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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CaptainSarcastic: Jul 6, 2013

RFC2324 posted:

I don't bother because snapper works real good, but I its happened twice since the beginning of the year and a third time is just too annoying now. I already had to fight with zypper randomly deciding to install noveau every time I updated.

And yeah, the G04 driver seems to lag a bit, because the fix is just to hold back on updates for a few weeks. I imagine its just waiting on someone there to go 'oh yeah, we need to repackage so versions match' and push out the new version

Ugh, having to fight nouveau brings unpleasant memories to mind. If I ran into more frequent driver issues I would probably have dropped down to a point release instead of Tumbleweed, too.

KozmoNaut posted:

My NAS/HTPC and laptop are both running 15.2, and the more sedate pace of updates has been a nice change compared to the rolling-release distros I used before (Gentoo, Arch, KDE Neon). I don't run the latest greatest hardware, and I don't need the bleeding edge of software features, so it suits me just fine.

On the other hand, KDE Neon always has the newest KDE releases, and there are a few quality of life improvements over the version in 15.2, so I'm kinda sorta considering it.

I've run rolling releases in the past, but hadn't gone to Tumbleweed mainly because of Nvidia issues. It's been honestly surprising how smooth it's been for me, with the aforementioned caveat about having recent hardware.

Some of the headaches I've had (like with USB wifi adapters) were the same on both machines, so were more bad Realtek or Broadcom drivers than anything Leap or Tumbleweed related.

# ? Apr 13, 2021 08:56

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 16:41

Saukkis: May 16, 2003; Unless I'm on the inside curve pointing straight at oncoming traffic the high beams stay on and I laugh at your puny protest flashes.
I am Most Important Man. Most Important Man in the World.

I had been running Tumbleweed on couple spare laptops. The idea of never having to do point-upgrades is nice, but there was just too many updates. I would start the laptop after few weeks and there usually was thousand or more packageswith updates. That laptop spent more time installing updates than I did using it. I wish for a rolling release with more selective and seldom updates. The difficulty is coming up with update policy that requires least amount of human intervention.

When the upstream releases a security update that's a clear inclusion, but for others it's more difficult. New git daily probably isn't worth packaging, if the upstream "releases" a new version that probably is. If it receives a new changelog entry, then maybe.

# ? Apr 13, 2021 09:43

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

I loved tumbleweed, and the QOL features i am losing have already been painful, but fighting drivers just sucks no matter the OS.

# ? Apr 13, 2021 16:19

The Gadfly: Sep 23, 2012

I just accidentally chown -R 'd my root directory :shepicide:

# ? Apr 15, 2021 03:01

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

The Gadfly posted:

I just accidentally chown -R 'd my root directory

glad you have backups!

# ? Apr 15, 2021 03:49

The Gadfly: Sep 23, 2012

RFC2324 posted:

glad you have backups!

Well I have some bad news...

I didn't. Although, it's not that bad I guess. I was doing a fresh install on an old laptop. Still an annoying mistake though, I was about 3/4 done configuring it as a headless server.

# ? Apr 15, 2021 04:36

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

The Gadfly posted:

Well I have some bad news...

I didn't. Although, it's not that bad I guess. I was doing a fresh install on an old laptop. Still an annoying mistake though, I was about 3/4 done configuring it as a headless server.

I have fallen in love with snapper and btrfs. its good for loving around

# ? Apr 15, 2021 04:40

Craptacular!: Jul 9, 2001; Fuck the DH

Fedora's priorities with updates seem to be:

1) Move to kernel.org's stable release as fast as you possibly can.
2) Release lots of little fixes to things through the lifecycle of a version.
3) Keep all major non-kernel updates that are not compatible with the old must wait until the next six month window.

So you can expect three new kernels a month minimum, and speedy firmware/microcode updates, but won't watch your desktop interface break. If you're the kind of person who reads that KDE dev's updates on changes to Plasma, you'll hear about them and then never see them brag about new features and never see them live until you've forgotten about the post.

