So, read up everyone!  In theory, this marks the 12th year for VSIDO.  A long life for any distro, imo.  When you toss in the fact that VSIDO has been here through thick and thin, always maintained by one solitary individual from the very beginning makes it a really special distro indeed.  Long live VSIDO, long live FOSS!

To a special friend, I hope you have the best birthday this year that you've ever had!  This has been a tremendous journey, and I'm so glad our travels have just begun!  Long live the "VastOne"!  (quick edit: I know it's not till tomorrow, but hey sometimes it's not for years!!! FOR REAL!!!)

First, my apologies to VastOne whom I just spent 3 weeks only 40 miles away from,  and still was not able to get to meet.  I've been mostly absent from here the last few months due to health and other family issues.    I had surgery on my neck Nov. 28th to remove cancer from my carotid body on the left side of my neck.  Now cancer free but suffering some complications due to the surgery. (Trigeminal and Glossopharyngeal neuralgia, you should google them to see what fun I've been having).  They managed to do some nerve damage to the cranial nerve bundle which causes pain that is completely indescribable.  I've lost 42 lbs. since the morning of the surgery.  Also on Jan 6th, my wonderful father passed away unexpectedly and I had to spend almost 3 weeks in Missouri where EVERYONE had the worst flu I have ever had the misfortune to be around.  VastOne can back me up here when I say it was terrible.  Yes of course I caught it and basically shut myself in a room for almost the entirety of the trip.

On a much lighter note, success with my almost 600 updates to my current VSIDO. (check the Artwork thread scrots)  With all that has been happening I dreaded doing an UP but in the end took the plunge!  As VSIDO is such a strong and reliable distro, this update (the largest I've ever done on a VSIDO build) ran with exactly 0 (yes as in zero) issues!



I had no problems with some of the issues reported here this month with the new builds, or upgrading 'apt'.  Nothing broke, and I was happy to see that all went well as I noticed it was going to upgrade 'apt'.

One issue I read here posted I believe by Gordon, concerned inxi and smxi.  I too began experiencing problems with smxi last year at some point.  My apologies once again, as I did finally fix this and then never mentioned it to anyone.    The inxi script appeared to be working fine, until I ran smxi and it tried to update itself (which I believe it does every time it is ran) and suddenly was getting error messages that it could not complete the upgrade.  After much trial and error, I finally found an error log somewhere and was able to determine (at least in my case) that smxi and wget were not very happy with one another.  The 1.19.* versions of wget would not work with smxi anymore.  I simply rolled wget back to version 1.18 and this issue was resloved.  Now, I hardly ever use smxi anymore, and this may have just been MY issue.  I compile my own Kernels and who knows where this can lead you when climbing down into the 'Rabbit Hole'.  So when you look at my scrots and see the 2 sys updates always showing, that is because I'm continuing to 'hold back' wget and just recently it started also 'holding back' libcdparanoia0.  I also have wondered if anything wireless could be affecting the "wget/smxi" issue (if it is or ever was an issue)  I have no idea why the libcdparanoia0 is being held back as I don't remember 'pinning' it.  Right now however, I just don't have the energy or drive to be "paranoid" about libcdparanoia0.

Please remember to use thumbnails! Thanks...




Love "Quintet N. 1"  By 'Dustin O'Halloran' on the album "Lumiere".  So haunting...  (not the Halloween kind!)

Also, no further issues with sleep/hybernation/black-screen after installing Nvidia drivers several hours (7hrs 20min) ago...   

So I've been without 'shotwell' for a couple of weeks now.  I use it to maintain a huge photo library.  This has not been my day.

lost wicd-gtk and all the python dependencies...  Just a warning to anyone using wireless on wicd, so far I've been unable to get wicd to reinstall.  This is not an issue for me, but for those with little CLI experience, or no DE, or 'Network managing' front-ends, you may be in trouble...

Well my beautiful 18 year old daughter has gone out to face the big bad world.  She is going the UMaine and living on campus in the dorms.  A weird hole appears in your life at the absence of a child who's always been with you.

