February 2006 - main

Thanks
by Robert 04 Feb '06

04 Feb '06

Thanks Chris and Jonathan for your help though you basically said the same thing.There is one other thing though and that is on my xine player i come up with no MRL and as i don't have a Linux dictionary to hand i wondered what it meant as i would prefer to use that audio/video player than Kaffeine. Thanks Robert

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FTGH: Various computer junk.
by Jonathan McDowell 03 Feb '06

03 Feb '06

I hate throwing out working (in all but one case below) kit, so all of this is free to the first person who wants to come and get each item. Otherwise it's getting skipped. Priority will be given to whoever can collect stuff first - I'm off the Drayton Road in Norwich itself. I'm prepared to bring the smaller items to the meet next Thursday. The list will be sent to Freecycle as well. Complete Cyrix 6x86 PR200+ machine: VXPro+ chipset, 32MB RAM (in a single DIMM), 2 roughly 300MB HDs, Realtek 8139C network card, Trident ISA video card. No keyboard/monitor. An ancient machine, with Debian on it and the 2 HDs in a RAID1 configuration. Might do as a play about box I guess; it's too noisy to be an always on server. Axil Ultima 1 (Sun Ultra 1 clone): This is a faulty Ultra 1 clone; I believe the specs are 167MHz UltraSparc 1 processor, 128MB RAM, 4GB HD. It powers on, but just gives some gibberish to the serial port and although my monitor registers a signal it remains blank. Could be something simple, could be toast. Might be of use for parts if you've got old Sparc kit? Advansys PCI SCSI card; Iwill SIDE-2930U+ PCI SCSI card, works fine with Linux. Internal 50 pin header, external high density 50 pin connector. Has boot rom. Apple 14" monitor. Suitable for old Macs; has the low density 15pin D connector. Sun Type 4 keyboard. I have a couple of these. No cable to connect them to the machine, but I think they're fine aside from that. Celeron 400MHz - Socket 370 processor. Just the CPU; no heatsink/fan etc. J. -- If love is blind, lingerie makes great braille.

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Use it or lose it
by Paul 03 Feb '06

03 Feb '06

Just returned from the library in the Forum after a fruitless attemp to borrow two volumes on network programming by Richard Stevens - The titles in question had been on the shelfs for a number of years, yet do not appear in the catalogue. A casual comment to one of the staff revealed that the books had been withdrawn.. After giving the head librarian a stern Padington Bear lecture, it would appear that even "standard texts" such as the Stevens titles are removed from circulation if they have not been taken out for some unspecified time. The range of popular titiles from the "Dummies guide to..." will be expanded (probably) at the expense of *nix related books. A short sighted policy in my opinion... In order to preserve the stock of books in our public libraries, I would urge everyone to borrow at least one Linux/Unix book on a regular basis lest we lose yet more. Regards, Paul. -- From the Klingon book of C: Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.

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Re: Welcome to the "main" mailing list
by robert 03 Feb '06

03 Feb '06

Dear Sir, Thanks for the email you ask why i chose Linux,it boils down to three things. 1.I run a dual boot system and as my other OS happens to be Windows98,Linux is a little newer. 2.Linux seems to be more compatible with my new upgraded system. 3.As an alternative to spending £170(what it cost a friend)on Windows XP. So it seems a worthwhile trade off to have access to the internet and learn how to use a command line. Yours Sincerely RJohnson ----- Original Message ----- From: <main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk> To: <robertj35(a)tiscali.co.uk> Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 10:02 PM Subject: Welcome to the "main" mailing list > Welcome to the main(a)lists.alug.org.uk mailing list! Welcome to ALUG! > > We welcome new members and we'd especially like you to send a short > description of why you're interested in Linux to the mailing list. > This is so that we can get some idea of how to cater for new members, > as they're the most important ones! Some general info should follow... > > To post to this list, send your email to: > > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > General information about the mailing list is at: > > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > > If you ever want to unsubscribe or change your options (eg, switch to > or from digest mode, change your password, etc.), visit your > subscription page at: > > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/options/main/robertj35%40tiscali.co.uk > > > You can also make such adjustments via email by sending a message to: > > main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > with the word `help' in the subject or body (don't include the > quotes), and you will get back a message with instructions. > > You must know your password to change your options (including changing > the password, itself) or to unsubscribe. It is: > > Mandrake > > Normally, Mailman will remind you of your lists.alug.org.uk mailing > list passwords once every month, although you can disable this if you > prefer. This reminder will also include instructions on how to > unsubscribe or change your account options. There is also a button on > your options page that will email your current password to you.

