The officially official Devuan Forum!

You are not logged in.

#1 Devuan » Aggregate of Various Lightweight Alternatives to Common Software » 2017-10-24 18:16:06

Adhil
Replies: 2

I'm creating this thread to discuss the viability of alternatives to certain ambitious (i.e., bloated) software projects with  broad, encroaching feature creep. This is above and beyond the obvious example which brought most of us here (i.e., systemd). I've been hunting for various replacements to inefficient, unresponsive, and vulnerable software. I will attempt to explain rationale for each as I write this list. Anyone who has similar goals can feel free to post their additions for the mutual benefit of the open source community. I will try to continually improve the collection here.

1) [COMPLETED ALREADY] Replacing udev with eudev: https://github.com/gentoo/eudev

*SELF CENSORSHIP EDIT*
Kudos to fsmithred for his intructions for eudev installation here: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=1543

2) Replacing gksu/gksudo with gtksu: https://github.com/KeithDHedger/GtkSu

gksu had a hard dependency on gnome-keyring which I despise. I don't enjoy the prospect of storing my passwords, albeit encrypted, anywhere other than my head. The only exception is when absolutely necessary (i.e., when creating accounts for websites, passwords must be on their servers for your account; etc.) I am a firm believer that the more areas you store passwords, the greater the potential for vulnerabilities to manifest. No man can predict every facet of their softwares' behaviors; nothing in life is perfect. Trust nothing. Minimize potential for exploitation. Don't be caught with your pants down.

3) Replacing Wicd & NetworkManager with dhcpd-ui (i.e., gtk/qt), connman, wpa_gui (qt5), or ceni: https://roy.marples.name/projects/dhcpcd-ui

This is a matter of both preference and functionality , but in my experience, I've found Wicd slow to connect, unresponsive, and reminiscent of synaptic's behavior (i.e., onerous hostage negotiations when loading a textual list of packages). Network Manager ships with features I'll never desire in addition to being the most unreliable network manager I've had the displeasure of using. Suspend oft leaves Network Manager scrambling to reconnect in a endless cycle of perpetuity especially on newer kernels for my Intel Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300.

4) Replace ntp reference implementation with Openntpd: https://github.com/openntpd-portable/openntpd-portable

Insecure, unaudited, and probably unauditable; ntp is ancient, bloated, and never meant for user systems. It was designed for developers to study and implement. Now there are several choices for an NTP daemon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntpd#Implementations If connman is decided upon above, it has an ntp daemon built in ergo making this unnecessary. I like options though.

I've been busy practicing compilations on Salix 14.2, antiX, and Fatdog64. I've tried my hand at compiling a few of these on antiX 17, but I haven't delved into testing each or packaging into .deb or .t?z. Right now, I am working towards better compilation practices and experience in packaging software from the source. Eventually, I may find the time to compile and configure more software and share it.
P.S. Find the closest black hole and cast Pulseaudio into the abyss.

#2 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Issues with Laptop Lid Suspend/Hibernate and Panel Plugins » 2017-07-12 16:11:00

I'll be gone for the next week, but I shall return and reinvigorate this dying thread. By July 24th, you'll hear from me again, hopefully with a report of success. I will not allow this thread to be left abandoned.

#3 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Issues with Laptop Lid Suspend/Hibernate and Panel Plugins » 2017-07-02 17:12:27

Is it a fix if I've changed the lid.sh script as ralph suggested, rebooted, attempted restarting acpi daemons, and still to no avail? I don't mean this in a snide way either, I'm just stating I've tried the code ralph ronnquist volunteered to provide to no effect. I forgot to mention in the initial post that suspend works when run from the terminal, but not using the pm-suspend command. I do have pm-utils installed (by default during Devuan's installation); however, pm-suspend does not work unless you are the root user as per my terminal:

InsertUsernameHere@HostMachine:~$ /usr/sbin/pm-suspend
This utility may only be run by the root user.

Only typing suspend or clicking Log Out and manually selecting Suspend works, and intermittently at that! As I write this now, typing suspend just hangs in the terminal. Logging into a root terminal, I found pm-suspend command to work flawlessly regardless. This has me stymied.

Perhaps adding pm-suspend to my sudoers.d file and prefixing the command with sudo might work? My other thought was with changing lm_lid from this:

event=button/lid.*
action=/etc/acpi/lid.sh

To this:

event=button[ /]lid.*
action=/etc/acpi/lid.sh

Anyone who can help to solve this will be greatly lauded by the community, especially me. I'm going to keep working on this when I have time; until then, I encourage others to post their suggestions and potential solutions for the community.

P.S. Thanks for weighing in Green Jeans, its nice to know others are experiencing the same frustrations; the more prominent an issue this becomes, the greater attention that will be garnered from developers like you, thank you!

