"Glib-Warning" written by Tinypliny on estrip.org

Category: linux

03/06/11 04:29 - ID#53773

Glib-Warning

GLib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r(): failed due to unknown user id (0)

I get to bat my eyelashes at this gibberish every time my laptop boots. And every glib soul on the World-Wide-Web seems to be just as mystified as me about what it can possibly mean.

Oh, the joys of linux.

paul writes at 04:10:28 03/11/11 - Comment #61160: Ya right click on your gnome panel at the top. Select add to panel. Then choose the system monitor widget. Its got it all.

tinypliny writes at 12:39:51 03/11/11 - Comment #61159: I forgot to ask.. do you know of a simple gnome-based resource monitor to see what is using the most CPU and RAM at any given time.

paul writes at 10:14:37 03/08/11 - Comment #61087: Have you tried running top or the GUI based system resource gnome panel widget. Just like the task manager on windows it shows you what is running and how much CPU, memory, etc is being used. I find my fedora box uses almost nothing unless I am actively running other programs or there is a system update running. Using that tool you can get a feel for anything taking up resources. Then you can remove those things or use the GUI, or the nice command to reduce the amount if CPU given to those tasks.

I could help you with it after yoga on Wed night if you want.

tinypliny writes at 07:43:54 03/08/11 - Comment #61084: You are right and unfortunately, I am finding it very difficult to work up the energy or the vision to share your bigger picture about the necessity of passwords. On the surface, your post sounds rather paranoid and it's easy for people with lazy tendencies like me to dismiss extreme scenarios and shut our eyes to anything that seems a bit of an inconvenience. You see, this is not that different from all those people who simply refuse to learn the ropes of i2. I am laughing at my own hypocrisy because I am doing the very same thing with linux as people generally do with i2.

However I do know that it's not really as over-the-top as it might sound. After all, we definitely know that something of this sort happened when the Chinese government paid hackers to control the gmail accounts of political activists last year. It was probably made easier by 123, abcd like dictionary passwords or worse shared passwords. It does pay to be safe than sorry.

As for switching distros, my motive was to give R the maximum resources it possibly could get without system resources hogging RAM or CPU power - hence the preference for a lean system. As you noticed, I am not a very good code writer and improving my code skills could be a time-consuming alternative. I instead opted to throw bigger hardware at my poor code-writing. Searching for "easier" ways to make this bigger hardware be at least 95% available to R was what I was trying to do.

Anyway, you make very valid points and I have been running my models on Fedora Gnome and it's not been going as disastrously as I imagined apart from an occasional freeze up or two...

And as a funny endnote, all this tinkering with linux (maybe for all the wrong reasons) is making me more dissatisfied with Win XP everyday. lol

paul writes at 07:10:27 03/07/11 - Comment #61076: I am not sure why you are using linux anymore? It sounds like you are spending more time installing OSes than you would waiting for your windows computer even in its slowness. Besides your new laptop should be faster. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you just want a machine that executes R fast and for which R is easy to install, then fedora seems like a good match. Why the constant OS re-installation?

As for those passwords they have nothing to do with people stealing your computer physically. Without them your computer is totally vulnerable from being owned over the net.

The whole reason XP was so insecure was because it did not ask you for any passwords to do administrative tasks like install software and start and stop services. Thus when you ran as an admin, which you were, and you visited a website that had malware, which you could - it would simply auto install in the background and you would be owned. Your computer could seem normal but in reality it could just be waiting for commands from the master.

Even if you don't care about your own data safety, which you should - you should care about contributing to the terrorists, mafia, foreign hostile governments, etc which all use these methods to exploit your computer and others into giant zombie super computers that they can use to reak havok on the world at large.

Imagine if no one cares, and if the OSes are not more secure than it becomes pretty easy to create a zombie infrastucture which could attack our own systems like the electric grid, nuclear power, etc. If you don't secure your computer than you should not network it at all.

Every OS requires passwords to do administrative tasks at this point. Either that or the system is horribly gimped and tied to some commerical account that you install software through, e.g. iOS, or tied to your google account android.

