It's been a long wait but Patrick has just called the current branch as Alpha 1 as the mass rebuilt due to glibc 2.33 has been done in the weekend. In this massive update, more than 1500 packages were rebuilt against latest glibc 2.33 to make sure it doesn't have any regressions. Please note that the new glibc was just released in February 2021, so it's very new. Good news is that based on most users who have just upgraded, the rebuilt works just fine as expected. I personally have upgraded to the latest version on both my desktop and laptop and it worked just fine. It just takes time to complete the upgrade and remove the .new or merge it with your existing configurations.
So what's next? Well it's definitely working towards more bug fixing and making sure there are no regressions on the default installation of Slackware 15.0. You can help by downloading the latest ISO here and install it on your machine, either via VM or in bare metal and report it to the LQ where Patrick and most of the dev team are there to monitor.
There are still some scheduled upgrades in the future, but they will have to wait until the mass rebuilt is done today and give time for users to test this snapshots. If you are curious, just try to install and use slackware-current now. In my opinion, it's very stable even on daily usage.
I never used XFCE before, but i'm curious about this lightweight desktop environment since it's included in Slackware and has just released it's latest release 4.16. The new version drop GTK+2 support and fully migrated to the newer GTK+3. The announcement of XFCE 4.16 showed that this is a major upgrade both in the backend and also in the front-end (UI/visual). They now have the cool icons, many new APIs, support for fractional scaling, and many more.
So i tested to run the new XFCE 4.16 from my desktop at home and here's the default desktop i got
It runs very fast and it's very minimalistic, which i love since i don't need the fancy things on my desktop or any of my machine (i still like KDE/Plasma 5 even though it's full of fancy things).
Big thanks for Robby Workman for his work on packaging XFCE 4.16 so Patrick can smoothly include it on Slackware-Current.
Linus just announced the next LTS kernel 5.10 last week and 24 hours later, the first point release was released by Greg to revert 2 commits that caused problems, but in less than a week after, it landed straight into Slackware-Current main tree without going into /testing first. So we have a final confirmation that next Slackware release (15.0) will surely use the latest LTS kernel release which will be supported up to 5 years (which will be EOL around 2026).
Up to this point, NVidia hasn't released any update to their legacy drivers, but that didn't stop me to push the upgrades knowing that there's a patch to make the current Legacy driver works with 5.10. I have pushed the patches onto my SlackHacks repository and i have tested it before posting it here. In fact, i'm now running Slackware Linux with Kernel 5.10.1
uname -a Linux slack64.slackie.org 5.10.1 #1 SMP Sat Dec 19 17:07:30 CST 2020 x86_64 AMD Ryzen 5 1600X Six-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
One notable differences with previous patch was that it now requires me to run the nvidia-installer with --no-unified-memory parameter or else it would failed to build nvidia-uvm.ko modules. I suspect that this has to do with CUDA things and i don't have it installed on my machine. If you do have CUDA installed, you can try to remove this parameter and see if it works on your machine.
Hopefully this patch can help users who are still stuck with legacy drivers like me :)
First for installation terraform, this need a go lang as requirements to built from source. Before to installation, i will explain a little about terraform. Terraform is tools for building, changing and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform can manage a thousand cloud servers like AWS, GCP or azure. With terraform you can save amount of time for deploying the services, build infrastructure etc.
To setup terraform, you need install go lang as dependencies so you can built the terraform in slackware linux. You can built go lang from slackbuilds template or compile manually. Here the links for installation from slackbuilds:
After the big merge (tm) event, i respun two new fresh VM based on latest update on -current and rebuilt all packages for MATE and Cinnamon to see whether there's a breakage or not and it turns out it works very well for MATE. You can use the same script to rebuilt all the packages if it's broken due to the big update.
As for Cinnamon, i'm using this good chance to push the updates for Cinnamon 4.8.x that has been pushed by upstream developers. I had prepared for this launch when vtown was introduced few weeks ago, but i'm stuck at elogind that didn't get pushed to main tree since it's one of the main dependency for Cinnamon packages besides other things. I'm really glad that it was finally pushed and i can push my changes for Cinnamon 4.8 and provide early preview for Cinnamon 4.8 for Slackware-Current users.
Binary packages has been uploaded to slackware.uk (Thanks Tadgy) as usual and master branch has been updated as well with the latest commits.
Let me know if you find any issues running the script or the binaries.
This is the day!!! This is the Big Merge (tm) day of Plasma 5 and newer XFCE from /testing into main branch. This is also the day of Qt4 and ConsoleKit2 removal from Slackware since it has been replaced by Qt5 and elogind. It took time for Patrick to push all these changes but finally all is in the main tree now and it's time to polish this tree for best release ever of Slackware 15.0.
Since there are a lot of changes (new, removed, upgraded, rebuilt) entries in the changelog, pay attention in the new and removed parts since you don't want to miss them.
LQ community has done a great job of submitting suggestions, testing (and found broken packages), and sending patches to Patrick and we want more of those positive suggestions/comments to improve the stability of Slackware.
I'm looking forward for an Alpha/Beta state of Slackware 15.0 once Pat is finished with some more cleanups after this big merge. Stay tunes and stay safe!!!
It's Thanksgiving day in the US and Patrick gives a very nice gift to every Slackware users which he posted on his Patreon page. He pushed GNOME-related stacks to main tree (including UPower 0.99.x) and XFCE stack to vtown.
Please note that this update will affect those who are using MSB and CSB projects as some of the dependencies are now part of the main tree, so before upgrading, it would be good idea to remove them first.
For MATE users, here's the list of packages you need to remove:
glade
libwnck3
gtksourceview3
Since UPower has been bumped, i have the chance to bump mate-power-manager to 1.24.x release as well since it requires newer UPower which was the only blocker to bump this package. With this update, all MATE packages are now in 1.24.x release.
