February 2019 - luv-main

RAID drive folders now multiplying on desktop
by Andrew Greig 27 Feb '19

27 Feb '19

Hi All, Having recently set up my machine with btrfs RAID 1, I now have 13 folders named "Data" on my desktop, and I expect that with each new access to my RAID drive I will get another one. I have not set my system to populate the desktop as I like to keep it clear. Normally the only item on my desktop is Trash. Is this a Gnome setting? I access my data through Dolphin file manager, and I have never seen this before (I have never used btrfs or RAID 1 before either). If I delete these instances am I likely to encounter one which will damage my system on deletion? Many thanks Andrew Greig

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(fwd) Re: Proposed road map for 1 SSD & 2 HDDs set up in btrfs as RAID1 -- success!!
by Craig Sanders 26 Feb '19

26 Feb '19

----- Forwarded message from Andrew Greig <pushin.linux(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2019 21:50:56 +1100 From: Andrew Greig <pushin.linux(a)gmail.com> To: Craig Sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au> Subject: Re: Proposed road map for 1 SSD & 2 HDDs set up in btrfs as RAID1 -- success!! Hi all, I have a working GUI and and a working btrfs RAID1, data is loading at present but it is a lot slower as the feed is from USB3 to a SATA HDD. But I can work with that. Really overjoyed, I have learned a lot, and probably tormented Craig and the list a lot, BUT I AM GRATEFUL!! Thank you Andrew On 25/2/19 1:22 pm, Craig Sanders via luv-main wrote: > On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 06:44:57AM +1100, Andrew Greig wrote: > > Now it is time to see if I have learned anything. > > > > 1Tb SSD and 2 x 2Tb SATA HDDs, motherboard is a UEFI board but I have never > > used UEFI with this board. > > > > Ubuntu desktop obviously ignored it. > > > > Using Gparted partition the SSD thus: > > > > 512MB EFI Partition /dev//sda1, formatted FAT32, primary (boot?) > > 8 Gb allocated to SWAP > > > > rest of the disk _*/*__dev/_sda2, primary, formatted btrfs mounted as / > Looks good except that if you have an EFI partition (sda1) and a swap > partition (sda2) then the btrfs root partition will be sda3, not sda2. > > > Partition the first HDD /dev/sdb1primary, formatted btrfs , mounted as /data > > > > Second HDD same size leave completely blank > The second 2TB HDD (sdc) needs to be partitioned exactly the same as the first > (sdb). > > I don't think gparted will let you create a partition without formatting it > (as a filesystem or as swap or whatever), so just let it format the partition > and then run the btrfs commands as below. > > > After the system is installed add the second HDD withtwo lines in the > > terminal > > > > sudo btrfs device add -f /dev/sdc1 /data > > sudo btrfs balance start -dconvert=raid1 -mconvert=raid1 /data > You can do this after the system is installed, or from a root shell while > booted on gparted. It doesn't matter either way, although it's probably > better/easier to do it from gparted (there'll only be the one /data fs for the > ubuntu installer to detect so you won't end up with /data0 and /data1 again) > > craig > > -- > craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au> > _______________________________________________ > luv-main mailing list > luv-main(a)luv.asn.au > https://lists.luv.asn.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luv-main ----- End forwarded message -----

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Proposed road map for 1 SSD & 2 HDDs set up in btrfs as RAID1
by Andrew Greig 25 Feb '19

25 Feb '19

Hi All Now it is time to see if I have learned anything. 1Tb SSD and 2 x 2Tb SATA HDDs, motherboard is a UEFI board but I have never used UEFI with this board. Ubuntu desktop obviously ignored it. Using Gparted partition the SSD thus: 512MB EFI Partition /dev//sda1, formatted FAT32, primary (boot?) 8 Gb allocated to SWAP rest of the disk _*/*__dev/_sda2, primary, formatted btrfs mounted as / Partition the first HDD /dev/sdb1primary, formatted btrfs , mounted as /data Second HDD same size leave completely blank Remove the gparted disk and insert the Ubuntu Server disk commence the install Install the system and add the GUI using tasksel After the system is installed add the second HDD withtwo lines in the terminal sudo btrfs device add -f /dev/sdc1 /data sudo btrfs balance start -dconvert=raid1 -mconvert=raid1 /data Enjoy the set up. Please add any corrections. The reason I choose to use the g-parted step is because the ubuntu partitioner was difficult to use.

