The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Phiberoptik posted:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3364676

Crossposting this from SA-mart for any linux experts who want to help me out and make a quick $15

Are you sure you want to do this? It will probably take more than $15 worth of time to get a mail server setup and and properly configured, and even then you might still have vulnerabilities you overlook.

When I had a Linode for a website I just used Gmail for your domain, its much easier and free up to a certain point.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2010 20:36

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 19:10

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

TheGopher posted:

Just got my LFS system to boot for the first time! Pretty loving happy, since I was so pessimistic thinking I'd never get it to work!

So do you think it was worth the time? I started one on an old p3 years ago but never finished, and couldn't bring myself to go through all those tedious steps again

# ¿ Feb 3, 2011 18:27

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

New debian looks like it will be released in the next few hours, including the new Debian with FreeBSD's kernel

I'll throw image links up here as soon as they get posted on identi.ca/twitter/debian's site

# ¿ Feb 6, 2011 00:52

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Debian Released! It is still being pushed to mirrors, but here are links:

Debian 6 - i386
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.0/i386/bt-cd/debian-6.0.0-i386-netinst.iso.torrent

Debian 6 - AMD64
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.0/amd64/bt-cd/debian-6.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso.torrent

Debian 6 kfreebsd - i386
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.0/kfreebsd-i386/bt-cd/debian-6.0.0-kfreebsd-i386-netinst.iso.torrent

Debian 6 kfreebsd - AMD64
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.0/kfreebsd-amd64/bt-cd/debian-6.0.0-kfreebsd-amd64-netinst.iso.torrent

EDIT: Be sure to seed long after finishing, since a lot of people will be grabbing this

text editor fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Feb 6, 2011

# ¿ Feb 6, 2011 01:25

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Holy poo poo, I've been using Linux for like 6 years, why the hell have I never hit the tab key while typing things in the prompt before?

# ¿ Feb 6, 2011 05:17

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Nigel Tufnel posted:

Question about Linux live CDs. As far as I know, live CDs don't have permission to write to your hard drive. However, when using the Ubuntu Live CD I have been able to install flash using APT (I think that's what it's called) direct from the Adobe website. My question is, where does this get installed? Also, I would have thought that browsing the web would generate cookies etc so where do these go if the files for the program are stored on the CD which is read-only?

It gets installed in the same place the stuff from the Live CD does - your RAM

# ¿ Feb 8, 2011 17:15

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

oRenj9 posted:

Is it possible to halt an SSH instance on the host machine from inside the instance?

The reason I ask is because, when I work from home, I have to ssh into my machine in the office, then, ssh from there into servers. It would be nice to be able to put the ssh process into the background so that I can bounce back and forth between my work machine and the servers without having to kill the ssh session and bring it back up.

if I'm understanding this right, I think you want to install/use screen on your work machine. It's kinda like a window manager for the shell (bad description, but still).

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 22:26

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

oRenj9 posted:

Yeah, I usually use screen for this task, but sometimes I forget to launch a screen session first.

Here is a guide on multiple 'windows' in screen, i used to know of a better one but can't find it
http://mdxi.collapsar.net/docs/screen/#s200

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 22:29

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

rt4 posted:

Give Solaris a shot; it's pretty cool.

Speaking of which, what is the big difference between Solaris express and OpenIndiana?

I know OpenIndiana is probably a ways behind Solaris Express but Solaris Express is a free Oracle product which probably means it has some kind of "limit of 2 daemons running at once" limitation.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2011 17:14

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

NOTinuyasha posted:

Just out of curiosity, how does this setup benefit you?

If I understand it correctly, nginx proxies connections to cgi, freeing up resources since nginx can open/hold open a ton of connections in little memory.

Apache is not nearly efficient enough for this in places where either RAM is scarce (a VPS) or many connections are opened for a long time (this is how youtube uses nginx)

Apparently you can use it to load-balance too, here's the Linode docs
http://library.linode.com/web-servers/nginx/configuration/front-end-proxy-and-software-load-balancing

# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 05:55

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

bort posted:

I was just wishing for this two days ago!

alias vless='vim -u /usr/share/vim/vim73/macros/less.vim'

I used to wish for this every day, thank you Linux Thread for another gem like this!

# ¿ Mar 31, 2011 14:32

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

eames posted:

http://www.opensuse.org/

Aprils Fool or real?

//edit: just a joke and I fell for it.

looks like all the other distributions point to the same site

# ¿ Apr 1, 2011 19:13

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Bob Morales posted:

What's the best vim resource(s) out there? Tutorials, tips, customization...I can 'get around' in it but I wouldn't say I know "how to use" vim.