I mean how hard is it for you to type in a password? It you are incapable of remembering it you could switch to a system with a smartcard reader or a fingerprint scanner. Plenty of laptops come with those now anyways. If you really hate having a password you can remove it as root. Login as root with su. Then type passwd -d -f USERNAME, replacing USERNAME with the user you want to remove the password for.

tinypliny writes at 06:14:45 03/07/11 - Comment #61073: I will try the uid solution and see if that message goes away in one of my other laptops (which is running peppermint Ice now). I might change that laptop to linux mint...

tinypliny writes at 06:13:40 03/07/11 - Comment #61072: Thanks. :) I have put in Fedora Gnome now and I am completely hating all the passwords and logins its asking every single time. Autologin is a nightmare to set up. I really could not care less if my current laptop has ANY security whatsoever. Chances are it will never leave home anyway...

uncutsaniflush writes at 04:21:11 03/07/11 - Comment #61067: And, oh yeah, by the way, (e:tinypliny) did you have an existing persistent /home partition before you did whatever it is that you did? If you went from something vaguely Debian (aka Ubuntu) to something vaguely Redhat (aka Fedora) and kept the persistent /home partition, you could have uid(user id)problems because of different uid numbering conventions. /home/tinypliny could have an uid of 500 in Fedora and 1000 in Ubuntu. If you have that problem, you should change the uid to the right number in something like /etc/passwd (or yr distro's equivalent).

uncutsaniflush writes at 04:04:10 03/07/11 - Comment #61066: (e:tinypliny) - actually what I think you are experiencing are the joys of Windows. My assumption is that if Windows (or/and osX) did what you wanted, you wouldn't be mucking about with linux.

I concur with (e:paul). You might want to examine why you want a stripped down minimal system and decide if the extra hassle is worth it. If you want to use Fedora (or even Ubuntu (assuming no hardware issues), his advice is good. Remember you can always install openbox later and use it. Modern distros support multiple windows managers and desktop shells.

paul writes at 11:30:43 03/06/11 - Comment #61064: This month:
Windows - 73.05%
Mac - 14.27%
Android - 4.19%
IPhone - 2.45%
Linux - 2.31%

paul writes at 11:14:47 03/06/11 - Comment #61063: I would suggest not using the ldxe spin. Not because there is anything wrong with it but because, based on the hardware you purchased there is no need to par down.
Instead I would just run the default fedora gnome desktop that installs off the live CD. Becuae many more people run this default install it will be much easier to find support than it you run a non mainstream desktop manager. Looking at this report from os news :::link::: you are not having any if the same limitations these systems are designed for. The amount of memory you ate saving is meaningless on an 8gb of ram system? Is disk space even am issue anymore? I would say it's not worth the risk of having things be more complicated. Nothing is going to steel major CPU either. Just don't tun a milling things along with your heavy r processing. Your new computer can handle it. Don't be scared to utilize it.

tinypliny writes at 10:35:29 03/06/11 - Comment #61062: BTW, do user OSes turn up in your statistics for the site? Whatpercentagel of (e:peeps) actually run linux?

tinypliny writes at 10:33:48 03/06/11 - Comment #61061: Downloading fedora-lxde spin now... It might be nice if I didn't have to wrestle with things for a change. :)

paul writes at 08:41:44 03/06/11 - Comment #61060: If you install fedora from the live CD instead of the DVD it will have way less stuff by default.

paul writes at 07:28:08 03/06/11 - Comment #61059: Fedora boots for me so fast. It also runs openbox if you need it. That being said, I think you may be complicating things by trying to be so minimal.

If you go super stripped down, then you will always need to install stuff everytime you need anything. And that can be great if you know what you are doing but its not a big advantage otherwise. Like the problem you had when trying to compile the other day but you did not have the dev library stuff you needed.

What are you goals. A fast box that runs a browser but can also run R code natively? If thats the case , I would just go gnome desktop on fedora and install R with "sudo yum install R" Then install chrome from the google site.

