I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
She's far more likely to outlive me than I her; so I want to install something requiring a lot less maintenance on her machine, so that she'll have it and be used to it, years ahead of need.
I'm thinking CentOS 6, whenever it's ready, is probably my best choice. Any thoughts? (And yes, I do mean what my .sig says.)
On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 01:11:49AM +0800, Guenther Boelter wrote:
On 12/18/2010 01:04 AM, Beartooth wrote:
I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
What's wrong with Fedora in that case, what do you think is the benefit of using CentOS instead?
Fedora will break things. They're still, in many ways, figuring out what they are, but they do serve as a test bed, or perhaps development platform, for various things that aren't ready for prime time.
On 17/12/10 18:24, Scott Robbins wrote:
On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 01:11:49AM +0800, Guenther Boelter wrote:
On 12/18/2010 01:04 AM, Beartooth wrote:
I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
What's wrong with Fedora in that case, what do you think is the benefit of using CentOS instead?
Fedora will break things. They're still, in many ways, figuring out what they are, but they do serve as a test bed, or perhaps development platform, for various things that aren't ready for prime time.
I so often hear that Fedora breaks things. I've been running F-11 and F-12 on a server as KVM host, without issues. I've been using F8-F13 on several computers (3 laptops and a workstation), and I can't really say it has broken anything on my setups. It might be I'm not using it "right" to experience such breakage. Use cases are everything from "mail, surf and OO.org" to development tasks
In fact, for me, Fedora has been way more stable and solid than the time I was running Ubuntu (from Gibson to Ibix), where I got worried every time there were new updates available.
But rightfully enough, I've never tried CentOS on the desktop. Maybe CentOS 6 will be a good choice for that.
kind regards,
David Sommerseth
David Sommerseth wrote:
On 17/12/10 18:24, Scott Robbins wrote:
On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 01:11:49AM +0800, Guenther Boelter wrote:
On 12/18/2010 01:04 AM, Beartooth wrote:
I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
What's wrong with Fedora in that case, what do you think is the benefit of using CentOS instead?
Fedora will break things. They're still, in many ways, figuring out
<snip>
I so often hear that Fedora breaks things. I've been running F-11 and F-12 on a server as KVM host, without issues. I've been using F8-F13 on several computers (3 laptops and a workstation), and I can't really say it has broken anything on my setups. It might be I'm not using it
<snip> I upgraded a workstation that we do offline backups on to FC 13, from FC 10. I *H*A*T*E*D*!!! FC13. Things do *not* work right. I had to remove gnome, because it was hosed - you couldn't log in in runlevel 5, got a vertical bar a couple of pixels wide instead of a login pane. It crashed, every other week it seemed, and yes, I was doing updates. FC14 *seems* to be a bit more stable, though right now, I'm fighting to try to get ssh-agent working correctly on it - just did a full update, and now it starts it on login... but doesn't stop it on logout, and doesn't pass the environment variables.
*bleah*
In '06, when I was going to upgrade from Redhat 9 (not RHEL, shrike), it was SuSE or Ubuntu, wound up with SuSE. When I was ready to go up from openSuSE 10.3, I went to CentOS. I want a solid system at home - I do enough admin work at work, I don't want to be debugging the o/s at home. The my opinion, and the opinion of a number of folks I personally know (including ESR, btw) of fedora is that it's bleeding edge, not leading edge.
mark
On 12/17/2010 10:11 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
FC14 *seems* to be a bit more stable, though right now, I'm fighting to try to get ssh-agent working correctly on it - just did a full update, and now it starts it on login... but doesn't stop it on logout, and doesn't pass the environment variables.
Off topic, but: You're probably trying too hard. ssh-agent works correctly on a clean install of Fedora and has for many releases. You don't need to configure anything.
Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 12/17/2010 10:11 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
FC14 *seems* to be a bit more stable, though right now, I'm fighting to try to get ssh-agent working correctly on it - just did a full update, and now it starts it on login... but doesn't stop it on logout, and doesn't pass the environment variables.
