Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:31 AM, Mike Wright  wrote:
> Alan Evans wrote:
>> This is an on-again-off-again kind of problem. It usually hits me when
>> it is least convenient, like when I only have shell access to the
>> machine. Example:
>>
>> [a...@agena ~]$ cd /media/My\ Book/
>> bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
>> [a...@agena ~]$ cd "/media/My Book/"
>> bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
>> [a...@agena ~]$ Gaaah!
>> bash: Gaaah!: command not found
>>
>> What's up with that? Usually it is no trouble, but occasionally, bash
>> refuses to deal with spaces. I don't even know what to do in this
>> case.
>
> You could use a "?" where the " " is.

Clever, but no:

[a...@agena ~]$ cd /media/My?Book/
bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Siddhesh Poyarekar
 wrote:
> Are you sure it is a space? how about pressing a  after typing in
> 'My' (without the quotes)?

Yes. It is certainly a space. Auto-completion is how I arrived at the
first example.
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Michael Hannon  wrote:
> Hi, Alan.  Are you sure that the spaces are causing the error?  I.e., if the 
> directory were actually named:
>
>    Media My Book
>
> you'd get the behavior you describe.  I don't usually use spaces in file 
> names, but I've never had a problem dealing with spaces (e.g., when I've 
> gotten files with spaces in the names from other people).

It's a HP My Book removable hard drive that was auto-mounted in /media
when I plugged in the USB cable. I don't use spaces either when I have
a choice, but the file or directory name is not always my decision.
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Fennix  wrote:
> I made the directory My Book and tested before replying and it worked here.
> You can also try cd /media/My* which also should work.

I believe you. And like I said, it usually works for me. But sometimes
bash gets in a mood and won't let me express a file name with spaces
in it. It's very frustrating since it usually happens when I can't
access the file any way but through a shell. (Like our company file
server, which has many nodes with spaces in them due to the
proliferation of Windows users.) I'd always assumed it had something
to do with the Samba share, but this time is interesting because it's
the first time I recall it happening exclusively on my local machine
with no shares involved at all.

By the way:

[a...@agena ~]$ cd /media/My*
bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory

Thanks, anyway.
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:01 AM, Genes MailLists  wrote:
> On 05/10/2010 11:56 AM, Alan Evans wrote:
>
>  Obvious question - could it be a file not a directory (perhaps it is
> not mounted yet for example)
>
>  ... try ls -lZ instead (to check permissions whlie you're at it).

It is certainly mounted. I can get to it through the GUI file browser.
Not that I think it makes any difference, really but:

[a...@agena ~]$ cd /media
[a...@agena media]$ ls -lZ
drwx--. alan alan system_u:object_r:fusefs_t:s0My Book
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Jeff Voskamp  wrote:
>
> Try
> cd /media
> ls -bl
>
> and send us the results.

Ok:

[a...@agena ~]$ cd /media
[a...@agena media]$ ls -bl
total 4
drwx--. 1 alan alan 4096 2010-05-10 08:12 My\ Book
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames? [SOLVED]

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:28 AM, Tom Horsley  wrote:
> Then try putting the cd command in single quotes as well - it may be
> some alias that isn't dealing correctly with escaped args.

Somebody just sent me a private reply along these same lines. Here is
my reply to him (I thought I was replying to the list):

cd is not aliased. But that got me thinking...

cd *is* redefined in my .bashrc file. I totally forgot about that; I
did it years ago. Comment out the redefinition and: Hurray! Thanks for
that! It's been a thorn in my side for a very long time.

For those curious about why I would redefine cd, I think it was
because I wanted to auto-execute scripts when I entered certain
directories:

cd ()
{
   builtin cd $1 || return
   [[ -f ./.autorun ]] && . ./.autorun
}

Now I guess that won't work. Oh well, that's a smaller problem. It was
really a silly solution to a non-problem anyway. Although now I'm
curious if there's a way to fix the function. Could $1 be replaced by
anything that might work?
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Mark Knoop  wrote:
> At 09:09 on 10 May 2010, Alan Evans wrote:
>> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Jeff Voskamp 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Try
>> > cd /media
>> > ls -bl
>> >
>> > and send us the results.
>>
>> Ok:
>>
>> [a...@agena ~]$ cd /media
>> [a...@agena media]$ ls -bl
>> total 4
>> drwx--. 1 alan alan 4096 2010-05-10 08:12 My\ Book
>
> Here is your answer. The directory name is "My\ Book", so you will have
> to use:
>
> cd My\\\ Book
>
> (and you may want to do
>
> mv My\\\ Book My\ Book
>
> )

You seem very confident! Better double-check your assumptions... (I
always find it mildly humorous when people are cocksure while being
totally wrong.)
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Chris Adams  wrote:
> Try looking at the kernel messages (dmesg).  I have seen media errors,
> especially on auto-mounted external devices like this, give similar
> results.
>
> Does "mount" show the correct device mounted there?
>
> Is it possibly some Unicode space (as opposed to ASCII 32)?  Try
> "grep My /proc/mounts | od -t c".
>
> Otherwise: no idea; I've never seen bash have a problem.  Try installing
> strace and running "strace bash -c 'cd /media/My*Book' 2>&1 | grep My".

Thanks, but I found the source of the problem (thanks to David Hawes
and Tom Horsley). See the list with the subject "[SOLVED]".
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames? [SOLVED]

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Chris Adams  wrote:
> Once upon a time, Alan Evans  said:
>> cd ()
>> {
>>        builtin cd $1 || return
>>        [[ -f ./.autorun ]] && . ./.autorun
>> }
>
> Any shell functions should properly quote their arguments (and there are
> possibly arguments to cd, so you should pass all args, not just the
> first).  So:
>
> cd ()
> {
>       builtin cd "$@" || return
>       [[ -f ./.autorun ]] && . ./.autorun
> }

Cool. Thanks!

(I always knew that my attempt was amateurish...)
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Alan Evans  wrote:
> (I always find it mildly humorous when people are cocksure while being
> totally wrong.)

Not that I could ever be accused of doing this, of course! ;)
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames? [SOLVED]

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Bill Davidsen  wrote:
> Ha, you didn't know cd has options? ;-)

Well, you're probably right about that. And after looking at the man
page, I'm not sure it matters that I didn't know. :)

Really, though, the error had nothing to do with not knowing about
options and everything to do with my sad bash skillz.
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Re: f13 torrents?

[Alan Evans]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 7:08 AM, Tom Horsley  wrote:
> I've looked at all the versions of the "get fedora 13" pages
> I can find, and perhaps I am just blind, but I can't find any
> pointer to http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ on any of the
> download pages, even the one that claims to be "all the ways
> to get fedora" :-).

Thank you for providing that link. I just came to the list hoping
someone would know how to get at the torrents. If you can't see it
because you're blind, then I must be blind also.
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Re: F13 upgrades post here, please.

[Alan Evans]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 9:28 AM, Linuxguy123  wrote:
> I'd love to hear about F13 upgrade experiences.  Once the issues are
> worked out I'll be upgrading from F12.

Do you want all the issues listed conveniently to you in a single
thread? I, for one, would prefer that separate upgrade issues be in
separate threads.
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Re: Regarding Get Fedora page

[Alan Evans]

2010/5/26 Máirín Duffy :
> The links you referenced were removed quite explicitly in the design.
> The assumption was that if someone understands how to use bittorrent,
> jigdo, and mirror lists, they are more than capable of making use of a
> search engine to find them.

I hope that this thread is a demonstration that folks who *could* use
a search engine may have been well-served by a page design that didn't
deliberately exclude them.

> Unsurprisingly, the first links for each
> 'fedora torrent', 'fedora mirrors', and 'fedora jigdo' on Google direct
> you to the correct location. However, for those users who don't
> understand what those things are and don't need them, the new design is
> a vast improvement in preventing them from having to navigate around a
> cluttered grid of links full of complicated jargon in order to get
> Fedora. A search engine would not be of any use in solving their
> problem.

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who wasted a considerable amount of
time looking for options that, although quite reasonably expected to
be, simply weren't there. The fact that a search engine is available
doesn't imply that it's my first choice, especially when I think I
know where to find my answers without it.

