Monthly FAQ for Debian-user mailing list (last modified 20240501)

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Debian-user is a mailing list provided for support for Debian users,
and to facilitate discussion on relevant topics.

Codes of Conduct
================

* The list is a Debian communication forum. As such, it is subject to both
the Debian mailing list Code of Conduct and the main Debian Code of Conduct
https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct
https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct

Guidelines for this list
========================
Some guidelines which may help explain how the list should work:

Language
========

* The language on this mailing list is English. There may be other mailing
lists that are language-specific, for example, debian-user-french or
debian-user-catalan

* It is common for users to be redirected here from other lists, for example,
from debian-project. It is also common for people to be posting here when
English is not their primary language. Please be considerate.

Answering questions and contributing to discussions constructively
==================================================================

* This is a fairly busy mailing list but even so you may have to wait some
time for an answer - please be patient.

* Help and advice on this list is provided by volunteers in their own time.
It is common for there to be different opinions or answers provided.

* It is not necessary to answer every post on the mailing list.

* Be constructive in your responses. It may be that somebody else answers
a question before you - if so, you should not reply simply in order to get
the last word in, only reply if you can add useful information.

Off-topic posts
===============

* Please try to stay on topic.

* Off-topic posts will happen occasionally as threads wander.
Don't reply to them to make them carry on.

* If you wish to introduce an off-topic subject that might be
of interest to the wider list, start a new thread and preface
the title with [OT].

* There is no debian-offtopic mailing list: please don't try
to start one.

Partisan topics and political arguments
=======================================

* Arguments for the sake of it are not
welcome here.

* Partisan political / religious / cultural arguments do not belong here
either.

Debian's community is world wide; do not assume others will agree with your
views or need to read them on a Debian list.

Editing and answering mailing list posts
========================================

* It is helpful to write meaningful subject lines. If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.

For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

* It may also be useful for someone to post a summary email from time to
time to explain long threads.

* Before posting, it may be useful to check your post for spelling mistakes
and scan it for redundancy, duplicate words and redundancy.

* Clear replies and a short mailing list thread are much easier to
read and follow than long threads.

* If you are replying to a post, please reply in-line if possible and
cut out extra text that is not relevant to your point.

Private replies and responding to posts off-list
================================================

* Please post answers back to the list so others can benefit: private
conversations don't benefit people who may only be following
along on the list or reading the archives later.

* We're only human: you may want to respond to someone off-list
to make a point (or to wish them Happy Birthday / comment that you
haven't seen them for a long time). We're also a community and the
people you find on the list may become familiar friends

BUT

* Posting outside the list can be unhelpful: bad behaviour outside the lists
can't easily be dealt with and will be invisible. You may inadvertently leak
personal information by posting a private reply back to the list.

If you *do* want to post outside the list - make it clear that you have done
so at the top of the message. If someone replies to you privately and you
think that this should go back to the list - ask them to post it to the list
- do not just do so on their behalf without checking.

I can't see what I want here - help me!
=======================================

* It is often useful to look through the archives to see whether the issue
you wish to raise or a similar issue has been raised before by someone
else. The top level link to the archives of this list is at
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/ organised by year, then month.

* Although there are only 20 or 30 regular contributors, there may
be a couple of thousand readers in the background. Nobody is
a mind reader, nobody can sit beside you. Please help by providing
useful details if asked, especially which version of Debian you are
running.

I'm not using Debian but ...
============================

* Strictly, discussions of other distributions are off-topic here.
Please note: advice on Linux distributions other than Debian will be
only our best guess - other distributions may do things very differently.
Any advice given accordingly may be inaccurate but is given in good faith.

FAQ topics
==========

* There is an FAQ on the Debian wiki derived from some questions asked on this
list at https://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

This is a public list, archived in many places
==============================================

* One question that comes up on almost all Debian lists from time to time
is of the form:

"I have done something wrong / included personal details in an email.
Could you please delete my name / details / remove the mail"

Practically, this is impossible: the mailing lists are archived, potentially
cached by Google and so on.

Unfortunately, there is nothing much we can do to ensure that all copies
anywhere on the Internet are deleted. Asking to do this may only serve to
draw further attention - the so-called "Streisand effect"
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Problems and inappropriate behaviour?
=====================================

Complaints about inappropriate behaviour should be referred to the
Debian Community Team <***@debian.org>.

Inappropriate behaviour on the list may lead to warnings: repeated bad
behaviour may lead to temporary or permanent bans for offenders.

[Max Nikulin]

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject. Perhaps Gnus may treat square
brackets as well. I have no idea concerning other mailers.

Sorry for violating the rule. Curious users may test if their MUAs
recognize "(was: ...)" in the subject and remove old part.

[Bret Busby]

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject. Perhaps Gnus may treat square
brackets
as well. I have no idea concerning other mailers.

My despair and agony increase every time I hear about some new
abomination
that people's mail user agents perform by default.
*face palms, shakes head*

I simply use single hyphen; for example
abomination - was Re: yeti another snowman

or, more appropriately (because it is an abomni nation)

abomination - was Re: yeti another country of snowmen

...

