Re: Debian as My home firewall/router

[David Christensen]

On 02/27/2016 01:29 PM, Reco wrote:

On Sat, 27 Feb 2016 12:54:52 -0800
David Christensen  wrote:


On 02/27/2016 10:40 AM, Reco wrote:


On Sat, 27 Feb 2016 09:41:47 -0800
David Christensen  wrote:


3. What is your opinion of pfSense?

https://pfsense.org/


I'm by no means an expert on FreeBSD (from which pfSense is derived) so
I suggest to search more educated evaluation elsewhere.


I ran pfSense briefly on the Internet connection for my SOHO LAN.  There
are differences between BSD vocabulary and Linux vocabulary, but
functionality is pretty much the same.  pfSense seemed more
sophisticated and featureful than IPCop, but more brittle.


Now you picked my curiosity. In what ways pfSense is "more brittle"?


The two things I remember are:

1.  The pfSense installer wanted to use the whole disk.  The only way I 
could get it to use only part of the disk was to create a slice for 
pfSense and create another slice that ate up all remaining free space. 
Then every time I booted, the boot loader (GRUB2, I believe) would show 
both slices, even though I don't recall setting the boot bit on the 
second slice.


2.  I typically power down my machines every night.  After a month or 
two of use, the pfSense box would not boot.  I didn't, and still don't, 
know enough about BSD to figure out why.  The first time or two, I wiped 
the HDD, reinstalled, and reconfigured.  The last time it was behind 
another firewall, so I pulled the pfSense box.




I suspect that pfSense lacks any meaningful mandatory access control
pre-installed (no *BSD family has it), but that's it.


According to McKusick [1], p. 34, "FreeBSD implements a framework for
kernel access-control extensibility, the MAC framework".


So it's so called capiscum framework. A nice sandbox effort, but it's
nowhere near SELinux capabilities. A direct analogy from the Linux
world is seccomp.

If they use it in pfSense - that's good. The main question is - how
meaningful is the use of this framework pfSense has?


I need to finish McKusick's book and research if/ what/ how pfSense 
makes use of the BSD MAC framework.



David

Re: Windows Shares Abound Continuously

[Martin Smith]

On 28/02/2016 01:21, Steve Matzura wrote:

Just when I thought it was safe to let my Debian 8.2 system alone for
a few days, I started getting emails from users of the service I
provide which uses that system that they could not access any content
on the shared-mounted drives on one of my Windows machines. Sure
enough, I tried an 'ls' and got "cannot access {name of remote shared
folder}: Remote I/O error".

Thinking this has *got* to be a Windows problem, I rebooted
everything, and everything came back. But within an hour, the remote
I/O error came back, too. Might there be something in dmesg I could or
should look for? Is mounting a Windows shared drive or directory a
problem, and if so, should I go to something else, and what would that
be?



Ever since Windows 3.11 its networking has been just awful and prone to
malfunction without notice, they originally lifted the network stack from
FreeBSD but managed to completely screw it, and it is still awful now, both
in sharing and even trying to find shares.
You would probably be better off putting all that stuff on a samba share
on a nice Debian box, you would be much more likely to get a good nights 
sleep.


--
Martin

Re: user History File.

[Muhammad Yousuf Khan]

Thanks Alot for your input Tomas.

I don't know exactly what your problem is, but take into account that bash
> only appends its (in-memory) history to .bash_history at exit (so while
> the shell is active you won't see any changes)


Actually i never worked on multi user environment. this is the first time
that i am dealing with multiple users. i  want to monitor what hey are
doing. so i thought history is the best option to do.but when i try to scan
their history i see nothing. so my Question is why i can not see any thing
new in their history file.
so how can i track user activity.

Re: XFS on root

[Saša Janiška]

David Christensen  writes:

> Been there, done that, and lost data. If you can't afford 2 @ 2 TB
> disks right now, get a replacement 1 TB disk until you can.

Thanks for sharing...well, I'll use 2TB disk in the btrfs mirror with
old 1TB disk and the remaining space use for partion along with
rsync-based backup or btrfs' send/receive.

> My goal is ECC memory, RAID1, and checksummed file systems (btrfs,
> zfs) on all my computers. All it takes is time and money. ;-)

I'd like to use zfs, but, it's still lacks proper distro support to
fiddle with it.


Sincerely,
Gour

-- 
One who sees inaction in action, and action in inaction,
is intelligent among men, and he is in the transcendental position,
although engaged in all sorts of activities.

lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[BerndSchmittNews]

Hello,
under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate touchpad.
My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer is running wild.
I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but maybe it is a hardware
failure, so I have to live/deal with it.


thanks
Bernd

Re: user History File.

