DOS vs. Linux

[PKTKS]

What I need:

• Automation Tasks
• Web programming

Umm, Perl? I think I will add it to my list 

Rest assure that PERL  fits 99% of day tasks and

EVERY SINGLE RESPONSIBLE SYS ADMIN ...
sleeps with a PERL cook book under the pillow..

PERL will suit 100% fine from simple script
to complex object oriented GUI apps

Check lately CPAN stats how much folks actually
are working daily  restless since hmmm 80s? 90s?

While the other side of the coin has done the impossible
to wipe out PERL strong capabilities from earth...

It is still there..

In as much I personally don't like the recent PERL 6
trends ...  diverting from the real strong and secure paradigms.

There is no coming back once you master PERL at least reasonably

Enjoy the real strong points of the free  Internet...
Paul


PS> several times a question considering REPLACING BASH w/PERL
has crossed my eyes... and I do think that will be a nice thing...

[Nominal Animal]

People *have* designed such languages, but the problem is they don't get any traction unless they find some "killer app", in which case the shittiest language in the world (PHP, JavaScript...) can take off.

I haven't seen any.  Every one I've seen has either historical baggage, or serious signs of this-is-my-favourite-fad-and-I'll-keep-it-in-itis.

Rest assure that PERL  fits 99% of day tasks

Ha-ha, that's funny.

Perl is Yet Another language that has not evolved but aggregated more and more.  Having both OO and non-OO approaches in the standard library, and an obtuse syntax to boot, is a long-term maintenance problem.  Have you ever looked at long-maintained Perl code?  It is almost as bad as PHP.

And like I said earlier, I find it a fatal flaw that perl-based "standard" tools (like /usr/bin/rename provided by File::Rename) cannot handle file names with newlines (provided from standard input).

You may like it, but I don't.  I've been bitten by its flaws too many times.  Also, I still have flashbacks to some really horrible Perl code I had to try and maintain on a server just before the turn of the century.  It has its uses, but those are very rare; I keep it in the same category as awk.

[PlainName]

cannot handle file names with newlines

I never realised that anything could, or should! Is there an actual OS that does?

[Nominal Animal]

You can create a file named foo<newline>bar in Bash by running touch $'foo\nbar'.

Like I wrote above, the Linux kernel considers file names (directory entries) to be opaque byte sequences terminated with '\0' and not containing '/' .
The $'foo\nbar' is just a way Bash allows one to express the name.

You can also do

Code: [Select]

filename="$( printf 'foo\nbar' )"
touch "$filename"
or even

Code: [Select]

touch 'foo
bar'
to accomplish the same.  Works just fine in Linux.

[brucehoult]

cannot handle file names with newlines

I never realised that anything could, or should! Is there an actual OS that does?

Any decent one, I should think!

Code: [Select]

bruce@rip:~/temp$ l
total 32
-rwxr-xr-x  1 bruce bruce 16408 Dec  6 16:01 hello
drwxr-xr-x  6 bruce bruce  4096 Dec  6 15:58 _install
drwxr-xr-x 17 bruce bruce  4096 Dec  6 15:28 riscv-isa-sim
drwxr-xr-x 11 bruce bruce  4096 Dec  6 15:37 riscv-pk
bruce@rip:~/temp$ echo foo >'line 1\
> line 2'
bruce@rip:~/temp$ l
total 36
-rwxr-xr-x  1 bruce bruce 16408 Dec  6 16:01  hello
drwxr-xr-x  6 bruce bruce  4096 Dec  6 15:58  _install
-rw-r--r--  1 bruce bruce     4 Dec  8 11:56 'line 1\'$'\n''line 2'
drwxr-xr-x 17 bruce bruce  4096 Dec  6 15:28  riscv-isa-sim
drwxr-xr-x 11 bruce bruce  4096 Dec  6 15:37  riscv-pk
bruce@rip:~/temp$

And viewed in emacs diredit mode:

Code: [Select]

  /home/bruce/temp:                                                                                           
  total used in directory 44 available 368830636                                                             
  -rwxr-xr-x  1 bruce bruce 16408 Dec  6 16:01 hello                                                         
  drwxr-xr-x  6 bruce bruce  4096 Dec  6 15:58 _install                                                       
  -rw-r--r--  1 bruce bruce     4 Dec  8 11:56 line 1\\                                                       
line 2                                                                                                       
  drwxr-xr-x 17 bruce bruce  4096 Dec  6 15:28 riscv-isa-sim                                                 
  drwxr-xr-x 11 bruce bruce  4096 Dec  6 15:37 riscv-pk                                                       


OK, that was Ubuntu. Let's try MacOS:

