/dev/chat

Kusalananda

12:02

@Wildcard Oh, those look nice.

Faheem Mitha

15:56

I suppose there are people here who use these phone apps more than I do. So, please comment on whether Telegram is better than Whatsapp, and if so, how.

@Wildcard I seem to remember you had an opinion about this.

terdon

@FaheemMitha Much better. 1) WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. That should be enough right there. 2) Telegram lets you edit a message after it's been sent; 3) Telegram is built around privacy from the bottom up. 4) I generally find it nicer to use, but the first 3 are the important ones for me.

Faheem Mitha

16:21

@terdon Telegram lets you edit a message after it's been sent !!?? For how long?

And yes, Facebook is enough right there.

Yes, I was able to edit a Telegram message by left clicking in the web interface.

@terdon Anyway, thanks for the comments.

terdon

16:44

@FaheemMitha For ever, I think. At least the last message you sent. I haven't seen a timeout.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Oh. Well, it's probably documented somewhere.

Faheem Mitha

17:12

Speaking of apps, this is kind of amusing.

89

A: Showcase of beautiful typography done in TeX & friends

For a project I had to typeset a text conversation between two people. I ended up writing a class that recreates the look and feel of the Kik messenger app. Source of the class file (kik-android.cls): % kik-android.cls % by Brian Jacobs (fixes by Maximilian Noethe). % April 10, 2018 % % T...

Jeff Schaller

17:29

and here I am, just trying to get a reasonable number of underscores on the right margin :)

ilkkachu

17:40

@terdon @FaheemMitha, Telegram lets you use the same account on two phones (which may be useful if you have a work phone and a personal one and use both), and I think it has some better features for group chats (pinning messages?), but I haven't really used groups with it

Faheem Mitha

@ilkkachu Whatsapp doesn't let you use the same account on both phones?

Also, any idea how Signal compares?

It's only when one writes legal stuff that one notices how slippery the English language is. And perhaps all languages are.

Or a research paper.

The first message here, news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19387786 says that Telegram isn't end to end encrypted.

Someone gave me a USB key. It's showing up in lsusb as

> Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0781:5567 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Blade

But it's not showing up in blkid. Ideas/thoughts/suggestions?

Mounting USB drives continues to be an annoyance.

I wonder if it's worth asking on the site. It seems like a rather boring question.

ilkkachu

@FaheemMitha I don't think there's any way to do that since the account is tied to the phone number.

Faheem Mitha

@ilkkachu Oh. Right, but isn't that true of Telegram as well?

ilkkachu

17:56

@FaheemMitha Well, I'm not sure. I have a friend I use Telegram with exactly because it works on her two phones, but then I do recall creating my Telegram account with the phone number so, yeah, idunno.

@FaheemMitha Actually, those points there about Telegram secret chats being tied to phones sound a bit like what I understand Whatsapp does, that is, even if you use it with the web UI on a computer, the messages actually go through your phone (and if your phone is disconnected or the battery dies, then the web UI doesn't work either)

Wildcard

@FaheemMitha I haven't used Telegram myself, but I know some people in a very privacy/security conscious group who use Telegram almost exclusively.

I think Telegram is definitely better than WhatsApp. Between Telegram and Signal, I am not sure how they compare. I use Signal, personally, but Telegram might actually be better.

I was irked recently to learn that there is flatly no way to back up or export the message history from the iOS version of the Signal app. (It doesn't go in an iCloud backup if you have one, for obvious reasons, but I was expecting a way to back it up locally.)

There is for the Android version of the app, but not the iOS version.

Faheem Mitha

18:28

@ilkkachu Messages going through the phone doesn't sound ideal. Though having stuff stored in the cloud is also not ideal. But at least in the latter case, it's less likely to be lost.

@Wildcard Odd. Why the difference?

@Wildcard I think I'll stay with Telegram for now, since there is nothing that is obviously better. I'd actually prefer to use none of these apps (I prefer email), but I'm using it under protest in an emergency situation.

Wildcard

@FaheemMitha Android gives much more filesystem-type access.

Faheem Mitha

@Wildcard Oh. Anyway, Apple sucks.