The vim 'wiki' at http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_Tips_Wiki

Also, for customization, sometimes it's cool to look through people's configs at sites like dotfiles.org and copying whatever looks useful

# ¿ May 2, 2011 19:35

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

All the cool kids are using Arch and pulling the latest version of KDE from the AUR, and then adding on other cool looking KDE packages from the AUR until something breaks, which causes cascading breakings of the system until your last four hours of work are wasted :smith:

Also, version 13.37 of Slackware was released, and KDE is the default desktop if you want a small but decent challenge.

# ¿ May 4, 2011 05:17

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Underflow posted:

Don't they ask you anymore in the setup script after install? Recent Slack usually came with Windowmaker/NextStep, Xfce, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Fvwm and Twm too.

Btw, why is it that KDE won't escape to the command line using Ctrl+Alt+F*? Nothing in its default keybindings seems to occupy the combo, but it doesn't works for me in 3.5.9 on Slack 12.1

Not a big fan of KDE (too many idiosyncracies compared to the more straightforward wm's), but it has some nice utilities. Seems to go down well with people coming from Win/Mac systems.

Yeah it still comes with all those WMs, I just meant the KDE had always seemed to be the "preferred" one for Slackware users.

Also, I don't know much about the Ctrl+Alt+F thing, since I'm always on Gnome or XFCE, even on Slackware. KDE isn't worth the hassle, and all the extra clutter and space taken up by the KDE menus usually means I'll be missing 1-2 lines of code in any text editor I'd have open.

# ¿ May 4, 2011 15:04

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Underflow posted:

Xfce is the best hands down, though it took a while for it to get fleshed out featurewise. I never seriously used KDE since Slackware 9.0 came with that faulty compile (linked to the wrong libs, I think it was). Maybe the Ctrl/Alt/F* thing is another one of those cock-ups. Sure is pretty if you like lots of colours, though.

I usually use Gnome since that's what's available immediately on the majority of distros, but about a year ago I went through the trouble of getting Debian stable running on my 4 year old laptop, and decided to go with XFCE with a few theme tweaks to darken in and minimize the menu bar. It was easily my favorite desktop Linux experience, very snappy and simple.

# ¿ May 4, 2011 16:37

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Kaluza-Klein posted:

Help me with my linode server!

aptitude safe-upgrade is telling me:

code:

The following packages have been kept back:
  apache2-mpm-prefork{a} apache2.2-common{a} dhcp3-client dhcp3-common exim4{a} exim4-base{a} 
  exim4-config{a} exim4-daemon-light{a} libapache2-mod-php5{a} libpq5{a} php5 php5-common{a} 
  php5-curl php5-gd{a} php5-mcrypt{a} php5-mysql phpmyadmin

If I do a dist-upgrade:

code:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  apache2-mpm-prefork ifupdown libapache2-mod-php5 php5 php5-curl php5-gd php5-mcrypt php5-mysql
  phpmyadmin
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  dbconfig-common isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libcap2 libonig2 libqdbm14
The following packages have been kept back:
  apache2.2-common exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light libpq5
The following packages will be upgraded:
  dhcp3-client dhcp3-common php5-common

I don't think I want to do this, do I? It is doing to remove php?!

It should just be removing the conflicting/outdated versions of PHP, if not just run 'apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5' after the dist-upgrade and it should get you right back where you were.

# ¿ May 13, 2011 17:45

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Kaluza-Klein posted:

I tried that:

code:

# apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  libapache2-mod-php5: Depends: libdb4.8 but it is not installable
                       Depends: libgssapi-krb5-2 (>= 1.6.dfsg.2) but it is not installable
                       Depends: libk5crypto3 (>= 1.6.dfsg.2) but it is not installable
                       Depends: libkrb5-3 (>= 1.6.dfsg.2) but it is not installable
                       Depends: libpcre3 (>= 7.7) but 7.6-2.1 is to be installed
                       Depends: libxml2 (>= 2.7.4) but 2.6.32.dfsg-5+lenny3 is to be installed
                       Depends: apache2-mpm-prefork (> 2.0.52) but it is not going to be installed or
                                apache2-mpm-itk but it is not going to be installed
                       Recommends: php5-cli but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages
#

???

Is this before or after the dist-upgrade? Also have you made sure to 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get upgrade' before re-running that install

Other options you can try are adding the '-f' switch to attempt to fix broken dependencies, or '--reinstall'

# ¿ May 13, 2011 20:52

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

I remember, many years ago, having to write down all the steps it took and tricks I needed to install my nvidia drivers on Debian.

