Re: [gentoo-desktop] System problems

[Roman Zilka]

[reordered the paragraphs]

> Unless you have specific suggestions for me to
> try out, you might want to stand by until I've had a chance to take a
> shot at the problem with the newer kernel.

I do have a few. I hope you'll make a good use of them to make your
life more productive.

> >  And I need to see your conf to discover such potential
> > mistakes. As for `emerge --info`, it may uncover problems relevant in
> > this case too.
>
> "emerge --info" is the the stock Gentoo system profile, and I'll be
> happy to share it, but in this case I'm looking at what's almost a
> "pre-Gentoo" issue, involving the kernel and the boot-up.

This sounds like you're sure that there is nothing interesting to
see in `emerge --info`. Well, let's change it into something more
correct: according to your knowledge there is nothing interesting to
see. But your knowledge isn't perfect (just like anyone's). Keeping
that in mind while consulting with others is the first of my specific
suggestions into the future. It will save your+our time and may get you
the solution faster.

> > Please, cooperate with those whom you'd asked for help. Writing these
> > several paragraphs worth of e-mail text as a reply was a waste of time
> > for you - it clearly hasn't produced any help at all regarding your
> > booting issue.
>
> Taking the desktop system off-line, re-emerging udev, bringing it up
> into its failure mode with a newer kernel and pulling the necessary
> pieces together, then backing out and putting everything back so the
> system is actually fairly usable is a major hassle.  I have had _zero_
> time to work on this problem since I posted this morning, but will be
> able to take another run at it this evening, hopefully.  Writing is no
> effort for me, and doesn't disable my desktop ;)

The second of my specific suggestions into a more fruitful future is:
read what people ask of you. Sending me what I'd asked for would've
taken about a few dozen seconds (I suppose you have the config for
2.6.29 stored somewhere). It certainly wouldn't entail taking your
desktop offline, reemerging udev, etc. etc. It's just attaching two
text files to a piece of e-mail. So if your current attempt at 2.6.36
(was it?) fails, you know what to do right away.

> > And some of those are relatively serious security holes and it'd take a
> > really special handling of the system to avoid them. And I'm talking
> > about handling that'd probably render an Internet-connected desktop box
> > with a web browser unusable.
>
> This desktop box is on an RFC-1918 masqueraded network.  It has zero
> exposure to the Internet, except insofar as the firewall will permit
> traffic from related and established connections, as per the firewall
> NAT rules.  The only other person on the LAN is my sweetie, and as far
> as I know I can trust her not to black-hat hack my desktop system :-)
> All my professional work is done via VPNs to my client's systems.

The third suggestion is probably the most important one: being NAT'd
and being behind any iptables configuration (that allows for operations
such as sending mail and browsing the web) doesn't make your PC
invulnerable or anything near that. In other words, active break-in
attempts via open ports is by far not the only option hackers have.

> Rather than
> posting my entire kernel .config, emerge --info and /etc/fstab to this
> list, which I consider questionable netiquette, I'll put it on my
> personal file space on one of my servers and post the URL.

In fact, some people who've appeared on this list over the years would
consider it unacceptably bad netiquette not to include `emerge --info`.
I also recall people who would consider it bad netiquette, but would
still answer your questions (perhaps with some remarks). And I suppose
most others consider it at least a good idea and a potential time-saver
to include it, unless the topic in question is "what laptop should I
buy to run Gentoo". So there goes my last specific suggestion to help
you make a more efficient use of this list: include your `emerge
--info` and relevant config files, if any, in the opening post to a
mailinglist. It's not like you're telling us your card number.

-rz