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Skype oddities
by stripes theotoky 25 Feb '19

25 Feb '19

Has anyone seen this behaviour with skype on Linux? I just changed my password and tried to log in, Skype rejected the new password even though they sent me an email confirming the reset. I reset it again same result. I reset it for a third time same result On the fourth reset it worked fine. The only thing I can think is that the first 3 passwords all had a y or a z in them and I have my location with Skype set to the UK while my keyboard is Swiss German which has the y and z changed over. Is it even possible for a system to get confused like that? Or is this perhaps just normal Microsoft / Skype behaviour? Richard -- Stripes Theotoky -37 .713869 145.050562

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Disaster (was Re: Boot problems after adding 2 new disks)
by Andrew Greig 24 Feb '19

24 Feb '19

Hi All I modified the /etc/fstab file to remove the reference to the /dev/sdc2 I used gparted live to delete the /dev/sdc2 partition I saved and quit and rebooted the machine, it stopped in an emergency condition Used CTRL + D to move forward, just came back to the same menu I removed the two SATA drives /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc1 and tried again, and it ended with the emergency state again. Now my SSD drive sda2 is not functional What is the best Rescue disk to use to clean out my new data and start again. Or, at a stretch , what do I need to do to set up uefi boot? Or should I avoid it? Many thanks Andrew Greig

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shrinking btrfs (was Re: Boot problems after adding 2 new disks)
by Craig Sanders 24 Feb '19

24 Feb '19

[ you accidentally sent this Q as private mail. replying back to the luv-main list ] On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 08:33:25AM +1100, pushin.linux wrote: > Hi Craig,I was wondering if btrfs allows "shrinking" a patition to create > free space, and if swap at the end of an SSD was better than at the start of > a standard SATA drive that's the kind of question that a search engine like google or duckduckgo is good for. Also Q&A sites like https://askubuntu.com/ or https://unix.stackexchange.com/ It's been years since I used btrfs for anything real (i use ZFS), so I searched for "shrink btrfs partition" and found that it is possible. But first you need to know that resizing ANY filesystem always involves two steps: resizing the fs itself, and resizing the partition that it's on. and the order of those two steps depends on whether you are shrinking or enlarging the fs. to shrink an fs, you first shrink the fs itself and then the partition. to enlarge, you first enlarge the partition and then the fs. For single-disk btrfs like on your root fs, it's fairly easy, just boot with the "gparted live" CD/USB[1] and tell it to resize your root btrfs partition (sda2, i think). That will resize both the fs and the partition. For a btrfs pool with multiple partitions/disks, it's more complicated because gparted operates on individual drives so it doesn't resize all of the drives/partitions in a btrfs fs at once. You have to resize each partition in the btrfs pool separately. e.g. if you wanted to resize your /data filesystem, you'd first have to run "gparted /dev/sdb", resize sdb2, and then "gparted /dev/sdc" and be careful to change sdc2 to EXACTLY the same size as sdb1. Personally, for a relatively trivial 4 or 8GB of swap space, i don't think it's worth the bother or the risk - messing with partitions is always a risk, it is very easy to make a mistake and that leads to data loss. swap *IS* faster on an SSD (everything is faster on an SSD), but when you get 24GB RAM installed your system isn't going to be swapping much - it certainly won't be thrashing stuff in and out of swap and causing performance problems. swap usage will be occasional data + code that hasn't been in use for a while. [1] https://gparted.org/ the gparted web site also has lots of useful info about partitioning and filesystems, so is a good place to learn the whys and wherefores of all this stuff. craig -- craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au>

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Boot problems after adding 2 new disks
by Andrew Greig 23 Feb '19

23 Feb '19

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upgrade
by Russell Coker 22 Feb '19

22 Feb '19

A few days ago there was some downtime on the LUV server because rebooting another VM on the same hardware revealed a bug in the KVM scripts that shut off IPv4 access. Tonight I have just upgraded the LUV server to Debian/Testing (we are in the freeze process for the next release of Debian). In the process of upgrading the LUV server and other servers I run to Debian/Testing I've fixed many issues with my code and filed bug reports against some other packages. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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making backports I have built recognised as providing correct package
by Mark Trickett 22 Feb '19

22 Feb '19

Hello all, Again more thanks to Craig. I have built and installed several backports, but the one I am still trying for will not yet build. It does not see the backports I did build and install as providing the dependencies, yet. I suspect that I may need to alter something in the dependencies thhat I backport built, or is it possible to alter the dependencies requirements in the backport built with dpkg-buildpackage. Even with one of the backports, it produced multiple debs, and one of those depends on two others, and adding the "~backport" tag in the changelog stalls the one that depends on the other two. Maybe did not need the backport tag, but on the other hand, I do want such indication. I built tiff-4.0.10, and libtiff-dev depends on libtiff5 and libtiffxx5 (version = 4.0.10-4 versus 4.0.10-4~backport). Without those all installed, dpkg-buildpackage will not build sane-backends-1.0.27. Regards, Mark Trickett

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Ongoing scanner setup, now need a bit of help with dpkg-buildpackage
by Mark Trickett 17 Feb '19

17 Feb '19

hello All, Many thanks to Craig Sanders for help so far. I have found the binary sane-utils packages for sid, but too much conflicts to go that way. I have managed to locate and download the source files, sane-backends_1.0.27.orig.tar.gz, sane-backends_1.0.27.debian.tar.gz and sane-backends_1.0.27.dsc and put them in a directory. I tried using "apt-get src" to no effect, complained that could not find the source package, but finally understood the Debian site with Firefox, at least in that regard. Now I am looking at building my own backport, and looking at using dpkg-buildpackage. I would appreciate advice and comments about usage, what to do to prepare and the like. I will be looking at web searches, along with reading the manpage which I currently have up, but still not quite understanding, yet. All help is appreciated. Regards, Mark Trickett

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