Off topic, but: You're probably trying too hard. ssh-agent works correctly on a clean install of Fedora and has for many releases. You don't need to configure anything.
Not with PIV-II cards....
mark
Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 12/17/2010 12:32 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Not with PIV-II cards....
Why? Do they use a non-standard SSH agent?
pkcs11. opensc. NOT COOLKEY. Trying to use a current version of openssh, opensc, and openct that my manager built it 100% repeatably tries to use coolkey, and as you've seen from earlier posts, pops up the "phone home" window, then, when you make that go away, it brings up the Smart Card Manager window... WITH the FORMAT button enabled!
Oy. Having uninstalled coolkey, and its dependency esc, made all that go away, once I'd done some minor configuration.
mark
On 12/21/2010 10:49 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 12/17/2010 12:32 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Not with PIV-II cards....
Why? Do they use a non-standard SSH agent?
pkcs11. opensc. NOT COOLKEY.
I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything. You said that you're having trouble getting ssh-agent to close on logout. I replied that you're probably trying too hard. Fedora's desktops automatically have an ssh-agent available when you log in via gdm. In the past, it was OpenSSH's ssh-agent. In more recent versions, gnome has its own authentication agent, which is used.
So I'll repeat myself: if you are seeing ssh-agent continue after you log out, you're probably trying too hard. Setting the agent up and tearing it down on logout are done for you right out of the box, and have been for years. Log in to a new user account on a fresh install sometime. Open a terminal and type "set | grep SSH_AUTH_SOCK". See that environment variable? The agent is running.
Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 12/21/2010 10:49 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 12/17/2010 12:32 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Not with PIV-II cards....
Why? Do they use a non-standard SSH agent?
pkcs11. opensc. NOT COOLKEY.
I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything. You said that you're having trouble getting ssh-agent to close on logout. I replied that you're probably trying too hard. Fedora's desktops automatically have an ssh-agent available when you log in via gdm. In the past, it was OpenSSH's ssh-agent. In more recent versions, gnome has its own authentication agent, which is used.
Right, which AFAIK, doesn't work with the new US federal PIV-II cards. Certainly, I can't add the card when it's inserted in the reader with just that.
So I'll repeat myself: if you are seeing ssh-agent continue after you log out, you're probably trying too hard. Setting the agent up and tearing it down on logout are done for you right out of the box, and have been for years. Log in to a new user account on a fresh install sometime. Open a terminal and type "set | grep SSH_AUTH_SOCK". See that environment variable? The agent is running.
I'll check his box again, when I get a chance. But as I said, it wasn't willing to accept the card with ssh-add -s pkcs11, or ssh-add -s opensc-pkcs11.so
mark
On 12/22/2010 11:39 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Right, which AFAIK, doesn't work with the new US federal PIV-II cards. Certainly, I can't add the card when it's inserted in the reader with just that.
OK. Well, that's more or less what I meant when I asked if there was something non-standard. It looks to me like the older systems should have worked properly, before GNOME got its keyring manager involved. So, I'd recommend that you do two things. First, edit /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop or create a new session file of your own. Change the "Exec" line to: Exec=ssh-agent gnome-session
That'll launch your gnome-session as a child of ssh-agent. When you log out, ssh-agent will exit. You'll also need to (in your session) go to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications. Locate "SSH Key Agent". Remove the checkbox. Log out and log back in. At that point, double check that the ssh key agent is still deselected in startup applications, and then make sure that a terminal still has the SSH_AUTH_SOCK variable. If those two things are true, then you should be using the OpenSSH agent. (Also, the socket path shouldn't say "keyring"). Once you're using the OpenSSH agent, you should be able to use ssh-add to set up your opensc device.
Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 12/22/2010 11:39 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Right, which AFAIK, doesn't work with the new US federal PIV-II cards. Certainly, I can't add the card when it's inserted in the reader with just that.
