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>
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
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.
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/
> 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
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
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.
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/
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
