Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with debian

Damn it, lenny. Come on now.

koeselitz — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:29:40 -0800

Increasingly annoying problem installing Debian 5.0.0 'lenny' on an HP G60 with an Itanium (ia64) processor that is currently running Vista Home Premium. Specifically, the debian-installer consistently falls under the impression that I have an AMD 64-bit (amd64) processor. Why? So I told a client (one who's more adventurous than most, which is awesome!) that I'd install Debian 5 on his laptop this weekend; the specs are above. However, I've found it impossible to boot the standard debian-installer, and difficult to run the installer-loader for netbooting correctly. Here are the steps I've followed:

1) First, I wanted to try this new wubi-like Debian installer loader to see how easy it was and to see if I could possibly recommend it to people. In general, it went very smoothly; I downloaded and ran the Windows loader, selecting the 'Expert/custom' install and the 'stable' release. This went fine. Then, at the end of the loading of the installer, it prompted me to reboot, which I did. This brought me into the Vista BCD selection screen, from which I could choose 'Windows Vista' and 'debian installer.' Of course, I selected debian installer. That brought up the debian installer. It took a few times rebooting to get it to recognize my network hardware and download all the installation components, but finally it did; I proceeded through the install, set up separate partitions for swap, /root and /home, and installed the base system. Then I set up a GRUB.

After the installation was finished and I had a partition with Debian on it, I spent some time figuring out chainloading a GRUB. Not excessively difficult, especially with EasyBCD.

But when I booted Debian from the chainloaded GRUB, the kernel would run along and start booting until a certain point, at which time it would fail at a procedure and stop. Right off I figured there was just a problem with the install, so I turned around, jumped back into Vista, and ran the same install again.

And that's when I noticed what the problem had been: watching the installation take place, it was clear that the installer was downloading and installing the files with the '.amd64.' extension in the middle of them. It thought this was an amd64 machine! But it's not!

I let it finish the install, but the same thing: an inexplicably unbootable system.

So I deleted that partition and started over a different way.

2) I downloaded the full installation DVD of 'lenny' from debian.org. (I checked the md5 sum, by the way.) I burned a copy (with InfraRecorder) and booted up again; but when the BIOS screen finished and disappeared, the DVD drive spent about ten seconds running, a flashing cursor appeared in the top left-hand corner of the screen, and after about a minute and a half, the computer booted back into the BCD selection screen (where I only had the options to select Vista and the Debian installer, which I'd since deleted anyway, so it wouldn't boot to that.) I thought to myself, 'ah- a BIOS issue. Simple.' So I went into the BIOS - which is, by the way, completely current, and this is a brand-new laptop - and checked: it's set to boot to CD-ROM. That's when it occurred to me that some BIOSes don't have the necessary drivers to boot from DVDs - okay, simple fix, right?

3) I then downloaded the set of three full install CDs from debian.org, md5sum-checked them, and burned copies. But when I try to boot these, the same thing happens! I've tried pretty much all installation images supported by my architecture now - I went back and tried installing the 'testing' package, then the smaller netinst image. Same thing on boot every time.

4) At this point, I start to get worried about the way this thing can't seem to boot to CD even though the BIOS is set up for that. So I grab my Knoppix boot cd (5.3.1) - works just fine, boots right up into Knoppix! Fluke? I grab my Super GRUB Disk - same thing, boots fine. I d/l a new version of the latest Knoppix (a disappointment, by the way, since they're moving toward something sparser and it's pretty stripped-down) - boots just fine. What's going on?

The only thing I can imagine is that the installer invariably sees this machine as amd64 instead of what it is, ia64, and therefore can neither boot into the installed (amd64) debian system nor boot to the proper disk. But that's just a working theory - frankly, I'm pretty damned confused. I'd be satisfied if I could get the installer loader to recognize correctly, as that's the farthest I've gotten with any method. I'm getting more frustrated as time goes on; I've always loved the Debian installer, and I've run installations on it about six times! It's never not worked like this. Help!

Does anyone know what the hell is going on?