Code: [Select]

bruce@mini:~/trv$ l
total 168
-rw-r--r--  1 bruce  staff   2703  6 Dec 23:17 instructions.inc
-rwxr-xr-x  1 bruce  staff  68112  6 Dec 23:37 trv
-rw-r--r--  1 bruce  staff   8340  6 Dec 23:37 trv.c
bruce@mini:~/trv$ echo foo >'line1\
> line2'
bruce@mini:~/trv$ l
total 176
-rw-r--r--  1 bruce  staff   2703  6 Dec 23:17 instructions.inc
-rw-r--r--  1 bruce  staff      4  8 Dec 12:01 line1\?line2
-rwxr-xr-x  1 bruce  staff  68112  6 Dec 23:37 trv
-rw-r--r--  1 bruce  staff   8340  6 Dec 23:37 trv.c
bruce@mini:~/trv$

And, again, viewed in emacs diredit:

Code: [Select]

  /Users/bruce/trv:                                                                                         
  total used in directory 176 available 103 GiB                                                             
  drwxr-xr-x   7 bruce  staff    224  8 Dec 12:01 .                                                         
  drwxr-xr-x+ 41 bruce  staff   1312  6 Dec 23:21 ..                                                         
  drwxr-xr-x  12 bruce  staff    384  6 Dec 23:47 .git                                                       
  -rw-r--r--   1 bruce  staff   2703  6 Dec 23:17 instructions.inc                                           
  -rw-r--r--   1 bruce  staff      4  8 Dec 12:01 line1\\                                                   
  line2                                                                                                     
  -rwxr-xr-x   1 bruce  staff  68112  6 Dec 23:37 trv                                                       
  -rw-r--r--   1 bruce  staff   8340  6 Dec 23:37 trv.c                                                     

Running the following trivial program:

Code: [Select]

#include <stdio.h>
#include <dirent.h>

void main() {
    DIR *dp = opendir(".");
    struct dirent *files;
    while(files = readdir(dp))
      printf("Found file: '%s'\n", files->d_name);
}

On Linux:

Code: [Select]

bruce@rip:~/temp$ ./dir
Found file: '_install'
Found file: '..'
Found file: 'riscv-pk'
Found file: 'riscv-isa-sim'
Found file: 'hello'
Found file: '.'
Found file: 'dir.c'
Found file: 'line 1\
line2'
Found file: 'dir'
bruce@rip:~/temp$

On MacOS:

Code: [Select]

bruce@mini:~/trv$ ./dir
Found file: '.'
Found file: '..'
Found file: 'instructions.inc'
Found file: 'dir.c'
Found file: 'line1\
line2'
Found file: 'trv'
Found file: 'trv.c'
Found file: 'dir'
Found file: '.git'
bruce@mini:~/trv$

So it seems the '\' got included in the real file name as well as the newline. So it probably wasn't necessary. But anyway, both Linux and MacOS happily allow you to create files with newlines in their names.

[PlainName]

Well, you live and learn! Thanks, both 

[magic]

Code: [Select]

-rw-r--r--  1 bruce bruce     4 Dec  8 11:56 'line 1\'$'\n''line 2'


GNU ls
Who even thought it's a good idea

Code: [Select]

# grep QUOTING_STYLE .bashrc
export QUOTING_STYLE=literal

So it seems the '\' got included in the real file name as well as the newline. So it probably wasn't necessary.

Indeed. Immediately wanted to point it out.

[PKTKS]

(..)
So it seems the '\' got included in the real file name as well as the newline. So it probably wasn't necessary.

Well  I will avoid deviating the point as much as strictly needed.

I deal with programming for enough time to say certain things
with pretty much certain:
- I am above average in PERL skills but I am not even close to the experts
- It took me quite a while to master the mid level necessary skills
- quite a while being: I deal with PERL since early 90s.

The above comments actually are in the 0.1%  case of EXOTIC and
PATOLOGIC idiosyncrasies

I treat them like  gross errors (inserting newlines into file system names)
and wipe them out easily with a bunch of others cross-coded chars that
can not be mapped among different systems.

Trivial fix for such error:  s/\n//g;   # done

PERL is a context sensitive logical entity parser...
it has embed pre defined types for entity record definition

Not so easy when database feeds (and PERL handles pretty much
all of them)  contains nasty currency chars combined with non
mapped utf-8 ..   a hell of a headache ...

i have an entire library with hundreds of such exotic
fixes  with are not directly feedable into a db stream...

as anyone will recall data type mismatches will reject them all
Please do not allow gross errors like that cloud your judgment

The characters  in question are not mapped here inside the
text.. and neither into several other systems

So a figure of that stupid but highly frequent problem is attached.
I have more than dozen hundred lines of fixes...