The trickiest part with Fedora is going to be installing flash or proprietary third party video drivers as it only comes with open source software. That being said, flash is relatively easy now and the latest fedora include open source video drivers that will be good for anything you need minus say, 3D gaming and animation.

tinypliny writes at 07:03:25 03/06/11 - Comment #61058: With no applications when installed and everything left to the user to decide, maybe?

tinypliny writes at 07:02:20 03/06/11 - Comment #61057: For instance do you know of a reliable Fedora distro running openbox?

tinypliny writes at 06:59:00 03/06/11 - Comment #61056: :-) What is the smallest slimmest Fedora you know of?

paul writes at 05:31:21 03/06/11 - Comment #61055: Seems like something belongs to a uid (user _id ) that does not match what you have in the user db on your system. I have never seen this in fedora, just saying.

Permalink: Glib_Warning.html
Words: 49
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 03/06/11 04:29

Category: linux

03/02/11 06:08 - ID#53756

This tarball about to BLOW

Seriously, this is what I feel like when do anything on Linux. Not only do I have no idea about how to deal with most problems, I also feel as if I am always trapped in a hung window somewhere in OS hell. There is always something waiting just around the twisted little linuxy jagged corner to vex me.

Today I almost learnt how to compile a tarball. The keyword here is *almost*. And yes. A tarball. To add injury to insult, I was constantly reminded with obsessive checks by the terminal on Linux that I needed a sane environment to build these "tarballs".
Only, a zillion errors and a gazillion "lib-that-or-lib-this" missing messages later, I gave up.

And I am not going to have the time to go to yoga today. Enough grounds to conclude that I obviously don't have a sane environment anymore. I might as well have K-dollar-sign-HA! tattooed in comic sans on my forehead.

Permalink: This_tarball_about_to_BLOW.html
Words: 160
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 03/03/11 03:17

Category: buffalo

02/26/11 12:14 - ID#53733

Illegal plowing authorized by Church of Ascension?

Walking back home yesterday, I was beyond appalled to see an oversized red truck with a massive plow driving illegally all over the sidewalk and grass outside the Church of Ascension, on the corner of North Street and Linwood Avenue. The driver didn't just stop at the snow. He took a good chunk of the grass, dirt and pavement along with the snow and then, flouting all sense of common decency, tossed all that snow and dirt all over Linwood Avenue, over the driveway of (e:pmt)'s house on 24 Linwood and heaped the rest on the sidewalk in front of the LinNor Apartment building across the street.

Is this kind of plowing authorized by the Church of Ascension? I find it despicable that a church, whose main goals are to serve the community cares so little about its neighbours that it goes out of its way by hiring or authorizing obnoxious illegal plows to make life more miserable for them.

I was also extremely shocked to see this church-hired plow truck driver almost run over (e:Matthew) who told me later that he had stepped out to express his concern over this plow outrage. When (e:Matthew) asked if the church-hired plow truck had a city license to drive and plow all over the sidewalk and generally be a menace to the neighbourhood, the driver did not respond well and drove off in a huff, heaping even more snow over the lawn of 24 Linwood. (e:Matthew) was left to clean up the tons of snow he had just shoveled before the plow truck destroyed all his efforts.

Agreed that it is a church and churches do serve a religious purpose, but this definitely does not give them a blanket approval to do whatever they wish, break the laws and overstep common courtesies to their neighbours. At the very least, I hope city hall takes a stern view of this very objectionable, disruptive and quite possibly, illegal snow plowing authorized or encouraged by the Church of Ascension, issues a warning for future violations and fines the church authorities.

Permalink: Illegal_plowing_authorized_by_Church_of_Ascension_.html
Words: 351
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/26/11 05:40

Category: e:strip

02/25/11 11:15 - ID#53729

Droid y Yoga Gang!

Who's next!!?? (e:enknot)? :-)

PS: I wish these droids actually had smiles... I was chuckling all through class, the poses were so extreme and I was discovering all kinds of hilarious asymmetry in my body. I think everyone else was smiling and laughing at some point as well...

Permalink: Droid_y_Yoga_Gang_.html
Words: 52
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/25/11 11:39

Category: e:strip

02/25/11 09:58 - ID#53727

DroidyKeith

Tallest yogi EVAH!

PS: Too bad they don't have piercings or earrings! Cramping my style here...

