It looks like a cut/paste error occurred on me and lost a bit of what I had written... This part should read as follows... (easy to do, my touchpad seems to be super sensitivity to slight unintended touches and can screw things up on me!) Marc.. On 2/9/2011 3:33 PM, Marc Chamberlin wrote:

...

But then I am exporting the device, not the mount point. When you mount the device is BELOW the mount point, and as I said and you have verified, NFS won't go past the mount point. This I do not understand and makes NO sense to me. I have tried to export /dev/sdc1, /media/MyPassport, and /mnt/usbdrive all to no avail. What am I trying to mount, in all three of these cases, is what I perceive to be THE mount point for the USB drive. To me some of this is extremely confusing also! If I mount a USB drive at some location, or let KDE/Hal do it for me, the locally I can do an ls on that mount point and see what is on my drive. That makes sense and intuitively that implies that these paths ARE the mount point. But doing an ls on /dev/sdc1, or /proc/bus/usb shows nothing. Ergo I would never have guess these to be mount points, but what the heck, I experimented and gave them a try also.. No joy... What do you mean by "the device is BELOW the mount point"? It has become clear that I cannot mount anything "ABOVE" the mount point, like / and then expect to be able to access /media/MyPassport, because of an NFS restriction. OK, but I am exporting what appears to me as THE mount point and that should be sufficient for NFS since I am giving my blessing to NFS to export THE mount point. What do you mean by "BELOW"? That just does not make any kind of sense!

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/09/2011 07:00 PM:

...

What do you mean by

...

"the device is BELOW the mount point"? It has become clear that I cannot mount anything "ABOVE" the mount point, like / and then expect to be able to access /media/MyPassport, because of an NFS restriction. Correct.

...

...

OK, but I am exporting what appears to me as THE mount point and that should be sufficient for NFS since I am giving my blessing to NFS to export THE mount point. What do you mean by "BELOW"? That just does not make any kind of sense! If you read the NFS man page it is quite clear. You need to export the directory and mount point.

So I've exported Server:/home/anton but there is another fs mounted on server:/home/anton/PDF so I have to export that AS WELL

Not one or the other. BOTH

And, again, read the manual: you need to tell the server that you don't want the second FS to be hidden. Its there in the manual.

So you need something like

/media \ 192.168.x.0/255.255.255.0(rw,async,no_root_squash,crossmnt) /media/sdb1 \ 192.168.x.0/255.255.255.0(rw,async,no_root_squash,crossmnt,nohide)

RTFM I think Anton, that YOU need to RTFM on the man pages for NFS before you make assumptions/claims that I have not done so. NOWHERE, in the man

As for permission, it clear that you are mounting the USB with the wrong permissions.

Example

1 clear out the mount 2 chown marc.users /media/sdb1 That sets the ownership of the mount point 3 insert the usb and let the kernel mount it PLEASE DO NO USE THE AUTOMOUNTER MAPS THEY JUST CONFUSE THE MATTER 4 verify its mounted $ mount ... /dev/sdb1 on /media/sdb1 type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev....) .... OR WHATEVER 5 now check ownership of the mount point ls -l /media/sdb1

If I'm right, that's no lover "marc.users" so all the files on the mounted VFAT aren't either

Both Tajas and myself have suggested you experiment with manually mounting. I don't think you understood. The word experiment means try variations.

You point out in mail to Tajas that you tried

mount -t auto /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usbdrive -o rw,nodev,noexec

BUT YOU DIDN"T SAY WHAT UID YOU EXECUTED that as. Of course if you did that as 'uid=marc' than the mount is owned by 'marc'. If you do it as root then its owned by root. HUMP! I have NO IDEA what you are trying to say Anton. I CANNOT execute a mount command EXCEPT as ROOT! Trying to execute a mount command as me, user marc, is NOT allowed. I get told promptly that the mount command is ONLY allowed by ROOT if I try. Therefore, since there was no uid

