Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[deloptes]

terryc wrote:

> hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question again.
> I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
> spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
> then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.

Windows + MS Office :D

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Eric S Fraga]

On Tuesday, 13 Mar 2018 at 14:13, terryc wrote:
> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly

sc works well and is indeed simple.  not graphical.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.6 on Debian buster/sid


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Re: OT: dovecot with letsencrypt, K9 mail fails?

[Dominik George]

Hi,

>Today, though - which may be unrelated - it prompted me to check the
>certificate, which weirdly seemed to belong to my VPS provider; it
>wasn't the one configured in dovecot.
>
>Has anyone else seen either of these issues? My VPS provider hasn't
>come
>up with any ideas yet.

They have a very clear idea - they are snooping on your TLS, and that doesn't 
happen by accident.

It might be a sad accident with a firewall, but they should fix that in no 
time. If not, you are best off finding a new provider.

-nik

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:13:33 +1100
terryc  wrote:

> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly
> 
> hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question
> again. I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
> spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
> then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.
> 

'The' alternative spreadsheet is gnumeric, but it's some years since I
used it last. I recall it as being a bit less Excel-like than
LibreOffice (OpenOffice then) but that might be different now. If you
don't have any other Gnome stuff, gnumeric is likely to pull in quite a
lot of dependencies.

I'm not aware of a 'simple' spreadsheet, as it is the kind of
application that begs for feature-creep. Synaptic turns up sc, which I
know nothing about, but the description doesn't look compatible with
'simple', unless the user interface is similar to something you already
know.

-- 
Joe

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Erik Christiansen]

On 13.03.18 08:59, Joe wrote:
> I'm not aware of a 'simple' spreadsheet, as it is the kind of
> application that begs for feature-creep. Synaptic turns up sc, which I
> know nothing about, but the description doesn't look compatible with
> 'simple', unless the user interface is similar to something you already
> know.

An sc description: "Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and
it has most features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things
like graphing and saving in foreign formats. It's very stable and quite
easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it." makes it
look as simple as it gets.

Erik
(Who just uses a line of awk when needing to sum a column or two in a table.)

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Tomaž Šolc]

Years ago I used to work with GNU Oleo in a text terminal.

https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/oleo.html

I see it's been removed from Debian in 2009 though.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=526212

Best regards
Tomaž

Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[David]

On 13 March 2018 at 14:40, Mike McClain  wrote:
>
> If my other computer is South40 and I want to mount South40's /docs
> on my /south40/docs/ directory I can do that. As one script calls
> another I want to know if I need to mount South40 without
> $( mount | grep 'south40/docs').
>
> Suggestions?

Installing the package util-linux will provide the mountpoint command
which exits true=0 if its argument is in use as a mountpoint. Example:

$ if mountpoint / ; then echo "exit status is $?" ; fi
/ is a mountpoint
exit status is 0

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 20:42:08 +1100
Erik Christiansen  wrote:

> On 13.03.18 08:59, Joe wrote:
> > I'm not aware of a 'simple' spreadsheet, as it is the kind of
> > application that begs for feature-creep. Synaptic turns up sc,
> > which I know nothing about, but the description doesn't look
> > compatible with 'simple', unless the user interface is similar to
> > something you already know.  
> 
> An sc description: "Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and
> it has most features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things
> like graphing and saving in foreign formats. It's very stable and
> quite easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it."
> makes it look as simple as it gets.
> 
> Erik
> (Who just uses a line of awk when needing to sum a column or two in a
> table.)
> 

It's the 'little effort' that stood out for me. Someone familiar with
the operation of a piece of software always grossly underestimates how
much they know about it, and how much someone else coming to it cold
needs to know.

-- 
Joe

Re: OT: dovecot with letsencrypt, K9 mail fails?

[Richard Hector]

On 13/03/18 21:12, Dominik George wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>> Today, though - which may be unrelated - it prompted me to check the
>> certificate, which weirdly seemed to belong to my VPS provider; it
>> wasn't the one configured in dovecot.
>>
>> Has anyone else seen either of these issues? My VPS provider hasn't
>> come
>> up with any ideas yet.
> 
> They have a very clear idea - they are snooping on your TLS, and that doesn't 
> happen by accident.
> 
> It might be a sad accident with a firewall, but they should fix that in no 
> time. If not, you are best off finding a new provider.

What make that less plausible is that Thunderbird on Debian sees none of
these problems. I forgot to mention that in my original post, sorry.

Both devices were on my home lan, so behind the same NAT.

The name on the cert was something like "precise.example.com", which
looks to me like it was created as part of an (oldish) VPS image. My VPS
was built with Debian (jessie), though. There are Ubuntu LXC containers
on there alongside the Debian ones, but none as old as precise.

Hmm. I use iptables to forward 143 to the mail container. I wonder if
somehow my vps can see the same internal (RFC1918) ip address somewhere
else? That should all be blocked by my firewall, though.

Richard



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Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Erik Christiansen]

On 13.03.18 09:59, Joe wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 20:42:08 +1100
> Erik Christiansen  wrote:
> > An sc description: "Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and
> > it has most features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things
> > like graphing and saving in foreign formats. It's very stable and
> > quite easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it."
> > makes it look as simple as it gets.
> > 
> > Erik
> > (Who just uses a line of awk when needing to sum a column or two in a
> > table.)
> > 
> 
> It's the 'little effort' that stood out for me. Someone familiar with
> the operation of a piece of software always grossly underestimates how
> much they know about it, and how much someone else coming to it cold
> needs to know.

Too true. After a couple of hours of failing to get any GUI drawing
package, not least LibreOffice, to do anything useful, I used Vim to
textually produce the 8 drawings for my house; plan, elevations &
sections, and site plan. It took about 800 lines of Postscript, and I
didn't have to crack the inscrutable secrets of an obstructive GUI
interface.

But I persevered with the Eagle GUI schematic capture & PCB layout app,
putting in the weeks to tame it.

It probably comes down to whether you think you'll ever use it again.

Erik

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Eric S Fraga]

On Tuesday, 13 Mar 2018 at 14:13, terryc wrote:
> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly

I already mentioned sc.

An alternative is org mode in Emacs if you have Emacs already
installed.  Simple spreadsheet capabilities in tables.

Maybe define what you mean by simple.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.6 on Debian buster/sid


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Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[John Hasler]

terryc wrote:
> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly

Package: sc
Source: sc (7.16-4)
Version: 7.16-4+b2
Installed-Size: 440
Maintainer: Adam Majer 
Architecture: amd64
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libncurses5 (>= 6), libtinfo5 (>= 6)
Description-en: Text-based spreadsheet with VI-like keybindings
 "Spreadsheet Calculator" is a much modified version of the public-
 domain spread sheet sc, which was posted to Usenet several years ago
 by Mark Weiser as vc, originally by James Gosling. It is based on
 rectangular table much like a financial spreadsheet.
 .
 Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and it has most
 features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things like
 graphing and saving in foreign formats.  It's very stable and quite
 easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it.
Description-md5: 0925a794779dba23662eeb41fb663c7e
Tag: office::spreadsheet, role::program, scope::application,
 uitoolkit::ncurses, use::editing, works-with::spreadsheet
Section: math
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/s/sc/sc_7.16-4+b2_amd64.deb
Size: 211774
MD5sum: 94c7293bbb4ed7858f861d0e1bc3dfe5
SHA256: 1a676b93a1e376f18f8efc30e574c1b65b84be12157289d4105850810f2804e5

-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[Mark Fletcher]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 08:49:58PM +1100, David wrote:
> On 13 March 2018 at 14:40, Mike McClain  wrote:
> >
> > If my other computer is South40 and I want to mount South40's /docs
> > on my /south40/docs/ directory I can do that. As one script calls
> > another I want to know if I need to mount South40 without
> > $( mount | grep 'south40/docs').
> >
> > Suggestions?
> 
> Installing the package util-linux will provide the mountpoint command
> which exits true=0 if its argument is in use as a mountpoint. Example:
> 
> $ if mountpoint / ; then echo "exit status is $?" ; fi
> / is a mountpoint
> exit status is 0
> 
Unless I've misunderstood the question, you can tell if something is 
mounted at a mount point by checking if anything is present under the 
mount point, eg if you know there is a directory /Y that gets mounted 
under mount point /X, you can can make sure /X/Y doesn't exist under the 
mount poiunt and then check for the existence of /X/Y -- it will be 
there if the mount point is in use and not if not.

Mark

Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[tomas]

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On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 10:33:43PM +0900, Mark Fletcher wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 08:49:58PM +1100, David wrote:
> > On 13 March 2018 at 14:40, Mike McClain  wrote:
> > >
> > > If my other computer is South40 and I want to mount South40's /docs
> > > on my /south40/docs/ directory I can do that. As one script calls
> > > another I want to know if I need to mount South40 without
> > > $( mount | grep 'south40/docs').
> > >
> > > Suggestions?
> > 
> > Installing the package util-linux will provide the mountpoint command
> > which exits true=0 if its argument is in use as a mountpoint. Example:
> > 
> > $ if mountpoint / ; then echo "exit status is $?" ; fi
> > / is a mountpoint
> > exit status is 0
> > 
> Unless I've misunderstood the question, you can tell if something is 
> mounted at a mount point by checking if anything is present under the 
> mount point [...]

Not if the file system is really empty (and no, lost+found doesn't really
count, since not all file systems have that). Watch this:

  tomas@trotzki:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=fatty bs=1024 count=1024
  1024+0 records in
  1024+0 records out
  1048576 bytes (1.0 MB, 1.0 MiB) copied, 0.00582808 s, 180 MB/s
  tomas@trotzki:~$ mkfs.vfat fatty
  bash: mkfs.vfat: command not found
  tomas@trotzki:~$ /sbin/mkfs.vfat fatty
  mkfs.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
  tomas@trotzki:~$ sudo mount -ouid=tomas,gid=tomas fatty /mnt
  [sudo] password for tomas: 
  tomas@trotzki:~$ ls -al /mnt
  total 20
  drwxr-xr-x  2 tomas tomas 16384 Jan  1  1970 .
  drwxr-xr-x 23 root  root   4096 Feb 23 12:42 ..

