March 2018 - luv-main

Accounting software
by Mark Trickett 05 Apr '18

05 Apr '18

Hello All, I have a friend who has been stuck on Windows because of being tied to being able to hand his accounting data to the accountant in a Tax Office approved format, which has meant Quicken/QuickBooks or MYOB. I am not so certain of legal requirements, but what double entry accounting packages are there, and are any approved? I do know of GNUCash, but not the current status, and is it available for him to play with first on Windows. I an constantly annoyed by the insistence that only commercial packages are valid, when the quality of the coding is demonstrably dubious, let alone whether there are any "back doors". Regards, Mark Trickett

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Kde volume control
by Russell Coker 30 Mar '18

30 Mar '18

I've done a fresh install of Debian/Testing on a new laptop and the volume control buttons aren't working. They make no apparent difference to the volume and no change to the volume settings according to alsamixer. It seems that the backend is "Phonon VLC". Is it possible to have KDE use ALSA directly without such things? Is there another desktop environment that has a more minimalist design without being like TWM? I want something that has notifications for USB devices, battery, network manager, etc but not too much else in the way of trying to take over everything and not having a process like plasmashell taking 10% of a CPU core when nothing is happening. -- Sent from my Huawei Mate 9 with K-9 Mail.

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NVMe benchmark results (Was: Re: [MLUG] Next meeting - 26th March)
by Duncan Roe 28 Mar '18

28 Mar '18

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 02:02:33PM +1100, Michael Pope wrote: [...] > Duncan, > Thanks for sharing your NVMe experiences at the meeting last night. Would > you be able to run some benchmarks using 'bonnie++' please and post the > results? > from > Michael > Hi Michael, I ran a pair. For sda2 (ext3) I made the mistake of testing random creates / stat / delete which ran all night and then some, just soaking up CPU. So I didn't run that for nvme0n1p2 (ext4). > 18:07:37$ bonnie++ -d /sda2/bonnie -s 16g -n 1024 > Writing with putc()...done > Writing intelligently...done > Rewriting...done > Reading with getc()...done > Reading intelligently...done > start 'em...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 1.03e ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- > -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 > dimstar 16G 27653 53 27340 16 9023 3 18208 33 20106 3 136.6 0 > ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create-------- > -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- > files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP > 1024 57 99 932164 99 51223 56 58 99 175 99 105 66 > dimstar,16G,27653,53,27340,16,9023,3,18208,33,20106,3,136.6,0,1024,57,99,932164,99,51223,56,58,99,175,99,105,66 > 10:20:25$ bonnie++ -d /nvme0n1p2/bonnie -s 16g -n 0 > Writing with putc()...done > Writing intelligently...done > Rewriting...done > Reading with getc()...done > Reading intelligently...done > start 'em...done...done...done... > Version 1.03e ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- > -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 > dimstar 16G 63069 71 332703 41 142806 19 71545 75 375326 25 +++++ +++ > dimstar,16G,63069,71,332703,41,142806,19,71545,75,375326,25,+++++,+++,,,,,,,,,,,,, > 10:33:31$ > Per Chr Sequential Output is 2.26 times faster Block Sequential Output is 12.17 times faster Rewrite Sequential Output is 15.83 times faster Per Chr Sequential Input is 3.93 times faster Block Sequential Input is 18.67 times faster NVMe Random Seeks completed too quickly for bonnie++ to report a result (<0.5s) Bear in mind this is probably with only a PCIe version 2 bus, Cheers ... Duncan.

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Re: [luv-announce] LUV Main April 2018 Meeting: Write docs like a software developer using the Linux toolchain
by Duncan Roe 25 Mar '18

25 Mar '18

On Sat, Mar 24, 2018 at 10:53:48PM +1100, luv-announce wrote: > https://luv.asn.au/2018/04/03 > > *PLEASE NOTE NEW LOCATION* > > Tuesday, April 3, 2018 > > 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM > Kathleen Syme Library, 251 Faraday Street Carlton VIC 3053 > > Speakers: > > * Alec Clews, Write docs like a software developer using the Linux > toolchain > > This talk is about public API documentation and what useful developer > documentation should look like. The bulk of the presentation will > demonstrate various UNIX/Linux style CLI tools (M4, Make, Plantuml, > Pandoc, Graphviz, ...) and how they can be part of a build chain to keep > your docs up to date and relevant. There will also be a discussion on > why this toolchain is used, instead of tools like Javadoc or Swagger. > > The material is based on a short talk given at LCA 2018 'Using "old > skool" Free tools to easily publish API documentation' > > *Alec Clews* founded Melbourne Raspberry Jam. He can be found online as > alecthegeek in to many places. He drinks too much espresso, uses Linux > as much as possible and wishes he was a better Go programmer. > > Linux Users of Victoria is a subcommittee of Linux Australia > <https://www.linux.org.au/>. > Not too far from Maria's eh? Anyone else care to comment? Cheers ... Duncan.

