November 2012 - main

?Ubuntu 12.10 Boot Issues
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 21 Jan '13

21 Jan '13

Hi all, I was on an old version of Ubuntu, started getting messages about it not being supported any more and so decided to update. I decided to install the lubuntu-desktop package, then do updates until I was up-to-date. So now, I'm up to Lubuntu 12.10. When I booted it, it hang big-time before getting into the GUI. I Hard-booted and selected a different kernel, and it booted fine. After experimentation it seems that booting into the kernel described as "Ubuntu 12.10, kernel 3.5.0-10-generic" causes the machine to hang before getting into the GUI. I've just tried making LUbuntu and XUbuntu 12.10 CDs and booting from them, but both of them hang, I presume when trying to load the Kernel. Trying to boot via the "kernel 3.5.0-10-generic recovery mode" boot menu option also hangs. I've not had a problem like this before. Does anyone have any advice on diagnosing what's causing this hang? Any logs to examine would have to survive a hard-reboot, or are there any debug options I can put on the grub boot line. Or am I doomed, or have to wait for a new kernel to come out, or keep using the old one. Any advice or comments would be appreciated. I haven't googled much as I don't quite know what to search for (you may tell me I'm a numpty for this!) Hardware is a Dell Lattitude D410. Cheers Steve

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Renaming of files failing
by Chris Walker 17 Dec '12

17 Dec '12

I have a directory full of files and sub-directories which I've pulled from an emulator. But it has extra filename extensions on it. I would like to traverse this directory, stripping off the extensions and so I've been trying to write a script to do it but it's failing. An example of a file is this :- lamborghini miura_1024.jpg,c85 and so there, I'd like to remove the ,c85. But a bigger problem is where I have the odd file which has a numeric extensions such as .;1 and that's where I struggle. How do I do a substitution in my script to cope with things like that? I've been reading things like this - http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/renaming-multiple-files-at-a-shell-prompt.html and http://www.unix.com/answers-frequently-asked-questions/13774-unix-tutorials… but I'm still struggling. Can somebody point me in the right direction please, even if it's towards the door ;-) -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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git - if I "git rm" something can I get it back (as an old revision) later?
by Chris Green 01 Dec '12

01 Dec '12

As per the subject - if I am maintaining a set of files in a directory and one of them is no longer used then I would do "git rm <name of file>" and then when I commit the file is no longer in the current version of the repository. I assume however that it would be possible to get back the last (and previous) committed version of the file if I needed ot at some time in the future? -- Chris Green

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Wisdom (or otherwise) of using software RAID5 across 4 USB drives
by Mark Rogers 30 Nov '12

30 Nov '12

I have a USB caddy that takes 4 drives, on USB3. I have four 2TB SATA disks in it and have just set up a RAID5 array across the four disks, formatted to ext4. cat /proc/mdstat currently reports: md1 : active raid5 sdi1[4] sdh1[2] sdg1[1] sdf1[0] 5860145664 blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/3] [UUU_] [>....................] recovery = 1.2% (24142492/1953381888) finish=1134.2min speed=28348K/sec That's about 20hrs to complete the build, running at max speed (/proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_max is 500000 so I'm not hitting the upper limit there). To be honest, rebuilding an array comprising 4x2TB disks over USB in 20hrs seems pretty good to me, so I'm not overly concerned. But should I be? Is running this configuration likely to cause me grief in future? The purpose of the array is to store backups, so read/write speed is relatively unimportant. At this point the array is empty so wiping and starting again isn't a big deal if someone has better ideas. (As an aside, does the above look right for USB3 speeds? It's my first experience of USB3 and I'm using a cheap PCI-E USB3 card so I have no idea how well it's performing.) Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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XtreemFS
by Mark Rogers 29 Nov '12

29 Nov '12

Anyone here have any experience of Xtreemfs? http://www.xtreemfs.org/ Distributed replicated file system for Linux (and Mac/Win). Looks like an interesting package to experiment with but as it's not in my distro repositories (Ubuntu) I figured it can't be all that well established yet? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER`

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"Signal out of range" when booting from Ubuntu 12.10 LiveCD
by Mark Rogers 29 Nov '12