Totally empty...

Conversely, the directory you mount things on doesn't have to be empty:
its contents is just shadowed while the mount lasts.

Cheers
- -- tomás
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which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Albretch Mueller]

 I have a group of kids that are very good in Math and they want to
learn some actual programming

 My approach is to introduce them to the basics of coding using ANSI
C, C++ and java (so they learn what pointers are about, how patterns
are coded in different languages, ...)

 Is there a blend with those ANSI C, C++ and java as well as eclipse
installed, so that they can use it from a DVD Debian live version?

 lbrtchx

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Gary Dale]

On 2018-03-13 10:04 AM, Albretch Mueller wrote:

  I have a group of kids that are very good in Math and they want to
learn some actual programming

  My approach is to introduce them to the basics of coding using ANSI
C, C++ and java (so they learn what pointers are about, how patterns
are coded in different languages, ...)

  Is there a blend with those ANSI C, C++ and java as well as eclipse
installed, so that they can use it from a DVD Debian live version?

  lbrtchx


Exposing children to C and/or C++ should be considered abuse.  :)

Similarly exposing pointers is just a method of introducing bugs and 
security holes into programs.


Teach them using a decent object oriented language first so they learn 
how to write good programs.

Re: PAE or not PAE?

[Stefan Monnier]

> I will agree that it increases the unpredictability of execution time,
> and if I wanted to guarantee I could meet deadlines I'd turn it off.

Turning it off may indeed improve predictability of execution time in
some cases.  Especially if the various active threads have different
real-time priorities.

For non-real-time threads, turning it off would just replace the
hardware's scheduler unpredictability with that of the OS.

For really hard real-time, of course, you still have many other sources
of unpredictability: the cache(s), the TLB, the branch prediction, ...


Stefan

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Stefan Monnier]

> An alternative is org mode in Emacs if you have Emacs already
> installed.  Simple spreadsheet capabilities in tables.

There's also SES, also part of Emacs (i.e. C-x C-f .ses RET should
get you started).  And Emacs being what it is, there's also the Dismal
package, which you can install from GNU ELPA.


Stefan

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[David Wright]

On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 08:59:00 (+), Joe wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:13:33 +1100
> terryc  wrote:
> 
> > What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> > Stretch. I need to do some work quickly
> > 
> > hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question
> > again. I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
> > spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
> > then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.
> > 
> 
> 'The' alternative spreadsheet is gnumeric, but it's some years since I
> used it last. I recall it as being a bit less Excel-like than
> LibreOffice (OpenOffice then) but that might be different now. If you
> don't have any other Gnome stuff, gnumeric is likely to pull in quite a
> lot of dependencies.

Yes, on a new stretch (print/SSH/standard utilities) with the
following installed already:

etckeeper cryptsetup dosfstools keyutils gdisk zip apt-show-versions
aptitude boot-info-script bootlogd dkms exim4 firmware-linux flac
fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs fluidsynth* gpm lame lynx-cur mc
mlocate normalize-audio mutt ntp p7zip-full paps pdftk
printer-driver-cups-pdf putty putty-doc python-doc python3.5-doc
python-reportlab realpath scrot setcd smartmontools sox strace
texlive-luatex* timidity tnef unifont uudeview wicd-curses xournal
xpdf xzgv xzoom youtube-dl* apt-listbugs emacs emacs24-common-non-dfsg
hwdata hwinfo info inxi jpeginfo firmware-ipw2x00
ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 linux-source alsa-utils arandr aumix-gtk
audacious-plugins audacity evince font-manager fvwm get-flash-videos*

(where * marks the relatively hungry ones), gnumeric will add:

hunspell-en-us enchant libaa1 libdv4 libshout3
gstreamer1.0-plugins-good lp-solve yelp libyelp0 pxlib1 fonts-dejavu
libhyphen0 libsuitesparseconfig4 libgsf-1-114 gnumeric-doc
libgoffice-0.10-10 gnumeric-common gnome-user-guide libaspell15
yelp-xsl libtag1v5 libgsf-1-common libcolamd2 libenchant1c2a
fonts-dejavu-extra gstreamer1.0-x libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 aspell
libgoffice-0.10-10-common libhunspell-1.4-0 libtag1v5-vanilla gnumeric
libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 libxslt1.1 aspell-en

> I'm not aware of a 'simple' spreadsheet, as it is the kind of
> application that begs for feature-creep. Synaptic turns up sc, which I
> know nothing about, but the description doesn't look compatible with
> 'simple', unless the user interface is similar to something you already
> know.

Cheers,
David.

password hash in shadow file

[Adam Weremczuk]

Hi all,

I've just spotted that on one of my old wheezy servers root entry in 
/etc/shadow was updated just over 3 weeks ago.


The root password is still the same and the lastchanged count is much 
higher than 3 weeks.


The difference I've noticed is the hashed password string being much longer.

It's now prefixed with $6$ (SHA-512 algorithm) comparing with $1$ (MD5) 
before the change.


My first suspect was a security patch but the system was not updated 
around that time.


Has anybody seen this before and could explain?

Thanks
Adam

Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[Mike McClain]

Thank you David.
As it happens I have util-linux installed but as with most of Gnu/Linux
there are hundreds of programs I've never used and don't know what do.
Appreciate the heads-up.
Mike

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 08:49:58PM +1100, David wrote:
> On 13 March 2018 at 14:40, Mike McClain  wrote:
> >
> > If my other computer is South40 and I want to mount South40's /docs
> > on my /south40/docs/ directory I can do that. As one script calls
> > another I want to know if I need to mount South40 without
> > $( mount | grep 'south40/docs').
> >
> > Suggestions?
>
> Installing the package util-linux will provide the mountpoint command
> which exits true=0 if its argument is in use as a mountpoint. Example:
>
> $ if mountpoint / ; then echo "exit status is $?" ; fi
> / is a mountpoint
> exit status is 0

--
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...
It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the
opposite direction."   - Albert Einstein

Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[Mike McClain]

Thank you Richard.
I suspect $(grep /south40/docs/ /proc/mounts) would be faster than
$( mount | grep 'south40/docs').
And I'm sure [ -f /south40/docs/.flag ] would be.
Much obliged.
Mike

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 05:37:07PM +1300, Richard Hector wrote:
> On 13/03/18 16:40, Mike McClain wrote:
> > If my other computer is South40 and I want to mount South40's /docs
> > on my /south40/docs/ directory I can do that. As one script calls
> > another I want to know if I need to mount South40 without
> > $( mount | grep 'south40/docs').
>
> You could look at /proc/mounts, but that's similar to the output of mount.
>
> Or if it's for a specific directory, and you can put something in it,
> you can test for the existence of a special file in the directory.
>
> Something like
>
> [ -f /south40/docs/.flag ]
>
> Richard
>
--
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...
It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the
opposite direction."   - Albert Einstein

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Jude DaShiell]

Oleo is now no longer supported and support for that spreadsheet ended 
in 2001.  However there is good news.  A program called neoleo can be 
found and built and neoleo is the successor to oleo and is under active 
support.  The neoleo program can work in text or graphics now.  I doubt 
debian has neoleo 6.0 available though which is why I didn't mention it 
in my response.  I run archlinux here and if I can ever get stretch to 
properly boot after an install I may put that on one of my hard drives 
and use it too.


On Tue, 13 Mar 2018, Toma? ?olc wrote:


Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2018 05:49:28
From: Toma? ?olc 
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Simple spreadsheet program.
Resent-Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2018 09:49:51 + (UTC)
Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org

Years ago I used to work with GNU Oleo in a text terminal.

https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/oleo.html

I see it's been removed from Debian in 2009 though.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=526212

Best regards
Toma?




--

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[tomas]

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On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 10:54:15AM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:
> On 2018-03-13 10:04 AM, Albretch Mueller wrote:
> >  I have a group of kids that are very good in Math and they want to
> >learn some actual programming
> >
> >  My approach is to introduce them to the basics of coding using ANSI
> >C, C++ and java (so they learn what pointers are about, how patterns
> >are coded in different languages, ...)
> >
> >  Is there a blend with those ANSI C, C++ and java as well as eclipse
> >installed, so that they can use it from a DVD Debian live version?
> >
> >  lbrtchx
> >
> Exposing children to C and/or C++ should be considered abuse.  :)
> 
> Similarly exposing pointers is just a method of introducing bugs and
> security holes into programs.

Uh-oh :)

> Teach them using a decent object oriented language first so they
> learn how to write good programs.

No! A functional language! Object oriented languages are wrong!
Linear types FTW! Multi-paradigm! Strongly typed! Dynamically
typed -- no, statically typed!

Oh, wait...

Remember:

 1) All generalizations suck.
 2) Language wars are generally a loss of time.

That noniwthstanding, this is going to be a long thread.
(Disclosure: I don't share your opinion, FWIW).

Cheers
- -- t
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Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[Greg Wooledge]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 07:51:32AM -0700, Mike McClain wrote:
> Thank you Richard.
> I suspect $(grep /south40/docs/ /proc/mounts) would be faster than

But that would be wrong, because it would incorrectly return "true"
if you have something mounted at /south40/docs/subdir or /media/south40/docs/
(or if there is a device that contains the string "/south40/docs/"
somewhere in its name, etc.).

Use the mountpoint command instead.  This is why it exists.  (Use the
-q option in a shell script to suppress the human-readable output.)

Re: password hash in shadow file

[tomas]

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On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 03:18:35PM +, Adam Weremczuk wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've just spotted that on one of my old wheezy servers root entry in
> /etc/shadow was updated just over 3 weeks ago.
> 
> The root password is still the same and the lastchanged count is
> much higher than 3 weeks.
> 
> The difference I've noticed is the hashed password string being much longer.
> 
> It's now prefixed with $6$ (SHA-512 algorithm) comparing with $1$
> (MD5) before the change.

Of course, moving off MD5 makes some sense. It's not burning a hole
in your system's security in this case [1], but MD5 is a bit old these
days.

