/dev/chat

Faheem Mitha

8:18 AM

Can I compress with GNU tar and something else besides gzip?

Ok, that explains it. Debian does include the tar info manual because it is licensed under the GFDL. Freaking hooray.

Ah, there is tar-doc. Thanks, @StéphaneChazelas.

Faheem Mitha

9:27 AM

Is there a good place to park files for download, like permanently?

Faheem Mitha

10:00 AM

Never mind.

Braiam

11:41 AM

is there any need for distro-version tags? these are as unuseful as they can get

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam If something is distro-specific, then yes. E.g debian, gentoo.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha they are hell rare events

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam If something is distro-specific, then yes. E.g debian, gentoo.

@Braiam They are? apt, dpkg, portage, FreeBSD ports etc etc.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha yes, they are very rare

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam The apt tag alone has 519 matches.

Braiam

11:56 AM

for?

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam Meaning?

Braiam

54 secs ago, by Faheem Mitha

@Braiam The apt tag alone has 519 matches.

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam Still don't understand what you mean. More words, please.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha "The apt tag alone has 519 matches" for? matching what?

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam A search gives 519 questions with the apt tag.

slm

4:24 PM

@Ramesh - make sure you double check items when working the review queues. You had 2 that you pushed through as OK where everyone else VtD.

Ramesh

@slm, sorry. I will make sure this doesn't happen.

@slm, is it suggested edits?

casey

VtD sounds like the VLQ queue

Ramesh

@casey, VLQ?

casey

4:43 PM

@Ramesh "Low Quality Posts", though I refer to it as VLQ because posts get put in there because someone voted / flagged it as very low quality

Ramesh

@casey, ok thanks.

slm

sorry I was fumbling around trying to find it now...casey's right it ws the VLQ.

unix.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/57660

unix.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/57661

@Ramesh ^^^^

@Ramesh - just becareful, I've gotten lulled into approving things in there too, honest mistake, just double check things before hitting approve etc.

Ramesh

@slm, my bad. I will make sure it doesn't happen again.

slm

just a heads up 8-)

Ramesh

@slm Thanks. No issues. :)

Faheem Mitha

5:04 PM

Ooh, other humans. Exciting!

Seth

5:34 PM

Can you guys make sense of this question?

ohhh, I think I get it now.

He wants it to be like the gnome 2 version.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha now, I don't know the context...

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam Huh? You said distribution tags were useless.

Scroll up.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha yes, how we are using them right now is useless, and more useless are the version ones

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam version ones?

Braiam

@FaheemMitha centos6/7, fedora18/19, testing(through the excerpt says for one thing, it's being used to mean the debian testing)/jessie, etc.

Faheem Mitha

5:48 PM

@Braiam hmm. examples?

Braiam

@FaheemMitha unix.stackexchange.com/q/149152/41104 <-- what has to do centos with the question

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam "Unetbootin and Universal USB installer won't work for CentOS 7"

Odd, why is this version-specific?

@Braiam well, if whatever it is doesn't work with some Centos version, then it is version specific.

Though it doesn't really make sense.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha Unetbootin, not other method like it says below: Starting with CentOS 6.5, one can create a bootable USB key simply by installing the ISO file on the key using a program such as Win32 Disk Imager. This will delete all information already on the key.

btw, they contradict themself later: UNetbootin, mentioned above, has a Windows version and allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for a variety of Linux distributions, including CentOS.

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam Having read the howto page, I think the poster misunderstood it.

"Moreover, the CentOS 7 installer image has a special partitioning which, as of July 2014, most Windows tools do NOT transfer correctly leading to undefined behaviour when booting from the USB key. Applications known (so far) to NOT work are unetbootin and "universal usb installler"."

OR maybe not. Are unetbootin and "universal usb installler" windows apps?

If so, don't they have versions on other OSs?

Braiam

@FaheemMitha I think both exist

Faheem Mitha

5:55 PM

@Braiam both exist?

Braiam

@FaheemMitha both unetbootin and universal usb installer tools

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam ok, but not os specific, right?

Braiam

@FaheemMitha nope

Faheem Mitha

Anyway, I don't think the use of versioning is that unreasonable here, imo.

Braiam

as far I'm concerned

Faheem Mitha

5:56 PM

@Braiam So he could use a linux version.

Oh, I see he wants to use Windows. Sheesh.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha but it displaced more important tags like live-usb, system-installation and windows ;)

I'm not saying that they are bad tags, used correctly they can be useful, but right now they are displacing more important/relevant ones

Faheem Mitha

Why would anyone want to use windows?

Braiam

@FaheemMitha because users

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam Fair enough, but that was the posters fault. Why are you blaming the tag? Not like it could say, "kind sir, please don't use me, there are more suitable tags."

@Braiam I think you're blaming the tags for user error.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha mmm... read this and you will understand blog.codinghorror.com/the-just-in-time-theory

Faheem Mitha

5:59 PM

@Braiam No offense to Jeff, but he is not God.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha I'm not implying he is one, am I?

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam hmm, maybe only a programming/ui god.

Braiam

he has reasons which I agree in some cases, and I disagree in others

I will always be in the side of the reasonable behavior and general well being

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam Fair enough.

@Braiam what do you want to do. delete the distribution/version tags? I think that is a tech solution to a social problem.

