[gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alan McKinnon]

Before, I beginning, I need dox, not solutions :-)

I'm having the devil's own time with kdepim after upgrading to 4.6.0.

Apart from the calendar (more on this later), everything seemed fine. 
Several kontact restarts and several reboots later it was still fine. 
Then suddenly kmail decided to throw away all my filters after #11 - 
they simply get removed from kmail2rc silently and the file is 
rewritten when kmail closes. I recreated the filters, and today it 
chucked everything away. Twice. Seriously, I'm now getting hugely 
pissed off. I can add the filters back in from a backup copy, but they 
still get discarded.

Today, kmail hung while accessing my Exchange account over IMAP. The 
folder list showed 100+ unread mails, but none of them were in the 
view pane. Deleting that account and recreating it brought everything 
back.

The calendar in korganizer just does not work. Period. It is empty. 
But all the todos in it are listed in the Kontact summary view! An 
invite is displayed as raw ical data, missing the usual Accept|Reject|
etc links. And the calendar is apparently read-only: right-click on a 
time-slot gives a greyed-out context menu so I can't select "Add 
event"

My pim config has come a long ways, from somewhere early in the 3-
series and just got updated every time. I tried a kdepim-4.6 beta a 
while ago but that was not a happy experience so went back to 4.4, and 
am now back at 4.6. I strongly suspect a very unhappy outdated config, 
but the apps themselves are not helping to nail it down.

There's nothing in .xsession-errors that gives a clue, nothing on the 
console with the appropriate kdebug options set, and lots of google 
searches have not revealed any kind of config validation script.

If any of you fine folks can point me at a link containing useful 
debugging techniques for kdepim, this here crotchy old sysadmin will 
be eternally grateful. I might even DHL some cookies as a token of 
gratitude :-)


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Mick]

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On Tuesday 21 Jun 2011 00:40:47 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Before, I beginning, I need dox, not solutions :-)
> 
> I'm having the devil's own time with kdepim after upgrading to 4.6.0.
> 
> Apart from the calendar (more on this later), everything seemed fine.
> Several kontact restarts and several reboots later it was still fine.
> Then suddenly kmail decided to throw away all my filters after #11 -
> they simply get removed from kmail2rc silently and the file is
> rewritten when kmail closes. I recreated the filters, and today it
> chucked everything away. Twice. Seriously, I'm now getting hugely
> pissed off. I can add the filters back in from a backup copy, but they
> still get discarded.
> 
> Today, kmail hung while accessing my Exchange account over IMAP. The
> folder list showed 100+ unread mails, but none of them were in the
> view pane. Deleting that account and recreating it brought everything
> back.
> 
> The calendar in korganizer just does not work. Period. It is empty.
> But all the todos in it are listed in the Kontact summary view! An
> invite is displayed as raw ical data, missing the usual Accept|Reject|
> etc links. And the calendar is apparently read-only: right-click on a
> time-slot gives a greyed-out context menu so I can't select "Add
> event"
> 
> My pim config has come a long ways, from somewhere early in the 3-
> series and just got updated every time. I tried a kdepim-4.6 beta a
> while ago but that was not a happy experience so went back to 4.4, and
> am now back at 4.6. I strongly suspect a very unhappy outdated config,
> but the apps themselves are not helping to nail it down.
> 
> There's nothing in .xsession-errors that gives a clue, nothing on the
> console with the appropriate kdebug options set, and lots of google
> searches have not revealed any kind of config validation script.
> 
> If any of you fine folks can point me at a link containing useful
> debugging techniques for kdepim, this here crotchy old sysadmin will
> be eternally grateful. I might even DHL some cookies as a token of
> gratitude :-)

Are you sure that your mysql has not gone awry?

I'm running KDE4.6.3 stable and Kmail 1.12.7 for a couple of weeks now on 
three machines and I have not noticed any problems.  On two of them I use 
sqlite3.  I am not using Kontact/Calendar or other kdepim apps much - only 
when I want to look at a date - with no problems so far.

