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pindakoe

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Posts posted by pindakoe

  1. I have been using rsnapshot (which gets called from draksnapshot) over a few years and found it stable; it gets called daily/weekly/monthly from cron (or anacron) and works well. The one drawback is that it can only backup to drives it has access to, i.e. local hard disks (how much safety do you buy by backing up a computer to itself?), via local network or (for the adventurous) over the internet to somebody else.

     

    It takes a while to fully understand the ins and outs, but from that point onwards I have never looked back -- I can always move back to state of my files of 1, 2, ..., 14 days ago (and then up to 4 month with decreasing granularity). Let me know if you need some pointers.

  2. When I read your log carefully I note the following:

    # logrotate -v /etc/logrotate.conf
    reading config file /etc/logrotate.conf
    including /etc/logrotate.d
    reading config file .directory
    error: .directory:1 lines must begin with a keyword or a filename (possibly in double quotes)
    ...

    To me this means that you have a file /etc/logrotate.d/.directory which probably doesn't belong there (not containing directives for logrotate). Can you check the contents of /etc/logrotate with ls -la?

  3. Thanks scarecrow ... gnome-settings-daemon was (surprisingly) not installed (I use XFce as desktop, some key apps such as mail & browser do not rely too much on Gnome, hence I hadn't noticed befroe the absence of gnome-settings-daemon). Installed it and this part works; I am still no further with the absence of ways to get information on a track such as lyrics or wikipedia stuff, nor do I have a button to rate tracks in top-right hand corner. One step at the time...

  4. I have installed the upgrade to Exaile that Mandriva pushed out this weekend. Since then it dies immediately after starting most of the time (always when started from menu, sometimes when started from an xterm). The output on the xterm if it crashes is:

     

    INFO	: Loading Exaile 0.2.99.2...
    INFO	: Loading settings
    INFO	: Loading plugins...
    Hello, world!
    w00t!
    /usr/share/exaile/plugins/mpris/__init__.py:35: SyntaxWarning: name '_MPRIS' is used prior to global declaration
     global _MPRIS
    INFO	: Loading collection...
    Traceback (most recent call last):
     File "/usr/share/exaile/plugins/gnomemmkeys/__init__.py", line 42, in _enable
    '/org/gnome/SettingsDaemon/MediaKeys')
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/bus.py", line 244, in get_object
    follow_name_owner_changes=follow_name_owner_changes)
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 241, in __init__
    self._named_service = conn.activate_name_owner(bus_name)
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/bus.py", line 183, in activate_name_owner
    self.start_service_by_name(bus_name)
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/bus.py", line 281, in start_service_by_name
    'su', (bus_name, flags)))
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 630, in call_blocking
    message, timeout)
    DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.SettingsDaemon was not provided by any .service files
    ERROR   : Exception caught!
    Traceback (most recent call last):
     File "/usr/share/exaile/plugins/gnomemmkeys/__init__.py", line 52, in _enable
    '/org/gnome/SettingsDaemon')
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/bus.py", line 244, in get_object
    follow_name_owner_changes=follow_name_owner_changes)
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 241, in __init__
    self._named_service = conn.activate_name_owner(bus_name)
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/bus.py", line 183, in activate_name_owner
    self.start_service_by_name(bus_name)
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/bus.py", line 281, in start_service_by_name
    'su', (bus_name, flags)))
     File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 630, in call_blocking
    message, timeout)
    DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.SettingsDaemon was not provided by any .service files
    
    INFO	: Loading devices...
    INFO	: Loading interface...
    INFO	: Playing file:///home/pindakoe/music/Camel/1973%20-%20Camel%20%282002%20remaster%29/01%20-%20Slow%20Yourself%20Down.mp3
    exaile.py: Fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server :0.0.

    The initial python errors have always been there (also before upgrade) and never prevented normal functioning. The mp3 referenced in the last but one line is one which plays normally with mpg123, i.e. not corrupt, is accessible by me etc.

  5. Yes you can, but it will require editing /etc/sudoers to grant you permission to access the log-files. I cannot claim that I understood this file's syntax well (even though I learnd programming in a time when no book/course went without BNF-definition of the language, so you'll best google and/or man sudoerds to learn.

  6. You could add yourself to the 'adm' group. This group was intended so that members of it could view the system logs without being root; by default some (not all) logs in /var/log have adm as group. Obviously having access comes with responsibility, so you might as well do the occasional sudo if needed.

