/dev/chat

kyrias

12:52 AM

base10 should probably either be removed completely or be made a synonym of decimal, hmm.

Faheem Mitha

6:13 AM

In case anyone is interested, interview with @Shirish.

people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/…

derobert

3:36 PM

@kyrias ok, I just got up, but what language is that... I think the language that's written in should replace both of those tags.

I mean, it could be shell, its valid shell syntax, but AFAIK none of those do anything useful...

I just got up—maybe I need to read the question again after some tea...

unix.stackexchange.com/questions/188474 is now the only question with either of those tags. I retagged one that was using decimal, because it wasn't really about decimal. (Was almost "what does tee do?") That was unix.stackexchange.com/questions/163524

terdon

3:57 PM

> I am a newbee in linux,and i have chosen gentoo for my linux distribution.

I think I see a problem right there :)

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Not necessarily. He might be a super-experienced FreeBSD user.

@derobert I somehow think of you as an exotic coffee drinker. A la the Crane brothers.

Question - I'm trying to help someone who has a SO account log into Area 51. I thought his SO login would work. Any idea what he might need to do?

terdon

@FaheemMitha That should work. Just like any other SE site.

Ah! Unless... hang on

81

Q: "OpenID 2.0 for Google Accounts is going away"; will this affect Stack Exchange?

Apparently, for some reason, Google is retiring its OpenID 2.0 platform. I got this notice while logging in with Disqus, but not with Stack Exchange. So... is Stack Exchange going to be affected by this? Do I need, or want, to add extra login methods to my Stack Exchange account to ensure I can ...

That might be relevant.

Faheem Mitha

4:15 PM

@terdon Ok, I pointed him to that. We're on freenode, btw.

terdon

I doubt that's the issue, I just happened to hear about that today.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon ok

barlop

4:32 PM

Did the linux bash prompt ever by default in distros, not show the directory(so people kept having to do pwd to check)?

and if so, then when was that?

terdon

@barlop Um, today?

It depends on the distro. I think that Debian and its derivatives always show the PWD but I'm sure that many others don't. It's such a simple thing to tweak.

Fabby

@barlop And everyone likes their own personalised prompt and hates everyone else's! ;-)

terdon

Hmm, I just checked and CentOS also shows \W

I don't know though since I always modify my prompt from the default.

Fabby

@terdon what's your default?

Mine is: green for normal users, red for admin/root and pwd on one line and $ on the next...

terdon

Mine's quite simple, just user@host and PWD $ on one line. Colors change for users/hosts though

${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}[\033[01;33m]\u@\h[\033[01;34m] \W \\$[\033[00m]

Fabby

4:45 PM

similar to mine...

terdon

Haven't really tweaked it much. I'd played with more complex ones in the past but they ended up being too distracting.

@Gilles are you around?

I'm looking into the background and I think that wallpaper (which exists) is better than desktop-background. Do you have any arguments why the desktop-background should be created instead?

Also, tsk: unix.stackexchange.com/posts/19646/revisions :P

Gilles

@terdon synonyms?

terdon

@Gilles You mean create the new tag only to make it a synonym?

Gilles

5:00 PM

“background” is used more often than “wallpaper” in the unix world, but I think “wallpaper” is used everywhere else

$ apropos wallpaper
fbsetbg (1)          - Set a background wallpaper or pattern

it's also called “root [window] image” but that's less well-known

terdon

I'd just rather not create a tag unless necessary. We already have wallpaper, would desktop-background really add anything?

Gilles

@terdon discoverability

People on this site have been spontaneously using “background” for years, not “wallpaper”

terdon

Well, sod it, I've already created the tag so I may as well synonymize them. Are you suggesting we make desktop-background the master and wallpaper the synonym?

Gilles

@terdon could go either way

terdon

I'd recommend the inverse since there are already 27 questions tagged with wallpaper

OK, dealing with it now, I'll post an answer to your meta Q once it's done.

Faheem Mitha

7:19 PM

Has anyone ever used reportbug with the --bts option?

faheem@orwell:~$ reportbug --bts debbugs.gnu.org
Ignored bogus setting for --bts: debbugs.gnu.org

suggestions?

bugs.debian.org/625654

Bummer

derobert

8:06 PM

@Fabby mine is pretty normal (basically Debian default) except that it turns red and adds $? when it's non-zero

Fabby

Oh! That's a good one!

derobert

RED="\[\033[31;1m\]"
NORMAL="\[\033[0m\]"
PS1_INSIDE='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w$bad\$ '
PS1="\`
        retcode=\$? ;
        if [ 0 -ne \$retcode ]; then
                bad=\" [\\\\\\\$?=\$retcode]\"
                echo \"$RED$PS1_INSIDE$NORMAL\"
        else
                bad='';
                echo \"$PS1_INSIDE\";
        fi;
\`"
unset RED NORMAL PS1_INSIDE

Fabby

Ouch!

Too complex for me to understand...

derobert

There, that's simpler to understand. And if you think its hard to understand... I got to build and debug it.

Possibly there is a better way to do that, who knows.

Gilles

@derobert I'm pretty sure there is, it begins with exec zsh

Fabby

8:10 PM

:D I'm not even going to try...

Here we go again... >:)

derobert

@Gilles someday I'll check out zsh

Fabby

After I've read the entire Linux System Administrators manual (which doesn't contain zsh) I'm going to start on go and then I'll have a look at zsh...

Faheem Mitha

@Fabby What a dreary way to spend the time.

Fabby

@derobert I'm just going to keep this for future reference as mine turns green for users and red for root and admin, so I will in a year or so when I know more, incorporate yours into mine and make the error orange...

Now I'm just not capable of doing that...

Hold on, I could ask a question here for that!

>:)

(just not used to actually asking questions on U&L...

Faheem Mitha

8:46 PM

One might reasonably expect mv to write atomically, and rollback if it fails, but it doesn't. E.g. in the case of running out of space.

derobert

@FaheemMitha Unix provides no API to do that. Rename of a single file, on the same partition, is atomic—beyond that, nope.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert same partition? You mean same filesystem?

derobert

yeah, sorry, same filesystem

Faheem Mitha

ok

@derobert do you have an opinion about

4

Q: How to prevent automake from overwriting INSTALL?

I'm working on a project that has a custom INSTALL file. Running automake --add-missing (or more precisely, autoreconf -i) will generate the GNU default INSTALL file, and overwrite our file with it. How can I prevent this behavior? I want it to either not generate the GNU INSTALL file at all, or...

gnu automake autoreconf autotools

derobert

@terdon obviously, we should use the longer one, as there is a long Unix tradition of typing as many characters as possible. (Just kidding... seems like a good candidate for synonyms to me)

Faheem Mitha

8:56 PM

Sorry, I should have been more specific.

The issue about whether the INSTALL overwrite is a bug.

derobert

No idea. Seems like a question for upstream.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert ok. I'll file a bug. Though apparently it is known behavior, which suggests they don't think it is a bug.

derobert

I don't use autotools enough as a developer to have an opinion

Faheem Mitha

@derobert ok