#4 Hardware & System Configuration » Issues with Laptop Lid Suspend/Hibernate and Panel Plugins » 2017-06-30 21:09:03

Adhil
Replies: 18

I've been a tester of Devuan since the first beta release, and while most issues I've encountered have been resolved, there always remains work to be done. Allow me to shed some light on and draw attention towards ACPI event handling.

First, let me preface this with stating the obvious. My download of Devuan matched both the signature and the checksum provided. I installed using a flash drive with default install options.
I wrote the ISO file to my flash drive using:

dd if=ISOIMAGE of=DeviceName

.

My hardware is as follows:

System:
           Kernel: 3.16.0-4-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) 
           Desktop: N/A Distro: Devuan GNU/Linux 1 

Machine:
           System: Dell product: Latitude D630
           Mobo: Dell model: 0KU184 Bios: Dell v: A15 date: 11/24/2008

CPU:
           Dual core Intel Core2 Duo T9300 (-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 800 MHz 2: 1600 MHz

Graphics:  
           Card: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary)
           Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1440x900@59.90hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 965GM GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 10.3.2

Audio:
           Card Intel 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller 
           driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k3.16.0-4-amd64

Network:
           Card-1: Intel Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 driver: iwlwifi
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: ##:##:##:##:##:##
           Card-2: Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express
           driver: tg3
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: ##:##:##:##:##:##

Everything went without a hitch during installation. Once I booted into my new Devuan Jessie install, I proceeded to configure the panel.

  • The Xfce Power Manager Plugin for the Panel does not display the battery icon properly and is frozen, displaying a static image of a power plug (the one usually only displayed when charging).

  • ALSA or the Audio Mixer plugin will function with the Mute Button on my Laptop; however, only the Master channel works as expected while the Speaker channel will only mute but never unmutes. I must meticulously open ALSA Mixer and manually unmute the Speaker channel in order to restore audio functionality to my Laptop.

  • Now, for the pinnacle of dysfunction, my Laptop Lid Debacle. I attempted configuring Xfce Power Manager, as I have done hundreds/thousands of times before, to Suspend my Laptop when the Lid is closed (irrespective of charging status). Closing the lid had no effect other than to turn my screen off. Opening my laptop turned the screen on. The problem isn't that the Lid Button ACPI event wasn't registering but, rather, that the event wasn't triggering suspend as it was configured in Xfce Power Manager.

~$ acpi_listen
button/lid LID close
button/lid LID open

The aforementioned code snippet proves that my Laptop Lid is capable of registering to my system, so I delved deeper and found some ACPI events from various contributors on obscure support forums which could function in /etc/acpi/events/ for the purpose I intend (and perhaps others as well). I followed all recommended permissions attributes on all of these files foremost.

This was saved as lm_lid in /etc/acpi/events/

event=button/lid.*
action=/etc/acpi/lid.sh

This shell script was the counterpart to lm_lid and was saved as lid.sh in /etc/acpi/

#!/bin/sh

grep -q closed /proc/acpi/button/lid/*/state
if [ $? = 0 ]
then
    /etc/acpi/Laptop/lidman-trigger;
else
    /etc/acpi/Laptop/lidman-trigger;
fi

I saved the following in /etc/sudoers.d/Lidpermit using visudo -f

InsertUsernameHere ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:/etc/acpi/Laptop/export_x_info

This was saved as export_x_info in /etc/acpi/Laptop/ and added to Xfce Session and Startup.

# Export the dbus session address on startup so it can be used by any other environment
sleep 5
env | grep DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS >> /home/clokedfigure/.Laptop/lidman
echo 'export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS' >> /home/clokedfigure/.Laptop/lidman
# Export XAUTHORITY value on startup so it can be used by cron
env | grep XAUTHORITY >> /home/clokedfigure/.Laptop/lidman
echo 'export XAUTHORITY' >> /home/clokedfigure/.Laptop/lidman

lidman was saved in /home/InsertUsernameHere/.Laptop/ & since it is generated by export_x_info, I suspect therein lies the dilemma. The DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS is most notably missing, yet when I manually enter the command as root, the expected DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS makes an appearance in Lidman.

  
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
XAUTHORITY=/home/clokedfigure/.Xauthority
export XAUTHORITY

And finally the insignificant lidman-trigger saved in /home/InsertUsernameHere/.Laptop/

source /home/clokedfigure/.Laptop/lidman

If anyone can inform me of the best approach to resolving this sooner, I'd very much appreciate your efforts. I've shown most of what I could glean from a day's worth of research, trial, and error; please throw some compassion my way. Thank you!

Board footer

Forum Software