/dev/chat

sebasth

00:49

@FaheemMitha doesn't seem to be supported on FF57 :\

Videonauth

01:01

@sebasth are you using greasemonkey?

sebasth

nope

Videonauth

> As a result, version 4 of Greasemonkey is a nearly complete re-write. Its interface and feature set have been rebuilt in order to best to work with coming Firefox versions. A variety of compromises have been made. We've elected to make a rare backwards incompatible change.

ok because greasemonkey does not work as expected, could have been one point where it coudld have failed

sebasth

ah, right, should have RTFM (says to use greasemonkey there)

Videonauth

I'm still using FF 56 tho for various reasons

sebasth

(Friendly Manual that is)

Faheem Mitha

08:29

@sebasth Debian stable is still on 52. Do you have it installed now?

@sebasth I thought it stood for Fine Manual.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha care to look over a question i did last night, for waht exactly is wrong with it? I only have legacy systems so i cant properly confirm what in kinds of EFI can break with this solution unix.stackexchange.com/a/407059/166226

Faheem Mitha

Interesting, and not totally off-topic: politics.stackexchange.com/questions/26289/…

@Videonauth Are you asking me to look at your answer? You said question.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha yes my answer

i actually recieved a downvote and well im not keen on DVs

Faheem Mitha

"(thats a lowercase L l and not number one 1)" is really redundant, and a bit confusing.

If people can't distinguish between the two, that's their problem, not yours.

Videonauth

yeah i put it in see comment below the answer

ok will take that out

Faheem Mitha

08:44

@Videonauth The downvoter didn't say?

I don't see any comments along those lines.

Videonauth

well he only said that it only works for legcy systems

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth You think it was Bahamut then?

Videonauth

gues so

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth If you want comments, I'm unclear why you say:

Videonauth

at least the DV and the comment came in the same time

Faheem Mitha

08:46

> This happens because it is missing the initramfs for that kernel.

(a) that's supposed to be taken care of automatically.

Videonauth

well thats the main cause for that kernel panic type

Faheem Mitha

(b) how do you make that out from the poster's question?

@Videonauth Ah, well I'd elaborate on that bit.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha google-fu :)

Faheem Mitha

The diagnostics are at least as interesting as the solution.

Presumably the "unable to mount root fs on unknown-block" bit.

Videonauth

yep

if you put that into google you will end up with at least 10 hits on AU and more on different pages too

including ubuntu forum etc etc

Faheem Mitha

08:49

Ok, well, I'd add a brief explanation why you think that is the problem, based on that error message. The chroot approach to fixing such things is pretty standard.

Videonauth

ok will elaborate more on that part

Faheem Mitha

Also, I don't understand how this could have happened.

Videonauth

power loss at upgrade end where the initramfs is ususally build

leaves the system without a working one

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth It's not strictly necessary, but it's good to explain rationale whenever possible. Otherwise it becomes a list of instructions without context and explanation.

@Videonauth Ah, well mention that too. Though the poster doesn't specifically mention power loss on upgrade.

Videonauth

> ... and when it was about to restart my battery was dead ...

Faheem Mitha

08:53

The (poorly written) relevant sentence seems to say that power loss happened after upgrade. But he could just not be expressing himself unclearly.

@Videonauth Yes, after the upgrade.

Anyway, no point in beating an uninteresting question to death.

Videonauth

yes i not know how short after upgrade it was, or if it was during a period where still data was written onto the drive and the upgrade was running, which in 99% of the cases is the thing what happened

we see those kernel panic questions on AU regularily

as well as wifi stopped working, cuts out etc

maybe asking @terdon to migrate it then we can close it as a dupe

ro an question which has a whole lot of answers

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth You could do that, but it's not actually necessary.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha well then i can delete my answer and not worry about downvotes incomming

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth The upgrade shouldn't be running on reboot.

@Videonauth I'd just leave it alone. It looks fine to me.

Videonauth

well , i just not keen on getting down-votes to be honest, especially when I'm still at a very low reputation here.

then i rather delete my answer and be done with

Faheem Mitha

09:03

@Videonauth You realise that one upvote and one downvote means 8 net points, right?

You shouldn't worry too much about downvotes. Everyone gets them.

