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Re: desktop (wife=moved->linux Mint) MB/sata/grub fun

by Chuck Anderson

Doug Mildram wrote: > ON BOOT, it would sometimes STOP at this prompt > > initramfs> > > and with good eyes as the boot-attempt screen(s) would fly by and return to > above prompt, > I discovered I could fix it with ( actually i did not use the "-y" > prompt, but it's the same fix either way) > > initramfs> fsck -y /dev/sda1 What kernel version are you running? If it is 4.19.x, you may have have hit a data corruption bug in Linux's block layer: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.19-EXT4-Issue-L… My suggestion--rollback to 4.18.x until this is all resolved.

Dec. 10, 2018

desktop (linux Mint/ubuntu) Motherboard/sata/grub fun

by Doug Mildram

Warning: there's a couple "fun" ( aka "new to me") things in this LONG email. SUMMARY 2-lines-below: 1) on reboot, an initramfs prompt, errors only seen briefly as boot screen overwrites it. Needed fsck. 2) later when things got worse, my solution followed by a different error message re: "environment block too small". the LONG story: Months ago i managed to move wife/maureen's desktop environment to Mint(ubuntu underneath). Usage: firefox,gmail (almost nothing else of note. This took some persuading, but desktops are such a fallback these days......another topic for another day) DESKTOP: 10?yr-old Gigabyte motherboard with sata2/sataII ... 4 ports. I only use 1 sata port. I "gave" it a $90/bestbuy 256g SSD Samsung months ago for /dev/sda which ran well+fast of course, turns out the SSD is actually still fine internally. A FEW WEEKS AGO, the "hint" symptom (1 of 2 in this long story) for disk woes was.... ( it started crashing occasionally, then) ON BOOT, it would sometimes STOP at this prompt initramfs> and with good eyes as the boot-attempt screen(s) would fly by and return to above prompt, I discovered I could fix it with ( actually i did not use the "-y" prompt, but it's the same fix either way) initramfs> fsck -y /dev/sda1 Which worked every time (a few times), nothing scary for an ex-unix-sysadmin, followed by initramfs> exit ######## would allow it to boot and be OK for days or so. I taped THAT magic (fsck...) onto a paper mini-sign on the PC for another rainy day. TODAY, the crash was followed by not booting (random results, kernel panics or bios/grub waiting). So I brought the SSD to my other living room desktop (not booting FROM it...) checked SSD with sudo smartcl -a /dev/sda #### AND ITS FINE. I moved the SSD "back" to wife's PC on another SATA port. It's fine! (motherboard deteriorating i guess....but might last another decade). I did run into.... ("created" by moving the disk i assume) .... a boot/warning error NEW TO ME: On initial boot a WARNING ERROR on the early/black screen (similar to where initramfs> shows up..just before that i think) "warning: environment block too small" was actually ignorable (after a few secs, boot marched on to kernel/logo). But I found "it's a thing" and the error appears solvable with first google hit suggesting linux user# sudo rm /boot/grub/grubenv # or "mv" it somewhere.old; 1024 byte file. ...............# sudo grub-editenv /boot/grub/grubenv create and reboot. Seems good now except (new i think; probably from the sata port move?) there's a ONE MINUTE wait on the initial boot with the Mint logo flashing. Final things-to-inspect: (no need to "fix" /etc/fstab which of course does find the disk parts ( just / and swap) by UUID and /var/log/syslog ( I have exportedthe old history to study, i think the disk errors stopped. ) =========================WRAPUP Haven't solved this learn-all mission yet, but...hope to make it to WLUG THURS EVE and i just thought of a (this) topic. Trick is knowing where to start such a story/tutorial; I'd try to skip over BIOS and sata/disk/etc basics, the fuzzy parts for me involve "initramfs" ... grub ..... and maybe that's it for me. Desired talk/take-home: linux BOOT steps you don't want to know. -doug

Dec. 10, 2018

WLUG meeting this week

by Anderson, Charles R

I haven't seen any messages to the list since November 8, so I'm sending this message to see if the mailing list still works. We have a WLUG meeting scheduled for this Thursday at 7pm in the WPI Campus Center, Mid-Century Room (the location we use most often).

