May 2007 - main - earth.li

Next Monday's Ipswich meet
by samwise 21 May '07

21 May '07

Hi, I've posted a reminder to Announce with details of next week's Ipswich meet which should come through when it's authorised. Wayne, were you thinking of trying to attend? Just wondering, as I have some books I could donate to the library, if you're going to be there? Cheers, Peter.

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OT, but ...
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 20 May '07

20 May '07

Hi Folks, I'm writing to ask for reactions to an item in today's Daily Telegraph "Digital Life" (in the "Review" section). This week, they're testing "Mini-PCs", and I quote their review of the Apple Mac Mini ("From £399"): "Apple's Mac Mini is the tiniest 'small form factor' computer in this group. It is 6.5in square, 2in high, and has a gorgeous brushed-metal finish below the iconic Apple-white lid. Unfortunately, it's also the perfect case of style over substance. The 1.66GHz version is certainly cheap, but it's also very slow. Even the faster model uses only a 1.83GHz Core Duo processor (not the nippier Core 2 Duo) and has just 512 MB of RAM. You will also have to supply the keyboard, mouse and monitor. We'd recommend the Mac for undemanding word processing, surfing the web, or impressing your friends. For amything more intensive, steer clear." Ehh?? "very slow"?? What *do* people use computers for these days. then? For years I've been doing word-processing (including "demanding") and web-surfing on A: 75MHz CPU + 64MB RAM B: 366MHz CPU + 128MB RAM C: 733MHz CPU + 512MB RAM (which at the same time happily runs Win98 in VMWare) (etc). and I've done a lot of quite intensive computational work too (dunno about impressing my friends, though ... ); and I've never had a machine more beefy than (C). I can see that the Apple Mac Mini could be inadequate for computing predictions of climate change, or similar; but what the hell can it be that enough of Joe Public want to do with a computer that it wouldn't be up to? (OK I can see a case for more RAM; but that should be upgradeable). Any comments? Ted. PS For comparison, the complete set of today's "Mini PC" reviews can be found at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/digitallife/index.jhtml and click on "on trial" -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-May-07 Time: 17:09:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Blogs and Wikis and things like that
by Chris G 18 May '07

18 May '07

I am trying to work out what a blog might do for me. I have a wiki running on my home Linux box alread (TWiki) and I find it useful for some things, I tend to use it as a CM tool rather than a wiki really as I am about the only contributor! :-) Still it allows me to give other members of the family some space to play in and it allows me to add to and create web pages when I'm away from home. Now I have a need for a diary type tool of some sort and, fairly obviously, blogs come to mind. However having played with a couple I'm still a bit confused as to what they actually offer. Apart from the ability to edit a web page and add stuff on a sequential basis is there anything special that a blog does that a wiki doesn't? Or, more particularly, are there any things that a blog makes easy that are more difficult with other tools? -- Chris Green

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UPS again
by J.R. Seago 18 May '07

18 May '07

Having a wife and daughter resident at home who are both becoming increasingly 'Green', today they presented me with an 'intelligent' six gang surge protected distribution thingy from 'Lakeland' to plug in to my UPS. This switches everything else plugged into the five subordinate sockets once the computer, (plugged into the first socket) has been powered down. At the moment I have my Netgear ADSL router plugged into this thingy, is that OK? Will my router survive being turned on and off when the computer and monitor is? Will it retain its settings, as I can cheat and just not power down my computer, although I might get caught if they spot all the pretty lights on at night! or I can plug the router directly into the UPS. -- J.R. Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: UPS again
by J.R. Seago 18 May '07

18 May '07

Tthank you to all those who replied to my query. The router is plugged into the mains again, although I can use a surge protected four gang out of the UPS to the router transformer, and then plug the six gang intelligent thingy into that. -- J.R. Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: main Digest, Vol 23, Issue 21
by Matthew 18 May '07