For Cinnamon users, here's the list of packages you need to remove:
Due to COVID-19 outbreak, many activities are switched to home activities and this affect my kinds and me personally. All schools activities and assignments were given online and it must be done at home and submitted back on the learning management system used. One of the task given was to draw and i realize it's not that easy to draw using a mouse and keyboard for my daughter, so i was thinking of buying a new drawing tablet.
I have been looking for some brands and making sure that it should work on my Slackware desktop and finally yesterday, i bought a new Graphic Drawing Tablet Huion Inspiron H430P from local dealer in Jakarta. It's considered a nice tablet for beginners and i'm not trying to be a professional artist, so this cheap tablet should be fine for me.
Today this tablet arrived and i started to check whether it's working out of the box under Slackware. I tried to connect the device to my computer and i can see that it has been detected by latest kernel in Slackware-Current (5.4.30 at this time of writing) and xorg libinput drivers. The pen (which is battery-free) works out of the box and i can instantly draw things using Krita or GIMP.
Unfortunately the pen lack of pressure sensitivity feature if we are using the driver provided by the Linux kernel. The four buttons on the tablet itself is also not working. So i tried to make a SlackBuild script to package a newer version of driver for tablets made by Digimend from this project. The project provides newer version of drivers compared to the one available in the Linux Kernel. So i installed the package and reboot the computer or you can simply reload the modules by using this command:
The newer driver provides better support and it enables us to add more custom configuration to the tablet by using X.Org driver or Wacom driver.
Before you proceed, make sure your tablet is detected by xinput:xinput --list⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳ Microsoft Wired Keyboard 600 id=9 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳ HUION Huion Tablet Pen stylus id=10 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳ HUION Huion Tablet Pad pad id=11 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳ HUION Huion Tablet Touch Ring pad id=12 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳ HUION Huion Tablet Dial id=13 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳ Logitech USB Optical Mouse id=14 [slave pointer (2)]⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)] ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Microsoft Wired Keyboard 600 id=8 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Microsoft Wired Keyboard 600 id=15 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ HUION Huion Tablet Dial
Next we need to make a new X11 custom rule for this device. I created a new file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-huion.conf:# Huion tablets Section "InputClass" Identifier "Huion class" MatchProduct "TABLET" MatchIsTablet "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Driver "wacom" EndSection
Reboot the computer and check whether your tablet is visible using this command:
xsetwacom --list
HUION Huion Tablet Pen stylus id: 10 type: STYLUS HUION Huion Tablet Pad pad id: 11 type: PAD HUION Huion Tablet Touch Ring pad id: 12 type: PAD
As you can see, the device is now configurable via Wacom driver. Next i want to make a new configuration for my tablet as follows:- Set the device mapping- Set the screensize- Set the ration between device:screensize- Set 4 buttons: * Button 1: color picker * Button 2: resize brush size * Button 3: toggle erase mode on/off * Button 4: undo
Next i create a new file called huion and save it under /usr/bin: #! /bin/bash
Give execute permission and run this script when you start your desktop. In MATE, you can easily do this by opening System > Preferences > Personal > Startup Applications menu. Make a new entry by clicking on Add button and set the values as follows. This will ensure that the script will be executed when you logged in to your MATE desktop.
I'm planning to submit the SlackBuild to SBo soon so it can be used by other people as well. If you upgrade your kernel, you will need to re-ran the SlackBuild script so that it will place the modules into the correct kernel version used by your machine.
Update (Nov 2020): digimend-kernel-drivers v10 and newer will change the identifier from HUION Huion Tablet Pen stylus
into HUION Huion Tablet stylus (removing the "Pen") so you need to adjust the "tabletstylus".
Hey all, it's been a while since i posted here, but today there's a big update that i want to share to all Slackware users who have waited for this to happen and this is one of the remaining part of my wishlist and that is the one and only, Plasma 5!!!
Yes, Patrick has finally decided to push Plasma 5 after coming with teaser in previous updates. At this moment, the Plasma 5 packages are still in /testing directory, but i'm guessing it won't be long until it's merged into the main tree along with other updates. I have downloaded the new Plasma 5 packages at my current desktop at home, but didn't have time to upgrade it this morning so i did test the upgrade on my workstation at the office first and once i confirmed it worked well, i perform the upgrade on my laptop which i used to write this post.
Here's how i perform the upgrade
slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade-all (to upgrade poppler and libinput first)
slackpkg remove kde (to remove all KDE 4 packages)
So for your information, the Plasma 5 that were added today consists of KDE Applications 20.08.2, Framework 5.75.0, and Plasma 5.20.2. This is the latest update from KDE developers per October 2020.
So far, i don't see any major issues with the new Plasma 5, but it will require more extensive testing to discover issues. I do wish Patrick can keep distributing digiKam. It's a nice application that probably needed by many graphic designers or people that do digital manipulations using digital cameras.
This is the current Plasma 5 screenshot taken from System Settings on my laptop
To prevent slackpkg to revert back to the original KDE 4, put this into your /etc/slackpkg/blacklist until Plasma 5 gets added into main tree: [0-9]_vtown_[0-9]
I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird as my default mail client application both at home, work, and also on my laptop. It has been working great so far and with the help of Enigmail, it's super easy to send encrypted/signed email messages and also to verify them.
With the latest release of Thunderbird 78, things will change a bit. The new Thunderbird 78 will be a new ESR release and it will be full of new features. However, this new release also comes with a significant changes, which is the removal of the old XUL overlays and moving to support MailExtensions and MailExtension Experiments only. This will hugely impact add-ons, including Enigmail. Developers working on add-ons will have to rewrite some or most of their code in order to work with the new technology.