-Alan
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Re: Regarding Get Fedora page

[Alan Evans]

2010/5/26 Máirín Duffy :
> On Wed, 2010-05-26 at 13:22 -0700, Alan Evans wrote:
>> 2010/5/26 Máirín Duffy :
>> > The links you referenced were removed quite explicitly in the design.
>> > The assumption was that if someone understands how to use bittorrent,
>> > jigdo, and mirror lists, they are more than capable of making use of a
>> > search engine to find them.
>>
>> I hope that this thread is a demonstration that folks who *could* use
>> a search engine may have been well-served by a page design that didn't
>> deliberately exclude them.
>
> How about the silent group of folks who looked at the old Fedora get
> page, had no clue what half of the jargon on the page went, and then
> browsed away to look at another distro or worse just stuck with Windows
> or OS X?

You seem to think that the only alternative to completely excluding
the more technical options is to scatter incomprehensible jargon all
over the page. I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion.

How about something like this at the bottom of the page?:

"Users looking for the Torrent downloads should go [link]here[/link].
If you don't know what a Torrent is then it's not what you want."

That would have at least kept me (and probably many others) from
scanning the page over and over again for ten minutes looking for what
I just knew must be there.

-Alan
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Re: Regarding Get Fedora page

[Alan Evans]

2010/5/26 Máirín Duffy :
>> That would have at least kept me (and probably many others) from
>> scanning the page over and over again for ten minutes looking for what
>> I just knew must be there.
>
> No, it wouldn't.

Yes, it would. I would have found the link that I was expecting to be
on the page after following the link that said, and I'm quoting, "View
full list of options for getting Fedora ..." Not a very full list,
after all. Notwithstanding that there are many other options that
other people may have been searching for, my statement was completely
true.

For my part, I'm just a user. I merely stated what I was expecting and
how my expectations were not met. You can take that any way you like,
and apparently you've chosen to take offence that a user would expect
something that you didn't deliver. I wish I could say I'm sorry, but
I'm more perplexed.

Whatever.

I thought that the fedoraproject.org web site was geared toward users.
Your screed tells me that fedoraproject.org is actually geared toward
Windows and Mac users who want to try Fedora. Current users such as
myself are expected to already know that we should just go eat
Google-cake. Certainly, fedoraproject.org is not where we should be
going for answers.

Apparently, a class of users looking to update their Fedora
installations by a heretofore encouraged and commonly available path
are not, in fact, customers from the perspective of the
Every-Way-To-Get-Fedora web page. Good information, that. I'll make a
note of it.

I'm unlikely to be following many developer-oriented lists, in any
case. Like I said, I'm just a user.

-Alan
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preupgrade: not enough space again

[Alan Evans]

Preupgrade is complaining that I don't have enough space in
/boot/upgrade. How much space is needed? Preupgrade is not telling me.
It *did* tell me that I could continue if I had a wired network
connection. I do have, so I continued; and then after finally
downloading all the packages (much time) and rebooting it apparently
couldn't find the driver for my network card. Bother.

Cancelling at that point and rebooting did bring back my F12, so that
was good. But I've cleaned out boot as much as I think possible and
still there's not enough space.

I thought this was done to death during the last upgrade cycle. And I
think I have a non-upgraded install of F12 on this machine, yet /boot
is still too small for preupgrade to work! Ack!

Will this work if I go buy a generic network card? Apparently the one
already installed (and that I'm using now) is no good for the
installer.

-Alan
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Re: preupgrade: not enough space again

[Alan Evans]

On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Colin J Thomson
 wrote:
> FYI, preupgrade does work with the default 200meg  /boot partition, I did it
> here on this small raid system, no LVM all ext4, F12 > F13.. More info here:
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=573451
>
> NOTE..
> I guess your mileage may vary depending on the hardware as Alan found out :(

Apparently, my default 200MB fell a bit short:

$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg_studio-lv_root
                     868G  266G  558G  33% /
tmpfs                 4.0G 1000K  4.0G   1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda5             194M   24M  161M  13% /boot

*sigh*
-Alan
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Re: preupgrade: not enough space again

[Alan Evans]

On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Konstantin Svist  wrote:
> It told me the same thing. At that point, I booted from a live CD,
> installed gparted and resized the boot partition to take 500M (took
> space from swap, which was 2G). Then preupgrade succeeded perfectly and
> I'm running F13 right now.
> Since the packages are already downloaded, you should be able to retry
> without having to get them again.

I thought gparted couldn't get anywhere near a LVM. Has that changed?
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Re: preupgrade: not enough space again

[Alan Evans]

On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 5:24 AM, Frank Murphy wrote:
> I do have, so I continued; and then after finally
>>> downloading all the packages (much time) and rebooting it apparently
>>> couldn't find the driver for my network card. Bother.
>
> What network card?

The one on my motherboard. Lspci tells me it's a Broadcom BCM57780. I
just installed an old D-Link 10/100 card that I had handy and
everything worked out. Now I'm running F13 and my network is back on
the BCM57780 with no apparent trouble. Thanks, everyone, for all the
suggestions.

I would eventually like to increase the size of my boot partition so
this doesn't bite me again. But right now I need to relinquish the
machine to my wife, who's been chomping at the bit to get back on her
blog...

-Alan
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Re: [Fedora] 'userdel' irony -- what do you say ?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 3:41 AM, Mihamina Rakotomandimby wrote:

> 1rst pass: The user has been deleted. No bug.
> 2nd pass : There is no more user to delete. What to expect?

But the operation wasn't atomic, since userdel was asked to delete the
home directory on the 1st pass. It reported that it couldn't complete
the operation because the user was logged in. However it carried on
deleting the user and not deleting the home directory.

> Argument: user's HOME is not always under /home/. If there
> is /home/test and /tmp/test and /var/lib/test, which one to delete
> after the first pass?

The user's home directory is wherever /etc/passwd says it is. If the
user hadn't been deleted in the 1st pass then removing the home
directory in the 2nd pass wouldn't have been a problem. Userdel should
determine before it does anything whether it expects to complete the
requested operation totally. If not then it shouldn't do anything.

Failing that, it should at least provide a message during the first
pass that suggests that it did delete the user but couldn't delete the
home directory. That's not really what the first pass error suggested.

-Alan
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Re: Improving the list climate [was Re: Fwd: Fedora Weekly News 228]

[Alan Evans]

2010/6/3 Máirín Duffy :
> Do we want new users to witness this kind of behavior? They are directed
> towards this list right now via a number of different pointers. My team
> is planning to redesign the Fedora website for Fedora 14, and I'm not
> sure we can in good conscience continue to point new users to this list

Let me get this straight: You remove relevant, helpful links from one
Fedora site page and the user community explodes with queries,
comments, and complaints about the omission. Now your response to this
feedback is to suggest that *more* relevant, helpful links be removed
from another page?

I would laugh, but I think that you're serious.

Not all of the feedback from this list was unconstructive. Not all of
the responses were abusive or confrontational. But after reviewing the
thread in question, I have to say that *many* of your responses were
confrontational and many were, frankly, condescending. It didn't seem
to matter whether the person you were replying to was trying to be
constructive or snarky; your responses seemed designed to pour more
fuel on the fire almost every time.

Consider moderating yourself before you come to this list and preach
to us about how we need to be moderated.

-Alan
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Re: Fwd: Fedora Weekly News 228

[Alan Evans]

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 8:55 PM, Craig White  wrote:
> like Gene you have assumed that Máirín is a woman and I
> can't imagine any greater testimony to your arrogance and insensitivity
> of others but keep trying.

Not that I think that sex has any substantive relevance at all here,
but I'm pretty sure that Máirín is, in fact, a woman:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MairinDuffy

I don't think that making this assumption is in any way arrogant or
insensitive, however irrelevant it is.

-Alan
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Redirecting mail in Thunderbird

[Alan Evans]

Is there no plugin to add mail redirection to the current Thunderbird?
I used to use the Mail Redirect plugin in version 2, but I've searched
in vain for a similar plugin that's compatible with 3.0. So either my
search method is wanting or there's really nobody doing redirection
any more from their mail client. Am I just outmoded for wanting this,
or is there some other preferred method?

-Alan
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Re: Redirecting mail in Thunderbird

[Alan Evans]

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 8:08 AM, Rick Barnes wrote:
> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=thunderbird+3+plugin+redirect&l=1
>
> Its about half way down the page.

Thanks. Something about exactly what I asked Google combined with
assumptions that are hard to mentally overcome prevented me from
seeing that even in searches that I already did. Now that I know what
it is, I see pointers to it everywhere.

-Alan
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Re: Status of SSDs under Fedora ?