Paul

[Nominal Animal]

GNU ls
Who even thought it's a good idea

But that's the entire reason for my (very slight) frustration in this thread.

There are two approaches.
1. Allow only that which is necessary or obviously useful.
2. Deny only that which is harmful or problematic.

These are completely separate paradigms.
First one is important in security-sensitive contexts.  Second one is important if you want to maximize the options for the end user.
Getting people to understand that while neither approach is superior, they are completely different, and realizing exactly how they differ, and what the ensuing effects of applying one or the other, is the frustrating bit.

- quite a while being: I deal with PERL since early 90s.

Me too.  But, I've never understood you one-tool people; I prefer to use the tool that fits my workflow, instead of venerating one above all others.
(For me, that applies to everything: software, programming language, OS, even license used for my own work product.)

Which is basically what I was saying about scripting languages, too.  All existing ones I know have obvious flaws, and instead of doing the hard work to integrate the good parts into a new language, all I see in new languages is new abstractions and computer science hip topic du jour being applied.  (I do tend to spend some time reading publications at ACM.org, I'm not bashing CS in general.  And I do consider software engineering to be more important than CS; I guess I see a lot of CS in new programming languages, but very little SE.)

Such a combination would obviously not replace all other scripting languages, but for any of the cases I use scripting languages now, one would for sure be an improvement.

[PlainName]

Trivial fix for such error:  s/\n//g;   # done

Such trivial search and replace efforts tend to find and replace stuff you didn't want changing. Really needs to be context-sensitive search, which I don't believe 's' is. Maybe without the 'g' so you can check each instance, eh?

Good job your perl skills are better than this trivial fix

[PKTKS]

Trivial fix for such error:  s/\n//g;   # done

Such trivial search and replace efforts tend to find and replace stuff you didn't want changing. Really needs to be context-sensitive search, which I don't believe 's' is. Maybe without the 'g' so you can check each instance, eh?

Good job your perl skills are better than this trivial fix

My dear... I will reply for the sake of completion...

Of course  as said above.. it matters on what context we
are dealing with..

For the sake of such stupid errors
$/ =""  is equivalent to $/ = "\n\n"   

and if $/ is assigned the empty string  Perl
assumes itself to be in a paragraph read mode.

That depends a lot on your goals..
that stupid newline inside file names suffice that trivial trick
instead you *may*  use paragraph modes.

Or more complex targets as PERL does have more ..
if you prefer
@lines = split( /\W*\n+\W*/, $_ );
@words = split( /\W*\s+\W*/, $_ );


Paul

[bostonman]

Here is an example of not understanding what is going on.

I ran the Ubuntu updates earlier and got these 'error' messages. The final message stated the updates have been installed, but why did it have errors during the process?

[PKTKS]

Here is an example of not understanding what is going on.

I ran the Ubuntu updates earlier and got these 'error' messages. The final message stated the updates have been installed, but why did it have errors during the process?

The BUNTU  things are made to leverage absolute newbies
some steps in the learning curve...

But definitively after that any reasonable clever newbie
should ditch that automated crappy scripts in favor
of keep climbing the proper learning curve..

otherwise will be stick  in that:  "see ma... just like windows does.."

Libmikmod contains a config parser which is generating
that "warning"  about some weird error  introduced in the files
listed by the messages...

I manage my scratch system totally free of buntus and systemd
and crappy shit..  using a SIMPLE PACKAGE MANGER written in PERL..

Ohhh  really ? yes simple as it should 100% working integrated
with ncurses Qt and Gtk (thanks to PERL)

Here the shot of mikmod using hte ncurses front end.. in PERL

Your system should contain such items and a man page for that

Paul

[PKTKS]

oops    fix the mismatched package

instead  this is KMOD not MIKMOD library

The error most likely is some sort of "blacked list item"

which in debian is very common method but no in systemV
where you only do things with 100% sure..

KMOD is not MIKMOD  sorry

Paul

[Nominal Animal]

I ran the Ubuntu updates earlier and got these 'error' messages. The final message stated the updates have been installed, but why did it have errors during the process?

The way to understanding starts from understanding how error messages are formed.  Here is the first line of the error, or at least the part that I can see from the image (the really interesting part was cut off):

libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod-config.c:656 kmod_config_parse:  ... .d/blacklist-ideapad.conf line 6: ignoring bad line starting with ...

The first part in green tells us what process or service is reporting.  Here, it is libkmod, a C interface for applications to load and unload Linux kernel modules. (Why have that? I don't have that installed!  Applications should not be able to do that, only specialized, privileged user interfaces on behalf of the administrator(s), and those use modprobe/insmod/rmmod like they're supposed to.)