Ubuntu -> Debian ?

mannequito — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:37:23 -0800

As a moderately experienced Ubuntu user, what should I know before giving Debian a try? I moved to Ubuntu/Linux approximately a year and half ago. Prior to that, I had zero experience with Linux. I also knew absolutely no one using it, so the learning curve was pretty steep for me even with the relatively user-friendliness of Ubuntu. I also tried a few others around that time - OpenSuse, Mint - but came back to Ubuntu because it was the only one I was able to get everything working under.

By now, I consider myself somewhat confident in all daily tasks, and I'm interested to try Debian both for a change, and because I'd like to try building from basics. Simultaneously, this is what makes me nervous - I understand that a fresh Debian install will give me no GUI, and I have to go from there. So basically I'm looking for a tutorial, or the exact steps I'd need to get up and running.

Beyond that, I'm concerned about my wireless working as that was the my biggest problem last year (my wireless chip is Atheros ar5007, and right now I use the madwifi driver). Will setting this up under Debian cause me any extra hardships?

So to sum up, I could basically use advice from anyone with Debian experience. thanks.

Linux Admin Company Needed

Dag Maggot — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:59:58 -0800

I'm looking for an out-sourced Linux admin company to help us manage 4 dedicated Debian servers. We'd like to work with a small 24-hour on call company to support us with admin, tuning and trouble-shooting things when problems occur. Preferably with Debian experience.

admins: intelligent rate-limiting of error notifications?

zippy — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:55:28 -0800

I have a web service that generates errors. Currently, each time there's an error, it gets sent to an admin mailing list. Is there an open-source tool that will summarize repeated duplicate errors, rather than generating a separate notification for each? For example, say there are 100 'service foo threw exception bar' errors in a 15 minute window.

What I'd like to see is one initial 'service foo threw exception bar' notification, followed by a single second notification 'service foo threw exception bar repeated 99 times.'

This seems like it must be a solved problem, where there's a single 'sink' for all of the notifications from various services that can summarize duplicates and in doing so prevent alert fatigue (and enormous pager/SMS bills).

So I turn to the collective wisdom of ask.mefi - does this exist?

Will asp.net work on a Debian server?

desjardins — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:29:02 -0800

I am trying to teach myself asp.net. My hosting company is iPower and apparently their server platform is Debian. Will asp.net run on this platform? The (really basic) aspx pages I've tried sort of work but not really, and I am copying code verbatim from Microsoft's site so I'm sure I haven't fucked up the code. I'm fine with HTML and CSS but this stuff is a bit beyond me. If asp.net won't work, what other language should I teach myself? iPower definitely does support PHP, Perl, MySQL, and PEAR (I've never heard of the last one). Basically I'm bored and I want to learn something useful during my downtime at work. It won't be useful to my current job, but I want to get into the GIS field so if one of these would be better than another please advise. (Similar to my previous question) I can't install anything on my work machine (Windows XP).

remote virtual server backup.

delmoi — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:10:11 -0800

What's the best way to back up a Debian Linux install? I have a virtual hosted Debian instance I use as a personal server, but right now I'm not doing anything to back it up. So what's the best way to do that? One thing I'd like to be able to do is take a snapshot of the entire installation, so that I could restore the entire system on another machine (or virtual machine) so that any software I'd installed would work and stay configured. So what's the best way to do this? I'm running Debian 3.1, and I don't have much freespace on the machine, so I'd helpful to do the backup directly over the network. the root partition is just 2.4G, with 1.7G used. In theory I can add another partition or 'grow' this one by a few gigs but I'd like to have a backup before I actually do that. It would also be nice if I could do incremental backups later on.

Multiple distros on one partition

finite — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:22:10 -0800

I have Ubuntu installed in a chroot. [How] can I boot into it? My system is running Debian stable, with a kernel from unstable. I've got an Ubuntu hardy install (created with debootstrap) in a directory on the same partition. Currently, I'm able to easily run programs in the chroot using the schroot command.

It seems like I should be able to modify something in my initfs to chroot into hardy early in the boot process, but I'm not sure how/where I need to make this change. Resizing partitions and keeping different distros on different partitions is the obvious thing to do, but I'd prefer a solution that works for any number of distros (which I can then copy on and off of my system whenever I feel like it) with a single partition. Any suggestions?