Other changes coming to Thunderbird is the out-of-the-box support for OpenPGP and End-to-End Encryption by default without using any third party add-ons. It has been requested for so long and finally it made it in this release. However, this feature will not be using GnuPG as the backend just like Enigmail, but they will rely on RNP library. Alas, in this initial version, it will be less feature than what we have seen in Enigmail, but they are working on other areas as the development goes.
So what is going to happen with Enigmail development? They will cease support for Thunderbird, but the developer of Enigmail has agreed to move forward and help the migration. The work will be ready by the time Thunderbird 78.2 is released in coming months, so if you are currently using Thunderbird 68.10.0 in production environment, DO NOT UPGRADE to 78.0 and WAIT FOR 78.2 INSTEAD!!! If you want to do the initial test on non-production environment, you can try to use the steps from this Wiki.
Slackware community is very active nowadays, and that's for a reason. They are waiting for the big update coming to Slackware, which is the new Plasma 5 and XFCE. It has been requested for so long after -current start moving, but Pat hasn't made the change until 2020 when big basic components such as Qt5 went in and many followed up.
There were some distractions along the way, such as PAM taking some time to test (it was initially planned for a day or two in testing/), but at the end it was a smooth migration. I barely notice any changes since all the changes happening under the hood and it works well both in my MATE and Cinnamon project (basically for Cinnamon since i already have PAM installed, but not as part of the core packages. It just sit there as a requirement for Cinnamon-screensaver).
For next Plasma 5 and XFCE, there are some another changes needed for it to go smoothly and that's UPower and elogind. Slackware 14.2 up to -current is still using the old UPower which is already deprecated for some time, but since it's related to many other libraries/applications, Pat kept them until it's time to move on with the rest of the projects and i believe it's time. Newer UPower is needed by Plasma 5, XFCE, mate-power-manager 1.24 (it's still at 1.22 for now due to this constraints) and better battery support in Cinnamon.
The other thing is the need of replacing ConsoleKit2 with elogind. CK2 has been inactive for 3 years and i don't see any future development on the project, so we can't rely on it anymore, while Plasma 5 and others need the session management tool which was initially provided by systemd's logind. As Slackware isn't going to ship systemd anyway, the idea is to use elogind, another fork of systemd that focus on logind module only.
Since CK2 is part of the core packages and deals with session management, it must be taken care with caution or else people would ended up getting locked up from their own machine. So Patrick (and alienBOB initially) made some preparations that you can see in the -current ChangeLogs:
a/sysvinit-scripts-2.1-noarch-34.txz: Rebuilt. rc.M: check for elogind first so that we can ignore a stale CK2 package.
x/xinit-1.4.1-x86_64-2.txz: Rebuilt. When using elogind, start the session on the current console. Thanks to alienBOB.
a/sysvinit-scripts-2.1-noarch-33.txz: Rebuilt. rc.M: add support for elogind. Thanks to alienBOB.a/util-linux-2.35.2-x86_64-3.txz: Rebuilt. /etc/pam.d/login: support pam_elogind.so. Thanks to alienBOB.
We should be seeing more updates soon, but just as an early warning, please DO READ THE CHANGELOGS and never do blind update.
After three months of testing (initially it was planned to be few days only), PAM is finally merged into the main tree of Slackware-Current per 18 May 2020. Many people have expected this to happen, they just wait for the trigger and finally Pat pushed the changes today.
Some people have started to panic about the integration of PAM, but really, there is nothing to worry about. Slackware will still keep to it's root and traditions. The integration of PAM is something inevitable as more and more upstream projects requires PAM as one of the authentication mechanism (including my Cinnamon SlackBuilds project) and the myth about PAM being insecure is no longer valid. Other distributions have been using PAM for many years and they do work well, so it should work well with Slackware as well.
Kudos to Patrick and the rest of the crew and some contributors, the integration of PAM is very smooth and there's no breakage at all. Everything works normally before and after the upgrade process as long as you follow the instructions carefully (install those three important packages: pam, libpwquality, cracklib). I have upgraded all my machines (except for my laptop but soon) to the PAM'ified version of Slackware and everything works fine here.
I also took this chance to add PAM support to cinnamon-screensaver and bump some packages in deps for MATE SlackBuilds project. All the packages in MATE are being rebuilt on a fresh Slackware-Current VM using the latest update that consists of PAM packages.
One milestone have been passed and now we are waiting for the next big steps, which is upgrading Plasma and XFCE along with the new UPower.
Few days ago i saw that Cinnamon 4.6.0 has been released on GitHub and as usual, developers will still release a couple more releases before they mark it stable, but i have made some changes to the SlackBuild scripts and push it to master branch for those who are eager to try the new Cinnamon 4.6.x series.
I believe this version will be used in the next Linux Mint 20 which will be released in June, but i want Slackware-Current users to try this version first :)
So as usual, go grab the latest master commit in github or grab the binary packages in slackware.uk (don't forget to support Tadgy for providing this free service to Slackware community by signing up in his Patreon page).
I have been using my old GnuPG keys since long time ago (it was created in 2003) and i think it's time to make a new one which is more secure according to best practices recommended by many parties. I'm still keeping my old keys for now, but it's recommended that you should use my new key.
It's now using the new RSA 4096 bit key instead of the old DSA 1024 bit key.
You can grab my new public key here: https://gist.github.com/willysr/b63c6567a30a07f27dd94994fb282d9f or simply by running gpg2 --receive-keys 720E73097A7E6E5577ECAB9C3F617144D7238786
I have just build the latest MATE 1.24 on top of latest Slackware-Current (per Feb 26 2020) and pushed the binaries into the usual repository provided by Darren Austin at slackware.uk. I took this chance to bump some libraries to the latest version available.