The rest of the line is the actual error message.  The black part tells us it was produced by libkmod/libkmod-config.c line 656, but this is kinda odd; only asserts (that if fail, indicate a programming error) usually do this.  The blue and red parts are the more commonly seen parts, describing where the error occurred, and what the error is, respectively.

Because part of the error was cut off, I cannot be sure, but I'd wager the missing blue part is /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ideapad.conf , which is a modprobe configuration file controlling how some kernel modules are loaded (or not) regarding ideapad devices.  Looking at the libkmod/libkmod-config.c:kmod_config_parse() function, I'd wager the problem is that the modules blacklisted by that file do not contain any underscores.  (Because libkmod considers blacklisting drivers – using blacklist drivername – an error.  Which is obviously incorrect, but hey, that code is utter crap anyway.)

So, let's recap.  During installation, you installed or some package you installed pulled in libkmod.  During some trigger (pre- or post-installation, when package install scripts can run things to verify everything is ok, or to set up the package itself) libkmod complained that it must skip some configuration entries in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ideapad.conf because it could not parse them correctly.

How dangerous is this?  Not at all.  It does mean that libkmod is not usable with kernel modules related to ideapad devices, because it cannot parse the modprobe configuration file.

What should you do about it?  Remove (purge!) libkmod, because it is crap.  Whatever applications need it, are crap also.  modprobe is provided by kmod, the official tool package in Debian derivatives for managing Linux kernel mods.  libkmod that you have installed, is having trouble with its configuration files, and does parallel stuff, so the problem is solely in libkmod.  The best approach to resolving such things is removing the inferior software and all its dependants (libkmod, and all packages depending on it), and add it and its developers to your shitlist.  Whenever you see new stuff, you check your shitlist first, because bad programmers that leave such errors languishing for months with zero action even on the git repository will never improve.

Others are much more gentle with their approach, and will not maintain such a shitlist.  I do, because I refuse to waste time and effort on the work product of those who are happy to waste others' time and effort.

[Nominal Animal]

Aww fuck, Lucas De Marchi seems to be the current kmod maintainer, and is adding libkmod to 'kmod' package in more recent versions.

Just look at this bug fix for example: De Marchi caused a problem himself, that now can't be fixed because it is part of the userspace ABI.

(Edited: I had a suspicion as to why this interface was added, and looks like my suspicion was right.  Yes, systemd will apparently eventually do kernel module probing/loading for you.  I wonder how long it will be before they announce modprobe/insmod/rmmod are deprecated in favour of systemd-kmod or somesuch.)

Oh how I hate programmers who just keep aggregating things because they can, instead of taking care their work product is actually usable.

Bostonman, if you want to avoid that error in the future, you have to edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ideapad.conf so that 'libkmod' is happy with it.  Or you can ignore the error.  If you do not use a Lenovo Ideapad, you can even delete the file.

[newbrain]

Since I use Linux for 99% of everything, I just used it to check my most common commands used:

Code: [Select]

$ awk '{print $1}' ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -n -k1 -r

As I have removing duplicates turned on, this only counts different variations of the same command, rather than the number of times actually used.

The (slightly redacted) results:

Code: [Select]

    659 cd
    600 git
    564 l
    489 sudo
    419 riscv64-unknown-elf-gcc
    388 ssh
    386 gcc
    344 man
    332 scp
    280 riscv64-unknown-elf-objdump
    246 cat
    242 rm
    219 less
    210 time
    192 arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc
    159 clang
    144 find
    141 make
    136 mv
    120 echo
    113 mkdir
    104 emacs
     92 spike
     86 cal
     82 du
     81 objdump
     73 file
     72 ls
     70 cp
     69 top
     69 for
     65 arm-linux-gnueabihf-objdump
     63 pushd
     62 grep
     50 perl
     48 qemu-riscv64
     48 df
     41 which
     41 tar
     39 ifconfig
     38 riscv64-unknown-elf-ld
     37 riscv64-unknown-elf-as
     36 riscv64-unknown-elf-objcopy
     34 avr-gcc
     32 riscv32-unknown-elf-gcc
     31 qemu-riscv32
     30 llc
     30 ./configure
     28 export
     26 uptime
     26 cmake
     23 kill
     22 aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc
     21 seq
     21 dos2unix
     20 size
     20 /home/bruce/software/arduino-1.8.10/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avrdude
     19 ping
     18 cut
     18 avr-objdump
     16 tail
     16 python
     16 opt
     15 perf
     15 minicom
     15 lsblk
     14 uname
     14 popd
     14 aarch64-linux-gnu-objdump
     13 while
     12 zcat
     12 rmdir
     12 ln
     11 sort
     11 ../configure
     10 unzip
     10 mtr
     10 killall
     10 gunzip
     10 apt
      9 wc
      9 nslookup
      9 lsb_release
      9 chmod
      8 diff
      7 wget
      7 set
      7 pgrep
      7 awk
      7 apt-get
      6 sync
      6 asciidoc
      5 stty
      5 strings
      5 riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc
      5 curl
      5 crontab
      4 vi
      4 pwd
      4 lsusb
      4 date
      4 cmp
      3 unix2dos
      3 touch
      3 shasum
      3 screen
      2 su
      2 strip