Help installing Debian Etch?

geoff. — Fri, 23 May 2008 10:03:32 -0800

Okay I'm trying to set up rtorrent and wtorrent using Debian Etch and this guide. Installs and updates the kernel fine, then I get "bash command not found" when trying to run through the rest of the tutorial. I tried this from a blank slate twice. I must be missing something stupid. My Linux knowledge is limited but I've setup wikis and things just fine. It is running on VMWare ESX as "Other Linux (32-bit)" ... it updated the kernel without incident, and I have SSH running. When I terminal in as root:

rtorrent:~# apt-get install apache-common apache2-utils autoconf automake \
>
autotools-dev binutils build-essential bzip2 ca-certificates comerr-dev \

cpp cpp-4.1 dpkg-dev file g++ g++-4.1 gawk gcc gcc-4.1 libapache-mod-php5 \

libapr1 libaprutil1 libc6-dev libcurl3 libcurl3-openssl-dev libexpat1 \
eading package lists... 0%
Reading package lists... Done
libidn11 libidn11-dev libkadm55 libkrb5-dev libmagic1 libncurses5-dev \
uilding dependency tree... 0%
libneon26 libpcre3 libpq4 libsigc++-2.0-dev libsqlite0 libsqlite3-0 \

libssl-dev libssp0 libstdc++6-4.1-dev libsvn1 libtool libxml2 lighttpd \

linux-kernel-headers lynx m4 make mime-support ntp ntpdate openssl patch \

perl perl-modules php5 php5-cgi php5-common php5-sqlite pkg-config screen \

Building dependency tree... Done
apache-common is already the newest version.
apache2-utils is already the newest version.
autoconf is already the newest version.
automake is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
rtorrent:~# autotools-dev binutils build-essential bzip2 ca-certificates comerr-dev \
>
-bash: autotools-dev: command not found
rtorrent:~# cpp cpp-4.1 dpkg-dev file g++ g++-4.1 gawk gcc gcc-4.1 libapache-mod-php5 \
>
-bash: cpp: command not found
rtorrent:~# libapr1 libaprutil1 libc6-dev libcurl3 libcurl3-openssl-dev libexpat1 \
>
-bash: libapr1: command not found
rtorrent:~# libidn11 libidn11-dev libkadm55 libkrb5-dev libmagic1 libncurses5-dev \
>
-bash: libidn11: command not found
rtorrent:~# libneon26 libpcre3 libpq4 libsigc++-2.0-dev libsqlite0 libsqlite3-0 \
>
-bash: libneon26: command not found
rtorrent:~# libssl-dev libssp0 libstdc++6-4.1-dev libsvn1 libtool libxml2 lighttpd \
>
-bash: libssl-dev: command not found
rtorrent:~# linux-kernel-headers lynx m4 make mime-support ntp ntpdate openssl patch \
>
-bash: linux-kernel-headers: command not found
rtorrent:~# perl perl-modules php5 php5-cgi php5-common php5-sqlite pkg-config screen \
>
Can't open perl script "perl-modules": No such file or directory
rtorrent:~# sqlite subversion ucf zlib1g-dev

Buh. I searched around and it looks like there might be something wrong with my Bash profile? What am I doing wrong here?

rtorrent:~# echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

Help me get OSX and Debian (under VMWare) playing nicely together for web development

inkedmn — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 07:22:42 -0800

Trying to set up a development environment on my Macbook (running latest Leopard). I have VMware fusion running Debian etch, set up perfectly with the requisite LAMP stack. The problem is, I'd like to have Debian's /var/www/ available to OSX for actual editing. I've tried setting up NFS, but to no avail (though I'm admittedly novice at this sysadmin stuff). I've also attempted to setup up simple FTP between OSX and Debian, but that's proven fruitless (probably due in part to my frustration level at the time).

My ideal situation:

/var/www on Debian is mounted as ~/webserver on OSX, where I have complete read/write access (as my regular user, not requiring any root authentication nonsense every time I save). Make a change in TextMate, save, refresh browser viewing site served up by Debian, the change is there.

