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The "Linux questions (and other stuff)" thread

I have been both newbie and expert in certain forums, and the key is picking the right forum in which to ask your questions.

Unfortunately, people new to the whole forums experience don't know... There isn't a guide built into google that will tell them, "don't click on that link, those guys are dicks" or anything.

Welcome to the internet, I guess.
 
lunatic59 said:
I think the common denominator here is that everyone here has been on the other side of the questions at some point. I understand answering the same question 500 times can be frustrating, but if you think about it, it's probably the first time the other person asked it.
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That's a good way to look at it.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, I think what happens on a lot of forums/newsgroups is that the regulars tire not only of the same question, but questions that could--with a wee bit of searching--be answered without someone posting them again.

Support forums are like hanging out in the mall. Eventually you will be asked where the bathrooms are because everyone's got to pee.
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True--to a degree. Forums have something malls don't have: history! A thread that asked the same question someone has today was already posted some other day. A little searching and they'll find it, and not need to ask again. But when someone walks into a mall for the first time, there isn't an answer archive waiting for them. :D
 
Man, I can't tell you how many times I've Google'd answers for Linux, especially when I first started to use it a decade ago. I honestly had no idea what I was doing, but I was tired of Windows, and Linux seemed aesthetically pleasing to me. No Wi-Fi when I installed it, so I did panic slightly. However patience and time solved that issue and I was a converted man.



That being said, though, I still use Windows on some computers in the house. Well, one laptop I should say. Reason being is for one of my Windows phones. (yes. Don't hurt me :()
 
MoodyBlues said:
That's a good way to look at it.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, I think what happens on a lot of forums/newsgroups is that the regulars tire not only of the same question, but questions that could--with a wee bit of searching--be answered without someone posting them again.
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After a while, a lot of forms tend to turn into a club atmosphere and take great joy in making newb and neophytes look inept or stupid. Many times, those users who ask the simple questions, don't even know what to search for or how to ask the right question.

"I can't get on da interwebz" is a lot different than "I need a driver for an Atheros A12345Z ver.2.5 network adapter that works with Ubuntu 13." Even though the answer might be the same.

True--to a degree. Forums have something malls don't have: history! A thread that asked the same question someone has today was already posted some other day. A little searching and they'll find it, and not need to ask again. But when someone walks into a mall for the first time, there isn't an answer archive waiting for them. :D
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Malls have those map kiosks that have the "you are here" arrows and icons for the restrooms. People still can't find them. And, when you really have to go, you're not going to be too patient with long drawn out answers. ;)

Prinny said:
Man, I can't tell you how many times I've Google'd answers for Linux, especially when I first started to use it a decade ago. I honestly had no idea what I was doing, but I was tired of Windows, and Linux seemed aesthetically pleasing to me. No Wi-Fi when I installed it, so I did panic slightly. However patience and time solved that issue and I was a converted man.



That being said, though, I still use Windows on some computers in the house. Well, one laptop I should say. Reason being is for one of my Windows phones. (yes. Don't hurt me :()
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I got started with Linux back in the day RedHat was free (before Fedora) and if you had hardware with a specific chipset you had to compile your own kernel to get hem to work. And that was before Google, too. :eek: Of course those were the days of Windows 3.1, Mac System 6 and all the voodoo you needed to keep them stable. ;)

There were BBS and usenet in them days. Before that we used to just draw code on cave walls. :D
 
lunatic59 said:
After a while, a lot of forms tend to turn into a club atmosphere and take great joy in making newb and neophytes look inept or stupid. Many times, those users who ask the simple questions, don't even know what to search for or how to ask the right question.
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Yes, absolutely.

"I can't get on da interwebz" is a lot different than "I need a driver for an Atheros A12345Z ver.2.5 network adapter that works with Ubuntu 13." Even though the answer might be the same.
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Yes again. Luckily, though, not ALL forums are like that. Take this one, for example. :D We coax out of a newbie the info we need to try to help. I don't think anyone here is ever downright rude or nasty about it.

Malls have those map kiosks that have the "you are here" arrows and icons for the restrooms. People still can't find them. And, when you really have to go, you're not going to be too patient with long drawn out answers. ;)
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I knew you'd say that! About the maps. So just assume that a person asking for a restroom HASN'T walked by one of those maps. :)

I got started with Linux back in the day RedHat was free (before Fedora) and if you had hardware with a specific chipset you had to compile your own kernel to get hem to work. And that was before Google, too. :eek: Of course those were the days of Windows 3.1, Mac System 6 and all the voodoo you needed to keep them stable. ;)

There were BBS and usenet in them days. Before that we used to just draw code on cave walls. :D
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When we weren't sending smoke signals...