As mentioned earlier, i can't provide mate-power-manager 1.24 since it requires new upower 0.99.x which uses a new API, so i will leave it as it is for now. Once new upower gets included, i will have to make some test first before pushing mate-power-manager 1.24 to public.
Big thanks to AlienBOB who generously deleted some of his ISOs to make room for MATE variant of Slackware Live ISO. The new ISO with MATE 1.24 will be provided soon once he had time to pull the binaries and recreate the ISO again.
One of the biggest wish for many people in Slackware community has been approved by Patrick this morning (or night depending on your local time). It's Qt5!! It's one of the main dependency for next Plasma 5 and many applications that has been ported to use Qt5 instead of Qt4.
Another big thing happening in -current is the new OpenSSH 8.2 release which will bring some incompatible changes, especially if you are still using ssh-rsa as the algorithm. To test whether your machine is affected, try to run this command in your shell
ssh -oHostKeyAlgorithms=-ssh-rsa user@host
If you managed to connect using the above command, it means that your OpenSSH software is fine, but if you don't, then it needs to be upgraded.
I'm still waiting for the next big update Plasma 5, PAM, and XFCE 4.14 to be merged soon. I'm not using the PAM for now as i want to test it later when it has been merged into the main tree. That saves time to remove the _pam packages later on.
It has been some time since i posted about Slackware updates and around 2.5 years since my wishlist i created in 2017. Only one item left that are still not yet approved by Patrick, but i have a hunch that it's coming soon to -Current tree. So i guess it's time to wrap some updates up to early December 2019:
It has been requested by many people in the past, many debates have been sprung due to this discussions, and finally in 2020 Patrick is taking PAM in -current (still in /testing for now, but hopefully will be merged in the main tree in the next few days or hours). It's a long journey to get PAM gets included and some people have been working on this as a side project, namely Vincent Batts, Robby Workman, and Ivandi. Their work is finally paid off and next Slackware release will have PAM support out-of-the-box, so people in the corporate can start working on AD (Active Directory) on top of Slackware.
I have been providing PAM support in my CSB project, but it's only needed to be present and it doesn't get linked to other packages outside CSB project. With real PAM support in core Slackware, some packages in CSB will be removed soon and Slackware should get real PAM support.
PAM is down, next one we are looking for is the new XFCE 4.14 and Plasma 5.18 LTS along with the new UPower for mate-power-manager. I'm looking forward for next big update in -current tree for the next few weeks. It's gonna make your adrenalin pumped!!!
MATE 1.24 has been officially released by the developers as scheduled. They are going to be part of some major Linux distribution coming up in April, such as Ubuntu 20.04 and Fedora 32. The highlight of MATE 1.24 release are moving from dbus-glib to GDBus, intltools to gettext, and also Python 3 migration due to EOL for Python 2. HiDPI is also one aspect the developer was focusing on for this release.
Tarballs have been uploaded to usual place and soon it will be coming to many distributions. I was ready to provide binary packages for MATE 1.24 for Slackware (-current users), but unfortunately that idea might have to be postponed a bit since mate-power-manager now requires newer upower (0.99.8+) which Slackware doesn't have (yet). It will become part of Slackware when Plasma 5 and XFCE 4.14 are introduced to -Current tree someday.
Git tree are updated to build MATE 1.24 releases in master branch (except for mate-power-manager). Feel free to pull the latest master branch and compile it on your own if you don't want to wait until new upower gets included in current.
Cinnamon 4.4 is out and while it's not officially announced as per this post is created, i have prepared the SlackBuild scripts along with the binary packages ready for Slackware-Current users. These new set of packages adds two new dependencies: pytz and libtimezonemap, but removed some of the packages that are no longer needed or have become part of Slackware Current.
Cinnamon 4.4 brings more improvements towards HiDPI especially through the icons, new XAppStatus applet, performance improvements, nemo external condition support, new scrollbar settings, and many more. Expect details on Clem announcement soon.
The SlackBuild script is now pushed to master branch of CSB Project, so feel free to pull latest update and run the build-cinnamon.sh script if you want to build it from source. Binary packages are available via http://slackware.uk/csb/current/x86_64/.
it's been a while since posted a post here, but that's because of my work load which was way so hectic, so i didn't have time to post an update on Slackware or other things related to Slackware, but for today, i will make an exception since it's time to play with Cinnamon 4.2, the latest release of Cinnamon, which is yet to be announced, but the tarballs are already released on their github project page.
There's no news yet on their blog, but i'm guessing they will release it soon after they mark it as stable. It took several minor releases to ensure stability and compatibility in Cinnamon based on past track records. We had some minor issue dealing with cinnamon-settings-daemon for Slackware-Current since they moved to support newer UPower 0.99 API while in Slackware, we still use the old UPower 0.9.23. In the end, upstream patched a bit, but i'm not really sure the power management component works best since i haven't tried it yet on a laptop (desktop is fine).
Anyway, the changes are now merged into master branch already on our github project and binary packages are now uploaded to http://slackware.uk/csb/current/x86_64/. Please use upgradepkg --install-new --reinstall *.txz to make sure everything is reinstalled and you didn't miss a new package (tinycss) or you will have a semi broken cinnamon-control-center.
NOTE: This is intended for Slackware-Current users only. It hasn't been tested on Slackware 14.2.
When i bought my first AMD Ryzen 5 1600X last year, i was hoping for a great performance after looking at some reviews and it did give me a good impressions on the first few days both in Windows and Linux. Unfortunately few days later, i had some issues after upgrading to latest Windows 10 update and i decided to remove Windows 10 completely from my desktop at home. It turns out an issue on the BIOS, so an update was performed and suddenly the problem goes away (Thanks to idlemoor for the suggestion).
