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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NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Is Clonezilla still the simplest option to backup a running system's OS drive against hardware failure? User data would be handled separately.

# ? Oct 14, 2020 18:25

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 06:57

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

NihilCredo posted:

Is Clonezilla still the simplest option to backup a running system's OS drive against hardware failure? User data would be handled separately.

rsync -a --backup --backup-dir=backup /dev/sda1 destination/

# ? Oct 14, 2020 18:46

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

isn't the standard practice to have it set up to be cloned off as a new system at a moments notice nowadays?

# ? Oct 14, 2020 18:48

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Methanar posted:

rsync -a --backup --backup-dir=backup /dev/sda1 destination/

That won't cover boot stuff ( :imunfunny:

) like grub and such though, right?

So if the OS drive died I would have to install a fresh linux and then rsync back everything on top (will that work on a running system?).

# ? Oct 14, 2020 19:58

xtal: Jan 9, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

NihilCredo posted:

That won't cover boot stuff () like grub and such though, right?

So if the OS drive died I would have to install a fresh linux and then rsync back everything on top (will that work on a running system?).

You should probably do that anyway like the person above you said. Just copying the boot folder might not work either, for example if you have that on an EFI boot partition.

# ? Oct 14, 2020 20:02

namlosh: Feb 11, 2014; I name this haircut "The Sad Rhino".

What would people recommend for the base host o/s for a machine I�m going to want to run a bunch of virtual machines and docker containers on at home.

It would be an old laptop with a lot of ram connected via Ethernet and I�m assuming kvm/qemu would be a good virtual machine runtime/micro-kernel no matter what the o/s is?

I want to bridge all of the machines as if they were on the LAN. Even the docker containers will be using macvlan.

Does it matter much? Or should I just throw Ubuntu server LTS on it and call it a day?

# ? Oct 14, 2020 20:57

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

xtal posted:

You should probably do that anyway like the person above you said. Just copying the boot folder might not work either, for example if you have that on an EFI boot partition.

Maybe... To add some more details, the use case is that I have a Pi 4 which is notorious for killing SD cards.

While all the actual user data is on external storage, and the various configuration files are backed up, I think it's now worth my time to take a full image of the SD card, so if it fails I can just burn the last image on a new card and bring it back online, instead of having to reinstall the OS and manually reapply all the various configurations.

# ? Oct 14, 2020 21:13

Perplx: Jun 26, 2004; Best viewed on Orgasma Plasma; Lipstick Apathy

namlosh posted:

What would people recommend for the base host o/s for a machine I�m going to want to run a bunch of virtual machines and docker containers on at home.

It would be an old laptop with a lot of ram connected via Ethernet and I�m assuming kvm/qemu would be a good virtual machine runtime/micro-kernel no matter what the o/s is?

I want to bridge all of the machines as if they were on the LAN. Even the docker containers will be using macvlan.

Does it matter much? Or should I just throw Ubuntu server LTS on it and call it a day?

It shouldn't matter much, I'm using fedora for that because my work is redhat shop, just depends if you like debian/ubuntu or redhat/centos/fedora. Also redhat has their own docker drop in replacement podman.

# ? Oct 14, 2020 21:22

namlosh: Feb 11, 2014; I name this haircut "The Sad Rhino".

Perplx posted:

It shouldn't matter much, I'm using fedora for that because my work is redhat shop, just depends if you like debian/ubuntu or redhat/centos/fedora. Also redhat has their own docker drop in replacement podman.

Ok cool, thanks.

I�m torn because I�m sort of more comfortable with Debian stuff, but work uses redhat, so even though I never really have to touch the servers being a developer, there might be some good come out of getting used to redhat/Centos/fedora.

Interesting you mention podman... work is piloting openshift right now. Not sure of the exact relationship between the two containers techs but I thought it was worth bringing up.

Maybe I�ll bite the bullet and put fedora on it

# ? Oct 14, 2020 21:30

xtal: Jan 9, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

NihilCredo posted:

Maybe... To add some more details, the use case is that I have a Pi 4 which is notorious for killing SD cards.

While all the actual user data is on external storage, and the various configuration files are backed up, I think it's now worth my time to take a full image of the SD card, so if it fails I can just burn the last image on a new card and bring it back online, instead of having to reinstall the OS and manually reapply all the various configurations.

Now is a good excuse to learn Ansible

# ? Oct 14, 2020 21:47

minato: Jun 7, 2004; cutty cain't hang, say 7-up.; Taco Defender

namlosh posted:

Interesting you mention podman... work is piloting openshift right now. Not sure of the exact relationship between the two containers techs but I thought it was worth bringing up.

podman is a dropin replacement for docker, in most respects. The main external difference is that it doesn't need to run a root daemon.