Videonauth

:) its simply in my nature and foremost I'm now simply unsure if my solution is correct, thinking on the fact that other people coming after the op will read it and mess up their system even more as it is

if i would face a kernel panic like this i mostly would simply go for a fresh installation myself

just to rule out other error factors

but on the other side i have backups of all and everything so I'm not loosing data, running backups daily means i max loose the past 24 hours in the worst case

still annoying but not as bad as loosinf days or weks of work

Faheem Mitha

09:23

@Videonauth If you are so concerned about it, you could try asking the other high rep users who stop by here.

You might learn something if you do that. You won't learn anything if you simply delete it.

derobert, gilles, terdon, Kusalananda, sebasth, and probably others I've forgotten.

Sometimes Michael Homer.

Of course, not everyone will have the expertise to comment.

Oh, and Eliah is around a lot recently, and is very helpful.

Videonauth

true that

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth Which part?

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha this part

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth ok

Jonas Stein

14:02

unix.stackexchange.com/questions/406675/… anything I can improve here?

there was a link to a similar question on askubuntu: askubuntu.com/questions/211578/…

Faheem Mitha

14:33

Is gddrescue a front end?

@JonasStein It seems to me that the AU question mostly answers your question. And probably should be in U&L anyway, because it has nothing to do with Ubuntu, really.

It's not entirely clear what a question like "what is the difference means", though I've written similar questions like that myself. But it leave the reader unclear what you are looking for.

They are two separate programs with different code bases. Are you looking for differences in features/reliability/maintenance activity/something else?

@JonasStein Ah, a TeX user. Me too.

Jonas Stein

@FaheemMitha gddrescue is just a rename of one package to prevent a name clash

Faheem Mitha

@JonasStein oh

Jonas Stein

And the AU question is answered by the question author with nonsense

I wonder who upvoted it, but the things are a bit different on AU

AU would better move to facebook

Videonauth

I pretend now that i did not read that :P

Jonas Stein

it is full of duplicates and people just want to vote (like) each other.

They hardly improve questions or answers.

Faheem Mitha

14:47

@JonasStein I'm not sure why it is nonsense. He's mostly quoting from other sources, anyway.

Videonauth

@JonasStein how would you expect that from about 1000 frequenters of the site to maintain over 270k questions and god only knows how many answers? we are working every day countless hours on improving questions and answers, closing dupes, and dealing with the incomming flood of questions day per day

Faheem Mitha

I didn't read the answer carefully, and I don't know anything about these programs. But it looked reasonable to me.

Jonas Stein

it does not answer his own question and is a cheap copy paste from the manpages

sebasth

@JonasStein made my day ;D

Faheem Mitha

@JonasStein Since the question is "What's the difference?", like your question, it is unclear what a correct answer would look like.

And copy pasting isn't inherently bad, though it is certainly lazy.

@sebasth Facebook is a walled garden. And I use the term "garden" loosely.

Perhaps "Facebook is a walled dung pit" would be a better description.

Jonas Stein

14:50

@FaheemMitha with difference I mean the difference in the functionality, not the naming

perhaps I should add this...

else it could be closed as duplicate to the AU question

where the accepted answer does not explain the internal difference

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth Countless hours? Who is working countless hours?

@JonasStein If you don't find the AU answer satisfactory, it would certainly be helpful to potential answerers of your question on U&L if you could explain or even indicate how it was unsatisfactory.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha I for myself spend about 6-10 hours each day on AU, and there are more like me, Eliah for example, just to nyme one who frequents this room too

Faheem Mitha

@sebasth I'll go out on a limb and say that you starred Jonas's Facebook comment.

@Videonauth Yikes, that's a lot of time.

Make sure you take frequent breaks.

Jonas Stein

<- did not want to hurt individual active helpers on AU with the nasty comment.

Videonauth

and to put that in perspective, in the time were talking her UL got one new or active questions, on AU there have been in the same time 6

Faheem Mitha

14:55

@Videonauth Yes, AU is certainly busier. Or it seems to me like it is, anyway.

Videonauth

so @JonasStein if the answer you find 'nonsense' on AU isn't satisfactory, and you seem to be a pro at this, you're most certainly welcome to add your own answer then.

Jonas Stein

It looks like wasted energy for someone who knows a better answer to write there. THe question is old, the author marked a right answer and will likely not change this 5 y later and no one gets attention of the new answer on the bottom

Faheem Mitha

@JonasStein That's not true at all.