[Alan Evans]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
>> * if you don't much care for the logs in /var/log, turn them off or
>> redirect to a ram drive -- reduces number of writes
>
> With the MTBF of the SSDs today, this is unnecessary.

For me, it wasn't MTBF that was a concern so much as write speed. This
is also why I chose ext2 over ext3/4. I reasoned that, without journal
writes, the processor would spend less time in IOWait. Do you think
that reasoning is flawed?

-Alan
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F13 - can't detect network printer

[Alan Evans]

The hard drive on my F12 system recently failed, and I decided it was
easiest to simply start from scratch. So what I'm dealing with now is
a clean install of F13 from DVD, updated. The printer in our office is
shared from a well-established Windows machine. It is the same machine
that was used when I was printing from F12.

I go to System->Administration->Printing and select Add. Then I'm
asked to provide my root password twice -- what's up with that?

So I now select "Network Printer" and "Find Network Printer" then
enter the hostname (it's correct; I've triple-checked). The dialog
says "Searching..." for a long time and finally, "No printer was found
at that address."

Now what?

-Alan
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Re: F13 - can't detect network printer

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 7:46 AM, Richard Shaw  wrote:
> Did you remember to poke a hole in your firewall?

Sorry, forgot to mention: Firewall is disabled.
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Re: F13 - can't detect network printer

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 7:59 AM, Tim Waugh  wrote:
> It didn't find any SMB shares there.  Did you apply the package updates
> first?  I ask because an updated F-13 system-config-printer package can
> adjust the firewall appropriately for you.

The system is fully updated. FIrewall is disabled.

> Another thing to try if 'Find Network Printer' still doesn't work is to
> select 'Windows Printer via SAMBA' and browse for the right shares.

"Windows Printer via SAMBA" is not on the list of options.

-Alan
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Re: F13 - can't detect network printer [SOLVED]

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Tim Waugh  wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-06-16 at 08:21 -0700, Alan Evans wrote:
>> "Windows Printer via SAMBA" is not on the list of options.
>
> Perhaps that's the problem.  Install the 'samba-client' package and try
> again.

That did it. Thanks!

-Alan
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Re: Another funny update?

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> I'm not attacking you, I'm stating a very plain fact. If RPMfusion says
> "Sure, we'll help you move from Nouveau to NIVDIA" and, when people want to
> come back to Nouveau, Nouveau developers answer "Ah, you fucked up your
> system? Good luck!" the people who adopted the NVIDIA module will be stuck
> with a one way ticket. And, whatever happens with Nouveau, some people will
> always want to try the module provided by NVIDIA.
>
> I don't know where RPMFsion stands on this issue, but they might not want to
> make your life easier by providing instructions on how to remove their blob.
> So, what I'm saying is that it's for you to decide if you want to make your
> battle tougher with one way tickets to NVIDIA.

It is curious how you can continue to be so belligerent about
something that has been so clearly explained to you so many times by
so many people.

What is so difficult about the idea that RPMFusion modifies Fedora,
and not vice-versa? They provided packages and instructions for
installing proprietary software on your Fedora system. It is their
responsibility to explain how to uninstall that software. Simple.

Fedora, for its part, doesn't advocate using proprietary software at all.

What you're asking is equivalent to demanding that Microsoft provide
instructions for how to switch from Firefox back to Internet Explorer.
It just doesn't make any sense.

-Alan
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Background image on dual screen?

[Alan Evans]

I have two monitors an my background image is exactly the size of both
combined. I used to be able to display this background image across
both screens as if they were a single display. I think I chose "Tiled"
to make this happen, but I'm not sure it was always that way.

Anyway, after an update a few months ago, I can no longer do this. My
background image is displayed, either clipped or scaled, once on each
screen instead of once across all screens, no matter what style I
choose from the Appearance Preferences dialog. Is there a way to fix
it?

-Alan
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Re: Background image on dual screen?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 8:27 AM, Alan Evans  wrote:
> I have two monitors an my background image is exactly the size of both
> combined. I used to be able to display this background image across
> both screens as if they were a single display. I think I chose "Tiled"
> to make this happen, but I'm not sure it was always that way.
>
> Anyway, after an update a few months ago, I can no longer do this. My
> background image is displayed, either clipped or scaled, once on each
> screen instead of once across all screens, no matter what style I
> choose from the Appearance Preferences dialog. Is there a way to fix
> it?

Really?!? Nothing?

Could someone who does dual screen at least say whether it works for them?
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Re: Background image on dual screen?

[Alan Evans]

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Michael Cronenworth  wrote:
> There is a bug[1] for this and there is a fix available, which was
> accidentally unpushed last week. It should be going back out into
> updates-testing soon.

Hurray! Waiting expectantly for the update to come soon...
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Re: Clamav

[Alan Evans]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Marko Vojinovic  wrote:
> "Bugfix (by a non-Albanian): FIRST send this mail to everyone you know, and
> AFTER THAT delete all the files on the disk."

See. Open source works!
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Re: [WAY WAY OT] Ubuntu 10.04 and Nvidia driver

[Alan Evans]

On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 11:14 AM, john wendel  wrote:
> I was told that I needed to restart the system
> to use the new driver. IT'S A LIVE CD FOLKS! Restarting of course wiped
> out the new driver download.

That is funny. But if it were a LiveUSB instead of a LiveCD then there
could be persistent data, so it might work in some circumstances.
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What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

This is an on-again-off-again kind of problem. It usually hits me when
it is least convenient, like when I only have shell access to the
machine. Example:

[a...@agena ~]$ cd /media/My\ Book/
bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
[a...@agena ~]$ cd "/media/My Book/"
bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
[a...@agena ~]$ Gaaah!
bash: Gaaah!: command not found

What's up with that? Usually it is no trouble, but occasionally, bash
refuses to deal with spaces. I don't even know what to do in this
case.
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:29 AM, jack wallen  wrote:
>> This is an on-again-off-again kind of problem. It usually hits me when
>> it is least convenient, like when I only have shell access to the
>> machine. Example:
>>
>> [a...@agena ~]$ cd /media/My\ Book/
>> bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
>> [a...@agena ~]$ cd "/media/My Book/"
>> bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
>> [a...@agena ~]$ Gaaah!
>> bash: Gaaah!: command not found
>>
>> What's up with that? Usually it is no trouble, but occasionally, bash
>> refuses to deal with spaces. I don't even know what to do in this
>> case.
>
> you can put the path in a single quote like so:
>
> cd '/media/My Book/'

Thanks, but still no joy:

[a...@agena ~]$ cd '/media/My Book/'
bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
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Re: What's up with bash shell and spaces in filenames?

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:31 AM, Fennix  wrote:
> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:23 PM, Alan Evans  wrote:
>>
>> This is an on-again-off-again kind of problem. It usually hits me when
>> it is least convenient, like when I only have shell access to the
>> machine. Example:
>>
>> [a...@agena ~]$ cd /media/My\ Book/
>> bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
>> [a...@agena ~]$ cd "/media/My Book/"
>> bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory
>> [a...@agena ~]$ Gaaah!
>> bash: Gaaah!: command not found
>>
>> What's up with that? Usually it is no trouble, but occasionally, bash
>> refuses to deal with spaces. I don't even know what to do in this
>> case.
>
> Put the space or the whole path in quotes?  This works for me.
>
> cd /media/My" "Book/

Nope:

[a...@agena ~]$ cd /media/My" "Book/
bash: cd: /media/My: No such file or directory

> cd "media/My Book/"

Tried that already!
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F15 live won't boot?

[Alan Evans]

I just downloaded (by bittorrent) the F15 x86_64 Live CD image, and
made a Live USB stick with LiveUSB Creator. When Trying to boot this
on my Samsung RC512 laptop, the boot process halts, displaying:

Dropping to debug shell.
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
dracut:/#

What does it mean?...

-Alan
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Re: F15 live won't boot?

[Alan Evans]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Timothy Murphy  wrote:
>> I just downloaded (by bittorrent) the F15 x86_64 Live CD image, and
>> made a Live USB stick with LiveUSB Creator.
>
> I found on one occasion that the Fedora LiveUSB Creator failed,
> but livecd-iso-to-disk (in the livecd-tools package) worked for me.

I haven't used livecd-iso-to-disk in a long time. However, it refuses
to even try:

The media check is complete, the result is: PASS.
It is OK to use this media.
USB filesystem must be vfat or ext[23]
Cleaning up to exit...