Dec. 10, 2018

desktop (wife=moved->linux Mint) MB/sata/grub fun

by Doug Mildram

Warning: there's a couple "fun" ( my definition for "new to me") errors/areas in this LONG email. Months ago i managed to move wife/maureen's desktop environment to Mint(ubuntu underneath). Usage: firefox,gmail (almost nothing else of note. This took some persuading, but desktops are such a fallback these days......another topic for another day) DESKTOP: 10?yr-old Gigabyte motherboard with sata2 ... 4 ports. I only use 1 sata port. I "gave" it a $90/bestbuy 256g SSD Samsung months ago for /dev/sda which ran well+fast of course, turns out the SSD is actually still fine internally. A FEW WEEKS AGO, the "hint" symptom (1 of 2 in this long story) for disk woes was.... (well, it started crashing occasionally, then) ON BOOT, it would sometimes STOP at this prompt initramfs> and with good eyes as the boot-attempt screen(s) would fly by and return to above prompt, I discovered I could fix it with ( actually i did not use the "-y" prompt, but it's the same fix either way) initramfs> fsck -y /dev/sda1 Which would fix a few things, nothing scary for an ex-unix-sysadmin, and initramfs> exit ######## would allow it to boot and be OK for days or so. I taped THAT magic (fsck...) onto a paper mini-sign on the PC for another rainy day. TODAY, the crash was followed by not booting (random results, kernel panics or bios/grub waiting). Worse (not that we care!) near the end of this story, the Patriots gave up cool kickoff return with a lead and 0:04 left. But timing-wise, I'm glad I had a few hours in the living room to debug all this. So I brought the SSD to my other living room desktop (not booting FROM it...) checked SSD with sudo smartcl -a /dev/sda #### AND ITS FINE. I moved the SSD "back" to wife's PC on another SATA port. It's fine! (motherboard deteriorating i guess....but might last another decade). I did run into.... ("created" by moving the disk i assume) .... a boot/warning error NEW TO ME: On initial boot a WARNING ERROR on the early/black screen (similar to where initramfs> shows up..just before that i think) "warning: environment block too small" was actually ignorable (after a few secs, boot marched on to kernel/logo). But I found "it's a thing" and the error appears solvable with first google hit suggesting linux user# sudo rm /boot/grub/grubenv # or "mv" it somewhere.old; 1024 byte file. ...............# sudo grub-editenv /boot/grub/grubenv create and reboot. Seems good now except (new i think; probably from the sata port move?) there's a ONE MINUTE wait on the initial boot with the Mint logo flashing. Final things-to-inspect: (no need to "fix" /etc/fstab which of course does find the disk parts ( just / and swap) by UUID and /var/log/syslog ( I have exported it all, i think the disk errors stopped. ) =========================WRAPUP Haven't solved this learn-all mission yet, but...hope to make it to WLUG THURS EVE and i just thought of a topic. Trick is knowing where to start such a story/tutorial; I'd try to skip over BIOS and sata/disk/etc basics, the fuzzy parts for me involve "initramfs" ... grub ..... and maybe that's it for me. Desired talk/take-home: linux BOOT steps you don't want to know. -doug

Dec. 10, 2018

December Meeting Reminder!

by Tim Keller

Hey Gang, We've got a meeting coming up next week! Date: Dec 13, 2018 @ 7PM. Location: WPI Campus Center (Mid Century Room 331) Topic: To Be Decided! If there's something you'd like to talk about drop me a line! Otherwise As usual, refreshments and snacks will be provided and we'll head off for dinner afterwards. Thanks, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

Dec. 6, 2018

OpenGameArt Movie Video Game

by Dennis Payne

Normally I do National Novel Writing Month in November. This year I decided to try the Indie Game Making Contest 2018. I spent the month working in my free time on a new computer game. I had thought of this game a while ago (including doing a novelization of it for NaNoWriMo last year). The idea was to use lots of art from OpenGameArt.org. Since the styles of the artwork can be drastically different, that was integrated into the story. The villain is in the Liberated Pixel Cup style. (It was a contest opengameart.org did to create lot of artwork which could be used together.) He would be trying to wipe out all the other art styles. (It's a crazy mashup like the Lego Movie.) The game didn't get to the level of completion I had hoped. I posted a Postmortem on the project: http://identicalsoftware.com/games/opengameartmovie You download the Windows version of the game from: https://dulsi.itch.io/opengameart-movie-video-game Unfortunately there isn't a log of content in the game as much of the work was building the game engine. (Why isn't there a Linux download? I was rushing to post it before the contest end and didn't get around to posting a Linux build. We aren't allowed to put up new downloads while the judging is being done.) -- Dennis Payne <dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com>