If anything kde4.6 is more stable here than kde4.4!

Are your akonadi logs clear of any errors?  Your mysql logs?

If you are using kdm (instead of startx) and mysql happens to fail at the 
start you are probably none the wiser about it, because kdm has kicked in by 
then and you are looking at a login screen.  Something like this could screw 
things up.

Also, if you forget to run mysql_upgrade after you updated/upgraded mysql 
things could break with it.

If none of the above are the causes then it might be some esoteric setting in 
your config files that does not translate across to the latest versions - but 
that seems unlikely.  I would have thought that it would be simply ignored, 
rather than screw up your email accounts/calendar.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alex Schuster]

Alan McKinnon writes:

> I'm having the devil's own time with kdepim after upgrading to 4.6.0.

Me too. But I still did not have any time to investigate this, so I live
without kmail for the moment. Thunderbird also sucks big time, but I
just live with it. I thought about downgrading the whole KDEPIM stuff
again, but some day I will have to do the upgrade, and the problems will
be back.

Oh my. I feared this would happen, and the more I read that the upgrade
process would be really really easy, the more I feared for it. Somehow I
just knew it wouldn't work, and at least I was right.

Um, this does not really answer your question. I know.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Michael Schreckenbauer]

Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011, 01:40:47 schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> Today, kmail hung while accessing my Exchange account over IMAP. The
> folder list showed 100+ unread mails, but none of them were in the
> view pane. Deleting that account and recreating it brought everything
> back.

I was hitten by this also. Recreating the account "fixed" it for me, as it did 
for you. I tried hard to find an explanation, why this happened, but had no 
success at all. If you are more lucky, please post your findings here.

Michael

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Michael Schreckenbauer]

Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011, 07:12:30 schrieb Mick:
> I'm running KDE4.6.3 stable and Kmail 1.12.7

kdepim-4.6.0 includes kmail 2.1.0. Try this one, if you're brave. But you have 
been warned :)

Michael

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 21 June 2011 21:16:14 Michael Schreckenbauer wrote:
> Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011, 01:40:47 schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> > Today, kmail hung while accessing my Exchange account over IMAP.
> > The folder list showed 100+ unread mails, but none of them were
> > in the view pane. Deleting that account and recreating it
> > brought everything back.
> 
> I was hitten by this also. Recreating the account "fixed" it for me,
> as it did for you. I tried hard to find an explanation, why this
> happened, but had no success at all. If you are more lucky, please
> post your findings here.

Sadly,

I have not been able to accomplish anything constructive with 
kdepim-4.6.0

I have concluded that the software is a piece of shit and that the dev 
team are not able to deliver a useable product to their market.

I'm going to look at claws now.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Mick]

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On Wednesday 22 Jun 2011 08:26:54 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Tuesday 21 June 2011 21:16:14 Michael Schreckenbauer wrote:
> > Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011, 01:40:47 schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> > > Today, kmail hung while accessing my Exchange account over IMAP.
> > > The folder list showed 100+ unread mails, but none of them were
> > > in the view pane. Deleting that account and recreating it
> > > brought everything back.
> > 
> > I was hitten by this also. Recreating the account "fixed" it for me,
> > as it did for you. I tried hard to find an explanation, why this
> > happened, but had no success at all. If you are more lucky, please
> > post your findings here.
> 
> Sadly,
> 
> I have not been able to accomplish anything constructive with
> kdepim-4.6.0
> 
> I have concluded that the software is a piece of shit and that the dev
> team are not able to deliver a useable product to their market.
> 
> I'm going to look at claws now.

Been through that cycle once already.  :(

I gave up when I realised that I was spending too much time trying to make 
Claws behave like ... Kmail!  O_O

Anyway, I noticed that a KDE machine which is using MySQL as a backend for 
Akonadi is not showing any contacts in its address book.  All other boxen use 
sqlite3 instead and they do not seem to have any noticeable problems.

Could this be a MySQL issue?