A better answer is never a waste of time or energy.

2

And lots of people look at all the answers, unlike there are many (not true in this case).

Jonas Stein

there is a "crowd effect" that no one reads or upvotes an answer with 0, if the accepted is 50+

Faheem Mitha

@JonasStein That's the first I've heard of it.

I'm tempted to go and find some questions satisfying that criteria and do some random upvoting, but I'll restrain myself.

Jonas Stein

15:08

;-)

Kartoffel

15:34

hey any recommendations on setting up debian partitions or how to improve the question? superuser.com/questions/1271722/…

sebasth

@Kartoffel do you only use debian repositories or also some 3rd party software sources (such as steam)?

Videonauth

@Kartoffel having 1 Gig for boot might be end up badly, and no you not necessarily need a boot partition, but if you do have at least space for 3 kernels and accompanying stuff which you can calculate about 350-400 MB per kernel, so have at least 1,5 to 2 GB for it to prevent problems later on

sebasth

@Videonauth huh? <5mb per kernel and ~20MB per initrd on my /boot partition

Videonauth

@sebasth well on ubuntu the kernel package is 378 MB

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth 1GB sounds like plenty to me.

sebasth

15:42

@FaheemMitha I thought my 0.5 GB was already generous

Faheem Mitha

Package: linux-image-4.9.0-4-amd64
Source: linux
Version: 4.9.51-1
Installed-Size: 185349

Videonauth

well sadly we see often users who update but don't clean up and then the question arises cant update and update stuck due to missing space in /boot

Faheem Mitha

Are the units kilobytes for Installed-Size?

It really should be included.

My /boot is 1 GB. I've got 4 kernels installed.

sebasth

@Videonauth It is also a bit of "learning material"/"opinion based" question IMHO (might get closed)

Faheem Mitha

root@orwell:/home/faheem# dpkg -l | grep linux-image
ii  linux-image-3.16.0-4-amd64           3.16.43-2+deb8u1        amd64                   Linux 3.16 for 64-bit PCs
ii  linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64            3.2.68-1+deb7u5         amd64                   Linux 3.2 for 64-bit PCs
ii  linux-image-4.9.0-3-amd64            4.9.30-2+deb9u5         amd64                   Linux 4.9 for 64-bit PCs
ii  linux-image-4.9.0-4-amd64            4.9.51-1                amd64                   Linux 4.9 for 64-bit PCs

Videonauth

15:45

all i see is when a kernel update occurs my system uses about 370 MB more but then now i see the initrd etc result in about 147MB for two kernels

 du -h --max-depth=1 /boot
7,0M	/boot/grub
147M	/boot

Faheem Mitha

@sebasth True. Plus lots of sub-questions in one question isn't too popular anywhere on SE>

sebasth

all the size used probably not installed on /boot perhaps?

Faheem Mitha

root@orwell:/home/faheem# df -h /boot/
Filesystem                         Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/newdebian-debian_boot  922M  109M  750M  13% /boot

Videonauth

yeah guess the headers go in /usr/lib and so on

Faheem Mitha

@sebasth The kernel images go into /boot.

sebasth

15:50

of course, but aptitude tells me "Uncompressed Size: 196 M" and `ls -lh shows`:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 19M Nov 26 01:14 initrd.img-4.13.0-1-amd64
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.3M Nov 16 23:04 vmlinuz-4.13.0-1-amd64

Videonauth

┌─[16:48:26]─[michael@NEXUS-ONE]
└──> testing $ apt show linux-image-4.13.0-18-generic | grep Installed-Size
Installed-Size: 72,0 MB
┌─[16:49:12]─[michael@NEXUS-ONE]
└──> testing $ apt show linux-image-extra-4.13.0-18-generic | grep Installed-Size
Installed-Size: 163 MB
┌─[16:49:39]─[michael@NEXUS-ONE]
└──> testing $ apt show linux-firmware | grep Installed-Size
Installed-Size: 206 MB

Faheem Mitha

@sebasth Yes, probably stuff goes elsewhere.

@Videonauth Huh, apt uses MB for Installed-Size.

It's nice when people use units.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha yes at least that what i get when i call this

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth Me too.

