January 2015 - luv-main

Kernel 3.17 no longer allows bonding ppp devices
by Toby Corkindale 18 Nov '15

18 Nov '15

Hi, I hit a problem when attempting to upgrade to kernel 3.17.2 on a particular server. Some time between 3.13 and 3.17, the bonding driver has stopped accepting ppp devices, instead throwing an error that the MAC address cannot be changed. (And does not allow this to be forced) I suspect it's unlikely.. but has anyone here encountered this issue and found a solution? Alternatively.. do you know where the right place to file bug report about this would be? It's been a while since I've filed anything against the linux kernel itself. Cheers, Toby

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SSD smartctl attributes for wear indicators (was: mine-is-bigger-than-yours maildir competition)
by Toby Corkindale 07 Feb '15

07 Feb '15

I'm curious to know what your SSD wear indicators look like, from long-running Linux machines, and how long it looks like they'll last based on existing usage. You can query these with smartctl (if your drive db is too old, run sudo update-smart-drivedb first) I'll go first. These are just private machines, albeit ones doing reasonable work. Perhaps at some point in the future I'll be able to report on long-term results of enterprise SSDs, but I can't right now. Machine one: Power_On_Hours 4522 (188 days) Total_NAND_Writes_GiB 18846 Maximum_Erase_Cycle 199 Avg_Write_Erase_Ct 74 Total_Bad_Block 201 Perc_Avail_Resrvd_Space 100 This machine has been running for over 188 days non-stop, has logged nearly 19 TB of writes, and is about 2.5% of the way through it's expected minimum lifespan[1]. Estimated total lifespan time: 20.6 years. Machine two: Power_On_Hours 18326 (763 days) Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot 0 Wear_Leveling_Count 13 Total_LBAs_Written 2066747494 (ie. about 1080 GiB [2]) This has been running for 763 days non-stop. Like the first machine, it hasn't used any of the reserved blocks yet. It's about 1.3% of the way through its min expected lifespan.[3] Estimated total lifespan time: 160 years. -Toby 1: ie. 3000 write/erase cycles for MLC; in practice you seem to get quite a bit more though, according to testers. 2: This drive doesn't report the actual NAND writes, just LBAs written, but you can roughly convert those out; call each LBA 512 bytes, and then multiply the total by a conservative 1.1 to allow for write-amplification; we come up with about 1080 gigabytes. 3: This machine is running a cheaper type of TLC-based SSD, so theoretical amount of erase/write cycles are just 1000.

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Does OS play any part in MB detecting bootable device?
by Terry Duell 30 Jan '15

30 Jan '15

Hello All, I recently posted about my troubles booting from a DVD. It turns out that my MB bios will only detect UEFI boot structures and any devices (USB, DVD) with pre UEFI (legacy) boot structure is not detected...ie. never show up in the boot menu. I have been trying to get a resolution to this from the MB manufacturer. To make a long story short, they claim that the MB will boot legacy boot structures with particular bios settings, which I am using. They also assert that they do not support linux and the linux driver is the issue, and that I should install Windows and test if I still have the problem. It has been my understanding that any OS driver will only come into play after the bios has detected the boot device and commenced the boot process by loading the OS/driver/whatnot from the bootable device. Is the MB manufacturer correct to say that the linux driver is the cause of the problem? Cheers, -- Regards, Terry Duell

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Problems booting from DVD-Fedora 20
by Terry Duell 30 Jan '15

30 Jan '15

Hello All, Some months ago I installed a new motherboard (Asus Z97M-Plus UEFI) and an SSD. I installed Fedora 20 on the SSD without any problems (GUID partition table), but had a few issues getting Fedora to boot, either the MB manual or I'm a bit vague...one of the two, maybe both. In the end, using 'other OS' for the secure boot setting worked OK. Yesterday, for the first time since this install I had need to boot from a DVD, and it failed...always falling back to booting the SSD. After some discussions on an Asus site it was suggested that maybe I need to set the MB for IDE controller instead of AHCI, and that disabling 'fast boot' might help. Changing AHCI to IDE didn't help. Disabling 'fast boot' allowed the latest 'Gparted-live' DVD to boot, but still cannot boot older bootable DVDs that I have tried whilst testing this. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Cheers, -- Regards, Terry Duell

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Linux Security Vulnerability: GHOST | FOSS Force
by Andrew McGlashan 28 Jan '15

28 Jan '15

http://fossforce.com/2015/01/linux-security-vulnerability-ghost/ Been patching..... not sure if squeeze-lts has been patched, wheezy has been though.

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Nvidia NVS300 card with dual output lead
by Andrew Greig 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

Hi I have obtained an nVidia nvs300 card as a cast off from my work, it has a one into two cable which serves 2 dvi monitors from a single port on the card. Has anyone used this before, is it 32bit/64bit particular? Is it likely to work with an AMD 64 bit system? At present I am running two identical monitors from the DVI and VGS ports. I would like to move to two dvi monitors set up for consistent resolution between the two. Hopefully yours Andrew Greig

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Learning coding
by Bob 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

Hello all, I am looking for some opinions on how to best support the development of coding skills in a child who is interested. I'm not sure if this is the correct forum or should it be Luv-talk? He has built a Kano computer (Rasberry Pi based) and followed the programs it provides. As a next step I am looking at Code Academy which offers tutorials in about 6 languages. Could someone please offer a view as to where is best as a starting point, or is there perhaps a better route to follow? Does he start with web languages and then progress to Ruby or Python? All advice would be most welcome. Thanks Bob

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Debian/stable won't boot
by Brian May 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

Hello, I have a i7 based HP computer here that until recently was booting Linux and Windows just fine. According to the user, it stopped working after updating the graphics drivers under Windows. Anyway the symptoms are: * Grub loads fine. * Selecting any Linux kernel from grub, results in the computer freezing immediately after loading the kernel (no time to initialize the kernel), with a black screen. * Selecting memtest results in similar problems. * Same thing happens booting from rescue items in grub menu. No extra debugging information. * Keyboard unresponsive after crash. Caps-lock, num-lock, and Ctrl-Alt-Delete don't work. * Booting windows works fine. * Booting Debian live CD image on USB works fine. It has the standard Debian wheezy kernel, 3.2.0-4-amd64, which is the same as one of the options I was attempting to boot from the hard disk. * Power cycling is the only way to un-crash the system. Extra facts: * It is a Nvidia GeForce GT 640 based graphics card * The live CD does not use grub. * Debian/wheezy based system with extra kernels installed from Debian backports. * The dog barking does not make any difference what so ever. * Nvidia closed source drivers not installed (not that I see this making any difference, as the kernel doesn't appear to be started when it crashes) * This is a UEFI boot system, with secure boot turned off. Have tried installing another kernel after booting live CD, and reinstalling grub, however nothing changed. Have run memtest from live CD, no errors reported. Only thing I can think of is that the update of the graphics drivers under Windows has updated the graphics card firmware breaking boots from the version of Grub in Debian stable/wheezy. Does this even make sense? Any other ideas? Thanks -- Brian May <brian(a)microcomaustralia.com.au>

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re: Learning coding
by Bob 26 Jan '15

26 Jan '15

Thanks Tennesee, Andrew and David - that gives me some things to consider. Bob

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nfs on btrfs and --reflink
by James Harper 25 Jan '15

25 Jan '15

I have a btrfs directory exported via nfs. Are there any secret mount options that would allow 'cp --reflink' on the nfs client to work (eg pass the required IOCTL to the server via nfs)? Thanks James

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