Wildcard

@FaheemMitha not really. Apple pioneered tablets. And getting rid of floppy drives. And making computers usable by typical non-techie people.

And it's still not possible to get a trackpad experience on other OSes or hardware that compares with Apple's trackpad and drivers. (I've looked, a lot.)

Faheem Mitha

@Wildcard Sorry. I still think they suck. Not because their gadgets are unpleasant to use, or anything. I expect the opposite is probably true, in fact.

I just used "aforementioned" in a letter, and meant it.

Kusalananda

18:44

@ilkkachu Good answer on that redirection question.

derobert

18:58

@Wildcard Interesting. I don't really recall the trackpad on my old Mac laptop being that different than the Asus laptops I have Linux running on. Though that was a c. 2000 Mac laptop, so maybe they've done something impressive since then?

Wildcard

@derobert probably. The trackpads are great. The drivers are great. The variable speed is extremely intuitive. Let me put it this way: As a general rule, I hate trackpads and prefer to use a mouse, and feel slightly crippled when I have to use a trackpad instead of a mouse. With Apple trackpads (and their drivers), I feel more able to control the cursor than I do with a mouse.

And the multi-touch gesture support just adds another layer of capability on top of that.

derobert

Wow, preferable to a mouse? That is impressive.

@Kusalananda BTW comments like unix.stackexchange.com/questions/550746/… probably don't come across as that welcoming. Presumably if OP had a backup that OP knew about, OP wouldn't be asking! I'm not sure if we have a good question to point OP to though...

Jeff Schaller

The OP hasn't demonstrated much effort yet...

derobert

@JeffSchaller No, the OP hasn't. I think just closing it as a dup of one of the how do I get my files back questions would be fine

Jeff Schaller

@derobert indeed the direction I was just going

Faheem Mitha

19:13

Hi @derobert. Is vacation over?

derobert

Yep

Wildcard

19:29

@derobert there's some discussion here with some interesting comments: reddit.com/r/answers/comments/1sr3fd/…

> Apple treats the trackpad like a second display and tracks the finger like an actual display making it incredibly accurate. Apple's integration of hardware and software made it much simpler than doing it in the Microsoft ecosystem where Intel, OEMs, and Microsoft would have to work together to make a consistent framework. It's not just a simple driver issue.

@FaheemMitha I'm curious what is the basis for your opinion? (Not arguing with you, just curious.)

Faheem Mitha

@Wildcard The usual. Anti-copyleft. Walled garden stuff.

I'm sure you can find critiques online. Again, I'm not criticizing their products per se.

Wildcard

@FaheemMitha well in that respect I am not thrilled with their approach to things either.

Faheem Mitha

"the fsf on apple" gives a bunch of hits, for example.

@Wildcard Well, that's a good enough reason to avoid their products.

I'm generally relatively pragmatic, but there are some things I draw the line at.

For example, it's generally agreed that Apple supported (and supported) Clang because they dislike the GPL, and want to hurt GCC.

Having said that, having some competition is no bad thing.

BTW, Telegram is GPL, if it's actually based on that code on GitHub.

Wildcard

@FaheemMitha Signal is also.

Faheem Mitha

@Wildcard Ok.

ilkkachu

19:59

I absolutely love the touchpad on my Mac...

it's a bit of a problem really, since I probably won't be getting a new Mac for other reasons, but then I'll have to suffer a non-Apple touchpad if/when I get a new machine :D

Faheem Mitha

20:33

Apparently external USB drives don't need to have a UUID. If I understand correctly.

9

Q: UUID Of A drive that won't show up in /dev/disk/by-uuid or blkid

I have a USB drive that is not receiving a UUID. When I look at the contents of the /dev/disk/by-uuid it doesn't exist there. The dev point that the partition lives in is on /dev/sdb. I am able to see sdb under /dev/disk/by-path. Also, when using blkid, I get zero output. I'm assuming that I got...

Kusalananda

@derobert Thanks for bringing that up. Yes I agree and I have deleted that comment. Yours was more elaborate and to the point. Thanks.

