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In the real world, unfortunately, "should be" and "is" are rarely the same thing. When I installed network-manager-gnome, I got the panel app in the menu, but no systray widget. Even after rebooting. But, as already described, when I rebooted into XFCE from testing KDE Trinity, the Trinity widget popped up in my systray. Still fussing with Trinity. It's interesting precisely because it is so blatantly "old school". Sort of like Windows XP for Linux.
Ron wrote:Why would these apps depend on libpulse0 especially since a lot of people on Linux don't use Pulseaudio?
The only people who don't use Pulseaudio these days are hair-shirt minimalists, all the desktop environments have PA as a dependency because it provides a convenient high-level interface for controlling how multiple sources are connected to sinks.
For example, almost all new laptops have HDMI outputs and if pure ALSA is used then it is necessary to configure it to make the inbuilt speakers work, most non-technical users don't know how to do that and so need PA to do it for them.
I would have thought, with all the resentment there was for it even before the same author embarked on the systemd dumpster fire crusade, that it would have been avoided with the same loathing. That's why my initial post. Why would that be in a distro specifically created to get around mini-Bill and his work? Has it really become stable and reliable? It never was in the past. Did some other authors take over and essentially rewrite it?
Installing the network-manager-gnome package gives me a panel app in the system menu, but not a systray app. But... I went ahead and installed Trinity Desktop and tried it out. That deserves its own thread. When I restarted into XFCE again, the Trinity systray nm app popped up. So now I have a triple-hybrid monstrosity desktop. Maybe I could remove network-manager-gnome and the Trinity panel app would appear?
Well, I was using Mint 17.3 (Rosa) also, but it was the XFCE edition, and that is the default in Devuan anyway. I like XFCE, it's been my default Linux desktop for some time. I do have to admit that I was often borrowing things from Gnome to finish out my XFCE environment, at least until Gnome began to require systemd. Even used Nautilus as a file manager when Thunnar was too raw and undeveloped. I guess I should have tried Mate and Cinnamon. Maybe the accessories like the network manager widget are more complete in those.
After installing the network-manager package I have not found any graphical network management utilities of any sort. Not in the menus, and not in the list of available objects when adding things to the XFCE toolbar. Where would I look?
Well, both. I want to find a widget for the systray like I have had on both Windows and every other Debian distro I've ever used. And I want to find the settings, either the text files (if necessary) or a more comprehensive graphical interface. If the widget can be clicked, that's fine. If it's on a menu, that's fine also.
I thought wicd was for Wifi only, but I've also been struggling with a laptop and when I set wicd up, it does watch both the cable connection and the wifi. And it puts a widget on the task bar! At last resort, I may just use wicd even on my desktop systems. I don't plan to put wifi on them, but oh well... it manages direct cable connections, too.
There is an entry for networkmanager in the man pages, but it's about NetworkManager, the command line program. What happened to the graphical front-end that is still available in Debian? It's very tedious to have to hunt down a bunch of text files to make minor adjustments to your network.
Not sure what happened, but after fiddling with /etc/network/interfaces a couple times I got network access and used it to install NetworkManager. Then commented out the unnecessary fields in interfaces. Now, I seem to have working dependable network access and no strange delays on boot. Yay!
Question -- where do you find the controls/config for NetworkManager? It doesn't have any entries in the System or Settings menus.
It works for you, but I don't see it working for me. Which is strange. It does work when I manually run the script. But GKrellM doesn't seem to be able to run it. Apparently that indicates a permissions problem? I wonder what I would check for?
In the thread cited above: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=1688 it suggests change "allow-hotplug" to "auto" in etc/network/interfaces to get rid of the delay on boot.
That's what I did, and it sits there trying DHCP instead of on the init. And when I try to use the network, it doesn't work. So I changed it back. It still sits there waiting, but when the system finally comes up, the network does NOT work. Something else broke by simply changing the IF config to "auto". WTF?
Not only did it not help, it broke my network setup somehow. I cannot get a connection anymore. Meaning I can't even install a network manager to try to fix it. What would changing one single line do to the rest of the network config that it would be completely broken?
One more case of the same thing. Same error message, but also no symptoms during uptime. Video seems to be flawless. It sounds like something in the install process was not properly removed and is now retrying at each boot.
Unfortunately, now that I have the chance to tinker with the system, I see the same thing described in that other thread. It just waits in another place. This is a completely unacceptable boot problem. It sits there for minutes either way. Why? Other Linux distros have not done this. There must be a config option that doesn't try to setup networking while booting.
Wow, that's nice. I knew that some of the other VM systems can convert other files, but hadn't seen anything about KVM in their lists of compatible formats. At least the Linux world can handle the other system's file formats. I guess I ought to learn about KVM rather than struggle with VirtualBox anymore.