On 2/9/2011 7:12 PM, Anton Aylward wrote: page for NFS does it say anything like what you are claiming it does. I HAVE read it, several times, top to bottom. NOWHERE. There is not one word saying that NFS by default, will not allow a client to traverse past a mount point that is below an exported mount point. There is not one word that says if you are going to export a mount point that you must also export the parent directory and that the client has to import both. There is NOT a single shred of documentation regarding why these particular limitations are in place. In fact, there is very little description of the model(s) behind NFS and I get the feeling that what is documented is just a few bits and pieces. Do a man nfs and READ IT YOURSELF. It comes up as nfs(5). And you wonder why I despise external documentation so much, and people who yell at me to RTFM first. Rarely is the documentation referred to in sync with the tools it describes, is complete, well organized, or up to date. These man pages on NFS are a mess, and as I said before, using/maintaining external documentation is a BROKEN process. Tools should present a self documenting interface to users, that is the ONLY way I know of to reliably keep documentation in sync with the tool. Command line interfaces can be designed to be self documenting if they are interactive, most are not. GUI's make the job even easier. Maybe the NFS subsystem is "mature" and has been around for awhile. Maybe a lot of Linux gurus have gotten information via the grapevine also on how to use it. Doesn't change the fact that NFS IS broken, one way or the other. Without proper documentation, a user cannot learn how to use a tool on his/her own, therefore must seek help, and DOES NOT NEED SOME "EXPERT" YELLING AT HIM TO RTFM with bad documentation. So I dug deeper, and took a hard look at the man page for exports. In particular at the nohide and crossmnt parameters. And there, buried, is a couple of offhand remarks about these limitations and what has to be done to get around it. How in the world is a user suppose to grasp what has gone wrong, when the NFS system is failing him, with no descriptions of underlying models, and be able to recognize that one, or the other, or both, of these parameters is needed? A user unfamiliar with NFS does not even have a clue where to begin diagnoses! Now if ONLY I could be so lucky as to be able to even get to the point where I can even use these parameters. Read on sir, before you reply. Even with using these parameters I cannot get NFS to work properly... parameter supplied in the command I gave, the uid of the mount point will be ROOT, that is the default behavior of the mount command, and I showed you exactly what I executed. So what in the world are you saying here?

Guess what the kernel event driven mechanisms out of HAL operates as?

$ ps -ef |grep sdb root 1680 1405 0 18:27 ? 00:00:00 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sdb (every 16 sec)

Right - ROOT !!

So it gets mounted as root.

Now as root you can FORCE a different UID

mount -t auto /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usbdrive \ -o rw,nodev,noexec,uid=<marc>,gid=<users>,umask=007

Now you want to substitute in there the numeric values. I think you said that marc=10001 "users" ... look it up /etc/groups. Its should be 100 So you have

-o rw,nodev,noexec,uid=1001,gid=100,umask=007

Do that mount command as root, just as HAL would, and see what you get.

Personally I'd use

umask=007,fmask=0117,dmask=0007

but then I believe in not fighting Linux access permissions. Let me try this again, even changing the uid and gid does not make any difference. Exporting the mount points. BOTH of em, or even all THREE still fails on me. Follow the dots..

So you need to make sure that the USB is always mounted like that. So put those values in /etc/fstab.

None of this is weird; this is how Linux works and its all documented. If you'd backed off and experimented and read the MAN pages you'd have found this. ITS ALL DOCUMENTED. Maybe.. maybe I don't have all the document packages installed or something.. What I have is certainly NOT clear and easy to understand. Maybe there are other obscure locations in the man pages that describe what is going on. But just because the documentation mentions these sort of details, somewhere within it, does NOT mean the documentation has been written in a clear concise, complete, well formatted manner. It is

But you seem intent on hammering at the same-old-same-old and making disparaging remarks about Linux and the way it works. Its odd how those of us who are more relaxed and believe that the people who made the design decisions did so for sensible reasons, and that mature products like NFS have been worked over by many minds, minds smarter than you or me, can get these things to work. Its sort of like Ju-Jitsu, don't resist, use the opponents strength .... go with the flow.

You derogatory attitude towards Linux and its facilities does not encourage people to help you. You keep getting me wrong about how I feel toward Linux. I feel it could stand a lot of improvement, if that is being derogatory towards Linux,