> My first suspect was a security patch but the system was not updated
> around that time.
> 
> Has anybody seen this before and could explain?

What I don't understand is how the system changed the hashing
method without getting you involved. You don't remember having
had to enter the root password?

That would be strange.

Cheers

[1] /etc/shadow isn't world-readable, so if you have someone
on your system capable of reading it, you're already in hot
water; and if you have copies of /etc/shadow around there,
well... you encrypt your system backups, do you?

The only credible threat model remaining is that someone(TM)
accesses your hard disk "from the side", e.g. booting a rescue
system or taking to the screwdriver.

- -- t
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Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[David Wright]

On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 21:31:00 (+1100), Erik Christiansen wrote:
> On 13.03.18 09:59, Joe wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 20:42:08 +1100
> > Erik Christiansen  wrote:
> > > An sc description: "Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and
> > > it has most features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things
> > > like graphing and saving in foreign formats. It's very stable and
> > > quite easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it."
> > > makes it look as simple as it gets.
> > > 
> > > Erik
> > > (Who just uses a line of awk when needing to sum a column or two in a
> > > table.)
> > > 
> > 
> > It's the 'little effort' that stood out for me. Someone familiar with
> > the operation of a piece of software always grossly underestimates how
> > much they know about it, and how much someone else coming to it cold
> > needs to know.
> 
> Too true. After a couple of hours of failing to get any GUI drawing
> package, not least LibreOffice, to do anything useful, I used Vim to
> textually produce the 8 drawings for my house; plan, elevations &
> sections, and site plan. It took about 800 lines of Postscript, and I
> didn't have to crack the inscrutable secrets of an obstructive GUI
> interface.

OTOH the results of your work were highly scrutable?

/door% S: length (door width)
{ dup
/wall_length exch wall_length add 60 add def % Keep global variable outside 
dict scope.
  1 dict begin  % 60 = 2*30 jambs.
  /length exch def  % Take length off the stack.
  30 100 box
  currentpoint translate 
  0 length lineto length length length 0 length arct 30 100 box gstroke
  gsave 200 300 moveto length buf cvs show   % Size 
text.
  grestore
  end  % End of local var scope.  
} def

> But I persevered with the Eagle GUI schematic capture & PCB layout app,
> putting in the weeks to tame it.
> 
> It probably comes down to whether you think you'll ever use it again.

In the case of spreadsheets, I think anyone leaving school should be
able to use one to do simple finance/budgeting calculations, just as
using a calculator was necessary for pupils in the past. That didn't
mean the latter had to be familiar with an RPN interface (like the
original HP models), but just the basic infix interface that most
calculators had.

In the case of the OP, "I need to do some work quickly" indicates that
the interface is more important than the underlying complexity that the
computer deals with. That said, I have no idea what the OP was
trying to do. If LaTeX was a good fit last time, it sounds as if they
wanted to print a table of non-calculated information in a neat and
tidy format, for which I might gravitate to a text file with tabs.

Cheers,
David.

Re: password hash in shadow file

[Adam Weremczuk]

I think it was me invoking "passwd" as root and aborting (ctrl+D) 
without making any changes.

Would that be enough to update the shadow file?


On 13/03/18 15:47, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

What I don't understand is how the system changed the hashing
method without getting you involved. You don't remember having
had to enter the root password?

That would be strange.

Cheers

Re: password hash in shadow file

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 04:01:52PM +, Adam Weremczuk wrote:
> I think it was me invoking "passwd" as root and aborting (ctrl+D)
> without making any changes.
> Would that be enough to update the shadow file?

Hm. That depends on which point you invoked abort at, but naively
I'd say "no". Note that the system doesn't "know" your password,
only its hash -- so if it succeeded in storing the SHA-1 of your
password (you say it didn't change, did you?) without you telling
it, then it would have to crack your MD5 password hash.

Still strange. Are you sure that you stopped "passwd" early enough?
Had you entered the password already? Twice?

Cheers
- -- t
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x6sAnRpH4q2J9UqbT7aypggmxFLaIhjH
=qwpf
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: password hash in shadow file

[Sven Hartge]

Adam Weremczuk  wrote:

> I think it was me invoking "passwd" as root and aborting (ctrl+D)
> without making any changes.  Would that be enough to update the shadow
> file?

No.

You can't reverse a hash and to generate a new hash the code needs the
password for the user in plain. 

Grüße,
Sven.

-- 
Sigmentation fault. Core dumped.

Re: password hash in shadow file

[Adam Weremczuk]

Quite possibly I changed it to the same password.
Not sure now as it was almost a month ago but can't find any better 
explanation.

Of course hashes are meant to be irreversible.
I guess I'm trying to catch my own shadow ;)


On 13/03/18 16:19, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

Still strange. Are you sure that you stopped "passwd" early enough?
Had you entered the password already? Twice?

Re: password hash in shadow file

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 05:25:18PM +0100, Sven Hartge wrote:
> Adam Weremczuk  wrote:
> 
> > I think it was me invoking "passwd" as root and aborting (ctrl+D)
> > without making any changes.  Would that be enough to update the shadow
> > file?
> 
> No.
> 
> You can't reverse a hash and to generate a new hash the code needs the
> password for the user in plain. 

Well, to be fair, the change to SHA-1 is because you can "reverse"
MD5 all too easily (where reverse just means that you find something
which hashes to a given hash, which hasn't to resemble your original
password all too much). Usually you want this something to have
some properties to be useful.

But I don't think your operating system is going to do that behind
your back ;-)

Cheers
- -- t
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BlUAn2c3RW8xuj751aC6LxJt+0T9udPT
=SGi/
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Gary Dale]

On 2018-03-13 11:38 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 10:54:15AM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:

On 2018-03-13 10:04 AM, Albretch Mueller wrote:

  I have a group of kids that are very good in Math and they want to
learn some actual programming

  My approach is to introduce them to the basics of coding using ANSI
C, C++ and java (so they learn what pointers are about, how patterns
are coded in different languages, ...)

  Is there a blend with those ANSI C, C++ and java as well as eclipse
installed, so that they can use it from a DVD Debian live version?

  lbrtchx


Exposing children to C and/or C++ should be considered abuse.  :)

Similarly exposing pointers is just a method of introducing bugs and
security holes into programs.

Uh-oh :)


Teach them using a decent object oriented language first so they
learn how to write good programs.

No! A functional language! Object oriented languages are wrong!
Linear types FTW! Multi-paradigm! Strongly typed! Dynamically
typed -- no, statically typed!

Oh, wait...

Remember:

  1) All generalizations suck.
  2) Language wars are generally a loss of time.

That noniwthstanding, this is going to be a long thread.
(Disclosure: I don't share your opinion, FWIW).

Cheers
- -- t
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We're not talking about the pros and cons of specific languages but 
rather about how to teach children to write programs. Focusing on things 
like pointers is fundamentally wrong. You need to teach them things like 
breaking down problems into manageable parts and assembling parts into 
complex wholes.

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 01:01:22PM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:

[...]

> We're not talking about the pros and cons of specific languages but
> rather about how to teach children to write programs. Focusing on
> things like pointers is fundamentally wrong. You need to teach them
> things like breaking down problems into manageable parts and
> assembling parts into complex wholes.

Even there: generalizations suck. I probably wouldn't choose C
these days myself, but hey, that'd depend strongly on the child.

Nor would I choose Rust or Go or Java. Perhaps Python, perhaps
Scratch, or (who knows) Logo. Perhaps Lua or Scheme. But for
someone very technically (as in bits and wires) oriented...
why not C? I'd take a look at the child in question!

There are many languages. I always cringe when I hear someone
say "Language X shouldn't exist!" (who knows, perhaps that's
true of COBOL, but even this...).

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Roberto C . Sánchez]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 01:01:22PM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:
> We're not talking about the pros and cons of specific languages but rather
> about how to teach children to write programs. Focusing on things like
> pointers is fundamentally wrong. You need to teach them things like breaking
> down problems into manageable parts and assembling parts into complex
> wholes.
> 

To be fair, *you* are talking about "how to teach children to write
programs." The OP specifically asked about how to obtain a Debian blend
with a specific set of features/capabilities. The mention of his
instructional approach was incidental to the actual question. You
decided it would be more helpful to criticize his proposed instructional
approach. I wonder if the OP feels that your comments have been helpful.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

Re: password hash in shadow file

[David Wright]

On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 15:18:35 (+), Adam Weremczuk wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've just spotted that on one of my old wheezy servers root entry in
> /etc/shadow was updated just over 3 weeks ago.

Take a look at the end of a file and see if a new user/system account
has been added recently when you installed a package.
Examples: clamav logcheck avahi ntop and even debian-security-support.

If that doesn't turn up anything, just scan for the highest number
in the 3rd field. Then type (where 16933 is your number):

$ date -d "1970-01-01 +16933 days"
Thu May 12 00:00:00 CDT 2016
$

and that ought to match the last-modified timestamp.

(That example is for debian-security-support going onto one of my
wheezy systems.)

> The root password is still the same and the lastchanged count is
> much higher than 3 weeks.
> 
> The difference I've noticed is the hashed password string being much longer.
> 
> It's now prefixed with $6$ (SHA-512 algorithm) comparing with $1$
> (MD5) before the change.

Should we assume that you have evidence of the root entry with an MD5
indication but the same number in the 3rd entry as you have now?

> My first suspect was a security patch but the system was not updated
> around that time.
> 
> Has anybody seen this before and could explain?

No. Lacking a backup of shadow with an MD5 indication, all I can say
is that the same process must have been carried out here on all my
systems, and whatever that process was, it happened before 12 Sep 2016.
Doesn't seem likely.

That's the last time this backup wheezy system was booted up, and
shadow shows
file last modification 21 April 2014
birth of root password  3 April 2014
shadow root entry: root:$6$…:16163:0:9:7:::
shadow last entry: apt-cacher-ng:*:16182:0:9:7:::

Cheers,
David.

