/dev/chat - 2014-11-11

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1:20 AM

@derobert It is most definitely an inverted pyramid. I wasn't really specific about what the pyramid is. To be clear, it is the users of Debian tools and processes vs the people who work on them.

Examples: dpkg, apt, aptitude, debconf, debhelper, the Debian installer, lintian. With the possible exception of the installer, all of the these are 1 person affairs. Occasionally, they are 0 person affairs. For example, apt did not have a maintainer for some years, before David K. stepped up. debconf and debhelper are one-man efforts going back many years, by joeyh. The aptitude maintainer disappeared in 2011, and hasn't really been replaced.

There was a sort-of replacement by two people who don't really get on, and have been seen publicly quarreling on the mailing lists. dpkg is a one person effort these days. Another person who was trying to assist got tired of trying to work with him and has mostly retired from the fray. You get the idea.

@shirish Look forward to what?

@FaheemMitha and those are somewhat small projects, through they don't have "upstream" to speak of

@Braiam What, the debian tools? Define "small".

Is there anyone here with Synesthesia? Just curious.

@FaheemMitha lines of code

@Braiam Small is relative. I suggest a project for you - try reimplementing apt from scratch. Have fun with it.

Alternatively, dpkg, or aptitude.

yay! blocker bug for Iceweasel bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=721689

1:35 AM

@Braiam I closed it actually. It only needed a single vote and I would have voted to close that immediately if I weren't a mod, so...

@terdon yeah, I noticed

Damn, I missed the Pi Boat. I too could have got 25 votes for a one line answer.

/me smacks forehead.

Errr... why would someone use that extremely limited platform if you can't do anything. — Braiam 41 secs ago

close with extreme prejudice unix.stackexchange.com/q/167239/41104

> Please debug my code.

@Braiam This really seems like a straight programming question. Should it go to SO, or is it not good enough for them?

> Questions seeking debugging help ("why isn't this code working?") must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Questions without a clear problem statement are not useful to other readers. See: How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example.

we don't migrate off topic questions

1:45 AM

@Braiam we don't?

I thought questions could be sent to SO from here.

Oh, you mean OT on SO?

@FaheemMitha we don't migrate questions we know will be closed on the target site (off topic on SO)

@Braiam Right

Yes, those SO people would probably downvote that question to oblivion in 5 minutes.

1:58 AM

Do we have a canonical question for “how do I set up key authentication with SSH?”

4

Q: How to make password-less login work

I generated a key and copied it to my target: ssh-keygen ssh-copy-id username@hostname I left the the location of the key as default and did not set any passphrase. For a small while after that, I was able to ssh username@hostname without being prompted for a password, and then it stopped wor...

ssh key-authentication

I guess this would work in a pinch

@Gilles, terdon's answer here were good.

@Ramesh Yes. Not good as a reference to cite or close as dupe, though, because it's just one section together with unrelated considerations.

2:17 AM

@Braiam terdon VtC as too broad which is what it should've been done to begin with.

2:29 AM

@Gilles skimmed through the ssh tag, didn't see anything useful

maybe is time to create our own

The response was to long, so I posted an answer. — Jackson 14 mins ago

le sigh

@slm it got very ridiculous after the 5th answer

2:48 AM

when I post a comment, I know my productivity takes a dip

3 hours later…

5:53 AM

@FaheemMitha looking forward to your blog post you mentioned earlier. I also know about the issue you mentioned, would be good that you blog and I re-share the post :)

6:50 AM

@shirish Ah, I see. It was a hypothetical blog post. Though someone should really write about these things.

6 hours later…

12:33 PM

Is there any reason this should be considered on topic?

0

Q: Nokia N9 Web-server

I have Nokia N9 phone which is running small web application using web.py. I have an external IP from ISP and on the router I forwarded port 8081 to the phone (which is assigned 192.168.1.22 on LAN). However, I cannot reach it from outside. But I can reach it from LAN: 192.168.1.22:8081/app will...

Ah, it runs meego. OK then, I guess.

1:21 PM

I'd say it's more network-related, yet I don't know which SE site would be more appropriate... I doubt ServerFault would take it.

Anybody followed the groupon crap gnome.org/groupon ?

6

Makes you wish April fools day.

^April^for April^

1:41 PM

@terdon N9 is probably the only truly on-topic phone. It runs a full linux environment (as you discovered) so its basically just a very compact linux box with a cell radio

1:54 PM

@casey Yes, it's just that since the OP did not mention that and I don't know squat about phones, it seemed weird.

@Anthon never heard of it. Donated $50

total BS that they have to spend that kind of money to defend the mark

@slm fortunately I still have some money in the US, so I can donate without making lawyers and banks richer.

