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grub init /bin/bash
by Colin Fee 21 May '12

21 May '12

A work colleague was reading a blog and in one of the comments was a statement saying that if you append init=/bin/bash to the grub boot line e.g. linux /vmlinuz-3.2.0-2-amd64 root=UUID=26585ddb-7dde-4a7e-b2c7-e32330bb4cc8 ro splash quiet init=/bin/bash you end up ia a shell with root privileges. So we had go at it and it works. We even tried booting with a USB tick in place to see if you could copy stuff to it and you can. The question that arose was what about network access? Do you have it? i.e. is there a tcp/ip stack running and if not how would you load one etc? -- Colin Fee tfeccles(a)gmail.com

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Debian testing no network on boot
by Geoff D'Arcy 21 May '12

21 May '12

I am running Debian testing and after a recent dist-upgrade networking no longer comes up automatically after booting. eth0 doesn't come up and more surprisingly neither does the loopback interface. I can configure these manually after booting but would obviously like to have the interfaces come up during boot process. During the upgrade a new networking program 'dnet' appears to have been installed which I suspect is related to this problem. During the install it wanted to be configured so it could change the mac address of my nic. Until it was configured eth0 was dead and wouldn't come up at all. Does anyone know what's wrong and how I can fix it? I'm tempted to uninstall dnet but it's obviously been installed for a reason. I've googled around and haven't been able to find anything that helps with a fix. Many thanks in advance Geoff

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ZaTab from ZaReason - a fully open Android tablet
by Chris Samuel 14 May '12

14 May '12

Hi folks, I originally sent this to the Melbourne Free Software Interest Group, but I reckon this would be of interest to others on this list and so I'm reposting here. Apologies to those who get duplicates! The US company ZaReason who build Linux systems (and are currently investigating opening a store in New Zealand) have been working on a fully open Android tablet for some time now. Well it's now appeared on their website for pre-orders (unlinked from the rest of the site, but tweeted about) here: http://zareason.com/shop/zatab.html I've blogged about it here: http://www.csamuel.org/2012/04/25/the-zatab-from-zareason-a-fully-open-sour… summarising what I've learnt from their tweets and from their site, plus noting that the status of their GPU driver is unclear (there is an open source driver in development, but its maturity is claimed to be low). The tablet ships with CyanogenMod 9 and an unlocked boot loader. I would presume it doesn't ship with the Google Apps as they're not open. I've asked via Twitter if they plan on having F-Droid installed by default. Timely given the interest in free software Android devices! cheers, Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC This email may come with a PGP signature as a file. Do not panic. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP

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Aborted an Ubuntu 12.04 Upgrade resulted in Booting into Blank Screen
by Wen Lin 14 May '12

14 May '12

Hi, Yesterday, a friend of mine proceeded with the Dist Upgrade to 12.04 process within the Update Manager of his Ubuntu 11.10 (64bit) system that I installed for him previously. (He did so before consulting me beforehand. Had he done so, I would have advised him to do the usual things before an upgrade, like: backup your system, etc; and I would have offered to do this with him together, because I had just done my upgrade recently). Well, everything was going well, until he got to the 4th point in the Upgrade Checklist (i.e. he saw 3 ticks in the checklist): - Preparing to upgrade - Setting new software channels - Getting new packages - Installing the upgrades - ... Later he told me that his PC seemed to have stuck at this point for a long time, no progress, PC seemed frozen. So he proceeded with the one option that many of us tend to do - pressed the RESET button. While I usually wouldn't do this myself, I can understand his rationale for doing so - aborting the upgrade so that he could get back to where he was. Instead, when his PC (there is no dual-boot in this machine - just pure Ubuntu) rebooted, after going pass the usual BIOS/Video card splash screen, followed by a quick splash of the Ubuntu logo, he got a blank screen. Not even the usual Ubuntu boot option list was displayed - just a black screen (with a tiny top bit coloured ubuntu purple). Subsequent rebooting attempts (powering off & on) got the same outcome. ** A quick note about the "computer freeze up" scenario during the upgrade before: From my own recent experience, actually the upgrade did not "freeze", it just sit there waiting for a user response. And the only way you can find this out is to expand the "Terminal" window within the Upgrade Wizard/Panel - which would show a message describing the issue at hand, and the user suppose to enter the relevant command before the whole install process would continue. @Ubuntu: How on earth a newbie would have known what to do in this scenario? More likely they would deem the process 'frozen' and did the next logical thing - reboot! I had used a Live CD to boot the PC up and confirmed that all his data (/home) is in a separate partition, so a clean install of 12.04 will not loose his data completely. However, that would mean I have to spend lots more time re-installing all his extra programs, installing codecs, configuring his scanner, etc (that I'd spent many hours/days fine-tuning in the previous 11.10 install). So my question to the LUV'ers out there, is there a way I can do to get back to his 11.10 version? Any tips will help as I have not done such rescue before. BTW, when I boot up an Ubuntu 12.04 amd64 Desktop Live CD on that PC, I didn't see a "Rescue mode" option. Should that be in the Alternate CD, or previous version of Ubuntu? This posting is meant not just to seek help as mentioned above, but also to warn those who are about to do an upgrade to 12.04 about that particular "Terminal" window trick - to avoid any unnecessary rebooting in the middle of an upgrade process. Cheers, Wen

