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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teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Kantaris posted:

The access point is setup to be an access point.

Does it, by any chance, have an access lists limiting the set of MACs that can access it?

# ¿ May 10, 2007 03:34

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 21:47

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

DeathChill posted:

I want to set up what will be a specialized project running on Linux. This means that I want the most bare bones setup possible.

I was curious as to the exact components I need for my project, which I'll explain now. The project is actually a set of applications that will work in unison to create the appearance of an operating system separate of Linux. I have no interest in installing a lot of dependancies that are unimportant, I basically want the kernel and any other NECESSARY pieces as well as the appropriate hardware drivers.

However, forms and windows and images will have to be placed on the screen, so I assume X11/Xorg

Install a "server" configuration of Debian without actual servers, plus X11.

quote:

will also be necessary and for anything advanced would require Beryl or Compiz?

Compiz and Beryl are the MOST COMPLEX AND DEMANDING pieces of desktop environment made for X. If you want a minimalistic configuration, you probably need Window Maker or similar window manager. Even Xfce will be an overkill.

# ¿ May 10, 2007 04:56

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

fletcher posted:

I'm trying to move a large directory of files to a new server

I tar'd the folder using tar cvf uploads.tar uploads (figured I didn't need the compression since they're all jpg's anyways)

Then on the new server I ftp in with ncftp to grab the tar, but it keeps going over 100%

ncftp /httpdocs > get uploads.tar
uploads.tar: ETA: 0:00 4.30/ 4.07 GB 5.75 MB/s

And when I untar it I get an error a few minutes into about corrupt headers. What's going on here. I don't get any errors when I create the tar.

md5's don't match either.

Switch to the binary mode before requesting the file. By default FTP is in text mode.

And what happened to ssh? My usual directory transfer procedure is

code:

cd /somedir && ssh otherhost '(cd /someotherdir && tar cz . )' | tar xvz

# ¿ May 10, 2007 07:39

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Smackbilly posted:

Minor minicom question:

I have a computer running headless that I am connecting to via a null-modem cable using minicom. The connection establishes perfectly, but this happens:
code:
Welcome to minicom 2.1

OPTIONS: History Buffer, F-key Macros, Search History Buffer, I18n
Compiled on Jul 26 2006, 06:38:12.

Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys


Fedora Core release 6 (Zod)
Kernel 2.6.20-1.2948.fc6 on an i686

reakk login: AT S7=45 S0=0 L1 V1 X4 &c1 E1 Q0
Password:
i.e. the printable part of the minicom modem init string is being entered as the username. Now obviously I can press enter and log in on the second try, but that's annoying and I'd like to make it stop if possible. The solution is not so simple as to make the init string empty in the minicom options - if I do that, it doesn't connect at all.

Anyone have a clue how to fix this?

What do you mean, does not connect at all? It will connect, but since it didn't send anything, you will see empty screen until you type something.

# ¿ May 10, 2007 07:48

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Smackbilly posted:

Is there any advantage to this over scp with the -r and -C options?

Preserves all attributes, copies all special files correctly.

# ¿ May 10, 2007 08:17

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

fletcher posted:

Ahhh, thank you.

And drat that line is slick, I'm such a newb on linux, I'm using that from now on!

Forgot: that line doesn't need parentheses:

code:

cd /somedir && ssh otherhost 'cd /someotherdir && tar cz .' | tar xvz

# ¿ May 10, 2007 09:35

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Smackbilly posted:

Ah, you're right. The issue was I didn't see "login:", so I didn't think it was expecting input. I figured out that if I replace the init string with a ^L, it shows the "login:", but doesn't enter anything. Thanks.

Ctrl-L is a "screen redraw" only for applications that use [n]curses, slang or readline libraries. Login prompt is displayed by login application, and it is designed to be compatible with all imaginable terminal types (starting with a serial-console typewriter), so it doesn't make any assumptions beyond very basic terminal capabilities. You can test this by trying to login with a username in all uppercase -- terminal will switch into the uppercase-only mode, assuming that you use some ancient console.

# ¿ May 10, 2007 19:54

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Kantaris posted:

No, other than the SSID not being broadcasted, it is a totally unsecured wireless connection. The laptop can't see any other wireless networks either. I know there are some other ones in my neighborhood if I run a scan for them.