OK. Well, that's more or less what I meant when I asked if there was something non-standard. It looks to me like the older systems should have worked properly, before GNOME got its keyring manager involved. So, I'd recommend that you do two things. First, edit /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop or create a new session file of your own. Change the "Exec" line to: Exec=ssh-agent gnome-session
That'll launch your gnome-session as a child of ssh-agent. When you log
<snip> Thanks a *lot* Gordon. I'll try that out when I get back from my vacation, and let y'all know how it goes.
mark
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 18:38 +0100, David Sommerseth wrote:
On 17/12/10 18:24, Scott Robbins wrote:
On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 01:11:49AM +0800, Guenther Boelter wrote:
On 12/18/2010 01:04 AM, Beartooth wrote:
I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
What's wrong with Fedora in that case, what do you think is the benefit of using CentOS instead?
Fedora will break things. They're still, in many ways, figuring out what they are, but they do serve as a test bed, or perhaps development platform, for various things that aren't ready for prime time.
I so often hear that Fedora breaks things. I've been running F-11 and F-12 on a server as KVM host, without issues. I've been using F8-F13 on several computers (3 laptops and a workstation), and I can't really say it has broken anything on my setups. It might be I'm not using it "right" to experience such breakage. Use cases are everything from "mail, surf and OO.org" to development tasks
Really? I've been running KVM on Fedora for quite a few releases. NetworkManager has been something of a nightmare on several releases when dealing with VMs. Especially if you were doing bridging. Fedora has a slightly schizophrenic group of publicists. There are folks that insist that they are stable, and there are folks that tell you that they are the leading edge. If you scan the Fedora devel lists, it's not hard to find discussions between developers noting that they'll have to force users to use a particular new feature so that it will get properly tested (i.e. it's so freaking buggy that no one would use it unless forced to use it). That said, I use Fedora for my development systems, but CentOS for my production systems.
In fact, for me, Fedora has been way more stable and solid than the time I was running Ubuntu (from Gibson to Ibix), where I got worried every time there were new updates available.
But rightfully enough, I've never tried CentOS on the desktop. Maybe CentOS 6 will be a good choice for that.
Depends on what you want for your desktop. There are a lot of things, like video, etc., that CentOS just lags too far behind.
Dave
On 12/18/2010 01:24 AM, Scott Robbins wrote:
On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 01:11:49AM +0800, Guenther Boelter wrote:
On 12/18/2010 01:04 AM, Beartooth wrote:
I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
What's wrong with Fedora in that case, what do you think is the benefit of using CentOS instead?
Fedora will break things. They're still, in many ways, figuring out what they are, but they do serve as a test bed, or perhaps development platform, for various things that aren't ready for prime time.
Not really ...
Redhat 6.0 and hopefully CentOS 6 is a very good OS for a server, no question. But for me, Fedora is the better OS for a workstation. Actually I'm still using Fedora 13 and I'm very satisfied with that.
I'm running CentOS 5 on my servers, that's really ok. What I don't like is, that there are no informations about CentOS 6 on there homepage. Something like '50% are already done' or so. There is always the feeling, that the project might be dead. That's not really good i think ...
Was thinking about the Ubuntu Server Edition instead for a while, but I don't like Ubuntu so much. Don't ask me why: The answer would be a little bit longer ...
On 12/17/10 11:11 AM, Guenther Boelter wrote:
On 12/18/2010 01:04 AM, Beartooth wrote:
I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
What's wrong with Fedora in that case, what do you think is the benefit of using CentOS instead?
You'll get tired of having to re-install fedora at least yearly. If you are young that might not sound like very often - but eventually you'll change your mind, especially if you manage very many machines and/or run into the problems you hit with less-tested versions. Remember that the main purpose for fedora is to get the first large-scale testing done before things go into RHEL.
On Fri, 17 Dec 2010, Les Mikesell wrote:
On 12/17/10 11:11 AM, Guenther Boelter wrote:
On 12/18/2010 01:04 AM, Beartooth wrote:
I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
What's wrong with Fedora in that case, what do you think is the benefit of using CentOS instead?