First, I ensured KDE's handling of removable storage media was disabled (Configure Desktop > Advance > Removable Devices > Enable automatic mounting of removable media) and got it completely out of the picture, (as well as the device notifier). I believe this is what actually will cause the auto mount of a plugged in device to take place, if enabled, but it was initially turned off on my system. And without it being active, despite what you say, NOTHING would appear under /media until I click on the button to "turn on", "mount" whatever you want to call it, for the identified device in the popup menu from the device notifier. Once I click on it, THEN AND ONLY THEN do I get /media/My Passport and I presume that a mount process has then occurred, but maybe there is some other term for it. IF KDE is configured to automatically mount removable storage media, then I do NOT have to click on anything in the Device Notifier and the drive is mounted at /media/My Passport. Anywise, I disabled both the device notifier AND KDE's configuration to automatically handle removable storage media. Now I plug in my USB drive... and nothing obvious happens any more. No mounts under /media nor under /mnt. The USB drive, for all intents and purposes, remain inaccessable to me, until I perform the mount manually. Second, as root, I created the mount point directory as root - cd /mnt mkdir "My Passport" and executed the following - mount -t auto /dev/sdc1 /mnt/My\040Passport -o rw,nodev,exec,uid=1000,gid=100,umask=000,fmask=0000,dmask=0000 And yes it is mounted with the owner being me... No problems so far, can access it, do whatever... I even tried it with your flavor of umask, fmask, and dmask, no difference in behavior with regards to the failure that is occurring when I try to export it... Third, I edited exports in /etc as follows / 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0(fsid=0,crossmnt,rw,no_root_squash,sync,no_subtree_check) /home 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0(rw,no_root_squash,sync,no_subtree_check) /tmp 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0(rw,no_root_squash,sync,no_subtree_check) /mnt 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0(rw,no_root_squash,sync,no_subtree_check,crossmnt) /mnt/My\040Passport 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0(rw,no_root_squash,sync,no_subtree_check,crossmnt,nohide) I also tried this with and without the space in the name - My Passport. I went back to using the space since that is what KDE/Device Notifier/Hal was doing, and I ultimately would like to be able to do this without having to manually mount the device. But for now will play along with manually doing things.. and finally I restart the nfsserver rcnfsserver restart Shutting down kernel based NFS server: nfsd statd mountd idmapd done Starting kernel based NFS server: idmapdexportfs: Warning: /mnt/My Passport does not support NFS export. mountd statd nfsd sm-notify done and I get a warning. If I ignore the warning, (since it is not saying it is an error...) and restart the autofs daemon on another system, with the following map file - slash -rw,soft,intr,timeo=50 marcslaptop:/ homes -rw,soft,intr,timeo=50 marcslaptop:/home temp -rw,soft,intr,timeo=50 marcslaptop:/tmp mnt -rw,soft,intr,timeo=50 marcslaptop:/mnt MyPassport -rw,soft,intr,timeo=50 marcslaptop:/mnt/My\040Passport then if I try to access ANY of the exported/mounted directories, the system hangs and waits for a timeout... Nothing reported in log files under /var/log. Removing the import of MyPassport, and rebooting will restore the ability to access the other directories. like looking for a needle in a haystack. As for the documentation itself, I cannot find anything obvious that I missed, but then I am not a Linux guru who knows what and where everything is stored in all those update repositories either. then that is YOUR opinion. Google around on the internet for awhile, you will find LOTs of people struggling with things like NFS. Hint - that is a clue it needs to be improved. Regards Marc... P.S. Anton, as always, thank you for your thoughts, even though we disagree with each other and somehow got off on a bad start, your input has been valuable... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

* Marc Chamberlin [02-10-11 14:01]:

And he decides to bring up the map file using Xemacs, and damned if there weren't some non-printing characters embedded in that file. Dunno how they got there, and kwrite was not showing them to me... Sigh... Removed em and all started working as expected...

Hint, kwrite is not a :text-editor". Graphics/GUI is *not* always better (er, ever). -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 2/10/2011 12:53 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

Patrick Shanahan said the following on 02/10/2011 03:26 PM:

...

* Marc Chamberlin [02-10-11 14:01]:

...

And he decides to bring up the map file using Xemacs, and damned if there weren't some non-printing characters embedded in that file. Dunno how they got there, and kwrite was not showing them to me... Sigh... Removed em and all started working as expected... Hint, kwrite is not a :text-editor".

Graphics/GUI is *not* always better (er, ever). ROTFL!

So it wasn't Evil USBs after all ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/nov/15/3

No, it wasn't an evil USB, it was poorly organized documentation, the nfsserver failing to guide or tell a user that he/she was trying to do something that would not work i.e. trying to mount a filesystem without also mounting the parent filesystem, intolerance of a newcomers inability to quickly comprehend a wide range of concepts and to rapidly sift though vast amounts of documentation in order to find a trinket of information necessary to solve this problem, an editor that failed to properly warn a user about embedded non-printing characters, a parser somewhere in autofs that failed to properly warn a user about embedded non-printing characters in a configuration file, a mount process that failed to tell the user that it could not perform it's task because it encountered those same non-printing characters, or perhaps because those non-printing characters were being interpreted as part of a file system name that was not being exported and by that same mount process simply hanging until a timeout occurred without any explanation whatsoever... or perhaps there are some gremlins embedded in openSuSE/Linux somewhere.... Marc... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 2/11/2011 4:53 AM, Anton Aylward wrote:

Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/11/2011 12:56 AM:

...

...

