September 2013 - luv-main

Recommendations for good Linux Haswell laptops?
by Chris Samuel 27 Dec '13

27 Dec '13

Hi folks, Anyone got any recommendations or experiences with Haswell laptops running Linux yet? Thinking that it might be time to refresh my work laptop and a Haswell Ultrabook could be quite enticing.. cheers! Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC

4 4

iptables-save output using dotted quad netmask rather than CIDR
by Tim Connors 13 Dec '13

13 Dec '13

iptables-save on rhel5 outputs: -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 12.3.4.5/255.255.0.0 -p tcp -m tcp -j ACCEPT whereas rhel6 outputs -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 12.3.4.5/16 -p tcp -m tcp -j ACCEPT Wanting to normalise iptables-save to one form or the other (preferably using the dotted quad netmask), the best I can come up with is a line by line grep (for optimisation perhaps, since a match wont happen often) for /<number> and then extract the number, pass to cidr2mask, and replace /<number> in that line (this is part of a self contained shell script that will be executed on the fly on another host, so I'd rather not rely on anything that isn't already in RHEL, ie no writing a perl sript myself unless it's a one liner perl -e thing). What flag to iptables-save am I missing where it does this for me? -- Tim Connors

4 8

Cheap GPL router - $11 from MSY
by Andrew Worsley 15 Oct '13

15 Oct '13

Just got what looks to be a pretty good deal on what appears to have GPL version of the code made available. Got this D-Link Modem - hopes weren't high but it appears pretty reasonable 802.11bgn + 8 LAN ports switch + WAN router. I noticed that it contained a "D-LINK GPL Code Statement" with link http://tsd.dlink.com.tw/GPL.asp which turns out to be their GPL web interface which lists masses of products and a download links to source code which includes my DIR-632 (took a little time to find it amongst the massive number of items). I am downloading it now - 185Mb. See what you actually get in that. The modem itself is rather nice - it has most features you could think of (no CLI though, Web interface) and has a built in manual that explains each feature in detail! I suspect they are letting them go at that price because the new 802.11ac modems have arrived. See http://www.msy.com.au/images/ADbanner/eletter/04042013/online/html.html for the original promotion. Anyway thought others might be interested in this and perhaps an example of GPL compliance that seems pretty good... Andrew

7 8

Combating Microsoft FUD.
by Peter Nunn 04 Oct '13

04 Oct '13

Hi Guys, At the risk of starting a thread that runs for months, how do you overcome microsoft FUB in the education sector. I've just quoted a couple of machines for a local, not for profit, school up my way that were intended to run KVM and file services with Winblows servers on top of them "because they have to have windows"). The Buresr, whom I do have some sympathy for, given the amount of crap he's been told, has made the decision that Linux is 'too risky', after consulting other bursers on some network of bursers (god knows) and being advised that "Linux is no good in an education environment, can't get staff, no-one uses it except a few 'out there risk takers'". Of course the M$ suppliers are pushing the same line. How the hell do you combat this bull shit? I have to say I'm amazed that a school with so little money is happy to throw it away to M$ (despite the heavy discounts they get for the licenses). Peter.

12 13

slow mkfs.ext3
by James Harper 03 Oct '13

03 Oct '13

I want to create a filesystem to store my on-disk backups (from Bacula) on a new server. These backup files will be few (less than 10000) and mostly huge (>1GB). Because I will have multiple files being written out at once, a large data per inode ratio seems to make sense as it will greatly reduce fragmentation, and wasted space would be low because of the small number of files. Also because the write pattern is exclusively streaming writes, I can go against my normal rule and use RAID5. I've chosen a 4MB of data per inode ratio based on some rough calculations, but while my mkfs.ext3 <dev> -i 4194304 just raced through initially, when it got to "Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:" it just seemed to hang. Strace says it's doing seek, write 4k, seek, write 4k, over and over again. I hit ^C and the process is now [mkfs.ext3], but the system is still pegged at 100% disk utilisation. Any suggestions as to how I could make this go faster? The filesystem is around 8TB (RAID5 of 4 x 3TB disks), so it's not exactly small, and the disks are only 7200RPM SATA, but I know xfs would complete pretty quick. I'd use xfs but over the years I've used xfs and ext3 in roughly equal proportions, and I've lost 3 xfs filesystems and no ext3 filesystems, so I'm a little reluctant to commit to it. Thanks James