Permalink: DroidyKeith.html
Words: 18
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/25/11 10:00

Category: e:strip

02/25/11 11:33 - ID#53722

DroidyPaul

Okay, seems I have caught the mattandroidify virus as well! Modeling DroidyPaul on (e:paul,52884)...

Permalink: DroidyPaul.html
Words: 17
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/25/11 11:33

Category: linux

02/25/11 08:39 - ID#53717

Keyboard shortcut for lxterminal

Just wanted to let everyone know that the keyboard shortcut for bringing up lxterminal or the command-line window under lubuntu is: F10 or Ctrl+Alt+T

Couldn't this document describing the lxterminal have included this tiny bit of information about keyboard shortcuts:

No, because you see, linux geeks need to do it the hard way and hope to build everyone else's character in the process. But I am all overbuilt on character so I really can't agree with their dodgy logic at all. As a result, I am going to be posting every single thing that I learn about linux here for everyone to see - IN PLAIN VIEW and eminently google-able.

Now, the next step is to change this shortcut and assign shortcuts to everything else. I need to figure out what this discussion is saying:

Oh, and keyboard shortcuts are called "Keybindings" to make it tougher for you to google them.

Permalink: Keyboard_shortcut_for_lxterminal.html
Words: 169
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/25/11 08:53

Category: dance

02/24/11 07:37 - ID#53704

The secret yoga dictionary

Fewer words strike more terror into the hearts of aspiring yogis than when the teacher casually tosses out the term "yogi's choice". What it essentially means is that you could choose to stay on in a wimpy form of the pose while the rest of the class and the teacher go into the more exotic variation - that just might have given you an infinitely more effective muscle stretch had you been able to do it. The harder you try and reach that variation, the more likely you are to wobble out of balance and end up with no pose at all. At which point you "honour your practice", which is actually just code for accepting that you totally missed the yoga elixir that was dangled before you minutes back.

Yoga totally whipped all of our hands and hearts yesterday... well, all EXCEPT (e:Paul) who was probably born with a strong dose of yogi's-choice-power-goo in his silver-yogi-spoon. I meant to complete this entry after class but I was so washed out after practice that I fell asleep at my "desk" and pretty much crawled into bed 3 metres away.

(e:Paul), on the other hand has been logged in the entire time and quite possibly coding in a frenzy. That's what happens when you outshine the entire class in just about every outlandish balance-act yoga-pose that is thrown your way. And there were tons that I can't even find the names for.

For instance, the L-pose at the wall above with a "yogi's choice" extreme T-variation where you raise one of your legs up in the air till it's perfectly perpendicular to your other leg and parallel to your arms. While the rest of the class wobbled with asymmetry across the studio, (e:Paul) literally flew through several of the poses AND he did the T-variation on both sides.

Wait. There is more. Later after class, while I bemoaned the lack of moonwalk fluidity, he totally denied knowing how to moonwalk WHILE his legs were moonwalking the hell out of the yoga studio floor. If all this doesn't silently scream "Clark Kent!!" to you... well, then it's time to go and see the movies or you could come to yoga. ~~Your~~ Yogi's choice.

Permalink: The_secret_yoga_dictionary.html
Words: 375
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 03/05/11 05:08

Category: linux

02/23/11 12:28 - ID#53694

Wacom linux frustrations...

I don't use a mouse at home because I have borderline RSI. Instead, I have a Wacom Bamboo tablet and stylus that I use for all kinds of input from simple pointing-and-clicking to drawing and painting on pressure-sensitive applications such as mypaint. A major frustration has been to make it work with any and all flavours of linux. Fedora has treated me no better than the *buntus.

I have a simple question. How can I assign functions to the two buttons on the stylus? I currently use one button as a right-click and the other one as a "grab and scroll" middle-click button. Is it SO tough to figure this out in linux? Apparently, it is. This supposedly authoritative "manual" for the wacom linux driver

does not help me at all because it's so dense and jargon ridden. And no one in ubuntu forums answers these sort of questions:

I am so frustrated. The linux community is nothing better than a mass of self-centred mirror-image RTFM-chanting zealots who have zero empathy or patience for anyone other than themselves and their ad nauseum omg-M$-is-so-evil-and-you-are-so-dumb-for-using-it agendas.