Am I asking for the impossible?

Windows on Linux - without Windows

cdmwebs — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:55:28 -0800

Is it possible to create a virtual Windows machine on a Debian box without X, then access the virtual machine remotely? Basically, I want to have a headless Debian server running virtual machines. I'm sure it's possible, and I've done similar things inside of X, but how would I go about doing it without X? Qemu? VMWare? Virtualbox?

Tunneling audio over TCP/IP

spaceman_spiff — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:35:25 -0800

How can I play audio from one computer through another computer's sound card? At home, I have a server running Debian, which usually has a medium-range wireless headset plugged into it. My time is split between that and a Powerbook running OS X. Which one I use depends on the activity at hand - I use the Debian machine for gaming and music, while the Powerbook tends to get used while I'm online or watching web video.

I was very happy to find mocp, letting me control my music from the Powerbook, but I'd like to make it more general. Ideally, I'd be able to leave the headset's transmitter plugged into the server all the time, but have it play the audio generated by random applications on my Powerbook.

So is there a way to have my Powerbook send audio to esd or alsa on the Debian box? A sort of remote soundcard, I guess. I'm comfortable fiddling with SSH tunneling and config files, but I don't really know anything about how ALSA works (or OS X audio, for that matter).

Debian VPN server for iPhone to connect to?

evariste — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:42:00 -0800

Best open source VPN (server-side) software for an iPhone user? What's the best way to set up VPN on my Debian server so I can use it from my iPhone? Total VPN newbie here, although I'm experienced with using ssh tunnels. Since iPhone lacks ssh, I guess VPN is my only option for security, right?

SSH legality?

rancidchickn — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:17:17 -0800

Running an SSH server illegal in some countries? I was looking through some packages for debian, when I came across the openssh package. This line kind of surprised me.

"In some countries it may be illegal to use any encryption at all without a special permit."

Does anyone know what countries have laws like this? What is this permit like?

Where can I buy an $800 Linux Server?

phrontist — Thu, 10 May 2007 11:25:46 -0800

I need to buy a server for around $800 ($1000 as an absolute maximum). It will be hosting a website with a (PostGres) database that will start at around 4GB and grow slowly (so would like at least 2GB of RAM). It must be able run Linux, preferably Ubuntu or Debian. I go to college in Kentucky, where I work for Radio Free Lexington. I am now home in the DC area for the next three months, during which I intend to develop a custom CMS/Radio Station Management/Playlist tracking system. The problem is, I have nothing to run or develop it on.

Before I left Kentucky, I had ordered a Dell Optiplex 320. It arrived two days before I had to leave, and what I thought would be a quick and straightforward install turned out to be extremely difficult (see this thread). Even if it is possible, I'm now out of town and can only ask the minimal effort of the person who has graciously volunteered to help me out of this mess and install the replacement machine in my absence.

So I'm looking for recommendations for a "server" (whether it is billed as such by the manufacturer is not important to me) that is comparable or better to the Optiplex machine, but is well documented as being trivially Linux compatible (no kernel patching) or ships with a Linux distribution installed. It must be something I can order in the next two weeks (I know Dell is promising Ubuntu systems... but I can't wait). Dell is not out of the running, but I'm highly suspicious now.

Here are the specs of the last machine:

P4 Processor 641 (3.20GHz, 2M, 800MHz FSB)
80GB SATA HDD (the SATA controller is actually what caused the problem, so I'm somewhat wary)
2GB SDRAM
$643 before shipping.

Atmel ATmega not programming over DAPA

Napierzaza — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:26:32 -0800

AVR Programming Hell: I've built my own Atmel programmer for my ATmega32 and it doesn't work a lick. I built the following circuit to the letter and tested it over and over:
http://www.captain.at/electronics/atmel-programmer/

But nothing happens when I try to program it using UISP (in Debian Linux). I have modprobed my LPT port but it always fails after 32 tries to program the chip.

Does anyone know if this is a good schematic for DAPA programming for the Atmel?

