UbuntuThis forum is for the discussion of Ubuntu Linux.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
ok, I might have found the reason: I had a system_bus_socket file, but I just realized that it has a size of zero! So, looks like it was corrupted for whatever reason.
Is this something I can copy from another 14.04 installation, or is it something generated during OS installation and system-specific?
Update: Nevermind! Just checked my VirtualBox 14.04 installation, and this file has a zero size there, too! So, what is this?
This is a socket, a special file. Anyhow, if you do not have ~/.xinitrc then startx will start plain Xorg with no application running on it. In most cases people want a WM running on X. My ~/.xinitrc has exec opebox-session in it, so when Xorg starts OpenBox will be loaded.
As for the xinitrc, you do not seem to be right: I checked the 14.04 that is working fine under VirtualBox, and the only xinitrc is also found under /etc/X11/xinit and that also has the same single line in it.
As for dbus: during our troubleshooting, I have moved the system_bus_socket to a tmp folder under my home directory. Now that I want to put it back using
cp system_bus_socket /usr/local/var/run/dbus/.
it does not let me, as it says
cp: cannot open 'system_bus_socket' for reading: No such device or address
Is there a way to put it back to /usr/local/var/run/dbus/ ?
Time to learn for you Linux world is full of choices. What I described was starting X using startx.
Ubuntu uses some login manager, not startx. This login manager (xdm, kdm, whatnot) takes care of starting the desktop environment. It is not configured using ~/.xinitrc.
As for dbus: during our troubleshooting, I have moved the system_bus_socket to a tmp folder under my home directory. Now that I want to put it back using
cp system_bus_socket /usr/local/var/run/dbus/.
it does not let me, as it says
cp: cannot open 'system_bus_socket' for reading: No such device or address
Is there a way to put it back to /usr/local/var/run/dbus/ ?
Thanks.
My friend, I'm getting tired of this. This socket is created when dbus runs. I asked whether dbus is running and you never bothered to answer.
I thought in my posts #73, #75 and #78 I answered your question whether dbus was running. Yes, it is running. I also double-checked it by using
ps ax | grep dbus
as you suggested.
I also created an ~./xinitrc file and tried startx again, and got
/home/username/.xinitrc: 1: exec: openbox-session: not found
xinit: connection to X server lost
Nothing is working.
If you are saying that you are getting tired of this, you can imagine how I feel. You are saying "Time to learn for you Linux world is full of choices". Too much of a good thing is a bad thing!!! This is exactly what is wrong with Linux! What the heck is this:
Talk about fragmentation. Of course, each of these main names also come with several different "flavors", like mint comes with four, yes, four different ones. So, multiply this list with the number of flavors, you'll see how much worse it is.
Why is this a bad thing? Because no one knows what the heck is going on. You and user widget, being Linux gurus, having been using it for so long, have no idea what is the cause of my problem, and how to fix it. I have also been scouring other forms, reading post after post, looking for a way to fix it. I have never run into such a serious problem as losing my Windows OS. When I had problems, I always found a way to fix it without reinstalling. Because someone had that issue at some point, and someone figured out how to fix it. Then, I can use that solution, because all of the Windows (insert your version number here) are all the same!
Anyway, as usual with Linux, I have, once again, wasted many days fiddling with this broken OS called Linux, instead of doing real work: science. Enough is enough, I will reinstall and call it a day. Of course, now I will have to spend a few more days, if not a couple of weeks, to put everything back the way it was.
Thank you both for all your help and suggestions, and time; I appreciate it.
Distribution: Debian Testing, Stable, Sid and Manjaro, Mageia 3, LMDE
Posts: 2,628
Rep:
Interesting. Any package that will run in Ubuntu will run in LM.
CentOS is also a very, very reliable OS. No matter what ubuntu likes to claim the people running Linux on Business desktops use mainly CentOS of Debian. Simply because they are reliable and predictable.
Fedora is a good distro. It is also very cutting edge and therefore not the most stable thing in the world. It is used as a test bed for RHEL and CentOS.
If you software is available for Debian I would suggest that because of its stability. Besides my prejudice for Debian as it is what I use.
I would not recommend the use of packages made for one distro to be used in another. It can be done. Not real great idea for production critical work.
I will repeat that LM will run anything an Ubuntu LTS will run. Because they are using the Ubuntu LTS repos as their base and they do not mess with them.
Of the ones you listed, however, I would recommend CentOS. Because it is reliable.
Bored devs aare not a problem with FOSS software as a rule. Rouge distros such as Ubuntu that are more interested in selling cloud applications for Azure servers are when they try to palm of that sort of software in so called desktop editions. This is simple abuse of the users by scamming them into testing software that is not really even intended for desktop use.