@Anthon - that's really all these cases work out to do. In a normal situation a phone call should be all that's needed.

the problem is that either they slept or didn't care, and now they have a product and they have to try if it is cost effective to just try and win a case.

Unfortunately you seldom can insure yourself against incompetent trademark lawyers that don't do their job for you. But like Gnome.org wrote, it is kind of difficult to miss Gnome if you google.

@slm is there some way to get this quickly in the advertisements?

2:38 PM

Can anyone recommend a reasonable free email service, not gmail?

2:48 PM

@Anthon I'll ask

3:01 PM

@Anthon sure, post a well-formed ad on meta.unix.stackexchange.com/questions/2549/… and link it here, I'm sure it'll reach the 6-vote threshold quickly

coordinate with Ask Ubuntu, they'll probably do the same

@Anthon - you want to put together the meta?

you can create an A to the meta that Gilles linked to. Once it get's to the 6 UV threshold it'll get into the sidebar advertising, if I understand it correctly.

thenextweb.com/insider/2014/11/11/…

@slm I will try to make the image first

@Anthon - I'll send an email to groupon@gnome.org and see if they have an official advertising icon/widget that we can use.

@Anthon - email sent

3:25 PM

Ok, posted here and on Ubuntu. If an official image comes in we can drop that in.

@Anthon - OK

@Anthon post the links

Seth said to drop a link in chat to accelerate the UV

0

A: Community Promotion Ads - 2014

0

A: Community Promotion Ads - 2014

@slm I did, But @gilles was quicker, thanks

3:38 PM

hmm, do you guys want this question?

I'm not sure if it is on-topic here or not:

0

Q: About FreeBSD and GPL License

I know this questions doesn't links too much to Ubuntu but I have a question about Unix and Linux and their licenses. If you choose to make an operating system based on the Linux kernel then you have to distribute it for free under the GPL License, but if you choose to make an OS based on the Uni...

@Seth we don't enjoy these questions much, but we do answer them

boy, this guy is seriously misinformed

@Gilles - agreed, they aren't my first choice but it seems on-topic here

@Seth - migrate it

People who can't spell shouldn't be trying to create operating systems.

We got 6 upvotes for the GNOME<>GROUPON ad

3:58 PM

AU got them too

4:12 PM

@slm Done. Sorry for the delay.

4:52 PM

@Anthon you're up to 8 now

@casey Yeah, not sure how long it takes until they show up and get clicked upon.

I got a necromancer badge on U&L meta and AskUbuntu meta for tne answer %-)

5:23 PM

@Anthon that makes it all worth it 8-)

@slm Silver badges and all, never realised that that could happen. Badges taste better when they come as a surprise.

so true 8-)

they're like finding $5 in your winter coat.

@slm, when should I flag for mod attention? For example, I could have instructed the user to provide more explanation here. So, is mod flag required only for contents that require deletion?

@terdon I finally wrote up the q&a for why Coriolis force makes hurricanes spin a certain way but does not affect the direction a toilet flushes, per an old conversation we had.

4

Q: Why does Coriolis determine the rotation direction of a cyclone but not my drain?

It is a common misconception that Coriolis is responsible for the direction the water swirls down a toilet, tub or sink drain. E.g. does a toilet flush the other way in the southern hemisphere? (If it does, it is due to the construction of the basin, not Coriolis). This misconception has been d...

meteorology coriolis fluid-dynamics

6:12 PM

@casey Should Synoptic be upper or lower case? You've used both.

@FaheemMitha lower, I'll edit it later. I already spent too much time writing it :)

@casey ok

6:24 PM

If you're unsure how to deal w/ something you can flag for mod, generally you should be able to deal w/ most things though. Instructing other users, I usually encourage everyone to use this browser plugin AutoReviewComments - Pro-forma comments for SE
http://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se

user image

The msgs there can be customized if you want them to be worded differently. I always liked using that since it gave me stock comments I could use for others.

@Ramesh^^^

@casey Cool! Thanks for the heads up

@casey you have a typo (don't have the rep): s/phenomena/phenomenon/

@terdon thanks, I'll fix that

@casey - when I tried to setup an ES login using my openid I got this msg:

This message has a timestamp of 11/11/2014 6:41:15 PM, which is beyond the allowable clock skew for in the future.

@slm odd

used my SE acct instead, that worked. Seemed to be an issue with the openid auth for 3rd party

6:39 PM

blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/11/…

"very interesting… i love the open-source-ness you guys promote, especially in the sysadmin space now. keep up the good work!"

