- Arch-general - lists.archlinux.org

[arch-general] Announcing pacpak
by pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) 22 Feb '17

22 Feb '17

Hello, A specter is haunting the GNU/Linux ecosystem: the specter of per-user containerization. Software like Flatpak and Snappy promise fully sandboxed GNU/Linux application bundles (instead of merely launching an application with fewer privileges but without hiding the operating system, like Bubblewrap or Firejail do). Bundles ship with the version of their dependencies which they need. Dependencies are not force-upgraded with the operating system, but easily upgradable by the bundle creator. The same files in different bundles and versions are deduplicated to save space. Applications can be containerized once for all modern GNU/Linux operating systems. Unlike Docker, Flatpak works without root privileges. Flatpak allows you to run, say, a sandboxed and containerized copy of LibreOffice where opening an infected file can only cause harm to what the sandbox has access to, but not compromise the integrity of the system as a whole. Untrustworthy games can be isolated and run without fear of a system compromise. More generally, most GUI applications should probably be installed to and run from a Flatpak sandbox. This has major implications for traditional package managers. Pacman would be demoted to providing the base system on top of which Flatpak bundles downloaded from elsewhere are run (e.g. from gnome.org or from reallytheofficialwebsiteoflibreofficeipromise.com) However, I would prefer having a unified pacman-like interface for installing containerized and non-containerized applications. I believe a PKGBUILD is a good way to specify how to build an application for Flatpak as well. I do not want to lose the many packages from Arch and derivative distributions. tl;dr: Therefore I started writing a tool called pacpak which uses pacman to populate Flatpak application bundles. Its interface is meant to be similar to pacman’s. For example, in order to install gedit into a Flatpak application using a bundle of the gnome packages as a runtime, you install pacpak from the AUR and use: $ pacpak -S Base xterm You can run the resulting application like this: $ flatpak run $(hostname).app.xterm pacpak is still in its early alpha stages. I do not currently have the time to devote more than a day per week to its development. However, I’d like some feedback on the basic idea. I am also looking for a home for the project in the longer term, since I do not currently like to administer a bug tracker on my own rented server and dislike centralizing all free software development on GitHub or Sourceforge (I’d rather administer my own then). This will only be helpful once all the basic features are implemented of course. I would be glad if pacpak or a similar tool eventually becomes an official Arch project. Let me conclude by thanking those who develop Flatpak, those who package and maintain Flatpak for Arch and all the other Arch and free software developers we rely on. Regards, Florian Pelz

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[arch-general] Inquiry about research paper
by Jaewon Choi 21 Feb '17

21 Feb '17

Dear Arch Linux community, Hello, my name is Irvin Choi I am student from Dwight School Seoul, and I am writing a extended essay within IB (ibo.org) curriculum research paper about systemd, service manager for Linux/GNU operating system. There are few questions that I would like to ask to broaden my understanding regarding systemd, and I would like to kindly ask you to answer them to best of your ability. It is very important for my research paper, as the research paper plays huge role in my high school curriculum and possibly my future. I would like to mention that, I may use your questions on the research paper for credibility purposes. Here are the questions (please consider explaining your answers and avoid short answers): 1) Who are you and what do you do for the community? 2) What do you think of the systemd as a service manager? Do you have an opinion about its pros and cons? 3) What do you think users of the distribution thinks about the systemd? Do you think they favor systemd? If not, why so? 4) Through my research, I was able to see that there are existing service managers such as upstart, sysvinit, and others. Why did systemd become the standard over the others in most of the distributions? Was it worth the replacement of existing service manager that is seen to be reliable? 5) What changes that do you think systemd should make to improve itself? For instance, ‘typing systemctl everytime is bothersome. Systemd should shorten it to sctl instead.) 6) There are lots of Linux/GNU users across the world. To what users are systemd intended for? Do you think systemd is useful for the servers administrators, desktop users, laptop users, or others? 7) I’ve heard that there are lots of debate about systemd and it really got heated at one point, involving personal opinions, politics, and others. What was the cause and how did it get resolved (if at all)? 8) Is there anything else you would like to tell me about systemd? Thank you very much time.. It means a lot for me, as I am really interested in Linux/GNU system, and this became the opportunity to broaden my understanding. Have a great day.

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[arch-general] Intel graphics issue
by Ralf Mardorf 21 Feb '17

