Jim Henderson wrote:
> Yeah, I've read a few stories about the newest Ubuntu (8.10 IIRC)
> delivery that state that the benchmarks are slower than the previous
> version.

OTOH, I read about a developer who quit contributing to the Linux kernel
because he was tired about devs caring about companies saying
$BULLSHT_BENCHMARK now gives lower results, instead of caring about the
desktop becoming faster for users. (it was about lowering latency and
improving the process scheduler, which would give better speed to the
desktop)

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 11:35:04 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 
>> JUst a thought, does the device have a SSD drive in it?  Or does it run
>> completely over the network?
> 
> Completely over network. It's a low-budget system, built from leftovers
> - AMD Athlon 1,2GHz, 768MiB, Matrox G400 16MiB, Intel EtherExpress
> Pro/100+, some random case, Gentoo Linux. The PSU still makes slight
> noise.

Cool, I've been thinking about putting a system like this together, this 
is a useful parts list. :-)  How's it work for you?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:21:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Well, it asks once per process you invoke with admin rights, just like
> sudo.

That wasn't my experience - or rather, once per program wasn't my 
experience.  This was pre-Vista SP1, though, so it's very possible the 
behaviour changed at that point.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:33:39 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Yeah, I've read a few stories about the newest Ubuntu (8.10 IIRC)
>> delivery that state that the benchmarks are slower than the previous
>> version.
> 
> OTOH, I read about a developer who quit contributing to the Linux kernel
> because he was tired about devs caring about companies saying
> $BULLSHT_BENCHMARK now gives lower results, instead of caring about the
> desktop becoming faster for users. (it was about lowering latency and
> improving the process scheduler, which would give better speed to the
> desktop)

I hadn't read that one...

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:21:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>
> > Well, it asks once per process you invoke with admin rights, just like
> > sudo.
>
> That wasn't my experience - or rather, once per program wasn't my
> experience.  This was pre-Vista SP1, though, so it's very possible the
> behaviour changed at that point.

Nope.  Every damn time you open the same program...

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:53:50 -0500, nemesis wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:21:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>>
>> > Well, it asks once per process you invoke with admin rights, just
>> > like sudo.
>>
>> That wasn't my experience - or rather, once per program wasn't my
>> experience.  This was pre-Vista SP1, though, so it's very possible the
>> behaviour changed at that point.
> 
> Nope.  Every damn time you open the same program...

Well, that's what I meant.  I had situations where it asked me two and 
three times about specific things the program wanted to do (like VNC).

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> Well, it asks once per process you invoke with admin rights, just

>> Nope.  Every damn time you open the same program...

That would be "once per process", where "process" is used in the 
technical sense there.

> Well, that's what I meant.  I had situations where it asked me two and 
> three times about specific things the program wanted to do (like VNC).

I'll be installing VNC, so I'll see. Of course, if you know it's going 
to do this, you can start it with rights in the first place, but that 
doesn't help the first times you run it. I'm still working on getting 
everything set up the way I want it, so I haven't gotten very far in the 
process of being annoyed by Vista yet ;-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:36:30 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>>> Well, it asks once per process you invoke with admin rights, just
> 
>>> Nope.  Every damn time you open the same program...
> 
> That would be "once per process", where "process" is used in the
> technical sense there.
> 
>> Well, that's what I meant.  I had situations where it asked me two and
>> three times about specific things the program wanted to do (like VNC).
> 
> I'll be installing VNC, so I'll see. Of course, if you know it's going
> to do this, you can start it with rights in the first place, but that
> doesn't help the first times you run it. I'm still working on getting
> everything set up the way I want it, so I haven't gotten very far in the
> process of being annoyed by Vista yet ;-)

I probably mentioned it before, but my annoyance at Vista was pretty 
extreme - was pulling video off my DVR via firewire, and silly me, I 
thought I could run it headless.  Disabled the firewall, UAC, installed 
TightVNC and set it up to autostart, set up autologin, background to 
solid black...everything was perfect.

Rebooted the system and it started as expected.

Shut down, took the system to the room with the TV and plugged it in.  
Powered it up.

Couldn't connect to it remotely via VNC.

Eventually went and got a keyboard and monitor and plugged in - Vista had 
reverted *every* *damned* *change* *I* *made*.  I'm surprised it didn't 
uninstall TightVNC.  But sure enough, UAC enabled, autologin turned off, 
background restored, firewall reenabled - all of it.

That's the last time I ran it.  Well, no, tell a lie, I installed the 64-
bit version in a VM so I could extract the wireless drivers for the 
wireless NIC in the machine using ndiswrapper - HP very *helpfully* 
requires that you use the actual OS the drivers are written for in order 
to extract them.  I wasn't real happy about that either.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Darren New escreveu:
>> What really annoys me the most is that I'm quite sure I turned the 
>> damned UAC feature off...
> 
> I believe you. I don't have a whole lot of experience with it yet. I 
> just have to say it hasn't annoyed *me* yet, except for the broken 
> software crap that came with the computer.

Hmm, odd.  I'm seeing html sources on IE7 with notepad just now without 
problems or questions.  I took a look at my UAC, and it was ON!  It's 
more schizophrenic than I thought!  It's now faking to be a fine OS... :P

Ok, once I installed Firefox, I haven't used IE in a while.  I only 
really used it in the first few days post migration.  Perhaps SP1 did 
improve things a bit, I guess...

Our memory can betray us sometimes.  :P

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Eventually went and got a keyboard and monitor and plugged in - Vista had 
> reverted *every* *damned* *change* *I* *made*.

Weird. I've occasionally had it happen where it "couldn't load my 
profile" when I remote loggined, leaving me with everything as if I was 
logging in for the first time. But logging out and logging back in 
always fixed that. I figured a temporary timing failure somewhere.

> HP very *helpfully* requires that you use the actual OS the drivers are written for
in order 
> to extract them. 

The abusiveness of HP's "rescue disks" are one of the many reasons I no 
longer will buy any HP machine. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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nemesis wrote:
> Perhaps SP1 did improve things a bit, I guess...