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 01:52:25PM +0500, Muhammad Yousuf Khan wrote:
> Thanks Alot for your input Tomas.
> 
> I don't know exactly what your problem is, but take into account that bash
> > only appends its (in-memory) history to .bash_history at exit (so while
> > the shell is active you won't see any changes)
> 
> 
> Actually i never worked on multi user environment. this is the first time
> that i am dealing with multiple users. i  want to monitor what hey are
> doing. so i thought history is the best option to do.but when i try to scan
> their history i see nothing. so my Question is why i can not see any thing
> new in their history file.
> so how can i track user activity.

Well, you should be able to see the history in their home's .bash_history
files, but it gets only added to when they end the respective shell session.

Yo can see it happening by opening two terminals (same user). In the one,
you do "tail -f ~/.bash_history", in the other you enter some commands
and terminate the shell (e.g. by entering CTRL-D or "exit", or even perhaps
by closing the terminal). You should see all those commands appear at
once at this moment.

Regards
- -- t
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Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Haines Brown]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 11:56:53AM +0100, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> Hello,
> under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate touchpad.
> My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer is running wild.
> I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but maybe it is a hardware
> failure, so I have to live/deal with it.
> 
> thanks
> Bernd

My Thinkpad touch pad was also driving me crazy because I couldn't help
moving the mouse pointer when typing. I simply removed the synaptic
package and have had peace ever since.

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Adam Wilson]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:42:13 -0500 Haines Brown 
wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 11:56:53AM +0100, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> > Hello,
> > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer
> > is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but
> > maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to live/deal with it.
> > 
> > thanks
> > Bernd
> 
> My Thinkpad touch pad was also driving me crazy because I couldn't
> help moving the mouse pointer when typing. I simply removed the
> synaptic package and have had peace ever since.

Is there not a Fn+Key combination to activate/deactivate the touchpad
minus the hassle?

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Haines Brown]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 03:51:11PM +0300, Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:42:13 -0500 Haines Brown 
> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 11:56:53AM +0100, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> > > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer
> > > is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but
> > > maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to live/deal with it.
> > > 
> > > thanks
> > > Bernd
> > 
> > My Thinkpad touch pad was also driving me crazy because I couldn't
> > help moving the mouse pointer when typing. I simply removed the
> > synaptic package and have had peace ever since.
> 
> Is there not a Fn+Key combination to activate/deactivate the touchpad
> minus the hassle?

As best as I can make out from the x250 manual, there's no way to
disable the touchpad. I don't know why removing synaptic disabled the
touchpad. But doing so did no harm and I'm not sure why a package
manager is useful.

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 03:51:11PM +0300, Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:42:13 -0500 Haines Brown 
> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 11:56:53AM +0100, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> > > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer
> > > is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but
> > > maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to live/deal with it.
> > > 
> > > thanks
> > > Bernd
> > 
> > My Thinkpad touch pad was also driving me crazy because I couldn't
> > help moving the mouse pointer when typing. I simply removed the
> > synaptic package and have had peace ever since.
> 
> Is there not a Fn+Key combination to activate/deactivate the touchpad
> minus the hassle?

There is a command "synclient" which allows, among other things to
switch on/off a synaptics touchpad.

I know I've seen some use it to disable the touchpad when any key
was pressed, to re-enable it . Here's a link (a program called
syndaemon does the trick):

  


Disclaimer: I haven't tried it.

regards
- -- t
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Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[lostson]

On 02/28/2016 04:56 AM, BerndSchmittNews wrote:

Hello,
under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate touchpad.
My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer is running wild.
I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but maybe it is a hardware
failure, so I have to live/deal with it.


thanks
Bernd



 use the command synclient TouchPadOff=1 to turn it off

Re: XFS on root

[Adam Wilson]

On Sat, 27 Feb 2016 23:56:59 +0100 Saša Janiška 
wrote:

> Adam Wilson  writes:
> 
> > My solution to this (because XFS is my favourite filesystem next to
> > ReiserFS) has been to use ext2 for /boot and XFS for / and /home. I
> > can confirm this configuration works tickety-boo- I use it on my
> > Jessie box at the moment.
> 
> That's really strange to hear since I do not have separate /boot and /
> is subvolume (@) and no problem booting it.

Let me get this straight- /boot on XFS, with GRUB, working flawlessly?

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Adam Wilson]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 08:11:12 -0500 Haines Brown 
wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 03:51:11PM +0300, Adam Wilson wrote:
> > On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:42:13 -0500 Haines Brown
> >  wrote:
> > 
> > > On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 11:56:53AM +0100, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> > > > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the
> > > > pointer is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in
> > > > debian8, but maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to
> > > > live/deal with it.
> > > > 
> > > > thanks
> > > > Bernd
> > > 
> > > My Thinkpad touch pad was also driving me crazy because I couldn't
> > > help moving the mouse pointer when typing. I simply removed the
> > > synaptic package and have had peace ever since.
> > 
> > Is there not a Fn+Key combination to activate/deactivate the
> > touchpad minus the hassle?
> 
> As best as I can make out from the x250 manual, there's no way to
> disable the touchpad. I don't know why removing synaptic disabled the
> touchpad. But doing so did no harm and I'm not sure why a package
> manager is useful.

