Several people have asked in the past including myself, and at least one
other person has asked on this and maybe other recent threads...
Could you please keep on topic for debian-arm?
Simply running debian on an arm system doesn't really give free license
to talk about anything and everything about that system, or other
arbitrary topics entirely unrelated to it. I recognize it's not a black
and white issue, but please make (more of) an effort to stay on topic.
This is expressly listed in:
https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct
In particular:
"Make sure that you are using the proper list. In particular, don't
send user-related questions to developer-related mailing lists."
Thanks for considering.
live well,
vagrant
On 2019-07-08, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 08 July 2019 10:12:31 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 2:01 PM Andrei POPESCU
> <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Lu, 08 iul 19, 07:42:46, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> > > yes it was, and no solution was offered that I read about. And no,
>> > > aptitude is not a replacement. I've hit q for quit and had it tear
>> > > a working system down to doing a reinstall to recover, 3 times
>> > > now.
>> >
>> > I used to be a heavy aptitude user in the past, on unstable (i.e.
>> > almost daily package upgrades). It does have it quirks. It also
>> > shows very clearly what it is about to do before you press the final
>> > 'g'.
>>
>> indeed, as does apt-get (which i much prefer). ultimately, if you
>> are... how can i put this diplomatically... a GUI gives you the "nice
>> warm feeling" on presenting you with a nice warm cozy dialog box, "Are
>> You Sure You Wanna Do This".
>>
>> apt and aptitude it is assumed that you are... well... hum.... no
>> other way to say it really..... it is assumed that you are... um...
>> capable of reading?
>>
> I am not as fast as I was once tested at 350 a minute with 95%
> comprehension 70+ years ago, one does not become one of the 1% or 2%
> that survive a pulmonary embolism without some thinker damage.
>
>> sorry if that sounds like it's terribly insulting, there's really not
>> a way to say it without implying so, because if you don't actually
>> read the warning - no matter that it's in words that are not
>> bold-faced and surrounded by a big dialog box - you basically get to
>> learn *why* the warning is there.
>
> Absolutely, the worst effect that I am rather painfully aware of is a
> noticeably poorer short term memory.
>>
>> > > It may be capable, but imnsho its also dangerous. Having it do
>> > > anything but quit instantly when you hit the quit key q, hit
>> > > because you're lost is unforgivable.
>
> I should have qualified that with "and it was doing nothing until I hit
> the q." I didn't get the "are you sure" popup whose default is no, it
> just started hammering on the drive.
>
>> > Thanks, but no thanks. Having it exit immediately in the middle of a
>> > complex upgrade just because I hit 'q' by mistake is not nice and
>> > might leave your system in a very bad state.
>> >
>> > Once an action has been started it might be possible to interrupt it
>> > with Ctrl+C. Please do so at your own risk.
>>
>> synaptics i presume actively prevents and prohibits such termination.
>>
>> recovery of a system that's been terminated in the middle of an
>> install can actually damage the dpkg database. apt and aptitude exec
>> dpkg to install individual packages, and, as anyone knows who has
>> tried to manually install a .dpkg, you interrupt that process, as
>> andrei says, at your own risk.
>>
>> of course, it is perfectly possible to f*** up with synaptics as
>> well: "killall -9 synaptics" whilst it's in the middle of an install
>> will achieve the exact same level of system-f****g-up-ness.
>>
>> if you really _really_ get into such a mess, the first action to take
>> is "apt-get -f install". this uuuusually recovers things back to a
>> known stable state, and you can re-run apt-get {whatever}
>>
>> sometimes i've had to do a dpkg -i --force-all {insert package that
>> failed.deb}, particularly on systems where there's been file conflicts
>> (very old packages still installed, where new ones have the same
>> file).
>>
>> ultimately, though, there is absolutely *NO* excuse for quotes
>> reinstalling quotes. any debian system is ENTIRELY RECOVERABLE
>> without resorting to the stupidity of the windows mindset "if it's
>> broke duhhh reinstall". in really *really* broken conditions (a
>> kernel upgrade interrupted, a grub replacement gone wrong), you can
>> run recovery live USB boot media, and repair the damage by chrooting
>> in to the root filesystem.
>>
>> in one hilarious incident involving "cpio" i managed to write ARM
>> files onto an x86 filesystem (in /lib, /usr/lib, /bin and /sbin) *and
>> still recovered the system* by live-booting a recovery USB stick,
>> manually downloading the relevant dpkgs, unpacking them and
>> hand-copying the accidentally-replaced files.
>>
>> bottom line: if you're relying heavily on synaptics, be worried and
>> concerned that you're turning into a windows user :)
>
> Heaven forbid, the end is near! And until about 6 weeks back, the
> longest any winders install that came on a machine has lived is about 2
> weeks. This is a linux only house.
>
> But I've had to recently buy a windows machine to use as a display for a
> redpitaya, a piece of rf test equipment. They promised linux drivers but
> they don't work. One of its functions is drawing smith charts of an
> antenna. All by a couple boxes that can fit in your T's shirt pocket.
> And at a hair less than $800 delivered in 3 days from Slovenia, plus the
> winders box for a display ($350) and printer driver for a $100 printer.
> It can do in 2 to 5 minutes, what it took a General Radio RF bridge all
> night to take measurements that the engineer wrote down and spent the
> next day turning into a chart that if he was smart enough to read, tells
> him which direction to tune a capacitor, or move a clip on a big coil in
> the right direction to improve the match. Only intuition will tell you
> how far to move or turn things. But this thing can cut the iteration
> time by 95% by running a continuous update as the adjustments are being
> made. So most can be made to work well in just a few hours unless the
> station owner has loaded the tower so much junk in the last 30 years to
> put it out of range of the available tuning adjustments.
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
> - Louis D. Brandeis
> Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
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