- Arch-general - lists.archlinux.org

[arch-general] efivars kernel module not loaded automatically in 3.10 kernel
by Sebastiaan Lokhorst 04 Aug '13

04 Aug '13

Hello fellow Archers, I've noticed that the efivars kernel module is no longer loaded automatically. Previously (I believe also in 3.9), it was loaded by default and commands like gummiboot and efibootmgr would work without any manual loading. The wiki[1] also explains that it should be enabled in the stock Arch kernel. I am not sure if this is intended, but if it is, all UEFI bootloader instructions should be updated because none of them work without efivars. Thanks! Sebastiaan [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#…

1 0

[arch-general] pyalpm 0.6.2
by Rémy Oudompheng 04 Aug '13

04 Aug '13

Hello, pyalpm 0.6.2 has been released to [extra]. The following fixes are included: * pycman: recognize RemoteFileSigLevel and UseDelta=x options (FS#34791) * init_with_config now handles IgnorePkg and similar options (FS#29688) Regards, Rémy.

1 0

[arch-general] Texlive 2013 packages released in [extra]
by Rémy Oudompheng 03 Aug '13

03 Aug '13

On 2013/7/3 Rémy Oudompheng <remyoudompheng(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I have pushed TeXLive 2013 packages to [testing]. > The packages are now available in [extra]. Please read the news announcement for any issues after the upgrade: https://www.archlinux.org/news/texlive-2013-update-may-require-user-interve… Rémy.

1 0

[arch-general] Disabled asm in x264 on i686
by Jens Arm 02 Aug '13

02 Aug '13

Hi ArchLinux-Team Why are asm optimizations disabled in x264 on i686? In the PKGBUILD is written: [[ "$CARCH" == "i686" ]] && _asm='--disable-asm' Are there any bugs when asm is enabled? Regards Jens

3 2

[arch-general] Upstream urls and package descriptions
by Karol Blazewicz 02 Aug '13

02 Aug '13

Intro: Below are some questions / ideas I came up with. I simply don't know if anyone cares about these issues, whether there are rules or at least suggestions how to best deal with them or is it up to the maintainer. I've heard there were some plans wrt a build server that would periodically check if packages still build. Any news? If there indeed are issues that need fixing, should I file the low-priority bugs now? Summer vacation may not be the best time for Arch-related work so maybe I should wait until September so that people are back from holidays? Upstream urls: I found that dozens of packages in the repos have an upstream url that prints 'Page Not Found' in one way or another. Should I open bug reports for these packages or does nobody care about it? I could also check if the source is still available. If opening bug reports is OK, should I limit creating the reports to e.g. 10 a day? If I find a url that works, I will include it as a suggestion for the maintainer. For example for https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/i686/autocutsel/ neither the url nor the source is available, but I found what seems like a perfectly good autocutsel website: http://www.nongnu.org/autocutsel/ with a link to the source. Some projects seem to be gone for good e.g. https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/apricots/ even grabs the sources from ftp.archlinux.org https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/plain/trunk/PKGBUILD?h… Would http://freecode.com/projects/apricots be a better website? It has some info e.g. that last development is from a decade ago, a screenshot, a longer description ... What about urls that point to a redirect? Is it OK only if the redirect is automatic and otherwise upstream urls should be updated if they moved e.g. from SourceForge to GoogleCode? An example: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/junit/ has http://junit.sourceforge.net/ as the upstream url, but when you go there, it says 'Please see our main site at junit.org'. Is there a rule that 'www' should be omitted or that it should be included? https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/alsa-lib/ : http://www.alsa-project.org https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/alsa-firmware/ : http://alsa-project.org/ What about the slash at the end of the url? Sometimes the slash makes a difference: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/i686/pidgin-toobars/ uses http://vayurik.ru/wordpress/en/toobars/ and shows (via a redirect) the Russian version http://vayurik.ru/wordpress/toobars while the English version demands no slash at the end of the url: http://vayurik.ru/wordpress/en/toobars The same upstream url can be used by many packages and standardizing would make it a bit easier to find which packages need to have the upstream url updated. Are upstream urls mandatory? https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/hwdetect/ does not have one. Package descriptions: There was an attempt at improving the descriptions last year, but it didn't go so well https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/commit/trunk?h=packag… I don't know if maintainers should write package descriptions or should they just take them from upstream, but IMHO e.g. https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/kdeplasma-addons-wallpapers-v… : 'Description: Virus' has to go. Even https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/kdeplasma-addons-wallpapers-w… - Weather or https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/kdetoys-ktux/ - KTux are pretty bad descriptions. Quite a few descriptions could be more informative, but I don't know if anyone cares about it e.g. description for https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/kdeutils-ktimer/ says 'Countdown Launcher' and is IMHO too terse. Should I suggest changing it upstream, will the maintainer change it to a more descriptive one or is it considered just pointless churn? Similarly, https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/kdeplasma-addons-applets-calc… could be described as e.g. 'A simple calculator' instead of the current 'Calculate simple sums'. Is adding 'data files' phrase to descriptions of packages that provide architecture-independent data recommended? I've noticed many packages share the same description, usually because it's a generic one: monica - A monitor calibration tool kdegraphics-kgamma - A monitor calibration tool or because the packages represent different version of e.g. the same toolkit: qt3 - A cross-platform application and UI framework qt4 - A cross-platform application and UI framework Sometimes the descriptions explicitly says it's a python2 thing: python2-atspi - Python 2 bindings for at-spi python2-dbus - Python 2.7 bindings for DBUS Some language-related packages use the same description for all of them e.g. xpdf-korean - Encoding information to use specific character sets in Xpdf; does not include fonts vim-spell-af - Language files for Vim spell checking Other packages, like firefox-i18n-* or libreoffice-* adjusted the description for each package: firefox-i18n-af - Afrikaans language pack for Firefox libreoffice-af - Afrikaans language pack for LibreOffice Is one way preferred over the other or is it up to the maintainer? Should language files always have a description that says which language do they represent or are package names enough? I also found https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/libreoffice-sid/ - ??? language pack for LibreOffice https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/libreoffice-tt/ - TT ? language pack for LibreOffice What's this?