So you don't use apt then?

Re: XFS on root

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 05:34:18PM +0300, Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Feb 2016 23:56:59 +0100 Saša Janiška 
> wrote:
> 
> > Adam Wilson  writes:
> > 
> > > My solution to this (because XFS is my favourite filesystem next to
> > > ReiserFS) has been to use ext2 for /boot and XFS for / and /home. I
> > > can confirm this configuration works tickety-boo- I use it on my
> > > Jessie box at the moment.
> > 
> > That's really strange to hear since I do not have separate /boot and /
> > is subvolume (@) and no problem booting it.
> 
> Let me get this straight- /boot on XFS, with GRUB, working flawlessly?

I'm neither the OP nor have I actually tried it. But *in theory* (yeah,
famous last words), there is a grub module "xfs.mod", which at least
hints at grub understanding XFS. So it really might work.

regards
- -- t
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Re: user History File.

[Dan Ritter]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 01:52:25PM +0500, Muhammad Yousuf Khan wrote:
> Thanks Alot for your input Tomas.
> 
> I don't know exactly what your problem is, but take into account that bash
> > only appends its (in-memory) history to .bash_history at exit (so while
> > the shell is active you won't see any changes)
> 
> 
> Actually i never worked on multi user environment. this is the first time
> that i am dealing with multiple users. i  want to monitor what hey are
> doing. so i thought history is the best option to do.but when i try to scan
> their history i see nothing. so my Question is why i can not see any thing
> new in their history file.
> so how can i track user activity.

There is the ttysnoop package, but I strongly advise consulting
with a knowledgeable local lawyer before using it. If your laws
protect privacy at all, using it on a user without their
explicit consent is likely to be a crime.

-dsr-

Re: Problem with TP-Link network card

[Daniel Bareiro]

Hi, Dan.

On 17/01/16 18:33, Dan Ritter wrote:

>> That is, it seems that the communication notebook <---> router works
>> well regardless of the type of negotiation on the notebook side.
>>
>> But when I reconnect the firewall to the router, I lose again the link,
>> regardless of whether on the firewall is enabled or not the
>> auto-negotiation.

> I'm afraid at this point my suggestions all involve hardware:
> 
> - replace the TP-Link nic with something else, preferably with a
>   different chipset. Intel has been very reliable.
> 
> - put a small ethernet switch (4 and 5 port switches are reasonably
>   cheap) between the router and firewall.
> 
> - replace the router with something else.

Well, after some time, I have returned to this matter.

I have done one more test that I think is is conclusive. As I said, this
Debian GNU/Linux firewall PC has two network cards:

* eth0: RealTek RTL8139 (to the ADSL router)
* eth1: VIA Rhine II (to the local network)

The problem was with the RTL8139 card connected to the router. This only
worked when setting up it to 10 Mbps. The VIA card connected to the
switch of the local network never gave problems.

So I now exchanged the configuration of the cards. Now the eth0 Realtek
card connects to the internal network. It runs smoothly at 100 Mbps,
full duplex and auto negotiation. So I think it was not a problem with
the Realtek card. In fact, now the VIA card (that previously worked
properly connected to the internal network switch) only works against
ADSL router when it is set to 10 Mbps.

All this makes me think the problem is in the ethernet interface of the
ADSL router.

I have requested a new router to Telefonica. I hope they send me a good
one. This Zyxel router worked smoothly for quite some time. I also hope
it have a default password to access the router and make the necessary
settings (such as SNMP monitoring).


Thanks for your reply.

Kind regards,
Daniel



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Charlie Kravetz]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 17:42:11 +0300
Adam Wilson  wrote:

>On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 08:11:12 -0500 Haines Brown 
>wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 03:51:11PM +0300, Adam Wilson wrote:  
>> > On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:42:13 -0500 Haines Brown
>> >  wrote:
>> >   
>> > > On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 11:56:53AM +0100, BerndSchmittNews wrote:  
>> > > > Hello,
>> > > > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
>> > > > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the
>> > > > pointer is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in
>> > > > debian8, but maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to
>> > > > live/deal with it.
>> > > > 
>> > > > thanks
>> > > > Bernd  
>> > > 
>> > > My Thinkpad touch pad was also driving me crazy because I couldn't
>> > > help moving the mouse pointer when typing. I simply removed the
>> > > synaptic package and have had peace ever since.  
>> > 
>> > Is there not a Fn+Key combination to activate/deactivate the
>> > touchpad minus the hassle?  
>> 
>> As best as I can make out from the x250 manual, there's no way to
>> disable the touchpad. I don't know why removing synaptic disabled the
>> touchpad. But doing so did no harm and I'm not sure why a package
>> manager is useful.  