Can you get KVM to run Android? I've seen instructions for installing Android into VirtualBox and it says use the Linux mode. I guess it would be the same with KVM?
Well, I do like XFCE. The two original old standby desktops have gone nuts. KDE is an insane widget zoo that requires cutting edge hardware just to run and is very annoying when it does run. Supposedly all the fancy useless graphical hand-waving can be disabled but I don't even want to try to wade through the settings and find where to do that. Gnome is not quite as flashy but has gone down a similar route, trying to out-do Windows for bloat and restrictions meant to "help" the user do things The Right Way [tm]. But as the saying goes, make something foolproof and only a fool will use it.
The only competition I am aware of for XFCE right now is LXDE, but as the new kid on the block it's missing a lot of those "mature" features that take time to complete. If XFCE needs PulseAudio, I guess it will have to stay.
Edit: But I do need to try the "Trinity" Desktop one of these days... it's based on KDE 3, which was still sane.
KVM seems to be the native Linux virtualization solution, but can you migrate a KVM machine to any other virtualization system? What if I want to run something from a KVM on Linux in a Windows environment?
Argh... I'd hate to remove it and then find out that Firefox requires it. FF is becoming the only viable alternative to Chrome. Guess I'll just install alsa-mixer and leave PulseAudio alone for now.
Well, I'm glad it works but my concern is that I don't understand why it works. Guess I need to learn perl. It's become very influential. Sort of the script equivalent to the C dialects in full languages, real techies need to know the basics even if they don't use it full time.
Ah, I see. Interesting problem. I also installed Devuan on a laptop a few days ago, but it was plugged into a cable when I did. When I next boot, I wonder what will happen? Might have to tinker with that one also. Thanks for the tip.
One other thing I noticed on my new install of Devuan Ascii. It's got PulseAudio??? Is there a reason for that to be present? I see that ALSA is already available. ALSA is and has been vastly more reliable for more than a decade. Is there some dependency on it? Can't I just purge it all: "apt-get purge pulseaudio gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils" and not have to worry about all the conflicts that might come from having competing audio systems?
Also, where is the mixer control for ALSA? I don't see it in the multimedia menu. Is it not installed by default? Is it available through some other utility?
Not sure where to put this one, but it involves perl scripts, so the more technical "system configuration" seems appropriate.
I like having plenty of information available on my desktop, especially about the machine itself. So I always use GKrellM if at all possible. One of the plugins that is nice to have, though not essential, is the weather info plugin. This plugin has had problems for years now because the original author disappeared and the NOAA weather site keeps shifting information around. When it first broke, I just ignored it for a while and then managed to figure out that the "program" that gathered the weather info for the plugin was just a script. A simple editing job fixed it after finding where the information had moved to.
But now that I am trying to get my Linux desktop up-to-date I find that it has broken again. This time they have added https to the URL and apparently the old standard http doesn't work anymore. There is a so-called replacement utility out there, but it doesn't gather all of the information. Instead of using that, I edited the script again. It might be working? I'm not sure since I haven't had the chance to just let it sit and run for a few hours. When I manually run the script, it does retrieve the information. So here's the question: How does perl get the information? Is it invoking a browser in the background? Does it matter what browsers are present on my system? Or will perl be able to do this https connection with its own libraries regardless? Here's the actual script, BTW. Maybe someone with actual knowledge of perl can help. I have been blindly guessing how to change things. Notice the mention of LWP. This is apparently a perl library that does HTTP connections? It is present in my Devuan install, so that is probably what the script is using to connect.
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Grabs the latest local weather conditions from the
# National Weather Service (NWS). Uses the decoded METAR reports.
#
# Need to give the 4-character METAR station code on the
# Command Line. E.g.;
#
# GrabWeather YSSY
#
$ReportDir = '.wmWeatherReports';
$WeatherSrc = 'https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/decoded';
use strict;
use vars qw( $ReportDir $WeatherSrc );
use IO::File;
#
# Change to users home directory. We used to dump into /tmp
# but using home dir instead avoids multiple users interfering
# with one another. (Yeah, we could "unique-ize" the filenames, but
# this is easier for now...)
#
my $home = $ENV{HOME} || (getpwuid($<))[7];
chdir() || chdir($home) or die "chdir '$home' failed: $!";
unless(-e $ReportDir) {
mkdir $ReportDir, 0755 or die "unable to mkdir '$ReportDir': $!";
}
chdir $ReportDir or die "chdir '$ReportDir' failed: $!";
my $StationID = uc shift @ARGV or die "Usage: $0 <station-id>\n";
my $HTMLFileName = "$StationID.TXT";
my $URL = "$WeatherSrc/$HTMLFileName";
my $DataFileName = "$StationID.dat";
# Is LWP installed?
eval { require LWP::UserAgent };
if ($@) {
my $cmd = qq{wget --cache=off --passive-ftp --tries=0 --quiet } .