It all went fine after few weeks ago i got another same sympthoms. When i left my computers over night, i would get a lockup in the morning. I barely have any loads, so it shouldn't be an issue. I tried several trick, but still the issue persists, until i tried the last combination by adding this kernel boot parameters: "nomodeset irqpoll rcu_nocbs=0-11 idle=nomwait". I added this parameters in /etc/default/grub and use grub-mkconfig to generate a new grub.cfg and after few days of testing, i could say this parameters are the best workaround for me. I also use this script to disable C6 state, which is suspected as one of the culprit. So far, everything is working as intended. Let's wait for a couple of days and see the results
It's been a month since the final release of MATE 1.22.0 and the developers has pushed a new update MATE 1.22.1 which fixed some issues, including security fixes in the code that still uses unsafe functions such as strcat or strcpy.
The new mate-icon-theme is also featuring a sharper icons for some MATE components as can be seen in the git log. The icons are now built using latest inkscape version so you will notice some differences once you upgrade your MATE components and logout from your X and login again or reboot your machine.
For this new update, i had to patch the upstream source a bit to remove a dependency of inkscape in order to build mate-utils. It was introduced in this commit, but i revert some of the changes in the latest commit here. It won't have any effect at all for users as inkscape is only used as a build dependency, not as runtime dependency.
MATE developers are very open to non-systemd systems like Slackware, Gentoo, and many others distributions that didn't adopt systemd. The latest mate-session-manager works without a patch since it's now included in the 1.22.1 release. Big thanks to Victor Kareh of RedHat. This is important as more and more Linux and *BSD system uses MATE as their desktop environment. The latest project that incorporate MATE is OS18, where it was built on top of NetBSD.
Binary packages has been pushed to the slackware.uk as usual. It's built against latest update in -current per April 23 2019.
If you live in the stable environment, you will notice that Patrick has issued a new update on the kernel packages that fixed several security vulnerabilities and also some other minor issues found during kernel development and backported to earlier LTS release. Unfortunately, this new release broke some user-space application as they changed some of the API during the development, which was get_user_pages. It's still unknown why this changes happening on -stable releases which shouldn't change any interfaces.
On my system, it broke the virtual box, both from source and also binary distribution from Oracle. It failed here with this message:
/tmp/vbox.0/r0drv/linux/memobj-r0drv-linux.c:1113:18: error: too many arguments to function 'get_user_pages' rc = get_user_pages(pTask, /* Task for fault accounting. */ ^In file included from /tmp/vbox.0/r0drv/linux/the-linux-kernel.h:101:0, from /tmp/vbox.0/r0drv/linux/memobj-r0drv-linux.c:31:include/linux/mm.h:1200:6: note: declared here
Other people spotted a breakage on NVidia driver as well, although a new beta driver is available that fixed this issue. Unfortunately, this issue is not yet fixed in VirtualBox case. There's a patch available, but at this time of writing, it hasn't landed in VirtualBox's SVN repository.
Update:I managed to rebuilt the kernel modules under binary distribution from Oracle (Thanks to LQ). Here's how to do it:
Run the installer (it will fail to build the kernel modules for the first time)
open /usr/src/vboxhost-6.0.4/vboxdrv/r0drv/linux/memobj-r0drv-linux.c
Change the bold part (there are 3 places where you need to apply)
if GET_USER_PAGES_API >= KERNEL_VERSION(4, 9, 0)
fWrite ? FOLL_WRITE | /* Write to memory. */
FOLL_FORCE /* force write access. */
: 0, /* Write to memory. */
into
if GET_USER_PAGES_API >= KERNEL_VERSION(4, 4, 168) fWrite ? FOLL_WRITE | /* Write to memory. */ FOLL_FORCE /* force write access. */ : 0, /* Write to memory. */
MATE Developers are still working on next major update, MATE 1.22, but in the meantime, they are still pushing updates to the latest stable release: MATE 1.20. Several packages were getting fixes while others have received translations updates and they have been pushed to public for few days. I'm a little bit behind as i'm focusing on stabilizing Cinnamon packages and it seems they are now in stable states as LinuxMint 19.1 has been released. I can now focus on my MATE project again.
Clem hasn't announced the official release of Cinnamon 4.0, but the tarball has been around for some days and i have managed to build it on top of latest Slackware Current. Cinnamon 4.0 will give some big performance on Nemo, new panel layout, and many new features. You can check the detailed changes on every sub component of Cinnamon on their github repository.
I noticed the release just two days ago while i was sick at home and i started to work on it. It took some time to do finish it since some sub components changed their build tool to Meson and some changes in the parameters were needed to build without Wayland (Thanks Clem for the pointers). At the end, it was a successful one (at least under a virtual machine), but it won't get merged into master for now as i need to make sure few things before pushing them to master. Also, Slackware Current is still developing, so there might be a chance that some packages are added into the main tree itself.
Here is the part where you can help by trying to reproduce the build on a clean installation of Slackware-Current. Go to Cinnamon SlackBuild repository on branch cinnamon4 and start cloning it. Please use the build-cinnamon.sh script to automate all the download process and installation according to the BUILD_ORDERS.
Let me know if there's a problem with the current installation and please write a new issue so it's trackable.
PS: You will notice that the default icon in the menu turned into GNOME menu. I'm hoping to replace it with Slackware's icon in the final release of Cinnamon 4.0 for Slackware 15.0 :) (Done, thanks to Skaendo for the icon and patch).
Today i decided to call for public testing for the upcoming Cinnamon 4 for Slackware Current, a development branch of Slackware which will become Slackware 15.0 in the future. I found the current version of Cinnamon and all of it's components are stable enough for public usage and Slackware already progressed much and some of the packages that are needed by Cinnamon are now included in the core packages as well.