Then this is a driver bug -- there are many reports of bcm43xx driver not working while ndiswrapper and a Windows driver for the same card work without problems. So disable bcm43xx and install ndsiwrapper.

You will need to install ndiswrapper, ndiswrapper-utils and ndisgtk packages (using Synaptic, Aptitude or apt-get), and use a Windows driver (from installation CD ot manufacturer's web site). Before configuring ndiswrapper, disable bcm43xx driver:

code:

sudo sh -c "(echo; echo \#Broadcom driver does not work; echo blacklist bcm43xx) >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist"
sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
sudo rmmod bcm43xx

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper for details about ndiswrapper drivers configuration, use "feisty" in place of "dapper" or other older versions names' if you need to download the packages manually.

teapot fucked around with this message at 20:17 on May 10, 2007

# ¿ May 10, 2007 20:12

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

DeathChill posted:

Well, I want to take advantage of some nice features and effects, the minimal aspect is in terms of the low level stuff (like the kernel). I'm not worried about the graphical aspect getting too complex, I'm just more interesting in allowing the applications to use some nice effects. I have the hardware to make it all work, but the most important part is the imaging aspect beyond the kernel.

All hardware-dependent graphics functionality is implemented in X server, its modules and extentions, so for 3D graphics, distortion and alpha blending within an application you will only need X server with GLX, and OpenGL library for the client.

Graphics libraries such as SDL are used to provide 2D graphics handling and interface to OpenGL for 3D graphics, typical for games.

Widget libraries such as GTK+ and Qt provide traditional GUI interface with menus, buttons, input fields, checkboxes, listboxes, lists, etc. typical for most of non-game applications.

quote:

As well, I'm not sure that I'm in over my head, I'm just learning the aspects that I'm not familiar with.

So, Compiz and Beryl, they're actually window managers and desktops and not just imaging tools (like Aqua).

They are window managers with functionality that allows them to handle applications' windows as surfaces in 3D, and in their turn they can be integrated into desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE. If you have applications with complex interface within them but without a need to arrange windows of multiple applications on spinning cubes and similar effects, you can use a much more simple (and less resource-hungry) window manager.

# ¿ May 11, 2007 06:17

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

mo- posted:

How do I connect to an enterprise wireless connection? Meaning, there is no key just a username and password.

EDIT: I should note that my wireless card is fully configured.

What is that "enterprise wireless connecion" that you speak of? 802.11(something) with WEP? Same with WPA? Some network authentication protocols? Some kind of VPN?

# ¿ May 11, 2007 22:30

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Foetid posted:

I used to use a 'slow' double click on files in Windows to enable me to change the filename/foldername, but that doesn't seem to work in Linux (Ubuntu 7.04). Don't spose there's any way to enable that, or a little app that gives that functionality, is there?
I know I can right click - rename, it's just a bit quicker (or at least I'm more used to) doing it the slow double click way.

F2

I think, it is done intentionally to avoid triggering this by accident.

quote:

Oh also, on my other workspaces, there's no panel on top or bottom of the screen. Ummm, did I accidentally turn them off or something?
Right clicking on the desktop doesn't give me any option to add/remove app bar/menu bar/panel/whatever it's called.
Properties on the panel doesn't seem to have any option to span/replicate onto other workspaces as far as I can tell.
(I know about ctrl-alt-arrow and moving programs to other spaces)

Are you sure that you have the same physical and logical resolutions (so panels are off the physical screen, but they appear when you move the mouse when the cursor is on the border, so the physical screen scrolls within the logical one)?

And if this is not the case, what window manager do you use? metacity? sawfish? compiz/beryl? enlightenment of some version? fvwm? window maker?

# ¿ May 12, 2007 07:32

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Foetid posted:

Oh I stumbled upon the reason why this was happening - it's something to do with the new nvidia drivers. I had enabled the fancy pants wobbly windows desktop effects thingy and this was causing it.
Tried turning the effects off - and hey presto, the panels on top and bottom of each workspace appear now.
Oh well, the wobbly windows thing was getting annoying already anyway. Thanks for the help!

You can look at those threads:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=359367 (Compiz)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=357501 (Beryl)

I have Beryl installed on Feisty, however my configuration has all kinds of manual tweaks, so I can't give advice, what exactly should be configured with standard packages. I remember that desktop effects configuration menu given a warning that it may not work, then tried to enable Compiz without any checks for compatible options, so didn't work well on default configuration. After drivers configuration and Beryl installation everything worked without problems.

quote:

Edit: I'm a bit of a newbie, but if I said that I used Gnome as a window manager, would that be right? It's whatever Ubuntu installs by default for the desktop CD.

Desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE consist of many components -- UI, graphics and components libraries, configuration system, messaging mechanism, session manager, window manager, panel/menu system, panel and desktop applets, configuration utilities, file manager and some applications.

Not all of those components are mandatory -- a window manager with built-in launch menu can provide a fully functional minimalistic desktop environment, and this is how twm, mwm, fvwm and Enlightenment can be used. Many components of different desktop environments may be used simultaneously (GNOME and KDE libraries, messaging systems and configuration management for corresponding applications), some components have multiple compatible implementations (various window managers such as Metacity, Sawfish, Compiz, Beryl and Window Maker can be used with GNOME). By default GNOME comes with Metacity window manager and Nautilus file manager, however, for example, on most of my computers some minor configuration changes allow me to switch window manager to Sawfish and file manager to Thunar while keeping unchanged their interfaces to the rest of the desktop environment.

So if you have GNOME installed in the default configuration, your window manager is Metacity, and if you have desktop effects enabled, it's Compiz.

# ¿ May 12, 2007 09:54

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

desy posted:

I will try this again when I boot back into ubuntu, but when i tried earlier the error changed to:

sudo dmesg | tail
USB 1-5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
USB 1-5: USB disconnect address 5
USB 1-6: New high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
USB 1-6: USB disconnect address 6
USB 1-5: New high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
USB 1-5: USB disconnect address 7
USB 1-6: New high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
USB 1-6: USB disconnect address 8

This is not really an error, it's USB2 device connecting and disconnecting. You may consider using a powered hub.

# ¿ May 15, 2007 03:31

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

fletcher posted:

20,000 files in an uploads directory, i want to chmod all the ones that aren't 0644 to 0644. how do i do this?

chmod 0644 *.* yields "-bash: //bin/chmod: Argument list too long"

In addition to what everyone said, "*.*" is a DOS/Windows filename mask for "everything" -- on anything Unixlike that wildcard will only match filenames with dots in them. "Everytning" will be "*" . Except, of course, files starting with dot -- to get those (but not match . and ..) you need ".??*". This still excludes "dot and a single character" filenames, but thankfully no one uses those.

With "find" those problems disappear.

# ¿ May 15, 2007 03:43

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Tusk posted:

what's the best substitute for MSN Messenger?? aMSN is too goddamn buggy to use and ugly, gaim has very few features and Kopete also has few features.

Latest gaim is probably the best you can get for MSN Messenger.

quote:

Also I would like to know about a good program to graph math functions in 2D and stuff.

KmPlot?

# ¿ May 15, 2007 03:52

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Twinxor posted:

Seems like a bug in Konsole or Metacity.

Doesn't seem to exist in sawfish when using a viewports mode (however sawfish requires additional configuration to properly work with Nautilus desktop).

# ¿ May 15, 2007 03:55

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

deathmerc posted:

After upgrading my ubuntu server from 6.06 to Feisty I'm getting really slow samba response from my server share drives. I have them mounted in /etc/fstab and it was working fine before the upgrade.

How did Samba shares end up in /etc/fstab file on the SERVER (as opposed to the client)? Or do you mean drives mounted in /etc/fstab are exported as Samba shares (and then it does not matter because they are seen as normal directories)?

If server became slow, Samba probably was reset to some default options that Windows seems to hate -- make sure that it is configured to use

code:

socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

Otherwise it may be a result of changes in the set of network drivers -- see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/samba/+bug/112794 . Apparently many kernel changes in Feisty made people scratching their heads in seemingly straightforward situations.

# ¿ May 15, 2007 04:08

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Crush posted:

Why are fonts so sexy in Firefox for Ubuntu, but are so ugly (and jagged) in Firefox for Gentoo or FreeBSD?

Probably because ugly fonts are not Bitstream Vera, Dejavu or "Microsoft Core Fonts" (Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New), or Firefox is built with the wrong version of GTK without pango/xft/cairo.

# ¿ May 19, 2007 20:49

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Zakalwe posted:

It could also be the patent issue in libfreetype. Some distros diable that by default

Gentoo and FreeBSD certainly don't do that.