Oh yeah. SP1 on any Microsoft OS (post DOS at least) is a necessary 
precursor to being usable. They tend to ship things long before they're 
actually ready for the general public. It's all that sort of tuning 
stuff they put in the SPs, while the first release I'm convinced is more 
to give the HW and SW vendors a chance to get their stuff working OK 
with it. Even XP pre-SP2 wasn't all that great. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> Cool, I've been thinking about putting a system like this together, this 
> is a useful parts list. :-)  How's it work for you?

Nicely. I've wrote a bunch of PHP-scripts, so the system works on it's
own and I can control it over a web-browser. I'll release the software
after it seems even remotely releaseable. It works already, but the code
is ugly (and there's some minor clitches). It also has automated
CD-ripping system - I just drop a disc to CD-ROM, Xplayer rips it,
checks CDDB for disc information and encodes it to FLAC. My goal is to
make a system which is usable also by others, not just me.

http://www.zbxt.net/~aero/xplayer.png
http://www.zbxt.net/~aero/xplayer_trackinfo.png

> Jim

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
>> Yep, pure business. I'm pretty sure if I was running a company like
>> Nvidia I'd work exactly the same. I might do some time-shifting for the
>> drivers, but releasing Vista-drivers for G400-aged card... No way.
> 
> I don't know how far back they really go, but I remember it was least a
> couple of generations. And, of course, it's a thing that's easy to point
> out, unlike (say) reliability. You just point to the web pages and say
> "See? We do that."
> 

Yep, Matrox has done that - and I'd probably do that, if I was running a
company like Matrox (traditionally quality and long lifetimes rather
than extreme speed). Above I ment that if I was running a company like
Nvidia, which wants to stay at the top of speed with its cards.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:53:43 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 
>> Cool, I've been thinking about putting a system like this together,
>> this is a useful parts list. :-)  How's it work for you?
> 
> Nicely. I've wrote a bunch of PHP-scripts, so the system works on it's
> own and I can control it over a web-browser. I'll release the software
> after it seems even remotely releaseable. It works already, but the code
> is ugly (and there's some minor clitches). It also has automated
> CD-ripping system - I just drop a disc to CD-ROM, Xplayer rips it,
> checks CDDB for disc information and encodes it to FLAC. My goal is to
> make a system which is usable also by others, not just me.
> 
> http://www.zbxt.net/~aero/xplayer.png
> http://www.zbxt.net/~aero/xplayer_trackinfo.png

Cool, are you doing other types of media as well, or so far just music?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:37:45 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Eventually went and got a keyboard and monitor and plugged in - Vista
>> had reverted *every* *damned* *change* *I* *made*.
> 
> Weird. I've occasionally had it happen where it "couldn't load my
> profile" when I remote loggined, leaving me with everything as if I was
> logging in for the first time. But logging out and logging back in
> always fixed that. I figured a temporary timing failure somewhere.

Huh, yeah, I tried rebooting the machine a couple of times, and it just 
completely forgot what it was supposed to do.

>> HP very *helpfully* requires that you use the actual OS the drivers are
>> written for in order to extract them.
> 
> The abusiveness of HP's "rescue disks" are one of the many reasons I no
> longer will buy any HP machine. :-)

I can understand that.  If I weren't running Linux, I think I'd probably 
do the same.  I have to admit, though, I really like the machine I 
bought.  It runs Linux very nicely. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:33:39 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> OTOH, I read about a developer who quit contributing to the Linux kernel
>> because he was tired about devs caring about companies saying
>> $BULLSHT_BENCHMARK now gives lower results, instead of caring about the
>> desktop becoming faster for users. (it was about lowering latency and
>> improving the process scheduler, which would give better speed to the
>> desktop)
> 
> I hadn't read that one...

Found link:

http://apcmag.com/why_i_quit_kernel_developer_con_kolivas.htm

This is the part I was referring to:

"And there are all the obvious bug reports. They're afraid to mention these.
How scary do you think it is to say 'my Firefox tabs open slowly since the
last CPU scheduler upgrade'? To top it all off, the enterprise users are
the opposite. Just watch each kernel release and see how quickly some
$bullshit_benchmark degraded by .1% with patch $Y gets reported. See also
how quickly it gets attended to."

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> http://apcmag.com/why_i_quit_kernel_developer_con_kolivas.htm

Heh. """Hardware driven innovation cannot be afforded by the market any 
more. There is no money in it. There will be no market for it. Computers 
are boring."""  Yeah, right. Because nobody gets excited about OLPC, or 
a PS3, or a new graphics processing pipeline design, or SSDDs, or 
hardware RAID, or multi-touch screens, or virtualization, or ....

This guy's starting to sound like that Alan Kay interview.

"""Computers of today may be 1,000 times faster than they were a decade 
ago, yet the things that matter are slower."""  Yeah, because with 
uptimes of months or years, the length of time it takes to boot is of 
supreme importance.

"""Money was pouring into development from all these big names into 
developing Linux's performance in these areas.""" Ding ding ding!

He tinkers with Linux scheduling. I wonder if he realizes that UNIX 
scheduling has always sucked ass compared to anything contemporary. The 
scheduling tables in the mainframe I worked on actually had to be 
compressed in memory (in the sense of sparse, I guess) because they'd 
otherwise take up too much core. And UNIX at the time was saying "let's 
nuke him if he's compute bound, and otherwise bump him up." I still 
don't know if they even have the concept of a minquan.  Sheesh. But it 
certainly sounds like he was getting it working much better. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> Cool, are you doing other types of media as well, or so far just music?

Every possible file. It searches for all files in configured basedirs
and you can define the player-software (and if the file is playable at
all) by filetype. I'm throwing video files straightly to full-screen X
with "export DISPLAY=localhost:0;/usr/bin/mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=3,0
-vo x11 -fs -zoom". Apache is running on the same user that has the
right to play the files, just to make things easier (the machine is
dedicated, after all).

And yeah, it normally plays randomly the radio-playable marked tracks
and you can browse and search them - you'll need to log in to see the
files you have permissions to (ables ie. you to give your kids
permission to play cartoons, but not porn).