I have merged the cinnamon4 branch into master branch in Github repository, so master branch is now following Cinnamon 4.0 exclusively. The build script is updated to reflect changes to the list of scripts to build the whole Cinnamon desktop. You can just run build-cinnamon.sh to build and install all packages according to the build order.
Binary packages are uploaded to the usual place, thanks to Darren Austin for the mirror space.
As always, please raise a ticket if you found any issue with the build script or if you have any suggestion to improve the experience with Cinnamon Desktop.
UPDATE: vala and graphviz are now removed as vala is included in -current and it was built without graphviz.
Under 24h after Linux Kernel 4.19 LTS is released by Greg, Patrick decided to bump the kernel used in -current to the latest LTS release. This new major version brings tons of new and interesting features, as written in Kernel Newbies.
I decided to try this new kernel and luckily, my VMWare is still working well, even though i used VirtualBox lately. I did have some problems with NVidia 390.87, but i found a simple patch and here's what you need to do:
All (except 1) of my wishlist is now fulfilled. The last remaining is moving on to Qt5 and KDE 5. I'm pretty sure it will showed up soon enough as KDE 5 is getting more stable and polished. It has been tested by Eric (and some other) for some time and it's proven to be solid.
I was shocked to hear that the Slackware Storedidn't work as intended and Patrick got no income from the store for the last TWO YEARS!!! I was mad, considering that most people thought the sales would have gone to Patrick and it could helped him financially while working on Slackware Linux project. They don't really need the DVDs, but they wanted to show their respect for Patrick who have devoted his life for the project. I stopped my subscription once i saw that post by sending an email to the store.
Many people have suggested alternative options to Patrick to get the money directly to him instead of using third party and FINALLY, he officially announced his PayPal account (https://www.paypal.me/volkerdi). For now, that's the only official payment method that is confirmed by Patrick himself. Do not go other options like BitCoin address because Patrick has denied that it was his account.
Since my PayPal is blocked permanently for something i didn't do and stupid AI flagged me, i may not be able to send any donations nor receive any donations using PayPal. I will probably wait if Patrick decide to add more ways to set up a donations which goes directly to him.
Please support Patrick and his family so that he can focus on Slackware Linux and make Slackware Linux 15.0 the best release ever!!!!
It's been a month since my last post about SBo DMCA Takedown, and i wanted to share some updates in the Slackware development progress. It has been an amazing progress and most of my wishlist (from one year ago) have been realized, while two remaining.
The recent upgrade in Slackware brought GCC 8.1, the latest major release of GNU C Compiler. It brings new language features as well as better code optimizations, BUT it also comes with a stricter rules (which might affects scripts in the SBo projects). Amazingly Pat has stated that all packages have been tested for build failures against this new version of compiler.
Another progress in development areas are perl 5.28.0, rust 1.27.0, guile 2.2.4, git 2.18.0, mercurial 4.6.2, mariaDB 10.3.8, PHP 7.2.7, and meson 0.47.0. Developers will love it. It has great support of many modern languages along with the tools to support development process.
As for core packages, the kernel is still tracking latest 4.14.x LTS branch along with coreutils 8.30 and sysvinit 2.90 among many other changes. pkgtool have received many love in this cycle and it's a major work related to how package database are located. Previously it was placed under /var/log/packages, but in the latest version, the exact location have been moved under /var/lib/pkgtools/packages, while the old one are symlinked for backward compatibility.
Many updated/new packages/libraries gets into this release, including pulseaudio 12, harfbuzz 1.8, poppler 0.66, mesa 18.1, NetworkManager 1.12, texlive 2018.180630, gimp 2.10.4.
Patrick is now tracking Firefox 60-ESR and no longer continue on following latest release from Mozilla as ESR will get longer support. Next ESR release will be at Firefox 68 which is scheduled to be released on July 2019, so small chances that we need to wait until next year.
I'm still waiting for the KDE5/Qt5 integration in Slackware.
About 14h ago, 10:32 PM GMT+7 (Western Indonesian Time), me (and several other people who forked SBo's repository at GitHub) received a DMCA Takedown notice due to a company (Steinberg) filed a complaint to more than 200 open source repositories in GitHub that uses several of their header files (namely aeffect.h and aeffectx.h). We used that files in one of our scripts (jack-tools) which was changed over a year ago by the maintainer. At that time, it was OK to use their header files (although it has been unmaintained since 2013), but some time ago, Steinberg has made an announcement about dropping their support for VST 2 and focusing on VST 3 only. This drives the DMCA takedown action which affects SBo repositories in GitHub.The admins have discussed this matter last night and we came to a solution of fixing this issue permanently by removing the related commit and all the history for this script in master and 14.2 branch. This is not a trivial action as the commits involved were 11867 since 2017-02-04. Ponce did the initial testing and David did the final touch, including pushing an unexpected public update including with the mass re-base on master and 14.2 branch (Thanks David).How this affects you?If you are maintainers who had push access to SBo repository or someone who cloned SBo repository locally, you must do these steps in order to get back to the right track:
git tag -d 14.2-20170204.1 (you only need to do this step once)
git push github :refs/tags/14.2-20170204.1 (only if you have mirrored SBo repository on github)
git checkout master (do this to 14.2 branch as well)git fetch --allgit reset --hard origin/master (do it for 14.2 as well)
or a simpler way is to re-clone our repository using git clone. That should give you a clean repository with an updated tags and commits.
If you are regular user who download the scripts or tarball containing the SlackBuild script along with the rest from our website or someone who used automatic tools, such as sbopkg, you don't need to do anything and everything will work normally just as you normally do.
At this point, all the tags are not yet signed, but it will be done soon. SBo will also set a stricter rule to avoid things like this to happen in the future.
The first idea was occured by windows driver, because in my laptop supported dolby sound. So i found the interesting article to enable surrounding sound.
