/dev/chat

slm

00:00

Ah yes that Q. I've never seen an accept move around like that. All the A'ers are like ex-girlfriends on that one.

terdon

Mine too. And only cause it's great not cause it's the only one I have any real fluency it at all!

@slm lol

I found it hilarious cause I honestly don't know squat about it. All I know is what I've inferred over the years but since the OP seemed to be more or less on the same level, it worked :)

Oh hey, since you're here, can't we do anything better than this about detecting init systems? Is it really that hard?

8

Q: Bash- detect init system

This may have more to do with detecting operating systems, but I specifically need the init system currently in use on the system. Fedora 15 now uses systemd, Ubuntu uses Upstart, while others use variations of System V. I have an application that I am writing to be a cross-platform daemon. Th...

Ah, I guess your answer here is probably as good as it gets

2

A: How to determine which init system is used?

Using processes Looking at the output from a couple of ps commands that can detect the various versions of systemd & upstart could be crafted like so: upstart $ ps -eaf|grep [u]pstart root 492 1 0 Jan02 ? 00:00:00 upstart-udev-bridge --daemon root 1027 1 0 Jan02 ? ...

slm

Ah good you found it. I was having severe deja vu

I was thinking it was the "witch windowing env." Q that I was confusing it with but knew I'd written something up about this

terdon

Strange that there isn't anything cleaner though.

slm

1

A: How to detect the desktop environment in a bash script?

Method #1 - $DESKTOP_SESSION I think you can find out by interrogating the environment variable $DESKTOP_SESSION. I'm not entirely positive how widely supported this is but in my limited testing it appears to be available on Fedora & Ubuntu. $ echo $DESKTOP_SESSION gnome Method #2 - wmctrl T...

Yes the same goes for the windowing env.

The tools like lsb_release are really just giant case/switches that hide all this decision logic so that it presents as a nice simple tool that reports your distro, but the logic behind it is ugly (I'm guessing). A tool to do init or DE would likely be as ugly.

terdon

I guess it's too deep in the system to be easily reportable, really strange about the DE though.

Who launches a DE? It's run as me, but it's started by the login manager right? Should it be possible to walk up a process tree to find it (and I just tried and failed)?

slm

00:15

Yeah

Graeme shows how to walk up the tree. It didn't work on RH distros though

terdon

Ah, yes, I'd missed that one. That's the kind of thing I was thinking of, but it is not trivial.

slm

No it took me a bit to understand how it was doing that

Hauke had an example where he was walking up a tree too, can't remember which Q/A that was on though

AU has a better A

29

Q: How to determine which window manager is running

Is there any way (such as a command or environmental variable) to determine what window manager is the one actively running in the current session?

xorg window-manager

Grame's method is likely the best w/ having a giant || list, but building that list and maintaining it is a thankless job no one wants to do

only installers would really care about it

on4aa posted the solution that was UV'd here and got DV'd there on AU

-1

A: How to determine which window manager is running

The following script resulted as the best answer to a similar question I posted over at unix.se. It also works great with Unity and LXDE. if [ "$XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP" = '' ] then desktop=$(echo "$XDG_DATA_DIRS" | sed 's/.*$xfce\|kde\|gnome$.*/\1/') else desktop=$XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP fi desk...

terdon

@slm Yeah but I think cause others had already mentioned $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP

slm

I don't know why that makes me laugh

terdon

@slm Yeah, very different crowds.

I've been downvoting quite a bit there, there are so many bad answers.

Some fun questions every now and then though.

(blush):

terdon, Marseille, France

4.2k 10 31

command-line bash 12.04 scripts partitioning mount shell-scripting

mikeserv

00:23

Bash detect init system? Non sequitur.

slm

I usually go to your page and open your A's in tabs and then UV the good ones

Figured we'd get you to 5k

Getting one of us to 20k would be a plus

terdon

@slm thanks :)

And yes, we need to get more people from U&L on serious rep on AU.