> Jim

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Every possible file. It searches for all files in configured basedirs

Reminds me of a description I read some months ago. A quiet dedicated 
commercial Linux server with nothing but a web interface. It would read 
all your POP and IMAP accounts and consolodate them into one imap 
server, would run bittorrents you gave it the torrents for, would serve 
files, a printer, a web server, basically all the kinds of things you'd 
want in a nerdy home server. It was like $600 with a big HD on it, and 
you just plug it in and go.

Only on sale in Sweeden or something, sadly enough.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:58:25 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:33:39 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>>> OTOH, I read about a developer who quit contributing to the Linux
>>> kernel because he was tired about devs caring about companies saying
>>> $BULLSHT_BENCHMARK now gives lower results, instead of caring about
>>> the desktop becoming faster for users. (it was about lowering latency
>>> and improving the process scheduler, which would give better speed to
>>> the desktop)
>> 
>> I hadn't read that one...
> 
> Found link:
> 
> http://apcmag.com/why_i_quit_kernel_developer_con_kolivas.htm
> 
> This is the part I was referring to:
> 
> "And there are all the obvious bug reports. They're afraid to mention
> these. How scary do you think it is to say 'my Firefox tabs open slowly
> since the last CPU scheduler upgrade'? To top it all off, the enterprise
> users are the opposite. Just watch each kernel release and see how
> quickly some $bullshit_benchmark degraded by .1% with patch $Y gets
> reported. See also how quickly it gets attended to."

Will have to read it more, but interesting - thanks for the link.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:53:47 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 
>> Cool, are you doing other types of media as well, or so far just music?
> 
> Every possible file. It searches for all files in configured basedirs
> and you can define the player-software (and if the file is playable at
> all) by filetype. I'm throwing video files straightly to full-screen X
> with "export DISPLAY=localhost:0;/usr/bin/mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=3,0
> -vo x11 -fs -zoom". Apache is running on the same user that has the
> right to play the files, just to make things easier (the machine is
> dedicated, after all).
> 
> And yeah, it normally plays randomly the radio-playable marked tracks
> and you can browse and search them - you'll need to log in to see the
> files you have permissions to (ables ie. you to give your kids
> permission to play cartoons, but not porn).

Very cool.  In some respects, kinda like Netjuke, but with more media 
types supported (including video, which I don't think Netjuke does at 
all) but also with a lot more flexibility.

When are you thinking of making the code available?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> Very cool.  In some respects, kinda like Netjuke, but with more media 
> types supported (including video, which I don't think Netjuke does at 
> all) but also with a lot more flexibility.

Media support comes from the fact that it's only a frontend. It'll check
the file type by using command "file" (yes, this does incredible
quantities, if you have FLACs or MODs available...),

> When are you thinking of making the code available?

I'll need to do some cleanup, create db-dumbs (it uses MySQL for file
listing, playlist and bunch of other stuff) and collect the pieces, but
some day pretty nearly.

And yeah, I'll need to finish rendering the background-image for X :p.
12:33:03 Rendering line 200 of 544, 14155 rad. samples

> Jim

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:11:49 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 
>> Very cool.  In some respects, kinda like Netjuke, but with more media
>> types supported (including video, which I don't think Netjuke does at
>> all) but also with a lot more flexibility.
> 
> Media support comes from the fact that it's only a frontend. It'll check
> the file type by using command "file" (yes, this does incredible
> quantities, if you have FLACs or MODs available...),
> 
>> When are you thinking of making the code available?
> 
> I'll need to do some cleanup, create db-dumbs (it uses MySQL for file
> listing, playlist and bunch of other stuff) and collect the pieces, but
> some day pretty nearly.

Very cool.  I'm hoping I'll have the time to play around with it - when 
you do post it, can you let me know where?

> And yeah, I'll need to finish rendering the background-image for X :p.
> 12:33:03 Rendering line 200 of 544, 14155 rad. samples

:-)

I know the feeling; I'd probably have a render going right now if I 
wasn't trying to crack a PDF we created at work a few years ago - nobody 
has the source files any more and of course it's got an owner password on 
it.  Someone needs to parallelize pdfcrack. ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> Very cool.  I'm hoping I'll have the time to play around with it - when 
> you do post it, can you let me know where?

Naturally.

>> And yeah, I'll need to finish rendering the background-image for X :p.
>> 12:33:03 Rendering line 200 of 544, 14155 rad. samples
> 
> :-)

Damn, it seems that the texts on the image will overlap. Well, I can
always tweak it also afterwards.

http://www.zbxt.net/~aero/xplbg.png

(it's tracing on my laptop, C2D 1,83GHz, 3.6 so one core only)

> I know the feeling; I'd probably have a render going right now if I 
> wasn't trying to crack a PDF we created at work a few years ago - nobody 
> has the source files any more and of course it's got an owner password on 
> it.  Someone needs to parallelize pdfcrack. ;-)

Unencrypted? Run through pdf2ps and then ps2pdf. Quick, simple and
effective ;).

> Jim

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:16:58 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 
>> Very cool.  I'm hoping I'll have the time to play around with it - when
>> you do post it, can you let me know where?
> 
> Naturally.

Thanks!

> Damn, it seems that the texts on the image will overlap. Well, I can
> always tweak it also afterwards.
> 
> http://www.zbxt.net/~aero/xplbg.png
> 
> (it's tracing on my laptop, C2D 1,83GHz, 3.6 so one core only)

32-bit system or 64?  Really cool image.

>> I know the feeling; I'd probably have a render going right now if I
>> wasn't trying to crack a PDF we created at work a few years ago -
>> nobody has the source files any more and of course it's got an owner
>> password on it.  Someone needs to parallelize pdfcrack. ;-)
> 
> Unencrypted? Run through pdf2ps and then ps2pdf. Quick, simple and
> effective ;).

<thud>  Damn, now that saved me a lot of time but is also scary at the 
same time.....Thanks for that tip!

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> Thanks!

I'll still need to dump the databases and truncate the dumps. Maybe
tomorrow, I'll have to sleep before going to work tomorrow.

>> (it's tracing on my laptop, C2D 1,83GHz, 3.6 so one core only)
> 
> 32-bit system or 64?  Really cool image.

64-bit, running Gentoo Linux (surprisingly).

> <thud>  Damn, now that saved me a lot of time but is also scary at the 
> same time.....Thanks for that tip!

The easiest and quickest ways are often out of mind - partly luckily.