How exactly do SE promote open source? Do they have any more FOSS projects?

they have several open source projects

github.com/StackExchange

@slm Ah, so they do. I stand corrected.

@DisplayName In my book, I think it is a bit unfair to have this closed because so many people have favorited this question, so there is a lot of interest. Unfortunately a small oligarchy of 24/7 SE geeks always feel that they have to impose their opinion on the enormously huge rest by these hasty closings. Yes: it's always THE SAME names I read there. Over 5,000 views by now - but 0.1 percent of people dictate a closing. Reminds me of Mozilla developers who always think that what they remove from their software is what their users want to have removed as well. — syntaxerror 11 hours ago

@syntaxerror interest is irrelevant. If you were to post a question asking for naked pictures of celebrities, it would get thousands of views and quite possibly upvotes. That does not make it on topic. This question is a classic example of too broad. Just look at the number of answers. Also note that the OP did not specify any limitations which makes the possible answers essentially infinite. In any case, closing is not deleting. The question and all of its 23 answers will still be here. Closing just means that no more answers are accepted. Do we really need even more ways to print π? — terdon ♦ 5 hours ago

ugh

I like that the only regulars there are braiam and terdon. All the others are seen less frequently in closings, IMO

That Q should've been closed w/ Mark Plotnick's comment anyways.

rosettacode.org/wiki/Pi

The only thing that made me hesitate originally on it was that the OP asked if there was a standalone command and I knew about the pi utility. The other A'ers probably should've been deleted on that merit alone, but we tend to allow for alternate solutions to the tags, which in this case bit the site in the @ss.

7:15 PM

@slm Thanks. I will take note of it.

@slm Not sure what this means. You think people should participate less or more in closings?

7:31 PM

@FaheemMitha - the implication by the comment that there are only a few that participate in the closings, yet on this we have 3 of the 5 that are not typically doing it.

This isn't what I would consider a good example if you're trying to make that argument

The entire rationale of why we close seems to go over people's heads too. The closings are done b/c the Q is off-topic, or poorly written. Both of these reasons are to protect the site from poor quality and so as to not waste peoples' time chasing a moving target when trying to answer.

@slm Make what argument? Maybe I'm too sleepy, but still not following.

@slm And what comment was that?

The quoted comment above that @terdon replied to already

8:14 PM

There should be possibility to add labels to favourite questions and answers. I tend to forget even my own solutions for some problems, so sometimes I mark a question as favourite not for question but for one of answers, but later on I forget why in fact that question was marked as favourite. It would be nice to have a possibility to attach short description to favourites.

9:04 PM

@slm Not sure what you mean. But I actively participate in closing of questions. Do you mean that while closing we need to leave some comments as well after choosing to close?

1 hour later…

10:26 PM

@Ramesh I know you do. I only meant that I wouldn't consider you one of the regulars that that comment is being directed to.

@jimmij that was suggested before in meta, let me see if I can find it.

@jimmij - this was one that I remembered

-2

Q: Folderize favorites such as bookmarks in Firefox is needed for unix.stackexchange

Suppose I use my favorites as learning. If I do it, specifying favorites's category is hard. Suppose unix.staxexchange is Firefox, and favorites of unix.stackexchange is bookmarks of firefox, How i create folder for bookmark?

feature-request favorites

you can also search within your favorited Q's too

You can search w/in your favorites like this:

> infavorites:mine [tag]

12

Q: Ways to label Questions that have been ticked as Favorite?

I like to star/favorite questions on StackOverflow that I would like to revisit some time in the future. Some of them are interesting, some because I'd like to reread when I get home from work. After a while, these pile up-- there are a lot of them. My question is, can we have a feature or way...

feature-request favorites

23

Q: Allow grouping of favorite questions

There are many, many old posts on meta asking for suggestions on how to better organize favorites. 1, 2 and 3, among others. This is not meant to be an open discussion on how to improve favorites, but rather a specific feature request that I'd like feedback on. I would love to see a featur...

feature-request favorites

go through the meta site, it has a rich collection of things that have already been thought of 8-)

10:49 PM

We have decided to abandon our pending trademark applications for #Gnome. Read more: http://gr.pn/gnomeupdate #defendGNOME

Tweeted by Groupon on November 11, 2014 at 8:26 PM

2

11:07 PM

0

Q: Upgrade cmake without root access

When I try to compile my c++ code, I got an error saying I need to update the cmake I use. I downloaded the latest one I followed the instructions in the README In the cmake-3.0.2 folder, that is I ran ./bootstrap && make && make install. It all worked alright until I tried 'make install'. It sh...

software-installation cmake

do we have a canonical “installing software from source without root access” question?