Today, I discovered smxi, which did all the work for me, flawlessly.

# ¿ May 16, 2011 22:22

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Pram posted:

Whats a one liner for downloading a shell script (with curl) and then executing it? I know how to do this with perl, but I rarely work with bash scripts.

curl script.sh && sh script.sh

# ¿ May 27, 2011 07:29

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

The Linux kernel has gone to 3.0rc1

That's right, for the first time since 1996, the kernel doesn't start with 2.x

http://kernel.org/

# ¿ May 30, 2011 07:31

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

wrong thread

text editor fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Jun 1, 2011

# ¿ Jun 1, 2011 14:06

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Bob Morales posted:

Wrong thread I think.

Yup, definitely was, my bad

# ¿ Jun 1, 2011 14:24

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

kyuss posted:

So far Arch feels lightning fast, and easily configurable. Hardware support seems great. Currently, I have to start Gnome3 manually via "startx", but I kinda like it, will propably leave it at that.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Start_X_at_Boot if you want it to be automatic, just don't do it the .bash_profile way unless you want it to start X after you login via command line

# ¿ Jun 3, 2011 16:00

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Ziir posted:

I have no idea what I did but I must have accidentally done something cause now when I use VIM my backspace key is in "insert mode" like in a text editor. You know, instead of deleting backwards it deletes whatever is at the pointer. How do I turn this off.

This is mostly a guess, but I think that is one of the vi-like behaviors in vim

adding:

code:

set nocompatible

to your .vimrc will probably fix that, but your vim won't act as much like vi (which may be a problem or a benefit, depending on what you're used to)

# ¿ Jun 3, 2011 21:35

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Inquisitus posted:

I'm leaning toward Debian in that case. I'll see if they're willing to set me up with testing/unstable, but they might be reluctant screw around with specific distros/releases rather than using the pre-created VMs, so is it simple to upgrade from Debian stable?

Also, what is there between testing and unstable? How unstable actually is unstable?

Debian unstable is actually pretty stable - probably more so than Ubuntu

Also you don't have to ask them to set you up with unstable, if they can set you up with stable you can either make the switch manually or grab smxi and do it the easy way.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2011 18:01

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Inquisitus posted:

You're quite right

Well, I went for Debian stable, and tried upgrading by modifying sources.list and running apt-get dist-upgrade et al, but it shat itself and told me that some of the packages it was trying to upgrade needed a newer kernel version (it's running 2.6.18). I fired off a support ticket and they say it's a restriction in OpenVZ and that I need to look at Xen instead if I want a newer Kernel.

Does this screw me over with regards to upgrading to unstable, or is there a way round it?

I know it's possible to manually upgrade to unstable without a moving to a new kernel, but once again I'm going to have to recommend using smxi to do it - it just makes things so easy.

~~I used it last night to push my VPS to unstable for the Mumble server I was setting up, and it gave me the option of leaving my old kernel.~~ Sure enough, as I check it now, I am still using my provider's Xen-optimized kernel; uname -a says it's 2.6.39-linode33.

Edit: nvm maybe I left it on Debian stable, lemme see if I can figure it out

text editor fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jun 10, 2011

# ¿ Jun 10, 2011 16:03

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Bob Morales posted:

I love Freenode and all, but are there any other good Linux channels on IRC networks that aren't so uptight? I'm tired of getting yelled at for accidentally saying 'drat' or 'hell' or being told every other thing is off-topic, and in some cases not even allowed. Maybe I'm dreaming of some 'underground' utopia of nerds that doesn't exist.

None that I know of, but I will agree with you on Freenode. Every Linux/BSD channel should auto-ban every user with a message that says "We'd just tell you to read the manual anyways, link <here>"

That, or just jump into a channel for a lesser-known Linux distro, where people are so desperate for attention they'll solve all the problems for you.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2011 18:22

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Bob Morales posted:

Does DALnet or EFnet still exist?

Yes, but I don't think they have quite the traffic Freenode does. Searching through the DALnet channel listing it looks like some of the Linux channels are still active - EFnet looks like it's pretty dead though. Most of the people in Freenode are idle though, only occasionally chiming in with a snarky answers; so maybe the smaller populations on the other networks are actually active users.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2011 18:47

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

ambushsabre posted:

SynIRC is basically the goon server, and I know there are a bunch of people that know their technology stuff, but I'm not sure if there's a specific channel for it. Does anyone know of one on there?