Except that I know for certain that the filesystem on the flash drive
is vfat. I formatted it just before attempting to write the live
image. When it's mounted (not while livecd-iso-to-disk is running)
mount tells me it's vfat.

Oh well. Thanks everybody for the replies. It would have been nice if
the livecd/usb had just worked, but I don't really have the time to
dink with this. I'll probably just try F14 or else wait for F16 on
this laptop. Such is Fedora...

-Alan
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Re: Upgraded F14 -> F15, now how do I use this?

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Solution: read the extensive discussions on the list archives over the
> past couple of weeks.

*That* sounds like an efficient migration strategy!

> Use a different desktop, such as KDE, which works as before.

If the switch from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 left the user lost in unfamiliar
territory, how is switching to KDE a "solution"?

-Alan
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Re: Upgraded F14 -> F15, now how do I use this?

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Steven Stern
 wrote:
>
> Gnome 3 is still a work in progress, so as Fedora
> users interested in being on the leading edge, it behooves
> us to try the new stuff and provide constructive and useful
> feedback feedback about how it's going for us.

>From the standpoint of a user, I have no trouble trying new stuff or
providing feedback. However, the trouble is that I can't "try" the new
stuff (GNOME 3) without completely abandoning the old stuff (GNOME 2).

Couldn't the developers have continued packaging GNOME 2 for at least
*one* release cycle so I could seriously try the new stuff but still
fall back to the old stuff when the new was confusing or troublesome?
Then I could get my feet wet with GNOME 3 and provide feedback while
still being able to get some work done.

-Alan
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Re: Upgraded F14 -> F15, now how do I use this?

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak wrote:
>> Couldn't the developers have continued packaging GNOME 2 for at least
>> *one* release cycle so I could seriously try the new stuff but still
>> fall back to the old stuff when the new was confusing or troublesome?
>> Then I could get my feet wet with GNOME 3 and provide feedback while
>> still being able to get some work done.
>
> Err... they did. gnome-shell was packaged for, and testable in, F14.

Please understand that I'm not trying to be combative here, but...

How is a user supposed to know:

1. gnome-shell == GNOME 3?
2. gnome-shell is available in F14? I don't remember it being
mentioned in the release notes or any list of features.
3. gnome-shell will irreversibly replace what the user is familiar
with in the next release?

So, now having discovered all of the above, the user can install F14
and gnome-shell, try it there and provide feedback on that version?

Better to change the default system and keep the old system available
for a release cycle, rather than provide a virtually unadvertised
preview version up to the point that it becomes the default and the
old system is no longer an option.

-Alan
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Re: Upgraded F14 -> F15, now how do I use this?

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-06-08 at 08:51 -0700, Alan Evans wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>> > Solution: read the extensive discussions on the list archives over the
>> > past couple of weeks.
>>
>> *That* sounds like an efficient migration strategy!
>
> Someone who asks what to do without having read the relevant postings
> needs do some homework, that's all. Fedora is a bleeding-edge system and
> no-one can expect to handle a version transition without at least
> keeping an eye on this list.
>
>> > Use a different desktop, such as KDE, which works as before.
>>
>> If the switch from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 left the user lost in unfamiliar
>> territory, how is switching to KDE a "solution"?
>
> A solution to what? The OP says he finds Gnome 3 "severely crippled". I
> have no dog in this fight as I use KDE, but I know that going back to
> Gnome 2 is not feasible in F15. I'm merely outlining his choices.

I suppose I misunderstood exactly what you were proposing solutions to.

-Alan
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Re: Adieu, Fedora

[Alan Evans]

On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 7:37 PM, David wrote:
>> I disagree. He makes a very valid point. New installs of Windows always
>> come up with a tutorial and "helper" app. I have never seen anything like
>> that on Linux

> Really? Seriously?
>
> What "New installs of Windows" of Windows are you referring to? None
> that I have seen do this. Version numbers of Windows? Dates of install?
> I can't think of any.

I don't really have a horse in this race, but I remember such apps and
popups myself. And it didn't take me but ten seconds to google an
example:

http://techsalsa.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/take-tour-windows-xp.png

Arguments about the usefulness of this are perhaps in order, but to
argue that it didn't exist at all seems silly to me.

-Alan
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Re: About Fedora bugs

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 6:27 AM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> But if one is an optimist one can take the position that having the bug
> fixed if you don't report it is an even rarer event.

Perhaps, but I'm not certain that statistics would back that up. I,
too, have reported many things and have only rarely seen reported
issues acknowledged, let alone resolved. Lately, I've taken the
wait-and-see approach, with approximately the same results. I guess
that I'm not an optimist.

As an aside, I'm thinking of bug 531088, which I initially thought
would be relatively easy to deal with. To be fair, it seems that many
smart and talented individuals have tried to tackle this, but a year
and a half on and problems persist in the mail notification applet. I
never imagined it could be so complicated. About a year ago, I stopped
paying attention to it and consigned myself to just not using the
applet. At the time, I figured it would be easier to rewrite the
applet completely from scratch than to continue to endure the
machinations that were apparently necessary to fix it. And maybe I was
right -- with GNOME3 there will probably come a completely revamped
mail notification applet that will probably not suffer the problems of
the current applet. So I'm hopeful that I will once again be able to
be informed of incoming mail, just as soon as I can swallow the pill
of GNOME3.

-Alan
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Can't run Software Update since upgrade

[Alan Evans]

I was a F13 holdout for a long time and finally caved to my machine
constantly nagging me to upgrade. I did the upgrade (preupgrade) to
F14, since I'm not ready to endure all the changes in F15. Still, I'm
surprised at the number of things that subtly (and not-so-subtly)
broke. I'll take it one thing at at time...

Today, the little icon in the system tray tells me that there are
updates, and clicking on it sure enough brings up the "Software
Update" app. However, selecting "Install Updates" merely results in a
dialog:

   Authorization failed
   You have failed to provide correct authorization.
   Please check any passwords or account settings.

I was never asked to provide a password. Clicking on the "More
details" dropdown, helpfully states:

   Failed to obtain authentication.

Gee, thanks for the additional details!

This same thing happened yesterday and I found that I could do the
update from a terminal with yum update. So I guess this isn't an
absolute show-stopper, but the GUI app ought to work, I think. How
should I begin troubleshooting this (like where should I go to
*actually* get more details)?

-Alan
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Re: dynamic memory automatically zero'd

[Alan Evans]

On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 7:44 AM, Stefan Schulze Frielinghaus wrote:
> if you allocate memory, e.g. via malloc(3), then it is automatically set
> to zero. This is actually a security feature quite common nowadays. I
> would like to know when this feature has made it into Fedora or in RHEL.
> Is this a mandatory feature of some security policy as e.g. the Common
> Criteria? I couldn't find much information about this. Therefore, any
> pointers, hints and so on are welcomed!

man malloc: use calloc() instead of malloc() if you want the allocated
memory to be zeroed.
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Re: backing up shadow files with rsync?

[Alan Evans]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 4:45 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Ironically, the NAS disk that failed was a 1TB Seagate unit. OTOH I've
> (touch wood) had good results with WD Caviar Black disks.

My experience also. I've had a few Seagate Barracuda disks die on me
in just the last couple of months. I've had really good results with
WD Caviar Black. None have failed so far...

-Alan
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Re: Any arguments for keeping Yum case-sensitive?

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:34 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> You can´t have all of them present because file creation is
> case-insensitive. Once A_Bottle_Of_Coke.txt is present, you cannot
> create A_BOTTLE_OF_COKE.tXt. But you´re free to rename the existing
> one to whatever capitalization you like :).

It seems to me that you are arguing to replace one set of problems
with another. The fact that it's less of a problem for you doesn't
mean that it's less of a problem for me.

I, for example, have directories that contain many files that differ
in name only by case. Maybe you can't think of a good reason to do
that, but it happens to be a very convenient arrangement in my case.
To me, "a.png" is *not* the same as "A.png", and that's the way I want
it.

-Alan
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Re: Any arguments for keeping Yum case-sensitive?

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Michael Hennebry
 wrote:
> As noted earlier, this is a distinct issue from whether yum and
> rpm should be case-insensitive or have a case-insensitive option.
> I'd be inclined to put warnings next to any case-insensitive
> matches that were not also case-sensitive matches.

I was replying to the post that I was replying to, not discussing any
distinct or broader issues.