So it wasn't Evil USBs after all ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/nov/15/3

No, it wasn't an evil USB, it was poorly organized documentation, the nfsserver failing to guide or tell a user that he/she was trying to do something that would not work i.e. trying to mount a filesystem without also mounting the parent filesystem, intolerance of a newcomers inability to quickly comprehend a wide range of concepts and to rapidly sift though vast amounts of documentation in order to find a trinket of information necessary to solve this problem, an editor that failed to properly warn a user about embedded non-printing characters, a parser somewhere in autofs that failed to properly warn a user about embedded non-printing characters in a configuration file, a mount process that failed to tell the user that it could not perform it's task because it encountered those same non-printing characters, or perhaps because those non-printing characters were being interpreted as part of a file system name that was not being exported and by that same mount process simply hanging until a timeout occurred without any explanation whatsoever... So, as well as not being able to tell the difference between a "programmer's" text editor and a word processor, you can't recognise a joke either. Attempting to ridicule me again Anton will NOT come across as helpful. As for jokes, when done at someone's expense, that is an attempt to be hurtful and bullying. No, I do not accept those and have told you that ridiculing me, a novice in regard to usage of the NFS tool set, is NOT helpful in the least. It only reflects badly on your own character... BTW I regret having chosen to use your own remarks about gremlins against you, and apologize. That was twisting the knife and not necessary to make my point. Your ridicule of me made me angry, but I should stay professional and not respond in kind.

As for using a "programmer's" text editor v.s a word processor? If a tool purports to handle a plain text file, I expect that tool to honor the syntax conventions associate with plain text files. I see nothing wrong with using any tool that will edit text files, conceptually, as a simple text file. By not displaying or warning about non-printable characters, other than CR or LF, kwrite has a bug in it. I use other text editors such as xemacs and vi all the time. Because I had approached these configuration files via Dolphin, kwrite was handy, so I used it instead. It bit me, and I learned of it's limitation. Won't make that mistake again... I also pointed out, that there are a number of issues with various different tools, that aligned to make the process of setting up an nfs server and an autofs client extremely difficult. You might want to focus on those instead of attacking me. Marc... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/11/2011 02:43 PM:

...

As for using a "programmer's" text editor v.s a word processor? If a tool purports to handle a plain text file, I expect that tool to honor the syntax conventions associate with plain text files. "Purports to handle" could mean anything. Word processors can READ IN plain text files. That could be shoe-horned into "handle", but the resulting file when the word processor has finished with it is a word processor file.

It is, after all, a word processing tool.

There are plenty of tools for editing pain text files. Some "programmers editors" for pain text files like Kate and GVIM have facilities for "syntax directed editing" and can make smart guesses at the 'language' in the file: C/C++, perl, php, as well as various types of config file.

Kate also has a terminal emulator built in, so you could view it as a development environment. But I am not editing a file that requires syntax directed editing. Why is Kate and GVIM relevant? If I had chosen them instead, to use as a text editor because they claim they can do so, I would expect exactly

On 2/11/2011 12:37 PM, Anton Aylward wrote: the same behavior as if I had chosen any other tool that claims to be able to edit text files and write said files back out as a plain text file.

...

I see nothing wrong with using any tool that will edit text files, conceptually, as a simple text file. Indeed, but I'd rather have one that will edit text files ACTUALLY.

...

By not displaying or warning about non-printable characters, other than CR or LF, kwrite has a bug in it. That makes no sense. Kwrite is a WORD PROCESSOR. It writes out word processing files. It is not a text editor any more than Quanta+, Inkscape or GIMP is a text editor. All those can manipulate text, but what they write out isn't a text file

Funny that the menu item for KDE/openSuSE applications labels Kwrite as a Text Editor! I am suppose to have groked this distinction how? Oh I see, guess I am suppose to go read another man page first... Hmmm funny, no man pages for Kwrite! Aww guess what! KWrite has a Help button, that leads me to a built in document!!! Oh now this is interesting - Right at the very top of this help document it says - "KWrite is a text editor for KDE allowing you to edit one file at the time per window." What part of "text editor" am I suppose to have interpreted as - not really! KWrite is really a "word processor"?

...

Because I had approached these configuration files via Dolphin, kwrite was handy, so I used it instead. It bit me, and I learned of it's limitation. Won't make that mistake again... This is where Patrick would step in and say that your mistake was using a GUI -- Dolphin -- and let it make decisions for you. I would add that GUIs in general let other people make decisions for you and limit what you can see and do to what they think you should be doing and seeing. You have illustrated this point exceedingly well.

Dolphin offered me a choice, it did not force me to chose KWrite, but it did make it a little easier... That is called guidance...

...