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disk usage in perl without modules or /bin/df
by Tim Connors 21 Mar '18

21 Mar '18

I have a very minimal system where I can't use df because I want an extended output df can't do, and I can't install CPAN modules (there isn't Filesys::Df, Filesys::Statfs, etc) I want it to take args of a given file/directory. stat()'s first returned arg is st_dev. What's a system call that can return current usage and total size of a dev? stracing df shows it does a stat then a statfs, but I can't seem to access the statfs system call from perl without Filesys::Statfs. Sigh, embedded (very large) systems. -- Tim Connors

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Re: quotas and reservations (was Re: Looking at RAID)
by Craig Sanders 12 Mar '18

12 Mar '18

On Fri, Mar 09, 2018 at 07:49:48PM +1100, Russell Coker wrote: > Unlike BTRFS, you can expect every feature of ZFS to just work. It may be > a total PITA to get it working, it may not be something you even want to ZFS just works, and I've never found it to be a PITA at all. I've been using it since around 2010. * `apt-get install zfs-dkms zfsutils-linux` (and optionally zfs-zed and zfsnap) is no big deal. It's no more trouble than installing anything else. * non-rootfs storage just works - no hassle, no fuss, no drama. Couldn't be easier...certainly a lot less work/hassle than LVM and/or mdam + ext4 or xfs. * getting linux to boot from ZFS requires some work (unless your distro supports it natively, like Ubuntu). A few hours of reading and about the same of careful, methodical work the first time you do it. IMO it's worth the effort just for snapshots & zfs send backups of the rootfs. All the other ZFS features are just gravy. > use (EG ZFS control of Samba configuration), but it will work if you do the > right thing. I've never used that. Or the auto-NFS stuff. I Never saw any need to try it since I was already running NFS and Samba - continuing to use what I already had was no trouble at all :) I don't really care about samba, but one of these days I should look into doing NFS exports just by setting an attribute on a dataset in zfs. For now, editing /etc/exports is easy enough. craig -- craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au>

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Re: Looking at RAID
by Paul Dwerryhouse 08 Mar '18

08 Mar '18

On 2018-03-07 11:44, Craig Sanders via luv-main wrote: > BTW, it's not always a good idea to follow install instructions from > developers. Many of them are focused exclusively on their pride and > joy and > don't give a damn about the operating system it runs on....and many see > the > OS as an obstacle to be worked around. Oh, so you mean that best practice for production installs *isn't* to run curl-pipe-sudo-bash that pulls something from the head of a random github repo and then runs npm to splatter it across your filesystem? ;)

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host name - domain name
by Nic Baxter 08 Mar '18

08 Mar '18

Hi All I host a number of domains on a Centos 7 VPS. Now I am setting up a VPS with only one domain hosted. I am trying to get my head around issues with naming especially regarding RDNS and a mail server. Should I name the server host.domain.com or just domain.com? Cheers Nic

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March 2018 Workshop: Comparing window managers
by Andrew Pam 07 Mar '18

07 Mar '18

Thanks to an excellent suggestion at yesterday's very successful March main meeting, this month's workshop on Saturday week (17 March) will be a comparison of Linux window managers. We're still looking for more people who can talk about the window manager they are using, what they like and dislike about it, and maybe demonstrate a little. Please email me with the name of your window manager if you think you could help! Thanks, Andrew

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Linux Distro for photographers.: Sony Alpha SLR/SLT A-mount Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review
by Andrew McGlashan 07 Mar '18

07 Mar '18

Hi Andrew, Thought this would be better in it's own thread. https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/50166906 I can't vouch for the above, but a quick DDG search found it and it looks suitable (also based on OpenSuSE). Cheers A.

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