March 2014 - Arch-general - lists.archlinux.org

[arch-general] Trimming down our default kernel configuration
by Thomas Bächler 04 Apr '14

04 Apr '14

Hello all, it won't be too long until 3.14 is out and I want to address a topic that has been bugging me for a while. Our kernel includes everything and the kitchensink. I have no problem with delivering drivers that can be built modular, but there are other things that have an unknown impact on everyone. I want to trim our kernel down to what we actually support. 1) Once we agreed to disable one LSM, everyone else said "we can enable LSM XYZ, too". And so we did. Right now, we enable SELinux, SMACK, Tomoyo, AppArmor and Yama, although we don't support the userspace for any of those. I propose to drop all of them. 2) We patch our kernel to allow enabling CHECKPOINT_RESTORE without enabling CONFIG_EXPERT. I have no idea what the impact of this option is, other than that it was requested in order to support some tool that can freeze and save single processes resume them later. I am generally sceptical towards options that require CONFIG_EXPERT, so I propose dropping this one, too. 3) We enable tons of debug options in the "Kernel Hacking" section, many of which have a "small performance impact". I'd like to get rid of those that we don't need (I didn't go through all of them yet). What I'd like is a discussion where people suggest more things that could or should be dropped, and tell me what is absolutely needed and why. I hope that such a discussion makes it clearer to me how I should proceed. Regards Thomas

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[arch-general] What's with F# and mono?
by Magnus Therning 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

I'm just starting to dip my toes in the mono waters. Slightly prompted by my current situation at work. In particular I'm interested in F#, but I'm finding the whole situation around mono/monodevelop + F# a bit confusing. 1. There are indications online that mono ships with F# [^1][^2]. But the mono package in Arch doesn't include F#. Looking at the sources used to build the mono package there is no F# in sight. Was it ever there? 2. The package on AUR[^3] for fsharp is rather outdated. Not such a big problem, the building received a lot of TLC so the package is extremely simple to bring up-to-date. 3. Is there an F# add-in for monodevelop? There seems to have been one back in 2010, but it's not distributed any more, [^4]. However, other places say there is an add-in available, [^5] (however, downloading fails). So, can anyone help me get a clearer picture of F# on mono (and ArchLinux)? /M [^1]: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Nov-11.html - talking of plans to include F# in mono. [^2]: http://is.gd/cNC5xb- - "F# is included in the standard Mono release, but it's still missing from the MonoDevelop IDE." [^3]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fsharp/ [^4]: http://is.gd/YndnsA- - bug on F# add-in missing, closed for MD 2.4, the last comment suggests it'd be re-opened [^5]: http://is.gd/YndnsA- which links to http://addins.monodevelop.com/Project/Index/48 -- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4 email: magnus(a)therning.org jabber: magnus(a)therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus The results point out the fragility of programmer expertise: advanced programmers have strong expectations about what programs should look like, and when those expectations are violated--in seemingly innocuous ways--their performance drops drastically. -- Elliot Soloway and Kate Ehrlich

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[arch-general] package ncurses lacks c++ support
by lx 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

In core/ncurses, we have c++ wrapper header files like cursesw.h, but the corresponding library was not included. Actually, gnu ncurses itself only builds a static "libncurses++.a". Is there any need to do some extra work to add a libncurses++.so to the package?

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[arch-general] Printable wiki pages not working
by Jerome Leclanche 30 Mar '14

30 Mar '14

?printable=yes on the wiki doesn't seem to have any effect. Example: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Kernels&printable=yes Compare: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Linux&printable=yes printable pages are nice for downloading and reading offline with lynx -dump. Could this be fixed? J. Leclanche

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Re: [arch-general] display manager dvorak recognition failure
by message 30 Mar '14

30 Mar '14

On 2014-03-17 22:59, arch-general-request(a)archlinux.org wrote: > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 18:39:58 +0000 > From: message <letter(a)openmailbox.org> > Subject: [arch-general] display manager dvorak recognition failure > > Readers, > > Initially lxdm, gdm have been installed, but neither recognise a dvorak > keyboard. How to configure the graphical display manager so that a user > can specify the keyboard layout before to enter sign-in credentials? > > -- > digest-mode subscriber; please cc to maintain message thread > How to add language options to the graphical display manager sign-in window, so that user A can sign in using qwerty and user B can select the option to use dvorak and another language?

