October 2011 - main

Routers (as in ADSL routers and similar) and DHCP and DNS
by Chris G 23 Oct '11

23 Oct '11

Is it just me or are most routers' DHCP servers close to useless? I have several, all of which can provide DHCP and most of them also allow you to set them as the DNS server such that they forward (most?) requests to your ISP's DNS server. However *none* of them provide name access to clients on the LAN, so I have printers, a VOIP server, etc. on the LAN to which the router gives IP addresses (using DHCP) but the router *doesn't* allow one to reference anything by name. This makes the DHCP server completely pointless! If I want, for example, to be able to refer to my VOIP server by name (it has a web server for configuration) then I have to give it a fixed/static IP address and put it in /etc/hosts everywhere, by the time I have done that for the printers too I might just as well turn the DHCP server off in the router. Am I just unlucky in the routers I choose or are they really all like this? -- Chris Green

3 4

HP Laserjet P1102
by Bev Nicolson 23 Oct '11

23 Oct '11

People may remember me wrestling with another HP a while ago. This is a new machine but I wondered if the results from CUPS below shed any light on the topic on why it says it may not be connected? E [22/Oct/2011:11:51:56 +0100] [cups-driverd] Unable to write "/var/cache/cups/ppds.dat" - Permission denied E [22/Oct/2011:11:52:19 +0100] CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer: Unauthorized E [22/Oct/2011:11:52:31 +0100] [cups-driverd] Unable to write "/var/cache/cups/ppds.dat" - Permission denied E [22/Oct/2011:11:53:21 +0100] CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer: Unauthorized Bev.

1 1

Open Office failing
by Chris Walker 23 Oct '11

23 Oct '11

I have Open Office running here (Mandriva 2010.2) on my 64bit i7 machine. It also runs on the Windows 7 side as the machine dual boots. The Windows side works and I use it to save some multi page spreadsheets. But whenever I try to open any of the spreadsheets here, OO fails to open them. It says it will try to recover the docs but as it doesn't seem to open them, it never manages to recover. The machine has gone through several updates/upgrades and yet the problem persists. Can anybody suggest what I might do to fix OO here please? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

1 0

Google Chrome - anyone use it?
by James Freer 21 Oct '11

21 Oct '11

[running Xubuntu] Just wondering if anyone uses it and what their thoughts are! I decided to have a change from Firefox. I liked Chrome and didn't find any problems - except for the bookmarks. In FF i installed the google toolbar and had all my bookmarks stored in my gmail account. Useful while i was teaching and using lots of different machines...(no longer) but i've got into the habit so i wanted to do that with Chrome. Setting up Sync and logging in to gmail i don't find it syncing at all. Having installed Chrome i then found that FF google toolbar bookmarks didn't work. Assuming there was conflict between the browsers i removed FF and google toolbar - problem remains. I think i've found a glitch somehow and will only know when i install the new Xubuntu release. james

2 2

sshd in single-user mode, resizing root ext3 partition
by Richard Lewis 21 Oct '11

21 Oct '11

Hi ALUG, So we've recently purchased a new server on which we intend to run Xen and hand out some virtual OSs to the students our Digital Sociology and Digital Journalism courses. The server machine has two HDDs and I allowed the Debian installer to set up LVM using just one of the drives, leaving the other un-partitioned. I let it create swap and root logical volumes with the root logical volume taking up all the volume group space not used by swap. Now, however, I realise that what I really wanted was a small root LV and then a large LV for Xen to use to store guest OSs which could use physical extents from both HDDs. In principle this should be a matter of: 1. Reduce the size of the / filesystem 2. Reduce the logical volume on which / is mounted 3. Create a new partition on sdb 4. Add sdb to the volume group 5. Create a new logical volume using all of the remaining space 6. Create a new filesystem on the new logical volume 7. Mount this new filesystem in the place where Xen stores its guest OSs However, I can't resize the root filesystem while it's mounted. And now the server has been moved to the rack. Before I face the ITS staff and ask to be allowed to login locally in single user mode in order to resize the root filesystem, I wondered if there's any way to, either: 1. Resize the root filesystem while it's mounted (it's an ext3 filesystem) or; 2. Log in to the computer remotely in single user mode so that the root filesystem is mounted read-only and is thus resizable? (such as running sshd in single user mode) I know this is total schoolboy stuff and please feel free to point and laugh. But after that, any advice would be very much appreciated. Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1 1

ubuntu 11.10
by nev young 20 Oct '11

20 Oct '11

Oh my. Oh dear. I've just upgraded (one of) my ubuntu VBoxes from 11.04 to 11.10. How do I get the nice previous gnome desktop back and get rid of the abomination that has replaced it. Of course, I 'spect everyone will think the BIG clicky bar down the left is k3wl and I'm just being an old fart. Looks like the entire household may have to go minty. -- nev