qq{--output-document=$home/$ReportDir/$HTMLFileName $URL};
`$cmd` == 0 or die "unable to fetch weather: $?";
} else {
$ENV{FTP_PASSIVE} = 1; # LWP uses Net::FTP internally.
my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent (agent => 'Mozilla/5.0', cookie_jar =>{});
$ua->env_proxy();
my $req = new HTTP::Request( GET => $URL );
my $rsp = $ua->request( $req );
die $rsp->status_line unless $rsp->is_success;
my $fh = new IO::File "> $home/$ReportDir/$HTMLFileName"
or die "unable to write '$home/$ReportDir/$HTMLFileName': $!";
print $fh $rsp->content;
close $fh or die "error closing '$home/$ReportDir/$HTMLFileName': $!";
}
#
# Parse HTML File.
#
my %stats = (
temp => -99.0,
chill => -99.0,
dew_point => -99.0,
pressure => -99.0,
humidity => -99.0,
universal_time => '99:99',
);
my $fh = new IO::File $HTMLFileName
or die "unable to read '$HTMLFileName': $!";
chomp($stats{station_info} = <$fh>);
chomp($stats{update_time} = <$fh>);
while (<$fh>){
chomp;
$stats{sky_conditions} = $1, next if /Sky conditions: (.*)/;
$stats{temp} = $1, next if /Temperature:\s*(\-{0,1}[0-9.]{1,}).*/;
$stats{chill} = $1, next if /Windchill:\s*(\-{0,1}[0-9.]{1,}).*/;
$stats{dew_point} = $1, next if /Dew Point:\s*(\-{0,1}[0-9.]{1,}).*/;
$stats{pressure} = $1, next if /Pressure \(.*\):\s*([0-9.]{2,}).*/;
$stats{humidity} = $1, next if /Relative Humidity:\s*(\d{1,})\%.*/;
$stats{coded_metar} = $1, next if /ob: (.*)/;
}
close $fh or die "error closing '$HTMLFileName': $!";
#
# Isolate the Wind groups out of the coded METAR report.
# There may be two groups - the normal one and a variability set.
#
$stats{wind_group} = $stats{coded_metar};
$stats{wind_group} =~ s/ RMK\s.*$//;
$stats{var_flag} = 1 if $stats{wind_group} =~ /\d+(KT|MPS)\s\d+V\d+\s/;
if ($stats{wind_group} =~ /\s(\w{3})(?:(\d+)G)?(\d+)(KT|MPS)\s/) {
@stats{qw( direction speed1 speed2 )} = ($1, $2, $3);
if ($4 eq 'MPS') {
$stats{speed1} *= 1.942 if defined $stats{speed1};
$stats{speed2} *= 1.942;
}
}
#
# Get the Time out of the coded Metar Report.
#
if ($stats{coded_metar} =~ /$StationID \d+?(\d{2})(\d{2})Z/) {
$stats{universal_time} = "$1:$2";
}
#
# Write out the stuff we need to the Data File. This is the file that will
# be read by GKrellWeather.
#
my $fh = new IO::File ">$DataFileName"
or die "unable to write '$DataFileName': $!";
print $fh
map { "$stats{$_}\n" }
qw( station_info update_time sky_conditions universal_time
temp dew_point chill pressure humidity );
if (not exists $stats{direction}) {
print $fh "-99\n";
} elsif ($stats{direction} =~ /VRB/) {
print $fh "99\n";
} elsif ($stats{var_flag}) {
print $fh $stats{direction} * -1, "\n";
} else {
print $fh $stats{direction} + 0, "\n";
}
if (not $stats{direction}) {
print $fh "-99\n";
} elsif (defined $stats{speed1} and defined $stats{speed2}) {
my $ave_speed = (($stats{speed1} + $stats{speed2})/2.0) * 1.15155;
print $fh "-$ave_speed\n";
} else {
print $fh $stats{speed2} * 1.15155, "\n";
}
close $fh or die "error closing '$DataFileName': $!";
Currently I am trying to learn enough about Devuan to replace old installs of Mint (the last version that did not rely on systemd), which replaced the last version of Debian that didn't rely on systemd...
Anyway, since the installer is so similar to Debian, there was not much trouble, but I am seeing something strange when the system starts up. It stops for quite a long time in the middle of booting with a message "ifup: waiting for lock on /run/network/ifstate.eth1". I think it's not getting the "lock" at all but just timing out. Why would it be doing this? Could it be a problem caused by this motherboard having two ethernet ports? Or could there just be a compatibility problem with a very old board? This is a EVGA 680i, yes, an nForce board. Are there Linux compatibility issues with nForce?