Faheem Mitha

No doubt I'm missing something obvious here, but for this disk I get:

root@orwell:/mnt# fdisk -l /dev/sdh
Disk /dev/sdh: 1.9 GiB, 2001076224 bytes, 3908352 sectors
Disk model: Cruzer Blade
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x03b1e8fa

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdh1        2048 3908351 3906304  1.9G  b W95 FAT32

But if I try to mount:

root@orwell:/mnt# mount -t vfat /dev/sdh1 joseph
mount: /mnt/joseph: special device /dev/sdh1 does not exist.

Also, no UUID.

Why does fdisk list the device /dev/sdh1, but it doesn't exist?

derobert

20:52

For some reason udev hasn't created the device

Logs (journal) might say more

Faheem Mitha

@derobert I'll post the logs. Doesn't say much.

Nov 07 01:58:35 orwell kernel: usb 5-1: Manufacturer: SanDisk
Nov 07 01:58:35 orwell kernel: usb 5-1: SerialNumber: 20063486020EF1B285D3
Nov 07 01:58:35 orwell kernel: usb-storage 5-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
Nov 07 01:58:35 orwell kernel: scsi host11: usb-storage 5-1:1.0
Nov 07 01:58:35 orwell mtp-probe[8089]: checking bus 5, device 4: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.2/0000:0b:00.0/usb5/5-1"
Nov 07 01:58:35 orwell mtp-probe[8089]: bus: 5, device: 4 was not an MTP device
Nov 07 01:58:35 orwell mtp-probe[8091]: checking bus 5, device 4: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.2/…

I enabled usbmount. Doesn't help. Should probably disable it again.

derobert

root@Zia:/# vim
bash: vim: command not found
root@Zia:/# vi
bash: vi: command not found

... good job there dpkg/apt, good job.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert ?

derobert

Got a conffile prompt from dpkg, dropped to shell to deal with it. Part of this upgrade has vim being upgraded. Which apparently includes removing it at inopportune times

(Ah, it's the transition from vim-gtk to vim-gtk3 ... so there is one installed, just alternatives haven't been update yet, so I have to call it by the full name).

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Would generating a UUID help, possibly? Though I don't see why it should be so crucial.

derobert

21:01

a uuid should be optional

Faheem Mitha

This reminds me of the 1990s. Wrestling with annoying hardware.

@derobert I think so too. Any debugging suggestions?

Could it just be a crappy USB drive? I'd expect at least an error message.

derobert

@FaheemMitha for some reason, it didn't see the partition table... what does /proc/partitions say?

Faheem Mitha

@derobert For sdh, it just has:

   8      112    1954176 sdh

Though in that case, why is fdisk seeing:

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdh1        2048 3908351 3906304  1.9G  b W95 FAT32

?

derobert

So for some reason the kernel isn't seeing the partition table. I vaguely recall there being a way to debug that, but probably the easiest thing is to work around it with addpart/partprobe/partx

Faheem Mitha

@derobert I think I tried partprobe.

No, maybe not. I tried

partprobe /dev/sdh1

But should it be

partprobe /dev/sdh

?

derobert

21:07

yep, sdh, not sdh1

Faheem Mitha

So that should cause a /dev/sdh1 to appear? Because it didn't.

derobert

Possibly it failed to find the partition table for the same reason as the kernel did. Whatever that is. addpart can work around that — you just feed the kernel the partition details

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Er, that's getting a bit over my head.

What should I type, exactly?

Oh, just the numbers from fdisk?

derobert

addpart /dev/sdh 1 2048 3906304 # I think, mount it read-only first to be sure

Faheem Mitha

@derobert mount -o defaults, ro /dev/sdh1 /dev/joseph ?

derobert

21:12

no space in the options

(and defaults is redundant, pretty sure, only needed for e.g., fstab where you can't just omit the field)

well, and I doubt you want to mount it at /dev/joseph

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Right, /mnt/joseph

Looks like that worked.

But let me see if I can read it.

Yes, I can.

derobert

So probably if you have fdisk re-write the partition table that'll fix whatever is stopping the kernel from seeing it. Probably.

Faheem Mitha

I wonder if the site has anything about addpart.

