Re: [gentoo-user] General weirdness - a tale of woe.

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

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On Wednesday 27 May 2015 15:16:35 Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 May 2015 09:21:37 Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 7:59 AM, Peter Humphrey <peter@prh.myzen.co.uk>
> 
> wrote:
> > > This is a KDE amd64 system with /usr under / and no initrd.
> > 
> > Just to clarify, is /usr on a separate filesystem, or the same as /?
> > I don't think that is your problem in any case, but it might be
> > relevant.
> 
> I didn't realise I wasn't clear, sorry. It might have been better if I'd
> said usr/ is under /. Anyway, it's not a separate partition.

It was clear to me.  It did a double take after Canek's email and still 
arrived at the same conclusion, but I accept that others read it differently.


> > > ... bunch of KDE stuff
> > 
> > I've had the odd KDE issue along the way, like having extra panels
> > spawning off-screen with notifications showing up in wierd places as a
> > result.  That doesn't sound like your specific problem, but assuming a
> > KDE expert doesn't chime in here you might consider pursuing those
> > questions in a KDE forum/list, or maybe even in the Gentoo forums
> > where there is a section for desktop environments.  Again, assuming
> > somebody doesn't recognize your problem here.
> 
> Since writing, I've found that my fonts have all changed as well. It's
> almost as though something were cruising my home directories and flipping
> bits. And KMail insists on using American English in the composer, despite
> my telling it UK. That may not be new though.
> 
> I'm signed up to the KDE-Linux list already but I see hardly any traffic,
> and I suspect dark things about what happens to posts of mine on it.

Disclaimer:  I am not using the full KDE desktop, but use a few KDE apps with 
an enlightenment desktop.

In the last week or two I noticed an oddity with kdeinit4, which I haven't yet 
been able to explain.  I share it here in case it is related to your problem, 
but even so my setup is different to yours and I have no explanation for it:

When away from base using insecure WiFi I run 'proxychains kdeinit4' to tunnel 
back to a local machine at home and bounce off to the Internet from there.

Suddenly, my (old) Kmail-1.13.7 stopped using the tunnel.  My (new) 
Knode-4.4.11 is also not using the tunnel.  They both just hang not 
establishing a connection whatsoever.  Konsole-2.14.2 is not using the tunnel 
either.

Strangely, Konqueror-4.14.3 *is* using the tunnel as before.  Launching 
konsole directly with 'proxychains konsole' is using the tunnel.  Kmail just 
fails to get anywhere even when invoked directly with proxychains, rather than 
via kdeinit4.

Proxychains was updated a couple of weeks ago and this problem may be related 
to it (I've raised a bug just in case), or it may be that something changed in 
KDE and this is the cause of both of our problems?  


> > > The last thing is that at reboot the RAID-1 volume manager often fails
> > > to start. It says afterwards that it's running, but all the /dev/vg7/*
> > > are absent (that's where the logical volumes live). The file system
> > > root lives on /dev/md5 with metadata < 1.0, while /dev/vg7 has
> > > metadata >1.0. The fact that it happens often but not always suggests
> > > a timing problem to me.
> > 
> > I've sometimes seen this sort of thing with kernel raid autodetection,
> > especially with metadata <1.
> 
> More clarity needed on my part. The file-system root is /dev/md5 which has
> metadata < 1.0. It's found reliably by kernel autodetection. Subsidiary
> partitions are in /dev/md7 which has metadata > 1.0 and lvm2 volumes.
> Here's a bit of fstab:
> 
> /dev/vg7/portage    /usr/portage            ext4  relatime,discard  1 3
> /dev/vg7/packages   /usr/portage/packages   ext4  relatime,discard  1 2
> /dev/vg7/distfiles  /usr/portage/distfiles  ext4  relatime,discard  1 2
> /dev/vg7/local      /usr/local              ext4  relatime,discard  1 2
> 
> It's the detection of md7 that often fails; I've had no trouble with md5.
> 
> Several other directories are in lvm2 volumes in /dev/vg7, but nothing
> that's part of system.
> 
> > I suspect that an initramfs might help
> > you out, assuming the filesystems on that RAID are useful in early
> > boot.  However, openrc and the raid init scripts should do a good job
> > of configuring your raid if your mdadm.conf and such is correct, so if
> > you don't need those filesystems until late in boot I don't think an
> > initramfs will make much of a difference, since it would likely use
> > the exact same userspace tools as openrc already does.  Make sure your
> > mdadm.conf is set up to search all devices that could contain RAID
> > (drive device names can get re-ordered), and it doesn't hurt to put
> > ARRAY lines in mdadm.conf to give it hints.
> 
> Like this?
> ARRAY /dev/md1 devices=/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1
> ARRAY /dev/md5 devices=/dev/sda5,/dev/sdb5
> ARRAY /dev/md7 devices=/dev/sda7,/dev/sdb7

No, I have always used something like:

ARRAY /dev/md7 metadata=1.2 UUID=f9516418:7ef43875:4e922ca1:43796eb1 \ 
name=data_server:0

It may be that the /dev/sdaX takes longer to settle and this causes your 
problem, but I can't tell for sure.


> I've just switched on a few more sensors in gkrellm, and I see Vcor2 at
> 3.00 and +3.3v at 3.34. Is it worth fiddling with those and related
> settings in the BIOS? I've always hesitated to do that, preferring to let
> it sort itself out.

If you haven't O/C'ed it, I'd leave it alone.  However, if the voltage used to 
be something different in the past and is now registering a lower value using 
the same version BIOS firmware, then you could have a failing PSU.  We all 
know that this will inevitably lead to behavioural problems (inc. waving your 
arms around and making noises ...  :-))

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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