7 16

RIP DMR
by mick 20 Oct '11

20 Oct '11

For anyome who hasn't seen it, Jon "maddog" Hall wrote a nice piece in Linux Magazine. http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddo… Mick

1 0

Watching "Look East" on line
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 20 Oct '11

20 Oct '11

Greetings all! I am not managing to watch the BBC "Look East" news programme on-line. I start with http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv then set "Your location" to "Ely, Cambridgeshire", then select "Full Schedule" under "BBC One". Up comes the schedule for the day, and at 13:00 there is "BBC News at One" followed at 13:30 by "Look East - East". Also, at 18:00 there is "BBC News at Six", again followed at 18:30 by "Look East - East". But, in either case, if while the main "BBC News" programme is on I select "Watch Live", after the end of the main News programme it is followed by the London programme and not by Look East. Also, if I click on the "Look East" link, there is no option to watch today's Look East, but although yesterday's is allegedly "available on BBC iPlayer", when one clicks on this it is "no longer available"!!!! Any solutions? Or am I somehow just confused? Thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-Oct-11 Time: 18:59:59 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

2 2

Re: [ALUG] ubuntu 11.10
by Ben Bewick 17 Oct '11

17 Oct '11

I agree, I dislike the way the ubuntu desktop experience has evolved. I've always liked gnome 2, and would like to stay with it. Just a note, 11.04 is the current LTS Viper On 17 October 2011 00:18, Ben Bewick <viperfang(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I agree, I dislike the way the ubuntu desktop experience has evolved. > I've always liked gnome 2, and would like to stay with it. > > Just a note, 11.04 is the current LTS > > Viper > > On 16 October 2011 23:53, Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> wrote: >> On 16/10/11 22:29, James Freer wrote: >>> >>> As Wayne said once don't swop distros too much but get to know >>> one really well. >> >> That wouldn't be the same Wayne who is typing this from a shiny new >> installaiton of LMDE after giving up (for the time being) with Ubuntu >> 11.10.....? :D >> >> To be fair though I have been a solid Ubuntu user since just before 5.04 >> came out so I am long overdue a look around to see if the grass is greener. >> Pretty sure I could have wrestled it into something close to usable although >> still at a loss as to how or if it is possible to configure around some of >> the things like that "dash" that were annoying me. >> >> Will probably take a look back at Ubuntu for the LTS release. I am not too >> unhappy with some of the overall concepts in Unity I just think the >> implimentation is a bit off at the moment. >> >> As to LMDE...well too early to tell but everything I really care about is >> working. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> main(a)lists.alug.org.uk >> http://www.alug.org.uk/ >> http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main >> Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! >> >

1 1

Wanted - HTML 'report generator' for sqlite (or maybe mySql) database
by Chris G 16 Oct '11

16 Oct '11

I am looking for a way to display information from an sqlite3 database on web pages in the sort of way that a 'report generator' provides. I.e. I want to be able to have breaks and indents in the report with sub-headings etc. with the breaks being set by changes in the data. For example I might have weekly timesheet information and I want it output with weekly and/or monthly sub-totals:- Week 1 ------ Day Job Hours Monday ABC 1.5 XYZ 6.5 Tuesday ABC 8 Wednesday XYZ 8 Thursday AAA 7 XYZ 1 Friday ABC 6 38 (Maybe the totals for ABC, XYZ, etc. here too) Week 2 ------ ... and so on. It's pretty standard report writer stuff but I can't find anything that does it for web output. There are full blown application frameworks that can maybe do it but they are rather lower level than I want as the database already exists and is created by other tools. I just want a configurable report writer. Open Office can do some of what I want but it's clumsy with sqlite3 and I'm not sure if it can produce an HTML version of the report. -- Chris Green

1 0