- luv-main - example.com

Graphic drivers under LInux, current progress
by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au 24 Aug '14

24 Aug '14

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

2 1

Anti-spam tool preferences?
by Jason White 21 Aug '14

21 Aug '14

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.

6 10

Android 4.4 external SD card
by Russell Coker 15 Aug '14

15 Aug '14

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/

8 10

patents are unquestionable good, right?
by Tim Connors 11 Aug '14

11 Aug '14

Some people might want to respond to the one sided article here: https://theconversation.com/grants-arent-helping-australian-tech-but-patent… -- Tim Connors

4 3

SP Ausnet and ZigBee devices
by Chris Samuel 07 Aug '14

07 Aug '14

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

1 0

SATA SSD + RAID
by hannah commodore 07 Aug '14

07 Aug '14

Hi all, I've inherited a system which has an Adaptec 2420SA RAID controller and 4x SSDs running in RAID6. There's no end to problems experienced with this setup; a disk seems to time out and get ejected from the controller at least every week. It's not always the same disk though, and I've tried replacing each of the SSDs with their spares, to no avail. Is there any known issue with using SSDs in hardware RAID that I've overlooked? Performance isn't *that* much of an issue, since it's only running Apache + mod_perl and a ~100GB MySQL database. Any thoughts appreciated Thanks, Hannah

8 13

PCI GigE cards
by Russell Coker 04 Aug '14

04 Aug '14

MSY is selling PCI GigE cards for $7 each. If you want to upgrade to GigE but have some P3 or P4 class systems in your network then this is a good opportunity. PCIe GigE cards were $11 each at MSY last time I bought some. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

1 0

dns question.
by Daniel Jitnah 02 Aug '14

02 Aug '14

Hi All, when I do dig somedomain.org I get: ; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> somedomain.org ;; global options: +cmd ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached What is the "no servers" that could not be reached?? If I do dig greenwareit.com.au it works fine. Both somedomain.org and greenwareit (and 3 other domains) are on the same dns server. somedomain.org is registered with namecheap.com. Any one has domain registered with them? (not my choice) Cheers Daniel.

7 8

Re: dns question.
by Peter Ross 31 Jul '14

31 Jul '14

From: "Sean Crosby" <richardnixonshead(a)gmail.com> > Hi Peter, > > I think your problem is that glue records for your domain do not exist in > the zone file for the DNS servers for id.au Thanks. > I think you need to contact your domain registrar to add > ns.gonglenuts.id.au as a glue record in the id.au namespace, I assumed that would happen when I can specify NS server and IP address in the administrative interface of the domain registrar. In a second step I wanted to experiment with some DNSSEC and PGP key via DNS related stuff so I thought "control as much as possible by myself" would be good. http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-wouters-dane-openpgp-02 Here a bit more background: https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/feedback-review/advancing-dane… I wanted to point at this but I cannot find anything of same content in English (this link is German): http://www.heise.de/netze/meldung/DANE-disruptiv-Authentifizierte-OpenPGP-S… > or you can > set your primary DNS server as something with an address outside the > gonglenuts.id.au domain. Yes, that's plan B. Ages ago I had these external addresses (an ISP) as primary sources but they were configured to act as a slave to a DNS server I was running. That way I avoided these constant: "Can you make a change in our domain" calls. I wonder who could do this. Also, DENIC in Germany asked for at least two nameservers in two different locations but that does not seem to be a requirement here? Thanks for help Peter

1 0

Re: dns question.
by Peter Ross 31 Jul '14

31 Jul '14

Hi Daniel, did you figure out your problem? I made, just for fun, an experiment to get an own nameserver up and running (I did not run a _public_ one for ages). The nameserver is up and running, I see it in whois but it does not get propagated. Here in detail: http://www.whoismydomain.com.au/whois/gonglenuts.id.au Domain Name: gonglenuts.id.au Last Modified: 01-Jul-2014 02:03:45 UTC Registrar ID: WAR Registrar Name: Web Address Registration Status: inactive Registrant: Peter Ross Eligibility Type: Other .. Name Server: ns.gonglenuts.id.au Name Server IP: 115.186.196.107 On the nameserver itself runs a bind 9.10. The zone file: $TTL 3h @ IN SOA ns.gonglenuts.id.au. root.ns ( 2014073001 1d 12h 1w 3h ) ; Serial, Refresh, Retry, Expire, Neg. cache TTL @ IN NS ns.gongelnuts.id.au. ns IN A 115.186.196.107 You can wuery the server, it returns SOA, NS and A records.. but if you query "the Internet" it returns: $ nslookup > set type=SOA > gonglenuts.id.au Server: 192.168.50.223 Address: 192.168.50.223#53 ** server can't find gonglenuts.id.au: NXDOMAIN I do not know what I did wrong. While writing this, I noticed this whois line "Status: inactive" But I do not know why it is. The domain is registered, setup and paid. It was a bit low on my priority list over the last weeks (it is a "playground project") but I still would like to sort it out one day.. Regards Peter

2 1