EDIT: RPMFusion's nvidia-kmod package seems to recompile the nvidia driver's kernel module with each new kernel installed (which is why the terminal won't let me reboot immediately after installing a new kernel), so I've never had any problems with that either.

Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Apr 15, 2021

# ? Apr 15, 2021 05:18

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

Craptacular! posted:

Fedora's priorities with updates seem to be:

1) Move to kernel.org's stable release as fast as you possibly can.
2) Release lots of little fixes to things through the lifecycle of a version.
3) Keep all major non-kernel updates that are not compatible with the old must wait until the next six month window.

So you can expect three new kernels a month minimum, and speedy firmware/microcode updates, but won't watch your desktop interface break. If you're the kind of person who reads that KDE dev's updates on changes to Plasma, you'll hear about them and then never see them brag about new features and never see them live until you've forgotten about the post.

EDIT: RPMFusion's nvidia-kmod package seems to recompile the nvidia driver's kernel module with each new kernel installed (which is why the terminal won't let me reboot immediately after installing a new kernel), so I've never had any problems with that either.

are you referring to my issues with tumbleweed? its happening because new kernels break old drivers, nvidia maintains official opensuse repos, and aren't keeping their older driver version up to date for the new kernels. I could do the manual thing, but its not worth it

this is not an issue if you use the g05 driver because your nvidia card is less than a decade old

# ? Apr 15, 2021 05:30

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

I've actually had the RPMFusion driver break a few times on me. Switched to the negativo17 one a year+ ago and haven't had any issues. Bonus it has a few pleasant tweaks like building the control panel with GTK3 instead of 2 so it looks much nicer.

# ? Apr 15, 2021 05:39

General_Failure: Apr 17, 2005

ARM based installs have spoiled me. Is there a way to have a nice (non-live) normal install on amd64 of something debian / ubuntu based without unplugging a hard drive?

I have a... mature Toshiba laptop. About 12 years old. It works nicely with Windows 7 but has its limitations. I'd like to shove something on an SD card for Linux. What's the accepted way, if any?

# ? Apr 15, 2021 07:49

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Put SD card in laptop, boot install media, install to SD card?

Depending on whether the laptop can boot from SD, of course.

E: Of course the usual caveats as with RPi and other installs running from SD cards apply: Accept that it will be slow and try to minimize writes to the card to avoid wearing it out.

# ? Apr 15, 2021 07:55

CaptainSarcastic: Jul 6, 2013

General_Failure posted:

ARM based installs have spoiled me. Is there a way to have a nice (non-live) normal install on amd64 of something debian / ubuntu based without unplugging a hard drive?

I have a... mature Toshiba laptop. About 12 years old. It works nicely with Windows 7 but has its limitations. I'd like to shove something on an SD card for Linux. What's the accepted way, if any?

You could shrink the Windows partition and dual-boot from the existing drive, but that has its own set of pitfalls. You could use a thumb drive, but running off a flash drive can be slow and potentially wear out faster. If your machine can boot from an SD card you could try that, but it's going to have a lot of the same issues as a thumb drive. You could use a USB external drive, but that can be physically a hassle.

# ? Apr 15, 2021 07:57

General_Failure: Apr 17, 2005

CaptainSarcastic posted:

You could shrink the Windows partition and dual-boot from the existing drive, but that has its own set of pitfalls. You could use a thumb drive, but running off a flash drive can be slow and potentially wear out faster. If your machine can boot from an SD card you could try that, but it's going to have a lot of the same issues as a thumb drive. You could use a USB external drive, but that can be physically a hassle.

Yeah the HDD isn't really big enough for that. Adding to the fun it has all those extra partitions for recovery etc.
Really it's no big issue running off SD card. So long as /tmp is set up as tmpfs not many writes happen. Also I don't give a poo poo. The notebook only recently came into my hands. It's been useful because there's been so many windows-y things I haven't been able to do.

