February 2008 - main

previous note on recovering from silly mistake
by Peter Alcibiades 18 Feb '08

18 Feb '08

By the way, this is the conclusion of the story. I had, you recall, somehow lost all the icons in kontact during a new install of Mandriva, and asked the list for help. They were putting up with it until I figured out what to do. So having got some wisdom here, or at least useful suggestions, I go in to visit last week, and discover it will not boot the default. Not only that, but there seem to be some extra boot options in grub. Who knows, maybe they did an update? Its hard to get a clear account. So I boot from the latest kernel version of the new options, and it starts fine. So just to check, I boot again from the default, and now that boots fine. Very odd. And guess what, all the icons have come back of their own accord! In another part of the wood, another Mandriva system, after system update it cannot start X. Then, same process as above, it can start X but only in 640 x 480 mode. The solution here turned out to be, use the xorg not the nvidia drivers, and all was fine again. I know, put them on Debian..... But the thing is, the Mandriva control centre is so easy for people to use. When it works. Oh well. Al

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3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road
by samwise 18 Feb '08

18 Feb '08

The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back tonight (Monday 18th February) at 20:00: The Milestone Beer House 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 252425 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA The Milestone pub is in the centre of Ipswich, near the now-defunct Odeon cinema and not far from The Regent Theatre. There is more information on the venue, including car parking info, on the ALUG wiki: http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard to find the pack, look for those huddled around a laptop! Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Hope to see you there, Peter.

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virtualbox display on win98
by Peter Alcibiades 18 Feb '08

18 Feb '08

Has anyone managed to get better than 640 x 480 out of virtual box display on Win98? I have gone through endless hassle just to get the thing working at all, which it now does, and it will even install the package I wanted. This was a saga incidentally which may be of interest. First you make a CD or ISO from your existing win98 installation, but using DR DOS as the image. Don't ask me why MSDOS doesn't work equally well, but it doesn't. At that point you can boot into DR DOS and unlike if you boot into MS Dos, you can copy the files over from the CD to drive C. The reason you have to do this is that in MSDOS you can run the install program, but not see the files on D. In DRDOS you can see the files but not run the install program! Unless you can figure out how to raise the max program size in DRDOS, but that was too much like archeology for me. So you boot from the CD with DRDOS, copy all the files to C, then switch to MSDOS boot from a different image, and run the install program, and some hours later you have a proper though rather slow Win98 install. However, it is tiny. Perfectly formed but tiny, and you cannot up the resolution. Well, not quite perfectly formed, networking doesn't work and the CD drive is invisible. But that would be OK, if I could only get the display to work acceptably. So next I tried to use Scitech Display Doctor 6.5 as recommended. Does not help in the least. Display Doctor 7 beta is no better, and in addition it doesn't come with a registration code. Getting this stuff onto drive C so you can install it is another saga - the only way I found was to put it onto the DRDOS install CD. Still, it does not actually work, contrary to what other people report. I am now trying to use kqemu, but that won't boot from the image in a way that lets me get to the install files. I can boot from it, then do fdisk, then format C. But then I can't see the install files on the CD or the image to copy them. What next? Is VMWare the only answer? Does that work in better than 640 x 480? All this is on a Mandriva 2008 box. I cannot get VB to run at all on Debian. Al

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ALUG Christmas Meal
by Steve 17 Feb '08

17 Feb '08

Morning list, Here's an email I entirely failed to send from my phone last night: --- I write from the Reindeer, mid pubmeet and also through my phone so do bear with me as the beer is with me. mChicago said: List up people! I am responsible. We've had three pints; we're going too far. Christmas 2006 was too long ago. We have two options: 1. Construct a time portal and travel back to celebrate this event or 2. Have it on the 2nd Thursday of March which is only four weeks' time. We have been offered a set menu - turkey dinner and christmas pudding or a vegetarian option - at the Reindeer by the head chef. Would everybody who's interested please email the list ASAP to say "TRUE" so I may inform the chef of the size of the part. This.Is.Serious. Enf of transmission. Happy Valentine's Day all. x x x With love, Steve --- So there you have it, christmas party plans must be instigated immediately. 13 March at the Reindeer. Set christmas menu. Win. Mildly hungover, Steve