I also pointed out, that there are a number of issues with various different tools, that aligned to make the process of setting up an nfs server and an autofs client extremely difficult. You might want to focus on those instead of attacking me. You might want to use the right tools and in the right way and gain an understanding of how the tools and facilities work and interact BEFORE hacking away. I kept saying "It works for me" and looking back I'm of the opinion that it worked without problems such as you encountered because I chose the right tools and read up and planned

I was taught "The seven Ps", but it seems one of the Ps is considered a rude word by many Nanny Filters, so its "The Six Ps" you'll find discussed most on the 'Net http://jbdcolley.com/?p=184

Marc, I see from other people and some out-of-band that you are coming across as attacking Linux, previous version of UNIX, their designers and developers and in many ways the OpenSource movement. This is not appreciated. There's a saying by the old Roman poet Horace that sums things up well:

If a better system is thine, impart it freely; If not, make use of mine. Anton, I grow tired of fencing with you. You are so blinded by your

Yeah!? I guess I had better go off to some mountain top somewhere, spend a few years groking ALL the documentation, and ALL the tools in Linux, before I use ANY of them, so I will know up front what ALL the possibilities are, and ALL of the interactions between ALL of the tools. HUMP!! prejudices against GUI's that you cannot see their potential. You are so blinded by your love of Linux that you cannot see that there is room for improvement. Your comments such as "It works for me" or "RTFM" shows that you are incapable of learning from others and have no tolerance for newcomers and people struggling to learn. Instead you launch personal attacks against me repeatably, which is called bullying. NO I am NOT a Linux hater in any way shape or form, but you want to establish and live by such doctrines of "It's my way or the highway.", or "Either you are with Linux, or you are against Linux." Such elitist attitudes do no allow you to see the middle grounds, the gray areas, just black and white simplistic answers. You are incapable of being a good teacher Anton, or a guide, and I suggest you should not try. You lack empathy for those who are struggling, a necessary quality of a good leader, and instead mock, and laugh at them. I thank you for trying though, you did help although it has turned into a rocky road that we traveled. I pointed out some faults of Linux, and you then choose to label me antagonistic against Linux. Not as someone who is trying to be helpful by sharing the difficulties he was having, offering suggestions on how to make improvements, and hoping to open a pathway towards those improvements. In all of our diatribes, you have not once offered suggestions of your own, on how Linux might be improved, for newcomers. Instead you complain, attack and imply that you wish beginners would go away and leave Linux to the elite few gurus who like it the way it is.. I suspect you will continue you attacks against me for awhile. I will reply no further to you in this thread. This has gone far enough. Regards... Marc Chamberlin -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/11/2011 12:56 AM:

..... an editor that failed to properly warn a user about embedded non-printing characters, a parser somewhere in autofs that failed to properly warn a user about embedded non-printing characters in a configuration file, a mount process that failed to tell the user that it could not perform it's task because it encountered those same non-printing characters, .....

Well, you were using a GUI. The command line version has STDIN, STDOUT an STDERROR streams Applications do complain - to the STDERROR stream that has no counterpart when you are using a GUI. Unless of course the GUI designer chooses to make the GUI very heavy and monitor all the error codes. But then perhaps the GUI designer chose not to write a wrapper around the CLI and instead, being a programmer, wrote it all in C, and found that checking all the return codes and interpreting the results and writing all the handlers and branching code was just too tedious and boring. Marc, you say you are a programmer. Do you ALWAYS check the return codes when subroutine and procedures are called, do you ALWAYS write the branching code and handlers for the results for each and every one at each and every level? By using the CLI and seeing the errors I learnt quickly. Of course you could have monitored the various files in /var/log -- Getting into a patent battle with IBM is right up there with starting a land war in Asia -- http://slashdot.org/~Don+Negro -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Putting all the head butting aside, I would have to say Marc is correct in one fundamental point: why isn't the help environment more integrated into the application? As an application developer, and thus as a user support participant, I know very well that most problems stem from lack of information to the user more than poor program design. (My education is in cognitive psychology and interface design - so don't assume ignorance in this claim.) Not to say that poor program design is not also a problem. But really, no one sits down and says "How can I freak out the most users? What will elicit the most hostile reactions from the users? To be blunt, how can I be the biggest pain in the ass?" The developers are, in the total absence of a detailed specification from the user (read that a few times - it is a core issue here), surely doing their best. Given that they are often working sans enumeration, how on earth can you complain? But complain we do (drat, I am on that list of complainers when as a developer I should know better...). Instead of bitching at the programmers, perhaps we should address the more general question of how we could improve the situation for everyone. Developers are not evil bastards bent on making a bad experience for the user. I warrant that they are in fact very interested in quite the opposite. When users complain I suspect the developers are unhappy. What is missing is an infrastructure that developers can include in their applications that facilitates a moderated dialog between them and the users. Of course individual apps have done this. But a 'libc' that facilitates user/developer interaction in a constructive and commonly available way simply does not exist. And as long as there is no easy avenue for dialog, this complaint will persist. So instead of bitching at the obviously evil developers with hearts of pure evil, perhaps a more constructive approach might be to see how the developers can best keep abreast of the undefined and surely constantly shifting demands of the users. So, users, what do you suggest? And here is the rub: suggest something concrete and that puts some of the responsibility on you to invent a way to clearly define what some widget should do. After all, to complain that some unpaid coder did not implement some undefined (by the user) functionality is lame at best. -- Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 SHAW'S PRINCIPAL Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

* Marc Chamberlin [02-10-11 14:01]:

...