Videonauth

just took out the warning messages

this one :D WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

Faheem Mitha

16:05

@Videonauth I don't see any warning messages.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha well i do, i guess thats some quirks canonical put into apt

sadly this is making using it in scripts prety much useless

except you parse all and everything you get from apt

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth Oh. Odd.

Videonauth

i take it you're on debian strech?

sebasth

@Videonauth github.com/Debian/apt/blob/… , also says so in the man page

Videonauth

@sebasth yes but all i did was piping the output :D

sebasth

16:11

@Videonauth is the reason why !isatty(STDOUT_FILENO) check fails

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth 9.2, yes.

Jonas Stein

@Videonauth And *buntu installs 300 MB to /boot? I can not believe that. Perhaps these are the sources which go to /usr/src/...

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha on my jessie server, i have the following oddity, apt doesnt know autoremove or clean

Faheem Mitha

@sebasth What does isatty(STDOUT_FILENO) do?

@Videonauth Well, maybe they added it later.

sebasth

@FaheemMitha if standard output is a terminal (often not when invoked from script)

Faheem Mitha

16:14

@sebasth Ah, I see. That explains it, then.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha might explain it, maybe i should unpin Debian 8 and go complete over to stretch, anyways have already installed quite a few bits and bobs from stretch

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth You should stay on one release as much as possible.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha i did but i needed php7

Faheem Mitha

Well, except for leaf packages.

@Videonauth So port that backwards or forwards.

Videonauth

i ported forwards :)

its a Debian Jessie and php is from stretch

Faheem Mitha

16:17

@Videonauth ok

The stretch default is 7, I see. You aren't using stretch?

Videonauth

lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Raspbian
Description:    Raspbian GNU/Linux 8.0 (jessie)
Release:        8.0
Codename:       jessie

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth You're using Raspbian? On what?

Videonauth

apt-cache policy php7.0
php7.0:
  Installed: 7.0.19-1
  Candidate: 7.0.19-1
  Version table:
 *** 7.0.19-1 0
        500 mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian stretch/main armhf Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

@FaheemMitha raspberry pi 3 model b

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth Ok.

Kartoffel

@Videonauth @sebasth @FaheemMitha thanks, I appreciate the discussion about boot size and the included feedback. about the feedback: I know that it's a lot of questions combined, but they're somewhat really closely related, for example the first comment already answered like 4 questions. If I put all questions in differend "threads", it'd kinda be spam.
About boot size: so to conclude it's something between 300 mb and 2 gb depending on how much trash piles up? So I might just go with 2gb to be safe, right?

Videonauth

16:23

The time i installed this server jessie had only php5.6

@Kartoffel exactly it is sitting in root

sebasth

@Kartoffel if you use plain partition as root without disk encryption/lvm you do not need a separate boot

Faheem Mitha

@Kartoffel 2 GB is way overkill for /boot. Even 0.5 GB is probably overkill.

Go back and look at those numbers again.

@sebasth You don't need a separate /boot even with LVM.

Videonauth

and what we concluded on our talk

Faheem Mitha

I'm actually not sure when a separate /boot is necessary.

There might be situations where it's a good idea, but off the top of my head I can't think of anything.

Videonauth

@FaheemMitha on encrypted root drive it might be less error prone as having it inside the encrypted drive

sebasth

16:28

@FaheemMitha when your bootloader can't load the system, you might want to load the kernel from separate /boot. For example encrypted rootfs, grub doesn't have the necessary features to unlock the partition to read and load the kernel image

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth Would it not work as part of root, then?

@sebasth When would that happen?

@sebasth I see. Right.

Kartoffel

I'm sorry I don't get any of this. I'm trying to set up a debian system, not Arch, I'm new to this and have no idea what rootfs or grubs are. Why would my drive be encrypted in the first place? Should it be encrypted? Is there way to do this in a dual setup like I proposed? Wouldn't that be overdoing it regarding my little expirience?

Faheem Mitha

@Kartoffel Ignore the talk about encryption.

Though you probably want to consider LVM and MDRAID.

Kartoffel

And @FaheemMitha, regarding the question you pointed out in the comment: the first question basically is where the programs I install afterwards are stored, as I don't want them to block the ssd space. So I wanted to know if programs are stored in root or home

Faheem Mitha

@Kartoffel "Programs I install afterwards"? After what?

