Linda Walsh said the following on 05/08/2013 03:39 PM:
Anton Aylward wrote:
Linda Walsh said the following on 05/08/2013 03:27 AM:
but one I didn't think Anton would take personally.
Anton takes very little personally .... a few days later.
Linda: you report a lot of technical problems with your own systems to the list. I must admit it makes me wonder why you have these problems and and others, not least of all myself, don't.
==== 1) I boot from my hard disk 2) I have a separate /usr partition
Therefore work to disable booting from your hard disk directly cause problems on my end as I undo / workaround such.
Work to move files into /usr and leave dangling symlinks on the root partition that point to nothing when /usr is not mounted also cause problems. When I have asked why not move those utils into /bin or /sbin, and put the symlinks in /usr (you'd get the same benefits from /usr based programs' perspectives, I'm pointed ignored.
Oh, I'm sorry, haven't I made it clear why I ignore you when you go on about that? I thought I had. It is because I too have a number of systems set up with separate /usr and /var and /usr/share and /usr/lib/perl5 and /usr/lib/ruby and a few other such splits of /usr/lib because, my gosh, its a big subtree! And, as regular readers will recall, I'm obsessive about using LVM and small partitions and backing up to, if not DVDs, then CDs, and yes I do use K3B, and yes, by gosh, by golly my /tmp is large enough to let that happen, don't you just know, because my /tmp is another LVM partition - but you were expecting that weren't you? What? Yes I do have a system that is just BtrFS, all on one disk, not /boot partition, not /tmp partition. Again, and see previous email, its there just to see if it can be done and it can and it seems to work just fine, by gosh, by golly, showing that openSuse is capable of great things even on crapped out hardware out of the Closet Of Anxieties that isn't even capable of running Windows, so that I'm not trapped into being stuck with Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 and can use the threading mechanisms of 17.0.5, even if they do have a different look-and-feel from the one you are using. But what the heck, Linux has a different look and feel to Windows anyway; I can live with that. The thing is that your 'dangling links' actually don't dangle in real life. Well not for me. As far as I can see "it all works" and that's what counts. Or it works for me, out of the box, without fiddling with any details. All the stuff of systemd uses absolute paths since it isn't using the shell and $PATH. Out of the box my system boots to include /usr (I'm talking about the ones where I use partitions not the BtrFS one). Weren't we talking about disks and systems that were big enough to need a 1TB /tmp? Heck I know, because one such machine has it, that you can put all of openSuse, a few desktops (xfce, e17...) office tools and more, all on just 20G # lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 0 19.1G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 156.9M 0 part /boot └─sda2 8:2 0 19G 0 part ├─system-HOME (dm-0) 253:0 0 1G 0 lvm /home ├─system-SWAP (dm-1) 253:1 0 1.1G 0 lvm [SWAP] ├─system-TMP (dm-2) 253:2 0 1.6G 0 lvm /tmp ├─system-suse--root (dm-3) 253:3 0 5G 0 lvm / ├─system-suse--var (dm-4) 253:4 0 2G 0 lvm /var └─system-suse--usr (dm-5) 253:5 0 2G 0 lvm /usr or an system running BtrFS # lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 0 19.1G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 1.4G 0 part [SWAP] └─sda2 8:2 0 17.7G 0 part Now if you can't spare 20G from your 1TB to put all of / and /usr on the same partition then things are dire. What? Someone is asking how I back up that stuff with just a 1.6G /tmp or the 20G BtrFS. These are the systems from the Closet of Anxieties, scratch - to show it can be done, to show that openSuse can run on machines the Windows world has rejected. Machines that show a lot of what Linda goes on about makes no sense. Oh, and recall the other thread where I mentioned using rsync for backups to another machine... just to show that it could be done and done very simply and easily ...
Some people have been promising that it is going to get worse -- nothing will work if you don't boot from a ramdisk or have a separate root. The former likely because the keys to access allow secure boot will be kept on the initrd, so if you boot from the HD, you don't get secure boot -- which may be the only option supported in a few years.
Your point being that most vendors are kow-towing to whatever Microsoft says. I don't know about that. My all-in-one 8G USB stick (only one desktop, few tools) versions of Koppix (yah! boots on anything) Fedora and OpenSuse (I don't need the 16G 32G stick for a minimalist boot) seemed to work on all the machines in the store I tried and that included some with this UEFI thing. No separate root on that stick. So you don't boot from a initrd... how long can you justify that? Or is this really about you simply don't want change and view change as somehow ... nasty.
