Linux

Cheers all for the assistance.

It looks like I have a few issues. First one is that the full command wasn't being executed for some reason so however I tried to log it I wasn't getting any output. The command actually being executed was this :

Oct  2 13:50:01 raspberrypi CRON[5184]: (root) CMD (sh /home/pi/bkup_rpimage/bkup_rpimage.sh start -c /media/Raspi/Backup/$(date +)

Should stuff be in quotes or something? I've not seen any reference to that before.

When I shorten down the output so the command does run I get the following error in my log file

/home/pi/bkup_rpimage/bkup_rpimage.sh: 299: /home/pi/bkup_rpimage/bkup_rpimage.sh: blockdev: not found
/home/pi/bkup_rpimage/bkup_rpimage.sh: 300: /home/pi/bkup_rpimage/bkup_rpimage.sh: blockdev: not found
/home/pi/bkup_rpimage/bkup_rpimage.sh: 352: /home/pi/bkup_rpimage/bkup_rpimage.sh: losetup: not found
/home/pi/bkup_rpimage/bkup_rpimage.sh: 360: /home/pi/bkup_rpimage/bkup_rpimage.sh: losetup: not found
-e Required program losetup is not installed

Not sure why it runs when I run it directly but not using cron. I can't find any reference to it from googling the script.

Scripts run from cron aren't inheriting your interactive shell setup, and often have a different PATH. You can find the absolute path of each of the programs it's complaining about by typing eg.

$ which blockdev

in your shell, and then use the result (/sbin/blockdev or whatever it happens to be) explicitly in the script. Or just add that directory to PATH inside the script.

Excellent, thanks all. That's got it working now.

Now just need to work out why cron doesn't work with the command which includes the date.

EDIT: Turns out I needed to escape the + and % with a backslash

I have an annoying issue that I keep bumping into that I suspect has a simple solution (I'm guessing I screwed something up somewhere).

I have a number of folders on a Windows machine mounted using /etc/fstab. Generally all works fine but every so often they don't all mount properly (I suspect it's when I've had a powercut or similar and the linux machine boots up before the windows one).

Linux machine auto-downloads various stuff and uses those mounted folders to save it to the network. When the mount isn't working it just saves the files to the raspberry pi (the same folder that is normally mounted) and swiftly fills up the SD card. How do I stop this happening? Downloading is generally happening on sabnzbd

You could make the directory read-only on the underlying FS, so the write will always fail unless the mount has succeeded.

That sounds like it should work. Will give it a try. Cheers.

I posted this in the Pi thread, but just incase:

for those using pihole if your update "breaks" and complains iproute2 is missing

check /etc/apt/sources.list and make sure it's right... mine was zero'd somehow, and iproute2 is now in backports for Debian Buster.

If you want the real tech info, I filed my findings (and suggestions) here:

https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/pull/­3537
... guess my username ... :P

snap can fuck right off, can't it.

I do miss being able to run df without having to grep out all the snaps.

I understand the attraction of packaging apps up like the Mac .dmg style, though.

I've got a load of csv files in a folder and want to see how many rows each is. I'm sure I previously knew how to do this but my mind is now a blank

I tried used awk

awk "END {print NR}" *.csv

but that gives me the aggregate number of rows, rather than the number for each file. Any suggestions on how I should be doing this, cheers?

wc -l *.csv

(Word count utility, -l is output number of lines only.)

I had no idea that existed, way easier. Cheers

Kinda not linux, but I figured some people may be interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1J2RMorJXM

How much does running Linux on a Raspberry Pi differ from an x64 machine? I need to replace my Linux machine soon and wonder whether that's an option or it will throw up lots of incompatibilities?

Raspbian is based on Debian, and is otherwise fairly vanilla for most uses.

I run Ubuntu on various desktop & servers, and Raspbian on various Pi 0 / 3 / 4 boxes, use exactly the same profiles & scripts to work on them.

Any incompatabilities probably depend on your use

Cheers. It has just occurred to me that I do actually have a laptop somewhere running Ubuntu so it shouldn't be an issue. I do have a spare Pi though so will give that a try too.

Asking in here & in the IT workers thread:

Does anyone know of any open source projects that have good quality documentation all the way from user requirements / stories through to functional specs, technical specs, and code?

The project itself is not what I am interested in per se - I'm modelling the link between specs & code (more specifically, code changes)

Should I just be trawling Github / Sourceforge?

It might be worth looking at the various sites out there for beginner contributors? Might be the case that those sites point devs who want to start contributing to big, well-structured and well documented projects

With the Letsencrypt chat earlier, I was minded to update the certificates on my server, where I have self-hosted cloud storage.

While https://mydomain.com/bitthatIneedtoaccessallthetime has a certificate expiry of 5 Jan 2022, I cannot connect to the account using my (ubuntu) desktop - the error states that the certificate is expired.

Any ideas?

It's a letsencrypt certificate - could it be because of the root certificate expiry a while back?

Does anyone know of any apps that I can use to tile windows, but without having to use an entirely new window manager?

Currently using X11

Probably depends on which desktop env/window manager you are using already?

Currently using X11 (on ubuntu 20.04)

I know that compiz could work, but I also know that it's heavy going and a bit fragile.

You should be able to do basic edge-tiling/snapping, if not by default, but certainly after installing gnome-tweaks/gnome-tweak-tool and turning on the relevant settings.

Might be worth looking to see if there are any gnome extensions for more advanced tiling, or maybe pop shell might be worth a look.

I tried pop shell, but didn't really get on with it.

The basic gnome shell snapping does a lot of what I need - using , etc.. to tile windows left and right of my screen.

The problem is that it only does it in halves of the screen, and I need to do it in thirds.

Unfortunately pop shell doesn't have the option to change this either.