Hey @terdon, so is it time to nuke efi? :-)

Fox's answer has 13 upvotes and no downvotes. Is that sufficient?

Sorry, not nuke. I guess the correct thing to do is rename efi to usefi wherever it appears. Is that correct?

@terdon Thank you.

you're welcome

I see firefox is back in Debian.

RIP iceweasel.

@terdon Excuse my ignorance, but what is the correct protocol in the case of this meta question? Do I accept your answer, or Fox's? Or is it up to me? I incline towards accepting Fox, but let me know, please.

@FaheemMitha As always, it's completely up to you. I just posted an answer so it wouldn't be a comment. And on meta there's no rep involved so even less reason to choose one over the other.

Go for Fox's since that's the one people voted on.

@terdon Ok, thank you.

@terdon Yes, I'll do that.

@terdon Could you not have commented? Would it have made a difference?

@derobert What you think of ZFS? Though the standard installer, at least, does not support it. And apparently is unlikely to.

Most people say it's tested and stable on other OSs, but not so much on Linux.

Which I suppose makes sense, because of the incompatible license thing.

@FaheemMitha I guess I could, but I prefer to have clear answers where possible. Comments are easy to miss.

@terdon Ok.

Would it be appropriate to tag this question with synaptic?

Though I'm a little puzzled as to why synaptic is being used as part of installation.

But I've never installed Mint.

@FaheemMitha This is post-install, that's synaptic.

As you pointed out.

@terdon So the system is already installed at this point, then?

Yes

Presumably a freshly installed system so it's odd that the OP would have such issues.

Ok.

Are you sure that's Mint Debian? Looks like normal Mint.

I've suggested he use something else. A command line tool is probably easier to debug.

@terdon I have no idea. Where did I say it was Mint Debian?

I've got zero experience using synaptic.

@terdon Oops.

I think I meant to write Linux Mint. What they call a thinko?

Can you change it to Linux Mint using your superpowers?

Sure

He's got a bunch of Ubuntu sources in there too.

That's normal. Mint is based on Ubuntu and uses their repositories as well as their own.

@terdon Oh. Was it automatically added, then?

@FaheemMitha I haven't ever used ZFS

@derobert oh. Well, it's available in stretch now, I think.

Does anyone think it makes sense to use LVM to copy a LV between two volume groups?

@FaheemMitha can you do that?

Step 1: merge the VGs. Step 2: Use pvmove.

@StephenKitt Possibly. See

@FaheemMitha ah right by merging the VGs

yes

the nice thing about that is that you can continue using the system while it moves data around

My question is whether this is a reasonable way to go. After all, there are many alternatives. And LVM is not without bugs.

@StephenKitt Well, in theory.

@FaheemMitha Curious why they're two vgs if you're moving stuff between them...

@FaheemMitha I’ve used pvmove a lot without running into issues

@derobert I don't follow.

but that’s just anecdotal of course

@FaheemMitha I haven't seen any in the core functionality for quite some time. Actually, can't remember ever running in to one.

@StephenKitt Oh, you've used it? Good to know.

Same here. I've also used pvmove just fine.

@FaheemMitha yes, whenever I prepare to remove a drive from a system

@derobert Snapshotting used to hang sometimes. Of course that was a long time ago. And I don't know whether LVM is actively developed or what.

@FaheemMitha yes, it’s still actively maintained

So would it be a reasonable approach to try?

@FaheemMitha I would say so, yes

@FaheemMitha Snapshots would hang if you ran out of space... but I haven't had them hang otherwise.

@FaheemMitha yeah

Ok. Thanks, guys.

I wasn't sure whether it fell into the category of "eccentric".

I use snapshots automatically for lvcheck and I’ve never had a problem

@StephenKitt My usage was around 2006/2007 or so.

@FaheemMitha right, it’s had time to improve ;-)

@derobert I don't think that was the case with me. But it's been a while.

I was using snapshots to backup on a machine back in '04 or '05, didn't have any problem. As long as I monitored and the snapshot didn't run out of space.

This was in the context of making backups, so the volumes were presumably being written to while the snapshot was created and read from.

yes

it was a database, so actually both sides may have taken writes... Don't recall if log recovery was done as part of the backup

@derobert Still not clear what you meant by:

BTW, did you check whether your Intel laptop had that bug?

@FaheemMitha I'm curious why you've made two different volume groups if you treat them as one (by, e.g., moving stuff between them). Though maybe that's a rare exception, and you don't normally move stuff between them.

@derobert Oh, the two volume groups are my old and new Debian installations.

@FaheemMitha Not yet. The maintainer responded though (doesn't happen for him, on Intel), and asked me to try with the version in sid.

Currently called debian and newdebian.

@FaheemMitha I imagine if you want to follow progress on the bug, you'll have to subscribe to it. I doubt it continues to cc you.

And the copying is me copying my old installation files, /home etc, to my new installation. The SSD disks. You recall answering my question copying my system from non-UEFI to UEFI.

@derobert Well, I think you BCCed me.

What's the link again?

