October 2010 - main

IRC channel configuration change
by MJ Ray 12 Oct '10

12 Oct '10

I've had a request to give quinophex on #alug more admin power. I've not been there much, so I don't know the context/motive, so I'm emailing the list. Is everyone OK with that? On- or off-list replies OK. Thanks, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. Webmaster, Debian Developer, Past Koha RM, statistician, former lecturer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for various work http://www.software.coop/products/

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Just a quick shout out...
by Brett Parker 11 Oct '10

11 Oct '10

Has anyone heard from/seen Ruth Bygrave recently... I was recently hitting the archives and noted that we don't appear to have seen anything on list from her since Feb 2009. She was never a very active poster, but we did usually see a message from here at least once every 4 months, just want to check that she's doing alright. Thanks, -- Brett Parker http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ PGP Fingerprint 1A9E C066 EDEE 6746 36CB BD7F 479E C24F 95C7 1D61

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Intel 2200B/G wireless
by Richard McLellan 11 Oct '10

11 Oct '10

Hi folks, I have a Dell Inspiron with the Intel 2200B/G wireless card. After reading the destructions that came with the linux drivers, it goes on about building it with the kernel or something close to that. I have no idea what/how to do this. Would this have to be done regardless of linux version or might there be a linux version with these drivers already in the distro? ThanksRich

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Can one get rid of Desktop?
by Chris G 07 Oct '10

07 Oct '10

Is it possible to get rid of the (IMHO) stupid Desktop directory and the concept that goes with it? If my screen is anywhere I want it to be my home directory, not ~/Desktop. I can delete ~/Desktop but it just gets recreated whenever I do anything like open a terminal 'here'. Why can't I just get a terminal to open at /home/chris when I right click on my screen? (Not to mention the silliness of all those directories like Pictures, Videos, etc. starting with an uppercase letter) -- Chris Green

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Co-lo and VM hosting
by Laurie Brown 06 Oct '10

06 Oct '10

We find ourselves in need to some tertiary DNS and other services, and am looking at either using a VM, or some co-lo. In the case of the former, can anyone on-list recommend a Linux-supporting VM company, either Ubuntu or Gentoo (the latter fairly important)? In the case of the latter, does anyone know and can recommend a local (to Ipswich) co-lo company with reasonable rates? Bandwidth is an issue in each case, as we need to keep the servers current, and there's a fair amount of traffic flowing through. Cheers, Laurie. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie(a)brownowl.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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'ssh -X' doesn't seem to work, any alternative ways to do the same?
by Chris G 06 Oct '10

06 Oct '10

I'm currently away from home and I'm trying to get a GUI application running on a machine at home with the display here in N. Wales. Normally I would connect from the remote location using 'ssh -X' so that the DISPLAY environment variable would be set up to work through the ssh 'pipe' and a GUI app run on the remote machine (at my house) would use the display on the machine where I'm sitting currently (in North Wales). For some reason (possibly security on intermediate machines, this isn't a single hop ssh connection) the -X parameter in ssh isn't working for me in this case so I'm looking for alternatives. Can anyone suggest alternative ways of achieving my goal? The *real* aim is to allow me to get at my router configuration from here in Wales so I can change it to allow direct ssh access from this IP address. The router's web configuration uses so much bad/arcane javascript that you can't access it using lynx/links/w3m and the telnet access to its configuration is far too difficult to attempt to use remotely, the chances of screwing it up so that access is completely denied are very high. I have full root access to the server machine at home if necessary so can install/configure stuff as necessary, similarly at this end I'm running Linux on the laptop I'm using and can do whatever's needed. Thanks for any help and suggestions. -- Chris Green

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fetchmail and MS Exchange 2010
by Mark Rogers 05 Oct '10

05 Oct '10

I can't persuade fetchmail to collect mail from an Exchange server on our LAN (fetchmail and Exchange are both on the LAN). The errors I am getting are: fetchmail: Server CommonName mismatch: myoffice.mydomain.co.uk != 192.168.11.10 fetchmail: Server certificate verification error: unable to get local issuer certificate fetchmail: Server certificate verification error: certificate not trusted fetchmail: Server certificate verification error: unable to verify the first certificate fetchmail: Error exchanging credentials fetchmail: Authorisation failure on user(a)192.168.11.10 fetchmail: Query status=3 (AUTHFAIL) myoffice.mydomain.co.uk resolves to the office's external IP address, although I think (from Googling) that the first line is a warning not the reason for the failure. My fetchmailrc is fairly simple: set daemon 60 set invisible set no bouncemail set no syslog set logfile /var/log/fetchmail.log poll 192.168.11.10 protocol pop3 username "user" password "password" mda "/usr/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action correspond --url http://localhost/rt/" no keep You'll see from the last line that I'm trying to set up Request Tracker (RT), and it needs to be able to collect mail from our office mailserver. This guy seems to have the fix: http://berqnet.blogspot.com/2009/11/exchange-2007-fetchmail.html .. but I don't know what he means by "the fingerprint of the Exchange 2007". [We've had nothing but problems like this since moving to Exchange, but it does a reasonable job of keeping Windows users in check so we're stuck with it.] -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Numbered Lists
by Richard Parsons 04 Oct '10

04 Oct '10

Hi folks, I'm trying to choose a good text markup language (e.g. markdown, restructured text etc). I want it to be able to deal with nested numbered lists. So something like this: # Dog # Kitten # Fish # Goldfish # Haddock # Elephant would produce something like this: 1. Dog 2. Kitten 3. Fish 3.1. Goldfish 3.2. Haddock 4. Elephant Anyone know a text format that would fit the bill? Many thanks, Richard

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Analogue bonanza
by Anthony Anson 04 Oct '10

04 Oct '10

The PDSA charity shop near the Norwich Bus Station has a table full of pooterbooks, new, but some of them admittedly have whiskers. At first glance there's not a lot which is obviously for Linuxoi, (I've had those innit), but there are piles and piles of useful-looking books on the multitude of programming tools. They've all been reduced from their oiginal prices to three squids, and from there to a pound, nicker, quid or oncer. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Scanner woe
by Bev Nicolson 04 Oct '10

04 Oct '10

I've taken charge of my first scanner (a freebie from a friend) but I'm having trouble getting it installed. If I go to XSane it says "failed to open device snapscan :libusb:001:002 " . I have since installed every XSane extra there was via synaptic but it's still won't play ball. I'm very reluctant to give in though so how do I investigate what's up? And even more to the point, how do I fix it? It knows it's there I'm sure. [Ubuntu 8.04] Bev.

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