....
Bret Busby
Armadale
Western Australia
(UTC+0800)
.................

[Greg Wooledge]

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject. Perhaps Gnus may treat square brackets
as well. I have no idea concerning other mailers.

My despair and agony increase every time I hear about some new abomination
that people's mail user agents perform by default.

*face palms, shakes head*

[Bret Busby]

Post by Greg Wooledge

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject. Perhaps Gnus may treat square brackets
as well. I have no idea concerning other mailers.

My despair and agony increase every time I hear about some new abomination
that people's mail user agents perform by default.
*face palms, shakes head*

I simply use single hyphen; for example
abomination - was Re: yeti another snowman

....
Bret Busby
Armadale
Western Australia
(UTC+0800)
.................

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject. Perhaps Gnus may treat square brackets
as well. I have no idea concerning other mailers.

No - the square brackets are an example :)

Square brackets can be noticed, perhaps, and the effort to type them may
be worth the distinctiveness, but what I really wanted was to make the
distinction visually clear so that the reader would notice it..

I routinely type ammedments to the subject in square brackets and
add WAS in upper case so that this is immediately apparent in a long
email thread. Whatever your mailer does is fine but it needs to stand out
clearly. Similarly, whenever I reply to something on behalf of the
Community Team, I add that in square brackets to show that it is
distinct.

New topic - brackets or parentheses (WAS: Debian-user Monthly FAQ)
might be appropriate here. So that email subjects don't go beyond 72
characters, you may always need to abbreviate the amended subject.

[WAS: WAS: WAS (previous subject)] would be too many levels of off-topic
discussion - but this discussion is still, just about, on topic.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater

Post by Max Nikulin
Sorry for violating the rule. Curious users may test if their MUAs recognize
"(was: ...)" in the subject and remove old part.

[e***@gmx.us]

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject.

This is true. I (on Thunderbird 115) had to restore the subject line after
Thunderbird modified it. Do you know of a plugin or weird setting to make
it stop doing that? Web searches were fruitless.

--
A mob with torches and pitchforks approaches the castle.
"Sire, the peasants are revolting!"
"Yeah, disgusting, aren't they?"

[Bret Busby]

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject.

This is true.  I (on Thunderbird 115) had to restore the subject line after
Thunderbird modified it.  Do you know of a plugin or weird setting to make
it stop doing that?  Web searches were fruitless.
--
A mob with torches and pitchforks approaches the castle.
"Sire, the peasants are revolting!"
"Yeah, disgusting, aren't they?"

I am using Tbird "115.11.0 (64-bit)" and, in checking, have found that
square brackets are apparently not molested in this version of Tbird.

In checking in my Inbox, for email from a mailing list that uses mailing
list name subject field prepending, I observed that the GnuCash mailing
list uses such prepending, and the subject line
"Re: [GNC] Problem with New Account Creation"
is apparently not molested by Tbird.


Similarly, with this (the Debian users) list,
"Re: [solved] Re: No login with Debian 12 ssh client, ssh-rsa key,
Debian 8 sshd"
and
"Re: [Solved]: What DE to replace GNOME with?"
appear to be unmolested by Tbird.

Whilst I regard Tbird after v102.x, as a pile of faecal matter, having
been downgraded from v102.x (the higher the version number, the greater
the degree of downgrading), the reported problem involving square
brackets in the subject field, is not apparent on this system, making me
wonder whether the reported problem, is an effect of either affected
users' settings, or, desktop environments, or, themes.

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

[Bret Busby]

Post by Bret Busby

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject.

This is true.  I (on Thunderbird 115) had to restore the subject line after
Thunderbird modified it.  Do you know of a plugin or weird setting to make
it stop doing that?  Web searches were fruitless.
--
A mob with torches and pitchforks approaches the castle.
"Sire, the peasants are revolting!"
"Yeah, disgusting, aren't they?"

I am using Tbird "115.11.0 (64-bit)" and, in checking, have found
that square brackets are apparently not molested in this version of
Tbird.
In checking in my Inbox, for email from a mailing list that uses
mailing list name subject field prepending, I observed that the
GnuCash mailing list uses such prepending, and the subject line
"Re: [GNC] Problem with New Account Creation"
is apparently not molested by Tbird.
Similarly, with this (the Debian users) list,
"Re: [solved] Re: No login with Debian 12 ssh client, ssh-rsa key,
Debian 8 sshd"
and
"Re: [Solved]: What DE to replace GNOME with?"
appear to be unmolested by Tbird.
Whilst I regard Tbird after v102.x, as a pile of faecal matter,
having been downgraded from v102.x (the higher the version number,
the greater the degree of downgrading), the reported problem
involving square brackets in the subject field, is not apparent on
this system, making me wonder whether the reported problem, is an
effect of either affected users' settings, or, desktop environments,
or, themes.
..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

Sorry - I should have changed the subject field value, in my last
previous post, to more properly refer to where this thread has gone.
..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

Similarly to the above examples; just came through - the subject field
"[SECURITY] [DSA 5703-1] linux security update"
is also unmolested by Tbird.
And, that has two sets of square brackets.