Really I'm just going to be chucking things onto it that are too much of a PITA to do with my pinebook.Most of the time I'm using my Jetson Nano and Pi 4. But put plainly pain sucks and I gotta park my rear end sometimes. Unless any of you plans on sponsoring me, I'm making do with, and happy with what I have. I just wanna be able to install SDKs, toolchains etc which suck in Windows.

# ? Apr 15, 2021 08:30

General_Failure: Apr 17, 2005

drat I was snarky last night. Sorry about that. I was having a poo poo of a night.

Moving right along. I'm not too worried about the longevity of the SD card. Literally the only reason I'm choosing an SD card over a USB stick, which is almost as bad, is because it sticks out.

In terms of writes, if /tmp is set up as tmpfs, and I plop a swapfile on the laptop's hard drive it shouldn't really be an issue. I know swapfiles work on NTFS because I have exactly that setup on an ARM SBC based "server" on a USB HDD.

But really shouldn't I be able to do something like set up / and whatever else using UUIDs in /etc/fstab?
This is all where I get a bit hazy. Even worse where bootloaders are involved. Like I said I'm more used to using ARM based machines these days.

# ? Apr 16, 2021 01:52

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

General_Failure posted:

drat I was snarky last night. Sorry about that. I was having a poo poo of a night.

Moving right along. I'm not too worried about the longevity of the SD card. Literally the only reason I'm choosing an SD card over a USB stick, which is almost as bad, is because it sticks out.

In terms of writes, if /tmp is set up as tmpfs, and I plop a swapfile on the laptop's hard drive it shouldn't really be an issue. I know swapfiles work on NTFS because I have exactly that setup on an ARM SBC based "server" on a USB HDD.

But really shouldn't I be able to do something like set up / and whatever else using UUIDs in /etc/fstab?
This is all where I get a bit hazy. Even worse where bootloaders are involved. Like I said I'm more used to using ARM based machines these days.

modern linuxes definitely recognize UUIDs in /etc/fstab. Pretty sure bootloaders do too, but I so rarely much with them anymore I can't be certain

# ? Apr 16, 2021 06:04

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Grub understands UUIDs.

# ? Apr 16, 2021 08:26

General_Failure: Apr 17, 2005

KozmoNaut posted:

Grub understands UUIDs.

It does? That's great news. About the only sticking point is when GRUB gets updated and regenerates the boot list. I don't really want the internal hard drive added to the boot options on the SD card. But I guess there's not much that can be done about that.

# ? Apr 16, 2021 09:34

Saukkis: May 16, 2003; Unless I'm on the inside curve pointing straight at oncoming traffic the high beams stay on and I laugh at your puny protest flashes.
I am Most Important Man. Most Important Man in the World.

General_Failure posted:

In terms of writes, if /tmp is set up as tmpfs, and I plop a swapfile on the laptop's hard drive it shouldn't really be an issue. I know swapfiles work on NTFS because I have exactly that setup on an ARM SBC based "server" on a USB HDD.

But really shouldn't I be able to do something like set up / and whatever else using UUIDs in /etc/fstab?
This is all where I get a bit hazy. Even worse where bootloaders are involved. Like I said I'm more used to using ARM based machines these days.

Another mount you should take into consideration is /var/log. And consider just getting rid of swap, the performance benefits probably aren't worth the longevity hassles. A decade ago I was running Win XP with 1GB of RAM without pagefile and it worked just fine.

# ? Apr 16, 2021 09:36

General_Failure: Apr 17, 2005

Saukkis posted:

Another mount you should take into consideration is /var/log.

I forgot about that. Definitely.

quote:

And consider just getting rid of swap, the performance benefits probably aren't worth the longevity hassles. A decade ago I was running Win XP with 1GB of RAM without pagefile and it worked just fine.

