September 2007 - main

Impress
by Bev Nicolson 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

Opening a Powerpoint presentation in Impress I find that one slide seems to be too big for the slide area. The last few lines of text are obscured by a grey block of colour which makes the white text impossible to read. How can I resize it? I would read the manual but I've got no idea where to start looking. (And the one I have got doesn't mention any incompatibility.) Bev. -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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How to allow another user to run something on my X desktop?
by Chris G 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

How can I make it possible for another user to run one specific program on my desktop? I don't want to simply remove the X security completely, I'd rather do it by some sort of SUID'ish sort of approach. The first thing I have tried doesn't work though. I changed the ownership of the program in question to be owned by me and set the SUID bit:- -rwsr-xr-x 1 chris root 2497525 2007-02-14 18:54 /usr/local/bin/xvile I thought that if anyone else executes the program they would 'become' chris but it doesn't work. However thinking about it now I suspect that I'd need to add some code to the program to actually change the user as well as setting the permissions as above. So, is there any other way to get what I want? I just want another user (it's just one user in particular if that makes it easier) to be able to run /usr/local/bin/xvile on my X desktop. It's a home system with me as the only real user so there aren't any serious security implications, there aren't any unfriendly users. -- Chris Green

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Clamav issues
by David Reynolds 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

Hi, I seem to be having some issues with clamav at the moment. It only seems to be creating the socket file on a reboot. If it gets restarted any other time, I get no socket file and then exim won't talk to it. Anyone have any ideas? I'm running the following versions of clam (on debian): ii clamav 0.90.1-3etch7 antivirus scanner for Unix ii clamav-base 0.90.1-3etch7 base package for clamav, an anti-virus utili ii clamav-daemon 0.90.1-3etch7 antivirus scanner daemon ii clamav-freshclam 0.90.1-3etch7 downloads clamav virus databases from the In ii clamav-testfiles 0.90.1-3etch7 use these files to test that your Antivirus ii libclamav2 0.90.1-3etch7 virus scanner library Thanks, David -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Setting paragraph margins using CSS, is it really this clunky?
by Chris G 10 Sep '07

10 Sep '07

Is there really no way to set a lot of margin-top and margin-bottom values for paragraphs without explicitly setting a class= for each paragraph where you want to change the default? Other things (like font-size and alignment) can be changed by wrapping a set of paragraphs in a <DIV>....</DIV> and setting the values in the DIV's class but margin-top and margin-bottom are not inherited so this doesn't work for margins. All I want to do is have a set of paragraphs with bigger margins than the default and it looks as if I'll have to do:- <P class=bigmargin>..............</P> for every paragraph, which rather defeats the object of using CSS, I might just as well write the margin size there. -- Chris Green

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Suspend2 Debugging
by Dan Hatton 09 Sep '07

09 Sep '07

I could use some power management help, please. I like to suspend my system with Software Suspend 2 (or Tux on Ice, as it seems to be rebranding itself) when I'm not using it. However, since I upgraded my kernel from 2.6.20.6 to 2.6.22.5, the system sometimes (perhaps 25% of the time) fails to resume after a suspend. I've got suspend2 logging very verbosely. A successful suspend/resume cycle writes ~11kB of stuff to /var/log/messages, whereas a failed suspend/resume cycle writes ~1.4MB. The first place the two sets of logs differ is that, where the successful cycle writes Stopping tasks ... done. Preparing Image. Try 1. Preparing Image. Try 1. Stopping tasks ... done. Starting to save the image.. Starting to save the image.. - Final values: 23908 and 102848. Writing caches... Writing caches... 20%...40%...60%...80%...100%...done. The failed cycle writes (I've snipped out instances of IPtables logging rejected packets, and some messages from gpm and sleepd.) Stopping tasks ... geset+0x11d/0x1a9 [<c01391b7>] do_suspend2_step+0x2d7/0x649 [<c0139816>] _suspend2_try_suspend+0xab/0xe1 [<c0138678>] suspend2_attr_store+0x180/0x1c6 [<c0193100>] sysfs_write_file+0xa8/0xd1 [<c0193058>] sysfs_write_file+0x0/0xd1 [<c015c58f>] vfs_write+0x8a/0x10c [<c015ca25>] sys_write+0x41/0x67 [<c0103ace>] sysenter_past_esp+0x5f/0x85 [<c0720000>] ieee80211_process_probe_response+0x122/0xe4d ======================= Mem-info: DMA per-cpu: CPU 0: Hot: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Cold: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Normal per-cpu: CPU 0: Hot: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 30 Cold: hi: 62, btch: 15 usd: 13 Active:0 inactive:0 dirty:0 writeback:0 unstable:0 free:724 slab:2680 mapped:21865 pagetables:670 bounce:0 DMA free:1968kB min:88kB low:108kB high:132kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:16256kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no lowmem_reserve[]: 0 483 Normal free:928kB min:2764kB low:3452kB high:4144kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:494668kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 DMA: 0*4kB 0*8kB 1*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 1*512kB 1*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 1968kB Normal: 0*4kB 0*8kB 0*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 1*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 928kB Swap cache: add 78, delete 77, find 18/27, race 0+0 Free swap = 505444kB Total swap = 1015800kB Free swap: 505444kB 128736 pages of RAM 0 pages of HIGHMEM 4191 reserved pages 171366 pages shared 1 pages swap cached 0 pages dirty 0 pages writeback 21865 pages mapped 2680 pages slab 670 pages pagetables 20%...40%...60%...80%...100%...done. Any ideas, please? -- Thanks Dan Hatton