# ? Oct 14, 2020 22:19

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

xtal posted:

Now is a good excuse to learn Ansible

I skipped the era of configuration management and moved on straight to containers, I'd rather not have to learn it all just for a homelab box, thanks

minato posted:

podman is a dropin replacement for docker, in most respects. The main external difference is that it doesn't need to run a root daemon.

It also lacks docker-compose. There's a project to write a drop-in replacement but it's still under development and very far from production ready.

That's important because there's a lot of space between "simple enough that I can launch individual 'podman run' commands manually" and "complex enough that I must dehumanize myself and face tp K8S".

# ? Oct 14, 2020 22:32

Chilled Milk: Jun 22, 2003; No one here is alone,
satellites in every home

Yeah, podman is a wonderful replacement for docker itself, but the wider infrastructure around it is still a heavy WIP

# ? Oct 14, 2020 22:41

hifi: Jul 25, 2012

cockpit is included with fedora if that's your thing (website dashboard thing)

if you're comfortable with debian then learning fedora is easier the second time around because you know what you want to do with it, imo. and eventually you sort of build up a linux dictionary in your mind that you can use for say, arch wiki stuff and figure out what suggestions make sense and what are BS, and how much effort everything takes to accomplish.

# ? Oct 15, 2020 00:58

namlosh: Feb 11, 2014; I name this haircut "The Sad Rhino".

Thx, that�s good to know... I�ll take a look. I did actually research some of the web front ends for vm management. Lots of choices!

# ? Oct 15, 2020 04:13

Mr Shiny Pants: Nov 12, 2012

NihilCredo posted:

Maybe... To add some more details, the use case is that I have a Pi 4 which is notorious for killing SD cards.

While all the actual user data is on external storage, and the various configuration files are backed up, I think it's now worth my time to take a full image of the SD card, so if it fails I can just burn the last image on a new card and bring it back online, instead of having to reinstall the OS and manually reapply all the various configurations.

PXE it?

# ? Oct 15, 2020 08:43

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Mr Shiny Pants posted:

PXE it?

Not a bad option, but the only candidate for a PXE server in my house is my gaming desktop and I wouldn't rely on it.

# ? Oct 15, 2020 09:10

Mr Shiny Pants: Nov 12, 2012

NihilCredo posted:

Not a bad option, but the only candidate for a PXE server in my house is my gaming desktop and I wouldn't rely on it.

Ah, that makes sense. A NAS is nice for that.

# ? Oct 15, 2020 13:14

Rocko Bonaparte: Mar 12, 2002; Every day is Friday!

I have an X DISPLAY gotcha that I want to fix once-and-for-all because I have to remember the manual set up whenever the machine is power cycled every few months.

I have a QA rig that's kicking off some stuff that has a UI component. It'll block up if it can't find a display. A specific user account is starting up a service to take in the QA jobs when the machine boots. If left untouched, the QA jobs will fail thanks to "Can't open display: :0.0." I have to log into the machine as that user and keep a session going to appease it. Furthermore, that has to be the first so I get :0.

Is there a way to get that account a DISPLAY going by default? Can it be done with the session still being locked? I don't want to necessarily have it log in and then be open and available.

PS: I'm pretty sure what I described is how it's happening but if something smells different, then maybe it is. This comes up once every few months, which is enough time for me to forget and have to relearn what the hell.

# ? Oct 19, 2020 19:03

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

Rocko Bonaparte posted:

I have an X DISPLAY gotcha that I want to fix once-and-for-all because I have to remember the manual set up whenever the machine is power cycled every few months.

I have a QA rig that's kicking off some stuff that has a UI component. It'll block up if it can't find a display. A specific user account is starting up a service to take in the QA jobs when the machine boots. If left untouched, the QA jobs will fail thanks to "Can't open display: :0.0." I have to log into the machine as that user and keep a session going to appease it. Furthermore, that has to be the first so I get :0.

Is there a way to get that account a DISPLAY going by default? Can it be done with the session still being locked? I don't want to necessarily have it log in and then be open and available.

PS: I'm pretty sure what I described is how it's happening but if something smells different, then maybe it is. This comes up once every few months, which is enough time for me to forget and have to relearn what the hell.

Have you tried just setting the DISPLAY variable prior to launching the app? Or am I misunderstanding exactly what you need?