@slm Kinda what I do with you on SU

mikeserv

@terdon - you launch the DE. In fact, X will pretty much refuse to operate as root.

slm

Yeah I was paying back w/ that. Plus as you said it's kinda easy to write up a solid A over there, they usually eat it up if it's got any of our usual level of detail.

terdon

@slm true

slm

00:27

I run X as root on several systems

mikeserv

It takes a special touch...

slm

I usually login as root right at the desktop

terdon

@mikeserv I know, what I said was " It's run as me, but it's started by the login manager". I know I own it, I was wondering how to find my way through the process tree to infer the name of the DE currently running.

slm

xscreenlock is the only app that seems to need special attention

terdon

@slm Do we need to give you the lecture on why that's not safe? :P

mikeserv

00:28

XDG will definitely bite back in a root scenario... And any apps that enforce sandboxing will get pretty angry.

slm

I thought you guys had already 8-)

mikeserv

Meh. As long as they're several of his systems who cares?

terdon

He does presumably.

mikeserv

Anyway, I think its just xsession

Probably via .profile or .bashrc. I dunno about Debian. @FaheemMitha clued me into .xsession earlier.

slm

Yeah I don't use any AV either, and I've never had a virus, but I still don't recommend for novices to go w/o AV or to use root. But if you know what you're doing it's like using a saw w/o the guard

mikeserv

00:31

You can trace it though back through those configs. Find the exec line - should combine X and de in one line somewhere.

Me either.

slm

never had a virus either, right?

terdon

@mikeserv Ah, but how do you know which one was run?

slm

It's total bunk

terdon

@slm I have, on Windows.

mikeserv

AV is like those thugs who want the corner grocer to pay "protection" money.

3

terdon

00:33

Long time ago though, but then again, I haven't used Windows for anything but games. When I reboot to play something I tend to simply disconnect the wireless to avoid any issues.

slm

I've had several technophobes get them at work but none of the tech staff. It's just using common sense

mikeserv

Well, whichever comes first in the exec statement.

terdon

@mikeserv Has it ever been proven that some viruses come from AV makers? I'd be really surprised if that's not the case.

slm

@mikeserv - well said, that's exactly what it is

mikeserv

@slm Amen.

terdon

00:34

Call it the Luddite Immune Deficiency Virus, LIDV

mikeserv

@terdon I have no idea. I just know that every favor I've ever done for friends or family that was computer related had more to do with removing their protection than it did with viruses.
@terdon if the LID fits, I guess.

"but... Don't I need zonealarm...?"

"Yeah. My password is abc123, by the way. Its the same on every site..."

slm

@terdon - nice job on this Q 81 UV and still going

81

A: Are hard links equivalent to Windows shortcuts?

No, a hard link is completely different. A soft link is closer to a Windows shortcut (though there are important differences, symbolic links are more similar to windows shortcuts than hard links are). A hard link is a different thing and one you will almost never need. Briefly, a soft link is c...

mikeserv

About init... The short answer is no. The longer answer is, if you're far enough along to specify bash you don't need to care.

terdon

@mikeserv Oh yeah, forget about the bash part.

@slm Thanks, that's what got me into AU actually. I was like "these guys think this is impressive? I'm going to be a guru here!"

slm

You've got some gems there already

mikeserv

00:50

I guess if you do want to know you could just iterate over a list - trial and error. There's no open ended method. And even if there was, what could you do with it? You can't handle an api that you haven't explicitly handled. Its either known and planned for or it's not used.

About init I mean.

strugee

@terdon putting that inode knowledge to good use, I see! :P

terdon

Yeah, iknowed

2

strugee

I don't regularly visit AU anymore but when I do I inevitably see a super easy question on the front page and I'm just like, "awww. I'll take pity and bless this pour soul with my knowledge."

AU is a nice ego boost.

terdon

@strugee That's how I felt about SU. All these poor lost souls needing help.

