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LMDE alternative (Closed).

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mike acker
Posts: 131
Joined: 2017-06-28 21:23

Re: LMDE alternative

#21 Post by mike acker »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
mike acker wrote:moving ahead to new Linux kernel
Why do you want to do this?

Unless your hardware is not supported properly then moving away from the stable kernel is probably a bad idea — the new features introduced always carry the possibility of security holes and new bugs.

EDIT: Ryzen will probably benefit from >4.9 though, I think.
I think 4.14 is supposed to be LTS if I remember right. The idea is to move to a position that will be LTS for a while. The Jessie base systems I'm using now are approaching end of life which is why I'm working up new system discs

as far as Ryzen goes -- I think that when you have 2 of their core-clusters working together you need the OS to schedule related threads on the same core so as to reduce latency in fetching across the "fabric" to obtain data from the other core cluster. I think the 4-core/8-thread chips will be plenty for anything needed here but I don't know if these are set up as 1 core cluster with 4 cores or 2 clusters with 2 cores each. in any event the issue is probably un-important except for extreme use.

if memory serves this is related to the DRM4 memory: there are 2 channels on these Ryzen Boards -- one cluster uses channel 0 the other uses channel 1; if the one cluster needs memory from the other channel it has to ask the other cpu cluster to get it ( from gray-matter memory ) --

Kernel 4.14
Excerpt
And now the new kernel is here: Linux 4.14 is the 2017 Long-Term Stable (LTS) release of the kernel and will be supported for about two years. Greg Kroah-Hartman made the announcement in his blog and added that he would be supporting 4.14 with stable kernel patch backports "unless it is a horrid release," which, despite the delaying issues, doesn't seem to be the case.
i found my notes on the kernel upgrade -- I had done a 4.10 earlier. I'm thinking of doing it to my research disc tw -- I really don't have all that much invested into that disc -- yet
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mike acker
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Re: LMDE alternative

#22 Post by mike acker »

one by one the little things get solved. I'm at the point now where I think I'm ready to switch.

I would note at this point: the Forum Guidelines are spot on: I find many times I can google a question and find hints that lead me to a solution. The latest example is

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ttf-mscorefonts-installer
I need Time New Roman -- it is required for APA format documents. Just running the installer from the package manager -- and then a system restart -- was all that was needed.
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stevepusser
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Re: LMDE alternative

#23 Post by stevepusser »

I hope your notes are to get a newer kernel from stretch-backports. You can get newer kernels from several other places, like my Liquorix kernel backports, but they aren't supported by the Debian mothership.

Now that Stretch has updated gcc-6 to fully support retpoline in the kernel, the newer kernels should be rebuilt against the new gcc to get full Spectre variant two hardening. With the Liquorix 4.14-29 I just rebuilt on my laptop:

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grep . /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/*

/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/meltdown:Mitigation: PTI
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v1:Mitigation: __user pointer sanitization
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2:Mitigation: Full generic retpoline
You should now get the same thing with the latest Debian security update of the standard 4.9 kernel.

About the Ryzen CPU: some users were getting crashes with various kernels on MX Linux until they found a kernel cheat:
entropyfoe, it's too sad, I really hoped you were lucky this time with the 4.15-kernels on your ryzen-box
But you are not alone

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1690085

Downscrolling to #72 he summarizes everything again, read it carefully.
They are talking about to compile a kernel with CONFIG_RCU_NOCB_CPU set to yes.
You know I'm no linux-guru, but I looked and think the 4.15.3-antix-kernel is already build like that.
So all you have to do is to put the right rcu_nocbs=X-XX parameter to your "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX"
It's the output of

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echo rcu_nocbs=0-$(($(nproc)-1))


and make the bios-changes
The last link in #72 is a How-To disable ASRL, you can do this for the time being only for the current session for trying it out.
Feel free to ask if you have questions.
MX Linux packager and developer

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mike acker
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Re: LMDE alternative

#24 Post by mike acker »

stevepusser wrote:I hope your notes are to get a newer kernel from stretch-backports. You can get newer kernels from several other places, like my Liquorix kernel backports, but they aren't supported by the Debian mothership.
--snip
thanks
it was my intention to upgrade to kernel 4.14 as this is the new 6-year rather than 2-year LTS kernel. It should also be RYZEN friendly. I'm not going to install new motherboards and RYZEN chips until 2019: by then they should have resolved the spectre problem

I found this essay on updating the kernel:
Managing Linux Kernel Upgrades In Debian

this breaks it down pretty good, I think. he's using jessie backports; we'd use stretch now. other than that a couple apt commands should do it. I'll do it to the Research box first. I did this to a MINT 18/KDE system but that change was a bit different procedure -- the downloaded the update as .deb and did it that way.
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Head_on_a_Stick
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Re: LMDE alternative

#25 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

mike acker wrote:Managing Linux Kernel Upgrades In Debian

this breaks it down pretty good, I think.
I disagree.

