August 2014 - luv-main

Computer issues with Linux
by Brian May 19 Nov '14

19 Nov '14

Hello, Am having two strange problems that are starting to eerk me with this (relatively new) computer, running Debian wheezy: 1. If I boot anything later then 3.12 kernel, I don't get any display. As in the monitors display black. No cursors of any sort. Changing to a virtual console doesn't help. Booting in rescue mode doesn't help (I think this rules out X-Windows being a problem). If I go back to the 3.12 kernel, everything works perfectly. I also tried plugging monitors into alternative ports just in case it is going to the wrong place, but get nothing - in any case, under 3.12 the computer seems pretty good at automatically working out what ports are active under X-Windows. 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G96 [GeForce 9500 GT] (rev a1) Am currently using the non-free nvidia drivers. Had exactly the same symptoms when I installed the latest kernel without the non-free nvidia kernel modules. I think the problem is occurring before X starts. Computer seems to be up and running, and responsive to crl+alt+del despite not having a display. 2. There seems to be some weird performance problem. e.g. save a 2 kilobyte file in vim, and the computer can completely freeze (all other windows, including xterms, stop responding to user input) for, say 30 seconds, while it is writing that file. Chromium takes ages to load with several tabs, and pages can fail to start properly while it is doing so. Computer has 16GB RAM and is not using any swap. It has 11GB of buffer/cache space: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 15G 13G 2.1G 0B 1.1G 7.9G -/+ buffers/cache: 4.6G 11G Swap: 3.8G 0B 3.8G Problems occurred before starting chromium, previously I wondered if it was chromium's fault. This is moving disk + RAID1 + LVM + ext4. Bonnie++ results seem to be pretty good, better in fact then my work computer, which doesn't suffer from similar problems. Writing a byte at a time...done Writing intelligently...done Rewriting...done Reading a byte at a time...done Reading intelligently...done start 'em...done...done...done...done...done... Create files in sequential order...done. Stat files in sequential order...done. Delete files in sequential order...done. Create files in random order...done. Stat files in random order...done. Delete files in random order...done. Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP falidae 31904M 1228 94 107313 4 47471 2 +++++ +++ 137886 3 441.8 2 Latency 19141us 12435ms 251ms 19913us 88073us 283ms Version 1.96 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create-------- falidae -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ Latency 36us 223us 226us 36us 10us 24us 1.96,1.96,falidae,1,1404290654,31904M,,1228,94,107313,4,47471,2,+++++,+++,137886,3,441.8,2,16,,,,,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,19141us,12435ms,251ms,19913us,88073us,283ms,36us,223us,226us,36us,10us,24us I am currently working on a new theory that the performance problems only occur when the computer is cold and first turned on. I think I have seen evidence to disprove this, but guess I should run bonnie++ as soon as I turn the computer on, just to be sure. Any other ideas? Thanks -- Brian May <brian(a)microcomaustralia.com.au>

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LUV AGM on Tuesday; A plea for attendance
by Lev Lafayette 06 Sep '14

06 Sep '14

LUV annual general meetings are typically our smallest meetings of the year. It is a bold and few technically-inspired individuals who wish to sit through the necessary administrivia that keep the organisation alive in a formal sense, and the lack of an advertised speaker does suggest the possibility of ad-hoc pot-luck when it comes the short, technical lightning talks. However, I would like to make a special plea for LUV members to attend this agm. The reason being is that, after four years as president of LUV, I am going to step down from this position. This is not because of any internal friction within the organisation, and it most certainly is not because the workload is too onerous, or the responsibilities too demanding. It is none of those things. Being president of LUV has been a privilege, an honour, and an opportunity to contribute in some small and meaningful way to one of the world's largest and oldest Linux user groups, a transformative operating system and application suite that embodies technical excellence and the high ethical principles of transparency through free and open-source licensing. Linux has changed the world and being part of that is really quite a wonderful experience. The reason I am stepping down as president is really quite simple: It's time for someone else to take up the role of chief organiser and leader. It is time for someone else to give the organisation direction and contribute their innovations. Organisations need to regenerate themselves and one method to do those is to ensure that people do not become too attached to the positions that they hold. It is a sign of an organisation's illness if this does not occur in leadership roles (in the more administrative positions, e.g., treasurer, it is certainly less of problem). Where it does not occur the potential for empire-building within the organisation and obsession among the individuals concerned. Thus it is in the interest in preventing stagnation in the organisation and giving people the opportunity to make their contribution, that I am stepping down as president. This does not mean however, that I am leaving LUV. Having served on the committee, or as public officer, since 2006, I would welcome any nomination that recommends me as a committee member. I intend to still be involved in helping LUV organise meetings, contribute to software freedom day, establish chapters in different parts of the state, write policy positions, and so forth. But please, no nominations as president. It is somebody else's turn. -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

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Ubuntu 14.04 Dovecot/Postfix Bug
by Daniel J Jitnah 26 Aug '14

26 Aug '14

Hi Luvers Just in case you are using Ubuntu 14.04 and Postfix and Dovecot for sasl authentication, there appears to be a bug which seems to only affect Google smtp servers and possibly only for the last few days, but could possibly affect other smtp servers. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/serverguide/+bug/1340772 What seems to happen is that when the google smtp server connects to your server sasl will fail and google will fail. Other smtp servers (eg Yahoo) seem to issue a warning and continue. So you will still receive emails from non-google smtps, and you may not realise that you are missing on emails, until a sender complains to you! Of course this email may not concern you at all!! Cheers Daniel.