And he decides to bring up the map file using Xemacs, and damned if there weren't some non-printing characters embedded in that file. Dunno how they got there, and kwrite was not showing them to me... Sigh... Removed em and all started working as expected... Hint, kwrite is not a :text-editor". Then what is it? It presents a text file to a user to manipulate. It apparently has a fault in that it does not display non-printing characters. Why am I, as a user, to be belittled for having chosen what appeared to be an easy to use tool to edit the configuration files? Graphics/GUI is *not* always better (er, ever). I NEVER claimed GUIs based tools are inheritantly better than command

On 2/10/2011 12:26 PM, Patrick Shanahan wrote: line tools, both can be badly designed. What I did say is that GUI's have a far better POTENTIAL to teach and guide a user in a tools usage, and make it easy for them to reach a satisfactory solution. Non-interactive command lines with external documentation has repeatedly been shown over and over, again and again, to be a failed approach when it comes to teaching/guidance. GUIs offer a far richer medium, using pictures, diagrams, built in layers of organization, can present models via easy to understand graphical concepts, automate much of the underlying difficult parts, make transparent the connections between different subsystems etc. Another advantage of GUI driven software is that the presentation layer/documentation often stays in better sync with the underlying tools capabilities, it HAS to in order to work. Yes, many GUIs are poorly design and only present a subset of a tools capabilities, but that is not the fault of the GUI approach per say, that is the fault of the designer. What Anton, and many Linux zealots fail to understand, is that half the battle of designing a well design tool(s) is that it is the job of the designers and programmers to make it easy for newcomers to learn how to use it also, intuitive if possible, and how to integrate said tool into their processes/needs to solve a particular problem. Stay with your command lines exclusively if you like, along with your external difficult to understand, unorganized documentation. The rest of the world will choose the easiest tools that guide and help them to learn, and I, as a programmer myself, will continue to be a champion for them. Why do you think GUI based tools such as Turbotax and H&R Block are so damn successful in helping people file their taxes? They are GUIDES! Try doing that with your command lines and external documentation and see how successful you will be. The current NFS system FAILED me, and many many others because of it's lack of guidance, organization, and usage of overwhelming large amounts of difficult to understand documentation. Yes the answers may be in that heap somewhere, but I am tired of having to sift through so much documentation, parse and understand the obtuse semantics used, just to find some little gem of information buried on some document page somewhere. And I am really sick and tired of callous answer such as RTFM. The moment someone says that, I KNOW I am dealing with badly designed/written software. Implementing features is one thing, designing for usability is quite another. Until you learn the difference, and understand that there are multiple levels of target audiences competency levels, please stay out of software design and development. People who do not understand this, and are writing programs, are making a mess out of computers and ruining them. I got no problems with experts who want to use concise command lines to quickly accomplish some task, but I got one hell of a problem with those same experts who want to force newcomers into HAVING to quickly learn so much background/underlying information/concepts necessary, in order to accomplish the same task, because the only means available is via those same concise command lines. That is building a needless barrier against entry into the world of Linux. Marc... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 2/11/2011 12:59 AM, Johannes Meixner wrote:

Hello,

On Feb 10 21:31 Marc Chamberlin wrote (excerpt):

...

What ... many Linux zealots fail to understand, is that half the battle of designing a well design tool(s) is that it is the job of the designers and programmers to make it easy for newcomers ...

Basically there are no extra designers for most Linux software. Basically it is the "Linux zealots" who make most Linux software.

It is a contradiction in itself to demand that "Linux zealots" should make their software easy for newcomers because they cannot.

They would need newcomers who are willing to spend time and energy to contribute real value and work together with them over a longer time and help them to understand how their software looks from a newcomer's point of view.

Unfortunately there is not much of those contribution.

Johannes - Your thoughts are very welcomed, but I am in strong disagreement with you also. Getting newcomers to provide feedback to developers can be easily accomplished if tools are designed and developed to MAKE it easy. Feedback is THE most important tool a developer can have. With it, he can improve his/her product immensely, and thus provide the multi level support needed for all competencies. How often have I wished to see a feedback button located right under the Help button! That alone shows the developer(s) care. (Command line designers/zealots could also put in a 'feedback' parameter for their tools which would solicit and forward comments to the designers. Makes wrapping such tools with thoughtful GUI's easier also.) I recognize that you will argue, that developers will fear being overwhelmed then. Maybe in the beginning, right after a tool is released, that will happen. But if developers take time to listen, adjust the product and correct the errors, that rate will taper off. Tools like GUI based Bugzilla can also mitigate some of this, via their voting process. Trouble is, most newcomers cannot even FIND, or even are aware of, a bugtracking tool that supports a particular tool, or a forum such as this one where help can be solicited. So, BUILD IT IN to the product! Put it in the HELP design and lead the user to it. In other words put it up front so the newcomers and others CAN discover/use these mechanisms. Your complaint about the lack of getting feedback and help from newcomers again boils down to how the tool and its support subsystem was designed. Usually badly....

