January 2009 - main

Why is it so hard? (Making Ubuntu Work)
by Mephi 23 Jan '09

23 Jan '09

Ok, I've been using Debian on my server for years and Knoppmyth (Debian based) on my media centre for slightly longer. But I've not really done much on the desktop. Since I do a fair amount of gaming, I've stuck with windows for my desktop. Recently though I've only been playing one game a lot (Guildwars) which is supposed to work fine under wine. Also I play GW with friends and we use skype. Which has a linux client, so I thought I'd give it a go... I downloaded and installed the 64-bit version of ubuntu, setup the ATI graphics card, setup the medibuntu repository and apt-getted skype and wine. So now I have 3 problems. 1. Now they're using something new in Ubuntu called Pulse Audio, which puts another layer between your devices and your applications, and apparently it's why I can't get my microphone working in skype. So, I've been working through everything on the Ubuntu forums (it appears I'm not the only one) documented by someone else here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1006163 But nope, none of that works... 2. I'm trying to setup my screens to work at their native resolution. I've got one that runs at 1680x1050 and another at 1280x1024. I managed to get them to run correctly, but the settings don't stick. It boots with both screens set at 1280x1024. To get them to work I do the following steps through the ATi Catalyst Control Centre: 1. Disable the second screen (1280x1024) 2. Reboot 3. Set the first screen to its correct resolution (1680x1050) which wasn't available before the reboot. 4. add the second screen in. Then it works, until I reboot. The third problem is that Guildwars doesn't want to run under Wine. I've not yet looked into this in great detail yet, as I've usually given up by this point and booted back into windows. Matt

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Can anyone explain why this HTML table displays as it does?
by Chris G 21 Jan '09

21 Jan '09

I'm trying to create a fairly simple table to lay out an itinerary. Currently I'm using OpenOffice as it makes it easy to generate the table with row spans and column spans etc. It actually seems to produce quite straightforward HTML. However neither Firefox 3 nor IE 7 seem to display the table borders correctly. Firefox 3 does really wierd things to some of the borders and IE 7 just shows them with differing thicknesses. All I want is the same cell/table borders everywhere. The url is:- http://www.isbd.net/images/itinerary.html There's very little CSS and not much HTML so why are the borders so wonky? -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] [ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting: McGintys, Northgate Street (samwise)
by Adam Reid 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

So... I'm currently sat in McGinty's, have been for well over an hour now; a couple of members have appeared and left due to a distinct lack of anyone other than me being here, and issues with bus times. The barman doesn't know anything about a Linux group having either been here or moved on to pastures greener, and unless you're hiding down the well you certainly don't appear to be anywhere in the vicinity. The IRC channel hasn't a clue, not that anyone there is Ipswich-based but if it were cancelled/relocated it'd be handy to stick a note there or on the wiki and/or mailing list. Suffice to say I'm slightly cheesed off, I took time off of a rather tight project deadline to make the meet this month, and now have a half-hour walk back home again toting a laptop. So I have to ask, what the blazes happened? Did the regulars just not turn up, and the whole thing just fizzle out, or...? O_o

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Unbootable 2.6.28 kernel
by Dan Hatton 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

Dear All, When I try to boot into kernel 2.6.28, I get a kernel panic with message `VFS: Cannot open root device "hda1" or unknown block (0,0)', followed by a list of available partitions which suggests that, between kernels 2.6.27.10 and 2.6.28, the drive on which I keep my root filesystem has changed its name from /dev/hda to /dev/sda. Is this expectable behavior? Should I edit my "root" boot option and fstab accordingly? Or does it indicate something wrong? -- Thanks, Dan

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Killing all programs on a virtual terminal
by Steve Fosdick 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

Apart from the SAK Magic SysRq sequence does anyone know of a way to kill all the processes that have a particular virtual console open? TiA, Steve.

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Magic SysRq and odd scan codes
by Steve Fosdick 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

Related to my other message I found that, with my current keyboard, Magic SysRq is not working. It is definitely compiled into the kernel. Documentation/sysrq.txt in the kernel tree suggested that the SysRq sending a strange scan code may be the reason. Running showkey -s gives me the following codes for SysRq: 0xe0 0x2a 0xe0 0x37 - on key down 0xe0 0xaa 0xe0 0xb7 - on key up. This does not match the description in setkeycodes which says that keys generate one or two byte sequences whereas this is clearly a four byte sequence. Has anyone seen anything similar or have any ideas if the necessary mapping can be established? Regards, Steve.

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HTML table editor - any recommendations?
by Chris G 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

I'm looking for a simple way to create HTML tables. In particular I want to be able to create tables with various (and fairly random) row spans and column spans. I don't really mind how it works, it can be a Web based application, a word-processor look-alike, or something that converts a text 'source' file into tables. I just want it to be simple to use. Currently I'm using reStructuredText which does most of what I want but its "Grid Table" syntax for tables is laborious to use and its "Simple Tables" don't give me all the row and column spans I need. I might take a look at Open Office, I assume that can generate HTML, what's its tables like? -- Chris Green

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Wireless keyboard with trackball for Linux - any experience?
by Chris G 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Does anyone here have any experience of using a wireless keyboard with trackball built in with Linux? E.g. something like:- http://www.kenable.co.uk/product_info.php?referer=froogle&products_id=1789 I guess it will probably "just work" but I'd like to be sure there aren't any odd issues before I buy one. It's for a multimedia (well more of a photo display) box to go with the big new TV. -- Chris Green

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Wierd DHCP problem - help!
by Chris G 16 Jan '09

16 Jan '09

I have just built (well, re-installed the OS on) a new system and have connected it to my LAN. It's running xubuntu 8.10 and uses the TV as its display device (probably irrelevant). It all installed fairly smoothly and appeared to work OK except that the networking was a bit 'jerky'. I then found that I couldn't ssh from the new machine to my desktop machine whereas other machines on the LAN could connect OK. It turned out that this was because the machine had the *same* IP address as my desktop machine. This of course explains the 'jerky' networking too! However I really can't understand *why* it has decided its IP address is 192.168.1.4. OK, some details, the router IP is 192.168.1.1 and it's the router that provides DHCP to the network. Most machines have static addresses, in particular my desktop machine (as noted above) is 192.168.1.4. The router is set up to start handing out DHCP addresses starting at 192.168.1.64 and this does work as there is a device (a VOIP server) which gets the address 192.168.1.64. The 'new' xubuntu system has default network setup, I have given it the name 'lounge' (which is different from all others) and it acquires its IP address and networking setup automatically on startup. So *how* is it getting 192.168.1.4 as its IP address? OK, I can fix the problem fairly easily by giving it a fixed IP but I'd love to know what's gone wrong. -- Chris Green

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Prescott - how many CPUs???
by Ian Thompson-Bell 16 Jan '09

16 Jan '09

My Nephew, who is a bit of a computer whiz, recently gave me an 'old' 2.6GHz Prescott CPU to replace the Celeron in my desktop PC. This I have done and it is certainly faster. However, I use gkrellm to monitor resource usage and whereas with the Celeron just a single window occurred for the CPU usage, now with the Prescott gkrellm shows two windows labelled CPU0 and CPU1 respectively. Googling Prescott I can find no mention of more than one core but it does have hyperthreading. So my question is, how many (effective) CPUs do I have and is gkrellm accurately reflecting them?? Cheers ian

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