I'm not a typical end-user -- I'm a computer scientist -- who likes to tinker in every aspect of their computer and run comparison benchmarks and tune it to run as fast and optimally as possible.
Ah, so you're dealing with the source and all the variations between different Linux vendors. All the way up to Linux on a mainframe.
I often try out new computing theories and practices if I can on my home network.
Like I try out new releases on scrappy bits of h/w from the Closet of Anxieties. I've got Mageia and Fedora here too - the Fedora is off line, that disk was in the closet for a reason ... so it goes ...
Having that freedom curtailed to give corporations the keys to my system so they can charge me for apps is not how I want my computers to be taken. Some of the above may sound paranoid, but it's nothing that MS and others haven't already stated that they want to do.
My ISP does that too; they charge extra for a static address if I want a certificate and more if I want to run virtual machines .. Damn It, they want to make a profit.
I re-read your problems with later versions of T'Bird. I've been happily using it since Mozilla calved it off as its own product. As I've commented before, I use fetchmail to download onto a 'server' and access via IMAP from whatever workstation I'm at (which might even be over a ssh tunnel). Yes, I could configure all or specific folders to download from the IMAP server to a local cache but I've chose not to use that configuration option. ---- I configure the folders on the IMAP server -- i.e. the filter happens at delivery time, before IMAP sees them. I have over active mailboxes (ones that may have new mail) and near 500 total.
Oh what a coincidence! I have a dedicated mail server that runs fetchmail, pipes though procmail (to do blacklisting and whitelisting more efficiently than spamassassin can), then spamassassin (to do Baysian learning), then procmail again (to sort into the folders). All that, as you say, before the IMAP server (dovecot in my case) sees them. Before Thunderbird sees them. Your point being?
Note: Its a configuration option. --- A default configuration option that is difficult to turn off since they really wanted it on -- so they could give you the "one-index' feature of all your email.
I don't see that its difficult to turn off. I do see that you have to explicitly choose to download folders onto your machine. I do see that the size and other things ARE configurable in 17.0.5 (Menu:edit->preferences->advanced-<advanced configuration->enable global search and indexer)(and also the user_prefs editor on the same dialogue box). I can't speak for 2.0.0.24 since I'm not running that, but the capability to control such is there is you choose to move to 17.0.5.
Yes T'Bird in IMAP mode will download the header/envelope information. (And cache it for the next startup) How else can it display that information - subject, date, from, status - and the number of messages in the folders? Please don't confuse downloading headers with downloading body.
---- That's not a problem. It's the "download for offline use" setting that went from default 'off' to default 'on' for all folders in 3.x.
Dunno for 3 but there are a few places in 17.0.5 where controls relating to that exist and I haven't changed them and when I look they are either "Off" or "ask me".
Does T'Bird download the body? Damn right it does! How else can you read the message! Does it cache that? Apparently so: move up and down the list when you have 3-panel set up or go to another folder then come back. No delay in viewing a message you've already viewed. Does the cache expire? Of course it does. Can you configure it? Of course you can:
user_pref("browser.cache.disk.capacity", 358400); user_pref("browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value", 204800); ---- Um... thats for the browser that is built into to Tbird (but not usually enabled). That is not for the email messages.
Maybe so for 2.0.0.24 but I can clear space on my 17...
You cannot expire the message bodies in your local cache without also deleting them out of your IMAP store (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=746350).
Ah, but you finally there mention 'roaming profiles'. I *am* using IMAP. Yes I can delete messages on the server. My windows reflect what the IMAP protocol sees on the server, so a delete in the window deletes on the server. I don't see how you can _not_ delete on the server if you delete what you see in the display. If you want to purge the local cache and force T'Bird to ask for all the headers from the IMAP server that is a different matter.
As it was, the wording was unclear, and I wanted them to make them separate -- but they just fixed the wording. The only way you can recover that space is to manually delete the cache files out of your local profile.
That depends what you mean by 'manually'. Yes you can use a file browser and delete them one by one, or you can use the GUI, built in with 17.0.5 and purge them.