21 Feb '17

Hi, this is my first Intel graphics and the first time I can't get rid of an issue. I never experienced such an issue with NVIDIA or ATI graphics. In the upper left corner of the screen, there's a flashing line, whenever I use lower resolutions than 1152x864 at 60 Hz. With my Arch Linux I'm using 1152x864 at 90 Hz and there's no noticeable flashing line, but for the syslinux menu or e.g. a live media I need to use different resolutions at 60 Hz. If I switch from 1152x864 at 90 Hz to 1024x768 at 60 Hz, something I seldom, but sometimes need to do, a flashing line is visible when running Arch Linux, too. I posted this to an Intel forum: "Hi, in the upper left corner of the screen, there's a flashing line visible at the syslinux bootloader menu, as well as when running a Linux window manager, e.g. openbox on Arch Linux or a Linux desktop environment, e.g. Ubuntu Mate 16.10. CPU: INTEL CELERON G1840 BX80646G1840 Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-B85M-D3H CRT: LIFETEC/MEDION MD1998JB Type J91B This doesn't happen, when using the same monitor with an ASUS M2A-VM HDMI mobo and an AMD Athlon BE-2350 CPU. How can I get rid of this annoying flashing line. Regards, Ralf" - https://communities.intel.com/message/455301#455301 This is the currently used xorg.conf: [rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ grep -v "#" /etc/X11/xorg.conf Section "Module" Load "extmod" Load "dri" Load "dbe" Load "dri2" Load "glx" Load "record" Load "GLcore" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Plug 'n' Play" ModelName "Plug 'n' Play" DisplaySize 305 230 HorizSync 29-98 VertRefresh 50-120 modeline "1152x864" 128.42 1152 1232 1360 1568 864 865 868 910 Gamma 1.0 EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Card0" Driver "intel" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Card0" Monitor "Monitor0" Defaultdepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1152x864" EndSubSection EndSection Section "ServerFlags" Option "BlankTime" "0" Option "StandbyTime" "0" Option "SuspendTime" "0" Option "OffTime" "0" EndSection Regards, Ralf

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[arch-general] Archlinux i3wm i3-scrot copy clipboard
by Maykel Franco 21 Feb '17

21 Feb '17

Hi, I love with muy installation. Archlinux + i3wm but I like take screenshots with tool i3 called i3-scrot but I don't see option to copy clipboard, only save screenshots in folder...

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[arch-general] Cannot start Jack
by Peter Nabbefeld 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

Hello, I've installed jack2-dbus, but cannot start jack: $ jack_control start --- start DBus exception: org.jackaudio.Error.Generic: Failed to open server I'm in the audio group, dmesg doesn't show anything (I've cleared it before issuing the command, just to make sure I don't miss any line). Kind regards Peter

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Re: [arch-general] sparkleshare 1.5-3 core dump
by ber532k 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

Here’s the paste at github: https://gist.github.com/ber532k/194699fd4eaccbd3b3f8f5dcf57a8878. I am using the precompiled version from community, which is package version 1.5-3.

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[arch-general] sparkleshare 1.5-3 core dump
by ber532k 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

Hi, I am eperiencing core dumps when running sparkleshare, and I’m not sure how to resolve this. Does anyone have experience with mono? The error messages can be found at http://pastebin.com/VhA8n5jJ. Any help appreciated.

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[arch-general] pavucontrol doesn't find pulseaudio
by Peter Nabbefeld 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

Hello, I've tried to use Cadence to set up Pulseaudio with Jack, but it left my sound configuration even more corrupted. Now, after starting pulseaudio, even pavucontrol cannot find it. This is how I've started pulseaudio: $ pulseaudio --start -vv D: [pulseaudio] conf-parser.c: Parsing configuration file '/etc/pulse/client.conf' D: [pulseaudio] conf-parser.c: /etc/pulse/client.conf.d does not exist, ignoring. I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup successful. So I'd expect everything should be okay - can someone tell me what to check? Kind regards Peter

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[arch-general] Leftover kde4 stuff
by Oon-Ee Ng 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

I just hit a bug with okular (rarely used it and just got surprised by this) https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53003 After more investigation I realized the kactivites was being provided by kactivities4 (which no longer exists). Further investigation showed that I had a bunch of old kde4 packages (some still in repos, some not) installed. I think this is the list:- kdebase-runtime (16.12.2-1) libkscreen4 (1.0.5-2) qjson (0.9.0-1) libkexiv2_4 (15.08.3-2) kdelibs (4.14.29-1) qca-qt4 (2.1.3-1) polkit-qt4 (0.112.0+git20160226-1) phonon-qt4 (4.9.1-1) phonon-qt4-vlc (0.9.0-1) libqzeitgeist (0.8.0-6) libdbusmenu-qt4 (0.9.3+16.04.20160218-1) attica-qt4 (0.4.2-3) Only libkscreen4 and libkexiv2_4 were no longer in repos, and uninstalling both removed the rest. Did I miss an announcement or anything where I'd have noted these packages disappearance and uninstalled them? Or should I be keeping an eye on pacman -Qm (I have 137 packages there at this point)?

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[arch-general] What's with Ray Rashif?
by sekret＠posteo.se 17 Feb '17

17 Feb '17

Hey guys! I'm not writing this mail to complain, I'm just wondering! I use ardour quite a lot and of course I wanted the update to version 5 as soon as possible. The first release 5.0 didn't build here, so I thought ok, maybe the maintainer of this package is struggling with it too. The current version is 5.3 which compiles and runs just fine. So now I wonder why we don't get an update. So I looked at the other packages of the maintainer, see this link https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?packager=schiv and well, I see a lot of red there! So I must wonder: Is Ray still active? Best sekret

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