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[arch-general] per error
by message 29 Mar '14

29 Mar '14

Readers, 'get_iplayer' is a program to extract media from BBC F(/tr)ash streams. After installation of the program, obtained the following error: Can't locate HTML/Entities.pm in @INC (you may need to install the HTML::Entities module) (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl /usr/share/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/core_perl /usr/share/perl5/core_perl .) at ./getiplayer line 58. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./getiplayer line 58. line 58: use HTML::Entities; Tried re-installation of perl (518222 already installed) and failed. Any suggestions to solve please?

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[arch-general] Must use nomodeset to enable boot
by Anthony Campbell 29 Mar '14

29 Mar '14

I have a Thinkpad T42 which has been happily running Arch for many months. Its video is AMD/ATI. After a recent upgrade I started getting the dreaded blank page on boot. Googling showed a lot of discussion of this on various distros including Arch. The only solution seems to be to set nomodeset, which works, but it appears to be deprecated. It's supposed to prevent some opensource drivers from working, although so far mine does. Any comments or advice about this please? -- Anthony Campbell - ac(a)acampbell.org.uk http://www.acupuncturecourse.org.uk http://www.smashwords.com/profile.view/acampbell https://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/anthony-campbell/id73235412

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[arch-general] GNOME Software: Status and integrable?
by Karol Babioch 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

Hi, now that GNOME 3.12 has been released and probably will hit the repos in the next couple of days/weeks, I'm wondering what the current status of "Software" is [1]? This is an application similar to an app store in the mobile world. I couldn't find it in the repos, and I wouldn't expect it to even work without some patching, because obviously it would have to be integrated into the packet management system. The only reference I could find in regards to Arch Linux was a forum thread from last year [2], which basically ended up in a mess without any real answers. On the other hand I may have missed it, because GNOME is really good in using generic terms like "Software" and "Web" to name their applications, which are not great to search for :'(. I'm not interested in another flame war about GNOME, when it hits the repos and things like that. I just want to know whether this particular application is available/works and if not what the technical hurdles would be to make it work and whether it is feasible to get it working in the near term. Arguably users of Arch Linux are expected to know how to use use the command line (including pacman) and I'm fine with that, but I wouldn't mind to be able to browse an app store, just for the fun of it ;). Best regards, Karol Babioch [1]: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Software [2]: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=170223

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Re: [arch-general] graphical display management
by message 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

On 2014-03-25 15:59, arch-general-request(a)archlinux.org wrote: > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 00:15:27 +0100 > From: Guus Snijders <gsnijders(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [arch-general] graphical display management > > > Ok. Could you try resetting the password for user a? > You could do this (as root) with: > passwd a > > And then try again to login to a tty. > This was successful thanks, but the dvorak keyboard layout is not recognised at the graphical sign-in prompt. The layout is recognised when a command terminal is opened within the graphical user session. > Just to be sure: you do realise that the password shown in /etc/shadow > is the encrypted password and not the literal string to type in? > (no offence). > Using 'less' to access the file, the password is visible as literal text.

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Re: [arch-general] graphical display management
by message 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

On 2014-03-25 15:59, arch-general-request(a)archlinux.org wrote: > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 22:49:06 +0100 > From: Jakub Klinkovsk? <j.l.k(a)gmx.com> > Subject: Re: [arch-general] graphical display management > >> >> Interestingly, 'su a' results in the cursor 'pwd' to be the root home >> directory and not '/home/a'. >> > > This is the expected behaviour. Just run the command 'cd', without > arguments it > will get you into the home directory, which should be '/home/a'. Or run > 'su -l a'. > I would have expected the home directory for 'root' _not_ to be accessible to other users.

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