  7. msec also runs a check of all installed software and checks (AFAIK) two things:

     

    * config files belonging to packages which have been changed (rpm -vA

    * files belonging to packages modified in system

     

    I believe /usr/bin/msec_find is actually managing this but not 100% certain.

  8. One way which gives extra speed if your system is low on RAM and swapping a lot is by putting swap partitions on both. I had this and found that even hooking up one the first generation WS passports as additional swap speeded up large image-file editing with GIMP considerably. Two reasons: more swap space and Linux can spread what it wants to swap over two drives. Don't expect miracles though and if you really need speed to solve this -- buy more RAM.

  9. Go to EasyURPMI (links in top/righthand corner of these pages) and use the manual method -- that will give you the urpmi commands to update media which you cut and paste into a terminal (you have to be root). Whether 144 MB RAM is sufficient will be interesting. I have run Xfce as desktop with Pentium II/400 MHz with 192 Mb RAM and that worked. Another option is LXDE -- the new light desktop.

  10. I have done a clean install (including clean /home), re-installed all the software that I wanted, played with some new in 2009.1 and tweaked things to my liking. Impression of 2009.1 is good, booting is indeed faster (but not much on my ageing PC, and you get closer to the Windows experience of looking at an desktop which looks ready but is not quite yet so far). Three things however work not and have so far resisted attempts to get them working:

     

    Exaile -- used to have possibilities to fetch lyrics and background info (Wikipedia). This functionality has disappeared (no menu entries visible when right-clicking)

    mplayer -- plasy some stuff as before, but bombs out when viewing trailers at Apple. I can view the same move when manually downloading it, and then starting quicktime ...

    hugin -- no longer able to start/cooperate with autopano, bombs out with an wxEecute error

     

    So far all three issues have defeated my attempts of resolving. The hugin problem looks like known bug, but not quite and solutions provided there do not help. Interestingly enough there is no issue at all when starting autopanog from CLI.

     

    The other two have less starting points. I have installed the win32 codecs (from rpm), use the LPF version of mplayer, have got mplayerplugin up & running.

     

    These 3 problems have more than likely nothing to do with eachother, but decided to post them jointly anyway.

  11. Could it be that this font is OpenType (not Type 1 or Truetype). Opentype (OTF is usual extension) is sort of a superset of TTF and Adobe's fonts; Wikipedia has some background. Biggest advantage I found when exploring some time ago is that it by default assumes you will want glyphs (character shapes) for all Unicode whereas both TTF and Type 1 started in times when fonts had 128, 256 or a just a bit more glyphs than that. Obviously not every OTF will have all thousands and thousands of positions used, but they tend to be better than your average Truetype or Type 1 font. Application support is hit and miss affair -- OpenOffice and Abiword do not (fully) support OTF; one variety is supported, the other one is not. Fontmatrix (not in Mandriva repositories AFAIK) is a good app if you want to investigate what a font has under the hood.

  12. I decided to upgrade an older PC, as a test run before upgrading my main workstation (which is not exactly young, but less old). The PC is an Dell Inspiron 2100: Pentium 3, 1 Ghz, Intel 815 chipset with integrated graphics and two Realtek netwerk cards. I downloaded the dual-arch ISO as I have found installation using the One and Free CD somewhat lacking. Another reason was that an on-the-fly update using urpmi will be out of the question for my main workstation (re-partitioning and file-system changes). I also like the simplicity of downloading a minimal CD and pulling the rest of the software from the net.

     

    I booted the Dell, got to the GRUB screen, ran the memtest and the hardware discover (more out of curiosity) and was impressed -- the functionality is not ahead of what systemrescueCD offers, but it is a very good gesture to include it on a liveCD. I then tried to install, but the PC became inoperable repeat-ably at the begin of installation, almost certainly as the monitor was switched to graphics mode (initial screen where you can select the language). This is only visible is a white rectangle in the top 10% of the screen with some blue specks in it. I tried all 3 resolutions and text mode, all without effect. I have also tried safe boot (or words like that and no ACPI and no APIC), and permutations of these. The only thing which I have not played with were boot parameters on the grub command line as the help for that is less than half a second on screen (it boots instantly into the splash screen).

     

    I have then tried the same on a Compaq of similar vintage (P3-800Mhz, I810, more ram and HDD) and got a similar result. This time the screen showed a large amount of orange horizontal lines with plenty of black in between.

