February 2002 - main

February meeting
by John Woodard 09 Feb '02

09 Feb '02

Are we any closer to getting a room booked @ UEA for the 24th? -- Cheers, BJ

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Re: [Alug] New member
by MJ Ray 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Rob: > Our company has a large meeting room with a projector, access to a 64k > leased line and a pub next door if anyone is interested. We are in > Elmswell between Bury St. Edmunds and Ipswich just off the A14 and next > door to the railway station. Sounds ideal! Would you like to add a link to your venue information to http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/?AlugMeetings and possibly steal the April meeting away from me if you can arrange it? Sundays are conventional, but that might be a problem at a company? Saturdays have been suggested, so an experiment may be good. By the way, it's much nicer if you write the reply below the original and trim the previous message quote. We have a lot of people on this list and get quite enough traffic for it to be difficult enough to follow already... Thanks! -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] New member
by MJ Ray 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Eric, Welcome to the group. > [...] Next on my list: Web-services and .NET (see www.go-mono.com) Let me throw a few others at people: Ruby, Scheme, XT3D, XSP, Parrot. > My first question: do you guys ever meet in Ipswich? We've been to Woodbridge and Martlesham in the past. We might be able to use Martlesham again in the future, when David's back from uni, but a venue actually in Ipswich would be easier to get to. If you have the power to arrange such a thing, let us know! -- MJR

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Any Debianeers out there? I need help with modutils & USB.
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

I have just changed my mouse to USB and have got it working but I have to load all the modules manually. I have searched the internet for solutions and have tried a number of different aliases in modutils without any success (Yes - I did think to run update-modules). It appears that the modules I have to load, using modprobe, are hid.o and usb-ohci.o which then cause other appropriate modules, e.g. usbcore.o, to load. What do I need to put in as aliases to get this to work? I'm running Debian 2.2 with XFree86 3.3.6. One other connected problem is that although I have put the following in fstab: none /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs defaults 0 0 it is not mounted. When the machine boots I see a message something like 'cannot locate module usbdevfs' when it gets to the 'mounting local filesystems' bit which is rather strange because usb file system support is compiled into the kernel. I can, immediately after logging in, manually mount usbdevfs without problems and none of the USB modules have been loaded at this point. I would like to get these modules loaded automatically. Can anyone help please? Barry Samuels

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New member
by Eric Sellin 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Hello everybody, Just discovered the ALUG and its mailing list, so let me introduce myself briefly. My name's Eric, I'm 27 and live in Ipswich. In a previous life, I started a company with some friends to develop a Web-based document sharing and knowledge management solution, which was all 100% free (Linux, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL). Unfortunately, the company closed last year but never mind, we tried and had fun doing it all! I discovered Linux while at university back in 1994. I've been learning quite a lot since: I now speak a good C++ and Java, I love writing dirty shell scripts (preferably Bourne), I also came across Perl, have experience with CORBA, XML, XSLT and all these trendy technologies. Next on my list: Web-services and .NET (see www.go-mono.com) My first question: do you guys ever meet in Ipswich? Cheers, Eric.

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Isdn adaptors
by John Woodard 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Project: need to build a box to use as an isdn dial up and mail server serving a couple of iMacs and a power book. The machine will also be used for a bit of web development and basic office stuff. Problem: what is a good cheap pci isdn terminal adaptor to use bearing in mind I may need fax capability (I use a BT Speedway 128 which is a re-badged AVM Fritz). Bigger problem: I have never configured either fetchmail nor sendmail before (my modest mail requirements are currently satisfied by kmail configured to get mail directly from a pop server). Biggest problem: I know nothing about samba, iptables/ipchains or any of that stuff. Massive problem: I'm likely to have to maintain this machine remotely either via direct isdn dial in or via the net. The distro will most likely be Mdk 8.1 but I'm open to suggestions oh and the down side it will have to dual boot into Windows 98 occasionally to run some bit of bespoke software that won't run under wine for some reason. Any suggestions on what hardware will be gratefully received, first thoughts lean towards 1Gig Duron, 512Mb pc133 ram and 40Gb ata100. I'm starting to feel well out of my league here expect lots of cries for help on irc.openprojects.net:#alug. -- Cheers, BJ

