- luv-main - luv.asn.au

Re: Telstra ADSL and Linux, a couple of dumb questions.....
by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au 16 Jun '14

16 Jun '14

On Sat, 14 Jun 2014, Andrew McGlashan wrote: > Hi Lindsay, > > If you are 5km from the exchange by cable, then unless the copper is > quite thick, you probably won't even get ANY kind of DSL service. > > Now, let's say you are lucky and the cable is thick; chances are the > speed will still be low due to the loss of signal over the phone line -- > it won't sync high and it will probably have lots of dropouts, > particularly if the weather interferes. Telstra is not known for > properly maintaining the copper network; they do bandaid fixes on the > copper line. This will effect you no matter what provider you have. > > -- > Kind Regards > AndrewM > Many thanks for all the replies, its been most helpfull. A great deal of info to digest. A minor comment, I do not and never will have a mobie phone. Andrew raisies an intersting point in the above. I worked for most of my life as an PMG/Telecom/Telstra tech mostly on inside work lonngline exchange maintence etc. but I have done much work on transmission quality of the customer cable system. I may say I am very dubious of the ability of the cable to my location to work at ADSL frequncies. On a normal dialup using a Maestro Woomera modem, one of the best avalible, it will only manage a connect rate of 19.2 kilobits/sec, this is pathetic. Trying it from a nearby place which is over 2000 metres closer to the exchange produced the same result, ____not_good___. It appears the cable closer to town is no good (not unusual these days) I have known about the ADSL access since I moved in but have no desire to throw money down the drain for a system that is no good. There is still hope though, currently for high speed access I use prepiad Virgin 3G broadband. While this is __very__ expensive it is fast, generally getting 4 to 500 kilobytes/sec transfer rates (I am only a kilometre or so from the tower). Virgin do have a 40 dollar a month plan with a 12 gig data allowance, If you use more it just cuts off (effectively). THe USB modems dont much like the summer heat (common I am told for dongles) but is quite usable still. Virgin does have paymnet options I find reasonable and I have found the company __VERY__ helpfull in support. The 12 gig allowance will be more than enough as I do not do movies or TV or anything like that. Incidently I am JUST out of range of fixed radio NBN (like 3 or 400 metres), being in a valley behind some rising ground. Not that this is an issue. Lindsay

1 0

Re: Linux PPPoE bridge mode issues - again
by Peter Ross 12 Jun '14

12 Jun '14

From: "James Harper" <james.harper(a)bendigoit.com.au> >> >> I posted last year about a problem I was having with Linux's PPPoE >> functionality in regards to a specific modem. At the time I put it >> down to a dodgy modem and moved on, but now I've hit it on another >> modem, and twice seems more than coincidence. > > You aren't a Telstra customer are you? > > http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/2485wh/telstra_internet_traffic_… As said, I had similar issues - and it is an Optus network. For the case mentioned here, I would go with the commentary on the mentioned page: ITT: The evidence posted just indicates there's a fucked up router somewhere in Telstra (or along the path) that's screwing with large packets, nothing here proves Telstra monitoring. Why it only affects some hosts? Because routing isn't the same for all destinations. Regards Peter

2 2

Notebook with inactive screen after timeout
by Andrew Greig 12 Jun '14

12 Jun '14

Hi, I don't understand whether my computer is sleeping or hibernating or something else. After booting up into a KDE desktop on OpenSuse 13.1, after doing nothing for around ten minutes, the screen goes black. W.hen I move the mouse the computer "wakes up" a bit and the screen shows the OpenSuse graphic on the right side, and the mouse pointer is responsive, but nothing else is visible or available. There is no dialogue box to enter a password to unlock it, nothing at all. If I have a browser or other app open and close the lid, it restores quite well on opening the lid again. What is the difference between the two states, and what config file would I need to look at to resolve the problem above? My only solution to date is to CTRL+ALT+F2 su and reboot. Irritating but not the end of the world. Thanks Andrew Greig

3 2

Problems with VirtualBox kernel modules
by Terry Duell 11 Jun '14

11 Jun '14

Hello All, After migrating my system (Fedora 20 x86_64) from a spinning disc on an old MB to an SSD on a new UEFI MB, I have problems starting any of my VirtualBox guest systems. The message I get says that either the kernel drivers are not installed or there is a permission problem with /etc/init.d/vboxdrv. I have run /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup and that reports... Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules [ OK ] Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules [ OK ] Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS[ OK ] Starting VirtualBox kernel modules [FAILED] and sudo modprobe vboxdrv reports... modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'vboxdrv': Required key not available so, does this mean that the problem is to do with a missing EFI boot key? Is there any way to fix this? Cheers, -- Regards, Terry Duell

2 4

USB keyboards no longer working after upgrade
by Toby Corkindale 10 Jun '14

10 Jun '14

I've found myself in a bit of a confused state. I upgraded a machine from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS, and have now lost USB keyboard input. (And possibly lost other USB input devices, but I can't tell as it boots to textmode console only) Keyboards work in BIOS and at the Grub prompt, but not after the kernel has booted. The machine was previously running the 14.04 kernel, so that hasn't actually changed. If I boot the machine with a USB key running a fresh version of Ubuntu 14.04, the keyboard works fine too. I've tried several keyboards, and every combination of USB-related option in the BIOS to no avail. I assume that somewhere in the past couple of years, I've modified something on this machine which is now conflicting with something that's been upgraded.. but I have no idea what. I can get at the filesystem to edit things via the bootable USB version of Ubuntu. Any ideas of what to try? Cheers, Toby