> Jim

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Thanks!
> 
> I'll still need to dump the databases and truncate the dumps. Maybe
> tomorrow, I'll have to sleep before going to work tomorrow.

It's here:
http://www.zbxt.net/~aero/xplayer.tar.bz2

Yes, it's hasn't got even version number, so it's definedly something
like beta ;). It works, but still has a lot to do (tracefiles (which is
ment to keep the file-db up to date) gives continous errors, there's a
lot to implement, init-scripts are really bulk, skipping a track won't
work is something else than mplayer is playing it etc etc etc).

>>> (it's tracing on my laptop, C2D 1,83GHz, 3.6 so one core only)
>> 32-bit system or 64?  Really cool image.
> 
> 64-bit, running Gentoo Linux (surprisingly).

Update on the image also.
40:18:44 Rendering line 491 of 544, 14398 rad. samples, current status
can be seen on the same URL.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:05:58 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 
>> Thanks!
> 
> I'll still need to dump the databases and truncate the dumps. Maybe
> tomorrow, I'll have to sleep before going to work tomorrow.

OK - probably won't have time to look much until the weekend anyways.  :-)

>>> (it's tracing on my laptop, C2D 1,83GHz, 3.6 so one core only)
>> 
>> 32-bit system or 64?  Really cool image.
> 
> 64-bit, running Gentoo Linux (surprisingly).

Why surprisingly? ;-)

>> <thud>  Damn, now that saved me a lot of time but is also scary at the
>> same time.....Thanks for that tip!
> 
> The easiest and quickest ways are often out of mind - partly luckily.

That's true enough.  Now I just need to convert from PDF to Framemaker 
and we've got the original files to work with again.  :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:59:34 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Eero Ahonen wrote:
>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Thanks!
>> 
>> I'll still need to dump the databases and truncate the dumps. Maybe
>> tomorrow, I'll have to sleep before going to work tomorrow.
> 
> It's here:
> http://www.zbxt.net/~aero/xplayer.tar.bz2

Snagged it.  Like I said, probably won't have time until the weekend to 
do much with it.

> Yes, it's hasn't got even version number, so it's definedly something
> like beta ;). It works, but still has a lot to do (tracefiles (which is
> ment to keep the file-db up to date) gives continous errors, there's a
> lot to implement, init-scripts are really bulk, skipping a track won't
> work is something else than mplayer is playing it etc etc etc).

OK - good to know.  I had figured alpha-to-beta quality probably at this 
stage, given that you were still doing coding.

>>>> (it's tracing on my laptop, C2D 1,83GHz, 3.6 so one core only)
>>> 32-bit system or 64?  Really cool image.
>> 
>> 64-bit, running Gentoo Linux (surprisingly).
> 
> Update on the image also.
> 40:18:44 Rendering line 491 of 544, 14398 rad. samples, current status
> can be seen on the same URL.

Moving along pretty well. :-)

Jim
x

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> OK - probably won't have time to look much until the weekend anyways.  :-)

BTW, there's no installer nor install instructions, but luckily the
directory structure of the package is pretty simple ;). Diff files
before overwriting your old ones (ie. apaches httpd.conf), if you're
running anything else on that machine.

>> 64-bit, running Gentoo Linux (surprisingly).
> 
> Why surprisingly? ;-)

SaoIP (Sarcasm-over-IP).

> That's true enough.  Now I just need to convert from PDF to Framemaker 
> and we've got the original files to work with again.  :-)

Heh, conversion tunnel ;).

> Jim

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Well, it asks once per process you invoke with admin rights, just like 
> sudo. No, sudo doesn't ask for the password every time, but it makes you 
> type "sudo" every time, which was kind of what I was saying. 

BTW, what prevents a program from trying to run sudo, just to see if 
your sudo hasn't expired yet, and thereby taking over your machine? I 
mean, if I don't have to actively confirm every request, why can't a 
program just occasionally try to trojan its way in?

And, for the record:
1) SP1 apparently vastly improved how rarely you needed to UAC.
2) You can turn off UAC confirmations for administrators.
3) You can set administrators to needing to provide the password too.
4) There's a mildly hacky way (equivalent to setuid) to set up specific
programs to run as administrator without any prompting.

So it's pretty flexible. If you want a root account, log in as 
administrator and turn off the UAC for administrators only. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:53:22 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 
>> OK - probably won't have time to look much until the weekend anyways. 
>> :-)
> 
> BTW, there's no installer nor install instructions, but luckily the
> directory structure of the package is pretty simple ;). Diff files
> before overwriting your old ones (ie. apaches httpd.conf), if you're
> running anything else on that machine.

Will do.  Thought I'd have time this weekend, but ended up busier than I 
thought...

>>> 64-bit, running Gentoo Linux (surprisingly).
>> 
>> Why surprisingly? ;-)
> 
> SaoIP (Sarcasm-over-IP).

Ah, I get it. :-)

>> That's true enough.  Now I just need to convert from PDF to Framemaker
>> and we've got the original files to work with again.  :-)
> 
> Heh, conversion tunnel ;).

More or less, yes. ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:53:09 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Darren New wrote:
>> Well, it asks once per process you invoke with admin rights, just like
>> sudo. No, sudo doesn't ask for the password every time, but it makes
>> you type "sudo" every time, which was kind of what I was saying.
> 
> BTW, what prevents a program from trying to run sudo, just to see if
> your sudo hasn't expired yet, and thereby taking over your machine? I
> mean, if I don't have to actively confirm every request, why can't a
> program just occasionally try to trojan its way in?

A proper sudo configuration.  Which arguably I don't have. ;-)

> And, for the record:
> 1) SP1 apparently vastly improved how rarely you needed to UAC. 2) You
> can turn off UAC confirmations for administrators. 3) You can set
> administrators to needing to provide the password too. 4) There's a
> mildly hacky way (equivalent to setuid) to set up specific programs to
> run as administrator without any prompting.
> 
> So it's pretty flexible. If you want a root account, log in as
> administrator and turn off the UAC for administrators only. :-)

It's good to know they've fixed a few things, should I ever have a need 
to go back. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> A proper sudo configuration.  Which arguably I don't have. ;-)

What would be a proper sudo configuration?  What would you have it do, 
other than (say) require the human to check sudo failure logs regularly 
or something?