You'll get tired of having to re-install fedora at least yearly. If you are young that might not sound like very often - but eventually you'll change your mind,
+1
<big-grin/>
On Sat, 18 Dec 2010 01:11:49 +0800, Guenther Boelter wrote:
On 12/18/2010 01:04 AM, Beartooth wrote:
I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
What's wrong with Fedora in that case, what do you think is the benefit of using CentOS instead?
Fair question, for which thanks.
First off, Les Mikesell's point below. I keep fairly near current, installing new Fedora releases a week to a month after they come out, chiefly because that's when I have the best chance that some Friendly Alpha Plus Technoid (FAPT) will notice any Very Dumb Question (VDQ) of mine. All that takes a lot of time and mental effort -- which she, being more outdoor oriented (as I used to be), has no interest in. I'm getting almighty tired of it myself, despite my interest.
What's more, as a linguist and erstwhile mathematician, and one who's been following lists, LUGs, etc., etc., for a dozen years, I've picked up enough of the argot to ask questions in relatively brief and not totally unfamiliar ways -- enough so that most do usually get read. That's another interest she leaves to me.
Also, a side-effect of using the argot is that many or most of those who reply overestimate my actual savvy -- as is true of maybe half the ten posts in this thread so far. (The ratio is substantially more favorable here than in many of my electronic hang-outs, I'm glad to say.) Then I have to ask for elucidations. Nothing wrong with that, while I last, but still more reason to find her something that she'll have far less occasion to ask about.
For the likes of me, whether Fedora "breaks things" is a very oversimplified question. Maybe, despite my greater interest and experience (than my wife's, at least), *I'm* breaking most of them -- certainly some. (I do tinker, trying to emulate an amorous porcupine the while ...)
I'll stop here for now, just because this is getting long.
Greetings
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 5:04 PM, Beartooth beartooth@comcast.net wrote:
I'm running Fedora14 on all machines, including my wife's -- and I'm the nearest (distant) thing there is to tech support.
I totally can identify the horror </me nods head>
She's far more likely to outlive me than I her; so I want to install something requiring a lot less maintenance on her machine, so that she'll have it and be used to it, years ahead of need.
I'm thinking CentOS 6, whenever it's ready, is probably my best choice. Any thoughts? (And yes, I do mean what my .sig says.)
Ah! That's connoisseur's for the *real* classes!
That is what Centos is for. Long Live Centos6!
And Happy Birthday Centos 6 in Advance :)
Regards,
Rajagopal
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Beartooth beartooth@comcast.net wrote:
She's far more likely to outlive me than I her; so I want to install something requiring a lot less maintenance on her machine, so that she'll have it and be used to it, years ahead of need.
I'm thinking CentOS 6, whenever it's ready, is probably my best choice. Any thoughts? (And yes, I do mean what my .sig says.)
Hello, Beartooth.
I have given this a lot of thought over the last few months. You certainly can't leave her on Fedora. That turns over too fast.
On a server or in a public lab, I run Centos or RHEL.
This is a Centos list, and I don't want to inspire a big distro flame war, but here's an opinion. If you are serious that you may die and leave your wife with an OS she can't manage, you might think about installing the LTS version of Ubuntu. The Ubuntu email list folks are more helpful to non-experts. The distro team is more energetic about making device drivers work, even if you happen to own the "wrong" hardware (proprietary drivers for Nvidia video, MP3 encoding, etc). They are somewhat like Macintosh in attitude. "If we can't package it up for you to click on, it is not worth doing." That's not the way experts need it, but for somebody who is just using the system, it may be about right.
On the other hand, if I have a really serious problem, something wrong in the kernel, I'd much rather seek help in the Fedora list. There are more true experts floating about in there.