PS.  All of these PCs run stable KDE.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 22 June 2011 13:05:31 Mick did opine thusly:
> On Wednesday 22 Jun 2011 08:26:54 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Tuesday 21 June 2011 21:16:14 Michael Schreckenbauer wrote:
> > > Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011, 01:40:47 schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> > > > Today, kmail hung while accessing my Exchange account
> > > > over IMAP. The folder list showed 100+ unread mails,
> > > > but none of them were in the view pane. Deleting that
> > > > account and recreating it brought everything back.
> > > 
> > > I was hitten by this also. Recreating the account "fixed" it
> > > for me, as it did for you. I tried hard to find an
> > > explanation, why this happened, but had no success at all.
> > > If you are more lucky, please post your findings here.
> > 
> > Sadly,
> > 
> > I have not been able to accomplish anything constructive with
> > kdepim-4.6.0
> > 
> > I have concluded that the software is a piece of shit and that
> > the dev team are not able to deliver a useable product to their
> > market.
> > 
> > I'm going to look at claws now.
> 
> Been through that cycle once already.  :(
> 
> I gave up when I realised that I was spending too much time trying
> to make Claws behave like ... Kmail!  O_O
> 
> Anyway, I noticed that a KDE machine which is using MySQL as a
> backend for Akonadi is not showing any contacts in its address
> book.  All other boxen use sqlite3 instead and they do not seem to
> have any noticeable problems.
> 
> Could this be a MySQL issue?
> 
> PS.  All of these PCs run stable KDE.

A while ago I eventually got my contacts back. I forget the actual 
cause now, but I strongly suspect it involved tinkering with mysql, 
and this may have broken in turn my calendar.

I'm going to do one last test before consigning kdepim to the 
trashbin: migrate everything to a new user and start with a default 
config. If it works, I can migrate the data at my leisure.

But now, stupid question incoming:

How you you get akonadi to use sqlite as the backend? There's no, erm, 
gui tickbox for that.




-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Mick]

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On Wednesday 22 Jun 2011 13:16:05 you wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 June 2011 13:05:31 Mick did opine thusly:

> > Anyway, I noticed that a KDE machine which is using MySQL as a
> > backend for Akonadi is not showing any contacts in its address
> > book.  All other boxen use sqlite3 instead and they do not seem to
> > have any noticeable problems.
> > 
> > Could this be a MySQL issue?
> > 
> > PS.  All of these PCs run stable KDE.
> 
> A while ago I eventually got my contacts back. I forget the actual
> cause now, but I strongly suspect it involved tinkering with mysql,
> and this may have broken in turn my calendar.
> 
> I'm going to do one last test before consigning kdepim to the
> trashbin: migrate everything to a new user and start with a default
> config. If it works, I can migrate the data at my leisure.
> 
> But now, stupid question incoming:
> 
> How you you get akonadi to use sqlite as the backend? There's no, erm,
> gui tickbox for that.

Yes, that's right, no GUI box to tick because the KDE devs did not like to 
support sqlite (some of the things they wanted to do were not straight forward 
under sqlite).

The way I did it was to set it up manually in 
~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc.  This old thread describes how I went about 
it:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/224044


This is what my akonadiserverrc looks like today:
================================================
[%General]
Driver=QSQLITE
SizeThreshold=4096
ExternalPayload=false

[QSQLITE]
Name=/home/michael/.local/share/akonadi/akonadi.db
Host=
User=
Password=
Options=
StartServer=false

[Debug]
Tracer=null
================================================

No MYSQL section in there at all.

However, I must issue a Health Warning here.  I never had mysql on this 
machine and did not have to migrate my PIM resources from mysql to sqlite.  So 
YMMV.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
> But now, stupid question incoming:
>
>    

Now you know how I feel sometimes.  lol

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 22 June 2011 14:16:05 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> A while ago I eventually got my contacts back. I forget the actual 
> cause now, but I strongly suspect it involved tinkering with mysql, 
> and this may have broken in turn my calendar.
> 
> I'm going to do one last test before consigning kdepim to the 
> trashbin: migrate everything to a new user and start with a default 
> config. If it works, I can migrate the data at my leisure.