:rofl:
 
Anybody have any experience using Trickle to throttle access?

I've got a little personal situation. I have a CentOS server I have set up in my house for testing and just plain goofing around because I'm just not geeky enough. :p My best friend in the entire world - and maybe a few planets outside our solar system - is a rather successful graphic designer and was having some bandwidth issues uploading client files to cloud storage. I set him up with an FTP account on my server and told him to test the upload to see if it was any better. That was a few months ago.

Now, over the past several months I have been experiencing mysterious internet "outages". Can't sync email, or load web pages, and most importantly, the VPN between home and office drops although all diagnostics show I am connected to my ISP.

First thing I think of was that the ISP was having routing or DNS issues, but they ran a little check during one of the events and said I was maxing out my bandwidth. Virus or malware? Nope. Traced it back to my server and a little more checking the xfer logs, I discover that my buddy is using the test FTP account as a personal cloud. Sending off an occasional pdf or jpg wouldn't be a problem, but he's got 500+ MB files with gig's of usage. :(

Anyway, trickle looks like it might be able to throttle back the ftp services so i can prevent the drops. It hasn't seen any development since 2007, although i still see reports of it working with current distros. Any insights or alternatives?
 
If anyone has an implementation that is more "mother may I?" than Ubuntu/Kubuntu, don't tell me.

Trying to build lftp (Debian) with ssl support, because why include ssl support in the repository build.

Already linked in ssl and socks. Get past security and login. Can even cd - but no ls, put or get without an unknown protocol error.

Btw - cifs is a total bork festival in 14.04 but autofs seems to work like a charm.

I think that Ubuntu is the Linux against production software use.

Lol
 
EarlyMon said:
If anyone has an implementation that is more "mother may I?" than Ubuntu/Kubuntu, don't tell me.

Trying to build lftp (Debian) with ssl support, because why include ssl support in the repository build.

Already linked in ssl and socks. Get past security and login. Can even cd - but no ls, put or get without an unknown protocol error.

Btw - cifs is a total bork festival in 14.04 but autofs seems to work like a charm.

I think that Ubuntu is the Linux against production software use.

Lol
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I personally haven't used *buntu in forever; instead, I use Arch which does everything I need it to

EDIT: Although, Arch has lftp in its repos but it doesn't have SSL support by default
 
To validate -

ldd `which lftp`

And instead of libssl - as stated in the rtfms - it has libgnutls and I didn't notice. I ought to be OK, now to recheck what sent me here.

Still hate it and love it.
 
It's called wbadmin.

If you have to use Windows and have heard of this, the operative part is wb. Ever seen the dancing frog with the top hat pushing the old WB channel? The one that used to show the Animaniacs cartoon?

Think of that if you ever get stuck on a Windows node and have to use wbadmin.

Task at hand - back up some mapped network drives in Windows to a local USB drive.

Despite techsoft Microsoft saying that's (obviously) ok, give up. The documentation is wrong (as becried by IT foons across the land) and it cannot be done.

Solution - install Ubuntu in a virtual machine, aurofs mount the Windows shares and use cron (via an /etc/cron.d entity) to perform the backup.

Takes less time than googling to see if I'm telling the truth.

Silly Task Scheduler and wbadmin - no match for cron and zip.

Insanely sad really. Not a clich
 
So my roommate received a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. This is a very very nice tablet. Its a computer really it so steps up the tablet level. I have to hand it to the boys at Redmond for this one. I am impressed. But I am a Linux Guy. My Roommate decided that he wanted me to wipe it and install Linux Mint on it for him. He has been more interested in Linux since I moved in :o So I downloaded the latest edition from the website dd'd it over to a thumb drive and booted to it. I choose to start Linux Mint and then went to a black screen. It stayed that way for a bit. Like almost an hour. I thought hmmm maybe a bad download so I removed the thumb from the tablet and put it in my laptop rebooted and booted into Linux Mint Cinnamon and no problem. So hmmmm. I decide ok Lets try it with Mate. So I burn Mate over to a thumb and boot to it on the tablet and lo and behold the same thing but this time just about ten minutes of black screen So I said hmmm isn't this interesting. I at this time was giving up hope of being able to accomplish this task. I decided to see if I could get anything to load up so I downloaded the latest Fedora. Remembering that Gnome 3 was redesigned to be more touch screen friendly was my deciding factor. So I burned it to the thumb that I had Linux Mint Mate on and put it in the tablet booted and wahla up comes Fedora. Touch works and everything. Wifi works, Sound works, Screen is Amazingly crisp and clean. So I installed Fedora 21 on it and I have to say that I am impressed with Gnome 3 as a tablet Desktop Manager. I still don't really care for the fact that they killed it for the desktop but being an android user I would love to see a Fedora with Gnome 3 ROM. Don't think it will happen cause I know I'm not that talented :)