Then I cam here and tried to do the same thing thinking I'd be the "expert" and boy was I wrong. The amount of *nix and scripting knowledge I've picked up on this site is staggering. A couple more years of this and I could get me a job as a sysadmin :)

strugee

@terdon same haha

there's a reason I want to be a professional sysadmin.

a large part of it is because I'm good at it and a large part of why I'm good at it is this site

terdon

01:02

@strugee yeah, and the fact that you spend a hell of a lot of time tinkering with computers might have something to do with it as well.

By the way, whatever happened to that blog post of yours? Still not out?

strugee

@terdon I've been waiting for the theme

@terdon yeah...

terdon

ah, OK

strugee

just edited an AU post from a 1-rep newbie named "NewWinger", signed, "Thanks, NewWinger... winging it"

terdon

Ouch...

strugee

rolls eyes

it was a dupe of one of the most popular questions too

he needed nomodeset

probably

I almost want to reach 3k just so I can loan those poor souls some close votes. Emacs knows they need 'em.

terdon

01:09

YES! Please do.

mikeserv

Here. This one. unix.stackexchange.com/q/121023/52934

strugee

I got about 200 or something from a question that would have been infinitely better on here

mikeserv

Please. Pretty please?

The question is stupid and a blatant ripoff of so. But so is the top answer.

And the bottom one, but at least its honest about it.

strugee

I don't mince words.

as it is, this question is useless. tell us at least the following: what command did you execute to try to open the archive? where did you download the archive from? why are you downloading an archive instead of the Ubuntu package? — strugee 1 min ago

@mikeserv I UV'd

mikeserv

This is why its bad: stackoverflow.com/questions/13360091/…

terdon

01:21

@strugee Yeah, but you might want to. You get a lot of newbies an non computer folk on AU, you can't expect them to know what a tarball is, they're used to .exe installers (if that).

@mikeserv What are you talking about? The reverse array question?

mikeserv

Yeah, if the question isn't plagiarism, the answer sure seems to be.

strugee

@terdon true, I feel kind of bad about it. and someone (probably justifiably) called me on it.

mikeserv

Definitely mine is - but at least its self-plagiarism.

terdon

Nothing wrong with plagiarizing SO answers. It's nice to give a reference (and I always do) but SO stuff is CC.

By the way what are the ⏎ in your SO answer?

12

Q: How do we feel about copying answers from other SE sites?

One of our users posted a comment on this question pointing out that the question had been asked (not cross-posted, different user) and answered on Ask Ubuntu. Since I had found the question intriguing and the answer over on AU was quite good, I took the liberty of copying the entire answer verba...

discussion

mikeserv

The what in my so answer?

slm

01:32

@mikeserv meh, I get sick of writing the same things sometimes over and over and will recycle chunks of my own A's on the various SE sites. I've written > 2600 A's here so I'm bound to have already said key chunks of other A's, why reinvent the wheel.

casey

@mikeserv you have some glyphs that look like what is printed on a return key (outlined return gylph) in that answer

slm

So long as you cite it I don't have an issue w/ it and neither should you

Braiam

@slm you can vote to undelete it, you know ;)

mikeserv

Oh, the the return key. I copied it from my terminal back and forth a coupla times. No one did cite it.

slm

@Braiam nah the guy closed it himself, not touching it, the other A is better now, just funny

. <<REVERSE /dev/stdin ⏎

At the end there

mikeserv

01:35

Anyway, when copying back and forth I was trying to spread it out but then I'd stick it back in the terminal and the thing would quit working. So I just copied it in, made sure it worked, and left it alone.

Yeah - the return key.

Braiam

@strugee wow, that's a easy one... redownload it or look for another sources

mikeserv

\r

Just an artifact of highlighting back and forth from the ssh terminal.

terdon

@mikeserv ah, and it was copied as that? Weird.

mikeserv

Yeah. I thought so too. I dunno - do they do anything different? The same method I use here \ spreading long lines kept breaking there... By the end I was just like... Keep it. Don't care. It works. \r or no \r

slm

Something tells me this is a spammer

0

Q: Proxy problem in Mint 16

I recently installed Mint 16 alongside windows 8. I use the Internet through a proxy server in my campus.So after setting the proxy in the Network setting, I noticed that the Software center and the terminal cannot connect to the Internet.However, FireFox works fine and it has in its network sett...