     

    Both behaviours look very much like taking the wrong video mode and starting a game in DOS (for those old enough to know). My suspicion is that this is another manifestation of the issues with intel video drivers which I have been reading about. Anybody who has helpfull suggestsion to (1) get the text mode installer to work and (2) advsie on kernel boot parameters taht may help? I got the text mode installer working once, but cannot rememeber exactly how -- I started hardware discovery, escaped to CLI, and then booted the CD in text mode (linux text), but got stuck in partitioning, for reasons not related.

  13. Can't help you about the guest user, but I would indeed remove it if unused (and give your family proper logins -- I believe that guest's files are cleaned out after logoff).

     

    It is possible to restrict from which ttys you can logon as root using PAM, see file /etc/pam.d/login. The file /etc/securetty lists the consoles from which you can logon as root. You can always logon as root from an xterm started in your own Xwindows environment. PAM has many many options -- do some googling. Here is a starter: link.

  14. Interim update: also k3b is not free of issues; it does burn, but I had a few lockups of the drive lock (required a reboot to unlock). I have in the mean established that xfburn (an Xfce front-end to libburn) does work just as well (with much less functionality, but sufficient for me). So far I note that brasero and gnomebaker have bigest issues (brasero doesn't even rocgnise empty media in the drive; gnomebaker refuses to burn), k3b burns but with occasional lock-up and xfburn was OK the to times I have used it.

     

    I have also realised that one possible hardware change was made in past 6 month -- added a second optical as slave on the same IDE-channel. This one is configured correctly (as slave) and also detected as such). I do not rule out that this in some intricate way causes the issue. When I have a spare moment will disconnect it and try it w/o to see whether this is any more reliable.

  15. I believe the Mandriva installer can work of a list of what RPMs to install -- if I recall correctly there is a step near the end of the installation process that asks you to save your selection in a file. This obviously would only address "how to only get those Mandriva packages I need".

     

    Another avenue I see (but have no experience with) is to build a live DVD yourself, after you have added your own customisation.

  16. This is where the plot thickens -- lots of new data but the problem and the mystery remains. Here are some tests using LiveCDs:

     

    * Mint 5.0 -- fails with same behaviour and error messages when trying to burn using Brasero

    * Suse 11 -- burns successfully using K3b, then ejects and drive gets locked (doesn't respond to eject/load button, nor does it respond to the 'Load' button K3B has when you want to verify software. No record of syslog kept. This was using KDE4 as DE.

    * 2008.1 -- same result as Suse (using K3b), this time with KDE3. It spits out a barrage of error messages in syslog:

    Mar 18 20:58:42 localhost k3b: resmgr: communication failure: Bestand of map bestaat niet
    Mar 18 20:59:13 localhost last message repeated 53 times
    Mar 18 21:00:14 localhost last message repeated 61 times
    Mar 18 21:01:16 localhost last message repeated 57 times
    Mar 18 21:02:18 localhost last message repeated 62 times
    Mar 18 21:03:20 localhost last message repeated 61 times
    Mar 18 21:03:38 localhost last message repeated 23 times
    Mar 18 21:03:38 localhost kernel: scsi: unknown opcode 0xe9
    Mar 18 21:03:38 localhost kernel: scsi: unknown opcode 0xed
    Mar 18 21:03:40 localhost k3b: resmgr: communication failure: Bestand of map bestaat niet
    Mar 18 21:03:45 localhost k3b: resmgr: communication failure: Bestand of map bestaat niet
    Mar 18 21:03:45 localhost kernel: scsi: unknown opcode 0xf5
    Mar 18 21:03:47 localhost k3b: resmgr: communication failure: Bestand of map bestaat niet
    Mar 18 21:04:08 localhost last message repeated 10 times
    Mar 18 21:04:10 localhost kernel: scsi: unknown opcode 0xeb
    Mar 18 21:04:12 localhost k3b: resmgr: communication failure: Bestand of map bestaat niet

    (NB: the dutch text means "file or directory does not exist")

     

    Then installed K3B on the environment where this started, i.e. 2009.0. Burning a CD works as with Suse and 2008.1 (including the k3b: resmgr messages), but I also get the "kernel: ata2" messages reported at start of this post. The drive locks up as well. Trying this later (after several reboots to test some of these liveCDs) only gives the resmgr messages.