While true, what I said is create a swap file on the NTFS Windows partition on the internal hard drive. Performance isn't great, but it's better than hitting a brick wall. Plus I have to remember to try to force swappiness to be as low as it'll go.
My notebook has 4GB of RAM. After consulting the internet and finding that a pair of 4GB DDR2 800 modules comes in at over AUD$150, it can keep the 2x2GB modules. I don't even remember paying that much for 8GB RAM over 10 years ago for a not entirely dissimilar Toshiba.

# ? Apr 16, 2021 09:45

Skarsnik: Oct 21, 2008; I...AM...RUUUDE!

I use this on all the various pi's I run, works really well

https://github.com/azlux/log2ram

You could just point /var/log to tmpfs but certain services fail to start if they dont have a log file (plus diagnosing crashes after a reboot is impossible)

# ? Apr 16, 2021 09:47

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

General_Failure posted:

It does? That's great news. About the only sticking point is when GRUB gets updated and regenerates the boot list. I don't really want the internal hard drive added to the boot options on the SD card. But I guess there's not much that can be done about that.

Grub-update takes configuration options from /etc/default/grub and /etc/grub.d/*, so I'm pretty sure you can blacklist specific drives from showing up in the boot menu.

# ? Apr 16, 2021 10:05

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

KozmoNaut posted:

Grub-update takes configuration options from /etc/default/grub and /etc/grub.d/*, so I'm pretty sure you can blacklist specific drives from showing up in the boot menu.

if not, there is currently a bug for update-grub generating a bunch of errors from removable readers, and there appears to be a workaround that may help you deal with it.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lvm2/+bug/1834250

Not sure this will help, I skimmed it but didn't test it.

# ? Apr 16, 2021 19:07

Pablo Bluth: Sep 7, 2007; I've made a huge mistake.

Anyone a wizz with iptables? I'm trying to use iptables to route traffic from a particular IP over a wireguard VPN.

code:

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wg0 -s <local_ip> -j MASQUERADE
sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i enp0s3 -o wg0 -s <local_ip> -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -o enp0s3 -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

That works. The problem is that when the VPN isn't active (and there is no wg0 interface), rather than dropping traffic it reverts to sending it out via enp0s3 (missing the VPN). I've tried changing the default policy to drop on FORWARD, INPUT & OUTPUT but that totally breaks it and forwarding never works. What's the correct magic?

edit: nevermind. Limiting default DROP to FORWARD only did the trick.

Pablo Bluth fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Apr 16, 2021

# ? Apr 16, 2021 23:40

General_Failure: Apr 17, 2005

Just a generic update on Linux on SD card.

I had a bit of time to start the dance. I decided on Mint LMDE. Put that on a USB drive and used that to do an install on the SD card. It runs. Takes a horrendously long time at early boot but besides that it's passable. I still have to try tweaking GRUB and set up the fstab stuff.

By the time it finished installing and doing initial updates it was late.

# ? Apr 18, 2021 00:17

oh no computer: May 27, 2003

I use Windows and have a couple of files that I can't open because they have colons in the filename. I'm pretty sure they were created on a Linux machine (I used to use Mint) so I figured it'd be best to install a Linux distro on a VirtualBox VM and use that to rename the files to something more appropriate. I installed Ubuntu but that doesn't seem to be able to deal with these files either: they don't show in the GUI file manager at all, and on the command line I get "No such file or directory" errors whenever I ls, cp or mv. I've tried searching around for a solution and the internet seems to think that I can escape the character with a backspace, but that isn't working either. I also tried installing Mint to see if it was just an Ubuntu specific error (though I can't see why it would be) but I couldn't get Mint to install on VirtualBox.

# ? Apr 18, 2021 17:13

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

oh no computer posted:

I use Windows and have a couple of files that I can't open because they have colons in the filename. I'm pretty sure they were created on a Linux machine (I used to use Mint) so I figured it'd be best to install a Linux distro on a VirtualBox VM and use that to rename the files to something more appropriate. I installed Ubuntu but that doesn't seem to be able to deal with these files either: they don't show in the GUI file manager at all, and on the command line I get "No such file or directory" errors whenever I ls, cp or mv. I've tried searching around for a solution and the internet seems to think that I can escape the character with a backspace, but that isn't working either. I also tried installing Mint to see if it was just an Ubuntu specific error (though I can't see why it would be) but I couldn't get Mint to install on VirtualBox.