linux-mint proxy

strugee

01:41

4

Q: I accidentaly did sudo apt-get remove python

I accidentaly did sudo apt-get remove python command and now terminal look has changed, rhythmbox, ubuntu software center and everything is quite changed. I reinstlled python with the command sudo apt-get install python but still nothing reverses. Terminal can't be opened throug dash but only thr...

apt python

why? WHY? WHY WOULD YOU POSSIBLY DO THAT??

slm

Accidentally? That's funny, poor bastard.

strugee

I gotta get one of those "I see stupid people" shirts

slm

The A is even better.

> I had the same problem before and creating a new user account after (backing up files) fixed my problem. If you can't get to nautilus (the file manager) try to use firefox to upload ur stuff to google drive...

mikeserv

@slm problem solved

strugee

0

A: Cannot load Eclipse .tar.gz file

I find most problems can be solved with terminal: sudo tar -xf eclipse.tar.gz If that doesn't work, then, looking at the error, your archive is corrupt. Download it again.

AUGH

slm

01:45

@Braiam - you gonna start opening your shirt and showing a giant S (Superman) underneath and save this guy or what?

strugee

SUDO DOES NOT SOLVE EVERYTHING

2

slm

@Braiam - might be another 100 UV for you.

mikeserv

I always do my unarchiving as root - how else could you do it?

slm

yeah right into / right?

terdon

@mikeserv Yeah, exactly. Then we get "waaahhh why can't I do anything with the files I extracted?"

slm

01:48

Cuz that's just how we roll....

Wah I accidentally removed /bin/rm...

Sounds like that could be a form of child locks for Linux.

A distro w/ no /bin/rm or apt-get purge or yum remove.

Braiam

@slm which?

python guy... meh, let see what he accidentally deleted

slm

@Braiam

strugee

oh noes, I accidentally chmod 755'd the entirety of /usr

slm

135

A: I deleted /bin/rm. How do I recover it?

sudo touch /bin/rm && sudo chmod +x /bin/rm apt-get download coreutils sudo dpkg --unpack coreutils* And never again. Why didn't you used sudo with apt-get? Because the download command doesn't require it: download download will download the given binary package into th...

I feel like I'm passing the cup for donations when I post that one in here 8-)

mikeserv

I find sudo tends to solve my problems.rm / ... Oh no...??

strugee

01:51

> Just for fun,

Braiam

@mikeserv didn't you saw that hot question that guy uses sudo whenever he hits a permission problem, the one that replaced /dev/null

slm

It was a Friday at work and I was bored w/ like 15 minutes to kill at work before leaving, plus I was logged into our production server and figured what the heck I'll remove /bin/rm.

2

terdon

@mikeserv That won't work actually, as I found out to my surprise.

mikeserv

Replaced it with what???

terdon

@mikeserv Oh god. With just about anything there was a slew of crappy questions about that.

mikeserv

01:53

What rm / ? You're braver than I.

Braiam

oh god, this is weird, NM doesn't depends on python!

terdon

@mikeserv I trust POSIXman: unix.stackexchange.com/a/90075/22222

strugee

anyone else seeing the mplayer answer at the top of this q:

8

Q: Options to show images when on the console

When I am on the console (the tty, the virtual terminal, which you reach with Ctrl+Alt+F1-6, not a terminal emulator), what options do I have to view images, tiff, whatever that's not text?

linux console images

terdon

@Braiam NM? network manager?

mikeserv

No. / /tmp and /dev/null are three POSIX guaranteed paths in your filesystem.

Its a good question. Mplayer is hardly the simplest solution though. SDL is almost enough.

Braiam

01:56

@terdon yeah

strugee

@mikeserv right but do you see it as the top answer even though it has 0 upvotes?

I do and I don't know why

goldilocks

@slm Tch: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/35333/…

mikeserv

But serious ly, what did he replace /dev/null with?

terdon

@strugee since there are no accepted answers, the sorting order is random. Just reload

mikeserv

Its top?

terdon

01:57

@mikeserv sudo mv foo.txt /dev/null

strugee

@terdon sudo mv

@terdon I did. several times. I even held shift.

shouldn't it be ordered by votes then?