@FaheemMitha nope, used X-Debbugs-CC to have the BTS cc you so you'd get the bug number. bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=865544

bts subscribe 865544 ought to let you follow along via email. If email from your box is set up, at least.

@FaheemMitha Yes, Mint's default sources.list is basically Ubuntu's + one or two Mint things.

@terdon Ok.

@derobert I sent an email to 865544-subscribe@bugs.debian.org. Would that work?

@FaheemMitha yes

@FaheemMitha I think so.

there’s also a “subscribe to this bug” link on the bug page

which does the same thing

@StephenKitt @derobert Ok, great.

Presumably lvmove just copies the data over, so I suppose it could take a while with large filesystems.

it copies the entire block device. It doesn't know anything about filesystems.

@derobert Block device? Meaning the logical volume?

yeah

I guess that's good. But can I still carry on using my system if it is running on the LG that I'm screwing with?

yes

Hmm. Living Dangerously.

if I remember correctly, it basically works by setting up a mirror, then once the mirror is sync'd dropping the old half

<Cue Mission Impossible theme.>

(oh, and it's pvmove, not lvmove)

@derobert Right, sorry.

quick check of the pvmove manpage confirms they do it with mirrors

I'm imagining a stage magician act right now.

pvmove(1) oddly doesn't mention Miss Marple, or any deaths. Suspicious

Miss Marple? Isn't that a rather dated reference?

i think one is supposed to mention some suitable TV show these days.

Possibly Game of Thrones. Though I don't really know what that is.

Books are so passe.

I'm sure there has been some half-contemporary TV adaptation of They Do It with Mirrors .... /me checks Wikipedia

2010!

@derobert I wouldn't have pegged you as a AG reader.

I used to like Albert Campion.

Never read any of those. I read all of Agatha Christie's mysteries when a teenager though. Should reread them someday.

@derobert That's a lot of books.

The Edmund Crispin books are pretty fun.

shrug not that many, got through all of Discworld in under a year... Use to read at least a book a week. Probably more. That was before Netflix, after all....

You must be a fast reader.

@derobert Are you going to try upgrading to 4:5.8.7-1? Should I?

I've already upgraded it, just need to log out and back in

@derobert Ah. Let me know what happens.

@FaheemMitha still happens with new version

@derobert Oh. Bummer. Should I try too?

I suspect it's an Nvidia thing. Which would explain why it wasn't caught sooner.

@FaheemMitha Yeah, I'll have to try it on my Intel laptop.

Oh, dear. The icons on the panel aren't hiding/showing the programs that they are should be.

I've no idea how to debug this.

And now they are again. This is weird.

See Arrow's answer [Can someone explain what this chown is actually doing?] (unix.stackexchange.com/questions/373029/…). How can I make my comment's clearer if I haven't already?

@eyoung100 Personally I wouldn't bother. He's clearly not taking your point.

Hmm, when I start up a video file, the tabs all get confused. Clearly there's some kind of bug here. But how to report it?

@FaheemMitha: Did you get my point? I tried because I can tell he will be a productive user, but I don't want him posting garbage. In this case the garbage works but it is syntactically incorrect. And I don't think he realizes how many people Google here, and take even the garbage as gospel ;)

@eyoung100 Yes. I get your point.

You could always flag it to be edited. Or edit it yourself.

Hmm, those icons keep switching from being messed up and being correct. It's frustrating.

@eyoung100 Frankly, it's a dumb question. I'm debating whether to close it, but I'm not sure what reason to give. Clearly it's on topic.

@FaheemMitha, If I edit it, the comments become useless. I've thought about it, but I still don't think he'd get the poin't

@eyoung100 Probably not. BTW, are you using voice recognition software?

You could bring it to the attention of a mod, though. Since you seem concerned by the possible impact of a error on "posterity".

@FaheemMitha No, why... I'm a one handed typist on XUbuntu lol

@eyoung100 Ah, ok. That last error looked like something software might make.

@FaheemMitha I'll flag it and see what happens

i don't think there is really a protocol for: someone wrote something daft and won't acknowledge it. Mostly if I see something wrong I just edit it. Sometimes (very very rarely) the original author reverts it, in which I write a comment pointing out his error, and let it be. Life is too short.

I wonder if voice recognition software would work with SE chat. But I only know of Dragon, and that's dreadfully expensive. And probably wouldn't work on Debian.

Dragon isnt that good at it. I'm from Texas with a drawl :)) I spend more time training it than I actually do using it

@eyoung100 That sounds like a drag.

@eyoung100 It’s rather hard to discuss anything constructively with Arrow, unfortunately...

@eyoung100 Note that it's always possible to request comments to be removed by a mod. On SE they're not supposed to be permanent, anyway.

Or not necessarily.

@StephenKitt So I'm not the only one?

Hmm, Ok, I can reproduce the panel icon weirdness. Anyone out there running Plasma 5 on stretch (Debian 9)?

I'd like to confirm that I'm not hallucinating before I submit a bug report.

It might be related to the Nvidia drivers, so if you use that, so much the better. Oh, and you need to have a dual monitor setup.

@eyoung100 there’s at least two of us ;-)