# ? Oct 19, 2020 19:42

Spaz Medicine: Feb 22, 2008

Rocko Bonaparte posted:

I have an X DISPLAY gotcha that I want to fix once-and-for-all because I have to remember the manual set up whenever the machine is power cycled every few months.

I have a QA rig that's kicking off some stuff that has a UI component. It'll block up if it can't find a display. A specific user account is starting up a service to take in the QA jobs when the machine boots. If left untouched, the QA jobs will fail thanks to "Can't open display: :0.0." I have to log into the machine as that user and keep a session going to appease it. Furthermore, that has to be the first so I get :0.

Is there a way to get that account a DISPLAY going by default? Can it be done with the session still being locked? I don't want to necessarily have it log in and then be open and available.

PS: I'm pretty sure what I described is how it's happening but if something smells different, then maybe it is. This comes up once every few months, which is enough time for me to forget and have to relearn what the hell.

You can create a virtual display with Xvfb. I've used it on headless servers before.

# ? Oct 19, 2020 19:52

Rocko Bonaparte: Mar 12, 2002; Every day is Friday!

RFC2324 posted:

Have you tried just setting the DISPLAY variable prior to launching the app? Or am I misunderstanding exactly what you need?

Maybe you're misunderstanding. Who knows. I'll just explain some more regardless.

The QA agent is a service that launches on boot as user foo. Xorg comes up but it just has a login prompt. If I were to, say, SSH into the box as foo and try to run xclock, it can't connect to :0.0. If I login to the local X session as foo then that SSH session can start xclock.

Of course, I'm not trying to start xclock in practice. The real thing I'm trying to do is launch VMs in VirtualBox for my QA. I don't even need VirtualBox's GUI, but I need its half-assed display acceleration. That acceleration pukes unless there's a display properly set up.

Spaz Medicine posted:

You can create a virtual display with Xvfb. I've used it on headless servers before.

I never heard of this before. So this is what the cool kids do? Just googling around makes it sound like people use it literally for this situation lol.

Rocko Bonaparte fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Oct 19, 2020

# ? Oct 19, 2020 19:55

unimportantguy: Dec 25, 2012; Hey, Johnny, what's a "shitpost"?

So I'm not really familiar with the situation or the particulars of GPL vs other licenses. How fucky is the current kernel 5.9/Nvidia graphics card situation? Should I be avoiding kernel updates until that gets sorted out?

# ? Oct 22, 2020 11:42

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

I finally finished the FreeBSD status report for July-September, 2020.

# ? Oct 22, 2020 12:59

Kassad: Nov 12, 2005; It's about time.

unimportantguy posted:

So I'm not really familiar with the situation or the particulars of GPL vs other licenses. How fucky is the current kernel 5.9/Nvidia graphics card situation? Should I be avoiding kernel updates until that gets sorted out?

Apparently it only impacts CUDA and OpenCL, not the actual graphics driver.

# ? Oct 22, 2020 14:48

Computer viking: May 30, 2011; Now with less breakage.

D. Ebdrup posted:

I finally finished the FreeBSD status report for July-September, 2020.

Oh, that's you? Thanks for doing them, they're always interesting reading, and look like a fair bit of work to put together.

# ? Oct 23, 2020 00:25

unimportantguy: Dec 25, 2012; Hey, Johnny, what's a "shitpost"?

Kassad posted:

Apparently it only impacts CUDA and OpenCL, not the actual graphics driver.

Oh hey an excuse I can make for my shameful lack of folding@home progress. Thanks.

# ? Oct 23, 2020 00:49

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

Computer viking posted:

Oh, that's you? Thanks for doing them, they're always interesting reading, and look like a fair bit of work to put together.

Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got here.
For the most part, I like doing them - they're not as much work as one might think, mostly involving entries being sent in via email or a pull request, then grammar and proofreading, and fixing up the syntax of MarkDown so that it more easily converts to DocBook SGML/XML.
Fixing syntax will eventually go away, because the FreeBSD website (not the design, but the language it's written in) is being converted from DocBook to Hugo/AsciiDoctor which is MarkDown-compatible.
And despite me being the only one presently on the team, the bus factor is non-existent because the whole process is documented (although admittedly you have to know where to look) - and I'm not really alone, since there's a bunch of people helping and doing reviews of the final result.

