March 2001 - main

alsa-long filenames
by d.casal 27 Mar '01

27 Mar '01

Hi all, anonymous coward (though pretty constant reader): After much elbow grease and humbling experiences, I've managed a Debian 2.2 kernel re-compile (very scary for a newbie like me) so to get sound support without soundcard selection (needed by ALSA drivers) and to enable loadable modules. Now though, everything I read with a long filename (from a CD burnt in windoze, 'course) such as alsa-driver0.5a.bz2 comes up alsa-d~1.bz2, so killing the file when I try to untar. I know there is an easy way to do this (please?), but do I have to recompile the kernel again to support long filenames? Feeling closer than ever to getting a stable system running PD (see www.pure-data.org) proud I'm finally running Debian (a.savory's advice) cheers, david ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------- david casal +44 (0) 1603-613607 | d.casal(a)uea.ac.uk http://www.ariada.uea.ac.uk/~dcasal | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------\

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Weekly IRC meeting reminder
by Adam Bower 26 Mar '01

26 Mar '01

This is the automated ALUG irc meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an irc meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.openprojects.net in the #alug channel, you can take a look at www.openprojects.net to get more info on the openprojects network. Popular irc clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and ircII on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.bitchx.com http://www.xchat.org http://freshmeat.net Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Linuxcare recovery CD
by Ian Thompson-Bell 25 Mar '01

25 Mar '01

Has anyone else tried out the Linuxcare recovery CD given out at the last meeting. I tried booting from mine but is stalls trying to detect my PCI SCSI card. Ian

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Smoothwall chat, was Re: [Alug] IRC meeting reminders
by MJ Ray 25 Mar '01

25 Mar '01

Paul Tansom <Paul(a)whaletales.co.uk> writes: [...] > Haven't checked the ALUG site for connection details yet, but I have one > available volunteer so far, and if I can get my home machine configured > in time, and juggle the necessary time in I may be able to join myself. > So fingers crossed we should be able to talk techie with you :-) Ugh, I've just had a bad attack of Real Life(tm) and I'm not confident that this will be a success if we do it now, because I haven't promoted this through the channels that I wanted to. All my ALUG time is currently being taken up with trying to straighten out the blasted website (Martyn, where are you?). If we could postpone it to the second Monday in January (the 8th), then I'll try to get the word out properly. The bot for placing questions by those who can't guarantee a presence should be available from some time on the afternoon of Friday the 5th. I'll be backing up the questions at regular intervals just in case UEA drops off the net. Of course, you (like all ALUG members) are more than welcome to join in the usual chat on Monday evening at 2000 on eu.openprojects.net #alug. It would be lovely to meet some more of the newbies and have a big attendance for what will probably be the last opportunity before Christmas. -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] Your reply
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

>Now I was just thinking it is about time for a FAQ, and I am willing to >spend a bit of time writing one out for us, I will try and make sure I get >a rough draft done before the end of the week so that this does not >stagnate. A useful thing amongst the FAQ would be a list of useful links to linux-related sites. Want me to send along any I've found?

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Linux on a AJP SiS 630 Notebook
by govind chandra (JIC) 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

I have recently acquired an AJP notebook which is based on a SiS 630 chipset. The video RAM is shared from the main memory and is currently set to 16 Mb. I am unable to get X running on it. The screen just goes white and stays that way. If someone has configured X on a similar machine I would greatly appreciate some help. The manual says that the display is TFT XGA but gives no hsync or vsync frequencies. If someone could give me an idea of what these are on similar displays then I could try tweaking the modelines in the XF86Config. Best wishes Govind

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Re: [Alug] Your reply
by MJ Ray 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

Jenny_Hopkins(a)toby-churchill.com writes: > I've been thinking about this reply for a day or two. I was actually bit > shocked by it. With all respect to the guys who run the show, I wonder if > you mean to be so elitist? [...] Whoa whoa whoa! It's not intended to be elitist, it's just a self-defence mechanism. Indeed, the point I was trying to make was that OK, ALUG is informal, but we can't let anything go. Security announcements are blatantly best done elsewhere, else malicious types could put out alerts that most of us don't have the knowledge to check and we stop getting any useful work done. There are countless other mailing lists for security announcements. It would be a shame if this list becomes another one and kills our user group in the process. I doubt anyone wants that. Similarly job ads: from some discussions, I'd suggest either adopting Adam's proposal of only allowing a few people to vet and post job ads, to point people to some jobs site or other, or to set up an alug-jobs mailing list. It's probably time to compile a list "Charter" or FAQ, pointing people towards other more appropriate resources for common requirements like good security alerts. Anyone able to help on this? > PS. I am running 6.2 and had no idea that patches were needed. Read The Fine Manuals. You should *always* follow security announcements, regardless of distribution, operating system, etc. All computers are insecure, except when switched off and locked away. Perhaps a "Securing Linux" talk or two at the next meeting? Any takers? Once again, I'm sorry if I upset or intimidated anyone. That wasn't my intention at all. Please don't take it as such. Like the job ads, there's a real danger we could drown in real (new and old) and fake security alerts, which would kill this list. I just didn't want that to happen. The open atmosphere on here is something I love, but sometimes a little note of caution has to be sounded. Sorry for making it a bit loud this time. -- MJR

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irc meeting reminder
by Adam Bower 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

Hi People, I havn't put it in cron yet, but here is my sample text for the meeting reminder if there is anything wrong or obviously or broken in this please let me know so I can correct it. Adam This is the automated ALUG irc meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an irc meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.openprojects.net in the #alug channel, you can take a look at www.openprojects.net to get more info on the openprojects network. Popular irc clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and ircII on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.bitchx.com http://www.xchat.org http://freshmeat.net Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!) -- Adam Bower, <abower(a)zeus.com> Tel: +44 1223 525000 System Administrator Fax: +44 1223 525100 Zeus Technology Ltd http://www.zeus.com Zeus House, Cowley Road Cambridge CB4 0ZT England

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Sun Sparcstation
by Chris Allen 18 Mar '01

18 Mar '01

Thanks for the many requests for the SparcStation. The first to reply was Andrew Savory - sorry to everyone else who requested it.. Amazingly I offered this machine to our local school, together with help and advice on setting it up, etc, and they weren't interested. It wasn't windows compatible!!

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ALUG-IRC 8pm tonight (Monday)
by MJ Ray 16 Mar '01

16 Mar '01

ALUG-IRC meetings are held Monday evenings at 8pm on eu.openprojects.net channel #alug ... see you there! (So who said they'd put this email in a crontab?)

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