I suppose that once you install the OS, the trouble due to automatic updates from either Ubuntu LTS or Centos/RedHat will be about the same. The trouble will come when she either has to get a new computer or make a major distribution update, eg from Centos 5.5 to Centos 6.0.
If she needs to find Linux help, my *guess* is that she will be more likely to find a teenager who has used Ubuntu than the others.
She'd have the same trouble with Windows, the only difference there is that it is easier to find/hire geeks to help on a Windows system.
pj
On Wed, 22 Dec 2010, Paul Johnson wrote:
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Beartooth beartooth@comcast.net wrote:
She's far more likely to outlive me than I her; so I want to install something requiring a lot less maintenance on her machine, so that she'll have it and be used to it, years ahead of need.
I'm thinking CentOS 6, whenever it's ready, is probably my best choice. Any thoughts? (And yes, I do mean what my .sig says.)
Hello, Beartooth.
I have given this a lot of thought over the last few months. You certainly can't leave her on Fedora. That turns over too fast.
On a server or in a public lab, I run Centos or RHEL.
This is a Centos list, and I don't want to inspire a big distro flame war, but here's an opinion. If you are serious that you may die and leave your wife with an OS she can't manage, you might think about installing the LTS version of Ubuntu. The Ubuntu email list folks are more helpful to non-experts. The distro team is more energetic about making device drivers work, even if you happen to own the "wrong" hardware (proprietary drivers for Nvidia video, MP3 encoding, etc). They are somewhat like Macintosh in attitude. "If we can't package it up for you to click on, it is not worth doing." That's not the way experts need it, but for somebody who is just using the system, it may be about right.
On the other hand, if I have a really serious problem, something wrong in the kernel, I'd much rather seek help in the Fedora list. There are more true experts floating about in there.
I suppose that once you install the OS, the trouble due to automatic updates from either Ubuntu LTS or Centos/RedHat will be about the same. The trouble will come when she either has to get a new computer or make a major distribution update, eg from Centos 5.5 to Centos 6.0.
If she needs to find Linux help, my *guess* is that she will be more likely to find a teenager who has used Ubuntu than the others.
She'd have the same trouble with Windows, the only difference there is that it is easier to find/hire geeks to help on a Windows system.
<applause/>
From my point of view, that's tremendously good advice.
I too suspect that *among desktop/laptop users* she's more likely to find Ubuntu assistance than RHEL/CentOS/Fedora assistance. It's not a certainty by any means, but I agree it's likely.
My only bit of unsolicited advice would be to set up a fairly robust backup system (using, perhaps, a USB hard drive) and train her on it until she's got the procedure in muscle memory. Should the hard drive fail, someone will at least be able to restore her data.
On Thu, 23 Dec 2010 08:40:48 -0800, Paul Heinlein wrote: [....]
I too suspect that *among desktop/laptop users* she's more likely to find Ubuntu assistance than RHEL/CentOS/Fedora assistance. It's not a certainty by any means, but I agree it's likely.
My only bit of unsolicited advice would be to set up a fairly robust backup system (using, perhaps, a USB hard drive) and train her on it until she's got the procedure in muscle memory. Should the hard drive fail, someone will at least be able to restore her data.
Not unsolicited! And I'm glad to have it.
We have a couple of external USB hard drives, and one at least has a partition backing up her specific machine. I'll try to think up a good name (or get her to!) and see if I can change that partition to that.
The problem will be persuading her to take any interest beyond knowing that *I* have some backup for her, somewhere ... (I always do one before an upgrade -- and upgrade her machine last, in order to have seen most common problems before I get to it.) Any experience with that one?
On 12/25/10 10:11 AM, Beartooth wrote:
The problem will be persuading her to take any interest beyond knowing that *I* have some backup for her, somewhere ... (I always do one before an upgrade -- and upgrade her machine last, in order to have seen most common problems before I get to it.) Any experience with that one?
hah. Last year, I got my wife a USB backup drive, and set it up for her laptop. showed her how to plug it in and start the backup program while she was doing other stuff (this is a Windows laptop).
few months later, I ask hows the backup going? "oh, its fine, see, its right there->" (points to the drive sitting on her work table unplugged). k, when did you last back it up? "Oh, I thought you backed it up for me?". now, see, my wife is a tech writer, she's not a computer novice, she's been using them professionally for 30+ years, up to and including occasional unix shell usage. sigh.
