Re: My list of annoyances

On Wed, 2003-09-17 at 15:46, Daniel C. von Asmuth wrote:
> Thus quoth Roland Nagtegaal on Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 11:40:02PM +0200:
> > I'm a user of gentoo, and sysadmin of a redhat linux network,
> > and these are mine or my users most common annoyances:
> > 
> > 1. cannot shutdown because an nfs mount refuses to unmount, usually the
> > /home
> 
> That's probably because the NFS server is unreachable. 

I know that.
And if it will not be reachable any time soon, as in broken, why prevent
the client not shutdown, i.e. forcibly unmount? Even finding and killing
processess that still have open files, with something like 'fuser -mk
/home' sometimes does not help. The only "solution" in such cases is to
configure the alt-sysrqst keys, SAK. Or else just press the reset
button. 

> > 9. processes that cannot be killed somehow. Usually because of
> > some problem with files that are still open. And even with
> 
> You kill a process with 'kill -9'; only the 'init' process will ignore
> this signal, and only root can kill other user's processes. 

I'm a sysadmin. Don't you think I know that. It does not work. There are
processes that cannot be removed, and I don't mean init. This is usually
an open file on an unreachable filesystem problem. kill -9 DOES NOT
WORK. It usually prevents an application like evolution, mozilla or
openoffice to be started again. 

> Having open files does not keep a process from being terminated. What
> happens is that when a program is executing a system call (like write)
> it will be terminated when the system call finishes. Sometimes a
> hardware error or something causes a system call to never finish. 

Well whatever. Same end result: process is still in the table,
application will not start anymore, only option out is to reboot.

> 
> > 10. cannot print pdf files, except from acroread. Which almost
> > always has to be installed seperately.
> 
> You can print a PDF file called 'file.pdf' by 'lpr file.pdf'. I managed
> to install WvWare so I could print an MS Word file 'letter.doc' with
> 'lpr letter.doc'. 

Only if your printer provides a driver for that. Older laser printers or
any inkjet will usually not support that. Then you need ghostscript to
do it. But that supports only a subset of pdf files.
Specifically, postscript level 2 (or 3, I can't remember now) converted
to pdf will print, many other pdf's, made on windows or macs will NOT
print. Only with acroread. And even then not always.

Do you think I did not research this?

> > 11. most important mozilla plugins like realplay, acroread, flash java,
> > plugger are not installed. Takes hours to find them, and
> > get them all working. 
> 
> Flash Player? Acroread? Don't exist for Linux on Macintosh, but I got
> a Java plugin working. 

Ah yes. Linux on non-x86 application availability, another annoyance in
itself.

> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> 
> Daniel von Asmuth
-- 
Roland Nagtegaal <[email protected]>
loridanshof

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