Instead there are mostly only complaints when something does not work which does not really help the developers.

Oh YES, but complaints are extremely valuable, IF AND ONLY IF you take the time to LISTEN and understand where the problem really lies, and take the time to then correct it. Most complaints are very likely to boil down to the fact that the user does not understand how to use a tool. By correcting, I don't mean correct the user, but rather correct the tool. Answers, such as what Anton gave me - RTFM - is so wrong on so many levels. Anton complained that I was beating my head against a wall because I was unwilling to change my approach to a problem I was trying to solve. I disagree. NO, it is the developers who are beating their heads against a wall, insisting that users RTFMs, designing tools in a now 30 year old fashion, and not being willing to LISTEN to users and change their approach in software design and development. I repeat my earlier statement, if you want less complaints, design the tools to be teachers and guides, provide easy feedback systems that allow corrections to take place, as well as implementers of functionality.

...

Implementing features is one thing, designing for usability is quite another.

Yes.

I look forward to your valuable contribution regarding software design and usability.

And you are getting it, right now! Anton said that I, and users in general, have to learn how to do things the "Linux way" Fine. I just want that "Linux way" to include all levels of user competencies, not just experts who have a broad width and depth of understanding the Linux architecture and the associated tools limitations. That requirement becomes a barrier to entering the Linux world. Where are the "Linus Torvold's" who set the standards for the look and feel of Linux and it's tool sets? I know Linus has been one of the main gatekeepers for the kernel itself, but what about the rest of the system? Who make's the decision about what tools get included in a distribution's packages? At some level this has to be happening, and this is where a "standard" of acceptance should be developed, and tools judged on how well they meet those standards. Then roadmaps can be laid out for volunteers to pick and choose what to work on, and tool development guided towards becoming more and more usable for more and more users...

...

Until you learn the difference, and understand that there are multiple levels of target audiences competency levels, please stay out of software design and development.

Wow!

If I understand you correctly, you say that many free software developers should "stay out of software development".

In this case I assume with this kind of mind-set nobody would like to listen to what you will contribute regarding software design and usability.

No, you do not understand me correctly. I have nothing against free software developers, and much appreciate their time and efforts. But they need to be guided as well, and shown the way towards how to create excellent software. What I was really trying to say is that if you are unwilling to change your software development attitude, and design for usability instead of just functionality, then don't design at all. That attitude is doing far more harm than good for computers in general. I have taken a lot of time to try and explain, with examples, of what sort of thinking is required, (got off on a huge tangent here!) if Linux ever wants to evolve into a really superior OS and a cool environment for ALL of it's users. I am willing to help, I have been in this business for a long time now and seen some really neat examples of what works and what doesn't. I have also been a teacher, a very humbling experience, and the one thing I have learned is you cannot pigeon hole users and force them into fast learning processes that require a broad width of understanding of computer science. You cannot simply rely on requiring users to read lots of external dry documents in order to use a particular tool. You try and you will fail. That is archaic thinking and there are far better ways.... I hope a few developers/readers are really listening and doing some soul searching. I will summarize - Successful software development is going to be judged in terms of usability. Functionality is 10% of the battle, and currently gets 90% of many if not most software developer's focus. That focus HAS to change to be closer to 50/50. By functionality I am referring to those features/software elements that are focused on making the tool perform its basic job. By usability I am referring to those features/software elements that are focused on making it easier for a user to use the tool, provide feedback to developers, guide and teach painlessly, and finally make it a joy for the user to use said tool.

Regards Johannes Meixner

Regards also... Marc Chamberlin -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/11/2011 02:09 PM:

Where are the "Linus Torvold's" who set the standards for the look and feel of Linux and it's tool sets? I know Linus has been one of the main gatekeepers for the kernel itself, but what about the rest of the system? Who make's the decision about what tools get included in a distribution's packages? At some level this has to be happening, and this is where a "standard" of acceptance should be developed, and tools judged on how well they meet those standards. Then roadmaps can be laid out for volunteers to pick and choose what to work on, and tool development guided towards becoming more and more usable for more and more users...

All of which exists. Why not google for it? -- Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe. Thomas H. Huxley -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

...