29 Nov '12

I'm trying to reinstall an old server with Ubuntu 12.10 (it was previously on 12.04 I think, but had accumulated a lot of rubbish and a fresh install was the way to go). When I boot the LiveCD, at the point that (I believe) lightdm starts, I get "Signal out of range" on my monitor and can't get any further. I have tried various boot options (nomodeset, fb=false) without luck. I've also tried creating an xorg.conf file manually from the terminal and restarting lightdm - that has got me closer but I don't know my way around xorg.conf well enough to get this to work. (I copied xorg.conf.fallback to xorg.conf and added VertRefresh and HorizSync parameters, which got me a low resolution (800x600?) display but the mouse was all over the place and I managed to break it in the end so had to (hard) reset, losing my changes). What is the "correct" way to fix this? Is there a way to tell Xorg to dump its current settings to an xorg.conf file so that I can tweak it? What's a good "default" xorg.conf file that should work? Or a minimal one that might get me 1280x1024@75Hz (fglrx as the driver from memory). -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Reassembling a RAID array
by Mark Rogers 28 Nov '12

28 Nov '12

I have four drives containing mdadm RAID partitions: /dev/sda1 through /dev/sdd1 I believe they were previously set up as RAID5, although it might have been two separate RAID1 arrays or one RAID10 array. How do I work out what they were, which drive is which, and configure the array on a new PC to access the data? (Obviously I need to do that without losing the data on them!) Mark Rogers -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Why am I seeing "Waiting for Network Configuration" when I have configured a static address?
by Chris Green 24 Nov '12

24 Nov '12

I used to use another (small) machine as my LAN DHCP/DNS server (using dnsmasq) but that machine's other uses disappeared so I decided to move the dnsmasq configuration to my desktop machine. My desktop machine is on all the time because it's also a web server and I access it to read my E-Mail when I'm away from home. So, I have configured my desktop to have a static IP on the LAN with /etc/network/interfaces containing:- auto lo iface lo inet loopback iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.4 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1 dns-domain zbmc.eu dns-search zbmc.eu dns-nameservers 127.0.0.1 195.74.113.58 194.72.0.114 auto eth0 That 127.0.0.1 in the dns-nameservers is (I believe) correct, it makes dnsmasq act as a local caching nameserver. Everything seems to work OK once booted but I'm getting a message on the xubuntu boot screen saying "Waiting for network configuration", that seems odd to me as it indicates that Network Manager is waiting for a DHCP response from somewhere and it doesn't need it. I have removed the "dns=dnsmasq" line from NetworkManager.conf so that Network Manager isn't trying to run its own copy of dnsmasq. -- Chris Green

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Console editor with 'linebreak'
by James Freer 21 Nov '12

21 Nov '12

Who know's the editors! Is there an editor apart from Emacs and Vim that does 'softwrap' or 'linebreak' (as vim calls it). I want to use a console editor for editing text words (as opposed to programmer's code). Despite hundreds available it seems that emacs and vim are the only two that offer this. My preference would be for wordstar bindings (yes i'm that old! and i still think they are the most efficient keybindings like a lot of writers). Joe does all i want other than coping with long lines. [I seem to recall a discussion about editors a few years ago and someone on here uses Joe]. Point is i want to save in long line form but view and edit in wrapped form - just like one does in gedit or leafpad. Using nano/pico ^W^J justifies the entire file and saves it in that form... like Joe's ^B - which isn't what i want. I don't really want to have to learn either vim or emacs as they are too complex for my more basic uses but it seems i don't have much choice. So who's experimented and can advise on the many editors available. Nano has an option --softwrap or $ - it truncates but doesn't wrap like vim's linebreak. It seems surprising that no one's done a console editor with CUA bindings. thanks james

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Re: [ALUG] Uninstalling Ubuntu and installing another Linux OS
by Bev Nicolson 17 Nov '12

17 Nov '12

By the way, I've just had a shufti through Synaptic and xorg is still included, so, given that, would configuring the graphics card be a sensible option? (Choosing i915 as the driver, since it is.) The instructions I've got are for Breezy Badger so I guess some things have changed a bit since then. Bev.

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