     

    Conclusions so far:

    * Unlikely that the combination of media and Plextor is the cause -- these have worked here with K3B on Suse, 2008.1 and now also 2009.0. All tests were done on the same type of Sony media. I have been using them before (but not exclusively)

    * K3b seems to have something that gnomebaker and brasero do not. It does not lead to the cdrw dropping of the bus (continues to show up when doing a cdrecord -scanbus) and the eject button of the drive contineus to function

    * Issue is not specific to Mandriva (Mint has it as well), but seems Gnome dependant

    * Part of issue seems to be specific to 2009.0 compared to 2008.1 (the kernel: ata2 messages).

     

    The only downside to this for me is that I would need for burning alone a KDE/QT environment (K3b pulls in a whopping 145 MByte of dependencies).

  17. Thanks for the advice -- I will be trying to locate my 2008.1 CDR and see what that gives.

    @scarecrow: any knowledge that 2009.0 is more vulnerable than previous versions -- this PC has been in use since Mandrake 8.0 and burning worked well (once I understood some of the stuff way back when). This type of issue is new since 2009.0

  18. I have an issue with my Plextor CD burner. I do not know exactly when this started. I found it in my oldest log mid January (and I tend to update to new Kernels as mandriva makes them available). Description of the issue:

     

    * My drive works direct after boot to read CDs. Syslog doesn't contain anything special.

    * wodim (or cdrecord) -scanbus identifies my drives correctly

    * I start a burning session using Brasero or gnomebaker and this fails. Brasero complains there is no empty CD in the drive; Gnomebaker segfaults.

    * The logs show the following lines:

    Mar 16 21:48:04 localhost kernel: ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
    Mar 16 21:48:04 localhost kernel: ata2.00: cmd a0/00:00:00:00:fc/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 pio 81916 in
    Mar 16 21:48:04 localhost kernel:		  cdb 46 02 01 07 00 00 00 ff  fa 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
    Mar 16 21:48:04 localhost kernel:		  res 40/00:02:00:08:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
    Mar 16 21:48:04 localhost kernel: ata2.00: status: { DRDY }
    Mar 16 21:48:09 localhost kernel: ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
    Mar 16 21:48:14 localhost kernel: ata2: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
    Mar 16 21:48:14 localhost kernel: ata2: soft resetting link
    Mar 16 21:48:19 localhost kernel: ata2.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xa1)
    Mar 16 21:48:19 localhost kernel: ata2.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
    Mar 16 21:48:19 localhost kernel: ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
    Mar 16 21:48:24 localhost kernel: ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
    Mar 16 21:48:29 localhost kernel: ata2: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
    Mar 16 21:48:29 localhost kernel: ata2: soft resetting link
    Mar 16 21:48:40 localhost kernel: ata2.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xa1)
    Mar 16 21:48:40 localhost kernel: ata2.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
    Mar 16 21:48:40 localhost kernel: ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
    Mar 16 21:48:45 localhost kernel: ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
    Mar 16 21:48:50 localhost kernel: ata2: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
    Mar 16 21:48:50 localhost kernel: ata2: soft resetting link
    Mar 16 21:49:20 localhost kernel: ata2.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xa1)
    Mar 16 21:49:20 localhost kernel: ata2.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
    Mar 16 21:49:20 localhost kernel: ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
    Mar 16 21:49:20 localhost kernel: ata2.00: disabled
    Mar 16 21:49:20 localhost kernel: ata2.01: failed to set xfermode (err_mask=0x40)
    Mar 16 21:49:25 localhost kernel: ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
    Mar 16 21:49:30 localhost kernel: ata2: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
    Mar 16 21:49:30 localhost kernel: ata2: soft resetting link
    Mar 16 21:49:30 localhost kernel: ata2.01: configured for UDMA/33
    Mar 16 21:49:30 localhost kernel: ata2: EH complete

    From that moment on the CD drive continues to spin at medium speed (by the sound of it) and the eject button will no longer do something. The eject command will complete successfully without opening teh drive. The drive no longer appears in the output of 'wodim -scanbus'. It does appear in the MCC (but I believe this is not updated after boot. A google search shows plenty of hits which mostly refer to SATA drives -- my PC is vintage 2004 or thereabouts, i.e. well before SATA.

     

    Any clues whether this is hardware or software -- note that I am almost 100% certain that this issue is not related to the cd burning front end (brasero, gnome-baker), but is more fundamental. I will give k3b a spin later (or anything else that seems worthwhile). The only thing I suspect that worked was nero linux; buying this is a bit overkill for my limited demands.

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