> It's good to know they've fixed a few things, should I ever have a need 
> to go back. :-)

Yes. Almost all (but certainly not all) of the complaining I've seen was 
either about beta versions of the stuff, or just plain wrong (such as 
complaining "they should have left an advanced way to do X" when they 
already did, and the review just wasn't advanced enough to find it).

I must admit, this is the first time Windows has "improved" that I've 
immediately liked the new version better than the old, just in terms of 
look and functionality and such. Altho it does seem to be even more 
dumbed down, lacking (for example) progress bars for many things you'd 
think would have progress bars. And omitting useful functionality (like 
backups? Come on...) unless you pay for the full packages and more.

Mine worked much better once I scraped all the proprietary ad-ware off 
the thing, and put on only the device drivers it didn't already have 
signed copies of from Microsoft.

Of course, I haven't used it for real work yet, so maybe it's a lot 
flakier. But as a concept, it works for me. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:09:27 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> A proper sudo configuration.  Which arguably I don't have. ;-)
> 
> What would be a proper sudo configuration?  What would you have it do,
> other than (say) require the human to check sudo failure logs regularly
> or something?

Not use the NOPASSWD keyword, primarily.  On a critical system, I 
wouldn't allow that in the file at all.  That would prevent a trojan such 
as you describe from successfully using sudo to act as root.

On such a system, I'd also do other things, too, like require public key 
authentication via SSH and disable root's remote access via SSH.

>> It's good to know they've fixed a few things, should I ever have a need
>> to go back. :-)
> 
> Yes. Almost all (but certainly not all) of the complaining I've seen was
> either about beta versions of the stuff, or just plain wrong (such as
> complaining "they should have left an advanced way to do X" when they
> already did, and the review just wasn't advanced enough to find it).
> 
> I must admit, this is the first time Windows has "improved" that I've
> immediately liked the new version better than the old, just in terms of
> look and functionality and such. Altho it does seem to be even more
> dumbed down, lacking (for example) progress bars for many things you'd
> think would have progress bars. And omitting useful functionality (like
> backups? Come on...) unless you pay for the full packages and more.
> 
> Mine worked much better once I scraped all the proprietary ad-ware off
> the thing, and put on only the device drivers it didn't already have
> signed copies of from Microsoft.
> 
> Of course, I haven't used it for real work yet, so maybe it's a lot
> flakier. But as a concept, it works for me. :-)

Whereas for me, I used it for about 15 minutes and then rebooted the 
machine into openSUSE 11.0 and left it there.  Vista's still there, but 
pretty much all of my apps are Linux-based now, so I don't have a need 
for it, really.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Not use the NOPASSWD keyword, primarily.

Oh, well, yes. Then you get what UAC does. That was kind of my point. I 
mean, people were complaining that UAC asks for a password for every 
process that need root privs. I was just wondering why this isn't a good 
thing.

> Whereas for me, I used it for about 15 minutes and then rebooted the 
> machine into openSUSE 11.0 and left it there.  Vista's still there, but 
> pretty much all of my apps are Linux-based now, so I don't have a need 
> for it, really.

Yep. To each his own. :-) I already had to reinstall OpenSuSE 11 twice 
due to it doing f'ed up things I couldn't figure out how to undo. Like, 
taking the "start button" off the "task bar", or screwing up the package 
management system so that attempts to update crash out.

(BTW, I *hate* the new package update thingie in SuSE 11. Confusing as 
hell, and doesn't work nice at all.  Warp talks about rearranging menus 
- how about an "accept" button that doesn't actually install the listed 
updates until you push another button that reveals the magic button that 
says "Yes, this is what I want to accept". Sheesh.)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:58:57 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Not use the NOPASSWD keyword, primarily.
> 
> Oh, well, yes. Then you get what UAC does. That was kind of my point. I
> mean, people were complaining that UAC asks for a password for every
> process that need root privs. I was just wondering why this isn't a good
> thing.

I think it's largely a mindset - coming from a Windows background, one 
typically is used to just being able to do things.

On *nix platforms with sudo, the mindset is a little different, but also 
having the option to use NOPASSWD (which is ignored actually by kdesu and 
gnomesu).  When I installed VNC on Vista, UAC prompted me *several* times 
during the installation, and that was a pain.  With Linux, I get asked 
once during a software installation.

>> Whereas for me, I used it for about 15 minutes and then rebooted the
>> machine into openSUSE 11.0 and left it there.  Vista's still there, but
>> pretty much all of my apps are Linux-based now, so I don't have a need
>> for it, really.
> 
> Yep. To each his own. :-) I already had to reinstall OpenSuSE 11 twice
> due to it doing f'ed up things I couldn't figure out how to undo. Like,
> taking the "start button" off the "task bar", or screwing up the package
> management system so that attempts to update crash out.

KDE or GNOME?  I haven't had those issues as a GNOME user.

> (BTW, I *hate* the new package update thingie in SuSE 11. Confusing as
> hell, and doesn't work nice at all.  Warp talks about rearranging menus
> - how about an "accept" button that doesn't actually install the listed
> updates until you push another button that reveals the magic button that
> says "Yes, this is what I want to accept". Sheesh.)

I've not had that problem - using KDE or GNOME?  (I use GNOME, and found 
the updater works very well and makes a lot of sense - the only thing I 
don't like is that it only applies patches - security patches, for 
example - and doesn't do application upgrades).

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> I think it's largely a mindset - coming from a Windows background, one 
> typically is used to just being able to do things.

Yes. I was amused by one reviewer complaining he got a UAC prompt trying 
to change the time.

Maybe MS could put UAC prompts in appropriate to the version of the OS. 
Home users can change the time without a prompt, while enterprise 
versions need a prompt, for example.

> On *nix platforms with sudo, the mindset is a little different, but also 
> having the option to use NOPASSWD (which is ignored actually by kdesu and 
> gnomesu).  

Yah. You can do this just by logging in as administrator, for example. 
Then you get no prompts at all.

> When I installed VNC on Vista, UAC prompted me *several* times 
> during the installation, and that was a pain.  With Linux, I get asked 
> once during a software installation.

