March 2004 - main

Wanted - analogue clock with date for X
by Chris Green 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

I have just migrated my work desktop from running natively on a Sun Spark workstation to running via an X server on a PC. After a week or so of using and tuning it I have most of the wrinkles out of it now but there's one remaining minor niggle. I run the (very) old Sun OpenWindows 'clock' on my desktop as it provides an analogue clock display *and* the date in a nice written format (e.g. it says "Fri Mar 26" at the moment). However it's somewhat imperfect when run on this PC X server, in particular the dots marking the hours are missing. Can anyone recommend an X clock utility that has an analogue clock face and the date? (The other niggle I haven't sorted yet is a total inability to 'compose' characters, I think I'm stuck on this one) -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk)

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Alsa in 2.6.x
by James Green 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

This may be a wild stab in the dark, but I'm hoping someone out there has this one resolved already... Bought Unreal Tournament 2004. The demo worked nicely under kernel 2.6.4. Installed the retail version, and the following occurs: bash-2.05b$ /usr/local/ut2004/ut2004 open /dev/[sound/]dsp: No such device I've searched google without much luck. The Linux Games FAQ at icculus.org/lgfaq/ mentions some alternate drivers to be set as environment variables, which I see make no difference. I've compiled alsa in, with oss compatibility. The compatibility modules are indeed loaded. Other applications are giving sound fine, including the UT2004 demo. Most frustrating! Can anyone help? Thanks, James Green

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[Alug Announce]Meeting on Sunday, meeting in late April and quietness
by MJ Ray 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- ALUG: ---- 1. Meeting in King's Lynn at 2pm on Sunday 28 March, Globe Hotel http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/2004/03-28Sun.html 2. Opinions sought on late April Norwich meeting http://lists.alug.org.uk/main/2004-March/018217.html 3. Some list threads about ax25 and ALSA in 2.6, but a fairly quiet week on the list http://lists.alug.org.uk/main/2004-March/threads.html Other: ----- 1. Other UK lists reported on were quiet, so here's a reminder about free tickets for 20/21 April at London Olympia http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/expo/ -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Mandrake / automake version
by Joe Button 25 Mar '04

25 Mar '04

Hi. I'm trying to build ardour from CVS on Mandrake 10 community. When I run autogen.sh I get a message telling me I need automake >=1.5 (Mandrake uses 1.4 as standard). I tried changing the symlinks for aclocal and automake in /etc/alternatives/ to the 1.7 versions and running aclocal but I got a message saying aclocal: configure.ac: 4: macro `AM_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT' not found in library Can anyone explain what I need to do to use a later version of automake? Thanks for any help.

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Going ALSA-only with full mixing
by MJ Ray 25 Mar '04

25 Mar '04

On Monday's IRC, we discussed a little bit about how to get ALSA mixing sounds, but I'm not sure anyone got it working until after the meeting, so here's a summary and intro for those who missed it. Usually, only one thing opens the sound device at once and that's a pain. Different workarounds (esd, arts) exist, but it's surely better to do this in the sound driver. ALSA supports hardware mixing on some cards and is included in 2.6 kernels. Look at the Soundcard Martrix on http://www.alsa-project.org/ and see if your card has a (4) which means hardware mixing supported. If you have hardware mixing, using the right ALSA drivers is probably all you need to do. I think using ALSA-enabled programs is best, which usually just means installing the right package or compiling with the right options. For applications using the old /dev/dsp device, I think the module snd-pcm-oss should cope with it. I've not tested that and would like to hear what you find. If you don't have hardware mixing, then you need to enable the dmix plugin by editing a config file. Instructions are on http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/asoundrc.php3#softmix but you probably want hw:0,0 instead of the 1,0 in the example. My main machine doesn't do hardware mixing, so I did this. In my experience, this *will* highlight any misconfigurations or weaknesses in your sound setups, which is why it's not done by default for cards that can't do hardware mixing. I found that sounds played out with horrible clicks, but I had a minor option for my card incorrect in modutils.conf. When I put that right, it worked fine. The XMMS sound player complained until I increased the two _size options in the config file. Also, XMMS needed to be told to use user-defined "default" output instead of the detected card and not use "mmap mode". I don't know exactly what all that does (although I could guess), but trial-and-error is wonderful, isn't it? Now, what about OSS-only programs? The OSS emulation doesn't cope for software mixing, as far as I can tell. While sound is playing via ALSA, I get "device busy" from things trying to use /dev/dsp. Running them through aoss (from the alsa-oss package) works. Anyway, I hope you enjoy mixing your Frozen Bubble music with http://muzik.agnula.org/ or similar ;-) Thanks to IRC #alug for help. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

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12 Noon today (Wed) - R4
by Anthony Anson 24 Mar '04

24 Mar '04

Alternatives to Windows OSs discussed. Sorry I've been conspicuous by my absence recently. Severe dose of RL. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/ Lobby/bother/harrangue your MP about the rising tide of SPAM Suggest the laws relating to scanning e-mail contents be clarified. Point out that there would be votes in it. Contact opposition parties.

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Survey: venue and date of next Norwich sunday meeting.
by Syd Hancock 24 Mar '04

24 Mar '04

Hi all. We need to have arrangements for the next Norwich sunday meeting finalised very soon. Would all the meeting regulars and anyone else interested reply to the questions below (preferably off-list) as soon as you can. Thanks. ----------------------------------- Current situation: Meeting is provisionally booked at the Billy Bluelight for the last sunday in April (25th). Possibility of booking a room at UEA on a saturday. Following w/e is ALUG's fifth anniversary but it is a holiday w/e so some people will be away. Questions: 1. Prefer: a) last w/e in April b) first w/e in May c) either 2. Prefer: a) saturday at UEA b) prefer sundays c) either Syd

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AX25 Kernel
by Nick Daniels 22 Mar '04

22 Mar '04

Hi I wish to enable the AX25 protocol in Kernel 2.4.21-192-athlon on Suse 9.0 , is there anyway I can do this without rebuilding the Kernel ( something I have not done before) Regards Nick Daniels

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 22 Mar '04

22 Mar '04

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.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Advanced power management
by Charles Garcia-Tobin 19 Mar '04

19 Mar '04

Hi there I am trying to use APM on my home server so that its in standby all the time except when it has to perform its server duties. I think the machine is ACPI compliant, but the APM interface seemed simpler. Anyway when the machine has just booted, and I do an apm -S (in runlevel 5 full X) it goes into standby as you'd expect and everything is dandy. The I wake it up with some keyboard input say and again everything is cool, however after this first slumber if I try apm -S the machine will go to sleep and wake up instantly every time. Apmd shows the following: Mar 19 09:45:05 bongtime apmd[1607]: Event 0x0009: User System Standby Request Mar 19 09:45:06 bongtime apmd[1607]: User Standby Mar 19 09:45:09 bongtime apmd[1607]: Event 0x000b: System Standby Resume Mar 19 09:45:09 bongtime apmd_proxy[6395]: resume standby Mar 19 09:45:10 bongtime apmd[1607]: Standby Resume after 00:00:04 (-1% unknown) AC power As you can see it managed to sleep for 3 seconds before Event b woke it up. Does anybody now a way round this? Alternatively does anybody know how to put the network card and sound card to sleep, I can do hard drives with hdparm, the display with xset. Adding those two would more or less do decent standby mode. Cheers Charles

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