-Alan
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Re: Any arguments for keeping Yum case-sensitive?

[Alan Evans]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Fernando Cassia  wrote:
> I´m certainly tired of dictators that decree when a given discussion
> has been going on "for far too long" and thinks his viewpoint is
> "obviously correct", and that user-hostile messages to enforce proper
> capitalization of a package name conforms to some sort of Correct
> World View, and that offering the end user the option of a correctly
> capitalized package name, so that the user only needs to answer "y"es
> instead of re-typing the command is something that wouldn´t be
> actually an improvement.

[Well I think that sentence went on for far too long.]

"Did you mean such-and-such?" is not a user-hostile message when
compared to simply telling the user that the specified package doesn't
exist. Seriously, given the low-level nature of RPM and YUM, I'm
impressed that it makes a suggestion at all.

In any case, you're exaggerating the current situation somewhat. There
is little need to "re-type the command" when you have a perfectly
serviceable up arrow on your keyboard.

-Alan
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Re: [OT Humor] "Obviously designed by morons"

[Alan Evans]

On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 7:41 AM, Tom Horsley wrote:
> Oh yes, for a great example of how well gnome developers respond
> to negative feedback check out this bugzilla:
>
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136541
>
> Every once in a while I go back and re-read it just for the
> entertainment value :-).

I remember that bugzilla from when it was current. It's is an absolute classic!

And, sadly, it exemplifies perfectly the attitudes I recall when I
frequented the gnome mailing list. "You don't know anything because
you never did any formal studies of 'typical' users."

I'm also reminded of this closer-to-home classic:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2010-May/372990.html

-Alan
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Re: [OT Humor] "Obviously designed by morons"

[Alan Evans]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 7:10 AM, Joe Zeff wrote:
> You seem to be missing the point that I'm talking about a home box where
> you're the only person using it.  You set it up, you set the root
> password and I see no reason not to use it (with su) for admin tasks.
> Using sudo when you have the root password just seems silly to me.

And you seem to be missing the point that some others are talking
about. Some admin tasks are performed by some admins extremely
frequently. Using sudo allows them to avoid typing the root password
75 times a day just to remind the system over and over again that,
yes, they do have the authority to do this.

It's the same reason that I set up domain keys for servers that I log
into constantly. I know all the passwords, but I don't want to retype
them every 15 minutes just to reestablish my authority to do again the
same thing I do all day long.

-Alan
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Re: Font in firefox; now uses tahoma?

[Alan Evans]

On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 5:43 PM, Reid Rivenburgh wrote:
> I found one solution.  If you install the Stylish extension and the
> Font Styler script from userstyles.org, you can specify a global font
> family (and size) to use for all sites.  The script actually specifies
> tahoma, which is exactly what I don't want, but I changed it to sans
> and all seems to be well.  (I also commented out the size spec since I
> don't want to force all text to be one size.)  Hope this helps
> someone

Just reading your description, I'm having trouble seeing how this is
different than just specifying the font in Firefox's preferences
dialog, which you said you didn't think would do the right thing
globally.

I'm only asking because I just now noticed that Facebook looks suddenly hideous.

-Alan
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Re: smartd reporting disk failing

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 5:36 PM, Paolo Galtieri wrote:
> I can't believe that a drive would go bad
> after a few months use.  I have other Seagate drives that have been in
> use for years without any issues.

You should be aware that there is a certain firmware revision of
Seagate drives that has serious problems. *All* of my 7200.11 drives
have failed. Every one of them. I'm not kidding. I've not had any
issues with the 7200.12 drives.

If you can get eyes on the drive itself or otherwise check the
firmware version and discover any .11 drives, destroy them with
prejudice.

-Alan
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Re: smartd reporting disk failing

[Alan Evans]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 6:51 AM, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
> Alan Evans wrote:
>>   I've not had any
>> issues with the 7200.12 drives.
>
> Those models are just as bad. I went through three 7200.12 1TB drives in
> a few months.

Well that's not good to hear.

Fortunately, I've only got a couple of them deployed. I mostly
switched to Western Digital as I watched the stack of bricked Seagates
accumulate on my desk. Then I noticed that every failed drive was a
.11...
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Re: Why on the Earth GNOME Shell hiding Shutdown & Restart options

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 7:51 PM, Juan R. de Silva wrote:

> Looks like the most obstinate wing took it over in GNOME.

The most obstinate wing has been driving GNOME for a very long time
now. For a good laugh, just browse the gnome-devel archives.

These are the same fine folks who foisted spacial view on us by
default. I'm still waiting to meet even a single person who prefers
it. Whenever I help someone install Linux, that's the first thing that
they want me to turn off.

-Alan
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Re: FC14 good/bad news

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 8:33 AM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> System is i7-950, 12GB RAM ... Not a killer machine, not a dog.

Whatever you consider a "killer machine," I want one.

-Alan
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usb auto mount when nobody is logged in?

[Alan Evans]

Is it possible to get gnome-volume-manager style auto mount/umount of
USB drives in /media (or elsewhere) when nobody is logged into the
desktop? The behavior when I'm logged in (auto-mounting in a directory
named after the Volume Name, auto-unmounting, etc) is exactly what I
would like when I'm not logged in. It doesn't matter if the mount
point is owned by root, as I just want to back up some files in a cron
job but only if there's a drive plugged in.

I suppose I could script it all, except: 1. I'm not a very skilled
script writer, 2. I don't really know where to start to accomplish
this, and 3. It seems to me that there's already something on the
system that does perfectly what I want.

-Alan
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Re: usb auto mount when nobody is logged in?

[Alan Evans]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:42 AM, Tom Horsley wrote:

> if mount LABEL=BACKUP /backup
> then
>   ...do backup stuff...
>   umount /backup
> fi

Wow. It's really that easy?

I did have to redirect stderr to null since I'm not interested to
getting mail from cron every time the drive is not plugged in. But
otherwise, that will probably work form me.

I presume that this is safe in the case that somebody *is* logged and
and the drive is already auto-mounted by that user in /media? My
script mounts the drive in /mnt, and it's a little weird having two
mount points for the same device, but I suppose that was intended and
properly handled by the kernel...

-Alan
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Printing directly on DVD

[Alan Evans]

Does anybody know how to print directly onto printable DVD media? I
have a HP printer with a tray specifically for holding the media. I've
tried everything I can think to actually print onto the disk.

I've tried various-sized images in GIMP. The closest that I've come is
having the printer complain that the "disk doesn't match the size
selected." I don't see any way select a different size.

I looked at glabels, but it seems very oriented toward printing onto
labels and covers, with no templates for printing directly onto the
DVD that I can find.

I'm sure that *somebody* has done this. What's the secret?

-Alan
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Re: Printing directly on DVD

[Alan Evans]

Hiisi wrote:
> Alan Evans:
>> I looked at glabels, but it seems very oriented toward printing onto
>> labels and covers, with no templates for printing directly onto the
>> DVD that I can find.
>
> I'm not answering your question because I don't have printer with such
> capability. I only want to protect glabels. I use it to create
> lightscribe labels. There's a lot of templates you're looking for under
> CD/DVD category:
> http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/7481/kuvakaappausnewlabelorc.png

I wasn't attacking glabels, so I'm not sure why you feel the need to
"protect" it. I only said that it had no templates for printing
directly onto printable DVDs, which is still true notwithstanding your
screenshot.

-Alan
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Re: Printing directly on DVD

[Alan Evans]

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Tom Horsley wrote:
> Start here for the full story:
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/wisdom/dvd/dvdprint/dvd-print.html
>
> or go directly to the final chapter:
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/wisdom/dvd/dvdp/f13-success.html
>
> I make no guarantees, I've only tried it on my C5580, but it has
> worked OK through several updates of hplip now, so things may have
> stabilized.

Thanks for all that. Your stuff is always interesting to read.

After reading, I did manage to get the printer past the error and on
to pretending to print. After much pain, I actually saw ink on the
label. (I'm terrified to think what the inside of my printer looks
like now.) My latest iteration seems to be off by only about a quarter
inch.

What a bother.

-Alan
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Re: Printing directly on DVD

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Richard Shaw  wrote:
> I was starting to think it was my printer instead of glabels. No
> matter what custom media size I set (all around the recommended 5in x
> 5in) I ALWAYS get a media size error on my HP Photosmart C5580. Keep
> in mind, I'm talking about the printer, the driver happily feeds it to
> the printer without error.