I'm trying to verify that my LPT port works but am not sure how to via Linux.

Why is my (debian/linux) computer so sluggish?

RustyBrooks — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 07:47:42 -0800

Why is my (debian/linux) computer so sluggish? The computer is not new, but it's about a 1.5ghz, running debian linux. It is not slow per se, but rather sluggish to respond.

If I try to fire up vi, for example, it might come right up or it might pause for 5 seconds, then bring it up. Some times it takes 10 seconds to log in.

The computer has plenty of ram and is not under heavy load. When it needs to do tasks that are CPU intensive, it does them fine, it just might take a bit to start up.

Also, it does not play DVDs steadily - there is an occaisonal, nearly undetectable (but existant) stutter. This is strange - my previous computer that I used for a media center was a celeron 500Mhz which could display full screen dvds with no problem.

I'm wondering if there is some common misconfiguration, or conflict, or *something* that might account for this. I'm a computer geek so if it was something really obvious I think I'd have figured it out.

I was suspicious of slow disks for a while (or, that my disks were going into standby and the pause was them spinning up) so I tried: disabling apmd, changing the file system type from ext3 to ext2 (ext3 can take some extra CPU for journalling) and back, making sure all the disks used DMA, etc.

Nothing has really helped. Any thoughts?

Good riddance?

furtive — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:59:59 -0800

Help me make my choice from one of the three options below: 1) Fix Windows so that it boots without messing up my Ubuntu. 2) Remove Windows completely. I don't need it anyways. 3) Shrink Windows to the bare minimum and reclaim the space with Ubuntu. I made the switch to Ubuntu a short while ago and have no inclination on returning to Windows. Recently when I tried to boot into Windows (XP Pro) I got a BSOD with the following error:
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME
My boot.ini looks good. I did some research and noticed that if I do an fdisk that I get the same error for all my partitions:



furtive@furtive-laptop:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Password:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes

16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77520 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/hda1   *           1       50565    25484728+   7  HPFS/NTFS

Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/hda2           50570       76357    12996585   83  Linux

Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/hda3           76357       77520      586372+   5  Extended

Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/hda5           76357       77520      586341   82  Linux swap / Solaris

furtive@furtive-laptop:~$

It seems that these "does not end on cylinder boundary" messages are common when the partitions are made using megabytes instead of cylinders. I honestly don't feel like reloading my notebook again (no CD drive) and so I think it's come down to three choices:

1) Fix Windows so that it works without messing up my Ubuntu. I haven't seen any solutions to this yet, but I'm all ears. My ntfs drive is mounted with ntfs 3-g in Ubuntu if that helps.

2) Remove Windows completely. I don't need it anyways. I'd love to be able to reclaim that space for my Ubuntu.

3) Shrink Windows to the bare minimum and reclaim the space with Ubuntu. I know it was possible to do this during the install, but I don't see how to do it now.

I'll be up all night and quick to respond to any questions.

Why are my domains having intermittent DNS issues?

pornucopia — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 08:02:15 -0800

I'm having crazy issues with my Debian DNS server, and I don't know how to troubleshoot them. Why would I not even see the DNS requests coming in? The problem: I have three domains. I have people from around the globe complaining of intermittent issues resolving these domains. I am always able to resolve them.

The three domains are Smallbusiness.com, pornucopia.org, and Sadclown.com. (These are made-up examples.) The first two are registered with one of the popular major registrars. The third is registered with a minor registrar that I don't even remember the name of.

The first two are on Server A, and the second one is on Server B. Server A and Server B have identical installations of Debian on them. Server A and Server B are hosted in different CoLo facilities. All three domains on both servers are having the same problems. This made me suspect it was a problem with the Bind9 that came with my Debian distros. Also, Server A is the authoritative name server for Smallbusiness.com and pornucopia.org; Server B is the NS for Sadclown.com. (Each is also the web server hosting that domain.)

However, I recently did some troubleshooting. Denny, my customer, said that he couldn't get to pornucopia.org. Fine, I said. I got onto Server A and ran a tcpdump, looking for any traffic on port 53. Here's what I saw:

1. Denny tried pornucopia.org in his browser. I saw no domain requests incoming. Denny got a "Hostname couldn't be found" error.