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Thanks for the response
by Robert 02 Feb '06

02 Feb '06

Hi there, thanks for the feedback but i didn't buy my computer off the shelf at your local PCWorld.I built my first computer 5 years ago and been upgrading ever since.As for what Linux OS i use i've actually got 12,but only two happen to work on my upgraded pc Mandriva 2006 and Suse 9.2. Robert

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Hibernate a desktop
by Wayne Stallwood 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

What do I need to have in order to get suspend to disk to work on a Desktop machine. On my laptop (R40 Thinkpad) Ubuntu will suspend or hibernate perfectly. One suspends to disk and shuts down,the other suspends to ram and then puts the machine into a low power standby state. I always get the two mixed up. I understand that I need some power management in my hardware to do the 2nd one but surely suspending to disk is purely a software thing ? My Desktop is the most power hungry of the two machines I have running at home. I have now decided that rising energy costs and the environment outweigh my concerns of thermal cycling my hardware. However I would like to avoid full boots all the time because I tend to have a lot of stuff open on various virtual desktops, have virtual machines running in the background etc etc I tried selecting hibernate from the Ubuntu/Gnome log off menu. The following things happened. There was a brief flurry of disk activity I lost my (ethernet) network connection My keyboard (usb) stopped working but when I brought focus to a console using the (usb) mouse I found that the p key was repeating at the prompt. >From this state there was nothing I could do to cleanly bring the system down. Even the front panel button (that usually starts halt on this machine) failed. In the end I had to prod reset. Question 2 Assuming I can get this all to work, is there an easy way to produce a magic packet for "wake up on lan" from my other Linux box (that will be remaining switched on) to wake up the desktop from afar if I need it.

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Modprobe error
by Barry Samuels 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

Although I can now boot from my external drive and everything appears to be working, including X, I have a little cleaning up to do. Whilst the system is booting I see a message from modprobe, repeated around 10 times - difficult to judge as they flash past, along the lines of 'cannot load /lib/modules/2.6.8/modules.dep - no such file or directory'. This is rather strange because the path/file does exist, is correct and is on the root partition. In spite of that the whole system *appears* to be working. Can anyone suggest a reason for this message. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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RE: [ALUG] Transferring Linux to another hard drive
by Keith Watson 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

> From: David Fairey Sent: 29 January 2006 11:21 > > Hi guys, > > I'm looking to transfer one of my linux boxes from it's 3Gb > drive to a bigger drive (40Gb). > > What's the easiest method to transfer a partition including > the boot manager to another drive? when I upgraded from a 20Gb HD to an 80Gb HD recently I used the free edition of HDClone <http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html#free>. (as I had a dual boot WinXP / Ubuntu setup it got round all the irritating XP idiosyncrasies). > How can the root partition be resize afterwards? Or would it > make sense to start using a separate /var, /usr partitions? I used the SystemRescueCD <http://www.sysresccd.org/> and the QTParted and partimage utilise it offers to shuffle my Linux partitions around (but be careful about the partition orders and names I inadvertently moved my root partition from /dev/hda5 to /dev/hda7 and Ubuntu got really snotty about it :-) ). Personally I always have separate partitions for /usr, /var, /home, /tmp, /home/[my home dir] and /[my mail dir] because; a) I can keep better track of how and where the space is being used b) it makes backing up easier, I just back up the entire partition to a CD-RW Actually when I did the HD upgrade I also put in a DVD writer, so I now back up the partitions to a DVD+RW, but the principle's the same except I now have a 5Gb max partition size (which I can easily get on a single DVD) rather than 2Gb (which would sometimes go on to 2 CDs even with compression). I use partimage to do this now, but I used to use tar. Regards, Keith ____________ The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones. - Henry David Thoreau

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