After reading Tom's account (thanks, Tom!), I discovered that the
printer is expecting the "document" to be precisely 360pt square, with
the actual doughnut area where you might want to put ink is offset
somewhere inside that. I eventually figured out the exact offset for
my printer and produced a template document for GIMP that even
includes the little flat edge where the printer can't print. Then I
just have to remember to always print my file in the lower left corner
of the page on the print dialog, which GIMP seems to insist must be
full page size no matter what.

Actually, I find GIMP to be overall a bit clumsy for this sort of
thing. I wish that I actually had a working template for glabels or
else knew how to make one.

-Alan
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Re: Printing directly on DVD

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Tom Horsley wrote:
>
>> the little flat edge where the printer can't print
>
> That's actually an artifact of earlier versions of hplip.
> With never versions I can print edge to edge on the entire
> DVD, no flat spots.

Newer version as in, "Newer than the latest F13 updates"-newer?

How do mere plebeians get to use such "newer versions"?

-Alan
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Re: [Bulk] When did X go back to vt7?

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan
 wrote:
>>> The X server traditionally ran on console vt7, till a while back someone
>>> decided to move it to vt1. Now that I'm used to that, they've moved it
>>> back to vt7 again. What's going on?
>>
>> If it is any use to you; I am using Xorg 1.7.4 with Gnome.  vt1 still
>> runs my Xwindow.  vt2..6 are blank consoles; vt7+ blank screens.
>
> I might try Gnome just to see what happens. It's not a big deal, but I
> had a moment's panic when Ctrl-Alt-F1 failed to produce my desktop.

I use Gnome all the time and my desktop is now back to VT7.
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Re: Acrobat fonts compared to Evince fonts

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:

>
>  http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
>>
>
> Nice, but that means you have to do the build yourself.  Is this in any
> additional repos for Fedora?
>
>
>
As I understand it, licensing of the fonts prevents distribution that way.
But I did it once and rebuilding the spec file as per their instructions
auto-downloads everything necessary and delivers a neat, easy package to
install. Not at all hard, just follow the instructions.
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Can't rename files on KDE desktop.

[Alan Evans]

Or rather, I can rename them, but then I can't access them.

If I create a new file on my F23 KDE desktop, I have no trouble accessing
it. But if I rename it (right-click, Rename) then try clicking on it again
after, I get an error dialog: "Unable to run the command specified. The
file or folder /home/alan/Desktop/// does not exist." (
is the name the file was before I renamed.)

This is a real bother in the case of folders, because I rename them often.
But then I can't access them. Everything seems to work from within the File
Manager, but fails when dealing with Desktop icons.

-Alan
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Re: Can't rename files on KDE desktop.

[Alan Evans]

On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 5:16 PM, Ed Greshko  wrote:

> On 05/23/16 07:07, Alan Evans wrote:
>
> > Or rather, I can rename them, but then I can't access them.
> >
> > If I create a new file on my F23 KDE desktop, I have no trouble
> accessing it. But if I
> > rename it (right-click, Rename) then try clicking on it again after, I
> get an error
> > dialog: "Unable to run the command specified. The file or folder
> > /home/alan/Desktop/// does not exist." ( is the name
> the file was
> > before I renamed.)
> >
> > This is a real bother in the case of folders, because I rename them
> often. But then I
> > can't access them. Everything seems to work from within the File
> Manager, but fails when
> > dealing with Desktop icons.
>
> How are you, and what type of file, are you creating on the desktop.
>
> I just did the following
>
> Right click on the desktop and selected "Create New--->Link to
> Application" and then
> configured it to start Firefox.  In doing so I gave it the name "Run
> Firefox" which is how
> it appears on the desktop.  I also adjusted the properties to have the FF
> icon displayed.
> I started FF using this desktop file several times.
>
> I then right-clicked on the icon, picked "Rename" and changed it to just
> "Firefox".  After
> that I clicked it again and Firefox started without incident.
>

I haven't tried a link to an application. In my case:

Right-click on Desktop, Create New --> Folder.
Name the folder "foo".
Click on foo, opens File Manager in foo directory. Close that.
Right-click on foo, Rename. "bar"
Click on bar... Error.
(After reboot, clicking on bar works.)

Same thing happens with Create New --> Text File.

This condition exists in my login and my wife's login, since I'm not sure
when.
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Re: Can't rename files on KDE desktop.

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 9:13 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan 
wrote:

>
> Note that there is a list for KDE on Fedora, where you might get more
> help with this. See:
>
> http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/k...@lists.fedoraproject.org


I'll move this there, then.
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Re: Why did they f*ck with GIMP?

[Alan Evans]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 11:27 AM, fred smith wrote:
> because there's been a LOT of whining from many people about the multi-
> window interface. Allegedly it alienates Photoshop users, preventing
> them from being willing to learn to  use Gimp (and Linux, et al.)

There seems to be a lot of hatred here (even in this thread) for the
multi-window interface. But I, for one, wish that *more* applications
implemented it.

It is seriously the only way to go when you have multiple monitors and
edit a lot of images simultaneously. (Try to imagine stretching a
single-window interface across three screens. Ick.)

-Alan
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Re: UEFI bootkit

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Mike Wright wrote:
> Great!  MS shoots self in foot, others in head.  We saw it coming :/

Shoots themselves in the foot? Limiting user choice sounds like it's
working just the way they wanted. (Shooting everyone else in the head
was a part of their plan.)
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opinions about partition sizes

[Alan Evans]

Hello, insightful users!

I finally got a new desktop system for my home office, so I get to
tinker with a completely fresh install.

My query is how to best divide the storage. I will be installing the
system on SSD, and I tentatively decided to put swap, /home, /var, and
/tmp directories on a separate, conventional hard drive on the
assumption that this is where most of the rapidly changing data (and
most of the disk writes) would be.

I put swap in it's own partition, sized by the old two-times-RAM
(24GB, in my case -- woohoo!) rule of thumb. Not even sure if that
rule still applies.

The rest of the 2TB spindle is configured LVM, and in that reside the
/home, /tmp, and /var directories. In my ignorance, I guessed 50GB for
/var and 100GB for /tmp, and the rest for /home. (I do a lot of audio
and video work, so I figured /tmp might be used heavily.)

Does that arrangement sound sensible? Does anybody have a contrary
opinion about how it should be divided? Or better: is there a way to
make the division between /home, /tmp, and /var more fluid?

-Alan
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Re: Why graphics drivers are proprietary

[Alan Evans]

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 11:56 AM, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> So final users would have had the best hardware running the best drivers
> (open source too).
> This is something which must not be permitted to happen. :-/

Not if it helps to sell the competitor's hardware.
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Re: Games on Linux

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
> I haven't done any programming in many years, and when I did, it wasn't
> graphics programming.  However, AIUI, most of it is DE agnostic.  If so,
> this shouldn't be a factor, but of course, ICBW.

Probably agnostic to DE, but probably not to library or driver
differences. When every customer could have a different version of a
needed library, or the same version with different configure options;
plus incompatible changes in audio or video drivers.

Apple is essentially single-platform and Microsoft at least tries to
keep things backward-compatible. The Linux kernel devs seem, at least
to the uninitiated, to have some kind of animosity to the very idea of
ABI compatibility.

Witness VMWare basically recompiling itself every time the user
updates his kernel. No game developer wants that kind of headache.
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Re: Games on Linux

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote:

>>
>> Apple is essentially single-platform and Microsoft at least tries to
>> keep things backward-compatible. The Linux kernel devs seem, at least
>> to the uninitiated, to have some kind of animosity to the very idea of
>> ABI compatibility.
>>
>> Witness VMWare basically recompiling itself every time the user
>> updates his kernel. No game developer wants that kind of headache.
>
>
> That applies to device drivers, not user space. Differing library versions
> and limitations of graphics support are more likely to be an issue than the
> kernel.

Of course. I was only using that as an example. What I meant to convey
(and I clearly did a poor job) was that this problem runs through the
system, starting at the deepest levels. I don't even bother sending
binaries to a co-worker, who uses a different distro than I do. Much
easier to give him the source and have him compile against the
libraries on his own system. That's just not something that's going to
work for game companies who want to pay the army of specialists that
they employed to produce a modern game.
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Re: Games on Linux

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Reindl Harald wrote:
> Am 25.10.2012 01:09, schrieb Alan Evans:
>> Apple is essentially single-platform and Microsoft at least tries to
>> keep things backward-compatible. The Linux kernel devs seem, at least
>> to the uninitiated, to have some kind of animosity to the very idea of
>> ABI compatibility.
>>
>> Witness VMWare basically recompiling itself every time the user
>> updates his kernel. No game developer wants that kind of headache

You seem to have missed my mea culpa about using the kernel as an
example, but...

