I forgot to mention that I use LXDM as the login manager. I have tried some of the others but prefer this one. It has the advantage over at least one of the alternatives that you can shutdown or reboot from LXDM, which came in useful when I was having some difficulty shutting down when logged in (now sorted).
It is also clear how you select alternative desktops as it has a box at the bottom to choose from.

Geoff

When I look in syslog I can see where it tries to start :-

grep have syslog
Mar 16 20:12:02 beowulf kernel: [    8.642908] audit: type=1400 audit(1552767120.069:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" profile="unconfined" name="/usr/sbin/haveged" pid=1517 comm="apparmor_parser"
Mar 16 20:12:02 beowulf haveged: haveged starting up

But it is not running, according to ps.

Geoff

I wonder whether you mean using autofs. This way you can define the things you want mounted, but they are only actually mounted when you look at them.

Install autofs and then configure the auto.* files in /etc.

If I have a file server on my lan called sodium offering music then my auto.master might contain :-

/LAN    /etc/auto.lan  --ghost

the ghost flag is so that you can see the mount point all the time.

/etc/auto.lan might contain :-

music		-fstype=nfs,nolock	sodium:/volume1/music
# music		-fstype=cifs,user,uid=user1,gid=users,rw,suid,credentials=/etc/cifsmypwd	://sodium/music

I used to mount it via cifs but now I use nfs, so have commented out the cifs info.
My machine now only mounts /LAN/music if I go looking for it and unmounts it after a period of not using it.

Geoff

Its a bit <tl;dr> and I was rather lazily hoping that someone would post the executive summary for us! I did try and work my way through it, but failed.

Geoff

I do not have a .Xresources file but it just works for me. I am using rxvt-unicode-256color under LXDE and LXQt and normally use left mouse for select and middle mouse click for paste, although I have just tested that right mouse also works for extending the selected area. Having read the above post, I checked that <ctl><alt>c and <ctl><alt>v do also work as described.

Geoff

Thank you, I, too, now have it working.

My guess would be that pkexec/policykit is complaining about having a path in $TERM.

I opened the LXQt Configuration Centre and from there opened the Session Settings and in the Default Applications I set the Terminal Emulation to rxvt-unicode-256color (previously it was /usr/bin/rxvt). Then after I had logged out and back in, I was able to run Synaptic and Gparted from the menu. I then removed policykit-1-gnome and after logging out and in, it still all works.

As you say I have lxqt-policykit installed and ps reports that /usr/bin/lxqt-policykit-agent is running.

Geoff

Other USB devices

Having got a memory stick working I tried a portable DVD drive

usbip port
Imported USB devices
====================
Port 00: <Port in Use> at High Speed(480Mbps)
       LaCie, Ltd : unknown product (059f:0643)
       1-1 -> usbip://192.168.42.9:3240/1-2
           -> remote bus/dev 001/005

This worked and I was able to play an audio CD through VLC, once I had added myself to the group "cdrom". "eject" also worked.

Later I tried to put a video DVD in... Unfortunately this hung Dom0!

The DVD was mounted in Dom0 and then an info request came from DomU and then an attach request. This attachment seemed to complete and then there was a "general protection fault: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI" followed by a traceback from usbip-host on Dom0 and then the kernel went into a loop of tracebacks. Time to hit the power switch...

I spotted a USB bluetooth dongle for £1 in a charity shop, so I bought it. My Dom0 machine hasn't got bluetooth installed, but I attached it through to the Beowulf DomU and bluetoothctl show returns some plauseable looking data. I have yet to work out how to get it to actually do anything useful, despite having read man bluetoothctl!

bluetoothctl
Agent registered
[bluetooth]# help

is more informative, but bluetoothctl seems to have to be run as root to actually report anything.

[bluetooth]# discoverable on
Failed to set discoverable on: org.bluez.Error.Failed

The Bluetooth dongle could be seen, but I was not sure what to do with it. Connman was also able to see the dongle.

The next thing I tried was an external USB disk drive, a Samsung M3 Portable, which is USB 3 and, I recall 2TB. Unfortunately this did not work. I seemed that it was possible to connect it through to DomU but then it disconnects with the error :-

[ 5286.237272] usb usb2-port1: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?

USBIP seems to work in the general case, but some more extreme uses cause it problems. I think that it was problems with USBIP rather than Xen.

Geoff

Although I use LXQt much of the time, it does mean that I have found lxqt-sudo. A quick check suggests that you could install it without pulling in too much else. I have been using this in Beowulf as a replacement for gksu.

Geoff

USB

The next thing I wanted to try was using USB devices in DomU.