7 22

Capturing output
by Jay Amorin 01 Oct '13

01 Oct '13

Hi All, I have this crazy problem and I hope it is possible. Part in my script: svnadmin dump -r1:100 --incremental /srv/my_repo > /srv/my_repo.1-100.dump Output: * Dumped revision 1. * Dumped revision 2. * Dumped revision 3. * Dumped revision 4. * Dumped revision 5. * Dumped revision 6. * Dumped revision 7. * Dumped revision 8. * Dumped revision 9. * Dumped revision 10. Now I want to store the output (standard out/error) to a log file for future reference using this: svnadmin dump -r1:100 --incremental /srv/my_repo > /srv/my_repo.1-100.dump | tee /srv/my_repo.1-100.log But seems not to work. Is this doable with bash or python? TIA, Jay

6 8

Samba 4 AD provisioning and ZFS
by Petros 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

Hi all, is someone here familiar with Samnba 4 and especially the samba-tool written in Python? The story so far: Samba4 can work with ZFS, and is able to use the default s3fs. The trap: the samba-tool provisioning script does not work with ZFS. Reason according to Andrew Bartlett a few days ago: "The issue is essentially that the python-based provision code need to detect the use of zfs, load the zfsacl module in the generated smb.conf, and instead of testing simple posix ACLs, proceed to setting a full NT ACL when we create the sysvol share." I am not familiar with python but had some limited success in reading the code. Anyway, a look at lib/python2.7/site-packages/samba/provision/__init__.py let me suggest that I may - test whether zfs is there (e.g using libc.getvfsbyname("zfs", byref(info)) - add lines as "nt acl support = yes" into the smb.conf - load the zfs_acl.so module (how?) - modify the test when creating the SysVol (at the moment smbd.set_simple_acls) I wonder whether anyone could help a bit. My main problem is the loading of the module. I could not figure out how to do it, especially what's the proper "Samba way". Thanks for help Peter

1 0

Re: LMDE update, now have boot error
by Terry Duell 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 17:54:27 +1000, Jay Amorin <jeeyessos(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Yes. If your boot partition is in sda1. So root (hd0,0) if second > partition root (hd0,1). How does it goes? Not too good, see below. > > > On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Terry Duell <tduell(a)iinet.net.au> wrote: > >> On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:25:50 +1000, Jay Amorin <jeeyessos(a)gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> You're almost there. Try to mount all your partition under /mnt and run >>> chroot >>> >>> # mount -t proc none /mnt/proc >>> # mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev >>> # chroot /mnt /bin/bash this results in... "chroot: failed to run command '/bin/bash': no such file or directory" So, it would seem that I'm missing something. When you said "Try to mount all your partition under /mnt and run chroot" did you imply some other things needed to be done that you didn't list? As I said I am using Knoppix live, which is a 32 bit version. The system I'm trying to rescue is 64 bit. Is that an issue? In an attempt to see if I could get a bit further I booted a 64 bit system in rescue mode, but that doesn't provide grub. Cheers, -- Regards, Terry Duell

7 33

LMDE update, now have boot error
by Tim Hamilton 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

> > > Tried that, but had to separately install grub-common and grub-pc. > That process gave some feedback that some grub-legacy files existed and > asked if I wanted to migrate to grub2, which I did, and then asked which > drive to install grub...I chose /dev/sda, and then it went about its > business. > After going through the umount steps, a reboot gave the right result. > > My laptop boots. Great leap forward. > > Many thanks for your help, and to Craig, Nic and Colin for continuing to > follow this saga and make helpful contributions. > > > -- > Regards, > Terry Duell > > Great news and a fascinating read. I have a production PC running LMDE that I will need to upgrade at some point, a process that will include the same jump from grub-legacy to grub-pc as you've just fought with. Might leave it until the weekend! -- Vote NO in referenda.

2 1

Replicator model detaching
by Russell Coker 29 Sep '13

29 Sep '13

I've got the LUV Makerbot Replicator working, I will demo it at some meetings some time soon. One problem I'm having is that the model in progress will often get detached from the platform. The "Calibration Dual" model file that ships with the replicator has become detached three times, each time the front left corner lifts from the platform first and then eventually it all comes unstuck and the model is destroyed. I tried the "Cube Slide" model file that ships with it once and it detached when it was on the last black segment, so the model was mostly OK but it's still not a successful result. Any suggestions for how to deal with this? -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

3 2