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 09 Sep '07

09 Sep '07

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 13th September. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. People will be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. Topics for discussion will no doubt be as varied as ever. The Reindeer has a reasonable selection of beer as well as decent coffee (with biscuits, if you're lucky). Directions to the Reindeer can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/reindeer.html Pictures of some of the regulars, and irregulars, and, well, just some pictures of people that might or might not turn up are available from: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2007-05-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2006-02-ALUG/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for - the most recent images are from the meet a few months back. We now have an area reserved for us, so should be easier to find. As you enter through the main door you'll see a small set of steps ahead of you - the area just up those steps and to the left is where we'll be. J. -- 101 things you can't have too much of : 49 - Bandwidth. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Simple (I hope) HTML/CSS question
by Chris G 08 Sep '07

08 Sep '07

I want to use an image as a background, OK, fairly easy I think, I put the following into my CSS style file:- body { background: white url(sky.jpg) no-repeat; } I only want the image once at the top of the page, hence the "no-repeat". However, big problem, is there any way to tell my browser to fit the image to the width of the browser page rather than the other way around? It's easy enough if I'm displaying an image using the HTML IMG operator as I can set the "width=100%" and the image is scaled to fit across the browser's window but I can't see any easy way to do this when the image is set as a background. I can sort of understand that this might not be possible but it would be really nice if it was possible by some means as I want to use the image as a backdrop for all my page headings. If I can't do it using CSS "background" how can I get two images (or an image and a heading) to be put one on top of the other? -- Chris Green

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Sage alternatives for linux
by Jenny Hopkins 04 Sep '07

04 Sep '07

Hullo there, I'm looking for an accounting system that will run with the backend and the front on linux. Something like Sage, which takes care of accounting and payroll, also customers, jobs and invoices. Sage requires windows running on the workstation, however. I've looked at gnucash but it's scary and unfriendly, with the customer and invoicing side not being what is needed. I'm after a system that can have multiple front-end users and a database backend in postgresql or mysql. Hard cash may change paws, it doesn't have to be free. I did start writing one with a web front end, - the customer and invoicing part is okay but the more I do accounts the more I realise this is a mad, stupid thing to be doing. Thanks Jenny

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Anyone have a use for DAT tapes?
by Chris G 04 Sep '07

04 Sep '07

Further to my clearout, I have about 30 DAT tapes, some still wrapped, some used (but not heavily). They're mostly DDS2 data tapes. Any use to anyone? -- Chris Green

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Various FTAGH items (or even just FTAH)
by Chris G 04 Sep '07

04 Sep '07

My clear out of my old 'electronics' room continues and I'm still finding bits of superannuated hardware. Are any of the following of any use to anyone here:- ISA bus cards Modem (definitely not a Winmodem), boxed, manual Parallel/Serial/IDE/Floppy I/O card, boxed, manual Network card (original NE2000 I think) PCI bus cards USB 2.0 Interface, boxed, manual Modem (no info with it) 24x CD drive, IDE interface All could be posted or brought along to the next meet. -- Chris Green

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