Re: Completely disable Hibernation

[coco...@t-online.de]

Hi,

I've been kicked off the debian-user list (again) because my mail
provider keeps bouncing debian-user emails (and _only_ debian-user
emails, for some reason). Please respond _to the list_ and I'll catch
replies in the archives.  Thanks.

Felix Miata wrote:
> Remove resume= and include 
> noresume in all bootloader stanza(s) is how
> I do it.

I'm afraid I don't know what any of that means, I'm afraid.  Could you
expand?

Stefan wrote:
> a hackish way you can do it is by adding
>
>touch /var/run/do-not-hibernate
>
> to your /etc/rc.local.

I'll try this, thanks.

I've come across the following potential answer:

> sudo systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target
hybrid-sleep.target

However, I'm concerned that may disable normal suspend as well as
hibernate.  Anyone know for sure?

Also, how do I remove Hibernate from the Shut Down… dialogue/applet? 
All I could find was this:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/remove-suspend-and-hibernate-from-the-shut-down-applet-877889/

It suggests modifying
/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.upower.policy, but I don't
have this file.

Thanks.

Debian on flash a store.

[peter]

Hi,

https://wiki.debian.org/RunningOnFlash has some discussion and tips 
about basing the system in a flash store.  Also the introduction of 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 states "ext2 is still the 
filesystem of choice for flash-based storage media ... because its 
lack of a journal increases performance and minimizes the number of 
writes, ... However, recent Linux kernels support a journal-less mode 
of ext4 which provides benefits not found with ext2." Oddly, the 
Debian wiki article has no mention of journaling.

Can anyone recommend an authoritative and comprehensive article about 
running a Linux system from a flash store?

Thanks,  ... Peter E.





-- 

This message was transmitted by software carefully written to avoid
the vulnerability and additional overhead of antivirus software.

123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789
Tel: +1 360 639 0202  Pender Is.: +1 250 629 3757
http://easthope.ca/Peter.html  Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

Re: Completely disable Hibernation

[Felix Miata]

coco...@t-online.de composed on 2018-03-13 18:13 (UTC+0100):

> Felix Miata wrote:

>> Remove resume= and include 
>> noresume in all bootloader stanza(s) is how
>> I do it.

> I'm afraid I don't know what any of that means, I'm afraid.  Could you
> expand?

After you turn on your PC, and the PC's branding and/or BIOS information
screen(s) clear, you should get a brief menu that offers an opportunity to
select how to proceed. Usually that opportunity is presented by a bootloader
application named Grub, which in Stretch is version 2.0x.

The menu you see is a result of the content in /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
/boot/grub/grub.cfg is created programmatically whenever a kernel is added or
removed and various other times. The programming that creates it can be
customized by user changes to the files in /etc/grub.d/ and in 
/etc/default/grub.

You can change the behavior of any particular boot by striking the "e" key when
the boot menu appears, then adding, removing or modifying what appears on the
screen after striking the "e" key. It is at this point that you can remove the
current stanza string that begins with "resume=", or modify it to prepend "no"
and remove the characters that follow "=".

If the boot-time edit produces a result you wish to keep, you should modify
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX in the file /etc/default/grub
to include "noresume". Once that is done, the next time /boot/grub/grub.cfg is
rebuilt via grub-mkconfig or update-grub your changes will be automatically
incorporated.

cf.




(stanza)
$ man /etc/default/grub


An additional option to answer the original question would be to reconfigure
swap to be smaller than the amount of installed RAM.
-- 
"Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you
get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation)

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: password hash in shadow file

[Sven Hartge]

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 05:25:18PM +0100, Sven Hartge wrote:
>> Adam Weremczuk  wrote:

>>> I think it was me invoking "passwd" as root and aborting (ctrl+D)
>>> without making any changes.  Would that be enough to update the
>>> shadow file?
 
>> No.
>> 
>> You can't reverse a hash and to generate a new hash the code needs
>> the password for the user in plain. 

> Well, to be fair, the change to SHA-1 is because you can "reverse" MD5
> all too easily 

Yes, basically.

> But I don't think your operating system is going to do that behind
> your back ;-)

It would be quite obvious when just starting "passwd" takes several days
while it cracks your MD5 hash to replace it with a stronger one ;)

But on that note: I wonder of one could create a PAM module which will
do just that on successful login. Once you *know* you have the right
password (and the PAM system has that knowledge including the plain text
password the user entered) just rehash it and update /etc/shadow.

This will gradually upgrade all hashes once a user uses an account.

S°

-- 
Sigmentation fault. Core dumped.

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[deloptes]

Albretch Mueller wrote:

> I have a group of kids that are very good in Math and they want to
> learn some actual programming
> 
> My approach is to introduce them to the basics of coding using ANSI
> C, C++ and java (so they learn what pointers are about, how patterns
> are coded in different languages, ...)
> 
> Is there a blend with those ANSI C, C++ and java as well as eclipse
> installed, so that they can use it from a DVD Debian live version?

When I was a kid (~10y/o perhaps 1983) and good in maths, we started with
BASIC.
Through my studies I learned a lot about brain development and brain
function. Example: from the 7-14y the logic center in the brain develops,
so everything that has to do with maths can be easily learned (physics,
chemistry etc.)

To sum up, the best approach IMO is to 
- base everything on a game (something with rules and goals)
- explain computer architecture (as part of the game) what is doing what and
what is a purpose of a program, how a computer and a program work. 
 If they are good in maths you can tell how we came to computers from Kepler
to Turing
- select a simple language (as was mentioned functional is good) to
introduce idea of variable, condition and logical operator (BASIC is good
for that), loops and simple functions
- also very useful is to combine it with something rational (example:
microelectronics + BASIC - I have seen some good sets, or image
manipulation - but I don't know how good BASIC fits there). The point is
something they would touch at the end.
- I think kids would be good with binary logic too.

Later you can go on into details like stack, memory, pointer etc.
For OOP you need a notion of ontology (inheritance, overloading, etc).
Unfort. at the time I started, there was no C++. If I recall correctly I got
my first C book in 1987.


Let me know what is the outcome (use my mail please).

regards

Re: Completely disable Hibernation

[Abdullah Ramazanoglu]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:34:44 -0400
Felix Miata  wrote:

> An additional option to answer the original question would be to
> reconfigure swap to be smaller than the amount of installed RAM.

Swap space needed for hibernation is considerably less than available
RAM. It is reported in "/sys/power/image_size". E.g. I have 4G RAM and
I need just 1,5G swap to be able to hibernate.

~$ cat /sys/power/image_size
1608998912

So I would suggest a swap size of about a quarter of physical RAM in
order to make hibernation impossible.

-- 
Abdullah Ramazanoglu

Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:49:56 +0100
 wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 10:33:43PM +0900, Mark Fletcher wrote:

> > >   
> > Unless I've misunderstood the question, you can tell if something
> > is mounted at a mount point by checking if anything is present
> > under the mount point [...]  
> 
> Not if the file system is really empty (and no, lost+found doesn't
> really count, since not all file systems have that).
> 

But one use-case is unattended synchronisation, possibly over a network.
If the directory is mounted, but with some kind of problem, then a check
for mounting could succeed without any data being visible to the
synchronising application. In the worst case, the backup directory
might be synchronised to an apparently empty one

I prefer to test for the existence of a known lower directory in this
case, which tests not only for mounting but for a successful read.

-- 
Joe

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 13:18:37 -0400
Roberto C. Sánchez  wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 01:01:22PM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:
> > We're not talking about the pros and cons of specific languages but
> > rather about how to teach children to write programs. Focusing on
> > things like pointers is fundamentally wrong. You need to teach them
> > things like breaking down problems into manageable parts and
> > assembling parts into complex wholes.
> >   
> 
> To be fair, *you* are talking about "how to teach children to write
> programs." The OP specifically asked about how to obtain a Debian
> blend with a specific set of features/capabilities. The mention of his
> instructional approach was incidental to the actual question. You
> decided it would be more helpful to criticize his proposed
> instructional approach. I wonder if the OP feels that your comments
> have been helpful.
> 

Hey, if he's paying, we answer the question he asked. If he's not, we
answer the question we want to answer. This is how the Internet works.

-- 
Joe

Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[The Wanderer]

On 2018-03-13 at 15:39, Joe wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:49:56 +0100  wrote:

>> On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 10:33:43PM +0900, Mark Fletcher wrote:

>>> Unless I've misunderstood the question, you can tell if
>>> something is mounted at a mount point by checking if anything is
>>> present under the mount point [...]
>> 
>> Not if the file system is really empty (and no, lost+found doesn't 
>> really count, since not all file systems have that).
> 
> But one use-case is unattended synchronisation, possibly over a
> network. If the directory is mounted, but with some kind of problem,
> then a check for mounting could succeed without any data being
> visible to the synchronising application. In the worst case, the
> backup directory might be synchronised to an apparently empty
> one
> 
> I prefer to test for the existence of a known lower directory in
> this case, which tests not only for mounting but for a successful
> read.

That test can be spoofed, however, by the creation of a directory with
the same name (and/or other characteristics) under the mount point while
the mount is not active.

Even if you don't think anything malicious is ever going to try to spoof
this in whatever case is at hand, can you be sure no script (or, for
that matter, user) will ever attempt to create that directory under the
mistaken impression that the mount is active?

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: password hash in shadow file

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 07:36:19PM +0100, Sven Hartge wrote:
> to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

[...]

> > Well, to be fair, the change to SHA-1 is because you can "reverse" MD5
> > all too easily 
> 
> Yes, basically.
> 
> > But I don't think your operating system is going to do that behind
> > your back ;-)
> 
> It would be quite obvious when just starting "passwd" takes several days
> while it cracks your MD5 hash to replace it with a stronger one ;)

And possibly eat through a disk or two (or are rainbow tables
superfluous with current GPUs? I don't know).

All that to choose quite probably a *different* password which happens
to hash to the same MD5. Login no more possible, but now secure :)

> But on that note: I wonder of one could create a PAM module which will
> do just that on successful login. Once you *know* you have the right
> password (and the PAM system has that knowledge including the plain text
> password the user entered) just rehash it and update /etc/shadow.
> 
> This will gradually upgrade all hashes once a user uses an account.