The Xen's documentation on USB PassThrough
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_USB_Passthrough
seems to hint that it doesn't work and if you are not able to use PCI PassThrough to give an entire USB hub to DomU then you could use client/server software to pass the USB control over the network connection, mentioning USBIP. I was unable to get the Xen USB PassThrough to work.

Some of the USBIP documentation seems to be a bit out of date.
https://sourceforge.net/p/usbip/git-win … ace/README

man usbip
usbip help

but with a bit of trial and error it works quite well. It is not restricted to Xen or VMs and should work between real machines as well.

On Dom0 (the host) install usbip:-

apt-get install usbip

modprobe usbip-core
modprobe usbip-host
usbipd -D
usbip list -l
 - busid 2-1 (046d:c52b)
   Logitech, Inc. : Unifying Receiver (046d:c52b)

 - busid 2-2 (0781:5151)
   SanDisk Corp. : Cruzer Micro Flash Drive (0781:5151)

usbip bind --busid 2-2
usbip: info: bind device on busid 2-2: complete

then on beowulf (DomU - the client) install usbip

apt-get install usbip

modprobe usbip-core
modprobe vhci_hcd

this only seems to work with the numeric address of the server

usbip list -r 192.168.42.9
Exportable USB devices
======================
 - 192.168.42.9
        2-2: SanDisk Corp. : Cruzer Micro Flash Drive (0781:5151)
           : /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-2
           : (Defined at Interface level) (00/00/00)

usbip attach -r 192.168.42.9 -b 2-2

I was then asked for authentication as Spacefm popped up. There was some confusion with one window complaining about another authentication in progress. I think this is a conflict between gvfs and Spacefm both trying to mount the device, with gvfs winning. I dismissed that one and authenticated as me and Spacefm had the usb memory stick mounted via gvfsd-fuse plus the 2 partitions displayed. I could unmount the gvfs in Spacefm and then unmount sda1 and sda2 (my 'real' disk is xvda2)

usbip port
Imported USB devices
====================
Port 00: <Port in Use> at High Speed(480Mbps)
       SanDisk Corp. : Cruzer Micro Flash Drive (0781:5151)
       1-1 -> usbip://192.168.42.9:3240/2-2
           -> remote bus/dev 002/005

usbip detach -p 0
usbip: info: Port 0 is now detached!

I have now removed gvfs and installed udevil. There is now no conflict over authentication. I can now mount and unmount the partitions at will in Spacefm.

Using usbip attach and detach seems to be like plugging and unplugging the memory stick.

usbip attach -r 192.168.42.9 -b 2-2
lsusb
Bus 016 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 015 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 014 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 013 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 012 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 011 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 009 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 010 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0781:5151 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Micro Flash Drive
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

usbip detach -p 0
usbip: info: Port 0 is now detached!

Back on Dom0 (the server) :-

usbip unbind -b 2-2
usbip: info: unbind device on busid 2-2: complete

and the device is again available on Dom0.

I have only tested this with a memory stick so far, but will try some other devices.

Geoff

Thank you for those commands. All of my Policy kit stuff is from testing.

Looking at where all the packages come from, with fsmithred's command, nearly all are from testing, with just a few being labelled "now".  If I grep for not testing then I find :-

aptitude search ~i -F"%p# %v# %t#"|grep -v testing
clearlooks-phenix-darkpurpy-theme 7.0.2-1+devuan2.0 now
darkpurpy-icon-theme 1.0 now
desktop-base 1:2.0.3 now
devuan-baseconf 0.6.4+devuan2.3 now
gnome-icon-theme-extras 3.12.0-1 now
libupower-glib1 1:0.9.23-2+devuan1.3 now
upower 1:0.9.23-2+devuan1.3 now

These must have been pulled in from ASCII when I was installing the earlier policykit stuff.

I believe that Golinux is working on the theme for Beowulf.

There is a newer version of upower in testing but the version number is 0.99.9-3 and there is no matching version of the library. I recall that there was a problem as to which version number would be taken as higher if there is a "1:" in front.

Geoff

Another entry in daemon.log is for haveged. From /etc/init.d/haveged the description is :-

haveged uses HAVEGE (HArdware Volatile Entropy Gathering and Expansion)
 to maintain a pool of random bytes used to fill /dev/random whenever necessary.

This daemon appears to start but I cannot see it running and there are no error messages.

/etc/init.d/haveged status
[FAIL] haveged is not running ... failed!

Geoff

Yes, that sounds like it. I would also understand from the link you give that the eudev people will be fixing the problem.

Geoff