The only two I've ever ventured into were #shsc and #cobol, though you may find help there.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2011 22:57

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Accipiter posted:

All of these except for (Debian and Arch) are awful, awful choices. And SuSE is the absolute worst distribution to ever have been poo poo out of someone's rear end in a top hat, because it drat sure wasn't "developed".

You don't install Fedora/CentOS or Ubuntu if you want to "learn Linux". You install Slackware. Or Debian.

Gonna quote this so you read it. Ubuntu & Fedora are basically what happens when you start aiming for usability at any cost, and just start tacking on all kind of shinies anywhere in the system. Ubuntu has no rhyme or reason in its placement of config files or organization, and isn't as elegant as Slackware or Arch, or even Debian.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2011 23:03

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

BnT posted:

I cringed when I saw that over the weekend. I envisioned a hijacked thread, blood spilled, a possibility of poo flinging, maybe even a comparison to major religions

It really doesn't matter, you'll learn a ton regardless of which distro you pick. The text editor you pick, however...

He's right. Regardless of what text editor and distro you pick, especially if it is debian and vim, you'll be fine.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2011 21:15

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

fletcher posted:

I guess I should have said what distro and why.

Debian, because it is stable in ways that Ubuntu and Arch aren't, is stupid easy to install/upgrade, and receives regular, non-system breaking patches.

Also it had packages for node.js, redis, and nginx - but I'd assume they all do.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2011 23:09

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Mantle posted:

I just looked up lubuntu. It looks perfect for my VIA C7 with 512mb ram. However I have ubuntu 11.04 on there already running just the way I like it, albeit a bit sluggishly. Is there a way I can convert it to lubuntu and retain the ability to switch back if I don't end up liking it?

There is no lubuntu-desktop package, if that is what you are asking. You are going to have to get lxde and the associated packages separately, and then install the lubuntu theme after that.

By the way, can I ask what hardware and configuration you have on your C7 setup? I have an old C7-D at 1.5ghz with S3/unichrome graphics, but even with the openchrome drivers (I last tested this a year ago) it has terrible trouble driving a 1600x900 desktop running a simple tiling desktop.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2011 05:49

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Longinus00 posted:

...

http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/lubuntu-desktop

I searched for that 3 times and never found it, my bad

# ¿ Aug 3, 2011 06:18

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

I'd imagine most of you have heard of it, but as far as desktop Linux goes the Linux Mint team do a good job of cleaning up Ubuntu and stripping out most of Canonicals 'bad ideas'.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2011 19:53

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

spankmeister posted:

Yeah I have mint on my laptop to try it out and have been too lazy to install something else but the fact they install that "search enhancer" into Firefox just rubs me wrong.

They do a lot of things right, but browser spyware, really?

The first time I noticed this was when I did a google search for something very simple (can't remember exactly what) and it did not give me any results, none. Imagine searching for something silly like "apples" and there would be no results.

Other searches would have some results but missing what you're actually looking for, whereas with a correct google search the result you want is right on the first page.

In other words, their search "enhancer" which funds their work to a large degree, breaks google.

Now people say: You can easily disable/remove it, and you can, but that's not the point.

Yeah, I forgot about this, it really bothers me too, and the fix is basically "grab the regular google search thing from Mozilla". The developers are pretty adamant about keeping it too, even in its horrifically laid out form.

Still, compared to Ubuntu, replacing that file takes a lot less time than all the things I have to set up.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2011 09:10

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

BlackMK4 posted:

My arch linux server locked up at some point last night and now the fuckin thing hangs up at "Booting the kernel." with a blinking "_". Tried the fallback kernel: it hangs at "initrd /initramfs-linux-fallback.img" with the same blinking "_" following.

Any fixes or reinstall time?

edit: Welp, it was the death rattle of my 6 year+ power on hour Maxtor drive. Drive is dead.

MY Arch Linux install locked up and deleted my home directory today. Just flat out deleted it.

Fortunately, I had like 2 (backed up) docs on there and the SSD I was gonna drop in there arrived today.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2011 04:27

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

rt4 posted:

How long ago did you try the install media? They just updated it a couple weeks ago, supposedly fixing tons of problems in the process. Arch has been smooth sailing for me since I started around February at least...

I just tried that one, it's been the buggiest Arch I've ever used

# ¿ Sep 1, 2011 00:58

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 19:10

text editor: Jan 8, 2007

Martytoof posted:

Yeah, that's what I ended up doing. Back to my commandline roots

For some reason it doesn't always take in ubuntu when I do it through the GUI so I end up going to the commandline anyways

# ¿ Sep 6, 2011 18:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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