# ¿ May 20, 2007 00:10

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Zakalwe posted:

Sure?

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts

empahsis mine.

Of course this could be out of date.

I mean, they didn't disable freetype -- antialiasing still works. Bad hinting makes fonts look thick and blurry, not jagged.

# ¿ May 20, 2007 00:28

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Bonch posted:

Hola.

I'm running Ubuntu Feisty and last night I removed Gaim with Synaptic, with the intention of installing Pidgin, it mentioned something about also removing a couple dependencies during the process, no big deal...

Oh wait, one of the things it removed was something along the lines of "Gnome-Desktop." Now if I log into a normal session I just get solid colored background and a cursor, no ui.

I still can get into a terminal session. Is there someway I can fix this by apt-getting something? I tried "apt-get install gnome" and it reinstalled a bunch of poo poo, but still no ui with a normal log in.

Change your session back to GNOME before logging in.

# ¿ May 20, 2007 03:20

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Bonch posted:

Sorry for not clarifying, but I did indeed set it back after apt-getting Gnome.

Where?

You should change session on the login screen, then log in, and it should ask you if you want to change the default session for your account.

# ¿ May 20, 2007 03:44

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Sister Miyagi posted:

Here's a repost from my thread in HOTS (that noone answered ):

1. Why do you use Fedora Core 3? This is three releases and 2.5 yeard behind.
2. Why do you use apt to manage packages on Fedora?

# ¿ May 26, 2007 23:44

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Jo posted:

I saw someone ask this, but no reply. What is a good image viewer for Linux (Debian) that supports animated gifs, lots of image formats, and fit to screen/center capabilities?
I'm not liking Eye Of Gnome. (I use KDE.)
KView isn't great, either.
QuikShow does what it's supposed to, but I need more.

Edit: Cornice and ximg don't work too well, though they seem well suited.

GQview does not understand animated gifs, but everything else is better in it.

teapot fucked around with this message at 00:09 on May 27, 2007

# ¿ May 27, 2007 00:00

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Jo posted:

Will it show (in animated form) anigifs?

I usually pass animated gifs to Firefox from the viewer.

# ¿ May 27, 2007 00:19

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Toiletbrush posted:

Is it possible to selectively change/remove window borders in X11?

Basically, I'd like everything as it's supposed to be, except on the terminal window, where I want thin or no borders apart from the title bar.

I use Sawfish insteas of Metacity because of its much better configurability (including that feature), however it needs a special configuration to avoid breaking Nautilus. This is what I have added to .sawfish/custom :

code:

(custom-set-typed-variable (quote match-window-profile)
 (quote ((((WM_CLASS . "^Nautilus/desktop_window$")) (depth . -16) (ignored . #t))
 (((WM_CLASS . "^Xfdesktop/xfdesktop$")) (depth . -16) (ignored . #t))
 (((WM_CLASS . "^Pager/pager$")) (position 895 . 26) (depth . -15) (frame-type . none) (sticky . #t) (sticky-viewport . #t) (cycle-skip . #t) (window-list-skip . #t) (task-list-skip . #t))))
 (quote match-window) (quote sawfish.wm.ext.match-window))

teapot fucked around with this message at 01:04 on May 27, 2007

# ¿ May 27, 2007 00:35

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Jorenko posted:

How do I force X to try a resolution? I've added it to Xorg.conf, but it won't show up in the resoultion changer gui. This is on Feisty, using an All-in-Wonder 9800pro with a Mitsubishi HD1000U projector via VGA. It will do all of the 4:3 resolutions fine, but I can't get it to do 720p (1280x720), which is actually the projector's native resolution. I've tried running dpkg-reconfigure on X as well, and I end up with no change.

You have to restart X -- log out, then press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. You can cycle through resolutions with Ctrl-Alt-<+> and Ctrl-Alt-<->, however the logical screen size will stay the same, larger screen will scroll behind a monitor.

Also you have to add a resolution that is actually supported -- /var/log/Xorg*.log files may record errors that explain why some resolution is seen as unsupported, often because of the wrong range of frequencies configured for the monitor.

# ¿ May 27, 2007 02:13

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Jorenko posted:

ctrl-alt-+/- just seems to scroll through the same resolutions that are in the gui. I've restarted X many times.
Here's the relevant parts of xorg.conf:
code:
        Identifier      "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon R350 NH [Radeon 9800 Pro]"
        Driver          "ati"

Install fglrx driver.

quote:

And of course, my it seems the drat device doesn't know what its own advertised resolution is. Yeargh. This worked right away in windows.