Yeah, they could obviously clear this up. Maybe you would have had 
better results using "run as administrator" on the install script, as I 
expect VNC was installing (for example) both the client and the server, 
perhaps as launching separate executables.

>> Yep. To each his own. :-) I already had to reinstall OpenSuSE 11 twice
>> due to it doing f'ed up things I couldn't figure out how to undo. Like,
>> taking the "start button" off the "task bar", or screwing up the package
>> management system so that attempts to update crash out.
> 
> KDE or GNOME?  I haven't had those issues as a GNOME user.

GNOME. I didn't have them in KDE SuSE 10, either.

I think I'm just f'ing unlucky. I seem to run into every weird problem 
that no other Linux user ever has trouble with. Must be my morphogenic 
field or something.

> I've not had that problem - using KDE or GNOME? 

GNOME, this time. I'm just picking "yast" off the system menu and going 
to the "update" stuff.

It used to be YaST would say "Hey, there's three packages to install to 
update the installer. Click "OK" to install them, and I'll restart."

Now it tells you there's three you ought to install, so go scroll thru 
the list of 600 updates and find just those three, then click on each to 
make the "install" button appear, then click on the "Install" button, 
*then* accept it.

And don't just select all the packages and say "install", because then 
we'll warn you that we're about to break stuff, even if we really aren't.

I just think the UI went really downhill there, even if it makes more 
sense to someone more experienced.  Or maybe there's a better way to get 
to the same functionality now, or something.

> the updater works very well and makes a lot of sense

Except it locks the package manager for several minutes when I log in. 
(Probably less annoying than in SuSE 10, where it downloaded the package 
lists every time you logged in.)  Assuming you're talking about the 
automatic one that runs in the systray-equivalent.

That's what I *thought* I was turning off when I confirmed ditching the 
"start menu" button, since it had crashed out repeatedly with bad 
package repositories or something. And just *try* to figure out how to 
get that button back when it's gone. ;-)  Since I had *just* made a full 
backup, it was easier to restore than to look up what I needed to know.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:55:03 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I think it's largely a mindset - coming from a Windows background, one
>> typically is used to just being able to do things.
> 
> Yes. I was amused by one reviewer complaining he got a UAC prompt trying
> to change the time.
> 
> Maybe MS could put UAC prompts in appropriate to the version of the OS.
> Home users can change the time without a prompt, while enterprise
> versions need a prompt, for example.

That would probably make more sense.  Or make it configurable via a GPO 
but have the defaults be sane for the home user.

>> On *nix platforms with sudo, the mindset is a little different, but
>> also having the option to use NOPASSWD (which is ignored actually by
>> kdesu and gnomesu).
> 
> Yah. You can do this just by logging in as administrator, for example.
> Then you get no prompts at all.

On Vista?  I ran the home version here, and was logged in as 
administrator (hadn't created another user as of yet IIRC).  But maybe 
running the "Home" version was my problem. ;-)  Certainly, pre-SP1.

>> When I installed VNC on Vista, UAC prompted me *several* times during
>> the installation, and that was a pain.  With Linux, I get asked once
>> during a software installation.
> 
> Yeah, they could obviously clear this up. Maybe you would have had
> better results using "run as administrator" on the install script, as I
> expect VNC was installing (for example) both the client and the server,
> perhaps as launching separate executables.

Maybe, but it was packaged as a single MSI.

>>> Yep. To each his own. :-) I already had to reinstall OpenSuSE 11 twice
>>> due to it doing f'ed up things I couldn't figure out how to undo.
>>> Like, taking the "start button" off the "task bar", or screwing up the
>>> package management system so that attempts to update crash out.
>> 
>> KDE or GNOME?  I haven't had those issues as a GNOME user.
> 
> GNOME. I didn't have them in KDE SuSE 10, either.

Right click the panel and select "Add to panel" - then filter to 
"Menu".  :-)

> I think I'm just f'ing unlucky. I seem to run into every weird problem
> that no other Linux user ever has trouble with. Must be my morphogenic
> field or something.

LOL

>> I've not had that problem - using KDE or GNOME?
> 
> GNOME, this time. I'm just picking "yast" off the system menu and going
> to the "update" stuff.
> 
> It used to be YaST would say "Hey, there's three packages to install to
> update the installer. Click "OK" to install them, and I'll restart."
> 
> Now it tells you there's three you ought to install, so go scroll thru
> the list of 600 updates and find just those three, then click on each to
> make the "install" button appear, then click on the "Install" button,
> *then* accept it.
> 
> And don't just select all the packages and say "install", because then
> we'll warn you that we're about to break stuff, even if we really
> aren't.
> 
> I just think the UI went really downhill there, even if it makes more
> sense to someone more experienced.  Or maybe there's a better way to get
> to the same functionality now, or something.

You don't want to use YaST to do updates - I see what you're talking 
about, and yes, that is confusing.  I use the updater applet which is 
really clear.  The one thing I don't like, though, is that application 
upgrades aren't included in the updater - you have to install those 
separately for some reason.  I'm hoping they've addressed that in 11.1.

>> the updater works very well and makes a lot of sense
> 
> Except it locks the package manager for several minutes when I log in.
> (Probably less annoying than in SuSE 10, where it downloaded the package
> lists every time you logged in.)  Assuming you're talking about the
> automatic one that runs in the systray-equivalent.

It shouldn't take that long - they got rid of the old zmd stuff from 10.x 
(which was absolute garbage - they took Red Carpet from Ximian and ported 
it to run as a Mono app; thing is, Mono wasn't ready for prime time yet, 
and using your updater app to showcase a new technology is just mind-
bogglingly stupid IMNSHO) and replaced it with packagekit.  I've found 
that to be MUCH better.

> That's what I *thought* I was turning off when I confirmed ditching the
> "start menu" button, since it had crashed out repeatedly with bad
> package repositories or something. And just *try* to figure out how to
> get that button back when it's gone. ;-)  Since I had *just* made a full
> backup, it was easier to restore than to look up what I needed to know.

:-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> That would probably make more sense.  Or make it configurable via a GPO 
> but have the defaults be sane for the home user.