7 10

[arch-general] Kernel bug #60539
by Josh Liberty 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

Hi people, I've just had to downgrade my kernel back to 3.9.9 because of this bug: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60530 Does anyone know when one may expect the fix to arrive at the stable kernel builds? - Josh

2 2

[arch-general] CLI diffing tool other than Vim?
by Paul Gideon Dann 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

Hi guys, I run a couple of Arch servers, and I'm trying to teach someone how to go about maintaining it (for when I'm not around). The difficulty is that when it comes to package updates that require merging .pacnew files, I always use Vim to merge changes. That's quite a steep learning curve to impose on someone who's not all that familiar with a UNIX environment yet. Does anyone know of any good & simple(ish) alternative for merging files over SSH? Paul

13 24

[arch-general] Apache PID File not readable
by Stefan Tatschner 30 Jul '13

30 Jul '13

Hi, I always get this message after restarting apache via systemctl: PID file /run/httpd/httpd.pid not readable (yet?) after start. I have already used google and I found this: http://serverfault.com/questions/501687/error-pid-file-run-httpd-httpd-pid-… https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/32708 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16156761/error-pid-file-run-httpd-httpd-… Any ideas to avoid this message? I can chown the file, but after restarting apache it's the same problem. Apache seems to work fine but the restarting procedure needs a very long time...

5 6

Re: [arch-general] How to safe configs to another path than ~
by John Briggs 27 Jul '13

27 Jul '13

On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 11:51:41AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > On Fri, 2013-07-26 at 18:08 +1200, Ross Hamblin wrote: > > Unless I have missed something I think one of the audio > > session-managers should help you on the audio side, not so sure about > > other apps though. > > Jack-session and ladish work well for me unless I have misunderstood. > > Non-session is also popular although I have not tried that myself yet. > > Hi, > > I've doubts that session managers are that comfortable as a script is. I > might be mistaken. > > I'm starting sessions by a script. I don't like to use jack dbus. > Do those session managers really take care about the configurations in > ~? AFAIK they automatically add changes I make during a session, even if > I make those changes only temporarily or by mistake. When I tested > ladish I was to stupid to use it without a learning curve and I don't > want to add something complicated to my sessions, I also won't something > to add that does need resources, CPU and/or RAM. Following the Linux > audio users mailing list I read a lot of whining about unsupported > applications, somebody lost a production, because he used jack-session > in a wrong way. So IIUC session managers aren't neither safe to use, nor > able to handle all applications. > > I don't want additional GUI stuff on the Desktop, I already avoid to use > even qjackctl and for sure I won't be forced to use patchage or > something similar confusingly. There should be as less Windows as > possible. Several apps should be automatically startet in a terminal > emulation, a script can do this, are session managers able to do this > too? This unfortunately is important, since I never run an audio session > were there wasn't the need to troubleshoot. > > Some audio apps are able to take care about the configurations (the user > can save and restore them giving a path), others e.g. Qtractor don't and > for some apps it's even hard to find the configuration files in ~. > > I don't need something to start the applications, a script can do this > very good, I also don't need something to load songs, samples etc., this > also can be done by a script, I just miss a way to find all hidden > config files in ~ and to safe them to a path were I store the > productions. > > My workaround is to save and restore ~ nearly completely, sure, without > touching e.g. emails. > > It also would be nice, even if it's not that important, if I could use > another configuration profile even for e.g. xfce4-terminal for audio > sessions. > > Regards, > Ralf > I am unaware of what applications you are using but most applications have the option to specify different configuration files than the default $HOME directory so it should be a simple matter of using this option to specify your configuration path. Regards John

1 0

Re: [arch-general] How to safe configs to another path than ~
by Ralf Mardorf 27 Jul '13

27 Jul '13

-------- Cancelled posting -------- On Thu, 2013-07-25 at 18:46 +1000, Gaetan Bisson wrote: > Applications have different means of finding out what the HOME directory > of a given user is. The HOME environment variable is just one of them. > Other popular ones include the function calls getpwuid() and getpwuid(); > they basically read the data from /etc/passwd so your only way to work > around that and pretend having a different home directory would be to > override those calls with LD_PRELOAD... Thank you Gaetan, but this fails too: $ LD_PRELOAD=/home/rocketmouse/alt_profiles/1/ /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/rocketmouse/alt_profiles/1/' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored. Regards, Ralf -------- End of cancelled posting -------- Assumed I would be able to do it, then I need to write new calls that will replace those calls?

6 10