Fri Feb 16 23:43:48 Local time zone must be set--see zic manual page 2007

How to solve problems

Now, as you all know there are different ways to solve issues. Some of us just walk away from a problem, others try to find a compromise by discussing things. But there's another option, much easier to apply. Watch this:
< jeeves> I found 2 matches to your query (sorted): bonsaikitten DrEeevil.
bonsaikitten (i=dreeevil@gentoo/user/bonsaikitten) was last seen being kicked from
#gentoo-bugs by kloeri 4 days, 17 hours, 49 minutes ago with the reason ({you suck}).

22:03:49 -!- mode/#gentoo-bugs [+b *!*n=jakub@gentoo/developer/jakub] by eroyf
22:03:49 -!- jakub was kicked from #Gentoo-Bugs by eroyf [the end.]

23:22:22 -!- mode/#gentoo-qa [+b *!*n=jakub@gentoo/developer/jakub] by eroyf
23:22:22 -!- jakub was kicked from #Gentoo-QA by eroyf [second time tonight.]

See, much easier. Don't discuss, don't fix the cause of the discussion / disagreement / flameing. Just move them out of sight and the world is a better place.
I don't think that this is the right way to do things, but all my attempts at discussing it have caused, guess what, more kicking and/or devoicing. I'm getting really annoyed with this, and I wonder how many users just walked away to greener pastures instead if helping with Gentoo.
So ... any good ideas how to make people cooperate some more instead of splitting the community in "with us" and "against us" ? Would be nice, but I'm slowly getting rid of any remaining optimism.

Btw, I've dropped all context, so of course it looks bad, is biased etc. etc. But any context would need a few pages just for the minimum, and in the end it doesn't tell you much more than the few lines up there. :-(

Posted by Patrick | Permalink

Fri Feb 16 13:42:03 Local time zone must be set--see zic manual page 2007

Tips & Tricks: lsof / fuser

Every now and then I hit this interesting "bug" where a device fails to unmount. Usually it's the CDROM drive which is still the working directory in a shell, but how do you find it?
Two small tools to the rescue: sys-process/lsof and fuser from sys-process/psmisc. lsof is easiest to use as "what files are opened by process foo", fuser is best to use as "who has opened file bar".
Small example:
lsof -u you
This will list all files user you has opened.

fuser /home/you
Will show you all PIDs that have an open file in that dir. PIDs are a bit hard to read for humans, so you'll have to transform them back to process names - ps aux |grep $PID might be the most obvious way (where $PID is the PID you want to locate)
Update: Betelgeuse pointed me at the rather obvious -v switch ... So fuser -v /home/you shows all you usually would need to know. Thanks!

Posted by Patrick | Permalink