> you can not compare KERNEL modules with userland software

I can if userland suffers from the same kind of problems, which was my point.

"Failed to load application foo because library bar-1.12.5.0 was not
found." Checking my libs directory, I see that I have bar-1.12.5.7. So
I make a symbolic link and hope for the best, but no: Program foo now
segfaults because the libbar devs changed some function prototype. And
it was doomed to fail anyway because my distro ships libbar with
CONFIG_GARBUNDING_GRABULATORS=off when it was compiled.

> VMware itself does NOT recompile itself
> simply because it is a binary
> only the kernel-modules are source

I didn't say that it recompiled *all* of itself.
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KMail trash folder?

[Alan Evans]

In KMail (F17), where is the "Trash" folder? If I select a message and then
click the "Move to Trash" button, where is the message moved to? How do I
recover accidentally deleted messages?

On the sidebar, there is only "inbox," "outbox," and "sent-mail" listed
under Local Folders.

-Alan
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Re: Fedora 18, future isn't too good as it seems :-

[Alan Evans]

>
> Also what do you think does more damage shipping broken
> code or shipping late ?
>

The jokes almost write themselves: "And with Fedora, we get both!" *ducks*
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Re: First f17 install -- on an ee701

[Alan Evans]

FWIW, my netbook switched to Fuduntu (fuduntu.org) some time ago and it
seems like a really good fit, especially if you prefer GNOME 2.

My workstations are still Fedora, and I'm awkwardly trying to learn KDE
because I can't stomach GNOME 3. But Fuduntu seems to be designed with a
mind toward the netbook.


On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 5:43 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:

> On 10/31/2012 06:02 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
>
>> On 10/31/2012 02:47 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>>
>>> I am a bit stubborn and am working within the Gnome 3 model.  At some
>>> point I am going to have to work with Win8 either on the family machines
>>> or work, and knowing how to get a tablet GUI working on a mouse-based
>>> system will serve me well.
>>>
>>
>> Jerry Pournelle (http://www.jerrypournelle.com**) reports that Windows 8
>> appears designed to take advantage of "hardware you don't have yet."  He
>> suggests that most people stick with Windows 7 for the time being if they
>> have the choice.
>>
>
> I don't expect to be using Win8, let alone Win7 for a year or so. Gives me
> more time to get really comfortable with the Tablet-style GUI.  Been at it
> for about a year now.
>
>
>Not using Windows myself, I don't know, but I tend to trust his
>> experience in these things.
>>
>
> I knew Pournelle back in the 70s; never really got to trust him. But he
> often does get some things right.  :)
>
>
>
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Re: KMail trash folder?

[Alan Evans]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:52 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> I use KMail accessing mail on an IMAP server.
> In my case I can choose the Trash folder,
> by going to KMail=>Settings=>Configure KMail=>Accounts,
> then highlighting the appropriate account,
> and clicking on Modify=>Advanced,
> where there is an option to choose the Trash folder.
>

Thanks for the reply. My account is POP3, and I see no reference to the
Trash folder on that dialog.
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Re: KMail trash folder?

[Alan Evans]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Tim wrote:

>
> I've not used kmail for years, but it occurs to me that if you have
> options to immediately delete mail, that it would be logical for the
> trash folder to be removed if you have such a setting set.  So, you
> could look for such settings.
>

If there is such a setting, I can't find it. In Settings->Configure
KMail->Misc->Folders there are a couple of checkboxes -- ''Ask for
confirmation before moving all messages to trash" and "Empty local trash
folder on program exit" -- but nothing that tells me where to find the
trash folder's contents in any event.


> It also occurs to me that you could have accidentally deleted a trash
> folder, or accidentally dragged and dropped it into another folder.
>
> It could be worth your while to create another user account on your
> system, log in as that user, then fiddle around with kmail, without
> risking changing what's currently still working, and without risking
> losing your mail.  You could try to deliberately break things, to see if
> you can discover how your trash folder disappeared, where it might have
> gone, and how to get it back.
>

Ok. I just did a totally fresh install in a VM. KMail definitely only has
"inbox," "outbox," and "sent-mail" under Local Folders. So it's not like I
accidentally deleted it.

I tried creating a folder called "Trash" and deleted a message. Still not
there. I tried "Search in all folders" for something that positively must
match a deleted message. Nothing.

I'm beginning to think that the KMail developers are all snickering to each
other as they watch me through my webcam.

-Alan
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Re: KMail trash folder?

[Alan Evans]

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 8:28 AM, Tim wrote:

> There is the possibility that they don't use a trash folder.  The
> deleted mail staying in the same place that it was, to start off with,
> simply flagged as deleted, and will actually be deleted on exit, or upon
> a manual purge, or once a week, and probably hidden from view in the
> meantime.  Look for a hide deleted messages type of option in the menus.
>

If such an option exists, I can't find it.

I think that it is time for me to give up on KMail. I actually had a
handful of issues, and I thought I would deal with them one at a time. It
seemed to me that Where Does the Trash Go was the simplest issue and I
would be quickly pointed to the place or the option or shown how I was
thinking about it all wrong. But nobody seems to know. If we can't get past
this then the other problems are going to be insurmountable.

This is not an encouraging first bump on the road in my switch to KDE.

Thanks all for the help so far.
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Re: Need help with minimal install on ee701

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 7:03 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:

>
> Right now I have a 300Mb /boot and 768Mb swap leaving ~2.7Gb for /.
>

Not sure why you would bother with separate /boot and / partitions on a
system with only 4GB of mass storage. Just go with a single partition, and
limit the installed kernels to two -- current and previous -- to save space.

I didn't even have a swap partition on my 900A when I was using the 4GB
flash drive that came with it. but I had 2GB of RAM, so swap wasn't much
needed for the kinds of tasks I set that little machine to. Of course, I
didn't need hibernation, either.

-Alan
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Re: finding out what wireless card -- asus ee701

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 8:40 AM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:

> How do I find out what wireless card is in a system, and thus which driver
> to install?
>

lspci should tell you.
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Re: finding out what wireless card -- asus ee701

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 10:19 AM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:

> Got that in a private mail.
>

Sorry. Wasn't intending that to be a private email.


> It really does not say driver: ...
>
> But it looks like ath5k
>
> Now I have to figure out what rpm that comes from.


I don't think you have the option of getting rid of it if you use the
fedora stock kernel. That is, I don't think that there's a separate package
for it.

But seriously, if you're this committed to expunging stuff you don't need,
maybe you should just compile your own kernel and call it a day. It's not
that hard to do.
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Re: Partitioning between SDD and HDD

[Alan Evans]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 6:35 AM, Eddie G. O'Connor Jr. wrote:

> You mean that all this hype over SSD's and they're LIMITED? I thought they
> were supposed to be BETTER than the spinning drives of today? Exaclty how
> are they better if they come "out-of-the-box" with limitations? Just
> curious...
>

It's well known that flash devices have a limited number of writes. This
number is pretty high, though. And with caching and load-balancing built
into the drive's firmware, it is typically not a major concern.

However, although SSD devices have lightning-fast read performance, writing
to them is considerably slower. Think of the difference between reading a
big file from a flash thumb drive versus writing a big file. That doesn't
mean that you should never write to them, but if the intended use involves
writing very frequently (like /var or /tmp) then it might not be a good fit.

Also, SSD is much more expensive, byte-for-byte, than a hard drive. If you
want a lot storage (my /home partition is well over a terabyte) then SSD is
pretty cost prohibitive.

On the other hand, my system drive is SSD and, because of the fast read
performance, my computer boots, after the BIOS screen, in four seconds.
>From the login screen to my desktop is another 2-3 seconds. Starting even
very large applications is pretty snappy.
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Re: reducing PDF file size in Fedora

[Alan Evans]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 6:17 AM, Ranjan Maitra wrote:

> But I was wondering if there is an open source way to achieve the same
> result in Fedora?
>
>
I've used ghostscript to "optimize" some very large PDF documents. Maybe
not exactly what you want, but it worked pretty well in my case, thus:

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook
-dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile= 
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iptables is like alchemy

[Alan Evans]

This is really related to iptables, not I presume Fedora-specific. But I'm
really hoping that somebody here will be able to school me on iptables, so
I don't have to find and subscribe to some other list just to ask one
question.