@slm Ok, I see now. I missed the context.

@Gilles Installing software withour root access is really just a no-win situation. It means that (a) you are not the sysamin and (b) the sysadmin is MIA or hates you. Either way, bad situation.

@FaheemMitha or the sysadmin has other things to do than install whatever specialized software each user needs

@Gilles it hardly takes any time on a properly set up system.

@Seth that is good news

Assuming it has the package available for the OS, of course.

11:14 PM

@FaheemMitha installing some version of cmake? Sure. But installing a more recent version than what the distribution has? Not only does that take time, but it could also break things for other people if it's installed as the default, so it has to be installed in a non-default location anyway (i.e. not in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin).

@Gilles With those build systemy things you generally want to stay as current as possible. But we don't know the context of this upgrade, so speculation is not useful.

@FaheemMitha No, build systems are not special in that regard.

@Gilles I don't follow. Special in what regard?

Why do we need more solutions when the OP has clearly stated he needs to decipher the output from his output!

@FaheemMitha that a later version may have bugs that people won't be expecting

11:21 PM

@slm argh, that is plain awful. I want to flag that comment. But terdon's reply is good. So let it stay and people can see where regulars stand :)

@Gilles The advice I've generally received is to stay as current as possible with the build tool. Well, the advice for specifically for autotools, but I think it applies to cmake too. And any software can have bugs.

We should make a loop-instruction (name?) tag. People keep misusing loop-device when they want to have a loop in their shell script. And merge for into that new tag.

@FaheemMitha every author will tell you to use the latest version of their software

I think autotools incompatibility is a major problem because they are prone ot backward incompatible changes. So staying very current helps to mitigate that.

@Gilles I guess that is true much of the time.

Debian still has multiple versions of autotools in the archives. Must be a drag to deal with.

@Gilles The advice in this case was "third party".

How likely is it that this would get an answer here?

0

Q: Building and installing for multiple versions of Python using autotools

I'm trying to figure out how to build my project for multiple versions of Python. I'm testing this on Debian wheezy, where the default version of Python is 2.7. but 2.6 is also supported and installed. However, automake is only installing and compiling for Python 2.7. I'd like it to compile for 2...

python build-process autotools automake

Assuming it is on topic, that is.

@FaheemMitha it's more of an Stack Overflow question than an Unix & Linux question. It's a developer question, not a user or admin question.

we might not close it as off-topic if it was asked here (it's borderline), but it's more likely to be answered on SO

@Gilles Hmm. Well, anyway, I doubt it is more likely to be answered here, so I'll leave it where it is. And it may not have a good answer anyway.

11:29 PM

you may be running against the SO problem that your big wall of code (which isn't terribly relevant) is scaring people away, but if you remove it, your question will get closed for lack of code

@Gilles It's not really that big. And people often post their complete Makefile.am/configure.ac. (Because the thing is a unit, and coming up with dummy/minimal examples is hard.) I suspect it is just that nobody knows the answer.

I guess I could trim it down, but I doubt it would help.

I removed the simann_ex code, which is pure C++.

@Seth ha that was easy 8-)

11:45 PM

They dropped the issue, maybe we should drop it too? — Braiam 8 secs ago

@FaheemMitha if the s/w is in a repo and is available it can be easy, but installing s/w is generally not trivial, esp. when you need specific versions, which is typically the case with gcc, cmake, and libraries. The entire move to docker has been fueled by this, btw.

@Braiam agreed, do we just need to delete the advertisement from the meta post?

@slm suppose so.....

@slm Well, if people are using older versions and don't want to upgrade, that can be a problem.

Though I myself favor newer versions, within reason. And I mostly stick to leaf packages. I run Debian stable for example.

Running bleeding edge KDE makes no sense, for example.

@FaheemMitha often times you run into a distro not providing the specific versions in an official way. PHP was a major pain for CentOS 5, for eg.

@slm True.

11:49 PM

There are always issues, even w/ just the interpreters, when you mix in gcc and libraries it becomes even more of a pain.

@slm IT works Ok if you can install stuff side by side, but the distributions don't always support it, because it is extra work.

the decoupling of the app into a docker container is really the best solution to the problem I've seen in a while.

Wow, the GNOME foundation already raised $83,000!

For example, Debian supports multiple versions of gcc, along with supporting libraries and stuff, so there is no problem there. But that adds considerable overhead.

@FaheemMitha - yeah, it's just a blessing/curse of how the s/w is pulled together into a distro.