In Windows it used a driver from ATI, not a fallback.

# ¿ May 27, 2007 06:00

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Sister Miyagi posted:

Well holy poo poo... I've been using Linux on and off for a while, not full time, and I've been so busy trying to get FC3 to work I never realized they'd come out with loving 6 by now. So used to the "four years to release a product that will be stable in another two" Windows development cycle

so tell me then, should I pick up FC6 or wait for 7?

Get FC6, then upgrade to 7.

Personally I prefer Debian (Stable for servers, Unstable for desktops) or Ubuntu (I only use it on desktops and laptops), however Fedora is usable, too.

# ¿ May 29, 2007 03:03

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Smegmatron posted:

See, this is what confused me.

I figured if it was a free-for-all that they'd have ISOs up on their FTP. All I can find on ftp.redhat.com as far as downloads go are the SRPMs for RHEL and a link to the archive FTP which has the pre-RHEL distributions stored on it.

Do they actually offer ISOs of the enterprise stuff?

No, but CentOS gives the closest thing possible (Red Hat sources, CentOS compilation and name). SA runs on that.

# ¿ May 29, 2007 03:08

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

kyuss posted:

I spent the last three days installing Ubuntu Lite and setting up a video recording machine for my dad, and so far it has been a great experience. Linux support on the internet seems to have greatly improved in the last few years.

However I have a problem:

I want to use mencoder to encode analog TV from a Hauppauge WinTV PCI FM card. Watching TV with tvtime, xawtv or mplayer works flawlessly, but I'm not getting any sound when I try to record into a file:
code:
sudo mencoder -tv driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:norm=PAL:channel=E7:chanlist=europe-west:outfmt=yuy2:audioid=0
-ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=900 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64 -o output-mp4-audio0.avi tv://
When I open the file in Windows Media Player (on another machine) it tells me:

video codec: ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder
audio codec: -

The internet told me to make sure that the recording device should be set to "line" (as that is the input the TV card is connected with), but no dice.

So far I'm unsure if this is a mixer problem or a codec problem. Any ideas?

1. Does the file produced that way play correctly with mplayer? If so, what does it report as audio codec?
2. If it doesn't play sound with mplayer, check the output of mencoder -- mp3lame may be missing, so you may have to use lavc for audio, too. Ex:

code:

-oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=mp3:abitrate=32

(shown -lavcopts for audio should be merged with video-related options).

# ¿ May 29, 2007 13:50

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Twinxor posted:

I'm having some trouble debugging a C++ program in GDB:
code:
(gdb) list TimeSeriesDisplay.h:368,372
368     template <class K, class lineage_t>
369     void TimeSeriesDisplay<K, lineage_t>::updateDisplay(double t0, double t1)
370     {
371       restartGnuplotLogFile();
372
(gdb) break TimeSeriesDisplay.h:370
No line 370 in file "[b]Displays/[/b]TimeSeriesDisplay.h".
In short, GDB doesn't seem to know about the current files, and seems to believe that the code running is an older version. When I set a line breakpoint, GDB will sometimes think the breakpoint is in a function other than the one on that line number, because the other function used to be located there before I added some code.

This started happening suddenly the other day, but I don't know what I might have changed. The program compiles and runs correctly with the functionality I've added, so the object files must be working correctly. I'm using 'gcc -g', I've recompiled the program and all its needed libraries, etc., and it doesn't help. What's going on?

It is looking for file in the directory where the compiler took it from.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2007 12:33

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

DeathChill posted:

I was just curious if it's just me or are Linux developers much more expensive? I'm trying to get a Linux project started and it's simply an application set that actually utilizes existing open source Linux projects. I tried the exact same project for Windows and got quotes around $450; the Linux version had quotes of $6500+ for the EXACT same thing.

Where are you getting the quotes and what is the nature of the project? Most programmers on any system won't even start a development project for $450 -- this is a price of something like a php script for a web site.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2007 12:37

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

covener posted:

Generally that isn't the case, children don't care about their parents dieing -- their ppid is set to 1 (init) and init knows to wait() for them.