Braiam

terdon

@strugee nah, you probably have it sorted by active

mikeserv

Sudo does it. But he just replaced the special file, I mean it was back next time /dev mounted right?

terdon

@mikeserv yeah, a reboot would have fixed it

Braiam

01:58

@mikeserv on newer systems... yea

mikeserv

What happens on older ones?

terdon

What about macs? Did we touch on that on the Q here?

strugee

@terdon ah. wonder how it got set to that

Braiam

@terdon yeah, macs are bugged

goldilocks

@strugee Oh you are here too: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/35333/…

terdon

01:59

Any idea if it comes back after reboot though? I would think so

strugee

fuck Apple. I've spent a lot of time this past day trying to make the damn thing resize my OS X partition.

mikeserv

Costs $$$

strugee

Disk Utility appears to have a habit of remounting the partition just at the end of the whole operation, so the resize operation fails.

slm

@goldilocks Yeah thanks for catching that, reopening

help reopen this

terdon

Same here

slm

02:00

Gotta object to the close votes here as there is a substantial difference between the need to view images files from a (presumably GUI) terminal (this question) and the need to view them on the console (the other question). — goldilocks 6 hours ago

4

Q: What is the fastest way to view images from the terminal?

The terminal is very fast and convenient way to quickly access directories and files (faster than find and click on the directory). One thing that it cannot show in text-mode is "pictures". What is a best way to view pictures (like you see images thumbnail in Nautilus) when you are working in...

command-line software-rec images

Who triggered the closing of that to start with?

I know I'm first on the list but that came through earlier today and I missed it

strugee

@goldilocks hah. got there and the vote count was one, voted to reopen and it jumped to 4. race conditions may apply, I guess.

goldilocks

@slm I'd presume orion, his moniker is on the comment.

mikeserv

Terminology does this automatically with xdg.

goldilocks

...or it was, I swear it was.

Braiam

@slm why is that softrec through?

slm

02:03

Yeah I didn't see his name on it

mikeserv

Video, audio, images, any extension defined by xdg. Just hover your mouse cursor over an ls output.

Braiam

naa right? unix.stackexchange.com/a/35340/41104

slm

@Braiam - seems approp

mikeserv

You can printf images using terminal escapes.

terdon

Yeah

@mikeserv I should look into terminology at some point. Keep hearing good things about it.

goldilocks

02:05

@slm In fact I'm sure because I flagged it w/ a note saying it's not a dupe. So maybe he got that and removed it? Anyway, no big deal. Dunno why I just didn't @orion.

strugee

@terdon really? gonna abandon your precious Terminator?

slm

@goldilocks seems like there's another dup to this one though, I'm wondering if it was just the wrong dup selected.

mikeserv

Its pretty cool. Wayland (like 4-5mbs in library files), vlc, and terminology and you've got all you could want.

Well... It needs EFL and ecore too... Way more than 4-5mbs there...

goldilocks

@slm 'flagged' isn't tracked under recent activites, but I'm purdy sure. If you mean the irfanview one, I haven't seen it before (did not check Jason's "see also").

slm

@goldilocks - here's one

3

Q: Irfanview alternative

I'm looking for some very simple image viewer with the following functionality: fast start next/previous navigation (in directory) full-screen mode reasonable format support keyboard controllable image re-size to fit screen (with maintaining aspect ratio)

software-rec images

goldilocks

02:09

@slm Maybe makes sense as a "see also" but it isn't the same question. It doesn't even mention the command line.

slm

2

A: Are there any multiformat image viewers, which are similar to feh and can show SVG files?

GUIs I'm familiar with geeqie (a fork of GQView). It has pretty broad support of file formats. There are actually several that carry support for SVG. Rather than list them all here I'm going to refer you to the very well maintained Wikipedia page on the subject, titled: Comparison of image viewe...