As I use Linux, FreeBSD, but also Windows and PowerShell, I just did the same (list shortened):

Code: [Select]

C:\Users\newbrain> get-content (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath   | %{ $_.Split(" ")[0]} | Group-Object | Sort-Object -Descending -Property Count | format-table -Property Count,Name

Count Name
----- ----
  288 git
   31 Import-Module
   23 .\iperf3.exe
   18 format-hex
   17 Get-Content
   16 pip
   16 $hex[0].ToString(
   16 exit
   16 cd
   15 ping
   15 C:\SysGCC\arm-eabi\bin\arm-eabi-gdb.exe
   11 ssh
   10 Get-Module
    9 $hex
    8 &
    8 Enter-PSSession
    7 wsl
    7
    6 subst
    6 python
    6 tracert
    6 help
    5 nslookup
    5 where.exe
    5 scp
    5 ipconfig
    4 .\Documents\iperf-3.1.3-win64\iperf3.exe
    4 Update-Module
    3 $hex[0].Bytes[0]
    3 New-Item
    3 runas
    3 dir
    3 bash
    3 python.exe
    3 wslconfig.exe
    2 rm
    2 Get-Member
    2 wsl.exe
    2 Get-FileHashThe results are a bit skewed as this is my machine in Italy, not the main one in Sweden, but git dominates nonetheless...

[c.coyle]

I learned DOS way back before Windows and picked up on it quickly. Today I find it's still easy to navigate and remember commands. I've also used Linux (or Unix?), however, I find it's extremely confusing.

Linux seems like so many hidden commands. Recently I used DD to image a drive, and it took a very long time to figure out if my drive was connected, which one it was, and kept having command errors. . . .

You don't say a whole lot about exactly how you currently use Windows.

I switched from Windows to Linux Mint about 4 years ago and it's been great for what I need.  Mint with the Cinnamon desktop is very Windows-like.  Updates are easy. And better and more secure in my opinion, because I can decide if I don't want a specific update, and I need to enter a password for any program to be installed, uninstalled, or updated.  I'm sure it can be defeated by a sophisticated hacker, but it seems a lot more secure than windows.

As far as "commands," I don't have a need to enter commands from the terminal (command line) very often.  When I do, I can usually find cut and paste commands online.  I'm sure if I had to use the terminal regularly, I'd pick up frequently used commands, just like I did way back in the DOS days.

The only downside for me has been a very few Windows programs that beat any Linux equivalent, two being Irfanview and Total Commander. 

[DiTBho]

Is there an opensource equivalent for SolidWorks ?

[Siwastaja]

Is there an opensource equivalent for SolidWorks ?

Really, no.

Open source mechanical engineering is severely lacking, it's much further away than open source PCB EDA (many people are having success with KiCad, after all).

[gnif]

No experience with SolidWorks, but learning FreeCAD atm which seems very powerful and nice to use.

Designed this enclosure and printed it out the other week, leaning as I went.

[bostonman]

I'm uncertain whether to bring up an old topic, but tonight I did another update like I had done in a previous message on a laptop that had been sitting around.

Again, I'm not sure what these types of "errors" mean. Does this mean the update didn't get done correctly, is it an error that retried and eventually succeeded, etc...?

[ataradov]

Do you get an error dialog? If not, then it is fine.

You are looking at the behind the scenes log, those error messages may be normal.

[bostonman]

Do you get an error dialog? If not, then it is fine.

I assume this would be a pop up window that would show after the update completed?

If so, I didn't get anything, however, maybe this is normal, but if I reran updates, it found a few more showing a size of 0kb (I'm guessing it was too small to show the size).

[ataradov]

Yes, any sort of error dialog. If it just finished and showed a dialog with just an "Ok" or restart buttons, then it is fine. Those specific errors are a bit strange, but errors in the detailed log are not uncommon.

It would be helpful to know names of the packages. But if it goes away after the second update, then it is likely also fine.