2. I tried pornucopia.org from a different remote machine, and I saw a domain request come in, and the appropriate answer go out.

3. Denny tried smallbusiness.com in his browser. I saw a domain request come in. (Remember, this is the same server and same bind9 installation as pornucopia.org!)

Various Sadclown.com customers have been complaining about resolution problems for ages, so it seems that the same thing is afflicting my other server. I've never had a problem with that one either.

For a while I wondered if it could be a problem with the Apache virtual hosts, but my tcpdumps seem to indicate that it's a problem with the root name servers, or the registrars, or something crazy like that. (Though they are on different registrars.)

It seems that when a customer has a problem with resolution, it lasts for a long time. Denny hasn't been able to resolve Pornucopia.org for about 4 days now. Denny has had this problem come up once or twice before, and it lasted several days, then went away.

Any suggestions?

Yes, there is a hard drive there...

tdreyer1 — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 07:02:05 -0800

Debian won't find my hard drive! Please help! I have details so there's Ok. I'm trying to do a dual install with Debian ver 3.1 (for AMD64) on my PC ( also running XP Pro 64bit ). The installer initializes fine, but doesn't find my hard drive! I've looked online, but I can't find anything on my situation. Mostly, I can't find help with my specific hardware. I've used live cd's before, but this is my first install. Here's the specs on my computer:

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 FX62 Processor
Biostar GeForce 7600GS Video Card (V7602GS51)
2x Kingston 1GB DDR2 800 RAM
Western Digital Caviar 16-WD3200KS 320GB SATA Hard Drive 7200RPM 16MB Cache (connected to M.B. directly)
Plextor PX-716AL/SW DVD/RW + CD/RW
OCX 700W Power Supply

ASUS BIOS Ver. 0504

Debian Ver. 3.1r2 for AMD64

Thanks in advance for all the help!!!

My dpkg database is hosed!

ciaron — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:41:42 -0800

My Debian package database is a mess! How can I reset its state? So I made an attempt to use the Debian Backports and it didn't go so well. To cut a long story short, dselect (and aptitude) now want to uninstall about 90% of my installed packages. In dselect, they're marked as:

Installed?: installed
Old mark: remove
Marked for: remove

How can I reset the state of the dpkg database, basically tell it "if it's installed, leave it alone"?

"X" just seems to undo changes you've made in this session, so that's no help. There's also "R" to revert to the state before this list, which doesn't help either.

For what it's worth, synaptic sees all the packages in the correct state.

I'm hoping for a smart solution before I head off into a couple of hours of manually resetting this stuff.

I don't want to pay for bloody TiVo!

evariste — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:30:08 -0800

I know about MythTV and Freevo. My question to the hive mind is I have a useless whitebox PC with a 2400 "PR Rating" Athlon processor, a gigabyte of RAM, and a 200 gigabyte hard drive. I'm comfortable with Debian and a bit less so with Fedora. I'm willing to buy whatever expansion card it is I need to hook the computer up to my tv/cable.

I don't ask a whole lot, just that I can set it up to record shows so I can skip commercials and cut my TV time by a third. Is my best move to buy a TiVo already, or can I jigger up something with no monthly fees by using this useless spare PC of mine, a distro like Debian/Ubuntu or Fedora, and a minor investment (under the price of a TiVo box) in an expansion card? Are this PC's specs underpowered for the task or will it suffice for my purpose?

I really want a TiVo, but man, I hate to add yet another damn monthly bill to all my other monthly bills. I don't even really need the whole TV listings business, I don't care. I don't need my PVR to suggest shows to me; I already know what I like and want to watch. I know when the things I want to watch are on (mostly [adult swim] and the Simpsons and South Park, plus some stuff from the Annenberg/CPB channel, History Channel, and Animal Planet).

Bonus points for anyone who can suggest a way of having a remote control for the whitebox PC contraption. I would not mind paying a hundred bucks extra for a remote and receiver to install into the PC so I can control the Freevo/MythTV from across the room, although if consumer-level hardware for this doesn't exist, then I guess it doesn't exist.