I swear, I am about to go postal and shoot someone. This issue with 
the calendar not being visible is fixed.

Wanna know what it was?

Calendar -> Settings -> Sidebar lists 4 things

Show Date Navigator
Show To-do View
Show Item Viewer
Show Calendar Manager

That's weird, I see 4 ticks and 2 panes in the left sidebar. Let me 
hover for just a second.... Oh look, I can drag this divider bar. And 
fuck me sideways with a clue by 9 if I now don't see three calendar 
resources (the same three I set up in System Settings) and none of 
them have a tick. Tick all three. Oh but fuck me sideways again 
there's all my calendar items. Right click -> Add and I can make new 
ones. Double click an entry I can edit it.

This has been a huge issue for 4 months since the first semi-usable 
kdepim betas were out. The default display after migration to kmail2 
was to collapse the Manager and To-Do panes to 0 pixels as The To-Do 
is positioned somewhere else in the kmail1 window layout and the 
Manager pane does not exist.

Are there any visible clues in the divider to indicate the pane is 
collapsed to 0 pixels? No of course not! Don't be silly now!! Offer 
visible clues to the users? Surely you jest!!! Nonononono, we won't 
colour a collapsed divider differently, WE WILL TAKE IT AWAY ENTIRELY 
LEAVING JUST THE REGULAR PANES THAT ARE LEFT AND DELETE ALL CLUES 
THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE THERE AND HIDDEN. But we will put a pretty 
pulsating glowing blue border around remaining panes for your 
enjoyment and delight when you hover over them?

And did I mention that there is zero clues whatsoever in the settings 
dialog that these panes even exist at all? First page last tab is 
"Calendars" (it duplicates SystemSettings). Something that would be 
real nice right there is a column for Enabled/Disabled. Fancy that, 
give the user an alternate way to see stuff that makes the thing cease 
to work at all.

Sorry for the rant and language, this has beena  major clusterfuck for 
me. And where I come from, that kind of monumental cock-up in a QA'ed 
release gets you fired. Or at least busted down to maintenance coder. 
Grrrrrrr...



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Indi]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 04:36:14PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 June 2011 14:16:05 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > A while ago I eventually got my contacts back. I forget the actual 
> > cause now, but I strongly suspect it involved tinkering with mysql, 
> > and this may have broken in turn my calendar.
> > 
> > I'm going to do one last test before consigning kdepim to the 
> > trashbin: migrate everything to a new user and start with a default 
> > config. If it works, I can migrate the data at my leisure.
> 
> I swear, I am about to go postal and shoot someone. This issue with 
> the calendar not being visible is fixed.
> 
> Wanna know what it was?
> 
> Calendar -> Settings -> Sidebar lists 4 things
> 
> Show Date Navigator
> Show To-do View
> Show Item Viewer
> Show Calendar Manager
> 
> That's weird, I see 4 ticks and 2 panes in the left sidebar. Let me 
> hover for just a second.... Oh look, I can drag this divider bar. And 
> fuck me sideways with a clue by 9 if I now don't see three calendar 
> resources (the same three I set up in System Settings) and none of 
> them have a tick. Tick all three. Oh but fuck me sideways again 
> there's all my calendar items. Right click -> Add and I can make new 
> ones. Double click an entry I can edit it.
> 
> This has been a huge issue for 4 months since the first semi-usable 
> kdepim betas were out. The default display after migration to kmail2 
> was to collapse the Manager and To-Do panes to 0 pixels as The To-Do 
> is positioned somewhere else in the kmail1 window layout and the 
> Manager pane does not exist.
> 
> Are there any visible clues in the divider to indicate the pane is 
> collapsed to 0 pixels? No of course not! Don't be silly now!! Offer 
> visible clues to the users? Surely you jest!!! Nonononono, we won't 
> colour a collapsed divider differently, WE WILL TAKE IT AWAY ENTIRELY 
> LEAVING JUST THE REGULAR PANES THAT ARE LEFT AND DELETE ALL CLUES 
> THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE THERE AND HIDDEN. But we will put a pretty 
> pulsating glowing blue border around remaining panes for your 
> enjoyment and delight when you hover over them?
> 
> And did I mention that there is zero clues whatsoever in the settings 
> dialog that these panes even exist at all? First page last tab is 
> "Calendars" (it duplicates SystemSettings). Something that would be 
> real nice right there is a column for Enabled/Disabled. Fancy that, 
> give the user an alternate way to see stuff that makes the thing cease 
> to work at all.
> 
> Sorry for the rant and language, this has beena  major clusterfuck for 
> me. And where I come from, that kind of monumental cock-up in a QA'ed 
> release gets you fired. Or at least busted down to maintenance coder. 
> Grrrrrrr...
> 