John R Pierce wrote:
On 12/25/10 10:11 AM, Beartooth wrote:
The problem will be persuading her to take any interest beyond knowing that *I* have some backup for her, somewhere ... (I always do one before an upgrade -- and upgrade her machine last, in order to have seen most common problems before I get to it.) Any experience with that one?
hah. Last year, I got my wife a USB backup drive, and set it up for her laptop. showed her how to plug it in and start the backup program while she was doing other stuff (this is a Windows laptop).
few months later, I ask hows the backup going? "oh, its fine, see, its right there->" (points to the drive sitting on her work table unplugged). k, when did you last back it up? "Oh, I thought you backed it up for me?". now, see, my wife is a tech writer, she's not a computer novice, she's been using them professionally for 30+ years, up to and including occasional unix shell usage. sigh.
About 20 years old: "back up my hard drive? Where's the reverse switch?"
mark "I have *not* lost my mind; it's backed up on tape... somewhere"
On Sun, 26 Dec 2010 15:57:44 -0500 m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
About 20 years old: "back up my hard drive? Where's the reverse switch?"
Several years ago I wrote a database for a business and put a "backup data" option on the main menu. As a kind of a joke while writing it I played a "beep beep beep" sound when the backup ran (like backing up a truck). The business owner loved the sound effect so it stayed in the finished database.
On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 10:29:39 -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
hah. Last year, I got my wife a USB backup drive, and set it up for her laptop. showed her how to plug it in and start the backup program while she was doing other stuff (this is a Windows laptop).
few months later, I ask hows the backup going? "oh, its fine, see, its right there->" (points to the drive sitting on her work table unplugged). k, when did you last back it up? "Oh, I thought you backed it up for me?". now, see, my wife is a tech writer, she's not a computer novice, she's been using them professionally for 30+ years, up to and including occasional unix shell usage. sigh.
I hear you loud & clear, as we used to say on the squawkbox. Mine and I both cataloged foreign language books into the Library of Congress -- with at least five or six layers of backup between either of us and the actual IT directorate -- until we retired.
When LC shifted from dumb terminals to workstations between us and the mainframe (which the actual catalog ran on, and probably still does), the workstations ran OS/2 -- which at least did real multi- tasking, and didn't crash. Going from that to W98 of evil memory on retirement is what drove me to Linux.
On Saturday 25 December 2010 18:11:00 Beartooth wrote:
We have a couple of external USB hard drives, and one at leasthas a partition backing up her specific machine. I'll try to think up a good name (or get her to!) and see if I can change that partition to that.
The problem will be persuading her to take any interest beyondknowing that I have some backup for her, somewhere ... (I always do one before an upgrade -- and upgrade her machine last, in order to have seen most common problems before I get to it.) Any experience with that one?
I recently set up such a backup system for my daughter. Now the only thing she has to remember is to have the USB drive powered up whenever she uses the computer. The rest is done by rsync + cron - and I set cron to run quite frequently, because she doensn't really have regular hours for using it, so whenever she works, she is pretty well bound to hit one of the backup spots :-)
And because it runs so frequently (and it is differential) it takes a very short time, so there's little risk of her shutting down while it is still running. If that is a concern the backup script could run the rsync jobs on the necessary directories, then send her a message that it is done - but assuming that she doesn't normally switch on and off after only 2-3 minutes, the risk should be small.
Anne
On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 18:40:26 +0000 Anne Wilson wrote:
The rest is done by rsync + cron - and I set cron to run quite frequently, because she doensn't really have regular hours for using it, so whenever she works, she is pretty well bound to hit one of the backup spots
If you put it into /etc/rc.local instead of a cron job it would run once on every bootup.