I am going to try this piece of code from this forum

this evening. I wish I understood what it's doing!

!/bin/bash
If you set XSW in your environment it will override the
script's default of /usr/bin/xsetwacom.
If you set PAD and/or STYLUS then those override the script's
defaults of 'Wacom Bamboo pad' and 'Wacom Bamboo' which are
known correct for Ubuntu 9.04
[ Do not change this bit: ]

test "x$XSW" = "x" && XSW=/usr/bin/xsetwacom
test -x $XSW || { echo "Cannot find xsetwacom in /usr/bin"; exit 1; }

test "x$PAD" = "x" && PAD="Wacom BambooFun 4x5 pad"
test "x$STYLUS" = "x" && STYLUS="Wacom BambooFun 4x5"

pad () {
$XSW set "$PAD" "$@"
}

stylus () {
$XSW set "$STYLUS" "$@"
}

[ Configurability from here down.]
Define the Bamboo buttons
pad AbsWDn "CORE KEY - "        # circle zoom in
pad AbsWUp "CORE KEY + "        # circle zoom out
pad Stripldn "CORE KEY - "        # strip in
pad Striplup "CORE KEY + "        # strip zoom out
pad Button1 "CORE KEY CTRL /z"        # key 1 () fill frame
pad Button4 "CORE KEY SHIFT"        # key 4 (FN2) SHIFT

stylus TPCButton "off"            # side switch mode
stylus mode "Absolute"            # positioning mode
stylus Button1 "Button 1"        # pentip click left
stylus Button2 "CORE KEY /x"        # Lower side switch click right
stylus Button3 "Button 3"        # Upper side switch click middle

tinypliny writes at 07:40:26 02/24/11 - Comment #60890: You make an excellent point. Corporate conspiracy, code monopoly and microsoft are all the same entry in most respected dictionaries. :/

uncutsaniflush writes at 08:03:35 02/23/11 - Comment #60884: Oops, apparently, there is a Wacom employee involved in the linuxwacom project. My bad. It is unclear if he is volunteering his time or being paid by the company to maintain the project. But the faq state that the open source community, not Wacom, is responsible for the project.

My point was and is that if Wacom really wanted to have good Linux driver support, there would be good Linux driver support. The Windows and osX drivers didn't magically write themselves with the help of the Windows and osX communities with a Wacom employee babysitting the project.

Good luck.

uncutsaniflush writes at 07:54:31 02/23/11 - Comment #60883: (e:tinypliny) - your rants are entertaining even when they are directed at the Linux community (of which I am a member). I agree that the RTFM people are annoying. And I don't blame you for being angry at them and frustrated by the lack of decent linux drivers for your tablet.

But I think your anger is misdirected. You seem to have forgotten one very important fact -- Wacom does not want you to use your tablet in Linux. If they did, you wouldn't need the linux community to reverse engineer drivers for you to use.

Why do drivers for Windows and osX exist for the Bamboo tablet? The answer is a simple one. - Wacom paid people to write them. If there aren't any good linux drivers for your tablet, it's Wacom's, or it's corporate overlords, fault. It's as simple as that.

Members of the linux community have volunteered their time to do something that Wacom has refused to do. Apparently, some of them are doing it without style, grace and human decency. Not to excuse their behaviour, but what else would you expect from a bunch self-centered geeks lacking social skills?

Bon Chance!

Permalink: Wacom_linux_frustrations_.html
Words: 413
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/23/11 12:36

Category: linux

02/23/11 04:23 - ID#53691

Linux: Clear as Mud.

So I tried to configure the xorg (wth?) wacom drivers using a text editor called gedit (wth?). When I opened it this bit of gibberish was waiting for me:

WALTOP needs a patched kernel driver, that isn't in mainline lk yet, so for now just let it fall through and be picked up by evdev instead.

Seriously? Am I supposed to nod in agreement or throw rocks at the screen?

This is why regular folks might not really want to go anywhere near any kind of linux. I have seen linux distributions with holier-that-thou taglines such as "software for humans". Does their definition of "humans" comes from a dictionary buried under Martian craters?!

Permalink: Linux_Clear_as_Mud_.html
Words: 115
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/23/11 04:50