Before you changed the sound, first test your sound with command:
For 4.0 surround (two speakers in front and back)
speaker-test -Dplug:surround40 -c4 -l1 -twav
For 5.1:
speaker-test -Dplug:surround40 -c6 -l1 -twav
For 7.1:
speaker-test -Dplug:surround40 -c8 -l1 -twav
Make sure, your application audio player or video player stopped. Because the speaker-test won’t work.
if working, now change the file in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf with your favorite editor like vim, jed or nano.
Then find the line like:
“ default-sample-channels = 2 ”
Because the default is 2, so change to you want. In here i change to channel 8, save then reboot your machine.
Yesterday, i installing again genymotion in my slackware linux. But, i have installed multilib package from Alien’s repository in earlier. Now installing genymotion but the genymotion interface not running or starting from kde menu, so i trying in kde konsole to running genymotion from cli, and the result like this:
and symbol lookup in genymotion was error, this file libX11.so.6 available in /usr/lib64 but i check in genymotion directory the file is different that libX11.so.1 (just different versions).
So i trying to remove the file libX11.so.1 in genymotion directory, like this screenshot:
Then i try to opening again genymotion from kde menu, genymotion turns back and showing again.
For indonesian people, the book debian package management system was alpha released i.e 0.0.1. By planning this books will contain chapter 7 pieces, following the chapter list present in the following book current progress status until today;
NO.
Chapter number
chapter title
progress status
Shortage
1
I
Pendahuluan (Introduction)
90%
Catatan Kaki, Penyuntingan Tata Bahasa
2
II
Mengenal Sistem Manajemen Paket Debian (knowing debian package management system)
90%
Catatan Kaki, Penyuntingan Tata Bahasa
3
III
Paket Debian (Debian package)
90%
Catatan Kaki, Penyuntingan Tata Bahasa
4
IV
DPKG
50%
Perkakas Lain dalam Paket dpkg, dselect,Catatan Kaki, Penyuntingan Tata Bahasa
5
V
APT
0%
–
6
VI
Perkakas-perkakas Manajemen Paket Tambahan (additional package management tools)
0%
–
7
VII
Penyelesaian Masalah (Problem solving)
0%
–
In shortage column still use indonesian language, Therefore, we expect help from colleagues at once by giving us feedback, either in the form of advice, criticism and correction of the writer that can assist in evaluating and improving the authors of this book into works better. This feedback can be submitted via e-mail or a message to the following address:
E-mail: idnux09@gmail.com
Telegram: @idnux or https://telegram.me/idnux
Or may be via a column comments on this blog.
To get the book file, you can download it via the following link:
Yep kernel linux is generation from unix operating system family, released with General Public License (GPL). Functions like operating system, handles task switching in multitasking, handling requests to read or write disk equipment, perform the tasks of network and adjust memory usage.
Kernel make existing services therein, is available for the software that is running through a large set of entry points that are technically, the kernel using the system call read and writer fatherly provide hardware abstraction on your computer.
<< ———————–Enough For Chit Chat #LOL———————– >>
This time i will share to compile from source kernel linux, so if you want upgrade kernel version you can follow this tutorial.
The OS which i use is Slackware Linux Current x86_64 and i had to switch generic kernel not huge, so first download the kernel. In example i choose 4.7.2 kernel version to download don’t forget download patch too, after download follow this instruction:
– Extract kernel file to /usr/src with command:
# tar -C /usr/src/ -xf kernel-X.X.X.xz (X.X.X is version kernel)
– After untar, now move patch kernel to /usr/src directory– Then get into /usr/src directory, with command “cd /usr/src” (user root)– Now remove linux directory in /usr/src then create symbolic link, with following command:
# rm -rf linux (remove linux directory)
# ln -s linux-4.X.X linux (make symbolic link)
– After created, now patch kernel into linux directory:
# xzcat patch-X.X.X | patch -p1 (make sure to type command, you already in directory linux)
# zcat /proc/config.gz > /usr/src/linux/.config (this is same command for copy current kernel)
– Then building your kernel:
make bzImage modules # compile the kernel and the modules
make modules_install # installs the modules to /lib/modules/<kernelversion>
cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-generic-4.X.X # copy the new kernel file
cp System.map /boot/System.map-4.X.X # copy the System.map (optional)
cp .config /boot/config-4.X.X # backup copy of your kernel config
cd /boot
rm System.map # delete the old link
ln -s System.map-4.X.X System.map # create a new link
Yesterday i installing again mate desktop as mainly activity. When i installed mate, i had thought for disable the minimize effect in mate. Because mate desktop using marco and the effect is ugly, i trying to find cause these effects and voila i can disable minimize effect in MATE.
To disable this effect, you just open dconf-editor [ in slackware linux has already included ].
After opened, now navigate to ->org and select to MATE
And select to desktop -> interface, then uncheck enable-animation like this:
So you don’t need installing compiz or compton as alternative effect and feel the lightweight in mate dekstop.
This time i’ll share backup files in / Directories, i use Slackware Linux as mainly operating system. The implementation using local linux machine to a remote linux server using rsync command. This will be an interactive way to perform backup files / directory, where you need to provide remote backup server hostname or ip address and folder location.
In this post i added two scripts which the firstscript ask password after each file has been copied except have enabled ssh authentication keys, the password will be not asked and the second script password will be prompted only once.
For example i will backup file in /tmp is wireshark.tgz and telegram.tgz
bash-4.3# ls -l /tmp/ | grep wireshark-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24033619 Jun 8 11:08 wireshark-2.0.3-x86_64-1_SBo.tgzbash-4.3# ls -l /tmp/ | grep telegram -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 22:28 telegram-0.9.49-x86_64-1_SBo.tgzbash-4.3#
So i create text file with name backup.txt
here i put wireshark and telegram.