That would be downright sneaky :-)

Cheers
- -- t
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

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Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Cindy-Sue Causey]

On 3/13/18, to...@tuxteam.de  wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 10:54:15AM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:
>> On 2018-03-13 10:04 AM, Albretch Mueller wrote:
>> >  I have a group of kids that are very good in Math and they want to
>> >learn some actual programming
>> >
>> >  My approach is to introduce them to the basics of coding using ANSI
>> >C, C++ and java (so they learn what pointers are about, how patterns
>> >are coded in different languages, ...)
>> >
>> >  Is there a blend with those ANSI C, C++ and java as well as eclipse
>> >installed, so that they can use it from a DVD Debian live version?
>> >
>> >  lbrtchx
>> >
>> Exposing children to C and/or C++ should be considered abuse.  :)
>>
>> Similarly exposing pointers is just a method of introducing bugs and
>> security holes into programs.
>
> Uh-oh :)
>
>> Teach them using a decent object oriented language first so they
>> learn how to write good programs.
>
> No! A functional language! Object oriented languages are wrong!
> Linear types FTW! Multi-paradigm! Strongly typed! Dynamically
> typed -- no, statically typed!
>
> Oh, wait...
>
> Remember:
>
>  1) All generalizations suck.
>  2) Language wars are generally a loss of time.
>
> That noniwthstanding, this is going to be a long thread.
> (Disclosure: I don't share your opinion, FWIW).


PPS At the top > *waving* at FEXL (Function Expression Language)

https://fexl.com/

Forever imparted the mental image of... flubber. Can't help it... :D

Original thought process: So where does Ada fall into all of this? As
an upfront disclaimer, I found this detail at the very last before
posting:

License for the run-time library > Proprietary, royalty free.

I personally had never thought about that line of thinking while
contemplating what language to finally adopt.

Ada hit my radar a while back related to possibly either Debian Women
or Linux Chix or maybe about helping Debian in general (or Linux..
or kernelnewbies?). Can't find that original reference for nothin'
now.

Did find all of the following while on the hunt.

Programming Languages @ debian.org
https://wiki.debian.org/ProgrammingLanguage

Ada (programming language) @ Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)

Ada Information Clearinghouse, Resource Association
http://www.adaic.org/

Ada Programming
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming

Ada Programming Complete Chapters' List
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/All_Chapters

Ada Programming/Installing @ Wikibooks (run-time library reference is here)
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Installing

Rationale for Ada 2012 (I had trouble following this one)
http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/rationale12.html

Installable Ada Reference Manual 2005 *Debian Package*
ada-reference-manual-2005

AND 2012...
ada-reference-manual-2012

Debian Policy for Ada
https://people.debian.org/~lbrenta/debian-ada-policy.html

As an incidental aside, I have just now heard of the "how-can-i-help"
Debian archive package for the very first time:

https://wiki.debian.org/how-can-i-help

Just wandering through... :)

PS Almost forgot my 1983 library (hard) copy of Beginning Programming
with ADA by James A. Saxon. It has one rubber stamped
check-out/check-in reference in the back. 1984. University of San
Francisco Library. It's so clean and nearly perfect that I don't use
it so that I don't hurt it.. that's where the Internet comes in
handy. :)

Cindy :)
-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA

* runs with duct tape *

Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 03:56:00PM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2018-03-13 at 15:39, Joe wrote:

[...]

> > I prefer to test for the existence of a known lower directory in
> > this case, which tests not only for mounting but for a successful
> > read.
> 
> That test can be spoofed, however, by the creation of a directory with
> the same name (and/or other characteristics) under the mount point while
> the mount is not active.
> 
> Even if you don't think anything malicious is ever going to try to spoof
> this in whatever case is at hand, can you be sure no script (or, for
> that matter, user) will ever attempt to create that directory under the
> mistaken impression that the mount is active?

Seconded. That depends on what you want to achieve, but if this is some
kind of backup script, if it manages once (by mistake) to sync to the
mount point while no mount is active, it'll keep repeating that mistake
forever...

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 10:04:14 -0400
Albretch Mueller  wrote:

>  I have a group of kids that are very good in Math and they want to
> learn some actual programming
> 
>  My approach is to introduce them to the basics of coding using ANSI
> C, C++ and java (so they learn what pointers are about, how patterns
> are coded in different languages, ...)
> 
>  Is there a blend with those ANSI C, C++ and java as well as eclipse
> installed, so that they can use it from a DVD Debian live version?

I'm not aware of one, but then again I don't work in those areas. If I
had to do it, I'd make my own live DVD with those explicitly installed.

I think some of the random noise in the replies is due to your
juxtaposition of 'basics of coding' with 'pointers', and 'in different
languages'. 'Basics' to me is the business of learning how to translate
a real-world problem into a procedural language rather than the
technicalities of the language. I don't know how other people learn,
but my biggest problem with a new language is getting the concepts of
the syntax right and trying to forget the punctuation of the last
language I used... switching between similar but not identical
languages doesn't seem to me the way to go.

Still, let me add some noise of my own: I learned the basic concepts on
Fortran IV (on punched cards) which was certainly not optimal. The BBC,
in their drive to teach the country how to program, started children on
Logo and moved to BBC BASIC, which had eliminated most of the problems
of early BASICs such as Applesoft. As it happens, my first trial C
program used recursion with pointers, and worked first time, but I'd
encountered recursion in BBC BASIC (does the Towers of Hanoi have any
other purpose?) and had done some machine coding on the DG Nova which
involved considerable use of indirection.  

I might suggest other lines of approach, such as Lazarus (I learned the
outlines of OO on Borland Delphi) which mixes coding with visual
application building, or the use of Arduino hardware which is cheap and
very much real-world, and is supported well on Debian. Python is the
preferred language there, which can be OO if you like. In my youth we
were pretty impressed with being able to draw ASCII penguins on fanfold
paper (you guessed, my first Fortran program), but I think today's
children want to see more in the way of results than a few lines of
text.

-- 
Joe

Re: PAE or not PAE?

[Pascal Hambourg]

Le 13/03/2018 à 04:57, Joe Pfeiffer a écrit :

Gene Heskett  writes:


Both pae and hyperthreading take time, hyperthreading quite a bit more
than pae. With hyperthreading, to switch to the 2nd task, takes a
complete processor state stored on the stack, the stack pointer reloaded
to point at the image of the 2nd task, then pull the full register dump
for task 2 back into the processor.


What you describe is software multi-threading/multi-tasking, not 
hyperthreading.



This doesn't correlate with my understanding of the process.  My
understanding, and every block diagram I've seen of a processor capable
of hyperthreading, has a separate set of architectural registers for
every thread.


I agree.


The processor does need to start refilling the pipeline
on a thread switch


I don't think so, because IIUC there is not thread switch. Both threads 
instructions can be executed in parallel as long as they do not use the 
same resource.



I will agree that it increases the unpredictability of execution time,


This is the endless trade-off between thoughput and response time.

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 10:22:23 -0500
David Wright  wrote:

> On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 08:59:00 (+), Joe wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:13:33 +1100
> > terryc  wrote:
> >   
> > > What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> > > Stretch. I need to do some work quickly
> > > 
> > > hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question
> > > again. I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a
> > > simple spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a
> > > LaTex document then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.
> > >   
> > 
> > 'The' alternative spreadsheet is gnumeric, but it's some years
> > since I used it last. I recall it as being a bit less Excel-like
> > than LibreOffice (OpenOffice then) but that might be different now.
> > If you don't have any other Gnome stuff, gnumeric is likely to pull
> > in quite a lot of dependencies.  
> 
> Yes, on a new stretch (print/SSH/standard utilities) with the
> following installed already:
> 
> etckeeper cryptsetup dosfstools keyutils gdisk zip apt-show-versions
> aptitude boot-info-script bootlogd dkms exim4 firmware-linux flac
> fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs fluidsynth* gpm lame lynx-cur mc
> mlocate normalize-audio mutt ntp p7zip-full paps pdftk
> printer-driver-cups-pdf putty putty-doc python-doc python3.5-doc
> python-reportlab realpath scrot setcd smartmontools sox strace
> texlive-luatex* timidity tnef unifont uudeview wicd-curses xournal
> xpdf xzgv xzoom youtube-dl* apt-listbugs emacs emacs24-common-non-dfsg
> hwdata hwinfo info inxi jpeginfo firmware-ipw2x00
> ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 linux-source alsa-utils arandr aumix-gtk
> audacious-plugins audacity evince font-manager fvwm get-flash-videos*
> 
> (where * marks the relatively hungry ones), gnumeric will add:
> 
> hunspell-en-us enchant libaa1 libdv4 libshout3
> gstreamer1.0-plugins-good lp-solve yelp libyelp0 pxlib1 fonts-dejavu
> libhyphen0 libsuitesparseconfig4 libgsf-1-114 gnumeric-doc
> libgoffice-0.10-10 gnumeric-common gnome-user-guide libaspell15
> yelp-xsl libtag1v5 libgsf-1-common libcolamd2 libenchant1c2a
> fonts-dejavu-extra gstreamer1.0-x libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 aspell
> libgoffice-0.10-10-common libhunspell-1.4-0 libtag1v5-vanilla gnumeric
> libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 libxslt1.1 aspell-en
> 

I think you may be collecting 'recommendeds' there. I've had gnumeric
installed for many years, and don't have, for example, enchant.