Am 25.12.2010 19:55, schrieb Frank Cox:
On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 18:40:26 +0000 Anne Wilson wrote:
The rest is done by rsync + cron - and I set cron to run quite frequently, because she doensn't really have regular hours for using it, so whenever she works, she is pretty well bound to hit one of the backup spots
If you put it into /etc/rc.local instead of a cron job it would run once on every bootup.
Well, there is the special time flag "@reboot" for the crontab.
Alexander
On Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:58:21 -0600, Paul Johnson wrote:
Hello, Beartooth.
Hi, Paul! If you're the same guy I know from several electronic places, I'm glad to hear from you. And incidentally, the address I post from is valid, and I check it several times a day.
I have given this a lot of thought over the last few months. You certainly can't leave her on Fedora. That turns over too fast.
On a server or in a public lab, I run Centos or RHEL.
This is a Centos list, and I don't want to inspire a big distro flame war, but here's an opinion. If you are serious that you may die and leave your wife with an OS she can't manage, you might think about installing the LTS version of Ubuntu.
Hmmm ... I had forgotten all about the LTS versions ...
The Ubuntu email list folks are more helpful to non-experts. The distro team is more energetic about making device drivers work, even if you happen to own the "wrong" hardware (proprietary drivers for Nvidia video, MP3 encoding, etc). They are somewhat like Macintosh in attitude. "If we can't package it up for you to click on, it is not worth doing." That's not the way experts need it, but for somebody who is just using the system, it may be about right.
Hmmm ... again. IF (repeat IF) she would ask online (and I don't know) ....
As for drivers, etc., I don't think that's likely to become a problem unless by hardware obsolescence; but I'll keep it in mind next time I have somebody build her a new machine. (I don't speak hardware myself.)
I install lots of apps on her machine for me to use on occasion (not only for troubleshooting); but I don't think she even looks at most of what I put on her panel -- like the workspace switcher, which to me is the Champion Percheron of All Workhorse Apps.
She seems to stick to one or two browsers for news and reference, a gnome-terminal for Alpine, and OpenOffice for her own writing; she'd rather be out hiking or playing golf than sitting indoors.
On the other hand, if I have a really serious problem, something wrong in the kernel, I'd much rather seek help in the Fedora list. There are more true experts floating about in there.
I read you loud and clear. 99 44/100% of the Fedora list (well, close) is over my head; but lots of the regulars are very helpful.
I suppose that once you install the OS, the trouble due to automatic updates from either Ubuntu LTS or Centos/RedHat will be about the same. The trouble will come when she either has to get a new computer or make a major distribution update, eg from Centos 5.5 to Centos 6.0.
I'll hold off till 6.0 is out and quieting down; but that's just now. How important is it to upgrade from x.y to x.(y+1) in general?
If she needs to find Linux help, my *guess* is that she will be more likely to find a teenager who has used Ubuntu than the others.
Actually, she'd likely have an easier time finding an undergrad or grad student. (We have no Tech affiliation, but we live a couple miles from campus. Dunno if that will much affect the issue, though.)
She'd have the same trouble with Windows, the only difference there is that it is easier to find/hire geeks to help on a Windows system.
Our LUG list is nowhere near so active as for instance the ones in Northern Virginia or Silicon Valley, of course; but there seem to be a respectable number of members, year after year. Time was (before we arrived), I'm told, when Tech required Apples; but we replaced OSX with YellowDog and then Fedora.ppc while we had an iBook. Maybe the LUG is full of fellow rebels from fame.
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Alexander Dalloz -
Anne Wilson -
Beartooth -
David G. Mackay -
David Sommerseth -
Frank Cox -
Gordon Messmer -
Guenther Boelter -
John R Pierce -
Les Mikesell -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Paul Heinlein -
Paul Johnson -
Rajagopal Swaminathan -
Scott Robbins