...

...

What do you mean by "BELOW"? That just does not make any kind of sense!

I understand 'below' the nfs mount point like this (eg): I export /home from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.3 It becomes /home on 192.168.1.3 A user on 192.168.1.3 would then describe /home/lynn as _below_ home. I as root on 192.168.1.1 could see _above_ the share. eg I could go to /etc but the user on the shared box could not see _my_ /etc. Only browse the /etc on her own box.the end. Saludos, Cheers. L x -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/10/2011 01:19 PM: to say Anton. I CANNOT execute

a mount command EXCEPT as ROOT! Trying to execute a mount command as me, user marc, is NOT allowed. I get told promptly that the mount command is ONLY allowed by ROOT if I try. Therefore, since there was no uid parameter supplied in the command I gave, the uid of the mount point will be ROOT, that is the default behavior of the mount command, and I showed you exactly what I executed. So what in the world are you saying here?

I'm trying to show that if you let HAL - which runs as root - mount the decvice, it will be mounted as root. Its odd, but I can mount my USB devices as 'anton'. Its back to the MAN pages. In this case the MOUNT man page, which explains how non-root users can mount things: The non-superuser mounts. Normally, only the superuser can mount file systems. However, when fstab contains the user option on a line, anybody can mount the corresponding system. A little later it goes on to say For more details, see fstab(5). Which gets back to my point about reading other man pages well :-) Further, it says The owner option is similar to the user option, with the restriction that the user must be the owner of the special file. ... The group option is similar, with the restriction that the user must be member of the group of the special file. I expect you'll find /dev/sdb1 is root.floppy. If it was marc.users there would be no problem. Well, part of the "it works for me" was to alter the entry in /etc/fstab in accordance with the man page. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Anders Johansson said the following on 02/10/2011 06:31 PM:

On Thursday 10 February 2011 20:15:02 Anton Aylward wrote:

...

Its odd, but I can mount my USB devices as 'anton'. Its back to the MAN pages. In this case the MOUNT man page, which explains how non-root users can mount things:

The non-superuser mounts. Normally, only the superuser can mount file systems. However, when fstab contains the user option on a line, anybody can mount the corresponding system.

Yes, but that doesn't apply if you give more than one parameter to the mount command. As soon as you specify anything more than the device or mount point, the fstab entry is overridden, and you can no longer mount as user.

I don't see the problem. It just means you have to get the entry in the fstab right :-)

halmount should work, but since hal is deprecated it won't be around much longer. I'm not sure what the replacement will be

I can't recall if pmount (policy mount), which can get around all that (and hence the hal wrapper 'pmount-hal') is in the future or in the past. The sad thing about hal being depreciated (2001 jokes aside) begins with phrases such as "just when I've got it all figured out ...." -- Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. --Henry Louis Mencken -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

* Marc Chamberlin [02-09-11 18:34]:

first, and I will honor your privacy and respond as appropriate.

much toooo much detail why don't you try scp or sftp? write a script to automate the transfer -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/09/2011 06:33 PM:

...

...

And, as I said, the device notifier is a KDE applet that lets you deal with the mounted devices, it does not do the mount. All it does is let you run the file manager, or gwenview or something. You may be technically correct, but to someone who did not develop that tool, that is NOT obvious. What a user see's is that it notifies you when you insert a USB device. It pops up dialog, and tells you about the device. Then the user can click on the device, within the notifier, and IT GETS MOUNTED.

Not so. It offers the choice of that to do with an ALREADY MOUNTED device. I don't have to be the developer to determine this. Logically, it has to have mounted the device so it knows what it is, storage, camera, phone ..., before it can offer the choice of what to do with it, what applications to offer.

It pops up dialog, and tells you about the device

Right. So it must have seen that the device is mounted! Or, it you really want to be picky. Remove the notifier applet. Open a terminal window. Run "mount" in a loop to tell you when what is mounted changes Insert a device. See! It gets mounted by HAL NOT by the device notifier. If you read the man page on the HAL daemon, the same one that spawns the process that polls the USB ports and appears in the process table: root 1680 1405 0 18:27 ? 00:00:00 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sdb (every 16 sec) which is responsible for mounting the USB device, you will see it says DESCRIPTION hald is a daemon that maintains a database of the devices connected to the system system in real-time. The daemon connects to the D-Bus system message bus to provide an API that appli- cations can use to discover, monitor and invoke operations on devices. For more information about both the big picture and specific API details, refer to the HAL spec which can be found in /usr/share/doc/packages/hal/spec/hal-spec.html depending on the distribution. OH WOW! Its all documented. Non of this is the least bit obscure. I've not had to be the developer or even read the source code. I've not had to use obscure or sophisticated tools or write scripts, even in shell. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org