Removing synaptic touchpad manager does not remove a package manager.
What used to be called synaptics-touchpad is now called
xserver-xorg-input-synaptics, which is Synaptics Touchpad driver. 


>
>So you don't use apt then?
>


- -- 
Charlie Kravetz
Linux Registered User Number 425914
[http://linuxcounter.net/user/425914.html]
Never let anyone steal your DREAM.   [http://keepingdreams.com]
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Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Haines Brown]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 08:27:34AM -0700, Charlie Kravetz wrote:
> Removing synaptic touchpad manager does not remove a package manager.
> What used to be called synaptics-touchpad is now called
> xserver-xorg-input-synaptics, which is Synaptics Touchpad driver. 

Thanks for the correction. I must have removed the driver. My
installation notes do not make this clear. 

> >So you don't use apt then?

Of course. How else could I survive? I was thinking of GUI package
managers.

Re: XFS on root

[Saša Janiška]

Adam Wilson  writes:

> Let me get this straight- /boot on XFS, with GRUB, working flawlessly?

No, but root under btrfs without extra /boot works.

Here is my simplified /etc/fstab:

# / was on /dev/sda3 during installation
/dev/sda3   /   btrfs  noatime,autodefrag,compress-force=lzo,subvol=@ 0 
0 
/dev/sda3   /home   btrfs   
noatime,autodefrag,compress-force=lzo,subvol=@home 0 0
# swap 
/dev/sda2   none  swapsw  0   0

So, both / & /home are under btrfs subvolumes and everything works.

And according to https://wiki.debian.org/FileSystem XFS should be
capable to work as root FS.


Sincerely,
Gour

-- 
The humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal
vision a learned and gentle brāhmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog
and a dog-eater.

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 28 February 2016 08:04:01 lostson wrote:

> On 02/28/2016 04:56 AM, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> > Hello,
> > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer
> > is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but
> > maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to live/deal with it.
> >
> >
> > thanks
> > Bernd
>
>   use the command synclient TouchPadOff=1 to turn it off

A previous poster asked about a hot-key combo to turn in on or off.

And this triggers a very long standing ( a decade plus ) sore point, like 
hitting your thumb with a hammer, again, therefore:

rant mode ON!

The hot-key combo is the only sensible way, because whointuncket is going 
to remember that whole phrase quoted above, uppercase characters in the 
right places & all, to assign that on or off.

Side rant: Where the heck is this even documented? Come on folks, fess 
up! Just having that one liner available seems to be one of linux's 
biggest, most well kept secrets, and something that lappy/notebook users 
would cheerfully sell the family farm to know. And that lack is the same 
stuff usually found on the ground behind the male of the bovine specie.

Because the touchpad is such a pain in the a$$, it was and is a solution 
in search of a problem, my decade & change old hp 5120us lappy gets it 
turned off in the bootup, and runs with a wireless mouse plugged in.  
And I don't have to worry that the next 2 characters I type, will, 
because my thumb got too close to that POS, highlights the whole 26kb 
text file I am editing so that the next keystroke clears 2 chapters of 
the Great American Novel, with no equivalent undo function to be found.

To me, the obvious thing is to find wherever the heck the gui you are 
running, has hidden the hoykey managers editor, and assign a hotkey to 
be an unused Fn+pgup to enable it, or that same FN+pgdn to disable it. 
Using the above syntax's as the alias.  That way, the chances of a 
random cat walking on the keyboard screwing with you are minimized.

/rant off.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Hi!!! My name is Alex

[alex.raven...@list.ru]

  Hi ! My  name  is  Alex.  I  found  you  on the dating website
lavalife.  I  would  be so glad to continue talking to you and get to
know  each other better. I think we can become very good friends. I am
sending   you   my   picture.  I  will  be   waiting  for  you  reply.
Respectfully, Alex. 

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Joel Roth]

A "hardware" solution is to make a cardboard cover for the
touchpad.

BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> Hello,
> under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate touchpad.
> My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer is running wild.
> I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but maybe it is a hardware
> failure, so I have to live/deal with it.
> 
> 
> thanks
> Bernd
> 

-- 
Joel Roth
  

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad? solved

[BerndSchmittNews]

Thanks to everyone who responded.
I got all the information I needed to solve my problem.

Am 28.02.2016 um 11:56 schrieb BerndSchmittNews:

under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate touchpad.

 synclient TouchpadOff=1
 synclient TouchpadOff=0

are doing the job.


My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer is running 
wild.

I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but maybe it is a hardware
failure, so I have to live/deal with it.
With "running wild" I meant that the pointer is jumping all over the 
screen without stopping. The only way for me to get it stopped was to 
switch to a virtual console (Ctrl + Alt + F1 (-6)) - after switching 
back (C + Alt + F7) the pointer stops for some time. This happens 
independent, whether i am touching the touchpad/keyboar/mouse or not.
I fear this is a hardware failure, but if I can control it via the 
command mentioned above, I am fine.


