September 2014 - luv-main

Trouble booting up Ubuntu 14.04 Live CD in Laptop with UEFI
by Wen Lin 08 Sep '14

08 Sep '14

Hi, I've been trying for weeks to install Ubuntu 14.04 onto my friend's new Toshiba laptop with the new UEFI secure boot built-in. So far, no luck! I can't even boot it up with the Ubuntu Live CD, regardless of SecureBoot enabled or disabled. First, some info and what I had done so far: Laptop: Toshiba Satellite C50D-A (My friend bought from JB Hifi for $480 - not a high-end machine) CPU: AMD E1-1200 APU with Radeon HD Graphic 1.4 GHz 64-bit Memory: 4 GB HD: 500 GB Display adapter: AMD Radeon HD 7310 Graphic OS: Windows 8 (I had since upgraded it to Win 8.1) I had: - Created a Win System Recovery image (using Win 8.1 built-in standard tool) to a USB flash disk. - Also used Win 8.1 built-in tool to shrink the C: drive to 255 GB, leaving me the other half of the disk for my Ubuntu install. I had no problem F2 at startup into the laptop's BIOS to change stuff like: - Boot sequence - Enable/Disable SecureBoot - Swap between UEFI Boot & CSM Boot (or Legacy mode) I had googled around quite a lot, and had tried several different approaches suggested, to no avail. Most of the forum sites/blogs suggest disable SecureBoot, some said no need - as newer Distro like Ubuntu 14.04 nowadays have no problem booting with SecureBoot on. I tried both approaches, but the Live CD first could only display a text-based version of GRUB 2 boot menu, with "Try Ubuntu" & "Install Ubuntu" among the menu options (rather than the Ubuntu's usual graphical one). Then when I selected either the "Try" or "Install" options, it went into a total blank screen, and a moment later, everything stop - I tried waiting for it, sometimes hours, but it never come back! To try to see some messages, I used 'e' in the Grub menu to get into an editing mode: set gfxpayload=keep linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/... boot=casper quiet splash -- initrd /casper/initrd.lz To edit the kernel boot up parameters - generally involved replacing the "quiet splash" with parameters like "nomodeset", "vga=radeon", "vga=792", etc - all to no avail. But this time I could see some boot up messages splashing out, and then stopped at certain point: E.g. - [drm] Initialized radeon 1.34.0 ... - ahci 0000:00:11:0: flags: 64bit ncq ... - r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver ... - fb: conflicting fb hw usage radeondrmfb vs EFI VGA - removing generic driver - ACPI: Video Device [VGA] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no) In general, it would seem the different boot parameters could only vary in at most several boot steps, but none of them managed to go all the way to successfully boot into Ubuntu Live. I had also tried other Distros: Ubuntu 13.10 64-bit & Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon 64-bit - no different. I even tried an Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit CD - but it boot straight into the Windows 8.1 instead. Another thing to point out: I had also tried the CSM Boot option (in place of the default UEFI). When in this mode, the whole "SecureBoot" feature disappeared, and I managed to boot into Ubuntu 14.04 Live CD, all the local programs, WiFi, Internet, the lots, all worked as normal! I had not tried installing Ubuntu from there. Just as well! As attempt to boot back to Win 8.1 failed - the error message basically was saying that the Win 8.1 is not there anymore! I could only boot back to Win 8.1 normally after I had reverted back to UEFI Boot mode. As you can see, no joy at all! :-( So my question: Is it a UEFI/SecureBoot problem, or an AMD Radeon display adapter problem? If it's a display adapter problem, then why I could boot into Ubuntu when not in UEFI mode? If it's a UEFI problem, then why couldn't I boot into Ubuntu with the SecureBoot disabled (said so by all the related forums & blogs I had visited so far - i.e. secureboot off - no problem)? I was pondering, if all else failed, to just install Ubuntu 14.04 into the partition I had freed up, while in CSM mode. If this worked, then I could persuade my friend to just stick to Ubuntu, and occasionally if wanting to go to Wn 8.1, change back to UEFI before doing so. While this may work (painfully), my friend might one day decide not to go back to Ubuntu, and my efforts would be wasted. Worst still, installing Ubuntu in CSM mode may render the Win 8.1 unbootable, and I don't think my friend want that! Any suggestions, comments, or experience in such dual boot adventure would be welcomed! Thanks in advance. Wen

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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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TIme stamp on file
by Daniel J Jitnah 05 Sep '14

05 Sep '14

Hi Luvers, is it possible for a file to be written to and the time stamp not changed? Specifically, is it possible for a swap file to be changed and the time stamp not changed? OR if the time stamp on a swap file has not changed for several days, does that mean that the system has not used swap for that time, since this is the only swap space available? or could it be that the kernel process that initiates swap does not update the filesystem fully? Thanks Daniel.