When they get over a few 100MB (that just for index and **read** messages
Eh? You can set the size at which the cache tops out and does it automatic purging.
(I don't read every message that comes in on every list
Neither do I, maybe not for days ... certainly not the "SPAM" tree
-- not to mention > many of my folders are archive folders that won't be read in unless I go search them --
Ditto. I have a complete ARCHIVE tree and by now it has more than the current tree. Good on the capabilities of dovecot for this.
but IMAP can search them without mozilla downloading them. That's not real well supported by Tbird though.
True. Few mail readers can push stuff back from the remote 'reader' into the filter search and index capabilities of dovecot. But none of this is justification for failing to move to a more up to date version of Thunderbird.
There are other cache settings too - see the documentation. --- See all my bug reports in the mozilla DB... I've been using firefox/netscape for longer than I've been using suse (or linux for that manner)...it ran on Irix when I was at SGI.
You're not alone; I was using the 'original' back when it was still "Mosaic" (HA HA HA) and could not understand why the version for different platforms had different menu structures.
At this point the problem isn't so much that I can't turn off the downloading -- but if I do my favorite extension (the one that shows the hyperlinked/clickable conversation graph (that can be exported in in SVG!), that I'd lose -- because the author switched to using tbird's indexing service in 3.x -- which only works on the locally downloaded content in the message bodies. If you turn that off, you lose that feature.. He used to do his own indexing and sqlite db storage -- that's the version I still have that works in 2.x -- which is no longer supported in 3.x.
Some of that makes sense. If this tool runs locally and its doing full text indexing of the body to produce these hyperlinks then it need to have the bodies of the messages local to do that. I suppose you could just pour the messages into some external wikifier but that wouldn't have the email interface.
So while I could turn off the full account download -- I'd still lose that extension.
Life like that. It could be worse. Famine, Earthquake, War, Meteor strike, Divorce ....
bummer. There are other reasons...momementum... busy plate...etc...
I can think of other synonyms.
Problems? Yes I have lots of them! They all get back to the plugins and extensions, mostly that the developers don't keep up to date.
--- bingo... I'd lose half my extensions on any upgrade.. I have over 100.
You mean that there are actually that many extension for Thunderbird? Don't they slow it down? Oh my, I though my half dozen were a lot, and some of them are not of very good quality. Still....
--- Um... nope...its' not the few hundred meg of headers.. it's the 6G of bodies... that is stored in my ***ROAMING PROFILE***... the first time it happened, I didn't know that Tbird had downloaded the whole thing.
So long as you need a full text indexer/hyperlink builder that runs locally its going to need all those bodies locally. YOU made THAT decision, that have that facility and that's a consequence of the decision YOU made. So long as you choose to run that indexer and visualizer you are going to have to download "the whole thing". Are there other ways to do it? You're the "Computer Scientist", you tell us, but I'd betcha the answer is "yes". But the implementation you have runs locally. If you want to get away from that find one or the equivalent that can work entirely on the server. Dovecot does have a full text indexer, perhaps there's something that can make use of its indexing there. HOWEVER ... I think you're being excessive. You did say that you don't read all your folders. I gather that - like me - you have a 'working set' of what is of interest and lot of stuff that doesn't get looked at often or just gets archived. In that case I should thin there can be some kind of accommodation that only the working set needs to be regularly downloaded and updated. The 'archives' can be downloaded, indexed, then cleaned out.
But then you mentioned
I'm hoping to get 'X' to run faster
Well it that's your problem then it isn't really a T'Bird problem. ---- Well ... yes and no. My old Tbird runs locally so no 'X'.
That makes no sense. My T'Bird runs locally (at my workstation or on my laptop or whatever the keyboard I'm using wherever i'm using it is attached to) but its still running under X. Like right now its running under KDE which is running under X. The laptop uses lightweight xfce to run T'Bird and the xfce runs under X. What's you're saying is that you're running it under windows because you find X isn't fast enough. Gosh! Do you mean that you're running X on Windows and that's not fast enough? Believe me, X on openSuse, even with a crippled SiS card, is FAST!
If 'X' ran at the same speed as the local window manager, I'd be a happy camper.
You man you ARE running X under Windows?
