The Linux Help and Tutorial Thread

[josh1980]

Perhaps have 2 sections.. one for solely crunching and others that try to do "a little extra"? man pages are helpful, if you know what you're looking for.

Example: I wanted to run the equivalent of chkdsk on my linux machine. Do I know the name of the application? Nope. Have I ever seen it run? Nope. Am I pretty sure a file system checking application is out there? Of course. So what do I google? "chkdsk linux" and hope I can find it within the first 5 pages of searches.

WCG has definitely gotten me interested in linux. Where I go from here depends on how much I can get out of Linux.

Perhaps my desire to learn linux is a bigger part in my opinion than it should be. This forum is for WCG and not to give a crash course in linux. Google docs is a good idea though.

[Havis]

Here is a little guide how to set up Ubuntu(and it actually works with a little modifiactions for Debian), to automatically download and install updates:

"sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades debdelta"

and then configure apt
add these two lines to /etc/apt/apt.conf
APT::Periodic::Verbose "0";
APT::Periodic::RandomSleep "1";


and these lines to /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic:ownload-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic:ownload-Upgradeable-Packages-Debdelta "1";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7";

here you can set, whether you want to get all updates or only security ones (just comment out a line by placing "//" at the beginning)
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades
Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
"Ubuntu lucid-security";
"Ubuntu lucid-updates";
};

You can test that packages get updated by executing file:
/etc/cron.daily/apt
(you might set Verbose to "1" and RandomSleep to "0" in apt.conf for testing purposes :-) )

or just look at the logs in:
/var/log/unattended-upgrades

The whole thing is really simple. It executes "/etc/cron.daily/apt" script once a day, which reads appropriate config files in /etc/apt

Hope this helps to keep your crunchers updated & stable

[D_A]

I just do this:
Attachment 109124

[Havis]

Can you do that without X instaleled?


and one more thing I forgot.
For people who want remote desktop capability on their Ubuntu box, you need to install xrdp package.

sudo apt-get install xrdp

and then use some RDP (for example Windows XP/2003 Remote Desktop) client to connect to them (if they dont like ssh-ing into their crunchers)

[dangaroos]

Example: I wanted to run the equivalent of chkdsk on my linux machine. Do I know the name of the application? Nope. Have I ever seen it run? Nope. Am I pretty sure a file system checking application is out there? Of course. So what do I google? "chkdsk linux" and hope I can find it within the first 5 pages of searches.

I purchased "Univsersal Command Guide for Operating Systems" on sale at some bookstore few years ago. 1500 pages of commands and what their equivalent is in other operating systems. Covers linux , aix, solaris, bsd, netware 3-6, dos, win9x, nt 4, win 2k, win xp, mac.



My copy is from 2002 so its probably outdated and it is currently under my monitor stand ( next time I will buy a monitor that I can raise/lower and rotate )

Its basically big table with commands as rows and OS in columns for the first ~100 pages and the rest (1400 pages) is detailed syntax and parameters for the commands.

If there is a newer version available it could be a good reference.

D

[D_A]

Can you do that without X instaleled?


and one more thing I forgot.
For people who want remote desktop capability on their Ubuntu box, you need to install xrdp package.

sudo apt-get install xrdp

and then use some RDP (for example Windows XP/2003 Remote Desktop) client to connect to them (if they dont like ssh-ing into their crunchers)

I set them to auto-update when I do the installation as it's one of the options.

[D_A]

Can you do that without X instaleled?


and one more thing I forgot.
For people who want remote desktop capability on their Ubuntu box, you need to install xrdp package.

sudo apt-get install xrdp

and then use some RDP (for example Windows XP/2003 Remote Desktop) client to connect to them (if they dont like ssh-ing into their crunchers)

The other thing I can do without X installed is edit root's crontab and use

apt-get update && aptitude safe-upgrade

.

[josh1980]

I purchased "Univsersal Command Guide for Operating Systems" on sale at some bookstore few years ago. 1500 pages of commands and what their equivalent is in other operating systems. Covers linux , aix, solaris, bsd, netware 3-6, dos, win9x, nt 4, win 2k, win xp, mac.



My copy is from 2002 so its probably outdated and it is currently under my monitor stand ( next time I will buy a monitor that I can raise/lower and rotate )

Its basically big table with commands as rows and OS in columns for the first ~100 pages and the rest (1400 pages) is detailed syntax and parameters for the commands.

If there is a newer version available it could be a good reference.

D

Ordered a copy from Amazon!



Edit: The latest print was 2002, so your book is still the "latest".