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Re: [Alug] Acrobat/Ghostscript printing
by MJ Ray 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Ted wrote: > And that, to be frank, is the fault of these two viewers, and not of the > PDF format. And this (see below) is why I use Reader -- which, in my > experience, simply works. If xpdf and ghostscript worked as I need them > to, I'd probably use them myself. But they don't. I'm not sure that it is the fault of the viewers. If something which is claimed as an open standard is scattered across many documents with little indication from one that others exist, and that reality differs from what is documented in subtle ways, surely it is the fault of the "standard"'s owner? To the best of my knowledge, but ghostscript and xpdf are quite happy with the really standard bit of PDF (is that PDF/X?) but some documents using incompatible Adobe extensions make them fail. One could argue that it is the fault of the Adobe generator. > That's your choice. But by limiting yourself to Free software, you have to > take the downside that you're closing a lot of your options in real life. By using non-free software, you are similarly closing a lot of options: to be able to fix the software, primarily. I think it's just a different set of closed doors. > [...] Where you hit limits is in "add-on" libraries which extend their > pre-programmed functionality [...] Actually, in R there is one subtle difference in variable scope and very little else that kills extension libraries designed for Splus. > ([...] But life is short, especially real life ... ). Indeed, so I prefer it that we don't keep reinventing the wheel every cycle, as non-free software insists that we do. > [...] The plain fact is that, still, these things do dominate the desktop > world of work. If you don't go along, you're locked out. I'm actually seeing a lot less of this now. In the few cases where we do still get sent proprietary formats, we have converters that put them in a more useful form. There's a lot to be said for now completing the transition by a stance like http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5759283394.html > So, what you can achieve using Free Software, achieve that way. What you > can only achieve using The Other, achieve that way (even with a heavy > heart). And take the long view! [1] Agreed, but I think we differ on how much energy it is worth adding to Free Software before resorting to the other. The one piece of software that is non-free is in a field that only now are we getting free replacements for, but they are incompatible with the file format and have no market share right now, so can't be used. It's also a field that I know practically nothing about and can't really assist beyond testing the software as it is produced. But I do that, because I can and because I want to see a truly Free solution. [...] > However, the fact (on which we agree) that we don't like Adobe's > proprietariness does not imply that PDF is a bad format in itself. But which PDF is not a bad format? The idealised documented PDF which should allow easy document distribution, or the hacked-up one that you meet in reality? > [...] I will patiently wait till the skilled developers of these things > get it right. Meanwhile, I'll be using Reader. Oh, keep using the free one and sending the results/comments back to them. Without good feedback, it's very hard to develop software. As someone said (and I misquote here): "bug reports are like free software love letters. Share a little love today!" -- MJR

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Sendmail question.....
by Simon 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Hi guys, Hoping for some help here....... It's a question about the virtual user table, if I make any changes directly in the text file, do I have to do a "makemap" to update a db file? If so, can anyone help me out with the correct command please, I've got the "BAT Book", which I've found whilst being a cure for insomnia and very informative, it doesn't tell me what I need to know.. Or it probably does have the information in there, but my eyelids start drooping before I get to the relevant part!!! TIA Simon

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Re: [Alug] Acrobat/Ghostscript printing
by MJ Ray 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Ted wrote: [...] > Therefore I don't recognise the situation Mark is describing, at any rate > for the Reader viewer. If Mark is referring to other viewers, with which > PDF is "hairy", gives "unhelpful error messages", etc., then my first > reaction is "don't use that viewer". [...] Yes, but given that some PDF files make both of the viewers I have here fail with cryptic messages, that leaves me with a choice of zero viewers. Not exactly the most readable document ever ;-) > But, in summary again, provided you use Acrobat Reader, in my belief here > are no major problems with PDF unless it has been badly generated; with > the caveat about Adobe software (not sure if this applies to Reader) > possibly getting huffy about non-Adobe source. That is a huuuge pair of caveats you have there. First off, if it's not free, it's not here (with one shameful exception AFAIK). Secondly, if their reader throws its toys out of the pram if non-Adobe producer software creates it, do you really want to support Adobe trying to pull a Microsoft? They're not really the most fluffy of corporations, as the current Sklyarov/Elcomsoft case and the resultant Adobe Boycott should show. This difference in software may well be why I don't recognise the situation that you describe and view PDF as being a fairly bad format for document distribution. When is a standard not a standard? -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] Qmail custom setup
by MJ Ray 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Darren: > Anyone up on qmail/perl? I need to migrate a system from sendmail to qmail > but could do with some help What exactly is the perl for? If it's to change the mbox files into maildir ones, then there are already scripts to do that. I think the qmail web site has some. (Do you really want a non-free mailserver?) -- MJR

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