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USB HID functions
by S.Jude＠uea.ac.uk 16 Feb '08

16 Feb '08

Hi, A friend of mine is after some help with coding USB HID functions. Does anybody have any knowledge of experience of Linux USB API functions and data structures? In particular they are after some example C/C++ code that talks to USB HID devices but are finding thorough and complete documentation hard to find. Any info would be much appreciated as they'd like to release some opensource software for their products. Simon

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Proper/Non-perveted social behaviour
by Richard Bensley 16 Feb '08

16 Feb '08

Does anyone else find Paul_C's lack of respect for women, disturbing? Had I noticed earlier he was taking several photos of my girlfriend without her knowledge I would have asked him about his camera sooner. However it is an act that is familiar with every young girl that turns up to an ALUG meeting to be subject to Paul_C's little photo session. This is not acceptable social behaviour, and if a member of staff at the pub or a police office had seen somebody acting in this voyeuristic manner he/she would have been asked to stop what they were doing and leave the premises. I am unsure what the legal premise is on this matter? But it is totally unacceptable in this situation, how can ALUG thrive in helping newer members if they become subject to such abuse? Needless to say my girlfriend is distressed about the matter, but I assured her I would take action in making this threat aware to all ALUG members about Paul_C's actions which I understand he has denied before, and may other members have a problem with. You wont be denying me punk. What's it to be Paul_C? Stand up like a man and explain yourself? Or cower like a typical pervert? Either way I find your presence and contribution to ALUG to be an insult if your porogative is other than that to help people instead of victimising and treating them as objects. Yours Faithfully Richard Bensley

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Network connection at boot
by Barry Samuels 15 Feb '08

15 Feb '08

My MythTV box doesn't have a keyboard or monitor and could be moved between TV aerial points. It has two network cards so can connect via cable or wireless. Is there any way, at boot time, to get it to try the cable interface first and then, perhaps after a given time, to try the wireless interface and to keep trying both interfaces until it does find a connection? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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FW: Re: [SLL] Linux Roulette:
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 14 Feb '08

14 Feb '08

The following was just posted to the Seattle Linux List. I don't get it (either one). Can someone explain? Ted. -----FW: <20080214183909.GX3016@zen>----- Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:39:09 -0800 Sender: linux-list-bounces(a)lists2.linuxjournal.com From: Glenn Stone <technoshaman(a)liawol.org> To: linux-list(a)lists.linuxjournal.com Subject: Re: [SLL] Linux Roulette: On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 10:31:29AM -0800, Xeno Campanoli wrote: >!rm Took me a second to get that one. Yeah, that's shooting blind, for sure... Although one could say !rm:p to make sure... -- Glenn "Be sure you are right -- THEN GO AHEAD!" -- Davy Crockett, from his autobiography (1834) (caps his) --------------End of forwarded message------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 14-Feb-08 Time: 19:03:02 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Puppy and DSL
by Peter Alcibiades 14 Feb '08

14 Feb '08

Nothing against DSL, but its a curiousity, its an emergency disk. Its amazing and ingenious, but you'd not install it or use it as your main distro. Puppy is a possible main use everyday distro with an amazing quantity of stuff in it for the space and very fast on old hardware. These are both a lot smaller than DIY, Debian + Fluxbox + xfe.. But having thought long and hard about this for someone with quite a bit old hardware, it seems likely that the flexibility you get from the DIY Debian minimalist solution is worth a lot in terms of maintainability, and probably outweighs the extra disk space. I used to like Windowmaker a lot on old hardware, and it is fast, but its stuck in a bit of a timewarp, no faster than fluxbox, no easier to customize and not as attractive. Ion is quite nice if you are setting up an appliance. Its very fast indeed. Again, wouldn't want it every day, but if you're running only one app in a production environment, it might be worth looking at. Al

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Damn Small Linux v Puppy Linux
by member jessejazza 13 Feb '08

13 Feb '08

I was going to have a look at these two later today. Just wondering has anyone compared them and if so perhaps you'd be kind enough to give some feedback. james

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