I did send her on her way with a rather large 'Dire Wolf', so she should be fairly safe!  Not to mention it is the great white north.
I love and am so proud of her!!!

So no more Icedove?  Mine went ahead and updated and migrated my Icedove settings.  (Once I had done an 'UP', the next restart of icedove resulted in the migration)  Sure enough, it says 'Thunderbird' in the window title...

This topic has been moved to How To's.

http://vsido.org/index.php?topic=1269.0

So if you've ever had to attach an ext4 drive to windows and then install (on windows) a tool for it to read, or "GASP", write to that ext4 drive, good luck with the data on it next time you boot it in Linux.  Turns out that every time Windows boots it screws with the 'superblock' on the hdd.  Even though it doesn't recognize the ext2, ext3, or ext4 formats.  This totally confuses the 'you know what' out of Linux.  (everything Winders does confuses Linux)

Here's hopefully, a fix for that drive and getting your data back.  This is all done via terminal, and all the things you need are "OBVIOUSLY" already installed on VSIDO.

At any point in this process if it asks you if you want to repair something, which it undoubtedly will, you'll want to say yes.  I've done this procedure several times, and never regretted it.  Besides if you are following this 'howto' then something terrible has already happened to the drive right?  So good luck and no warranties with this.

So open terminal, and to determine partition/drive names type the following;

sudo fdisk -l

This will give you the names you need for next.  Still in the same terminal, you'll need to find out if it is the 'superblock' that is the issue so you need to do an 'fsck' on that drive.  Heres how:

sudo fsck.ext4 -v /dev/sda

That represents my hdd on my machine.  Yours may be and probably will be different.  Just be sure you have the correct /dev/xxx for your particular drive.  This will take a few minutes.  My 1TB internal storage drive takes less than 5 minutes to complete this start to finish.

If the 'superblock' is indeed the culprit you can restore a previous 'superblock' backup.  In the same terminal, type the following to find your 'superblock' backups and accomplish this:

sudo mke2fs -n /dev/sda

This command gives you a list of the backed up 'superblocks' on the bad drive.  Choose one from the beginning of the list is my general rule of thumb.  It may even recommend which to choose.  Safe to pick the choice it offers you, if indeed it does give you a choice.  To restore the backed up 'superblock' type the following in the terminal;

Remember, throughout this process you may have to decide whether you want to say (Y) to a repair question.  I've never regretted it.  Matter of fact, if you get tired of typing in (Y) for yes every time, you can also type (A) and it will do all the repairs without questioning you for each one.

(replace 'block-number-here' in the command below with the block number recommended to you by the program or a block number of your choosing from the list provided by the command above)

sudo e2fsck -b block-number-here /dev/sda

Reboot and enjoy your recovered drive.

Just a heads up to let you know that there is a known bug that is causing Nitrogen to not replace your wallpaper on a logout or reboot.  It is because of Conky using the 'desktop' own_window_type. Nitrogen 'sees' that and thinks it is an overlay covering the whole desktop.  So, no wallpaper.  I've gotten around it by using the (sleep 10s && launch foo here) in my autostart file in ./.fluxbox directory.  YMMV...

Snowed in up here. Got around 33 inches of snow in the last 3 weeks...
Now it refuses to warm up.  The first 2 storms, it was still warm enough that some of the accumulation did melt a bit, but then this freeze hit and then Sunday and Monday, yep, more snow...

At least this time it was cold enough the snow stayed fluffy and light and was a breeze to clean up.  I'd say there's still a good 2 feet on the ground.  I'm gonna go ahead and predict a white Christmas up here this year.  (again)

This Topic Has Been Moved to General Support

So like it says in the title!    Ran a 'UP' (another perfect alias) and was totally 'burned' by xorg.  I played around with it for a bit, but needed to be up and running so I restored yesterdays fsa archive!

Just a heads up and a place to ponder this... 