So, thanks again to all those who responded (per mail and to the group).
Bernd

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 28 February 2016 08:11:12 Haines Brown wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 03:51:11PM +0300, Adam Wilson wrote:
> > On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:42:13 -0500 Haines Brown
> > 
> >
> > wrote:
> > > On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 11:56:53AM +0100, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> > > > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the
> > > > pointer is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in
> > > > debian8, but maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to
> > > > live/deal with it.
> > > >
> > > > thanks
> > > > Bernd
> > >
> > > My Thinkpad touch pad was also driving me crazy because I couldn't
> > > help moving the mouse pointer when typing. I simply removed the
> > > synaptic package and have had peace ever since.
> >
> > Is there not a Fn+Key combination to activate/deactivate the
> > touchpad minus the hassle?
>
> As best as I can make out from the x250 manual, there's no way to
> disable the touchpad. I don't know why removing synaptic disabled the
> touchpad. But doing so did no harm and I'm not sure why a package
> manager is useful.

There is a confusing name clash, synaptic is a package manager, one of 
the best IMNSHO but the touchpad is also a synaptic.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 28 February 2016 10:27:34 Charlie Kravetz wrote:

> On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 17:42:11 +0300
>
> Adam Wilson  wrote:
> >On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 08:11:12 -0500 Haines Brown 
> >
> >wrote:
> >> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 03:51:11PM +0300, Adam Wilson wrote:
> >> > On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:42:13 -0500 Haines Brown
> >> >
> >> >  wrote:
> >> > > On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 11:56:53AM +0100, BerndSchmittNews 
wrote:
> >> > > > Hello,
> >> > > > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily
> >> > > > deactivate touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a
> >> > > > while the pointer is running wild. I hoped that this would
> >> > > > not happen in debian8, but maybe it is a hardware failure, so
> >> > > > I have to live/deal with it.
> >> > > >
> >> > > > thanks
> >> > > > Bernd
> >> > >
> >> > > My Thinkpad touch pad was also driving me crazy because I
> >> > > couldn't help moving the mouse pointer when typing. I simply
> >> > > removed the synaptic package and have had peace ever since.
> >> >
> >> > Is there not a Fn+Key combination to activate/deactivate the
> >> > touchpad minus the hassle?
> >>
> >> As best as I can make out from the x250 manual, there's no way to
> >> disable the touchpad. I don't know why removing synaptic disabled
> >> the touchpad. But doing so did no harm and I'm not sure why a
> >> package manager is useful.
>
> Removing synaptic touchpad manager does not remove a package manager.
> What used to be called synaptics-touchpad is now called
> xserver-xorg-input-synaptics, which is Synaptics Touchpad driver.
>
> >So you don't use apt then?

Thanks for clarifying that.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 28 February 2016 12:31:46 Joel Roth wrote:

> A "hardware" solution is to make a cardboard cover for the
> touchpad.
>
In the Ripley's Believe it or Not category, that was tried, and the &%$# 
thing could still see a thumb resting on it. Thru a piece of cereal box 
taped over it.

> BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> > Hello,
> > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer
> > is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but
> > maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to live/deal with it.
> >
> >
> > thanks
> > Bernd


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: user History File.

[Andrew McGlashan]

On 29/02/2016 2:19 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> There is the ttysnoop package, but I strongly advise consulting
> with a knowledgeable local lawyer before using it. If your laws
> protect privacy at all, using it on a user without their
> explicit consent is likely to be a crime.


# aptitude show ttysnoop
Monday 29 February 05:31:02 AEDT 2016 -- show ttysnoop
Package: ttysnoop
State: not installed
Version: 0.12d-5
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Maintainer: Mats Erik Andersson 
Architecture: amd64
Uncompressed Size: 100 k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
Description: allows you to spy on telnet+serial connections
 TTYSnoop allows you to snoop on login tty's through another tty-device
or pseudo-tty. The snoop-tty becomes a 'clone' of the original tty,
redirecting both input and output from/to it.


# aptitude show conspy
Monday 29 February 05:31:32 AEDT 2016 -- show conspy
Package: conspy
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 1.8-2
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Maintainer: Russell Stuart 
Architecture: amd64
Uncompressed Size: 67.6 k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.5), libncurses5 (>= 5.5-5~), libtinfo5
Description: Remote control of Linux virtual consoles
 Conspy allows a (possibly remote) user to see what is displayed on a
Linux virtual console, and send keystrokes to it.  It is rather like
VNC, but where VNC takes control of a GUI conspy takes control of a
 text mode virtual console.  Unlike VNC, conspy does not require a
server to be installed prior to being used.
Homepage: http://www.stuart.id.au/russell/files/conspy/


What is the difference between these two tools, they /seem/ to do the same?

