January 2006 - main

Strange rsync problem
by Chris Green 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

I'm trying to use rsync to upload a mailbox archive from my home system to the system that I usually use for handling my mail. I'm already successfully using rsync in the opposite direction. What happens is that rsync gets part of the way through the transfer (it does about 3.9Mb out of 75Mb) and then it just hangs. I've looked at the files it has transferred and the point at which it has stopped and can see no oddities in permissions or anything like that. The command I'm using is:- rsync --rsh='/usr/bin/ssh -l chris -x' --recursive \ --exclude=in/ --exclude=li/ --exclude=mfolder \ /home/chris/MailArchive halkidiki.areti.com: It's normally run by cron in the middle of the night but I'm trying it just now from the command line and the same problem seems to be there. In my mail I'm getting the following error from cron:- Read from remote host halkidiki.areti.com: Connection timed out rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 4 bytes: phase "unknown": Broken pipe rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(836) This error arrives 23 minutes (consistent for two nights anyway) after the cron command is run. When run from the command line it looks like it's going to take just as long to fail. Has anyone got any ideas what might be going wrong? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Relpats-eht
by Simon 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

Hey all, got some time to waste? Found a cool website yesterday, it's one of those internet puzzles. Start here: http://www.relpats-eht.com/ The answer to each page is the directory name of the second, as is explained on the second page. I'm still not sure if anyone has completed it yet, but there are as far as I know, 12 or more stages to it. Good luck.

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New Year's Resolutions
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

Hi Folks, I don't know how many of you follow Sandra Henry-Stocker's excellent series of articles on open.itworld.com (but it's worth keeping in touch if you don't). The latest has clearly been crafted under the influence of emerging from the festive season, and gives 12 New Year's Resolutions for Unix sysadmins. See http://open.itworld.com/5040/nls_unix_resolution060111/page_1.html They're all good advice, I think; my particular favourites are -- Learn Linux -- Find a better job or make your current job better -- Have a life and (somewhat ambiguously ... ) -- Get yourself certified Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 12-Jan-06 Time: 09:26:41 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Networking issues
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

Hi Folks, A couple of distinct questions. 1. Computers on a LAN are "behind" an ADSL modem/router which faces out to the Net. Seen from outside, this router has IP address PPP.QQQ.RRR.SSS From inside the LAN it can be accessed either from the above address or from an "internal" IP address 192.168.1.1 On the LAN are sundry machines with IP addresses 192.168.1.yyy or (on a subnet) 192.168.0.zzz Question: Is there any way by which one can address one of the "internal" machines from outside (i.e. the Net). Clearly, for instance, telnet PPP.QQQ.RRR.SSS would at best connect to the router (which does respond to telnet, by the way). What I'm wondering is if there's anything like telnet @PPP.QQQ.RRR.SSS!192.168.1.yyy i.e. to "route" the telnet request for connection to the internal machine at 192.168.1.yyy through the externally visible address PPP.QQQ.RRR.SSS 2. This one's a real Linux question! Suppose the internal machines, instead of having static IP addresses set up on them, get dynamic IPs handed out by the router. With the static IPs, each machine can have a /etc/hosts file which associates the IP address with the machines name within the LAN, including a short "nickname". E.g. 192.168.0.6 brandy.my.home.lan brandy br so, e.g., in the LAN I can do "telnet br". But, with dynamic IPs, this association would break down. "brandy" would no longer have IP address 192.168.0.6 So -- What's the equivalent mechanism when dynamic IPs are used? If I do telnet br would this simply not work (because there's no IP/name association), or is there a mechanism whereby allocation of a dynamic IP address to brandy.my.home.lan would set up an association with this name (and to chosen nicknames "brandy", "br") as in the /etc/hosts file? And, if so, where does it (and its components) reside? Thanks, and best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 11-Jan-06 Time: 17:15:20 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Strange Banana
by Keith Watson 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

http://www.strangebanana.com/generator.aspx Regards, Keith ____________ People would rather sleep through life than stay awake for it. - Edward Albee

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Funny but true enough
by Wayne Stallwood 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

A lovely article about the difficulties a Linux user had Switching to Windows. http://madpenguin.org/cms/html/47/5937.html

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New Joiner
by Safe Hammad 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