1. First Script:
#!/bin/bash
#We will save path to backup file in variable backupf='/tmp/backup.txt'
#Next line just prints message echo "Shell Script Backup Your Files / Directories Using rsync"
#next line check if entered value is not null, and if null it will reask user to enter Destination Server while [ x$desthost = "x" ]; do
#next line prints what userd should enter, and stores entered value to variable with name desthost read -p "Destination backup Server : " desthost
#next line finishes while loop done
#next line check if entered value is not null, and if null it will reask user to enter Destination Path while [ x$destpath = "x" ]; do
#next line prints what userd should enter, and stores entered value to variable with name destpath read -p "Destination Folder : " destpath
#next line finishes while loop done
#Next line will start reading backup file line by line for line in `cat $backupf`
#and on each line will execute next do
#print message that file/dir will be copied echo "Copying $line ... " #copy via rsync file/dir to destination
rsync -ar "$line" "$desthost":"$destpath"
#this line just print done echo "DONE"
#end of reading backup file done
Then save this script with name backrsy.sh
Running the script with output
[root@darknet tmp]# ./backrsy.shShell Script Backup Your Files / Directories Using rsyncDestination backup Server : 108.*.*.34Destination Folder : /tmpCopying /tmp/wireshark-2.0.3-x86_64-1_SBo.tgz ...The authenticity of host '108.*.*.34 (108.*.*.34)' can't be established.ECDSA key fingerprint is 96:11:61:26:f5:bf:......Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yesWarning: Permanently added '108.*.*.34' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.root@108.*.*.34's password:DONECopying /tmp/telegram-0.9.49-x86_64-1_SBo.tgz ...root@108.*.*.34's password:DONE[root@darknet tmp]#
Script 2
#!/bin/bash
#We will save path to backup file in variable
backupf='/tmp/bckup.txt'
#Next line just prints message
echo "Shell Script Backup Your Files / Directories Using rsync"
#next line check if entered value is not null, and if null it will reask user to enter Destination Server
while [ x$desthost = "x" ]; do
#next line prints what userd should enter, and stores entered value to variable with name desthost
read -p "Destination backup Server : " desthost
#next line finishes while loop
done
#next line check if entered value is not null, and if null it will reask user to enter Destination Path
while [ x$destpath = "x" ]; do
#next line prints what userd should enter, and stores entered value to variable with name destpath
read -p "Destination Folder : " destpath
#next line finishes while loop
done
#next line check if entered value is not null, and if null it will reask user to enter password
while [ x$password = "x" ]; do
#next line prints what userd should enter, and stores entered value to variable with name password. #To hide password we are using -s key
read -sp "Password : " password
#next line finishes while loop
done
#Next line will start reading backup file line by line
for line in `cat $backupf`
#and on each line will execute next
do
#print message that file/dir will be copied
echo "Copying $line ... "
#we will use expect tool to enter password inside script
/usr/bin/expect << EOD
#next line set timeout to -1, recommended to use
set timeout -1
#copy via rsync file/dir to destination, using part of expect — spawn command
spawn rsync -ar ${line} ${desthost}:${destpath}
#as result of previous command we expect “password” promtp
expect "*?assword:*"
#next command enters password from script
send "${password}r"
#next command tells that we expect end of file (everything finished on remote server)
expect eof
#end of expect pard
EOD
#this line just print done
echo "DONE"
#end of reading backup file
done
Conclusion
This post just example for backup important file. If you want create backup from your linux server, you can copy paste this script and give name what you want. Thanks
Pidstat use for monitoring system or individual task currently being managed by linux kernel. Usually pidstat was built-in in linux system, but you can install it if not available. Pidstat can also for monitoring child process of selected task.
Here For Installation Pidstat (if not available)
For Ubuntu/Debian
$ sudo apt-get install sysstat
For Fedora, CentOs (redhat based)
$ sudo yum install sysstat
Using Pidstat
The simple command for running pidstat, just type pidstat command in terminal (Gnome) or konsole (KDE).
$ pidstat
In the output explain:
PID – The identification number of the task being monitored.%usr – Percentage of CPU used by task while executing at the user level (application), with or without nice priority.%system – Percentage of CPU used by the task while executing at the system level.%guest – Percentage of CPU spent by the task in virtual machine (running a virtual processor).%CPU – Total percentage of CPU time used by the task. In an SMP environment, the task’s CPU usage will be divided by the total number of CPU’s if option -I has been entered on the command line.CPU – Processor number to which the task is attached.Command – The command name of the task.
I/O Statistic
You can use I/O statistic about process using -d options, with following command:
$ pidstat -d -p 1622
The IO output will display a few new columns:kB_rd/s – Number of kilobytes the task has caused to be read from disk per second.kB_wr/s – Number of kilobytes the task has caused, or shall cause to be written to disk per second.kB_ccwr/s – Number of kilobytes whose writing to disk has been cancelled by the task.
Page Faults And Memory Usage
For see page faults and memory usage, use -r options like following command:
$ pidstat -d -p 1622
Important columns:
minflt/s – Total number of minor faults the task has made per second, those which have not required loading a memory page from disk.majflt/s – Total number of major faults the task has made per second, those which have required loading a memory page from disk.VSZ – Virtual Size: The virtual memory usage of entire task in kilobytes.RSS – Resident Set Size: The non-swapped physical memory used by the task in kilobytes.
Using Pidstat To Find Memory Leak
You can use pidstat for find memory leak, like following command:
$ pidstat -r 2 5
The options here use 2 and 5, will give your 5 reports one every 2 seconds.
Other option, you can use pidstat command for find children of running application like example:
$ pidstat -T CHILD -C ksmserver
or with combine all statistic in a single report:
$ pidstat -urd -h
Here this command using pidstat, you can develop with other options as your need. Thanks
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