# ? Oct 23, 2020 11:21

i vomit kittens: Apr 25, 2019

I guess this might be more of a question about disk management in general, but I have two spare 256 GB SSDs and I'm looking to install Fedora on them. I know in Windows I can make a "striped" volume that will make one logical drive out of both SSDs, so I'm assuming I can do the same in Fedora. What if I wanted to install Fedora on a striped volume, though? Would I need to boot from the live USB, create the volume, and then install Fedora afterwards? The install options also seem to only list actual hard drives and not the volumes, so I'm not sure if the striped partition would show up there once I do figure out how to create it.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 23:53

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

i vomit kittens posted:

I guess this might be more of a question about disk management in general, but I have two spare 256 GB SSDs and I'm looking to install Fedora on them. I know in Windows I can make a "striped" volume that will make one logical drive out of both SSDs, so I'm assuming I can do the same in Fedora. What if I wanted to install Fedora on a striped volume, though? Would I need to boot from the live USB, create the volume, and then install Fedora afterwards? The install options also seem to only list actual hard drives and not the volumes, so I'm not sure if the striped partition would show up there once I do figure out how to create it.

You will want to use LVM to do it

or ZFS

# ? Oct 25, 2020 23:56

i vomit kittens: Apr 25, 2019

It was actually a lot easier than I thought because it turns out if you just select both hard drives in the Fedora installer it will automatically use LVM to stripe them.

# ? Oct 26, 2020 01:43

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Random-rear end question, somewhat related to Linux:

How do you guys keep all your USB drives straight?

Which one has CentOS 7? CentOS 8? Fedora? Ubuntu? VMware ESX?

I guess I could find some cheap ones and just stick a Brother label on them, but some of mine are those tiny Sandisk drives

# ? Oct 28, 2020 20:05

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

I gave up years ago and keep a single usb key, and dd over the top of it with whatever image solves my current problem.

# ? Oct 28, 2020 20:20

CaptainSarcastic: Jul 6, 2013

Bob Morales posted:

Random-rear end question, somewhat related to Linux:

How do you guys keep all your USB drives straight?

Which one has CentOS 7? CentOS 8? Fedora? Ubuntu? VMware ESX?

I guess I could find some cheap ones and just stick a Brother label on them, but some of mine are those tiny Sandisk drives

Ugh. I haven't figured a good way to handle it except keep buying new ones and keep unopened drives on hand so I know they are blank. I keep thinking of ways to try to organize them, but it usually ends up with a trial and error process of plug in, mount, look at the files, unmount, rinse and repeat.

# ? Oct 28, 2020 20:33

Matt Zerella: Oct 7, 2002; Norris'es are back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (fox Howl)

xzzy posted:

I gave up years ago and keep a single usb key, and dd over the top of it with whatever image solves my current problem.

this is the way to do it

# ? Oct 28, 2020 20:46

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Bob Morales posted:

Random-rear end question, somewhat related to Linux:

How do you guys keep all your USB drives straight?

Which one has CentOS 7? CentOS 8? Fedora? Ubuntu? VMware ESX?

I guess I could find some cheap ones and just stick a Brother label on them, but some of mine are those tiny Sandisk drives

I have a single large USB drive with both the latest win10 ISO and about a dozen different linux ISO, all of them bootable at the same time.

Ventoy is loving amazing. Here's the user guide:

1) Install Ventoy on a USB drive
2) Copy however many ISO you have in the main folder
3) Boot from the drive and Ventoy will let you pick which ISO you want to boot from

# ? Oct 28, 2020 21:16

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

NihilCredo posted:

I have a single large USB drive with both the latest win10 ISO and about a dozen different linux ISO, all of them bootable at the same time.

Ventoy is loving amazing. Here's the user guide:

1) Install Ventoy on a USB drive
2) Copy however many ISO you have in the main folder
3) Boot from the drive and Ventoy will let you pick which ISO you want to boot from

I'll try that since I have a 64GB drive

# ? Oct 28, 2020 21:26

Hollow Talk: Feb 2, 2014

xzzy posted:

I gave up years ago and keep a single usb key, and dd over the top of it with whatever image solves my current problem.

I have three usb sticks, same model but different colour, and it's still this, because I never find the right image either way.

# ? Oct 28, 2020 21:33

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

# ? Oct 28, 2020 21:38

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 06:57

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

NihilCredo posted:

I have a single large USB drive with both the latest win10 ISO and about a dozen different linux ISO, all of them bootable at the same time.

Ventoy is loving amazing. Here's the user guide:

1) Install Ventoy on a USB drive
2) Copy however many ISO you have in the main folder
3) Boot from the drive and Ventoy will let you pick which ISO you want to boot from

I usually use YUMI, tho I think I had a problem last time I went to use it.

https://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

Its a little more complicated than Ventoy, but has nice menus and will assist in downloading ISOs for you

# ? Oct 28, 2020 22:02

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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