Dec. 4, 2018

Frantic last minute room change

by thinkbrown＠gmail.com

Hey WLUG! Frantic last minute change of room. Due to the relative inaccessibility of Stratton after 5PM, we moved to Campus Center room 128 (the Taylor Room). This is on the first floor (down the stairs through the main entrance). Sorry for the last minute notice Logan (pretending to be Tim)

Nov. 8, 2018

Reminder! WLUG Meeting NEXT week! Nov. 8th, 2018! NOTE: LOCATION CHANGE!

by Tim Keller

Hey Gang! We've got a meeting next week! Date and Time: Nov. 8th, 2018 @ 7pm Location: *Stratton Hall Room 309* Topic: GNURadio / Software Defined Radio / GQRX Presenter: Ian Gelman Here's what Ian had to say about his presentation... I'd like to throw my hat in the ring and give an overview+demo of GNURadio, a FOSS package for graphically developing DSP applications and interfacing with Software-Defined Radios (SDR). I spent last summer at MITRE using this software heavily, and I'm also using it for my MQP work. For the demo, I'd like to bring down some hardware from my lab ( https://www.ettus.com/product/details/UN210-KIT) as well as the $20 RTL-SDR dongle ( http://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/sdr-receivers/nesdr-mini-rtl2832-r820t.html) to show reception of broadcast FM, ADS-B telemetry from airplanes, as well as some real time views of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and streaming drone footage from a DJI Phantom 3 Pro. Here's the outline: What's SDR? Why should we care? Why do I care? Who uses GNURadio? GNURadio fundamentals Introducing the workflow/flowgraph interface Cloning/Building/Installing (this won't be specific, just mentioning the GitHub repo and where the quickstart guide is) How to contribute (also GR-hackfest!) GNURadio as a software development framework Ex: GQRX (http://gqrx.dk) For the demo, I'll show off some stuff I've made with GNURadio, as well as GQRX to interface with the RTL-SDR. I'm pretty confident that I can cram it inside of 2 hours, because I'll be basically recycling the slides I made for my MITRE presentation, minus the branding and project-specific content. As usual, drinks and snacks will be provided and we'll head out to dinner afterwards. NOTE: I will be unable to attend this meeting. Thanks, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

Nov. 2, 2018

Re: Too bad about redhat...

by Tim Keller

I guess the question I have is this. IBM just spend 34B on redhat. Okay, now what. Is it possible that RedHat's support stuff was generating so much revenue that IBM thinks it can simply sit back and let it print money? While that's possible, I don't think RedHat has made 34B in it's entire existence. Thusly, there will be a point where the people who push the heaps of money around at IBM go "You know, we spent 34B on this thing, how are we going to get some ROI out of this?" My interactions with AIX and it's adoption of RPM as a method of software installation makes me think that possibly IBM sees a transition plan where AIX gets supplanted with Linux over time. Again, this is just conjecture. My fears are that those who care about FOSS in IBM and RedHat will be pushed aside by those in IBM who'll want a short term return on investment that makes the shareholders happy. Tim. On Thu, Nov 1, 2018 at 10:30 AM Jon "maddog" Hall <jon.maddog.hall(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I think that this is a big enough deal that IBM knows it is "bet the farm". > > Did you know that IBM has over 600 engineers working on "Open Source" > projects of all kinds? > > md > > On Thu, Nov 1, 2018, 06:55 Dennis Payne <dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com > wrote: > >> IBM of today is far different than the IBM that started investing in >> Linux. They have sacrificed the long term for short term profits. The >> question in my mind is does IBM realize this? Will they use Red Hat to >> reinvigorate? Or will they just cost cut it to death as well? >> >> https://www.cringely.com/2018/10/29/red-hat-takes-over-ibm/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org >> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org >> > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

Nov. 1, 2018

Re: Too bad about redhat...

by Jon "maddog" Hall

I think that this is a big enough deal that IBM knows it is "bet the farm". Did you know that IBM has over 600 engineers working on "Open Source" projects of all kinds? md On Thu, Nov 1, 2018, 06:55 Dennis Payne <dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com wrote: > IBM of today is far different than the IBM that started investing in > Linux. They have sacrificed the long term for short term profits. The > question in my mind is does IBM realize this? Will they use Red Hat to > reinvigorate? Or will they just cost cut it to death as well? > > https://www.cringely.com/2018/10/29/red-hat-takes-over-ibm/ > > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org >

Nov. 1, 2018