Kartoffel

16:35

after setting up the system itself

Faheem Mitha

@Kartoffel If you mean additional Debian packages, they go into the system. You don't really have an option about that.

sebasth

@Kartoffel IMO you should just follow the default partitioning. Keep Linux/Windows install partition separate. Should you need to share files between, use a separate data partition on one of your disks (probably ntfs).

Kartoffel

so system means root partition?

Faheem Mitha

@sebasth Yes, ntfs is reasonable.

@Kartoffel Not necessarily. But to a first approximation, yes.

Technically everything lives under root.

sebasth

for manual partitioning you should be OK with only one partition (root) too. You can later configure a swap file, which is a bit more flexible to static partitioning.

Faheem Mitha

16:39

@Kartoffel If you are just learning about Unix/Linux, I suggest some experimentation.

Kartoffel

@sebasth the point is that I want to know how much space I'm supposed to reserve when I set up windows first. Therefore I'm completely fine with using the fedault partitioning, but I need to know where I should place each partition and how big it is

sebasth

@Kartoffel as much as you think you need for Windows?

Faheem Mitha

@Kartoffel That's very hard to predict. The correct answer is probably "as much as possible".

You may end up using Linux more than you think.

sebasth

If you have already a running Windows system, you could check your disk usage to make an estimate.

Faheem Mitha

Approximately 20 years ago, I purchased a computer with Windows 95 on it. I think it was DEC, which no longer exists. I also installed RH 5.2 or something on that machine.I basically ended up never using Windows again. At some point it stopped booting. I didn't really notice.

Kartoffel

16:41

that may be true, right now I think that I might be making a big fuss about nothing as I don't ever use it in the end, I atleast hope to use it a bit. however that makes it hard to spend much time experimenting

sebasth

@FaheemMitha Use too much and you might go full rms in the end. Debian has vrms package to help you too ;)

Kartoffel

also the use case of debian and windows 10 here is completely different, I might need hundreds of gb for windows as I have games on it, I won't use debian for games however

Faheem Mitha

DEC was a pretty good computer manufacture, but was unfortunately acquired by Compaq. Which also no longer exists.

@sebasth Huh?

sebasth

@FaheemMitha using free software might make one learn about free software philosophy too

Faheem Mitha

@sebasth That certainly happened to me. But fortunately for world stability, or MS/Apple etc, it seems a comparatively rare phenomenon. Ask on AU, for example.

I'm sure Ubuntu users just think of Ubuntu as a better and cheaper Windows.

Kartoffel

16:50

this whole linux thing is pretty confusing as help concerning the setup is always opinion based and therefore sometimes opposite things are recommended resulting in me not having any idea how to do anything at all. even a plain non dual bios installation is a mystery to me right now as debian just gives you 3 different iso images. Am I supposed to run one after another?

pretty complex stuff to fill my free time with, free time I need to work on different things too

Faheem Mitha

@Kartoffel Relax and go with the flow. Experiment - that's the keyword.

Free software is all about choice. That's the point.

Videonauth

@sebasth OMGRMS -.-

shuddesrs

Faheem Mitha

> What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem, and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own.

In case you don't recognize that, those are the closing lines of "In the Beginning was the Command Line".

@Videonauth ???

Videonauth

well im actually not 100% conform with mister R.M.Stallmann

Faheem Mitha

@Videonauth He's one of our founders.

Videonauth

16:56

@FaheemMitha might be but i still enjoy my GPU driver to fully use my gpu and i still enjoy games which are sold and closed source

Kartoffel

it doesn't really encourage the use of linux when you approach the engineer to ask how to set up anything (and awesome opportunity to learn how to do it the right way) and the engineer is like "whatever, I don't care, do what you want"

Faheem Mitha

@Kartoffel If you referring to that essay, you should read the whole thing. It's a good read.

@Videonauth Use whatever you want. And give credit where credit is due.

I don't think Stephenson is particularly interested in computers. But regardless, and perhaps because of that, it's a particularly insightful essay. IMO, of course.

Kartoffel

ok, I'll stop trying to explain myself, thanks anyway for letting me know that I should just do whatever

Faheem Mitha

@Kartoffel really not my point.

Faheem Mitha

17:39

I was just looking at unix.stackexchange.com/q/388423/4671

Can someone remind me where DEB_CONFIGURE_EXTRA_FLAGS is defined?

Transcript for