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Nightmare installing current Linuxes
by Carl Turney 05 Sep '14

05 Sep '14

Hi All, I'm slightly above a user level now. My computer is office equipment. Am not in an IT career. Was a tech back in the DOS and Win 3.x and Win 95 days. Been such a happy user of Fedora and Ubuntu for the past ~9 years. Now feeling pretty disgusted and fed up with all things Linux. Why? Just spent EVERY spare moment of the last 2 weeks just trying to get the current versions of 3 popular Linux distros to work on my new hardware system. Failure! Just built 2 matching desktop boxes: Motherboards: Gigabyte GA-B85m-HD3 CPUs: Intel (quad) Core i5 model 4440 at 3.1 GHz Memories: Corsair Value Select 8GB DDR3, single bank Disks: Western Digital WD3200BUDT 320gb SATA Wifi: ASUS PCE-N15 PCI-E Adapter They pass all the hardware tests with flying colours. (1) I like the old Ubuntu 10.4 on my laptop, so first I installed Ubuntu 14.04.1 on the above desktops: Wifi dies or slows down after a few minutes, so always rebooting. init 1 - crashes system, instead of shutting down to single user. telinit 1 - does the same thing. shutdown now - does the same thing. Unity sucks, heard of MATE, couldn't install (above wifi problems). Tried to dual-boot with WinXP-64. Microsoft's probable sabotage. Sent Q's to relevant forums on all the above, no good replies. Googled my brains out trying to find solutions, nothing worked. (2) Then tried Mint 17 MATE (Everyone's obsessed with Mint, and calling Ubuntu obsolete.): Wifi dies or slows down after a few minutes, so always rebooting. init 1 - crashes system, instead of shutting down to single user. telinit 1 - does the same thing. shutdown now - does the same thing. Sent Q's to relevant forums on all the above, no good replies. Googled my brains out trying to find solutions, nothing worked. (3) THEN tried Debian 7.6 (If Mint depends on Ubuntu, which depends on Debian... then Debian must be a few months ahead of the others on certain bug fixes [e.g. Dropping down to single user mode, and the wifi glitch].): Cryptic, confusing and counter-intuitive install process. Very slow install -- repeatedly seizing up - fixated on my USB mouse! Insisted on a UEFI booting system. Crashed install -- Failed download of updates, when told not to try. First "successful" (?) install failed to boot up. Second "successful" (?) install has no GUI, and can't apt-get GUI. But at least Debian asked me during the install to provide... rtl8192cfw.bin and rtl8168e-3.fw ... in regards to my wifi adapter. This MAY be a hint to why Ubuntu and Mint can't stay online for more than a few minutes per boot-up. But I've got NO idea how to get either of those two files installed into Ubuntu or Mint -- particularly as how the second one is embedded inside a ".deb" file! Words of useful advice =greatly= appreciated. Carl Bayswater, Victoria

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ICT Professional in Schools Program
by Daniel J Jitnah 04 Sep '14

04 Sep '14

Hi all, Following my very short lightening talk on this topic at the AGM, here are relevant info that may be of interest to some: Program website is www.scientistsinschools.edu.au. Program national contact email is scientistsinschools(a)csiro.au Program Vic contact email is SIS.vic(a)csiro.au Briefly: This is a program administered by CSIRO which aims at providing opportunities for an ICT professional to be partenered with a Teacher or school on a particular project with ICT content. How this partnership takes shape is up to the Teacher/School and ICT professional to negotiate and decide. For example it can involve classroom contact or only online/teleconference contact. Or it can involve only supporting and advising a teacher or school, with no classroom involvement or very little - But it can also take other forms. For a bit of history: this is an extension of an ongoing program since 2007 where Scientists and Mathematicians were similarly involved in school projects. There have already been about 4000 projects set up under the program in Australia. The program is being extended to ICT professional and I believe only since earlier this year. It specifically focuses on ICT based projects. I am getting on this program and would like to encourage others to join in as well. Let me just say that this program can have relevance to Linux and Open Source. 2 things: a. It is a volunteer program - no pay. b. You need to get a Working With Children Clearance to be able to participate. I am happy to talk more about this off list with anyone interested, but the website has lots of info. And you can register your interest there. Disclaimer: I am not representing the Program Administrators or acting on their behalf in anyway. I am only posting this email on my own initiative because I believe its a good thing. Cheers Daniel.

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simple XML management
by Russell Coker 04 Sep '14

04 Sep '14

What's a simple way to extract XML values with little memory use or dependencies? I just need to extract a single value at a fixed place in the XML schema and I need to do it on an embedded Linux system that doesn't have much installed. It's got the basics (Perl, shell, etc) so any common script should work. Any suggestions? PS my backup plan is sed... -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ -- Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 with K-9 Mail.

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sending Hangouts messages
by Russell Coker 04 Sep '14

04 Sep '14

https://developers.google.com/+/hangouts/writing Google has written the above guide to writing Hangouts apps. None of the examples they have covers the most basic use case of sending a message. Also their examples seem rather complex, I just want to basically send a single message and not receive a reply. A Google search didn't turn anything up. Is there any easy way to do this? I'd like a little Perl or shell script to just send a message. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ -- Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 with K-9 Mail.

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