[josh1980]

Can you do that without X instaleled?


and one more thing I forgot.
For people who want remote desktop capability on their Ubuntu box, you need to install xrdp package.

sudo apt-get install xrdp

and then use some RDP (for example Windows XP/2003 Remote Desktop) client to connect to them (if they dont like ssh-ing into their crunchers)

You have NO idea how many hours I spent looking for a RDP server... I tried tons of different searches in google and in the ubuntu software search. Installed and worked first try!

I just wonder if it would interfere with GPU crunching. Logging into a Windows machine while trying to crunch with a GPU will cause the GPU crunching to fail due to reloading of the GPU driver.

[Havis]

You have NO idea how many hours I spent looking for a RDP server... I tried tons of different searches in google and in the ubuntu software search. Installed and worked first try!

I just wonder if it would interfere with GPU crunching. Logging into a Windows machine while trying to crunch with a GPU will cause the GPU crunching to fail due to reloading of the GPU driver.

I'm glad I could help
maybe this thread should be made sticky

[jcool]

Okay.. I'm all out of ideas on this one guys, maybe someone in here can pull a miracle and help me?
I'm trying to keep my HTPC running during SC week, obviously. It's a watercooled L5630 (40W Quad) on a trusty GB X58 Extreme (oldest X58 I have, bought in Nov 08) in a desktop form factor case.
I am running Ubuntu 10.04 because running XBMC (Xbox media Center) to watch movies and TV is the machine's main purpose. Now, on to my problem:
I have set BOINC and XBMC both to auto-start, so on boot-up, BOINCmgr will run in the background while XBMC's GUI fires up - so far, so good.
And as long as there is user input of any kind OR as long as I am watching TV, a movie or whatever with XBMC, the machine runs and crunches just fine.

However, if I leave the rig with either XBMC running in idle or just the Ubuntu Desktop sitting there, it ALWAYS shuts down while I'm gone. I would estimate the "auto shutdown" time at about 1 hour. It doesn't go into standby or anything, it's a real complete shutdown. When I start it back up again, there's no indication as to how or why the machine was shut down, it behaves like it was shut down normally (so no errors or anything).

Now, I have disabled auto-shutdown and auto-standby in the OSes power management, in XBMC, and also disabled thermal shutdown in bios.
Rig is running at 200x17 and temps are fine.

If I start a really long movie (I have one that goes for like 4h) it WON'T shut down for those 4h but keep on curnching.

So what the feck is going on here?! Never seen anthing like it. I really don't know what else I can do short of installing Windows

[PoppaGeek]

I would go though the system logs and figure out what time it shut down then look though all the logs and see what script was run or what called the shutdown. This assuming it is not hardware/BIOS doing it.

logs are in /var/log/

Look first at log files messages, kern.log and syslog if nothing there look in the logs same name but a 0 or 1 at the end.

[jcool]

Ok, will do when I get home later. Thanks PG

[D_A]

Hunting through the Ubuntu forums I came across someone with a similar problem. In their case it ended up being an incompatibility between the new ACPI and their BIOS and flashing to the latest BIOS update solved it.
Just a thought, but is the system set to turn off your monitor or anything like that after an hour?

edit: it also appears that XBMC has a setting that does exactly this.
In the System settings there's an option called "Shutdown function" and "Shutdown function timer". I'd be suspicious they may have something to do with this.

[jcool]

Got this from th syslog:

Nov  4 06:22:56 HTPC vdr: [1238] executing '/usr/lib/vdr/vdr-shutdown.wrapper 0 0 0 "" 0'
Nov  4 06:22:56 HTPC vdr: [1238] saved setup to /var/lib/vdr/setup.conf
Nov  4 06:22:56 HTPC vdr-shutdown: executing /usr/share/vdr/shutdown-hooks/S90.custom as shell script

Looks like the VDR server is initiating the shutdown command.. which makes sense because it is always running, even when XBMC is closed.

[PoppaGeek]

If the VDR software does not have a setting to turn off the auto-shutdown it is probably in the /etc/crontab. If that is the case copy and past the crontab here and we will see if we can help.

Found this

Min. event timeout = 30
Min. user inactivity = 120
If the command line option '-s' has been set, VDR will automatically shutdown the computer if the next timer event is at least MinEventTimeout minutes in the future, and the user has been inactive for at least MinUserInactivity minutes. Setting MinUserInactivity to 0 disables the automatic shutdown, while still retaining the possibility to manually shutdown the computer.

[jcool]

If the VDR software does not have a setting to turn off the auto-shutdown it is probably in the /etc/crontab. If that is the case copy and past the crontab here and we will see if we can help.

Found this

Thanks PG, will see about disabling that timer later. It definitely is the VDR server causing the shutdown, I stopped the service last night and it's still running.