-- 
Joe

Re: quick scripting 'is /P/Q mounted'

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 15:56:00 -0400
The Wanderer  wrote:

> On 2018-03-13 at 15:39, Joe wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:49:56 +0100  wrote:  
> 
> >> On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 10:33:43PM +0900, Mark Fletcher wrote:  
> 
> >>> Unless I've misunderstood the question, you can tell if
> >>> something is mounted at a mount point by checking if anything is
> >>> present under the mount point [...]  
> >> 
> >> Not if the file system is really empty (and no, lost+found doesn't 
> >> really count, since not all file systems have that).  
> > 
> > But one use-case is unattended synchronisation, possibly over a
> > network. If the directory is mounted, but with some kind of problem,
> > then a check for mounting could succeed without any data being
> > visible to the synchronising application. In the worst case, the
> > backup directory might be synchronised to an apparently empty
> > one
> > 
> > I prefer to test for the existence of a known lower directory in
> > this case, which tests not only for mounting but for a successful
> > read.  
> 
> That test can be spoofed, however, by the creation of a directory with
> the same name (and/or other characteristics) under the mount point
> while the mount is not active.
> 
> Even if you don't think anything malicious is ever going to try to
> spoof this in whatever case is at hand, can you be sure no script
> (or, for that matter, user) will ever attempt to create that
> directory under the mistaken impression that the mount is active?
> 

Reasonably, because the only program likely to create it would be the
synchroniser itself, which should have been prevented from running
because it wasn't there to start with. If it did happen, nothing
would be getting wiped, just a spurious copy created on a drive that
doesn't contain any system stuff, so I wouldn't worry too much. The
wiping of one of the sync targets *might* be catastrophic (and might
lead to the other getting wiped on the next sync) and is completely
unacceptable.

Yes, synchronisers do have some protection against this kind of error,
but I like to use belt, braces, and skyhooks when available.

Should I worry about your scenario, I could take it further, with
utterly improbably-named directories or files containing specific data,
but so far I haven't.

-- 
Joe

-- 
Joe

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 16:22:43 -0400
Cindy-Sue Causey  wrote:


> Original thought process: So where does Ada fall into all of this? As
> an upfront disclaimer, I found this detail at the very last before
> posting:
> 
> License for the run-time library > Proprietary, royalty free.
> 
> I personally had never thought about that line of thinking while
> contemplating what language to finally adopt.
> 

Depends on what you're doing: I gave up on Delphi when the cheap
hobbyist version stopped being licensed for distribution of compiled
code (there was no run-time) and I couldn't justify the price of the
'professional' version just to play with. As it happens, I only ever
sold one program, but I liked to think that I could if I was able to
find a buyer for anything.

-- 
Joe

Re: Debian on flash a store.

[Pascal Hambourg]

Le 13/03/2018 à 18:26, pe...@easthope.ca a écrit :


https://wiki.debian.org/RunningOnFlash has some discussion and tips
about basing the system in a flash store.


USB drives and SD cards are very different from SSDs. You cannot use 
them in the same way. AFAIK, USB drives and SD cards do not support 
TRIM/discard.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 states "ext2 is still the
filesystem of choice for flash-based storage media ... because its
lack of a journal increases performance and minimizes the number of
writes, ... However, recent Linux kernels support a journal-less mode
of ext4 which provides benefits not found with ext2." Oddly, the
Debian wiki article has no mention of journaling.


Ext2 is obsolete. If you don't want journalling, just use ext4 with 
journalling turned off. I didn't know this was a recent feature.


Also, I am surprised that these articles do not mention "flash friendly" 
log-structured filesystems such as F2FS or NILFS2. They may need to be 
updated.

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Curt]

On 2018-03-13, Joe  wrote:
>> 
>> Yes, on a new stretch (print/SSH/standard utilities) with the
>> following installed already:
>> 
>> etckeeper cryptsetup dosfstools keyutils gdisk zip apt-show-versions
>> aptitude boot-info-script bootlogd dkms exim4 firmware-linux flac
>> fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs fluidsynth* gpm lame lynx-cur mc
>> mlocate normalize-audio mutt ntp p7zip-full paps pdftk
>> printer-driver-cups-pdf putty putty-doc python-doc python3.5-doc
>> python-reportlab realpath scrot setcd smartmontools sox strace
>> texlive-luatex* timidity tnef unifont uudeview wicd-curses xournal
>> xpdf xzgv xzoom youtube-dl* apt-listbugs emacs emacs24-common-non-dfsg
>> hwdata hwinfo info inxi jpeginfo firmware-ipw2x00
>> ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 linux-source alsa-utils arandr aumix-gtk
>> audacious-plugins audacity evince font-manager fvwm get-flash-videos*
>> 
>> (where * marks the relatively hungry ones), gnumeric will add:
>> 
>> hunspell-en-us enchant libaa1 libdv4 libshout3
>> gstreamer1.0-plugins-good lp-solve yelp libyelp0 pxlib1 fonts-dejavu
>> libhyphen0 libsuitesparseconfig4 libgsf-1-114 gnumeric-doc
>> libgoffice-0.10-10 gnumeric-common gnome-user-guide libaspell15
>> yelp-xsl libtag1v5 libgsf-1-common libcolamd2 libenchant1c2a
>> fonts-dejavu-extra gstreamer1.0-x libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 aspell
>> libgoffice-0.10-10-common libhunspell-1.4-0 libtag1v5-vanilla gnumeric
>> libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 libxslt1.1 aspell-en
>> 
>
> I think you may be collecting 'recommendeds' there. I've had gnumeric
> installed for many years, and don't have, for example, enchant.
>

I'm disenchanted too.

curty@einstein:~$ apt depends gnumeric
gnumeric
  PreDepends: debconf
  Depends: gnumeric-common (= 1.12.32-1)
 |Depends: debconf (>= 0.5)
  Depends: 
cdebconf
debconf
  Depends: libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.12.4)
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.23)
  Depends: libcairo2 (>= 1.10.0)
  Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.25.2)
  Depends: libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.37.3)
  Depends: libgoffice-0.10-10 (>= 0.10.28)
  Depends: libgsf-1-114 (>= 1.14.24)
  Depends: libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.19.12)
  Depends: libpango-1.0-0 (>= 1.22.0)
  Depends: libpangocairo-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0)
  Depends: libxml2 (>= 2.7.4)
  Depends: pxlib1 (>= 0.5.0)
  Depends: zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4)
  Depends: gsfonts
  Depends: procps
procps:i386
  Breaks: gnumeric-common (<< 1.12.2)
  Breaks: gnumeric-doc (<< 1.12.32)
  Recommends: gnumeric-doc (>= 1.12.32)
 |Recommends: evince
  Recommends: evince-gtk
  Recommends: lp-solve
  Suggests: gnumeric-plugins-extra
 |Suggests: fonts-liberation
  Suggests: ttf-mscorefonts-installer
  Replaces: gnumeric-common (<< 1.12.2)

-- 
Bah, the latest news, the latest news is not the last.
Samuel Beckett

Debian v.9.2.1 DVDs - how long are they good for?

[Nomen Nescio]

I downloaded some Debian v.9.2.1 DVDs and I would like
to know how long they are useful. In other words, how long
may I retain them as install DVDs and upgrade once it has
been installed and put on-line?

Also, how often would I need to replace/download new versions
of the .ISOs (to ensure I could update/upgrade once installed
and on-line). I know there are other ways to go about this,
but I prefer to carry these install DVDs to make it easier
for installing onto my systems and clients. TIA.

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

On 13/03/18 16:13, terryc wrote:

What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
Stretch. I need to do some work quickly
hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question again.
I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.


Is your goal calculation or the preparation of tables for documents?

I also long avoided the complexity of LibreOffice Calc, but a modest 
investment of time has left me satisfied with the results. Things I like:


- Flexible CSV import/export. I like to manipulate CSV files with grep, 
perl, and geany, and then import into Calc. Nothing is quicker than 
Ctrl-D in a text editor for deleting unwanted rows. I also use a regex 
to convert all dates to (for example) ISO 8601 here as fixing date 
values in Calc can be painful (but formatting is easy with Ctrl-1). Then 
CSV import to slurp it into Calc, delete unwanted columns, and copy and 
paste into the target sheet.


- Copy a rectangular subset in Calc then Paste Special / HTML in Writer 
is an easy way to get calculated tables into a PDF document.


- Interoperability with Windows users via DOCX gives them something they 
can alter.


LibreOffice can be daunting at first but I found that a little 
persistence went a long way. Even from my perspective as a TeX/LaTeX 
user and programmer with much experience in data ingestion and 
reporting, LibreOffice lets me get small things done more quickly. I 
recommend it.


You can use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, producing delicious nut 
butter, if you do not mind the crunchy bits of shell.  :-)


Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Michael Stone]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 04:22:43PM -0400, Cindy-Sue Causey wrote:

So where does Ada fall into all of this?


I used to really like Ada. I haven't really thought about it in more 
than 15 years. At this point I'd wonder why pick it instead of something 
either optimized for teaching or remotely likely to be encountered 
later.


Mike Stone

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

On 14/03/18 06:12, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

Perhaps Python


+1 for Python as a first language. What ages and areas of interest? 
Debian Live will have some Python and text editors. I also recommend 
that you check out PyGame, SciPy, and Jupyter.


Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

now that Python on vanilla Debian Live is found as answer to the actual
question, let me show my favorite among those languages which i never
tried:

  http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet/samples.html


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[deloptes]

Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

> I also long avoided the complexity of LibreOffice Calc, but a modest
> investment of time has left me satisfied with the results.

+1

I use Apache OO, and there is very good documentation such that in 1-2
minutes I could find answer to any of my question and complete the task.

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Liam O'Toole]

On 2018-03-13,   wrote:

[...]

>  1) All generalizations suck.
>  2) Language wars are generally a loss of time.

That makes two generalisations which, presumably, suck.

Re: Debian v.9.2.1 DVDs - how long are they good for?

[Brian]

On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 22:11:58 +0100, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> I downloaded some Debian v.9.2.1 DVDs and I would like

Not today you didn't. It's 9.4.0 now.

> to know how long they are useful. In other words, how long
> may I retain them as install DVDs and upgrade once it has
> been installed and put on-line?

For ever and ever.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[dekks herton]

On 03/13, Gary Dale wrote:

On 2018-03-13 10:04 AM, Albretch Mueller wrote:

 I have a group of kids that are very good in Math and they want to
learn some actual programming

 My approach is to introduce them to the basics of coding using ANSI
C, C++ and java (so they learn what pointers are about, how patterns
are coded in different languages, ...)