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hardware library
by Russell Coker 25 Aug '14

25 Aug '14

Here are some things that we need for the LUV hardware library: Desktop PCs and mini tower servers that take DDR2 and DDR3 RAM (such machines are new enough to be useful). Systems that can use more than 4G of RAM are preferred. Please note on any PC the amount of RAM it supports as this is very important. DDR2 and DDR3 RAM. USB and SD flash storage devices. Note that there are people who can still use 128M storage devices so even small ones are useful. PCIe video cards (only ATI) and Ethernet cards. USB keyboards and mice. Anything else that you don't need but is likely to be useful to others. Please let me know in advance if you are going to donate a PC or keyboard as I don't always drive to LUV meetings. Also if you bring anything big/heavy then it would be good if you could carry it to my car. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Re: Graphic drivers under LInux, current progress
by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au 24 Aug '14

24 Aug '14

> stopping KMS via the "options radeon modeset=0" stanza worked with > my 9250se on a debian squeeze system, but failed to work on a similarly > dated Linux Mint installation, go figure... Probably looking for the file in another location. I delibrately stated Debian in my post as thats where its put in this distro. There is no garruntee other distros use the same location. Lindsay

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Graphic drivers under LInux, current progress
by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au 24 Aug '14

24 Aug '14

This post has been prompted by the "Computer issues with Linux" thread, It appear to me that some are unsure how linux works in this area these days. This explanation is what one may call a generic approach to what the Xorg graphics developers are aiming for, although most current open source drivers do work this way. The driver for each card/family of cards is made up of three separate drivers. First is the actual kernel part of the driver this is call KMS (Kernel Mode Switching), the second part is the standard xorg video driver. The third part is the mesa dri (3D) driver. Now on most modern cards the standard xorg and the dri driver are linked to some degree. THis is because the default xorg architecture expects the card to have a separate 2D and 3D controlers, where as most current cards only use a single 3D graphics (__VERY__ complex) engine. The kernel KMS driver has all the intertface specfic to the set up of a particular card and this driver does all the setup of the card. Often this driver requires access to a binary blob that contains the basic commands for the cards engine. This driver is usually specfic to a particular card THe other two drivers are generally made for a "family of cards". Note this was a major reason for the spitting off of the KMS driver as with the setup of the card extracted to the kernel, it left the developers a __far__ easier task to actual do the graphics programming as at this level the programming interface does not usually change much as card design moves forward. On start up __if__ KMS is enabled the kernel __will__ try and setup the card and the console will switch to a graphics mode, most modern distributions including debian are set up this way. It is possible to stop the KMS being setup, unfortunately exactly where this resides in the system has slipped my mind. Hmmmm, stop press........ For the radeon open source driver this is controled (in debian) by the file /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf If this is set up as "options radeon modeset=1" it will cause the kernel to activate the apropriate KMS driver in the kernel. Hope this explanation is clear..... Lindsay

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Anti-spam tool preferences?
by Jason White 21 Aug '14

21 Aug '14

What would others recommend these days as an anti-spam tool, suitable for integrating into a Postfix/Dovecot configuration? My experience: Spamassassin - when last I used it, accuracy wasn't adequate (at least for classifying my mail) and it tended to be memory-intensive if Bayesian filtering was enabled. Dspam - very good, but I haven't used it for over a decade and it was recently removed from Debian (which wouldn't prevent me from installing it). It doesn't seem to be under ongoing development. CRM114 - not under significant development currently, but it's my solution at the moment and it's giving good accuracy. I haven't tried any others. Nor have I used Dspam or SpamAssassin for a long time now. Up-to-date suggestions are welcome. I have friends who are also considering this issue and thinking about Dovecot Antispam.

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Android 4.4 external SD card
by Russell Coker 15 Aug '14

15 Aug '14

I've recently updated my Galaxy Note 2 to Android 4.4 and now I can't write to my external SD card. Apparently Google has changed things so that each app can only write to it's own directory. The online write-ups of this are mostly written by stupid people who say things like "this stops other applications from writing to your Internet banking files" when really what you want is to protect against READING internet banking files (something Android 4.4 does nothing about). Access to the primary "external" storage area (IE a directory tree on the device for downloaded files etc) is not restricted so Android 4.4 doesn't even protect any application data from writing in a useful manner (some apps just change to "primary external storage" instead). I've been using Olive Tree FTP server to upload TV shows to watch on my phone but it now can't write to the SD card. I tried creating a directory named /storage/extSdCard/Android/data/com.theolivetree.ftpserver (the directory that should be permitted by Android 4.4) but that fails. How do I go about making this work in the designed manner? Is there some special directory I should ask my FTP server to create? Is there another FTP server I can use? Failing that has anyone got KDE's support for media devices to work with an Android 4.4 device connected via USB? -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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patents are unquestionable good, right?
by Tim Connors 11 Aug '14

11 Aug '14

Some people might want to respond to the one sided article here: https://theconversation.com/grants-arent-helping-australian-tech-but-patent… -- Tim Connors

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SP Ausnet and ZigBee devices
by Chris Samuel 07 Aug '14

07 Aug '14

Hi folks, At the LUV meeting on Tuesday night during Richard Keech's presentation someone asked a question about whether SP Ausnet (now AusNet Services) allowed you to connect ZigBee devices. I said I didn't think so because in their (Flash based) web interface in the summary part it says "coming soon". However, I've just found there is a section called "Device Management" which appears to let you add and manage ZigBee devices. I don't have anything to test with but it does look more promising than I thought. On an unrelated note, does anyone know where to get one of the USB ZigBee modems that Richard was using under Linux ? :-) cheers, Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC

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