Ha, so it's true then: using my blackberry as a PDA (sync'd to google 
calendar) and not bothering with that stuff on my computer anymore may 
indeed have saved lives. I suspected as much. :)

Sorry, not to make light of your predicament. I do sympathize.

-- 
caveat utilitor 
♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ 

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 22 June 2011 08:14:06 Dale did opine thusly:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > But now, stupid question incoming:
> Now you know how I feel sometimes.  lol

bwaahahahaha :-)

Yes Dale, I surely do know how you feel :-)


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 22 June 2011 11:23:15 Indi did opine thusly:
> > Sorry for the rant and language, this has beena  major
> > clusterfuck for  me. And where I come from, that kind of
> > monumental cock-up in a QA'ed release gets you fired. Or at
> > least busted down to maintenance coder. Grrrrrrr...
> >
> > 
> 
> Ha, so it's true then: using my blackberry as a PDA (sync'd to
> google  calendar) and not bothering with that stuff on my computer
> anymore may indeed have saved lives. I suspected as much.

Android Android Android Android rulz

I fear for the desktop, I really do. I class myself as a decent KDE 
user who often reads the code instead of the docs, If I can't figure 
out how to use the app, what chance do regular users stand?

I look out over the nearby Support desk and watch the flunkies with 
Win7. I see a very bright future indeed for Android

> Sorry, not to make light of your predicament. I do sympathize.

Ah no worries, we'll laugh about it soon enough. Halfway there already 
- spilt milk and all that


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
> Sorry for the rant and language, this has beena  major clusterfuck for
> me. And where I come from, that kind of monumental cock-up in a QA'ed
> release gets you fired. Or at least busted down to maintenance coder.
> Grrrrrrr...
>
>    

Pissed off much?  Just curious.  I couldn't tell for sure.  ROFLMBO

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 22 June 2011 10:44:43 Dale did opine thusly:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > Sorry for the rant and language, this has beena  major
> > clusterfuck for me. And where I come from, that kind of
> > monumental cock-up in a QA'ed release gets you fired. Or at
> > least busted down to maintenance coder. Grrrrrrr...
> 
> Pissed off much?  Just curious.  I couldn't tell for sure.  ROFLMBO

Nah, not so much anymore.

But all this was mild compared to what I did yesterday. You know that 
notice on the console when you get sudo wrong? It says the incident 
"will be reported"

OK. But to whom? On my shell boxes it gets reported to me. And 
yesterday this is what it said:

<host> : Jun 21 11:55:25 : <user> : 1 incorrect password attempt ; 
TTY=pts/194 ; PWD=/some/path ; USER=root ; COMMAND=init 6

500 concurrent sessions on that box is routine, it's a major gateway 
server. That poor user has not recovered yet.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Indi]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 05:37:49PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 June 2011 11:23:15 Indi did opine thusly:
> > 
> > Ha, so it's true then: using my blackberry as a PDA (sync'd to
> > google  calendar) and not bothering with that stuff on my computer
> > anymore may indeed have saved lives. I suspected as much.
> 
> Android Android Android Android rulz
>

The cyanogenmod looks quite interesting, at some point I may get 
an android phome just to fool with that.