All advice, comments, persuasion and dissuasion welcomed. If the answer is "get a fucking TiVo already and shut up", I can accept that. But if there's a way to get a reasonably tolerable experience with open source software, my currently useless extra PC, and maybe a few hardware upgrades, I'd be delighted to put a little elbow grease and IRC begging-for-help-time into the effort.

Debian help: solving an apt-get problem

pornucopia — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 07:52:36 -0800

Debian's giving me grief when I go to install php5. Is apt-get dist-upgrade still scary and broken? I'm trying to install php5 on my debian system. Using apt-get install gives me the following error:

E: This installation run will require temporarily removing the essential package e2fsprogs due to a Conflicts/Pre-Depends loop. This is often bad, but if you really want to do it, activate the APT::Force-LoopBreak option.
E: Internal Error, Could not early remove e2fsprogs

Googling for answers, I have found the following suggestions:
1. "Try using aptitude to get around the dependency." Sadly, apt-get installing aptitude gives me the same error. I tried downloading the aptitude.deb package and installing directly, and quickly descended into a nightmare world of dependencies.

2. "Your system is out of date. Try doing an apt-get dist-upgrade." Well, ok, but googling around for info on apt-get dist-upgrade has shown me a host of problems that can occur when people do this. It looks fairly grim.

I'm running sarge at the moment. I wouldn't mind upgrading to etch, if I were confident that it wouldn't kill my system. I also wouldn't mind staying on sarge if I could solve the e2fsprogs problem. Also note that I'm doing this remotely, so it would be most convenient to find something that didn't kill the connectivity.

Thank you for any suggestions or advice.

Cannot Boot into XP or Grub

bloodniece — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 09:22:14 -0800

How do I recover Windows XP Pro boot record (MBR)? Scenario: Partitioned HD for Linux, Rebooted in XP ok, Reboot, install Linux and grub, reboot no Grub or XP. Ran XP Disc - Recovery Console (see extended explaination) Partitioned with Partition Magic HD for Linux.
Rebooted, Installed Linux (Debian) and grub.
Reboot --> no XP or Grub (no operating system found)
Rebooted with XP install disc, Ran Recovery Console
Ran these commands:
C: CD ..
C: ATTRIB –H C:\boot.ini
C:ATTRIB –S C:\boot.ini
C:ATRIB –R C:\boot.ini
C: del boot.ini
C: BOOTCFG /Rebuild
C: CHKDSK /R /F
C: FIXBOOT C: (had to do this since it tried to write a boot record to the partition I made for Linux E:, which I placed after C:)
No XP or Grub after reboot.
P.S. I even tried fixmbr to no avail.

die spam die.

delmoi — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 09:04:23 -0800

Help me deal with email: I have a couple domain names, and I get obscene amounts of spam and garbage email. I'd like to setup a system to help deal with all of it, but I'm not very familiar with server-side email setup beyond the basics. Basically what I'd like to do is setup rules such that if an address matches (something like *@mydomain1.com or delmoi@mydomain2.net) it could be either sent through, dropped, or sent through a sender verification step, that would require someone with the FROM address to reply, or go to a URL and type in one of those captchas. It would also be nice if someone with a particular email address would only have to authorize once.

I've given up on the idea of AI-based spam filtering, which just doesn't work when you have a 10000:1 signal to noise ratio.

Following that step, it would be nice if I could filter mail into different folders and then read everything with IMAP and keep it on the server.

Now, I know the tools to do this exist somewhere, but where, and what, are they? I have a basic Debian installed on my virtual host. and the mail server is exim (And yes, obviously I'll clear it with my hosting provider before sending out large amounts of email :P)

Hebrew input support in X

ori — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:46:56 -0800

How do I add a foreign language (Hebrew) input to X, and how do I switch keyboard layouts? This was easy to set up in Gnome and KDE, but I've since left those for Fluxbox, which doesn't (seem to) have a proprietary configurator. I'm running Debian/Testing, xorg 6.8.2dfsg.