Everyone knows that mobile devices, for instance, are much less secure than they should be. Vastly less secure. Snappy package managment on mobile devices actually improves security on those devices. This doesn't take much. That same level of security, however, degrades the security of your desktop install. This is simply because it was not designed to be used for desktop installs on PCs.
There are a lot of things that are popular that are not particularly good products at all. Fast food springs to mind.
What you need is a sensible, stable OS to run serious software. This is not an honest description of Ubuntu or any of their consumer products.
It is an honest description of Debian or CentOS. If you do not have packages available for Debian you should NEVER try to use Ubuntu packages in Debian. Or Debian packages in Ubuntu. There is too much crappy hacks of the file system in anything Canonical puts out to take that risk.
It could be done but I doubt you want to rewrite the install script to work in an unmodified Debian file system. I know I wouldn't in your possition. Computer science is probably not the point of your use of this software.
So get a good OS and use it. One that your needed packages are available for.
I am not a big fan of the package management system that the RH branch of Linux uses. That said most users of RPM based package management will say the same thing about the APT base for Debian branch package management. It is a fine system, my objection boils down to the fact that I am used to using APT.
I don't know what OSs they have your packages for but a full list would get you plenty of advice I am sure. Of what you listed, for serious work CentOS is really the best for your purposes. There may be others. Between CentOS, Fedora and Ubuntu I can tell you that either Fedora or Ubuntu are much prettier. This is not a sign that they are nearly as Stable.
I know very little about openSuse if that is on your list. This is because I have a personal problem with Novel corporation. That personal problem has, very obviously, little to do with the stability of that distro. I do know that my son uses openSuse and he is not particularly looking for the fun and adventure of unstable platforms. If openSuse is on your list I am sure that I could get him to give an honest appraisal of openSuse in relation to Ubuntu or Fedora. I am sure there are many others here that could do that too.
One thing I can tell you about Ubuntu is that I filed a couple bugs against packages that are critical to booting Ubuntu in 09. They are still open after being supposedly fixed and then reopened days later. This is still going on. As the original filer I still get any new developments in the handling of those bugs. Get them about 3 times a year. All they are is reports of shifting the severity level or shifting the dev that is supposedly working on them. There hasn't been any real movement at all in those bugs except for the few times they hvae claimed a fix. Those don't hold up a month.
The packages used by other distros based on the same source code work fine and have no outstanding serious bugs against them at all. That same source code is used in the boot process for CentOS. Works great. I have CentOS installed for a course ins Sys Admin I am taking so as to get a little experience with a different system than Debian. No it is not going to become my favorite OS. Is it an OS I would recommend for someone to use? Without any hesitation what so ever.
It uses as a DE a version of Gnome Shell fallback that they maintain. I am not a fan of Gnome Shell although it is better than Unity. The CentOS modifications of the fallback for Gnome Shell (was originally for hardware that would not run Gnome Shell) is very good. Has an actuall menu for instance. It is not designed to be primarily used with a touch screen which most people with desktop PCs do not have. This is nice.
One thing I am very, very good at is breaking systems. I tend to mess with them until they break. I haven't really tried hard but I do catch myself doing things that I know would break Ubuntu on CentOS. Much to my disapointment CentOS has not broken. I will have to try harder when this course is done. Just hope I can restrain myself until then.
I think you will find it stands up to software that is not native to it a hell of a lot better than Ubuntu.
As for your attempts at dealing with dmesg and so forth drop the grep pipe. It is above your pay scale. Use;
Code:
dmesg | tail -n 20
This will give you the last 20 lines. If that doesn't show you what you need increase it to 40. Should be some where toward the end of the file I wouldn't try more than 50.
You can read the start of the file with the same syntax replacing "tail" with "head". But your problem is later in the process so I think tail is more useful.
Emerson: Once I replaced unity with openbox-session in xinitrc, I got the GUI to start with startx. However, everything looked "weird" with fonts being different, no taskbar, etc. More importantly, my network was still down, and it did not let me change network settings using the GUI.
Anyway, that is just a last follow-up on that case, as none of this matters anymore.
As per widget's suggestion, I checked Mint. I was not aware of the fact that its adoption has come a long way since I tried it (I think, that was around 2008, just a couple of years after its first release, and I ended up preferring Fedora at the time, based on the suggestion from the developer of the software package I was using the most at the time), and now it is the most widely used distro. I also did not know it is based on Ubuntu, so all of the software I was using under Ubuntu should work with that.
After installing MATE and Cinnamon versions under VirtualBox and checking them very briefly, I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon to the real box. I used the partitioning tool provided during the installation, and installed it alongside my broken Ubuntu, just in case.
Anyway, if I run into problems with that, I now have a place to come back for help (i.e., here).
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.