A total of 6 hits. Exactly how bad is the search function in SE?

This one looks related, if not close.

2

A: How to mount an iso disk image hidden in an unallocated free space on a disk, assuming that the location and size of the image are known?

This is a very long question and I can't claim to have read to the end. For a solution which does not edit the disk: Basically what you are describing is a disk partition which is not listed in the disk's partiotn table. When you plug in a disk and linux assigns it a device in /dev such as /de...

@derobert Should I ask a question? What do you think?

derobert

addpart is a pretty low-level command, I suspect not many people know about it.

Go ahead and ask a question (and you can post an answer too).

Faheem Mitha

@derobert You post the answer.

Asking a question now. Hold on.

@derobert This question looks virtually identical, but none of the answers mention addpart. Perhaps you should add an answer?

1

Q: My SD card has a partition but Linux doesn't create a device entry for the partition

OK, I don't know what's going on here, at first I thought it was a problem I remember having some time ago where I couldn't mount a vfat partition because it had some flag set that it had not been cleanly removed. I remember there was a way to fix this, but I can't find it now. In any case, I don...

linux mount usb fdisk sd-card

Wildcard

21:23

@ilkkachu I am happy I got the very last and best model before they introduced the "touchbar" and changed the keyboard. I likely won't be getting another one.

But, I might get a Magic Trackpad, if the Linux drivers for it are up to snuff. Haven't explored that much yet.

derobert

@FaheemMitha That looks to be about an I/O error on sector 0... which you don't have

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Oh

@derobert Preliminary version. Feel free to edit. Anything I'm missing?

0

Q: fdisk shows the partition table of a device, but udev doesn't create the device

I'm trying to mount a external USB hard drive. Specifically, a USB key. But udev doesn't show the partition on the drive. fdisk reports root@orwell:/mnt# fdisk -l /dev/sdh Disk /dev/sdh: 1.9 GiB, 2001076224 bytes, 3908352 sectors Disk model: Cruzer Blade Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Se...

mount

Though, perhaps most imporantly, why wasn't it creating the device? Does my computer have a gremlin?

It seems Bercow thinks Brexit is a bad idea. Who would have thought it?

@derobert its -> it's

What does it mean to say that the partition table is in a slightly wrong format? fdisk can read it.

derobert

21:46

updated

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Anything I should add to the question?

derobert

@FaheemMitha looks fine to me when I skimmed it

Faheem Mitha

@derobert And the question title?

I can probably keep the USB key - it's not mine - it was given to me.

I wonder if it is worth debugging and filing a bug report.

Question: what does one do with an answer to a 2013 question that one no longer really understands?

Generally speaking, I go with ignoring it.

0

A: Why does this R ggplot2 code bring up a blank display device?

I am still having this issue with R 3.6.1 in 2019. My lack of reputation doesn't allow me to comment. So I am writing yet another answer: Things become a bit tricky if your plot uses non-standard fonts, say library (ggplot2) stat = qplot(Sepal.Length, Petal.Length, data = iris, color = Species...

I seem to have had rather more energy in 2013.

Jesse_b

23:39

I'm making filenames with whitespace in their names for basically the first time and it feels really dirty

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b You don't want to do that.

Jesse_b

@FaheemMitha Yeah I am making the filenames people's names that I want to be able to use for other purposes

But I think I'll use an underscore instead and just remove the underscore

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Underscores, hyphens and periods are all better than a space.

Personally i use underscores and periods.

Jesse_b

@FaheemMitha Yeah but I figured if I'm going to need to strip them to display the name anyway it would make more sense to leave them out, especially since I always* write code that can handle spaces in filenames

*always try

Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Spaces are just icky. Don't do it. The only thing worse would be return characters, or something. Assuming that's even possible.

Jesse_b

23:53

$ ll
total 0
-rw-r--r--   1    0 Nov  6 16:52 ''$'\t''foo'$'\n''bar'$'\r''baz '
drwxr-xr-x   3   96 Nov  6 16:52  ./
drwxr-xr-x+ 81 2.6K Nov  2 17:03  ../

$ for f in *; do echo "$f"; done
	foo
baz

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