Gnome-disk-image-mounter

Applications
21

Hi Neville, :wave:

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

I tried the script command a long time ago because I was curious about it.
Yet I may confirm what bsdutils ā€ŗ Wiki ā€ŗ ubuntuusers.de says about its usage:

The disadvantage of using script is that all special characters are also logged, so the output file is full of control characters and ANSI escape sequences

Yet:

However, the contents of the output file can be almost completely cleaned using the col program, which creates another file (cleanedfile in this example):

col -bx <typescript >cleanedfile
(translated from German).

Somehow I still find reading scriptĀ“s protocol somewhat difficult. :blush:

Ah. now I understand. I was wondering why gnome-disk-image-mounter was resident on my Lubuntu system.
I once installed the gnome-disk-utility package in order to get gnome-disks. :smile:
EvereythingĀ“s clear now.

Yes, I can confirm that.

Indeed, I have.

  • After doing my monthly clonezilla backups I use it for taking notes as far as the free space of my partitions are concerned, like so:

    1.) /: 25 GB ā€” 13 GB free (48,6% full)
    2.) /home: 38 GB ā€” 10 GB free (73,6% full)
    3.) 3rd part.: 210 GB ā€” 62 GB free (70,4% full)

  • it was great for quickly assigning two partitions to a 32 GB USB-stick and formatting therm (FAT32).
    This USB-stick is used as a storage device for a DVB-T2 receiver which sports the PVR functionality, i.e. for recording TV programmes.

Many greetings
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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22

I agree script is a primitive facility.
There might be another wayā€¦ I might try using tee to trap a copy of the screen output to a file

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23

@nevj
Manjaro
My Manjaro ls /dev/lo*
Have no idea what this is telling me, but since I have disks installed, it is part of Manjaro.

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24

It means you can do a loop mount.
I really wanted someone to try it in Debian 11ā€¦ Do you still have Debian installed?

25

@nevj
What is the command to find out what the loop devices are?
I have Debian 11 iso on my ventoy-usb, would not take long to install on one of my SSD drives.

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26

ls /dev/lo* will list the loop device nodes. Just like you did in Manjaro.

lsmod | grep loop will tell you if the loop.ko module has been added to your kernel

If the loop.ko module is present in the kernel, the kernel should make the loop device nodes at boot timeā€¦ just like all the other nodes in /dev

Can you run Debian 11 from the ventoy usb drive? That would be easier than an install.
We just need to find a fresh running Debian 11 ( not one upgraded from Debian 10 like mine) and see if it has the loop devices. Then I will know if mine were lost in the upgrade or if Debian 11 does not have loop devices.

Thanks
Neville

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27

@nevj:
Hi Neville, :wave:

Just one (perhaps silly) question:

WouldnĀ“t it be possible to try Debian in a VM via browser?
I was thinking of distrotestā€¦ :thinking:
For Debian this would be available here:

https://distrotest.net/Debian

I havenĀ“t tried it myself. Perhaps IĀ“m all wrong hereā€¦

Many greetings
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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28

Iā€™ve heard good things about this service.

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29

Hi Rosika,
I did not know that existed, thank you. Will try.
Regards
Neville

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30

Hi Neville, :wave:

I tried it out for you; curiosity got the better of me. :blush:

HereĀ“s the result (Debian11, live-system):

distrotest
distrotest1204Ɨ1033 125 KB

Well, IĀ“ll be blessed.
Seems loop device nodes are available after allā€¦ :smiley:

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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31

Thank you Rosika,
I did it tooā€¦ on a tablet would you believe. It kept disconnecting but I managed to do ls /devā€¦ and got the same result as you

So the conclusion isā€¦both my Debian 11 installations lost their loop device files in the process of doing a Debian 10 to Debian 11 upgrade.

It would seem the kernel module loop.ko is not in the kernel in my Debian 11 and that means the kernel cannot put the loop device files in / dev at boot time.

I do not know what tells the kernel to include various modules by default. I know the user can add a module by putting it in /etc modules, and that is an easy fix in this case.

Thanks again Rosika,
I must give distrotest a try on a proper PC.

Oh, and I looked at the script files of the upgradesā€¦ no mention of loop devices anywhere? They just silently disappeared.

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32

Hi Neville, :wave:

thanks for the feedback.

ThatĀ“s great. I always marvel at what technology can do nowadays. :smiling_face:

I think I tried distrotest at one time in the past but I guess it was the first time now I used it for a dedicated purpose.
At first I thought it would cost me quite a lot of data but it turned out otherwise.
I measured data consumption with vnstat and for the duration of 16.97 mins. I just used 6.71 MB.
Granted, I didnĀ“t do much during that time period but still, I think thatĀ“s quite resonable :blush: :

vnstat --live 1 -i enx001e101f0000
Monitoring enx001e101f0000...    (press CTRL-C to stop)

   rx:         0 bit/s   5,28 MiB          tx:         0 bit/s   1,43 MiB^C


 enx001e101f0000  /  traffic statistics

                           rx         |       tx
--------------------------------------+------------------
  bytes                     5,28 MiB  |        1,43 MiB
--------------------------------------+------------------
          max            1,37 Mbit/s  |   588,25 kbit/s
      average           43,52 kbit/s  |    11,79 kbit/s
          min                0 bit/s  |         0 bit/s
--------------------------------------+------------------
  packets                      12176  |           13443
--------------------------------------+------------------
          max                172 p/s  |         179 p/s
      average                 11 p/s  |          13 p/s
          min                  0 p/s  |           0 p/s
--------------------------------------+------------------
  time                 16,97 minutes

As to your findings

IĀ“m sorry the outcome wasnĀ“t as positive as could be hoped for. Nevertheless I guess we all learned quite a bit of that. :wink:

Hmm, it seems a fresh install would be the way to go then. Good to knowā€¦
IĀ“ve more than once heard experts state that the nuke-and-pave-approach (fresh/clean install) would be the safest optionā€¦ Oh wellā€¦ :neutral_face:

ThatĀ“s good to know. One never knows when that comes in handy.

Thanks for letting us know.

What an interesting discussion this has been.
Thanks a lot to all of you for your input. :heart:

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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33

Oh, that is OK. It is an easy fix.

Something interesting. Devuan is entirely different. It only has /dev/loop-control and the module loop.ko is not in the kernel. It relies on the mount statement to generate loop devices on the fly as needed, then it deletes them on reboot.
The Devuan people are rather clever. I would like to unscramble how they do it. The upgrade of Devuan from Devuan 3 to Devuan 4 did not break anything.
Regards
Neville

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34

Hi Neville, :wave:

Interesting. Who wouldĀ“ve thought there are such subtle differences between Debian and Devuanā€¦

Good to know. ThatĀ“s seems to be a plus-point for Devuan then. :wink:

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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35

I tried distrotest again on the PC. Performs much better than on the tablet - the pointer is still jumpy. I think you need a bit of compute capacity and a fast internet connection for it to work really well.
6.7Mb with our connection would take about 13 secs flat out. - we only get about 4mbps which is 0.5Mbytes per sec.
Regards
Neville

1 Like
36

Hi Neville, :wave:

YouĀ“re right. I didnĀ“t mention it before but the pointer was jumpy with me as well.
Still, I could manage it somehow for the limited time it took to achieve what we wanted. :wink:

Thanks for the info.
I canĀ“t provide any data for the mobile web-stick IĀ“m using, but as IĀ“m now on 4G things have progressed as far as speed is concerned.

Many greetings
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like