I hate the touchpad on this MSI laptop.  It is my least hated option on this laptop.  I will NEVER buy another MSI product in the future.  It is not solely related to this issue that I make that statement. (the 90 sec)
So I have an NVMe PCIe drive.  Seen by fdisk, parted, gparted, fstab, blkid, lsblk, you get the idea, as nvme0n1.  OK, so in /etc/fstab:


### first '6' lines are the original fstab for the VSIDO install
### we'll call this section 1.
#proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
#UUID=bda2cbcd-9696-419b-baf4-2e875fc1279a / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
#UUID=730da2a3-5aef-4654-908e-865d3ed8f8aa /home ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2
#UUID=efe98bd0-1254-40b4-8378-61811c50da34 swap linux-swap defaults 0 0
#UUID=9E77-1B41 /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 1

### we'll call this section 2.
proc /proc proc defaults 0 1
/dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 1
/dev/nvme0n1p3 / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/nvme0n1p4 /home ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2
/dev/sda1 /media/DATA ntfs-3g defaults,noatime 0 2
/dev/nvme0n1p10 /media/root_manjaro ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/nvme0n1p11 /media/home_manjaro ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2


Either way I have the 90 second wait.  However, for clarity, here is the general order of events;

Power on, Grub, then the "A start job for dev-x2uuidblahblahblah" happens for 90 seconds.  For whatever weird reason, in /etc/fstab when the top lines are uncommented, (called "section 1" above) and the /dev/nvme* are commented, (called "section 2" above) no wireless.  The card is seen, (Killer Wireless Qualcom card, ath10k) just no wifi.  Haven't tested ethernet.    (this issue resolved itself with the fix described below of adding 'nofail' to /etc/fstab.  I no longer believe UUID's are an issue or were an issue.  This has happened to as many regular ssd's and hdd's all over the net.)  I say this having just booted my laptop into VSIDO with no errors, and all drives present, and accounted for utilizing the UUID's!

Now, as seen above, just as it is, it goes to a emergency mode 'pause' for you to acknowledge that "no, it is not an emergency, or an issue", so press Ctrl-d and it boots to all of VSIDO's glory and finery!  Or type your password to fix any imaginary problems you may be having... 

I'm sorry it took so long for me to post about this.  I am also grateful to all of you who've taken care of it, so I can come along at last and correct mine!  Seriously, to everyone here on the forum, VastOne has been toiling away at this ever since I mentioned it on IRC almost 2 weeks ago.  Our one and only dev of VSIDO truly is a "one and only"!!!!  Also thanks to PackRat as well.  Wow, also zephyr and anyone else that posts here in support of this non-issue! hehe

I also agree that probably it shouldn't be marked solved...

VastOne, there might also could be a better or more proper name for the thread?

Let 'em rip!

I was just wondering when I took this scrot if dizzie would think it was running to hot?   

Hi all...

Got a new laptop on the last day of Feb.  (that'll give you some idea of how long I've tried to get it running)  Best laptop I've had to date.  Bar NONE!!!!  MSI GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G.  Rolls right off the tongue eh?     Anyway I have it running fine with Arch, but have had no joy at all with anything else.  Yeah, I do have a little hackery going on to make it all work, but well worth it imo.

Anybody runs into a decent link concerning the above mentioned laptop and Linux, please post a link for it if it's a "real" link...

Mines a beast!
Intel Quad Core i7 Skylake 6820HK
intel CM236 chipset
32GiB (dual channel 1366Mhz)  DDR5 2666MHz RAM
512GiB Samsung pro 951 NVMe m.2 SSD
Hitachi 1TB 7200 rpm HDD
Nvidia GTX980M 8GiB's gDDR5 vRAM
6 USB 3.0 ports, 1 HDMI, 1 Mini Display port, 2 Thunderbird ports...  (ports, ports, ports,)
Blue Ray Burner

Hi all, just wondering what, if anything, I can do to get my themes working on Spacefm?  If I switch to Adwaita, all is good.  Adwaita sucks!  Too bright for my tender eyes.  I like the dark themes as they don't cause me to have migraines...

Check this out, and any advice appreciated!   