 Is there a blend with those ANSI C, C++ and java as well as eclipse
installed, so that they can use it from a DVD Debian live version?

 lbrtchx


Exposing children to C and/or C++ should be considered abuse.  :)

Similarly exposing pointers is just a method of introducing bugs and 
security holes into programs.


Teach them using a decent object oriented language first so they learn 
how to write good programs.




Lego or smalltalk, pharo smalltalk has its own IDE so everything is in 1 place

bias included ;)

--
regards.

Thinkpad T60p 2.33Ghz 2GB SXGA+

Jabber IM: dekkz...@jabber.hot-chilli.net


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Re: Debian on flash a store.

[Richard Hector]

On 14/03/18 09:58, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> USB drives and SD cards are very different from SSDs. You cannot use
> them in the same way. AFAIK, USB drives and SD cards do not support
> TRIM/discard.

Apologies for the diversion - does anyone know if there are USB flash
drives that _are_ built for full-time use, as a system disk?

I've got some old thin clients that could do with storage upgrades that
are a bit easier to come by than the weird (PATA?) flash modules they
come with. Obviously I could just hook up an external USB ssd, but I'd
like to keep the small form factor if I can - then they can go inside
the case.

Cheers,
Richard



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Re: password hash in shadow file

[Richard Hector]

On 14/03/18 09:20, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 07:36:19PM +0100, Sven Hartge wrote:
> 
>> But on that note: I wonder of one could create a PAM module which will
>> do just that on successful login. Once you *know* you have the right
>> password (and the PAM system has that knowledge including the plain text
>> password the user entered) just rehash it and update /etc/shadow.
> 
>> This will gradually upgrade all hashes once a user uses an account.
> 
> That would be downright sneaky :-)

That's quite common for web apps, isn't it? Not with PAM though, presumably.

Richard




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Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Albretch Mueller  writes:

>  I have a group of kids that are very good in Math and they want to
> learn some actual programming
>
>  My approach is to introduce them to the basics of coding using ANSI
> C, C++ and java (so they learn what pointers are about, how patterns
> are coded in different languages, ...)
>
>  Is there a blend with those ANSI C, C++ and java as well as eclipse
> installed, so that they can use it from a DVD Debian live version?
>
>  lbrtchx

I would strongly suggest starting them in a more beginner-friendly
language, like Python.

Another option if you have the budget would be Mathematica -- that would
go from math concepts straight to programming.

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[James H. H. Lampert]

Exposing children to C and/or C++ should be considered abuse.  :)


No need for an emoticon there! C in the hands of an inexperienced 
programmer is a recipe for disaster!



Lego or smalltalk, pharo smalltalk has its own IDE so everything is in 1
place


Unless there's now a "Lego" programming language (news to me), could you 
possibly mean LOGO? Never used it myself, but but I've certainly heard 
good things about it. And if you're going to expose first-time 
programmers to ANY C-derived language, Java would be the one to expose 
them to.


Be that as it may, IBM VS-BASIC, on a 370-135 running the McGill 
University MUSIC operating system was good enough for me (and at home, 
I'm working on a project in M$ QuickBASIC Extended for DOS, that marks 
the first time I've touched a BASIC derivative in decades.)


(I miss PL/I.)

--
JHHL

Cores, Hyperthreads, and KVM

[Richard Hector]

Hi all,

When I configure a KVM guest to have 2 vcpus, will that be 2 full cores?
Or will it give the guest both threads on the same real core? Or might
it use half of each of 2 different cores?

I guess the same applies to physical CPUs, too - there's presumably an
advantage in giving a VM a set of cores all on the same CPU, to take
advantage of shared caching - is that dealt with automatically?

I've always assumed that I should allocate even numbers of vcpus on an
HT capable machine, so that it keeps the threads together.

Does any of this matter?

Cheers,
Richard



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Re: Cores, Hyperthreads, and KVM

[Daniel Bareiro]

On 13/03/18 21:13, Richard Hector wrote:

> Hi all,

Hi, Richard.

> When I configure a KVM guest to have 2 vcpus, will that be 2 full cores?
> Or will it give the guest both threads on the same real core? Or might
> it use half of each of 2 different cores?
> 
> I guess the same applies to physical CPUs, too - there's presumably an
> advantage in giving a VM a set of cores all on the same CPU, to take
> advantage of shared caching - is that dealt with automatically?
> 
> I've always assumed that I should allocate even numbers of vcpus on an
> HT capable machine, so that it keeps the threads together.
> 
> Does any of this matter?

I think these 2 VCPUs can run on any core however you can configure the
affinity of processors by limiting the execution using taskset.

By the way, it looks like your GPG key is expired.

Kind regards,
Daniel



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Albretch Mueller]

> Exposing children to C and/or C++ should be considered abuse.  :)
> Similarly exposing pointers is just a method of introducing bugs and security 
> holes into programs.

 I see your point including the joke, but I don't quite agree with
you. I will, of course, explain to them the dangers of using pointers
and many other related etceteras. After you teach them what arrays,
indexably customized, typed, named memory arrangements, are used for,
you tell them about hash tables, pointers to functions, the way to
kind of kind of do that in java using an array of command objects
extending abstract classes ...

> No! A functional language! Object oriented languages are wrong!
> Linear types FTW! Multi-paradigm! Strongly typed! Dynamically
> typed -- no, statically typed!

 In fact, it will just be an introduction, but I want to teach them to
be "multilingual"/"multi-paradigm" from the start.

> You need to teach them things like breaking down problems into
> manageable parts and assembling parts into complex wholes.

 For which pointers are very useful? ;-)

> To be fair, *you* are talking about "how to teach children to write
> programs." The OP specifically asked about how to obtain a Debian blend
> with a specific set of features/capabilities.

 Thank you and that blend doesn't seem to exist, right?

 I was just thinking of handing them a live DVD so their parents don't
protest about "installing software in their computers"

> To sum up, the best approach IMO is to
> - base everything on a game (something with rules and goals)
> - explain computer architecture (as part of the game) what is doing what and
> what is a purpose of a program, how a computer and a program work ...

 Thank you and yes, one of the projects will be coding a game and
another project will be about NLP (all my students are multilingual).
I will also introduce computer architecture, the Turing test (a little
bit of philosophy and why technical people have taken it as some sort
of modern day "how many angels can dance on the pin of a needle" kind
of thing, when IMO Turing himself never meant that computer
(ultimately syntactic devices) could compare to or simulate brain/mind
functions), ... but the most important aspect of it, would be that I
will mainly use a Mathematical approach to teaching computer
programming.

 I have had such ideas for a long time. It is that my students
actually started to ask for it. Of course, they have no idea about how
much time and mental effort professional programming takes, but again
it is just an introduction.

> Hey, if he's paying, we answer the question he asked. If he's not, we
> answer the question we want to answer. This is how the Internet works.

 There goes the emperor of the Internet telling how "we" think it works ...

> PPS At the top > *waving* at FEXL (Function Expression Language)

 I want to concentrate in the three that I mentioned because I would
like to gear that introduction towards the AP CS exam.

> Perhaps Python

 I will touch on

 Python is one of the languages that I will be marginally using in a
project that uses youtube-dl. Another one would be Mathematica. I will
also teach them about SQL's DBMS.

> let me show my favorite among those languages which i never
> tried:

> http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet/samples.html

 Thank you
~
 L

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[rhkramer]

On Tuesday, March 13, 2018 07:48:29 PM Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
> Another option if you have the budget would be Mathematica -- that would
> go from math concepts straight to programming.

Ahh, that was what I was trying to remember, and Stephen Wolfram was (is?)  
the author.   It is rather expensive, but there are discounts for students and 
educational institutions.

There are now a variety of open source attempts at similar functionality, this 
page provides some thoughts:

https://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-open-source-free-alternative-to-Mathematica

Re: Debian on flash a store.

[David Christensen]

On 03/13/18 17:00, Richard Hector wrote:

Apologies for the diversion - does anyone know if there are USB flash
drives that _are_ built for full-time use, as a system disk?

I've got some old thin clients that could do with storage upgrades that
are a bit easier to come by than the weird (PATA?) flash modules they
come with. Obviously I could just hook up an external USB ssd, but I'd
like to keep the small form factor if I can - then they can go inside
the case.


https://duckduckgo.com/?q=disk+on+module&t=ffsb&ia=web


http://www.memorydepot.com/ssd_diskonmodule.html


David

GPG key expiry questions?

[Richard Hector]

Hi all,

Daniel Bareiro recently pointed out that he sees my GPG key as being
expired:

On 14/03/18 15:14, Daniel Bareiro wrote:
> This is the information I see in Thunderbird with Enigmail:
>
> Fingerprint: 9E11 77C0 8F96 98B8 82EF 70E4 B4A2 F08F EC70 168D
> Created: 05/09/2010
> Expiration: 10/05/2015

gpg --list-secret-keys shows an expiry of 2018-08-05.

And if I search for my key here:

https://pgp.surfnet.nl/pks/lookup?op=vindex&fingerprint=on&search=0xb4a2f08fec70168d

... I can see that there is a self-sig with the expiry date Daniel
mentioned, but also one for the one I'm seeing.

Can someone help clarify what's going on?

Thanks,
Richard
P.S. the web of trust reveals quite a bit about me, doesn't it ...



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: GPG key expiry questions?

[likcoras]

On 03/14/2018 11:39 AM, Richard Hector wrote:
> And if I search for my key here:
> 
> https://pgp.surfnet.nl/pks/lookup?op=vindex&fingerprint=on&search=0xb4a2f08fec70168d
> 
> ... I can see that there is a self-sig with the expiry date Daniel
> mentioned, but also one for the one I'm seeing.

You can change the expiry date of your own key, but for other people to
be able to see it and avoid having your key show up as expired, you must
publish the new (key? signature? not sure...) and others must fetch it
before the expiry date hits.

I think what happened is that you edited the expiration date of your key
and published it, but the other person didn't get the updated version
before their copy of your key expired.

Spacefm file manager is making a little noise..

[Cindy-Sue Causey]

Hi..