> I fear for the desktop, I really do. I class myself as a decent KDE 
> user who often reads the code instead of the docs, If I can't figure 
> out how to use the app, what chance do regular users stand?
> 

Erm, no comment. :P
My views of the desktop are unpopular here, LOL.
Yet I go *years* without having to make big changes to my wm configs, 
and everything "just works" for me. 

> I look out over the nearby Support desk and watch the flunkies with 
> Win7. I see a very bright future indeed for Android
> 

And a dim one for wince7. I don't think it matter to ms though.
In spite of all the swagger wince7 is just a placeholder until 
8 arrives. *That* will probably their Hindenburg. :)

-- 
caveat utilitor 
♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ 

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 22 June 2011 18:02:39 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> But all this was mild compared to what I did yesterday. You know that
> notice on the console when you get sudo wrong? It says the incident
> "will be reported"
> 
> OK. But to whom? On my shell boxes it gets reported to me. And
> yesterday this is what it said:
> 
> <host> : Jun 21 11:55:25 : <user> : 1 incorrect password attempt ;
> TTY=pts/194 ; PWD=/some/path ; USER=root ; COMMAND=init 6
> 
> 500 concurrent sessions on that box is routine, it's a major gateway
> server. That poor user has not recovered yet.

You mean, he (or she) will eventually recover?

Am curious though, why the attempt for a reboot?

-- 
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Dale]

Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 June 2011 18:02:39 Alan McKinnon wrote:
>    
>> But all this was mild compared to what I did yesterday. You know that
>> notice on the console when you get sudo wrong? It says the incident
>> "will be reported"
>>
>> OK. But to whom? On my shell boxes it gets reported to me. And
>> yesterday this is what it said:
>>
>> <host>  : Jun 21 11:55:25 :<user>  : 1 incorrect password attempt ;
>> TTY=pts/194 ; PWD=/some/path ; USER=root ; COMMAND=init 6
>>
>> 500 concurrent sessions on that box is routine, it's a major gateway
>> server. That poor user has not recovered yet.
>>      
> You mean, he (or she) will eventually recover?
>
> Am curious though, why the attempt for a reboot?
>
>    

I was curious about that too.  I don't use sudo, I'm the only geek in 
the chair here, but I don't think I would want to reboot just because my 
typing was off.

Given what Alan runs and the amount of people it affects, I'm surprised 
it is set up that way.  Question.  You changed that behavior yet Alan?

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Thursday 23 June 2011 05:53:15 Dale wrote:
> Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> > On Wednesday 22 June 2011 18:02:39 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> >> But all this was mild compared to what I did yesterday. You know that
> >> notice on the console when you get sudo wrong? It says the incident
> >> "will be reported"
> >> 
> >> OK. But to whom? On my shell boxes it gets reported to me. And
> >> yesterday this is what it said:
> >> 
> >> <host>  : Jun 21 11:55:25 :<user>  : 1 incorrect password attempt ;
> >> TTY=pts/194 ; PWD=/some/path ; USER=root ; COMMAND=init 6
> >> 
> >> 500 concurrent sessions on that box is routine, it's a major gateway
> >> server. That poor user has not recovered yet.
> > 
> > You mean, he (or she) will eventually recover?
> > 
> > Am curious though, why the attempt for a reboot?
> 
> I was curious about that too.  I don't use sudo, I'm the only geek in
> the chair here, but I don't think I would want to reboot just because my
> typing was off.

I do use sudo for some scripts as I don't want the script to have root-access 
to some of the servers and I definitely don't want to add suid-bits to random 
programs.

At my home, I'm not the only one who knows his/her way around computers. But 
neither of us would consider it a good idea to simply reboot a machine.

> Given what Alan runs and the amount of people it affects, I'm surprised
> it is set up that way.  Question.  You changed that behavior yet Alan?

