September 2007 - main

Fedora - it seems to be a networking issue
by Chris G 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

Well I think I can see what's wrong with my Fedora 7 installation but I can't see how to fix it. The routing/DNS/gateway is somehow awry. The symptoms are as follows:- I *can* browse the internet with Firefox so I do have a working connection to the outside world (it's a Speedtouch router which is working for everyone else too). From the Fedora system it loks as if the *only* protocol that works to the outside world is HTTP, any attempt to ssh or whatever just hangs. This is probably why yum is failing I guess. I *can* ssh from the Fedora system to other systems on the local subnet, this is how I'm sending this mail, ssh from Fedora to the garage system and then ssh from there to my hosting provider where I read my mail. DNS does work, I can do 'host newred.gradwell.net' and get the right answer (newred.gradwell.net is my hosting provider), but I can't ssh direct to newred.gradwell.net. /sbin/route returns:- Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 169.254.0.0 * 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 default dsldevice.lan 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 Which looks OK (but why does Fedora give my router the silly name 'dsldevice.lan', had me confused for a while). So what's wrong? It's not some horrible IPV6/IPV4 thing is it? -- Chris Green

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Help wanted with Fedora installation
by Chris G 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

Well I have Fedora 7 installed but it has not gone quite to plan. I rearranged all the partitions of my old Slackware installation so that everything was on one disk (/dev/sda) and I removed all the partitions from /dev/sdb. I then ran the Fedora installation telling it to use /dev/sdb. That went pretty smoothly and I have managed to mount the old Slackware partitions in Fedora so I can see everything. However I have a couple of problems:- The Fedora system doesn't seem to be able to update/install new software using yum (or the GUI installer). When run it just hangs at the start where it is trying to get a list of packages. Fedora uses grub to start up, Slackware used Lilo. Fedora boots from /dev/sdb. Is there any way I can get grub to dual boot Fedora and Slackware? All the Slackware stuff is still there in its /boot on /dev/sda and I can see the Lilo configuration file. What is needed in grub to tell it to boot from an installation on a different drive? I'm sending this E-Mail from my 'garage' computer, what a good idea that was! :-) -- Chris Green

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Will Fedora 7 play happily with another version on Linux?
by Chris G 23 Sep '07

23 Sep '07

As I said recently I'm thinking of installing Fedora 7, will it "play nicely" with my existing Slackware installation? Has anyone else here got two versions of Linux dual-booting on the same hardware? There's lots of space to spare, the filesystem where Slackware is installed is only 9% used so that could easily be split to make space for Fedora. /home is a separate filesystem and can presumably be left as is for both Fedora and Slackware to use. Any problems likely? Will Fedora offer to squash the Slackware root filesystem and make space for itself there? -- Chris Green

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Using k3b to write an ISO image
by Chris G 23 Sep '07

23 Sep '07

I have just been trying to use k3B to write an ISO image and I really, really can't understand how to do it. E.g. I click on "Tools - Burn DVD ISO Image" and it immediately starts writing, I'm not given the chance to specify what ISO I want to write or anything like that. How do I simply tell it to burn an ISO image of a file I specify? -- Chris Green

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Another k3b problem
by Chris G 22 Sep '07

22 Sep '07

I'm just trying to write some data using k3b now. When I do a 'du -sk *' in my /home direcotry I see:- 49179124 ben 1280276 chris 4 ftp 301972 isbd 16 lost+found 1601772 maxine 474064 zelma However if I drop /home/chris into k3b to be written it says there is 4Gb of data, so why the discrepancy? -- Chris Green

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Linux Astronomy software
by mephi 21 Sep '07

21 Sep '07

A while ago someone posted here asking for Linux software that performed a function similar to a windows package, and as it was one I'd heard of, I think it was either k3CCDTools or Registax. If it was k3CCDTools, then I've just started to use the qastrocam software, which I think does a very similar job. If it was Registax, did you ever find anything? Matt

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Re: [ALUG] Anyone here running Fedora 7?
by Richard Bensley 19 Sep '07

19 Sep '07

>Here in the film industry, 64-bitness is helping with rendering >performance and also on the desktop where artists need to use vast >chunks of memory for their 3D and even 2D packages. I recently moved over to Red Hat for Softimage. 64bit Softimage is a no go for me, the support and stability under Linux is useless, and it's just about bearable under vista 64bit! As you say for rendering, having debian 64bit dual boot on my core2duo box with mental ray works a treat! I have seen Maya used on 64bit boxes, with a quadro or two and like 8GB of ram, anything to keep that crap from crashing ;) Of course the Autodesk IFFS suites and the like are all 64bit, but I would rather buy a house. Martyn, what 64bit 2D packages are you using?!? The closest thing I have to anything like that is a 64bit zbrush binary in windows :S Rich

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FAX with Linux
by James Freer 19 Sep '07