Braiam

if you don't see the relevance @FaheemMitha, let me tell you: I encourage good tagging by adding the most relevant tags so, later on, the system suggest them, and discourage the bad tagging removing the irrelevant ones, so people that wants them have to go extra lengths to find them

@FaheemMitha SE loves to do that

Faheem Mitha

6:04 PM

@Braiam I don't understand, removing from where? you mean the specific question?

if you want to do that, i doubt anyone cares.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha whenever I see them misapplied

Faheem Mitha

I thought you were talking about deleting the tags from existence entirely.

@Braiam ok

If I misunderstood you, my bad.

Braiam

@FaheemMitha sometimes it becomes a problem where the tag itself is misused too much (due vagueness, ambiguity or simply social/general misnomer) where I get force to remove it entirely

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam I hope that isn't often necessary.

Though I think users over a certain rep can create tags as necessary.

Lots of people here. Nobody talking.

HELLO WORLD! HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND?

2

casey

@Braiam so I shouldn't create a question about a generic linux userland tool and tag it debian redhat fedora gnu and suse ? :)

Braiam

6:17 PM

@casey <_<

Faheem Mitha

@casey Don't tease @Braiam

there's a gnu tag? huh.

ryekayo

6:54 PM

Can anyone help me out with mounting a virtual dvd on virtualbox

Faheem Mitha

@ryekayo Did you post a question?

ryekayo

Yes, I have. I have a bounty up for it and I have ran out of resources on how to mount the drive

@FaheemMitha I'm sure it may have to do with me running it on VirtualBox. I even tried editing the /etc/fstab file but that didnt work

Faheem Mitha

@ryekayo Ok, well, give the link.

ryekayo

0

Q: Mounting /dev/dvd /media on VirtualBox

I have installed Scientific Linux on VirtualBox and I am trying to follow some exercises on a book I picked up. The first thing I need to do is: mount /dev/dvd /media But when I do that, I get mount: you must specify the filesystem type What I would like to do is mount the virtual DVD where...

I figured it out..

Faheem Mitha

@ryekayo Ok, then add an answer.

ryekayo

7:05 PM

k

Gilles

7:54 PM

@Braiam I don't think so. I often remove them but I'm fighting the tide. Write a meta post suggesting to remove them all and see if someone comes up with a justified example?

Distribution tags get a lot of legitimate use, but not distro-version tags

very few questions are specific to one version

Faheem Mitha

@Gilles sure, you might have a question about backporting sw to some particular version. e.g. debian stable.

I can believe they are much abused, though.

Gilles

@FaheemMitha but the question is rarely applicable to only a single version

usually the gist of the question is how to compile that program, never mind exactly what the target environment is

Faheem Mitha

@Gilles well, backporting to wheezy is extremely specific to backporting wheezy. though of course we rarely have users clueful enough to know what they want/need is a backport. usually they say, if we install this from another version, then will it work? or I want to compile this from source, but omg it doesn't work, please help me.

@Gilles Yes, from source compilations are not really distribution-specific, but backports are. as noted, actual backport questions are rare.

Gilles

@FaheemMitha No, usually backporting to wheezy is exactly the same as backporting to any other version, except for some changing version numbers

if packaging gets into play then the questions are specific to a distribution or to a packaging format

Faheem Mitha

8:16 PM

@Gilles Not really. Modifying packaging from testing/unstable for wheezy in general is quite specific to both testing/unstable as well as wheezy. I could give you examples if you care. And that same packaging may not be backportable at all to earlier releases because the surrounding sw package ecosystem has changed too much.

I do a fair amount of backporting, so I'm quite familar with the issues.

Granted, sometimes one can just do a straight rebuild, but them's the easy ones.

Braiam

@Gilles can you spare a close vote here? askubuntu.com/q/509769

oh, forget it

undergroundmonorail

8:52 PM

I want to put a command in my `.bashrc` to check some stats from a game on the internet. 2 problems:

- The request I want to make is rate limited and I don't want the script to break if I exceed that limit
- If I just want to run a command real quick I don't want to have to wait for an internet request to go through for a command that's really only there for fun, so I'd rather not actually be hitting the server at runtime.

To solve these problems, I'm thinking of having the script save the result to a specific dotfile and have the actual command in my `.bashrc` be `cat .thatfile`. Is this…

Wow, I knew multiline messages didn't do much formatting but I figured inline monospace would work. Do multiline messages just not format at all?

Braiam

shouldn't we delete this and why it got 7 upvotes?

casey

9:33 PM

an alternative to deletion would be copying the entire Q to an Answer (CW) and edit the Q to be something along the lines of "How do I enable elliptic curve encryption in OpenSSL in an AWS CentOS image?" and nuke the [fedora] tag

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam I don't get the off-topic. it looks on-topic to me. But it isn't a question.

Braiam

10:03 PM

@FaheemMitha it should have been closed as "unclear" but there was a custom close reason that everyone agreed to

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam Ok. well, certainly the poster seemed confused about what he was trying to do. maybe he thought he was making a blog post.

casey

11:00 PM

It is certainly someone who doesn't quite understand SE, but his content in that particular post is good, just not as a question

Faheem Mitha

11:14 PM

@casey Agreed.

Braiam

@Caleb just me or the auto comments script broke?

Gilles

@Braiam it broke a few weeks ago but there's a new version on github

or somewhere

check the Stack Apps post

Braiam

@Gilles I did, last version was 18 days ago

Gilles

sounds plausible

Braiam

[stackapp.se]

Gilles

11:26 PM

works for me

@Braiam nope

Braiam

:(

ok working now... after installing it for third time :/

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