Cheers
A.

Re: XFS on root

[mj]

On 02/28/2016 03:34 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:


Let me get this straight- /boot on XFS, with GRUB, working flawlessly?



I think we have been running root xfs, without a seperate boot partition 
for ages. This has been working at least since wheezy, but I guess even 
earlier.


Just try it.

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[David Wright]

On Sun 28 Feb 2016 at 11:37:05 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 28 February 2016 08:04:01 lostson wrote:
> > On 02/28/2016 04:56 AM, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> > > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer
> > > is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but
> > > maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to live/deal with it.

> >   use the command synclient TouchPadOff=1 to turn it off
> 
> A previous poster asked about a hot-key combo to turn in on or off.
> 
> And this triggers a very long standing ( a decade plus ) sore point, like 
> hitting your thumb with a hammer, again, therefore:
> 
> rant mode ON!
> 
> The hot-key combo is the only sensible way, because whointuncket is going 
> to remember that whole phrase quoted above, uppercase characters in the 
> right places & all, to assign that on or off.

Alias? Shell function? On my system, every single-letter command is
undefined except "w".

I can't speak for Desktop Managers, only Window Managers. There's
typically a toolbar (FvwmButtons in fvwm) where you could have a
button to toggle the touchpad.

> Side rant: Where the heck is this even documented? Come on folks, fess 
> up! Just having that one liner available seems to be one of linux's 
> biggest, most well kept secrets, and something that lappy/notebook users 
> would cheerfully sell the family farm to know. And that lack is the same 
> stuff usually found on the ground behind the male of the bovine specie.

Assuming you're in X, the module that runs it is xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
whose /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/README.Debian starts

 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics for Debian
 ---

 This package contains the Synaptics TouchPad driver for X.Org X server.
 See also the README file for details on configuration options.

 Runtime configuration
 -

 The synclient and xinput tools allow configuring various aspects of the
 driver's behaviour.  See the synaptics(4) man page for details of the
 configurable options.

man synclient tells you that running synclient with no arguments lists
all the options.

$ synclient | grep -i off
TouchpadOff = 0
$ 

There are 58 other options too.

If there _was_ a pain, it was when tapping was the default, years ago.


> /rant off.

Whew!

Cheers,
David.

Re: Debian as My home firewall/router

[Stuart Longland]

On 28/02/16 18:10, David Christensen wrote:
> 1.  The pfSense installer wanted to use the whole disk.  The only way I
> could get it to use only part of the disk was to create a slice for
> pfSense and create another slice that ate up all remaining free space.
> Then every time I booted, the boot loader (GRUB2, I believe) would show
> both slices, even though I don't recall setting the boot bit on the
> second slice.

Well, to be fair, pfSense is intended as a router, and it's very rare
for a router to dual-boot.  Normally it sits in the corner and does one
sole function which needs a single OS.
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Sven Arvidsson]

On Sun, 2016-02-28 at 11:56 +0100, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> Hello,
> under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> touchpad.
> My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the pointer is running
> wild.
> I hoped that this would not happen in debian8, but maybe it is a
> hardware
> failure, so I have to live/deal with it.

In unstable (and possibly testing) palm detection (ignoring the
touchpad when typing) is enabled by default if you're using xserver-
xorg-input-libinput

On stable (or at least in older GNOME releases) there used to be a
setting to turn on something similar for synaptics (but I don't think
it worked very well). If your DE doesn't have a similar option you'll
probably have to configure syndaemon yourself.


-- 
Cheers,
Sven Arvidsson
http://www.whiz.se
PGP Key ID 6FAB5CD5



signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Jörg-Volker Peetz]

By the way, the touchpad package name ends in "synaptics" while the packet
manager name lacks the trailing "s".

A good starter for configuration is the file

/usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/README.Debian

(as for many packages is /usr/share/doc//README.Debian)

On the web it is documented how to disable the touchpad automatically when
typing (e.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics ).

Regards,
Jörg-Volker.

Re: user History File.

[Dan Ritter]

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 05:48:42AM +1100, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> What is the difference between these two tools, they /seem/ to do the same?
> 

I haven't used or researched conspy, but it looks like the
mechanism there might be specific to the virtual console system,
rather than ttysnoop's generic tty handler which can deal with
people logged in via ssh, serial logins and most xterm-like
systems.

You could install them both and try them out against
yourself.

-dsr-

how to autologin with systemd?