@goldilocks yeah I'm leaving it alone but just seemed odd

Hah this is the one I was thinking of where I just got tired of these stupid Q's and made a list

0

A: How to get JPEG thumbnails quickly

Just a list: digiKam (KDE) display eog (GNOME) feh Geeqie GPicView GQview (GTK) gThumb Gwenview(KDE) Imgv Mirage (GTK) Picasa pixieplus (KDE) qiv QVV (QT) views - View Images Exclusive With SDL VP (SDL) xzgv zgv Other lists Linux App Finder - Image Viewers Category:Linux image viewers - wik...

@goldilocks ^^^

goldilocks

Kevin's answer via xdg-open seems canonical to me, although maybe mention that you can invoke viewers by name (gthumb, whatever) might be a good edit -- anyway, I'm off to eat and watch The Good Wife while my catfish is still warm ;)

slm

@goldilocks - me and the wife are watching it too

terdon

@strugee nah, said I'd look into it is all :)

slm

that damn ethics crap w/ the ballot box getting stuffed

strugee

02:14

@terdon heh

Braiam

@slm ?

terdon

@slm hang on. You're "watching" a movie with the wife, and chatting with us at the same time. And you're still married?

2

slm

The TV show in the US it's called the good wife

the writing is great, good characters

cbs.com/shows/the_good_wife

imdb.com/title/tt1442462

Braiam

yeah, I know "The Good Wife" (local tv had it, had to drop it since they didn't continued) just that the phrase seems random to me

terdon

03:24

Anyone know off the top of their head how to trigger udev rules on waking from suspend?

Braiam

03:40

@terdon the nearest I've found wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Talk:Laptop

you probably will like to use systemd or upstart rules, tho

more reliable

terdon

@Braiam Thanks, but yeah, as you said, I don't think there's an even for this actually.

Looks like the best way is to add scripts to /etc/pm/sleep.d/

Braiam

you could poll something at wakeup and set the status of the touchpad

terdon

@Braiam hmm. Like what? You mean using systemd? Is that possible?

Braiam

[Unit]
Description=User resume actions
After=suspend.target

[Service]
User=%I
Type=simple
ExecStart=/some/script.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target

upstart apparently doesn't have a suspend hook

terdon

Nice, where would that go /etc/init.d/? Basically what am I looking at? I know nothing of systemd scripts really.

Braiam

03:48

/etc/systemd/system/ wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/…

terdon

@Braiam cool, thanks, going to have a look.

strugee

as seen over in The Comms Room:

linuxinsider.com/story/80145.html

slm

04:14

@strugee must of been a slow news week. The 100+ distro desktops on distrowatch, we need another one?

strugee

@slm heh. yeah...

I'd never go near that mess. seems ill-fated.

slm

05:01

@goldilocks - I can't freakin' believe they killed Will

I'm totally WTF

deadline.com/2014/03/spoilers-good-wife-bombshell-josh-charles

Kiwy

07:47

Good morning / afternoon / night

Kiwy

08:38

I hope I'm not mistaken with this one

1

A: Linux-image-3.2.0.4-amd64 vs linux-image-amd64

According to Debian wiki the package linux-image-amd64 is a metapackage meaning it does not exist but represent a set of package in fact installing this package is the same as installing the last kernel available for amd64 architecture. If you install Linux-image-3.2.0.4-amd64 and this packa...

Graeme

08:50

@Kiwy Nope, bang on.

Kiwy

@Graeme thanks, I had a small doubt about saying something not accurate or false

xiaodongjie

09:23

Hello

Kiwy

10:20

-1

Q: How to run a multiple scripts in a single shell script in parallel?

I have four different scripts which includes one in python, 2 perl and shell scripts. They were run one after the other and finally the outputs from all these scripts were taken and run on a perl script. Kindly suggest me a way, if i could run all the scripts in parallel.

shell

that guy just change its question

Graeme

@Kiwy yeah I just got that too! Wtf?