1 2

How best to move system to SSD
by Terry Duell 09 Jun '14

09 Jun '14

Hello All, I now have my SSD and have been trying to sort out how best to go about the business of moving my system to it. There is a lot of stuff on the web about this and I think I have some of it figured out, but none I have seen really fits what I want to do. Best to check before I bugger everything up. Firstly I am running Fedora 20 and my current disc is 500 GB formatted as /boot = 577 MB, / = 52 GB, swap = 8.4 GB, /home = 439 GB. My SSD is 256 GB. My thinking is that I would format the SSD as /boot = 500 MB, / = 50 GB, swap = 8 GB, and /home = 197 GB. After setting up the SSD as my boot disc I will transfer a number of folders from my current /home and leave the rest on the current disc which I would mount as /home/terry/disk2 (say). I should add I have a second 500 GB disc that I can use to hold stuff while reformatting my current 500 GB drive. So, the plan looks like this...(but some bits are not clear to me) install the SSD and partition (as above) as ext4 using gparted. Reboot with live distro and mount the 500 GB (spinning) disc and the SSD; sudo mkdir /media/src sudo mkdir /media/ssd sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/src sudo mount /dev/sdd1 /media/ssd then copy src to ssd sudo rsync -ax /media/src/ /media/dest/ I think this will copy my /boot only, is that correct? If it is only /boot copied then I need to also... sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/src sudo mount /dev/sdd2 /media/ssd then copy src to ssd sudo rsync -ax /media/src/ /media/dest/ to copy my / across. now I can unmount /media/src, and unmount /media/ssd I now need to get the UUID of the SSD drive (sudo /sbin/blkid) and mount the SSD partition where Fedora is now installed... sudo mount /dev/ssd2 /media/ssd (assuming /dev/ssd2 is my new /) open /media/ssd/etc/fstab and replace the UUIDs of old disc with the UUIDs of the SSD, and include the options noatime,discard also add tmpfs to fstab for some temp and logs tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0 tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0 tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=0755 0 0 Now to reinstall grub, after a reboot with live distro... Here it gets a bit murky for me, not quite sure what I should be doing. What I have read says mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt then proceeds to also mount /sys /proc /run /dev under /mnt, but this doesn't look right when my /dev/sdd1 is /boot Can someone please clear up my confusion and perhaps point me to some advice that better fits the partitioning scheme I want to end up with? Cheers, -- Regards, Terry Duell

6 18

Re: Debian 7.5 netinst - no kernel installed
by Colin Fee 09 Jun '14

09 Jun '14

On 9 June 2014 14:11, James Harper <james(a)ejbdigital.com.au> wrote: > > > > I was rebuilding my home print server (a re-purposed ASUS eepc netbook) > > yesterday and was trying Debian 7.5 netinst from a USB stick. > > > > All was going well until partway through it complained about not having > an > > installable kernel available to intstall. I continued on through the > process and > > sure enough at the end the reboot stalled at grub due to no kernel > entries. > > > > Does your eeepc have one of those processors that should support PAE but > doesn't? > No, full pae support. Previously it was running ubuntu 12.04 with the generic-pae kernel. Debian ended up installing the 3.2.0-4-686-pae kernel. > > What exact model eeepc is it? Is it mentioned here > https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/Models ? > >From memory, i.e. I'm not in front of it right now, it's a 701. The installer had no trouble ID-ing hardware and asked me which of the wired or wireless NICs I wanted to use. > > And what exact netinst download did you get? > This one: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.5.0/i386/iso-cd/debian-7.5.0-i386-net… -- Colin Fee tfeccles(a)gmail.com

1 0

Debian 7.5 netinst - no kernel installed
by Colin Fee 09 Jun '14

09 Jun '14

I was rebuilding my home print server (a re-purposed ASUS eepc netbook) yesterday and was trying Debian 7.5 netinst from a USB stick. All was going well until partway through it complained about not having an installable kernel available to intstall. I continued on through the process and sure enough at the end the reboot stalled at grub due to no kernel entries. More of a curiosity really as I resolved it using the Live-DVD downloaded onto the USB stick. I was a) trying it out and b) looking for a minimal installation. So has anyone else seen anything similar? I'd have thought that at the appropriate moment in the install process it would pull down a kernel to install. -- Colin Fee tfeccles(a)gmail.com

1 0

Cheap Android device recommendations
by Avi Miller 06 Jun '14

06 Jun '14

Hi guys, We are currently building new mobile applications for the community radio station at which I volunteer. In order to test the Android application, I need an Android device (obviously), so I’m looking for recommendations for a cheap device that will only really be used for development purposes. I’m not looking to replace my existing phone, so an Android tablet would be adequate. Ok? Go! :) Thanks, Avi

6 9

Network Problems - Clients in Christchurch affected
by Piers Rowan 06 Jun '14

06 Jun '14

Hi there, We are running a LAMP stack and we have multiple clients in CHCH and a handful other parts of the world who have time out issues. We have done traceroutes from CHCH, QLD, and other places back to the data centre in Adelaide and the results is that there are no problems in CHCH. There are two clients in CHCH with a few branches and both claim to have issues. They are both hitting the same server (with many others) but only they are reporting problems. We have given the "talk to your ISP" response but I would like to: 1) remove all doubt it is our end 2) Provide any investigative support to our clients as possible. Can some network guru or packet sniffing blood hound give me some ideas of where else to explore in the digital underworld? Cheers P

3 4