That's gonna be a long haul... The problem is per-packet latency. Since I regularly get over 300MB/s in large transfers -- fastest has been a little over 700, but not reliably. Max theoretical would be 2.5GB/s. That's getting closer to bus speeds of a few-several years ago.
That's why I have hopes of getting my linux desktop to run in near real-time I've even seen GLX/3d stuff run in real time -- where the remote end uses my local Nvidia 590's 3d acceleration -- that's pretty snazzy. But that also doesn't work reliable... though right now, not much does with my libraries being a bit whacked out due to the systemd repairs and workarounds.
Why don't you find your local equivalent to my company's Closet of Anxieties, i.e. where the old discarded equipment lives and modest box and put VANILLA unmodified 12.3 on it. Forget all your arguments about your like and dislikes, and jsut see what VANILLA out of the box 12.3 can do. Either that or explain wtf you're doing that the above is obscurificating 'cos I can't see it. What's local, what's remove what's with this bandwidth what's with this remote?
Yes, I know this is an old crippled box I'm describing. That's my point. Yes, I know that at my local Best Buy I can get a an Acer or Toshiba or, heavens forbid!, a HP with a 4-core CPU, maybe as much as 6-8G of memory and a 650G to 1TB disk for about $350[1]. Assuming I get that far into the store and haven't been persuaded to spend that on a camera, phone or tablet or large screen TV ...
---- um... remote? I use the more friendly windows desktop as a primary desktop -- the server in the back room is my "disk space" and network access. The windows box is low on disk space, high on graphics.
Whereas this crippled box out of the Closet of Anxieties is low on disk space, low on memory, low on graphics power. Look, if you don't have a Closet of Anxieties go along to the sally Anne, Goodwill, whatever your local thrift store is. I've seen some good PCs at the Sally Anne for around $20-$25. Forget the monitors, they're not worth it. I picked up a WRT45G for $5 and flashed it, thank you very much. The landfills are overflowing with computer equipment that is being junked. Ask Pooh's friends and relations; they all seem to throw out perfectly usable equipment just because they bought the newest model. Last month I had a stack of thin-line desktops on my desk with a KVM switch, all 20G drives - no, I like there was 40G drive in among them - from the Closet, all bits a pieces getting them to work. 13.3 CAN run in a half G of memory, but I couldn't get it to install in less than 3/4 G - a 512 and a 256. I was short on DVD drives and not all cables worked. Oh fun. But once I got one machine working I could make disks for the others. 12.3 is AMAZINGLY efficient even on this junk. I'll admit finding junked but workable drives is harder than junked chassis. If you have to resort to eBay/Kijiji then, heck, buy new even if it is 0.5 TB, its cheaper :-/ But lack of a dedicated machine, lack of disk space isn't an excuse in these days.
Just for the heck, I took a USB stick in and booted on LiveLinux on one of these machines - no not at Best Buy, at another place where the salesdroids were more tolerant. MY GOD IS 12.3 FAST ON A 4-CORE! Well OK, that high end video helped.
So why do I use the stuff from the Closet Of Anxieties? 'Cos its there; 'cos I like running Linux on stuff that can't run Windows just to prove a point; 'cos its more of a challenge than running it on high-end modern stuff. ---- My last server was 10 years old when it died... it was a 2 cpu running 1Gh processors with celeron sized caches (256k).
Oh wow, way ahead of my email server! The BIOS dates that from 2002.
I used linux on it because it gave good server performance for it's age -- but wouldn't have if I'd put windows on it. Was only a 32-bit machine -- had 2GB of main memory.
These machines max out at 1G of memory.
Am familiar with making do with old stuff... after 10 years, it gave up the ghost...
The bottom line is that I'm not very sympathetic to your reasons for sticking with 2.0.0.24. --- um....remote? ;-)... Cheers! & thanks for the uplifting understanding...??? ;-)
Remote? I tried VNC between two of these boxes a while back. (See list archives) I had problems understanding the config - suse and fedora and mageia all have their own ways. X on top of X. Ye Gods! the prions the vncserver has! You can optimise for all kinds of hardware and bandwidth in all manner of ways. Performance over the LAN - that was just a 10MHz one - was OK. Mouse was jerky, redraw was more than adequate. I decided to stick with XForwarding over SSH. -- If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities. -- Voltaire -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org