11:50 PM

in Ask Ubuntu General Room, 1 hour ago, by Seth

We have decided to abandon our pending trademark applications for #Gnome. Read more: http://gr.pn/gnomeupdate #defendGNOME

Tweeted by Groupon on November 11, 2014 at 8:26 PM

@slm IKR? lol.

Same for Python, for example.

@Seth I figured that was going to be a long battle. What else can we knock off tonight 8-)

@Seth Wonder what they will do with the money.

Damn, too slow again.

11:51 PM

They stated on the page we linked that any extra monies would be used for development

They could have a rock concert. Or give it to the FSF.

I gave $50

@FaheemMitha No idea. I'm not sure if they can refund it or not, but I'm sure they can put it to some good use otherwise.

@slm Oh. Well, that worked out nicely for them, then.

maybe they'll fix some of the issues in 3.x

I'm not worried about it

11:52 PM

I'm still thinking they might refund (if possible). People gave to stop Groupon, not fund development and I'm afraid there will be outcry otherwise.

glad to offer help

I heard rumors that GNOME usability had taken a nose-dive in recent years.

@FaheemMitha You don't use GNOME?

I switched to cinnamon

Though I don't use it.

@Seth No, I use KDE. I've used it since 1999 or so.

11:53 PM

got tired of the bending over backwards I had to do to make it work

Oh, interesting.

@slm Yeah, I'm kind of wondering if I can get my money back now. I'm still pissed at GNOME for, well, GNOME.

Well either way, yeah, GNOME 3 is almost unusable for me.

With SuSE 6.2 (I think). It was 1.x then, I think.

Although I know other people who love it.

11:54 PM

yeah I gave the money for the trademark, not to accelerate the removal of features.

@Seth GNOME?

yeah I stayed as long as I could, it just became too much work to make it do what I wanted

@FaheemMitha It can't have been (I think). I remember SuSe 6 and I was using Mandrake in 99.

@FaheemMitha Yes, GNOME.

I thought of moving away from KDE, because I don't really use much of it, but it is pretty, so...

11:54 PM

it was so deficient in features that it would drive me nuts

@slm haha, well put!

not to mention the memory leaks

@terdon Can't have been what?

gnome 1.x

@slm I was talking about KDE.

11:55 PM

@FaheemMitha What do you think of Plasma 5?

I'm about finished w/ cinnamon too.

@FaheemMitha SuSe 6. Wasn't that later?

I've never used GNOME.

love the UI, hate the memory crashes and instabilities

@slm Come try Unity 8-)

11:56 PM

@terdon SuSE 6.2 was released in 1999, I think.

I have that for the wife and kids

lxde or xfce

Yes, 1999-08-12. See the WP page.

@FaheemMitha So it was, I just checked. Oh well, could have sworn I was using the 6.x ones.

perhaps over the holiday break I'll venture, or make my F19 laptop whose HDD is starting to click my F20/21 LXDE guinea pig

SUSE Linux distributions

SUSE Linux (/ˈsuːsə/ or /ˈsuːzə/; German: [ˈzuːzə]) is a computer operating system. It is built on top of the open source Linux kernel and is distributed with system and application software from other open source projects. SUSE Linux is of German origin and mainly, was developed in Europe. The first version appeared in early 1994, making SUSE one of the oldest existing commercial distributions. It is known for its YaST configuration tool. Novell bought the SUSE (then "SuSE") brands and trademarks in 2003. Novell, one of the founding members of the Open Invention Network, decided to make th...

11:57 PM

waiting for the HDD replacement

@slm Unity?

@FaheemMitha Yes, I was just looking at that. I seem to have gotten my Susies mixed up.

Never really like SuSE, it was quite broken. And nobody ever responded to my bug reports.

unity for the family

will likely go with lxde or xfce

to try

you either completely loved suse or hated it, I never met anyone that was in the middle of that

I'm not sure I understand.

11:58 PM

It was like sending them down a black hole. Not that Debian is exactly perfect in that regard, but at least I know there are people out there who might read it.

@slm Change versions. I really haven't had any trouble with that. I'm on 2.2.16 and it's fine. Are you on 2.4?

And YAST was a total misfeature.

@FaheemMitha Ubuntu weaned me off it. Suddenly things worked out of the box.

I'm on 2.2.14

(Just don't tell Seth I said that)

11:59 PM

@terdon Well, yes. Since it was based on Debian.

@slm I might have skipped that. I was fine on 2.0 and am fine on 2.2.16. You may as well try 2.4, it just came out.

@terdon I think he might have noticed. :-)

@Seth - my wife+kids have ubuntu on their computers so I'm familiar enough w/ unity that I don't want it for me, it's perfectly fine for their use.

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