Actually, it's kind of weird to me that you can turn off the computer 
from a remote login without a UAC prompt, but you can't (say) change the 
clock.  Strange.

And it still takes two UAC prompts to change "advanced" power management 
settings. (Or maybe a different number if you're actually at the console 
and not logged in remotely? It's a bit weird, IIRC.)

>> Yah. You can do this just by logging in as administrator, for example.
>> Then you get no prompts at all.
> 
> On Vista? 

On my version, yes. Or go into Local Policies and set it up how you 
like. But on mine, by default, UAC is set to allow the actual 
"Administrator" account anything. (You have to actually turn on the 
ability to log in as administrator.)

Note I'm not talking "Member of the Administrators group", but the one 
actually called "Administrator".

> Right click the panel and select "Add to panel" - then filter to 
> "Menu".  :-)

Ah, thank you.  Yes, as I say, I probably could have solved it, but 
since the problem happened as I booted back from a full restore, I 
figured it was easier than actually trying to figure it out just then 
and there.

Vista, on the other hand, has apparently made it impossible to 
completely hide or reposition the task bar, or to pull toolbars off of 
it. Given how often I've seen someone want their start button in the top 
right corner vs how often I've seen it there, I can't fault this change. 
:-)


> I use the updater applet which is really clear.  

The thing in the "system tray" area? I never liked that. For one, it 
would take a long time every time you logged in to check for updates, 
preventing you from actually doing any package management or logging out 
cleanly or whatever. (As I said, probably fixed now that they don't suck 
down manifests every time.)

> thing is, Mono wasn't ready for prime time yet, 

This is a complaint? ;-)

> and using your updater app to showcase a new technology is just mind-
> bogglingly stupid IMNSHO) and replaced it with packagekit.  I've found 
> that to be MUCH better.

Cool. Maybe I'll turn it back on, when I get another job doing linux stuff.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> I think I'm just f'ing unlucky. I seem to run into every weird problem
> that no other Linux user ever has trouble with. Must be my morphogenic
> field or something.
> 

I dare to challenge you with couple of really weird problems:

1) I have a Alphaserver ES40 as a toy. I installed Gentoo Linux on it
via very weird problem - keyboard didn't work on the local console. It
works on Debian's install CD, but not Gentoo's. I changed the kernel on
the install CD etc etc etc, but nothing helped. Eventually I created a
install-CD with DHCP client enabled, root passwd unscrambled and SSHD
enabled, so I could do the installation over the network.

2) I have Sun Netra X1, which I though I'd install as a firewall (it's a
cute 1U system, would make a nice firewall). I managed to install Gentoo
Linux on it, RAID-1 -setup etc. But after installing almost everything
and configuring the system I suddenly couldn't anymore copy files to
local disks over network. Scp, Rsync, simple cp from/to NFS, wget.. No,
just couldn't do it. I could transfer data nicely over network with no
problem to two directions, I could copy files from USB-stick to HD's,
but the path from NICs to HD just failed. No error, no reason, nothing -
the file just never appeared at the filesystem. I never actually solved
this.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:27:01 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> That would probably make more sense.  Or make it configurable via a GPO
>> but have the defaults be sane for the home user.
> 
> Actually, it's kind of weird to me that you can turn off the computer
> from a remote login without a UAC prompt, but you can't (say) change the
> clock.  Strange.
> 
> And it still takes two UAC prompts to change "advanced" power management
> settings. (Or maybe a different number if you're actually at the console
> and not logged in remotely? It's a bit weird, IIRC.)

That does seem unusual, yeah.  In both cases....

> 
>>> Yah. You can do this just by logging in as administrator, for example.
>>> Then you get no prompts at all.
>> 
>> On Vista?
> 
> On my version, yes. Or go into Local Policies and set it up how you
> like. But on mine, by default, UAC is set to allow the actual
> "Administrator" account anything. (You have to actually turn on the
> ability to log in as administrator.)

Ah, now I remember - I was logged in as the "owner" created during the 
OEM setup process, not as administrator.

> Note I'm not talking "Member of the Administrators group", but the one
> actually called "Administrator".

Yup.

>> Right click the panel and select "Add to panel" - then filter to
>> "Menu".  :-)
> 
> Ah, thank you.  Yes, as I say, I probably could have solved it, but
> since the problem happened as I booted back from a full restore, I
> figured it was easier than actually trying to figure it out just then
> and there.

Glad to help out. :-)

>> I use the updater applet which is really clear.
> 
> The thing in the "system tray" area? I never liked that. For one, it
> would take a long time every time you logged in to check for updates,
> preventing you from actually doing any package management or logging out
> cleanly or whatever. (As I said, probably fixed now that they don't suck
> down manifests every time.)

On 10.x it did take a long time to check for updates and would bury the 
processor as well.  My experience with it in 11.0 has been pretty good - 
I do wish they differentiated between a read-only access to the database, 
though, so you could launch package management while it was checking for 
updates.  It's a database, after all, it should be capable of allowing 
multiple processes to access it for read-only access.

>> thing is, Mono wasn't ready for prime time yet,
> 
> This is a complaint? ;-)

Well, like I said below:

>> and using your updater app to showcase a new technology is just mind-
>> bogglingly stupid IMNSHO) and replaced it with packagekit.  I've found
>> that to be MUCH better.
> 
> Cool. Maybe I'll turn it back on, when I get another job doing linux
> stuff.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> On 10.x it did take a long time to check for updates and would bury the 
> processor as well.  My experience with it in 11.0 has been pretty good - 

Good to know.

> I do wish they differentiated between a read-only access to the database, 
> though, so you could launch package management while it was checking for 
> updates.  It's a database, after all, it should be capable of allowing
> multiple processes to access it for read-only access.

The linux file system isn't transactional, so you can't really work it 
that way. It isn't a database - it's a bunch of files, at least as I 
understand it.

>>> thing is, Mono wasn't ready for prime time yet,
>> This is a complaint? ;-)
> Well, like I said below:

That was unwarranted sarcasm, as in "isn't all of Linux not ready for 
prime time?" :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:48:58 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On 10.x it did take a long time to check for updates and would bury the
>> processor as well.  My experience with it in 11.0 has been pretty good
>> -
> 
> Good to know.
> 
>> I do wish they differentiated between a read-only access to the
>> database, though, so you could launch package management while it was
>> checking for updates.  It's a database, after all, it should be capable
>> of allowing multiple processes to access it for read-only access.
> 
> The linux file system isn't transactional, so you can't really work it
> that way. It isn't a database - it's a bunch of files, at least as I
> understand it.