Try using WSLv1, its probably an issue with the abstraction of the filesystem between vbox and ntfs.

Or boot from a usb stick

# ? Apr 18, 2021 17:19

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

There must be something else going on with those filenames, because a filename with a colon is perfectly valid in Linux:

code:

$ touch "blah:blahblah.txt"
$ ls
blah:blahblah.txt
$ file blah\:blahblah.txt 
blah:blahblah.txt: empty
$ cat "123test" > blah\:blahblah.txt 
$ cat blah\:blahblah.txt 
123test
$ file blah\:blahblah.txt 
blah:blahblah.txt: ASCII text

Maybe there's some weird unicode trickery or file corruption.

E: Oh right yeah, if they're on an NTFS partition, that would cause a mess. Not sure how you can get out of that.
E2: I'm unable to create files with colons in them on an NTFS partition, from Linux. However those files were created, some weird tricks were used.

KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Apr 18, 2021

# ? Apr 18, 2021 17:28

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

KozmoNaut posted:

There must be something else going on with those filenames, because a filename with a colon is perfectly valid in Linux:

E: Oh right yeah, if they're on an NTFS partition, that would cause a mess. Not sure how you can get out of that.
E2: I'm unable to create files with colons in them on an NTFS partition, from Linux. However those files were created, some weird tricks were used.

Maybe try deleting it by the ntfs equivalent of an inode. I know that NTFS is actually kind of weird and has several system hooks that aren't actually exposed by any windows UI piece. Maybe you can write a small bit of powershell to delete it by an internal file ID rather than name.

comedy answer: dd

# ? Apr 18, 2021 17:40

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

NTFS can do a bunch of poo poo that windows can't (did you know the filesystem is case sensitive but windows/cmd/powershell strip tha?) And I've see things get allowed on it that the overlaying shims for virtualbox prevent, usually because of a cp from a linux system or unzipping something that was zipped on linux.

The trick is to get as many layers out from between you and NTFS so you can actually communicate with it, either with WSLv1 (which may or may not work, but has the closest exposure to ntfs itself you can get in windows) or a direct linux boot from external media

# ? Apr 18, 2021 17:48

oh no computer: May 27, 2003

Booting Ubuntu from a USB did the trick, thanks all.

# ? Apr 18, 2021 18:22

Ulio: Feb 17, 2011

Quick newbie question. I have some security requirements from my company I have to start using Linux to do my work. I still use windows right now. I was wondering for gaming can vmware run directx11. I was thinking of going ubuntu and getting vmware for some windows side stuff + some gaming. I know there is many games that run native so I'll check that out as well. Let me know if it's better to vmware for gaming on Ubuntu or not.

# ? Apr 19, 2021 16:58

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

Ulio posted:

Quick newbie question. I have some security requirements from my company I have to start using Linux to do my work. I still use windows right now. I was wondering for gaming can vmware run directx11. I was thinking of going ubuntu and getting vmware for some windows side stuff + some gaming. I know there is many games that run native so I'll check that out as well. Let me know if it's better to vmware for gaming on Ubuntu or not.

Check out wine/lutris. P sure they support dx11 nowadays. Also, steam has proton, which is a very good wine fork. Any given game should be cross referenced with winedb and protondb(websites) to determine how well it will run

# ? Apr 19, 2021 17:09

Mr. Crow: May 22, 2008; Snap City mayor for life

Ulio posted:

Quick newbie question. I have some security requirements from my company I have to start using Linux to do my work. I still use windows right now. I was wondering for gaming can vmware run directx11. I was thinking of going ubuntu and getting vmware for some windows side stuff + some gaming. I know there is many games that run native so I'll check that out as well. Let me know if it's better to vmware for gaming on Ubuntu or not.