Actually nothing cares about parent process dying, however process may be killed if its session ends, or if a pipe or socket closes as a result of another process dying. init's role of wait()'ing for orphaned processes is to prevent them from becoming zombies when they exit.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2007 07:44

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

JoeNotCharles posted:

Of the top of my head, the "init" process is always PID 0, by definition, so I bet the kernel just rejects the kill signal when sent to that PID.

init's PID is 1, not 0.

Also some systems (including Linux) have in-kernel processes visible in the process table.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2007 07:46

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

Seaneseor posted:

I was just reading man pages and playing around with commands.

It claims SIGKILL can't be blocked, so I tested out how dangerous this command could be by trying to assassinate the head honcho.

Is there something about how 'kill' works that would logically prevent it from killing 'init'? Not because "it's a bad idea", but because "it's not actually possible"?

The /bin/kill utility or kill shell command (they are different, even though they implement similar interface) call kill system call that is passed to the kernel just like any other system call. It's up to kernel to decide, what should and what should not be done when it is called, so there is nothing unusual in kernel refusing to do something if developers thought, it's a bad idea.

There isn't anything "standard" the OS is supposed to do when init is killed, and there are some situations in Linux when kernel has to "spontaneously" execute a script that configures devices, what would be problematic without init being available. I guess, it would make sense to perform shutdown when someone with sufficient permissions tried to kill init, but even that usually requires init to do something, so it won't be immediately killed anyway.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2007 08:00

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

climboutonalimb posted:

I currently have a fresh windows xp install on a 4gb hard drive that barely fits, and I'm looking to copy that over to a larger hard drive. I was thinking of putting both drives in the PC, booting to a linux live cd, and using dd to copy all the data from the 4gig drive to the larger one. Before I start, I have a few questions,

If I use
code:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc 
it's going to copy the mbr and everything over so when I take out the 4gig drive and boot off the other, I'm still only going to have a 4gb partition full of data and then a ton of free space to setup a 2nd partition. How do I get my data over while preserving the NT bootloader without making a really tiny partition?

This is precisely what gparted is for.

quote:

Secondly, Is dd even the way to go with this? Will it take longer or just as long to copy the data using dd as it will to re-install XP on the new drive and get all the drivers/users configured?

If it's only 4G, then dd will be just fine.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2007 02:47

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

joe944 posted:

So I just interviewed for a position that will involve using a lot of Linux, and I haven't touched it in years. Decided to setup a partition and dual boot XP and Ubuntu.

Installation off the Live CD went fine. After it went to a screen that said to take the CD out and hit enter to finish restarting. Took out the CD and it was frozen at that screen. Whatever, so I restarted the machine and the boot loader shows everything correctly.

Except for when I attempt to load Ubuntu it gives me the kernel is live bit then goes to a black screen. The monitor is still getting a signal though since the lights are green instead of orange.

I probably wouldn't be asking if I had a place to look at settings but at this point all I can do is reinstall. Any suggestions?

Ctrl-Alt-+

If few times of that don't give you a gdm screen,

Ctrl-Alt-F1

and login from the text console.

You have a mis-identified monitor frequency range, it should be HorizSync and VertRefresh in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

# ¿ Jun 9, 2007 00:39

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

joe944 posted:

That's pretty much what I figured could be going on.

I've tried both Ctrl-Alt+ and Ctrl-Alt-F1 several times loading from the hard disk and from the Live CD. Attempting to run the Live CD gives me the blank screen also, which is weird because it did that at first, but booted up after a couple tries before I installed Ubuntu.

Tell it to use a safe graphics mode. Alternatively attach a different (any!) monitor.

quote:

I might attempt a reinstall, once I figure out where to do that!

Edit: I should add what I'm running this on.

AMD 3800+ @2.4ghz
8800 GTS (not even sure if this card is supported!)
2005fpw

I see that Nvidia has drivers for the card so they must be supported. If only I could do anything but access the recovery console to attempt to install them.

You may want to just disable X by booting in recovery mode (press Esc when GRUB is waiting for keystroke to see the menu), then install nvidia drivers.

teapot fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jun 9, 2007

# ¿ Jun 9, 2007 04:38

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 21:47

teapot: Dec 27, 2003; by Fistgrrl

sund posted:

Checked the mixer settigns and unmuted your PCM and master channels?

...in alsamixer. And for the sound card that is actually attached to the speakers.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2007 04:41

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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