Also, from the claws-mail users mailing list;
"Re: [Users] How to check if Bogofilter is still working?"

...

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

[Max Nikulin]

Post by Bret Busby

Post by Bret Busby

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject.

[...]

Post by Bret Busby

Post by Bret Busby
"Re: [GNC] Problem with New Account Creation"
is apparently not molested by Tbird.

[...]

Post by Bret Busby

Post by Bret Busby
"Re: [solved] Re: No login with Debian 12 ssh client, ssh-rsa key,
Debian 8 sshd"

[...]

Post by Bret Busby

"[SECURITY] [DSA 5703-1] linux security update"

[...]

Post by Bret Busby
"Re: [Users] How to check if Bogofilter is still working?"

Relax. In the case of thunderbird the pattern is namely " (was:".

It is not configurable, but I do not expect significant rate of false
positives. I do not see any problem with this behavior as the default.
When subject is changed you see both old and new variants. In follow-ups
it allows to keep subject concise without additional efforts from users.
Messages still have links to all messages in the thread in the
References header, so you may find original subject if you need it.

UI may offer to revert subject to the original one and I would consider
it as an improvement.

Regexp in Emacs includes square bracket and variation of case. However
there are more tunables:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/gnus/message.el#n321
- `message-subject-trailing-was-query'
- `message-subject-trailing-was-ask-regexp'
- `message-subject-trailing-was-regexp'

I accidentally noticed stripping old subject part in another mailing
list, so I was curious if "[WAS" in the FAQ follows another convention
than thunderbird implements. Andrew clarified that it is just an example
and it is intended for humans.

It seems thunderbird may add "(was:", but I have never used message
templates.

[Bret Busby]

Post by Bret Busby

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject.

This is true.  I (on Thunderbird 115) had to restore the subject line after
Thunderbird modified it.  Do you know of a plugin or weird setting to make
it stop doing that?  Web searches were fruitless.
--
A mob with torches and pitchforks approaches the castle.
"Sire, the peasants are revolting!"
"Yeah, disgusting, aren't they?"

I am using Tbird "115.11.0 (64-bit)" and, in checking, have found that
square brackets are apparently not molested in this version of Tbird.
In checking in my Inbox, for email from a mailing list that uses
mailing list name subject field prepending, I observed that the
GnuCash mailing list uses such prepending, and the subject line
"Re: [GNC] Problem with New Account Creation"
is apparently not molested by Tbird.
Similarly, with this (the Debian users) list,
"Re: [solved] Re: No login with Debian 12 ssh client, ssh-rsa key,
Debian 8 sshd"
and
"Re: [Solved]: What DE to replace GNOME with?"
appear to be unmolested by Tbird.
Whilst I regard Tbird after v102.x, as a pile of faecal matter, having
been downgraded from v102.x (the higher the version number, the
greater the degree of downgrading), the reported problem involving
square brackets in the subject field, is not apparent on this system,
making me wonder whether the reported problem, is an effect of either
affected users' settings, or, desktop environments, or, themes.
..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

Sorry - I should have changed the subject field value, in my last
previous post, to more properly refer to where this thread has gone.
..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

Similarly to the above examples; just came through - the subject field
"[SECURITY] [DSA 5703-1] linux security update"
is also unmolested by Tbird.

And, that has two sets of square brackets.

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

[Bret Busby]

Post by Bret Busby

Post by Max Nikulin

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater
If you change subject
or emphasis in mid-thread, please change the subject line on your email
accordingly so that this can be clearly seen.
For example: New question [WAS Old topic]

Are square brackets intentional here? E.g. thunderbird strips "(was:"
subject part from response subject.

This is true.  I (on Thunderbird 115) had to restore the subject line after
Thunderbird modified it.  Do you know of a plugin or weird setting to make
it stop doing that?  Web searches were fruitless.
--
A mob with torches and pitchforks approaches the castle.
"Sire, the peasants are revolting!"
"Yeah, disgusting, aren't they?"

I am using Tbird "115.11.0 (64-bit)" and, in checking, have found that
square brackets are apparently not molested in this version of Tbird.
In checking in my Inbox, for email from a mailing list that uses mailing
list name subject field prepending, I observed that the GnuCash mailing
list uses such prepending, and the subject line
"Re: [GNC] Problem with New Account Creation"
is apparently not molested by Tbird.
Similarly, with this (the Debian users) list,
"Re: [solved] Re: No login with Debian 12 ssh client, ssh-rsa key,
Debian 8 sshd"
and
"Re: [Solved]: What DE to replace GNOME with?"
appear to be unmolested by Tbird.
Whilst I regard Tbird after v102.x, as a pile of faecal matter, having
been downgraded from v102.x (the higher the version number, the greater
the degree of downgrading), the reported problem involving square
brackets in the subject field, is not apparent on this system, making me
wonder whether the reported problem, is an effect of either affected
users' settings, or, desktop environments, or, themes.
..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

Sorry - I should have changed the subject field value, in my last
previous post, to more properly refer to where this thread has gone.

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............