You effectively can't game in a VM without a bunch of very specific configuration. You either need two video cards or a GPU that supports virtualization.

Dual booting is still the easiest solution and with modern SSDs not much of a pain.

Also with the above consideration, you can generally play most singleplayer games and non-competitive multiplayer games directly through Linux via proton. Performance and ease may vary but I would say maybe 70% of the games I've played have little to know noticeable differences between Windows, maybe 15% working with noticeable issues in performance or configuration and then 15% just flat out not working.

I pulled those numbers out of my rear end but hopefully that gives you an idea. Also I'm not sure if Ubuntu is great for gaming or not, PopOS is a Ubuntu derivative that I think works better otherwise check out Fedora or Manjaro.

# ? Apr 19, 2021 18:09

Ulio: Feb 17, 2011

Aight thanks I will do some more research on those names.

# ? Apr 19, 2021 20:39

Saukkis: May 16, 2003; Unless I'm on the inside curve pointing straight at oncoming traffic the high beams stay on and I laugh at your puny protest flashes.
I am Most Important Man. Most Important Man in the World.

Ulio posted:

Quick newbie question. I have some security requirements from my company I have to start using Linux to do my work. I still use windows right now. I was wondering for gaming can vmware run directx11. I was thinking of going ubuntu and getting vmware for some windows side stuff + some gaming. I know there is many games that run native so I'll check that out as well. Let me know if it's better to vmware for gaming on Ubuntu or not.

The advice I have occasionally seen here is that you don't want to do your work on your personal computer. The justification usually is that if the company comes under investigation, maybe they are sued by other company, then the police will confiscate your computer and it will be a long time before you get it back.

If your work is such a pennypinchers they don't provide you with a computer, then I'd say you want to buy a ~5 year old business desktop in SFF case. I've had good experience with HP Elitedesks at work, I assume similar Dells and Lenovos are good enough too.

# ? Apr 19, 2021 22:54

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

Ulio posted:

Quick newbie question. I have some security requirements from my company I have to start using Linux to do my work. I still use windows right now. I was wondering for gaming can vmware run directx11. I was thinking of going ubuntu and getting vmware for some windows side stuff + some gaming. I know there is many games that run native so I'll check that out as well. Let me know if it's better to vmware for gaming on Ubuntu or not.

Check out the virtualization thread for my adventures in virtualization gaming.
The short of the long is that some games (well, one in particular) don't work well when virtualized, but if you put in the effort it can absolutely be great for every other game. It's just that I play very few games, so it became a sticking point for me.

# ? Apr 20, 2021 09:30

xtal: Jan 9, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

xtal fucked around with this message at 11:59 on Apr 24, 2021

# ? Apr 23, 2021 18:38

General_Failure: Apr 17, 2005

RFC2324 posted:

if not, there is currently a bug for update-grub generating a bunch of errors from removable readers, and there appears to be a workaround that may help you deal with it.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lvm2/+bug/1834250

Not sure this will help, I skimmed it but didn't test it.

Just wanted to say thanks. While I haven't tackled it on the Toshiba yet, it was useful. In fact I think this is the first time I've used it since I asked. In the interim I brought a similarly aged Asus back from the dead and installed linux mint LMDE on it. I added another partition on it which I installed Haiku. That's where the advice on messing with GRUB 2 was really useful.

# ? Apr 24, 2021 10:32

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 16:41

Agrikk: Oct 17, 2003; Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

How do I configure an ubuntu server to register its hostname with windows DNS (serverA) when it receives a DHCP address from a different server (serverB)?

I have control over the DNS server but not the DHCP server and these servers are AWS EC2 servers fwiw. Googling is lousy with answers that have DHCP and DNS on the same windows box but it doesn't seem applicable here.

# ? Apr 25, 2021 04:48

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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