I'm guessing Alan got that because it's not allowed with sudo. If it was, the 
password-failure wouldn't have been listed.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 23 June 2011 10:22:47 Joost Roeleveld did opine thusly:
> On Wednesday 22 June 2011 18:02:39 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > But all this was mild compared to what I did yesterday. You know
> > that notice on the console when you get sudo wrong? It says the
> > incident "will be reported"
> > 
> > OK. But to whom? On my shell boxes it gets reported to me. And
> > yesterday this is what it said:
> > 
> > <host> : Jun 21 11:55:25 : <user> : 1 incorrect password attempt
> > ; TTY=pts/194 ; PWD=/some/path ; USER=root ; COMMAND=init 6
> > 
> > 500 concurrent sessions on that box is routine, it's a major
> > gateway server. That poor user has not recovered yet.
> 
> You mean, he (or she) will eventually recover?
> 
> Am curious though, why the attempt for a reboot?

It happens about once a week on average - most of those users have 
multiple telnet sessions open from the Linux machine to Cisco routers.

Every time so far they really do want to run sudo, but type it into 
the wrong terminal. 

Or worse, they use PuTTY and right-click - PuTTY deals with the cut 
buffer very differently to the norm on Windows, and right-click 
doesn't give the usual context menu - by default it's the paste 
function


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] kdepim-4.6.0 woes

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 23 June 2011 13:36:11 Joost Roeleveld did opine thusly:
> On Thursday 23 June 2011 05:53:15 Dale wrote:
> > Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 22 June 2011 18:02:39 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > >> But all this was mild compared to what I did yesterday.
> > >> You know that notice on the console when you get sudo
> > >> wrong? It says the incident "will be reported"
> > >> 
> > >> OK. But to whom? On my shell boxes it gets reported to me.
> > >> And
> > >> yesterday this is what it said:
> > >> 
> > >> <host>  : Jun 21 11:55:25 :<user>  : 1 incorrect password
> > >> attempt ; TTY=pts/194 ; PWD=/some/path ; USER=root ;
> > >> COMMAND=init 6
> > >> 
> > >> 500 concurrent sessions on that box is routine, it's a
> > >> major gateway server. That poor user has not recovered
> > >> yet.
> > > 
> > > You mean, he (or she) will eventually recover?
> > > 
> > > Am curious though, why the attempt for a reboot?
> > 
> > I was curious about that too.  I don't use sudo, I'm the only
> > geek in the chair here, but I don't think I would want to
> > reboot just because my typing was off.
> 
> I do use sudo for some scripts as I don't want the script to have
> root-access to some of the servers and I definitely don't want to
> add suid-bits to random programs.
> 
> At my home, I'm not the only one who knows his/her way around
> computers. But neither of us would consider it a good idea to
> simply reboot a machine.
> 
> > Given what Alan runs and the amount of people it affects, I'm
> > surprised it is set up that way.  Question.  You changed that
> > behavior yet Alan?
> 
> I'm guessing Alan got that because it's not allowed with sudo. If it
> was, the password-failure wouldn't have been listed.

On a single user box, sudo is often a pain in the butt (witness the 
amount of whinging that goes on with Ubuntu users), so su is probably 
much better for that.

On a large multi-user corporate shell box, you can't avoid needing 
fine-grained access control and elevated privileges. A choice between 
running as user alan or root just doesn't cut it, neither does suid. I 
need to be able to let the senior Cisco jockeys run a router 
configurator app as the networkadmin role, or let the tape backup 
fellows run the backup agent as root, without giving them the root 
password.

There's 4 of us in the team, when one resigns it takes all day to 
change the root passwords everywhere. With 600 login users it just 
doesn't work at all.

So sudo is absolutely required in this neck of the woods.

Of course the machine didn't reboot - that user isn't in the wheel 
group, so sudo gave him the middle finger. That's not the point - 
/etc/sudoers is there to save my ass, not the user's. The user got the 
wrath treatment because he made the biggest mistake of them all:

He was not paying attention.

:-)




-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com