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A Linux Evening

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Re: A Linux Evening

#81

Post by npteljes »

hacb wrote: post #21

About take away #2: > I spent several hours fixing a problem and I learned next to nothing in the process. This trick is unlikely to be useful again. By the time I encounter something similar, it is likely I will have forgotten about the solution. This is why it is important to keep a personal knowledge base/documentation. Mine is full of things I'll probably never encounter again, but I know it may be useful one day…

Also, it's not like OP haven't learnt about kernel parameters. Often not just the dicrete knowledge itself, but also the way of arriving at it is just as useful.

Re: A Linux Evening

#83

Post by ectopod »

deltarholamda wrote: post #80
revolvingocelot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually my go-to for "Linux problems" is "tear down the VM and start a new one", but a few days ago my Manjaro rig at home lost power, and bluetooth wouldn't work upon restart. I wracked my brain, pored through forum threads, man pages, and LFS, but nothing really helped. It looked like several different problems at once, but none of the individual fixes worked, or only worked for minutes at a time. I stepped away fr…

>I'm not sure what I learned. "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Exactly. My tendency is to jump in and try to root cause problems but nowadays the most productive solution is almost always some kind of a restart.

Re: A Linux Evening

#84

Post by noisy_boy »

torben-friis wrote: post #76
noisy_boy wrote: post #10

Couldn't agree more with the takeaways. Especially #3 - and it is exacerbated if you are a finicky person who wants everything exactly the way you want it + loves to customize and tinker. Linux basically keeps me hooked by virtue of catering to those needs even though I have to deal with these Linux evenings (which are thankfully getting rarer over time). In time too because my tolerance is depleting as I age and hav…

What kind of android integration do you require, out of curiosity? I use iPhone + Mac, but I don’t remember any hiccups when it was android + Mac. Most of my interaction between the devices is pretty indirect anyway (photos are shared through google cloud, etc).

The main one I have is Syncthing[0]. I have a fairly involved file sync setup across several Android and Linux devices and it works beautifully; I like that I can use the space available on my devices instead of having to depend on/pay money for cloud (I know that it is not much for most of us). However, to best of my knowledge, Syncthing doesn't run on iPhone (it is possible that jailbreaking etc can make that work but that is a whole different area).

[0]: https://syncthing.net/

Re: A Linux Evening

#85

Post by markus_zhang »

miloignis wrote: post #74
markus_zhang wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think unless one uses Linux on daily basis it's really difficult to sink in the knowledge. I decided to install an Archlinux VM and see what happens. I'm kinda disappointed to myself as I found out I didn't like too much trouble so I'll probably never be a good/great programmer.

I wouldn't write it off just yet, at least if you want to be a good programmer! While there might be some correlation, there's plenty of fantastic programmers who don't want the hassle and want to focus on a specific problem and just use Windows/macOS and an easy to setup/low configuration editor. One particularly great TA I had in college comes to mind...

Thanks, but I actually wanted to learn low level stuffs, or I thought I wanted. Anyway I'll see what happens. So far nothing really clicks for me but if that's it then that's it.

Re: A Linux Evening

#86

Post by Waterluvian »

npteljes wrote: post #82

If OP used Windows exclusively, he'd have Windows evenings. There's tools that people complain about, and tools that people don't use.

This reasoning implies that every OS is equally buggy in ways that impact usability. I think this is likely untrue.

I don’t think it really matters if windows bugs exist, but how often they occur and impact use of the tool.

Re: A Linux Evening

#87

Post by planede »

nneonneo wrote: post #54
l1k wrote: post #15

Thunderbolt devices appear in the OS as a PCIe switch, so you need two additional bus numbers (one for the Switch Upstream Port and one for the Switch Downstream Port). If the device is hotplugged to a port which has run out of bus numbers, you'll get this error message. Mika Westerberg is constantly fine-tuning the allocation of PCI resources in the Linux kernel to avoid such scenarios. Some recent patches: https://…

It sounds like the pause/unpause might be the way to fix this properly, since trying to be heuristically smarter sounds like a recipe for never-ending corner case bugs like the OP’s issue. The patch for pausing and unpausing seems quite reasonable, except that it does require driver support (unsurprising - you’re literally reallocating the resources used by the driver!). I suppose if you had at least a few movable de…

Maybe it can be introduced gradually, making the reallocation an optional feature that a driver might support. Then drivers can independently implement the resource reallocation feature.

Mainline drivers can move gradually. If they want to be nice for out-of-tree drivers then they can describe a timeline for deprecating and removing the support for non-reallocating drivers.

Re: A Linux Evening

#89

Post by prmoustache »

mkl95 wrote: post #31

I have had my share of Linux Evenings. They built my confidence when it comes to troubleshooting system stuff, and they eroded my confidence in Linux for a while. Things are incredibly stable these days compared to even half a decade ago.

The good thing is after an evening you usually find a solution.

While one some proprietary systems the solution is usually "you are fucked deal with it".

Having said that it has been litterally years since I had this kind of problem. Checking if people have issues with devices on linux distros before buying actually works really well. I just don't buy the things that don't work. Kind of like checking at the back of the box if it is compatible.

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