For no reason whatsoever, I decided to check out the package
referenced in Bug #892725 that hit my inbox this evening. Spacefm:

Bug#892725: RFS: spacefm/1.0.6-1
https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg1590920.html

Am putting it out here since spacefm only had 3 total mentions in a
very large inbox, with that request for support above being one of the
three.

I've already installed and played for a few seconds. Install size was
~4MB when a handful of suggested packages were added on with.

spacefm wants to do things like install a plugin from a URL. I
clicked, and it said that wget would move things along there. Made my
eyes go wider for being a pretty cool, unexpected interactive.

A quick fake run generated a progress box at the bottom of the spacefm
window. To-do for me would be to learn if and/or where it stores
history of that kind of activity.

You can get straight to a root user terminal via "File > Root
Terminal". And, ooohhh, "File > Root Window" gets you a spacefm
instance for root user. VERY handy, often needed, very *trick*.. :)

Yes, those are features available in various ways already. With
spacefm, they're right there handy where I instead often find myself
moving outside of a file manager in order to do those very things.

"Devices > Show Devices" displays *all* devices where often expected
to the left. I LIKE seeing the actual device in addition to the label.
I am ALWAYS having to track that detail down for one thing or another,
but it might be bothersome "noise" for others.

"View > Design Mode" says: "Design Mode allows you to change the name,
shortcut key and icon of menu, toolbar and bookmark items, show help
for an item, and add your own custom commands and applications.

To open the Design Menu, simply right-click on a menu item, bookmark,
or toolbar item.  To open the Design Menu for a submenu, first close
the submenu (by clicking on it)."

I clicked around some more. I may be overreacting, but it looks like
it would be really easy to mess something up pretty badly if you're
brand new at this.

In fact, nope, not overreacting. I just messed up permissions on
something that fast. "Right click > Properties > Quick > [pick a
choice]". I did, and it changed permissions on something without
balking... because I was in my user's /home directory.

OOPS, just did it again. THIS time I locked myself out of something in
/home directory. It did let me choose again and at least halfway fix
what I broke.

PLEASE: If any newbies test drive this, PLEASE backup *and* know how
to recover fouled up data before you play...

A snippet captured from the middle of "apt-cache show":

+++ BEGIN ABOUT SPACEFM +++

Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4),
libffmpegthumbnailer4v5, libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0), libglib2.0-0
(>= 2.41.1), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.24.0), libpango-1.0-0 (>= 1.18.0),
libpangocairo-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libstartup-notification0 (>= 0.4),
libudev1 (>= 183), libx11-6, spacefm-common (= 1.0.5-2),
desktop-file-utils, shared-mime-info

Recommends: udisks2

Suggests: udevil, eject, lsof, wget, ktsuss, gksu, sshfs, dbus

Conflicts: spacefm-gtk3, spacefm-hal

Breaks: spacefm-common (<< 1.0.5-2~)

Description-en: Multi-panel tabbed file manager - GTK2 version
 SpaceFM is a multi-panel tabbed file and desktop manager for Linux with
 built-in VFS, udev or HAL-based device manager, customizable menu system
 and bash integration.
 .
 A descendant of PCManFM, SpaceFM's aims are to be bugfixed, efficient
 (mainly C), hugely customisable (change and add to the GUI as you go
 with Design Mode), powerful without scaring off newer users (due to
 customisation), independent of particular distributions and desktop
 environments, and device management featureful enough to replace the
 various udisks-based *kits when used alongside udevil.
 .
 Other highlights include optional desktop management, smart queuing
 of file operations, user plugins and the ability to carry out specific
 commands as root.

+++ END ABOUT SPACEFM +++

Yeah, panels, too. Four that I saw. They come and go at the poke of a button.

*shiny new toy*

Cindy :)
-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA

* runs with duct tape *

Re: GPG key expiry questions?

[Richard Hector]

On 14/03/18 15:50, likcoras wrote:
> On 03/14/2018 11:39 AM, Richard Hector wrote:
>> And if I search for my key here:
>>
>> https://pgp.surfnet.nl/pks/lookup?op=vindex&fingerprint=on&search=0xb4a2f08fec70168d
>>
>> ... I can see that there is a self-sig with the expiry date Daniel
>> mentioned, but also one for the one I'm seeing.
> 
> You can change the expiry date of your own key, but for other people to
> be able to see it and avoid having your key show up as expired, you must
> publish the new (key? signature? not sure...) and others must fetch it
> before the expiry date hits.
> 
> I think what happened is that you edited the expiration date of your key
> and published it, but the other person didn't get the updated version
> before their copy of your key expired.
> 

Ah, that sounds plausible. I think I actually edited it after it had
expired, so very likely, if that causes a problem. I have a newer one as
well (4096 instead of 2048 bit) - though apparently with no signatures
on it yet. Not sure if that will suffer the same problem? I can't
remember if that one also expired and was posthumously edited ... If it
hasn't actually been used much, will that mean nobody's got it 'cached'?

Maybe I should just start from scratch :-(

Secure distribution and collecting signatures always seems to be the
problem.

Thanks,
Richard



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: password hash in shadow file

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 13/03/18 09:47 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 05:25:18PM +0100, Sven Hartge wrote:

Adam Weremczuk  wrote:


I think it was me invoking "passwd" as root and aborting (ctrl+D)
without making any changes.  Would that be enough to update the shadow
file?


No.

You can't reverse a hash and to generate a new hash the code needs the
password for the user in plain.


Well, to be fair, the change to SHA-1 is because you can "reverse"
MD5 all too easily (where reverse just means that you find something
which hashes to a given hash, which hasn't to resemble your original
password all too much). Usually you want this something to have
some properties to be useful.

But I don't think your operating system is going to do that behind
your back ;-)


Not if it's Linux, anyway...

--
cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)

Re: which blend caters to TaL computer programming? . . .

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 13/03/18 01:29 PM, Joe wrote:


I might suggest other lines of approach, such as Lazarus (I learned the
outlines of OO on Borland Delphi) which mixes coding with visual
application building, or the use of Arduino hardware which is cheap and
very much real-world, and is supported well on Debian. Python is the
preferred language there, which can be OO if you like. In my youth we
were pretty impressed with being able to draw ASCII penguins on fanfold
paper (you guessed, my first Fortran program), but I think today's
children want to see more in the way of results than a few lines of
text.


Perhaps, but I would get very excited if I found someone was interested 
by that few lines of text.  Such people are the ones who we really need, 
because they're the ones who are going to be writing the building blocks 
of tomorrow's software rather than just adding a bit of fluff on top of 
something they really don't understand.


--
cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 13/03/18 02:49 PM, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:


I also long avoided the complexity of LibreOffice Calc, but a modest
investment of time has left me satisfied with the results. Things I like:

- Flexible CSV import/export. I like to manipulate CSV files with grep,
perl, and geany, and then import into Calc. Nothing is quicker than
Ctrl-D in a text editor for deleting unwanted rows. I also use a regex
to convert all dates to (for example) ISO 8601 here as fixing date
values in Calc can be painful (but formatting is easy with Ctrl-1). Then
CSV import to slurp it into Calc, delete unwanted columns, and copy and
paste into the target sheet.


The nice thing for me is that when you import a CSV file, LibreOffice 
Calc sizes each column according to the width of the data.  Unlike 
Excel, you don't have to manually invoke the hilariously-titled 
"auto-format" feature to set the column widths to something reasonable.


Speaking of ISO 8601, I'm currently in the process of converting all our 
systems to use it in place of other date formats such as /mm/dd. 
Excel is quite adamant about converting anything that looks remotely 
like a date into mm/dd/ format, but ISO 8601 is apparently beyond 
what its feeble mind can handle, and Excel leaves it alone.


A lot of my programming effort goes toward "Excel-proofing" my data.

--
cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)

Re: GPG key expiry questions?

[john doe]

On 3/14/2018 4:20 AM, Richard Hector wrote:

On 14/03/18 15:50, likcoras wrote:

On 03/14/2018 11:39 AM, Richard Hector wrote:

And if I search for my key here:

https://pgp.surfnet.nl/pks/lookup?op=vindex&fingerprint=on&search=0xb4a2f08fec70168d

... I can see that there is a self-sig with the expiry date Daniel
mentioned, but also one for the one I'm seeing.


You can change the expiry date of your own key, but for other people to
be able to see it and avoid having your key show up as expired, you must
publish the new (key? signature? not sure...) and others must fetch it
before the expiry date hits.

I think what happened is that you edited the expiration date of your key
and published it, but the other person didn't get the updated version
before their copy of your key expired.



Ah, that sounds plausible. I think I actually edited it after it had
expired, so very likely, if that causes a problem. I have a newer one as
well (4096 instead of 2048 bit) - though apparently with no signatures
on it yet. Not sure if that will suffer the same problem? I can't
remember if that one also expired and was posthumously edited ... If it
hasn't actually been used much, will that mean nobody's got it 'cached'?



You should assume that the key is already cached somewhere! :)


Maybe I should just start from scratch :-(



Key transition is the way to go here:

https://www.apache.org/dev/key-transition.html

--
John Doe

Re: GPG key expiry questions?

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Richard Hector writes:
> On 14/03/18 15:50, likcoras wrote:
>> You can change the expiry date of your own key, but for other people to
>> be able to see it and avoid having your key show up as expired, you must
>> publish the new (key? signature? not sure...) and others must fetch it
>> before the expiry date hits.
>> 
>> I think what happened is that you edited the expiration date of your key
>> and published it, but the other person didn't get the updated version
>> before their copy of your key expired.
>
> Ah, that sounds plausible. I think I actually edited it after it had
> expired, so very likely, if that causes a problem. I have a newer one as
> well (4096 instead of 2048 bit) - though apparently with no signatures
> on it yet. Not sure if that will suffer the same problem? I can't
> remember if that one also expired and was posthumously edited ... If it
> hasn't actually been used much, will that mean nobody's got it 'cached'?

Editing the key is no problem, the other side just has to update their
copy from time to time.  But this is necessary anyway: if they do not
look for updates to the key, they will never know about key revocations
either and continue to trust a revoked key.

Just run `gpg --refresh-keys` from time to time.

Ansgar