[Gregor Zattler]

Dear debian users,  I configured systemd according to
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/automatic_login_to_virtual_console#Virtual_console
in order to automatically log me in at system startup.  This
worked fine till a few weeks ago:


/etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf:

[Service]
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -a my-user-name --noclear %I $TERM
Type=idle

with /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty1.service
-being a link to /lib/systemd/system/getty@.service


$ systemctl status getty@tty1.service
● getty@tty1.service - Getty on tty1
Loaded: error (Reason: Invalid argument)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d
└─override.conf
Active: inactive (dead)
Docs: man:agetty(8)
man:systemd-getty-generator(8)
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/serial-console.html

Invalid argument is strange because if I issue

sudo /sbin/agetty -a my-user-name --noclear tty3 linux

I'm actually logged in on tty3.

Any ideas what's wrong with this?

Ciao, Gregor
-- 
 -... --- .-. . -.. ..--.. ...-.-

Re: lxde/openbox temp. deactivate touchpad?

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 28 February 2016 16:24:12 David Wright wrote:

> On Sun 28 Feb 2016 at 11:37:05 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 28 February 2016 08:04:01 lostson wrote:
> > > On 02/28/2016 04:56 AM, BerndSchmittNews wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > > under debian7 I was using gpoint to temporarily deactivate
> > > > touchpad. My acer laptop drives me crazy, after a while the
> > > > pointer is running wild. I hoped that this would not happen in
> > > > debian8, but maybe it is a hardware failure, so I have to
> > > > live/deal with it.
> > >
> > >   use the command synclient TouchPadOff=1 to turn it off
> >
> > A previous poster asked about a hot-key combo to turn in on or off.
> >
> > And this triggers a very long standing ( a decade plus ) sore point,
> > like hitting your thumb with a hammer, again, therefore:
> >
> > rant mode ON!
> >
> > The hot-key combo is the only sensible way, because whointuncket is
> > going to remember that whole phrase quoted above, uppercase
> > characters in the right places & all, to assign that on or off.
>
> Alias? Shell function? On my system, every single-letter command is
> undefined except "w".
>
> I can't speak for Desktop Managers, only Window Managers. There's
> typically a toolbar (FvwmButtons in fvwm) where you could have a
> button to toggle the touchpad.
>
> > Side rant: Where the heck is this even documented? Come on folks,
> > fess up! Just having that one liner available seems to be one of
> > linux's biggest, most well kept secrets, and something that
> > lappy/notebook users would cheerfully sell the family farm to know.
> > And that lack is the same stuff usually found on the ground behind
> > the male of the bovine specie.
>
> Assuming you're in X, the module that runs it is
> xserver-xorg-input-synaptics whose
> /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/README.Debian starts
>
>  xserver-xorg-input-synaptics for Debian
>  ---
>
>  This package contains the Synaptics TouchPad driver for X.Org X
> server. See also the README file for details on configuration options.
>
>  Runtime configuration
>  -
>
>  The synclient and xinput tools allow configuring various aspects of
> the driver's behaviour.  See the synaptics(4) man page for details of
> the configurable options.
>
> man synclient tells you that running synclient with no arguments lists
> all the options.
>
> $ synclient | grep -i off
> TouchpadOff = 0
> $
>
> There are 58 other options too.
>
> If there _was_ a pain, it was when tapping was the default, years ago.
>
> > /rant off.
>
> Whew!

Chuckle, but I just now found out why the pad is totally dead even with 
the mouse dongle unplugged, couldn't use it if I wanted to, that driver 
is not installed.  I did the install with a std wireless mouse active.  
I bet theres a clue in that. The installer didn't think it needed 
another pointing device when it already had one. ;-)

I just tested again, the pad is dead, but the buttons still work.  Thats 
rather worthless since you don't have a pointer to tell the menu that 
pops up what to do.  I guessed, hit an x on the keyboard and the 
requester went away with doing anything I am aware of.  It might have 
killed all the neighbors cats, in which case I am likely in trouble if 
they ever find out.

Same principle as washing your car, it always rains & the mud is then 3" 
deep.  But that mud still has a full dose of winter road salt in it.

So: Trivia factoid for the day, if you normally run with a conventional, 
mouse, leave it plugged in while you do the install. Looks like nearly 
the best way to terminate that kluge, with prejudice. ;-)

> Cheers,
> David.


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: Windows Shares Abound Continuously

[Steve Matzura]

Martin:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 08:44:07 +, you wrote:

>Ever since Windows 3.11 its networking has been just awful and prone to
>malfunction without notice, they originally lifted the network stack from
>FreeBSD but managed to completely screw it, and it is still awful now, both
>in sharing and even trying to find shares.
>You would probably be better off putting all that stuff on a samba share
>on a nice Debian box, you would be much more likely to get a good nights 
>sleep.

I have a fine Synology NAS box where everything just works, so I think
that's what I'm going to do--move that content onto the NAS and be
done with it. Now I wish I had put bigger drives in that thing! LOL.

Re: how to autologin with systemd?