19 Sep '07

Hi Mark I read your post with interest - i'd also like to know the best way of faxing with Linux. Winfax i don't think is your best choice. I also have tried winfax and it is quite a complicated app with telephone answering m/c etc. Difficult to incorporate with Wine i would have thought - but i'm only a newbie to Linux. For several years i've used an excellent small programme called FaxNow - printer driver sending any doc from any application (simple but effective). I got it on a pc mag CD. Receiving is the problem as one has to switch the line manually to receive. So i used eFax to receive [free for 20 faxes a month] and this last year Faxtastic [free but needs to receive at least one fax per quarter to keep account open]. I always got better quality faxes than a fax machine and no costs. These were .tif files. I noticed you mentioned pdfs - the ones i've looked at were tiff but pdf you probably pay for. Reading faxes is the problem - what they are read with must be able to read MULTIPLE PAGES. Most viewers are able to read a single sheet e.g. PhotoImpact, XnView. I used the efax messenger for a while just to view - they make their money on sending. I did find a multiple page viewer http://www.tiffsuite.theimageanvil.co.uk/ No one else mentioned this. I can't see how converting files is going to allow for multiple pages. I found the Tiff Viewer basic but reliable - useful for looking through received faxes. Alternatively, when i started using FireFox found a tiff viewer as an addon to FireFox - www.alternatiff.com [this is excellent]. This was in windoze so as far as Linux goes... hopefully someone may know? a] Use alternatiff in Linux (it says only for windows but i've imported my windows themes into Linux Firefox so could work) and use Gfax or Faxnow (through wine) to send. If alternatiff won't work i'm sure the Tiff viewer would as it is a basic .exe app. b] Ubuntufax.com on VmWare - this is quite NEW i haven't investigated this yet but if it sends a pdf to your email problems solved. Ideal solution! b] Simple solution - pay £10-£20 per month for the variety of paid services. I will be keeping windows on a machine for some time so will probably just continue until a Linux solution comes along and i've stopped using windows. I knew an IT consultant a few years back who recommended not using WinFax as he'd had known a lot of problems with it - you're welcome to a copy of FaxNow and the Tiff viewer if they'll run in Wine. I'm not as knowledgeable as some on the IT side but i don't think the answer is converting files or using WinFax. james

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Anyone here running Fedora 7?
by Chris G 19 Sep '07

19 Sep '07

I'm thinking of moving from Slackware to Fedora for my next upgrade. There are a number of reasons for this:- I have Fedora on my desktop at work and have found it quite good (and easy) to work with, an additional advantage of course is having the same distribution in both places. It's more compatible with Vmware, Vmware can be installed on Slackware as a host but it's a bit of a fiddle. While Fedora isn't 'supported' by Vmware, RedHat is supported and Fedora is similar enough to RedHat for Vmware to install simply. I'm thinking of going to a 64-Bit OS and there isn't a 64-bit version of Slackware. Can anyone envisage any bit 'gotchas' if I do this? Are there any major pitfalls when moving from 32-bit to 64-bit? -- Chris Green

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A question about 'relative' and 'absolute' in HTML/CSS
by Chris G 18 Sep '07

18 Sep '07

The question is basically - what do they actually mean? I have just been playing with setting some font sizes to various 'relative' sizes and the results don't seem to make sense to me. OK, I *think* I know what the 'absolute' sizes mean. If I set a size to "1cm" (yes, I know the quotes aren't necessary in the CSS) I get something that is 1cm high and if I set it to "1in" I get text one inch high. However I'm not at all clear how the system knows how big my display is, if I connect a smaller display to the same output then the text will be smaller even though I have changed nothing. Is the correct absolute size dependent on me having set up my display correctly at some point? Anyway, on to the bit I understand less well, what do relative sizes mean? For font-size we have:- * em (ems, the height of the element's font) * ex (x-height, the height of the letter "x") * px (pixels, relative to the canvas resolution) So what is meant by "the height of the element's font"? It can't be an absolute value (in cm or in) because that would mean the result would be absolute. I can see that there could be a relation between everything and, say, the default BODY text size so that if you change the BODY text size everything else changes in proportion but where does that BODY text size come from? Is it what I set in my browser as the font size? If that is right I sort of follow, everything is relative to the default font size set in the browser. Sizes set in em or ex are then relative to that size. However that leaves pixels, what on earth does "pixels, relative to the canvas resolution" mean? Does it mean a size related to the screen size, but how does one interpret 'pixels' in this context? If I say the font size is to be 16 pixels what does that really mean? If it really means 16 pixels of my screen then surely it's an absolute size. Certainly none of the relative sizes are relative to the browser window size which in many ways would make most sense. If they *were* relative to the window size a web page would (if it used relative sizes) just scale as you grow and shrink the window. As it is, even with relative sizes for things, when you grow and shrink the window the text stays the same size and is re-laid out to fit. Whatever, there's surely a web site somewhere that explains all this, can someone point me at it please. http://www.htmlhelp.com/ is an excellent site for the details of writing HTML and CSS but doesn't really explain the sizing (not for me anyway). -- Chris Green

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