Hi Everyone, Happy New Year! I'm currently in the throws of moving to the Great City of Norwich and I decided it might be a good thing to join the ALUG mailing list. Following the instructions for newbies to the list, here's a short description of why I'm interested in Linux ... I started my computing life in 1981 with the Sinclair ZX81. After flirting with machines like the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro, I found myself about to start a job programming Java on Solaris Unix machines early in 2000. I'd not used Unix before so I thought I should learn a bit before I started. I found some Red Hat 6.1 discs and an old PC and I haven't looked back since ... To me, Linux is like a shiny Swiss Army Knife. There's a limitless number of exciting tools old and new waiting to be discovered that come straight out of the box (or a swift apt-get install) to have fun with and get your job done, and all this for free! It doesn't get much better than that ... Looking forward to meeting you all once I've found the Reindeer! Cheers, Safe Hammad (Yep, that's really my name) P.S. Thanks, Adam, for helping me to get this post out. I've now found that pesky "HTML off" switch! ;o)

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apt-get question
by Keith Watson 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

As this is my 1st post of 2006, A Happy New Year everyone and I hope you enjoyed whatever solstice celebrations you had (if any) :o) Here's one for the debian aficionados on the list, is it possible to use apt-get install with a list of packages fed in from a file? e.g. something like; apt-get install {filename} or apt-get install < {filename} Regards, Keith ____________ The best use of your mind is to distrust it. - François Fénelon

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RE: [ALUG] apt-get question
by Keith Watson 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

> From: Adam Bower Sent: 11 January 2006 13:46 > > On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 02:35:43PM -0000, Keith Watson wrote: > > > Here's one for the debian aficionados on the list, is it > possible to use apt-get install with a list of packages fed > in from a file? > > Another way to do this is: > > (on box 1) > > dpkg --get-selections > foo > > (copy foo to box 2 then on box 2) > > dpkg --set-selections < foo > > Then... > > apt-get dist-upgrade (i /think/) > ooh, very nice! I haven't got round to getting broadband yet but I can see how I could combine this with apt-zip so I could download the packages elsewhere. I will definitely try this and let you know how I get on. Thanks Adam :D Regards, Keith ____________ There is nothing infinite apart from finite things - D.T. Suzuki

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RE: [ALUG] apt-get question
by Keith Watson 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

> From: Richard Kettlewell Sent: 11 January 2006 12:53 > > Steve Engledow <sengledow(a)formrecognition.com> writes: > > >> Here's one for the debian aficionados on the list, is it possible to > >> use apt-get install with a list of packages fed in from a file? > > > > cat filename | xargs sudo apt-get install > > xargs sudo apt-get install < filename > Yes, I forgot about xargs. A nice little utility, especially when used with something like find. However I went with the $(cat filename) option as it seemed IMO a little more elegant to use the shell's built in features rather than a separate program (but that's just a personal bit of lunacy :-) ) In case you're interested, what I'm doing is setting up a new box. I started off just upgrading from a 20Gb to an 80Gb HD (friend was upgrading from 80Gb to 200Gb so I got it cheap) and then decided to get a DVD-RW drive for backing up the new drive and then a colleague at work had a system unit minus HD and DVD/CD going spare (faster CPU, better graphics, more memory, etc, etc) so I ended up with a completely "new" system unit. I had 2 issues; 1) cloning my WinXP home set up to the new disk 2) duplicating my Ubuntu set-up on the new system Didn't want the hassle of a complete new WinXP install (plus all the cruft accumulated over the years) so tried copying the partition using Partition Manager, partimage and a couple of others whose name escapes me but the windows protection kept getting in the way. Finally found a nice little utility called HDClone <http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html#free>. It's proprietary but free for personal use. Worked a treat. Was very impressed by the development that has occurred to partimage since I last looked, if you're interested it's worth also looking at the SystemRescueCd <http://www.sysresccd.org/>, I found it invaluable when I was backing up bits of my original disk and moving things around. For various reasons, I wanted to do a fresh install of Ubuntu (5.10) and then add all the extra packages I'd installed since. Getting a list of my currently installed packages was easy using apt-showversions (yes I know about dpkg-query but apt-showversions' output was easier to edit) and editing the resulting output into a list of installed packages. A complete new ubuntu install takes just minutes, so, hopefully, using apt-get and the list of packages I should be more or less back to where I was but with better kit. Hence the original question. Regards, Keith ____________ ABSURDITY, n. - A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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