[Michael Biebl]

Am 28.02.2016 um 23:38 schrieb Gregor Zattler:
> Dear debian users,  I configured systemd according to
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/automatic_login_to_virtual_console#Virtual_console
> in order to automatically log me in at system startup.  This
> worked fine till a few weeks ago:
> 
> 
> /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf:
> 
> [Service]
> ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -a my-user-name --noclear %I $TERM
> Type=idle

..

> Any ideas what's wrong with this?

You didn't say, which systemd version you are using. This is with v229.
See the journal:

$ journalctl -u getty@tty1.service
...
Feb 29 01:22:49 pluto systemd[1]: getty@tty1.service: Service has more
than one ExecStart= setting, which is only allowed for Type=oneshot
services. Refusing.



-- 
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: how to autologin with systemd?

[Austin Adams]

On Sun, 2016-02-28 at 23:38 +0100, Gregor Zattler wrote:
> /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf:
> 
> [Service]
> ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -a my-user-name --noclear %I $TERM
> Type=idle

Like the ArchWiki page you linked suggests, you'll need to add an empty
ExecStart= line into `override.conf'. Like:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -a my-user-name --noclear %I $TERM
Type=idle

If you're curious about what that does, systemd.service(5) says: 
> ExecStart=
> ...
> If the empty string is assigned to this option, the list of  
> commands to start is reset, prior assignments of this option will
> have no effect.

(The error message in Michael's response is helpful, too.)

-austin

Re: how to autologin with systemd?

[Lotek]

On 02/28/2016 02:38 PM, Gregor Zattler wrote:

Dear debian users,  I configured systemd according to
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/automatic_login_to_virtual_console#Virtual_console
in order to automatically log me in at system startup.  This
worked fine till a few weeks ago:


/etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf:

[Service]
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -a my-user-name --noclear %I $TERM
Type=idle

with /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty1.service
-being a link to /lib/systemd/system/getty@.service


$ systemctl status getty@tty1.service
● getty@tty1.service - Getty on tty1
Loaded: error (Reason: Invalid argument)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d
└─override.conf
Active: inactive (dead)
Docs: man:agetty(8)
man:systemd-getty-generator(8)
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/serial-console.html

Invalid argument is strange because if I issue

sudo /sbin/agetty -a my-user-name --noclear tty3 linux

I'm actually logged in on tty3.

Any ideas what's wrong with this?

Ciao, Gregor



Copy "/lib/systemd/system/getty@.service" to 
"/etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/ getty@tty1.service" and change 
"ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --noclear %I $TERM" to "ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty 
-a  my-user-name --noclear %I".


I don't like systemd, but that's still working here.

   Lotek

ZFS on Debian GNU/Linux

[David Christensen]

On 02/28/2016 02:40 AM, Saša Janiška wrote:
> I'd like to use zfs, but, it's still lacks proper distro support to
> fiddle with it.

I believe the crux issue is incompatible licenses between Linux (GPL) 
and OpenZFS (CDDL):


http://open-zfs.org/wiki/FAQ#Licensing


I believe some Linux distributions have tried to offered ZFS OOTB, but 
people and organizations have cried GPL foul:


https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/


I believe Debian GNU/ kFreeBSD supports ZFS, but I've never had much 
success with Debian GNU/ kFreeBSD.  Perhaps I need to try again:



https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD_FAQ#Q._Is_there_ZFS_support.3F


https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD_FAQ#Q._Can_I_use_ZFS_as_root_or_.2Fboot_file_system.3F


zfs-fuse is integrated into Debian GNU/ Linux, but is older, slower, and 
lacks features. I ran it on Wheezy, and it worked:


https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/zfs-fuse


I ran a Wheezy Samba server with mirrored ZFS on Linux (ZOL) for bulk 
data, but never had much success writing a /etc/init.d script that 
worked reliably:


http://zfsonlinux.org/debian.html


I would very much like to have a Debian machine with mirrored ZFS for 
boot, root, home, bulk data, etc..  I could live with an ext4 boot on a 
USB flash drive.



Any other thoughts, comments, or suggestions for ZFS on Debian GNU/Linux?


David

Re: Debian as My home firewall/router

[David Christensen]

On 02/28/2016 01:35 PM, Stuart Longland wrote:

On 28/02/16 18:10, David Christensen wrote:

1.  The pfSense installer wanted to use the whole disk.  The only way I
could get it to use only part of the disk was to create a slice for
pfSense and create another slice that ate up all remaining free space.
Then every time I booted, the boot loader (GRUB2, I believe) would show
both slices, even though I don't recall setting the boot bit on the
second slice.


Well, to be fair, pfSense is intended as a router, and it's very rare
for a router to dual-boot.  Normally it sits in the corner and does one
sole function which needs a single OS.


I like to take images of my system drives periodically and I have a 
bunch of 80 GB drives I use for things like pfSense.  If pfSense only 
needs a few GB, then that's all I want to image and store.



David