Yes, but the information for RPM is stored in a database - or rather a 
series of databases - implemented using Berkeley DB (on my system, 
version 8).

>>>> thing is, Mono wasn't ready for prime time yet,
>>> This is a complaint? ;-)
>> Well, like I said below:
> 
> That was unwarranted sarcasm, as in "isn't all of Linux not ready for
> prime time?" :-)

Oh, I see.  Thhhhpt. ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Yes, but the information for RPM is stored in a database - or rather a 
> series of databases - implemented using Berkeley DB (on my system, 
> version 8).

I guess if all the information you need to make that decision is stored 
in a transactional database, yah, you should be able to do that sort of 
thing. But then you wouldn't need a read-only version.

The problem with ACID is too many people stop too soon, thinking (for 
example) that "Consistent" means if the internal structure of the 
database storage isn't screwed up means that the database is consistent.

If you upgrade GCC from 2.3 to 2.4, and the /usr/bin/gcc file gets 
rewritten and then you crash out before committing the package manager, 
or you have permissions to write to libgcc and overwrite it but fail to 
upgrade /usr/bin/gcc properly, you have an inconsistency.

Out of curiousity, how do the package managers work when the packages 
are distributed over the network? If /usr/bin is a NFS mount, for 
example, does package management still work? Or are you back to 
tiptoeing around trying to figure out every file a package will touch? 
Can clients upgrade things, or do you have to try to lock it down at the 
NFS server?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:37:50 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Yes, but the information for RPM is stored in a database - or rather a
>> series of databases - implemented using Berkeley DB (on my system,
>> version 8).
> 
> I guess if all the information you need to make that decision is stored
> in a transactional database, yah, you should be able to do that sort of
> thing. But then you wouldn't need a read-only version.
> 
> The problem with ACID is too many people stop too soon, thinking (for
> example) that "Consistent" means if the internal structure of the
> database storage isn't screwed up means that the database is consistent.
> 
> If you upgrade GCC from 2.3 to 2.4, and the /usr/bin/gcc file gets
> rewritten and then you crash out before committing the package manager,
> or you have permissions to write to libgcc and overwrite it but fail to
> upgrade /usr/bin/gcc properly, you have an inconsistency.

Yeah, and that sort of thing can happen - though the filesystem layer (on 
top of the actual filesystem at the kernel level - not sure what it's 
specifically called, probably some sort of abstraction layer) deals in 
inodes rather than files.  It's entirely possible to nuke a file that's 
open, along with its parent hierarchy; did that by mistake a few weeks 
ago when running pdfcrack before Eero suggested an alternative approach 
to my issue.  I even replaced the deleted directory with a second 
extracted copy of the source archive and a second copy of the PDF in 
question - but looking at the kernel level, the inodes are different.

> 
> Out of curiousity, how do the package managers work when the packages
> are distributed over the network? If /usr/bin is a NFS mount, for
> example, does package management still work? Or are you back to
> tiptoeing around trying to figure out every file a package will touch?
> Can clients upgrade things, or do you have to try to lock it down at the
> NFS server?

You know, I've never actually looked into that - I know in my Unix 
experience that mounting a remote /var partition wasn't uncommon, 
particularly with diskless workstations (obviously).  I may have to ask 
that question of some of the internal development folks.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Yeah, and that sort of thing can happen - though the filesystem layer (on 
> top of the actual filesystem at the kernel level - not sure what it's 
> specifically called, probably some sort of abstraction layer) deals in 
> inodes rather than files. 

I'm just saying that if you have (say) an executable and three related 
dynamically-linked .so files, or you have a .so and a .h file, there's 
no way in Linux to ensure that you can update them consistently, as far 
as I know. (I learn Linux tricks by telling people Linux can't do 
something, and then people correct me. ;-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:40:49 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Yeah, and that sort of thing can happen - though the filesystem layer
>> (on top of the actual filesystem at the kernel level - not sure what
>> it's specifically called, probably some sort of abstraction layer)
>> deals in inodes rather than files.
> 
> I'm just saying that if you have (say) an executable and three related
> dynamically-linked .so files, or you have a .so and a .h file, there's
> no way in Linux to ensure that you can update them consistently, as far
> as I know. (I learn Linux tricks by telling people Linux can't do
> something, and then people correct me. ;-)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "ensure that you can update them 
consistently" - since a file that's open can be overwritten or deleted 
because of the nature of that filesystem abstraction layer, why would you 
not be able to update it consistently?

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> why would you not be able to update it consistently?

You write the .h file. While trying to write the .so file, you
A) don't have permissions to do so,
B) find that it's open by someone else as a shared text segment,
C) run out of disk space,
D) have your process killed,
E) have the power fail,
....

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:46:38 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> why would you not be able to update it consistently?
> 
> You write the .h file. While trying to write the .so file, you A) don't
> have permissions to do so,

The updater requires root rights to run, so it has permissions to do that.

> B) find that it's open by someone else as a shared text segment, 

I don't believe that would matter, again, it's the inode that's open, and 
when the file is overwritten a new inode is created and the old one is 
destroyed.

> C) run out of disk space,

That would create other problems as well - as would running out of system 
filehandles (which is interesting to watch on *nix systems - I wrote a 
program to malloc() all the memory in a system once when in college - was 
to get students off of workstations when they were playing the local MUD 
if there were students who had actual work to do and there were no 
machines available.  Once the malloc() program ran they couldn't even run 
ps to find out what happened - just had to stop-A the system and reboot.  
Interesting to watch on the Sun SLC Diskless workstations, because they'd 
swap over the network to the server in the server room - which is 
invariably where we ran it from, so we could see all the disk activity.

> D) have your process killed,
> E) have the power fail,
> ....

Yeah, those could happen and could introduce problems - so you just 
reinstall the packages and that makes things consistent.  Come to think, 
I've had to do that once or twice.

Jim

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