I installed all the codecs and stuff he needs to really enjoy the Linux experience. But over all I am extremely impressed with the way that this tablet works and I am super impressed with Fedora and Gnome 3 being able to install on it and run it like they own the bi*** lol :D

Well I guess they do now :D

(Raises Glass) Here's to another future Linux user :)

frog
 
Ok. My official response is WTF. :p

Microsoft locks those tablets down with UEFI secure boot and the proprietary MS key, not the shim one they hand out. Did they revoke that policy or something?
 
Joelgp83 said:
Ok. My official response is WTF. :p

Microsoft locks those tablets down with UEFI secure boot and the proprietary MS key, not the shim one they hand out. Did they revoke that policy or something?
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I really have no clue bro. He had read where people had put Linux Mint on it and said everthing worked good but in my research it looks like those are all duel boots. We wiped the OS completely but uefi is locked and I'm not sure but its using a recovery boot option to boot into fedora. All I know is that it works it boots into it and its a very powerful tablet.
 
As I recall, the UEFI certificate that Ubuntu (and thus Mint, being a fork of Ubuntu) is flawed. That's why I use rEFInd as my boot loader and self-sign my operating systems.

Fedora has their own certificate and it doesn't have the problems that Ubuntu does.
 
Early Yes it will run a live usb with no problem. Like I said its the only OS on it and everything works with exception to the camera's but doing some research looks like a kernel update could be done someone says they recompiled theirs and its working. I'm just not comfortable playing with kernels at this point lol :) so if someone includes the patch in an official kernel then the camera's will work.
 
I have a rather interesting issue regarding certain Ubuntu-based distros (but not Ubuntu iself!). i found some nice highly polished UI distros out there, most if not all based in Ubuntu. they install fine, but soon as i connect to a wifi network, BAM! insta hard lockup. have to pull the plug.

Vector Linux 7 SoHo does the same thing, sadly. i tried turning off WPA2 security, tried eliminating the router and going to my phone's own hotspot, same result. everything is fine, you can scan networks, edit the options, and connect, but soon as it reports 'connected' BAM! hard lockup. not a kernel panic, everything just frozen and mouse doesn't work. can't ctrl F-2 or anything.

Regular Ubuntus work fine, but don't offer the level of polish i like, and currently i'm instaling KDE to attempt to resolve that, but i really wanted the themed distros to work. one was Pear Linux 6, the other Elementary OS Luna, and Vector 7. all hard freeze upon connecting to wifi. this is a Toshiba Satellite with AMD 64-bit CPU, RealTek RTL8188 wifi.
 
Nick, I am at work now, so limited internet, et al.

I have a Toshiba S55t-A5238 running Mint, so I know your pain.

I don't recall which WiFi module I have, but in order to get it to work, I had to change kernels.

If you search me out at the Linux Mint forums (try using Dngrsone and S55t-A5238 as search parameters), you'll see what I had to do to fix my laptop.
 
i have never changed kernels so don't plan to start now, thanks. i just settled on a KDE theme until i can simply use a different wifi card vs the in-built one. though it is odd how it seems to work (out of box) but soon as you get online, lockup. i've never heard of the internet locking something up solid, either the wifi works or it doesn't in my experience.

i kept the last distro as a dual boot and will later test the other wifi adapter 'dongle' i use for such situations where the wifi isn't detected, as it's a linux wifi adapter.
 
OK, i just had another 'funny' issue with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on the same laptop.

I shut it down and went home, and when i booted back up, i login, and i see the loading splash screen for KDE, and....

nothing. blank desktop, wallpaper, mouse pointer responds, but nothing happens when i right click or attempt to do anything.

Had to boot back to Unity, which did work, and create a different user, and then KDE worked fine. what gives? nothing in the log, and i know it shut down properly. it's as if something gets corrupted when i reboot. i'm now afraid to shut it down again. KDE did work perfectly fine before i shut it down so i don't understand. i had a nice Vista theme but it was working. it's as if the Plasma Desktop crashed. if i hit Ctrl-ALT-F1, and then hot CTRL-ALT-F8, it had the mouse pointer on a black screen, wallpaper gone.
 
either that, or the 2 year old HDD is dying...but fsck gave no errors either. glad i didn't have anything installed that mattered, just my Vista Aero theme and Firefox Vista theme. just curious why i had to use a new user account to get it working?

It froze about the time you'd expect to hear the little tune KDE plays on login. sound works though, but it is ironic.
 
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