July 2007 - main - earth.li

Kopete and that stupid blue highlight!
by Chris Glover 16 Jul '07

16 Jul '07

Hi, I've just started playing with Kopete IM client. Seems very nice so far.... (you can feel the but coming on can't you!) How do I turn off that stupid blue highlight on every alternate contact in the contact list. It looks ridiculous. The coloured heads next to the name are fine.. but why does every other name have to have a stupuid blue background???? OK I'll stop ranting now :-) Chris -- Chris ---------------------------------- E Mail: chris(a)glovercc.plus.com SIP: 84411389(a)voiptalk.org

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Blender Tutorial - Thanks!
by Martijn Koster 16 Jul '07

16 Jul '07

A big thank-you to Richard Bensley for this tutorial, and to Richard Lewis for arranging a venue. I never knew I was a spaceship designer and human sculptor! Okay, perhaps I'm not, but I had a lot of fun, and it was very interesting to play with something outside my usual use of Linux. And Richard explained this tricky material both well and with enthusiasm. I think the format worked well: The presenter instructed the class and a helper with a computer on the projector, the class brought laptops, and the presenter could use the whiteboard, walk around to troubleshoot etc. With tea and biscuits, what more could you want :-) Tip: Blender uses the numeric keypad heavily, so make sure it works, or for best effect use an external keyboard. Mine didn't work, fortunately I could do a hardware swap with Joe (ta!). I managed to fix my laptop this morning with this voodoo: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_get_special_keys_to_work#NumLock The other problem my laptop encountered was a box mode select graphics card driver issue (just like http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/3593/problemtj6.png) that I haven't fixed yet. -- Martijn

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Bidding for software job closes on Friday
by sagr 15 Jul '07

15 Jul '07

Thanks to all ALUGers who has offered to write the software for our Customer Login page. If anyone else would like to submit a bid for this simple project then please contact me (off list) before next Friday (20th). Sagr.

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login incorrect error for passwordless account
by sagr 15 Jul '07

15 Jul '07

Hi Folks, I have just installed openSUSE 10.2 on a spare PC. The PC boots up to the Linux ascii login prompt ok: Welcome to openSUSE 10.2 (i586) - Kernel 2.6.18.2-34-default (tty1) Linux login: However if I enter the login name "root" the PC immediately comes back and says: login incorrect. i.e. it recognises that root does not require a password but will not let me login. I have booted the PC using the install CD and can see the files on the hard disk. If I look at /etc/shadow I can see that the root entry does not require a password. I have therefore used vi to create an passwordless entry for a test user "tux" in /etc/password and /etc/shadow and also create a /home/tux directory and assigned it to user tux, group users however, after rebooting I still get the "login incorrect" error when I try to login as either tux or root. What has gone wrong? Any suggestions on how to login would be welcome. Sagr

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Creating Customer Login facility on a website
by sagr 14 Jul '07

14 Jul '07

Our company has used email and ftp file transfers between itself and it's customers for quite some time. However it is only in the last few days that I have started to create a simple website for it. I have however got stuck with how to create a customer login page. Traditionally we have put files for individual customers to download in individual .htpaccess protected directories, so that, for example, files for customer1 have been put in /customers/001, and files for customer2 have been put in /customers/002. This has worked well but now we are getting a website I would like to provide a better user interface and have a single common "Customer Area" webpage where our customers can type in their login name and password and then be automatically taken to a protected personal webpage listing the files waiting for them to download. i.e. if they login with the username: firstname1.surname1 they will automatically be taken to website/customers/001/index.html Does anyone have any suggestions how to achieve this. Our customer base is quite stable so setting up the individual login data entries in an ascii configuration file by hand would not worry me. Any suggestions welcome. sagr.

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Blender Tutorial - Venue & Time Confirmed
by Richard Bensley 13 Jul '07

13 Jul '07

Hello everyone, I have been laying out my final lesson plan, numbers for the class seem to be closer to 10 now, which is great! The venue has been confirmed, thanks to Richard Lewis for organising this for me. He has very kindly booked the Concert Room for 13:00-18:00 for the 14th of July, location details are as follows: It will be in the Concert Room of the UEA Music Department. The Music Department is the building marked A2 near the centre-bottom of this map and the main car park is P1, at the top: http://www.uea.ac.uk/campus_2004.pdf The building is only small so the Concert Room is easy to find: turn right as you enter the building and its the first door on your right. Details about parking can be found here: http://www.est.uea.ac.uk/transport/car_parking.asp Thanks again Richard. There are many more chairs than tables, laptops would be preferred to desktops. The Version of Blender we will be using is 2.44 which can be obtained from here: http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/ If anyone has anymore questions, you can get hold of me on the list or on IRC. Many thanks and I look forward to seeing some of you on the 14th. Richard

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Does anyone use Linux based genealogy software?
by sagr 11 Jul '07

11 Jul '07

Hi, Does anyone use Linux based genealogy software? In particular I am trying to find a Linux based program that will allow me to create/edit/import/export ".ged" GEDCOM files. Best wishes, Sagr

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Hello ALUG
by sagr 11 Jul '07

11 Jul '07

Hi, I have just joined ALUG and the subscription confirmation asked me to say Hello and introduce myself. I am the technical guy for the Suffolk Ancestor Genealogy Research Service and am trying to show my company the advantages of switching to Linux. I have a bit of experience with PCs and networking but only have basic Linux knowledge. I use an ancient version of Mandrake on my home PC and am fairly comfortable using it but am continually frustrated that the main applications I use (an ancient version of Quicken and eBay TurboLister) are MS Windows only meaning I still have to keep dual-booting. As far as Linux goes I have a couple of problems I am stuck on which I will discuss over the next few days, but this is just a quick "Hello". Ian.

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Tool for managing images
by Chris G 10 Jul '07

10 Jul '07

What do people recommend for managing images (i.e. hundreds of digital camera pictures)? I don't fant a full blown image manipulation and album creation thing like digikam, I want a basic file manager that will show me thumbnail images and allow me to drag and drop them around the place. -- Chris Green

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Debian GB Localisation
by samwise 10 Jul '07

10 Jul '07

Here's a new one, I haven't yet entirely figured out with Google ... What places do I need to modify to rid myself of all the US-isms? I've changed the Region and Keyboard layout to British in KDE, and I also worked out that I needed to add a specific GB localisation package for Iceweasel. What other places exist for setting the localisation? Are there any other applications which require additional GB localisation packages? I installed the localization-config tool after reading about it online, but if I run "update-locale-config -l" there doesn't seem to be a mention of GB English ... Thanks for any pointers, Peter.

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