 

The menubar (File, Edit, View, etc) is all smashed together.  No sliders to scroll with, don't recognize the icons on the tabs, but pretty sure they aren't LinuxLex-8 which is my default icons.  Theme is Dorian-theme-slate-3.14.

 

Menubar in Medit looking normal...

 

Transmission looking bad as well.  I have added the line to Trolltech.conf

[Qt]
style=GTK+

to no avail.

(p.s. uhmmmm, this is on an Arch Linux build.  Long story.  Sad ending.  Much mental anguish involved, as well as a large sum of non-returnable funds...)   

Hey fellow VSIDO'ans!

I've recently dropped Dropbox.  (no pun intended)  MEGAsync which was founded by the now infamous Kim Dotcom? chucklehead, which he is no longer a part of, has a staggering 50Gb free plan with a 10Gb per month bandwidth allotment.  For me on a personal computing level, this is serious overkill.  I'm not complaining.  Dropbox was getting more and more inconsistent.  Files missing, uploads interrupted, etc.  So far with Mega, no issues whatsoever.  It syncs all my selected folders/files in the background and does so quickly and efficiently.  You can even specify on the Cloud where each file will be synced to.  All in all, a really good service considering it is free!

I've always tried to keep current bu's, but on occasion I've lost my share of data.  My current setup allows me to now do all my testing on VSIDO and be secure in the knowledge that all my configs will always be there for me to grab when needed.  Though I must confess here, VSIDO needs less and less testing as time goes by.  The last ISO's (which certainly came out perfectly as per usual with VastOne's dedication) allowed me to test my new method and I'm totally satisfied.  Install VSIDO, which usually takes less than 5 minutes anyway, then at my leisure, apt-get my way back to my needed apps, then start up Megasync and sit back and grin!

Their security is really top notch as well.  For that alone, worth looking at if your looking for some free off-site storage...

I highly recommend it!  Here's the link; MEGA  Enjoy your free space in the Cloud!

Got this idea from PackRat.  Thought I'd just post it here so I don't lose it!  If it helps you out, thank PackRat and the other individuals listed in this post.  I copied all of it

Quote from: PackRat on May 04, 2014, 09:27:35 PM

Quote from: VastOne on May 04, 2014, 12:12:19 PM

Quote from: PackRat on May 04, 2014, 01:54:42 AM
It is smooth. I tweak it for my cpu and unload some of the video drivers - like trident - that I'll never use and pick up a bit of performance.

Using VSIDO for an NFS file/media server. Need to get it going as an (internal) ftp server; I carried over my ftp configuration from slackware (or so I thought), but something isn't right now. But all things considered VSIDO as server = happiness.

Great to hear that about a VSIDO server...  How do you go about the tweak and removal with the kernel?  That would be a great How To if you ever felt up to it

This is the method I use for a debian kernel -

http://verahill.blogspot.com/2012/07/compiling-kernel-35-on-debian-testing.html

You need to install kernel-package, fakeroot, and build-essential for this to work.

There is also a site called kernel seeds (kernelseeds.org I think) that has some good commands to determine your hardware - appears to be down at the moment.

The only additional step I do is after the make oldconfig command. Once you have answered all the questions, use the command -

Code Select Expand

make menuconfig

to bring up a graphical menu of your kernel config file. I make these changes -

Change the cpu type to my cpu - the default is generic 64 or 32 bit
Change the maximum number of CPUs to what you have or 2x what you have - the default is 512 CPUs and something like 8k of memory is alloted for each one.

The real changes are in the drivers sections - usually your hardware isn't going yo change, so you can remove plenty of stuff you don't have - like broadcom ethernet devices and trident video cards.

That decreases the size of the compiled kernel, as well as memory needed since those drivers are dropped - and won't get loaded.

Save the new config and finish the steps in that linked guide.

The performance increases are really only slight - it's more about building a more efficient kernel designed for your computer.

The Slackware beginners' guide and Arch Wiki have good HowTo's for building kernels that are generic build instructions.

Doc. attached with start to finish directions.

A new month, an old pic!