The author clams that regressions are a reason to use the backported kernel and this is quite ridiculous because the newer kernel version is far more likely to have regressions than the stable version and if there is a problem Debian will patch the stable kernel, switching to backports just means stuff will stay broken.

The backported kernel also suffers in respect of security updates and so should _never_ be preferred over the stable kernel unless there is a specific need for hardware support.

See also https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian ... f_Syndrome
deadbang

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mike acker
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Re: LMDE alternative

#26 Post by mike acker »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
mike acker wrote:Managing Linux Kernel Upgrades In Debian

this breaks it down pretty good, I think.
I disagree.

The author clams that regressions are a reason to use the backported kernel and this is quite ridiculous because the newer kernel version is far more likely to have regressions than the stable version and if there is a problem Debian will patch the stable kernel, switching to backports just means stuff will stay broken.

The backported kernel also suffers in respect of security updates and so should _never_ be preferred over the stable kernel unless there is a specific need for hardware support.

See also https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian ... f_Syndrome
thanks! this makes perfect sense to me.

I located this page: How To Upgrade Kernel -- which appears to be an "Official Debian" resource :)

I'm on the Office machine this morning munching donuts & coffee but a bit later I'll fire up the Research box. The first thing to do is an apt-get update; then i'll try the apt-cache search linux-image. I expect this is a package -- so it gets the headers as well as the kernel binary.

the nice thing about having a Research Box is -- if it wipes out, oh well. Actually the "Research Box" -- is just the disc in sda

I particularly like going this way as the result should be a 4.14 kernel that would also receive update notices. But, as I like to note: nothing beats rolling up the old sleeves and digging in. One thing that might be a "gotcha" for me: I'm running the Debian9.3+non-free install; this seems to pickup some driver firmware that I need-- the driver for the WiFi card; also for the AMD APU -- I used AMD APUs, generally as these office type boxes don't really need hot-rod gaming video cards.

The Guest box does have a discrete video card: when I ordered the CPU I didn't know what I was doing and got a straight CPU. so that sat around in its box for a while until I needed to build the Guest machine -- which I then built mostly from spare parts -- which there was a nice graphics card in the parts box that my brother didn't need when he built his box using an APU. But: that Guest machine is fast! There's stupid mistakes in it: the MoBo doesn't have a USB3 header -- so the front USB ports on the box aren't connected. Not a show stopper though we just put one of those little bus things out that reads USB sticks, camera SD chips etc. It works great. Live & Learn!

[from the research box]

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mike@Debian9Research:/etc/apt$ more sources.list
# 

# deb cdrom:[Official Debian GNU/Linux Live 9.3.0 cinnamon 2017-12-09T13:29]/ stretch main

#deb cdrom:[Official Debian GNU/Linux Live 9.3.0 cinnamon 2017-12-09T13:29]/ stretch main

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main non-free contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free

# stretch-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
mike@Debian9Research:/etc/apt$ 
hmmmmmmm ... looks like this is directing apt to read from the "stretch" version of Debian. I'm thinking it will be best for me to re-direct a little here: Stick with kernel 4.9 through the upgrade of the Office1 box. Right now I'm planning to upgrade Office1 with a new MoBo and RYZEN chip -- but not until 2019, perhaps, -- the idea is to be sure and get chips that have been corrected for Spectre. I don't really see Spectre as being all that much of a hazzard -- right now -- although: this could change.

General Maintenance of Debian 9.30 systems

I've been thinking on this a bit too. The LMDE system sends package updates (but not always what is needed -- e.g. LibreOffice). Right now I'm thinking og just doing an apt-get update followed by an apt-get upgrade, 1/month, along with regular backups.
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mike acker
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Re: LMDE alternative

#27 Post by mike acker »

Inservice 2018-02-26.
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