[PoppaGeek]

The other day I noticed on BoincTasks that one of the Linux boxes showed around 75% CPU on all 4 cores. When I opened a VNC session on it and ran top I saw on the top line under Command a process called backend. It was running 100% CPU usage and over 200 in Time+ column. So I exited out of top and did a man backend and it was a CUPS process, printer. Since I was not using the linux box for anything except crunching I ran top again and got the PID number in the first column, 12016. Exited out of top again and at the command line:
sudo kill 12016

This killed the process and WCG got 100% of all 4 cores. While it is about as easy to just reboot there may be reasons you do not want to reboot. If after looking at the man page you are not sure what the process is or does you probably should reboot to be safe. But if you know that it is something you do not care about such as a printer task then using sudo kill PID# is a little quicker. Sometimes it is nice to see how long you can keep a box running without a reboot.

[Gamekiller]

You guys ever used Arista Transcoder? I'm getting this (below) error when trying to launch it.

jesse@serverbox:~/Desktop/arista-0.9.5$ arista-gtk
** Message: pygobject_register_sinkfunc is deprecated (GstObject)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/arista-gtk", line 1671, in <module>
    main = MainWindow(options)
  File "/usr/bin/arista-gtk", line 397, in __init__
    self.setup_source()
  File "/usr/bin/arista-gtk", line 535, in setup_source
    self.finder = arista.inputs.InputFinder()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/arista/inputs/haldisco.py", line 184, in __init__
    "/org/freedesktop/Hal/Manager")
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/dbus/bus.py", line 244, in get_object
    follow_name_owner_changes=follow_name_owner_changes)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/dbus/proxies.py", line 241, in __init__
    self._named_service = conn.activate_name_owner(bus_name)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/dbus/bus.py", line 183, in activate_name_owner
    self.start_service_by_name(bus_name)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/dbus/bus.py", line 281, in start_service_by_name
    'su', (bus_name, flags)))
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/dbus/connection.py", line 620, in call_blocking
    message, timeout)
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.Hal was not provided by any .service files

[PoppaGeek]

Check out this thread.

[Gamekiller]

Thanks, PG! I had read that link a few times (and a billion others) before posting but looking into it deeper my issue was on that page. I had to delete everything in the presets folder and try again. I'm still getting "** Message: pygobject_register_sinkfunc is deprecated (GstObject)" when I run the program but it seems to be working... converting a video file as I type.

Hmm, anyways. Thanks!

Edit: Grr, something else. I must run the program with "sudo" or else it won't work properly. The issues is that the output file is un-editable to me unless I use the terminal with sudo or above privileges (can't just browse to the folder and delete it).
Edit2: Fixed the permission problems.

[PoppaGeek]

"Code that is tagged as 'deprecated' is officially still available for use but will typically have already been scheduled for removal at some point, so it's in your best interests to start looking for an alternative.

Kernel Trap

You might want to see if a newer version is available or there is another program that will do what ya want.

[Gamekiller]

Kernel Trap

You might want to see if a newer version is available or there is another program that will do what ya want.

Ah, thanks again! Linux Help thread is helpful!

Any suggestions on video converters for linux (Ubuntu)? Mostly .mkv to .mp4.. maybe some others as well. GUI preferred but not required.

[D_A]

I've used ffmpeg a few times before, but I can't remember the ins and outs of the commands. It can pretty much convert whatever to whatever else with the right settings.

[D_A]

Ok, a little something I just had to do so I thought I'd share. Time settings on headless server installs.
Naturally you don't want to have to worry about the clock on a headless machine wandering off, especially since this can cause headaches with bad time miss-matches on work units, so the solution is to get the system to correct the clock automatically from online time servers.

Note: this is for Ubuntu, but the principle is the same for other distros, even if some of the package commands differ.

After you have logged into the machine, either locally or remotely:
install the Network Time Protocol Daemon (ntpd)

sudo apt-get install ntp

let this do it's thing and it's good.
Now as we all know, servers go down from time to time. The Ubuntu variant of ntp checks the time from the Ubuntu time server, but if that one goes down then no fresh time for you! ... unless you add more servers to the config file that is. I like to use the nano text editor but feel free to use whatever you prefer.

sudo nano /etc/ntp.conf

go down to where you see

server ntp.ubuntu.com

and replace that line with something more fault tolerant like:

server 0.pool.ntp.org
server 1.pool.ntp.org
server 2.pool.ntp.org
server 3.pool.ntp.org

Feel free to hunt for servers closer to you at http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/WebHome but these should work for just about everybody.
To make sure the system picks up the new settings now instead of at the next reboot enter:

sudo /etc/init.d/ntp restart

and your machine clock should now be within the second and stay that way.