Kiwy

@Graeme wtf indeed

goldilocks

10:55

@slm I can see how as an actor it may not be about the fame or the money, it may the adventure -- and doing a weekly series probably isn't that. Or he thinks he is the next G. Clooney, lol. I notice on IMDb he's already doing/done two features for this this year, one of which includes Bobby Moynihan: imdb.com/name/nm0001038

@Kiwy @Graeme Some people don't get the concept. Good catch, good call.

Kiwy

12:22

the @futurtoad guy just ask two time the same question with two different packages using apt

0

Q: Get an error with apt-get trying to install pidgin

When I try to install pidgin using sudo apt-get install pidgin I get following error Err http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates/main pidgin amd64.2.10.9-1~deb7u1 403 Forbidden Failed to fetch http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/p/pidgin/pidgin_2.10.9-1~deb7u1_amd64.deb 403 ...

debian wheezy pidgin

0

Q: sudo apt-get install can't access -> http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/

I'm having not much luck today:problems with accessing http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ I have the default /etc/sources root@me:/etc# sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following package...

debian ftp wheezy

goldilocks

@Kiwy I 2nded to close as dupe...

slm

3rd

Kiwy

how much vote requiered ?

slm

5

Kiwy

12:37

@slm thank you :-)

Kiwy

12:54

if someone can take a look at the question about pidgin, it's really strange the OP use debian into VBox is able to use a browser but can't type ping 8.8.8.8

slm

13:09

@Kiwy I added some things to look into as an A

Kiwy

@slm just see this I can't think of anything but a proxy issue

slm

@Kiwy - seems like there is something else that's being overlooked to me

goldilocks

13:41

Someone who knows enough about apt should come up with a set of canonical Q&As for all the generic things that go wrong with it (e.g., I know the whole thing can fail because of one package with incorrectly formatted init.d scripts >_<).

1

Q: Fix held broken packages on debian?

I want to begin exploring moving myself away from google apps, because it's expensive, and it looks like citadel has all of the groupware functions I need. So I am trying to install citadel-suite with: apt-get install citadel-suite But it returns: citadel-suite: depends: citadel-mta but it ...

debian apt

YAMAF: Yet Another Mysterious Apt Failure

badp

aptitude ftw

Faheem Mitha

14:12

@goldilocks Not so easy.

These problems are actually easy (bordering on trivial to debug) but they tend to stem from a variety of reasons.

@badp actually, aptitude is probably buggier and more difficult to work with. for one thing, it is currently largely unmaintained.

badp

@FaheemMitha I've been using it with profit with unreleased ubuntu versions without much trouble

Sometimes it gets stuck in dependency hell, but it's not frequent.

Faheem Mitha

@badp yes, i'm talking about situations when there are problems

@badp most of the time, either apt-get or aptitude will work fine.

badp

@FaheemMitha That is "often" on Ubuntu alphas :)

Faheem Mitha

@badp ok

badp

I mean, I know of no better way to query about the state of a package and its dependencies

There's plenty of commands scattered around with dpkg and apt-get but aptitude just presents it all nicely.

It also has a good interface for getting out of tighter spots manually.

goldilocks

14:22

@FaheemMitha There must be someone somewhere who understands it well enough to definitively document them -- it is not open-ended witchcraft. Anything would be better than the literally hundreds or thousands of threads scattered around the internet that that go on for pages of "try this" and "try that" that usually stem, as you say, from something simple.

It's not a phenomenon unique to apt, it's just apt is widely used by people who haven't the faintest about where to start solving a problem. Me included, lol.

Braiam

14:33

wait, but Debian recommends aptitude for daily use instead of apt-get

Kiwy

@Braiam ? aptitude instead of aptitude ?

goldilocks

Catch-22! Damn it!

;)

Braiam

you guys should have waited the two minutes :P

goldilocks

Vultures.

Kiwy

@Braiam Yes I realised to late

goldilocks

14:41

@Braiam I think Faheem's right, BTW. Do you have a reference for this recommendation?

Braiam

14:53

> aptitude is most suitable for the daily interactive package management such as inspecting installed packages and searching available packages.

debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/…

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