18 May '07

> "Hub_2" is a 5-port > which (IIRC) claims that each port can independently negotiate > its rate with whetever its connected to. There is no such > claim for "Hub_1". > ... C ... only has a 10BaseT Switch_1 might have auto-negotiation for speed even if it's not claimed: it is very common on switches. If it doesn't, your problem is likely to be because Switch_1 and Machine_C are expecting different speeds. I don't know exactly what that would do, but I would expect collisions and hence delays. Try swapping the switches over. >> and are they all indicating that everything is >> plugged in at 100 meg? > > I don't know -- how can one tell? Most switches either have an additional light on each port when the link is at 100Mbps, or one of the lights is a different colour based on data rate. Hope that helps, Matthew

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journal/diary tool for local use
by Chris G 18 May '07

18 May '07

Going on from my question about blogs what I'm really after is a diary/journal tool for local use. I.e. I don't want (or need anyway) to publish the result on the web. I'm sure I found one a while ago but I can't find it again, does anyone have any ideas? -- Chris Green

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Comments on Network Lag?
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 17 May '07

17 May '07

Hi Folks, I'd welcome comment on the following situation, which has arisen since I've (temporarily) changed my home network topology. Previously (machines designated as A, B, C): ADSL---Modem | Hub_1----------------A [at which I sit] | 5 metres | 10 metres| | | 1 metre Hub_2----------B | +------------C 1 metre The above has worked very smoothly. Now, in order to have machine to hand while investigating a hardware (power switch) issue, I have brought it near to machine A, with the resulting topology: ADSL---Modem | Hub_1----------------A [at which I sit] | | 5 metres | +-----------------C | 10 metres| | | | 1 metre Hub_2----------B Now, when I am sitting at A and running certain X apps on C (which have relatively heavy throughput such as raster re-drawing of sections of screen), there is clearly congestion: output from C on A's screen can hangs for a few seconds at quite frequent intervals. But it can also happen from time to time when I'm simmply typing text into C (as now). Not much has changed: the cable to C has been plugged into a different hub, with a different cable (5m instead of 1m). Comments would be welcome! I don't think such a change should have much effect. 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: 16-May-07 Time: 23:14:22 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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sensors modules problems
by Barry Samuels 17 May '07

17 May '07

I changed my machine's innards some months ago which included an Asus P5W DH DeLuxe mainboard (64-bit board running 32-bit Debian Testing with kernel 2.6.20.1). Searching on the internet revealed that, apparently, the sensors driver to use for that board was w83627ehf but when trying to load I got the message "No such device". Next step was to run sensors-detect which gave me a list of modules: i2c-i801 i2c-isa eeprom lm78 That worked but gave me only one temperature and one fan. The temperature reading was 33 C which corresponed with the CPU temperature in the BIOS and the fan reading matched the BIOS reading. These readings were stable for some months. There was no reading available for the mainboard for which the BIOS gave a temperature of 38 C. I normally don't reboot or turn this machine off but just recently I did reboot and noticed that the temperature reading displayed was now the same as the mainboard temperature i.e. 38 C. Rebooting and going back into the BIOS showed that the two temperature readings were much the same as they had been for months so the temperature now displayed appeared to be that of the mainboard and not the CPU as it was before. So I'm baffled. Why the sudden change? Is there a module available that will give me both temperatures? I have also found recently that removing i2c-i801 appears to have no effect. I use gkrellm to display temperatures and trying 'sensors' produces the message: Can't access procfs/sysfs file Unable to find i2c bus information; For 2.6 kernels, make sure you have mounted sysfs and libsensors was compiled with sysfs support! For older kernels, make sure you have done 'modprobe i2c-proc'! sysfs is mounted but I don't know if Debian's libsensors2 is compiled with sysfs support. Any suggestions please? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Line speed problem
by Nick Daniels 15 May '07

15 May '07

Hi Bit off topic for lists but, this morning I noticed my line was slow, according to Plusnet speed check I am getting 125kbs, and for the last year I have been getting 990kbs. Yet they insist there is nothing wrong. Can anybody suggest anything (else) to check my end before I loose my temper with them? Running Kubuntu, Netgear DG834, tried another computer same results Kind Regards - Nick Daniels

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