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Re: Aborted an Ubuntu 12.04 Upgrade resulted in Booting into Blank Screen
by Peter.Ross＠bogen.in-berlin.de 14 May '12

14 May '12

On Mon, 14 May 2012, djitnah(a)greenwareit.com.au wrote: > There seem to be an odd thing with Precise install. It takes a really > long time when it gets to the language pack download/installation. I am very surprised because doenload and installation are quite separate things. An update only starts after a complete installation. I have done it a few times over the last weeks, so I am quite certain. Regards Peter

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Re: Aborted an Ubuntu 12.04 Upgrade resulted in Booting into Blank Screen
by Russell Coker 14 May '12

14 May '12

If you see it take a long time in future then please rub "top" to see what process is at fault and file a bug report. -- Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S Android phone with K-9 Mail.

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Re: Aborted an Ubuntu 12.04 Upgrade resulted in Booting into Blank Screen
by Toby Corkindale 14 May '12

14 May '12

On 14/05/12 12:19, djitnah(a)greenwareit.com.au wrote: >> On 13/05/12 17:56, Roger wrote: >>> >>>>> I should point out that no operating system is invulnerable from >>>>> monkey attacks like this one. I have seen Windows, Linux, and Mac OS >>>>> X installations b0rked due to upgrades where a monkey took control >>>>> before it completed. Unfortunately thatâ€™s the way the cookie >>>>> crumbles, and data recovery is probably the best long-term option. >>> FWIW. >>> Both Fedora and Ubuntu seem to recommend updating OS files regularly, >>> I've seen this mentioned quite a lot over the years. I update both every >>> few days. >>> My daughter just yesterday updated her Ubuntu Oneiric laptop to Precise >>> after updating to all the latest files, it took from about 4:30pm to >>> 10:45pm to complete downloading, installing and checking the file system. >>> Her system stopped for about 18 minutes - doing what ever it was doing, >>> she just let it go and eventually it got going again. >>> She googled some page or other every 5 minutes to make sure the bigpond >>> inernet did not time out... we had that time out with the last ubuntu >>> upgrade so she made sure it wouldn't happen again. >> > There seem to be an odd thing with Precise install. It takes a really long time when it gets to the language pack > download/installation. I did a beta install a few weeks ago, and I thought it had frozen at this stage. I restarted > and got the same thing. A few days ago it did it again with final release, but I realised that the percentage > indicator had changed after a long time by 1% (which I had probably not notice before) - so I let it go and it > eventually completed. I dont know how long it took, but well over 1hr, since I went away and came back a few hrs > later. Previous ones would take about 20 mins to complete for me. That's interesting.. I've found the upgrade to be quite straightforward.. think it took a little over half an hour. My main desktop is far from a straightforward setup, too -- it's been through multiple Ubuntu versions with a lot of customisation and a dozen PPAs enabled. Toby

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Request to Donate Laptops for Beginner's Workshop
by Clockwork PC 13 May '12

13 May '12

Hello everyone, Linux Users Victoria is looking to have a collection of dedicated laptops for the monthly Beginners' Workshops. If you have an old laptop with at least the following specs, it would go to a very good home: - Atom 1.6Ghz CPU - 1GB RAM - 40GB HDD Please reply to this thread if you have such a laptop to donate, or if you know someone who does, or if you know where such laptops are being sold off at a low price. Regards, Alexander Garber, Secretary, Linux Users Victoria

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netfilter generated keepalive packets
by James Harper 11 May '12

11 May '12

Is it possible to have netfilter generate keepalive packets for connections? I have some proprietary windows services that communicate with each other through a few Linux routers, and I suspect that some connections are timing out (or being selected for purging from the connection tracking due to other more-active connections). If netfilter could generate a keepalive in each direction sometime before timing out the connection it would be great! Any other suggestion appreciated too. The WRT54GL router will be replaced before too long with something with a lot more memory which should resolve those problems but I need an interim solution. Thanks James

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Unnecessary libata retries for media errors maybe going away soon
by Chris Samuel 10 May '12

10 May '12

On the btrfs list it was mentioned that a patch may be queued up for the 3.5 kernel to address unnecessary retries by the block layer for media errors by this patch: http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/156540/ # ATA and SATA drives have had built-in retries for media errors # for as long as they've been commonplace in computers (early 1990s). # # When libata stumbles across a bad sector, it can waste minutes # sitting there doing retry after retry before finally giving up # and letting the higher layers deal with it. # # This patch removes retries for media errors only. -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC This email may come with a PGP signature as a file. Do not panic. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP

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