I'm faced with the problem of needing to punch a hole in a firewall on our
portal server so that, in our case, ssh to port 20022 on external interface
of that server actually just connects to port 22 on another machine located
in the network on the internal interface. I hope I'm being clear.

I've tried many iterations of iptables rules to accomplish this. The
closest I've come is:

iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -p tcp -s 0/0 --dport 20022 -j DNAT --to
192.168.0.35:22

And indeed connecting to port 20022 on portal just goes straight to port 22
on the other (192.168.0.35) machine. The problem is, as soon as I apply
this rule, DNS queries (portal is also a DNS server) to the external
interface stop working.

I've googled endlessly and found about a thousand variations by people that
are each supposed to solve a subtly different variation on what I'm trying
to do. Nothing I've tried does what I want without bad side effects like I
describe above.

-Alan
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Re: iptables is like alchemy

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 6:13 PM, Jorge Fábregas wrote:

>
> Please elaborate more.


I'll try.


> Why does 192.168.0.35 perform DNS queries
> against the "external interface" of the firewall? Why not use the
> internal ip?


It doesn't.

I'll try to be more specific:

There are at least four machines in this picture.

"Portal" is our company's gateway between the wide internet and the local
LAN. It handles a number of services and also runs bind.

"Machine35" is a server on the local LAN.

"Server2" is another server (not yet mentioned) which sits parallel to
portal and is connected only to the internet. Server2 has portal as it's
only nameserver, so accessing server2 by name is only possible if portal is
online and running bind.

Now the task I've been unhappily given is to allow ssh access to 35
directly from some other machine accessing from the internet. Call this
machine "Developer".

The closest I've come to doing this is the rule that I posted originally.
After executing that rule and no other, Developer is able to initiate a ssh
connection to portal:20022 and directly log in to machine35. Beautiful.
Except now, nobody can access server2 because the DNS query times out. That
and the boss complains about IMAP access to portal from the outside stops
working, which I figure is the same problem.

Anyway, the rule I posted is the only rule in use here. I have tried other
iterations that did involve a MASQUERADE rule, but they didn't work either.
Like I said, I've been scouring google to solve this for a long time.

So my question is sort of multi-faceted:

If the rule I posted can't work without an attendant MASQUERADE rule then
why did it work? I'm certain it was the only rule in effect (aside from the
normal rules always effective) when I tested connectivity.

Why did my rule cause other services to be blocked? I don't see anything
about it that should have had that effect.

Finally, what *should* I do to make this work?

If you manually perform dig @192.168.0.1 google.com  (I
> assume that's your firewall ip) from 192.168.0.35, does it work?   Did
> you create the corresponding MASQUERADE rule (under POSTROUTING) for the
> egress traffic coming from 192.168.0.35?  I believe so , otherwise you
> wouldn't have been able to connect from the outside to 20022.
>
> Please post your rules if you want more detailed help.  I really don't
> see any relationship with what you describe & DNS problems.
>

Neither do I, and that's a big part of my problem.

Thanks for being patient with my ignorance.

-Alan
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Re: iptables is like alchemy

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 7:50 PM, Gary Hodder wrote:

try this
> ppp0=Internet connection
> eth0=local area network connection
> This will forward port 22 on the Internet to machine 192.168.0.2 port 22
> on local network.
>
> iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -i ppp0 -o eth0 -d 192.168.0.2 --dport 22 -j
> ACCEPT
>
> iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i ppp0 --dport 22 -j DNAT
> --to-destination 192.168.0.2:22
>
>
I'll try this tomorrow when I get into work. But at first look it seems
awfully familiar, like it's something that I've already tried. Thanks,
though. At this point I'll try whatever somebody thinks might work.

-Alan
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Re: iptables is like alchemy

[Alan Evans]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 3:37 AM, Jorge Fábregas wrote:

> Ok, I've posted a similar setup I've used in the past that worked like a
> charm.  The script is the actual /etc/sysconfig/iptables.  You'll notice
> the syntax there is somehow different than when you manually create the
> rules (or put in a script) but you get the idea.  Those rules WERE THE
> MINIMUM required in order to let a machine on internet reach a machine
> on the internal network (port 8,555).   Ask me any question if you don't
> understand a line (please specify line number in question).
>
> eth0 is WAN, eth1 is LAN.  Notice how I use "-i" and "-o" for the NICs.
>
> http://fpaste.org/sdPF/
>

Just to follow up on this, I had nothing but trouble from the portal
server. Everything I did seemed to break unrelated stuff and none of it
made any sense. It was very frustrating, and that was really why I came
here to ask.

Anyway, I finally gave up. To save time and what was left of my sanity, I
just installed another server parallel to portal, implemented rules based
on your example above, and called it a day. The new server *only* handles
the masqueraded connections to the internal server.

Thanks for the tips!

-Alan
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Re: KMail trash folder?

[Alan Evans]

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 3:33 PM, JPAM69 wrote:

> I just found in another post a trick, which worked for me:
>
> just create the 'trash' folder, quit the kontact application, start it
> again.  kmail will automatically recognize the 'trash' directory, will
> assign the trash icon to it and all removed messages will be moved from now
> on to this directory.  It seems that the trash folder simply does not
> exist,
> and "move to trash" simply means delete forever!
>
> I hope this helps (I also looked for this for a while!!!)
>

It worked! Notably, it must be "trash" and not "Trash". And I also missed
that I had to exit and restart the application.

I absolutely do not understand why all that was necessary. This belongs in
the UI Hall of Shame.

-Alan
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No sound for really old program

[Alan Evans]

Hi all!

I gave my kid a netbook with Linux on it, and he noticed an ancient (circa
RH6) game on one of my shelves. I told him that he could try to install it,
figuring that there was no chance. But it worked! Except, no sound, which
doesn't surprise me.

Now I do remember years back that there was some sort of wrapper I could
execute old programs in that would allow them to work with the latest (at
the time) sound architecture. But I don't remember what it was called. And
in any case, it probably wouldn't work now either.

Is there such a thing nowadays that will expose old audio hooks to programs
running on modern systems?

-Alan
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Re: No sound for really old program

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:

>
> $ padsp $old-program
>
> Yes, that is exactly the thing I was trying to remember.

Unfortunately, didn't work. Commandline complaint says it can't open the
sound device nor connect to ESD. I have only the foggiest, indistinct
recollection that something called "ESD" had something to do with sound a
long time ago.

Oh well, probably not really worth pursuing. At this point it's probably
easier to just dust off some ancient machine from my garage and install a
suitably old OS, if my real goal is just letting my kid play some old
games. Thanks for the help!

-Alan
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What happened to my printer!?!

[Alan Evans]

Hello all,

Sometime in the last couple of weeks, I lost my ability to print to the
office printer. If I check (KDE) System Settings, the printer's status
reads, "Paused - 'Unable to connect to CIFS host after (tried 3 times)'".
Everybody else can still use this printer, and there have been no major
network reconfiguration events recently. I can't figure out how to bring
this back online.

I tried to simply re-add the long-existing printer again, but the "Add a
New Printer" dialog won't let me browse the network for any printers at
all. The [Browse] button under "Windows Printer via SAMBA" is greyed out,
so I would have to type the URI by hand. But the URI is correct in the
configuration of the current, non-working, printer, as far as I know.

Is there any way to figure out why the current printer is offline, beyond
"Unable to connect"? Not being able to print is really messing with my
workflow.

-Alan
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Re: What happened to my printer!?!

[Alan Evans]

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 2:34 PM, Rick Stevens wrote:

> Well, since it seems to be a Windows printer (e.g. a print spooler
> running on a Windows box), did they change the authentication at that
> end? Did you change the firewall settings on your box so that Samba
> stuff is blocked now?
>

The authentication has not changed on the Windows box. (The guy in charge
of that would never do that, since it would force him to go around
reconfiguring everybody's machine for the new authentication. He would
never want to do that much work.) In any case, I asked, and there has been
no change to the print-spooler's configuration.

As for the firewall, it is disabled on this machine. For fun, I just issued
a "setenforce 0" and tried resuming the printer. No change in status. So it
is something of a mystery to me why I can't even browse for network
printers.

-Alan
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