December 2012 - main

Centos - anyone use it?
by James Freer 31 Jan '13

31 Jan '13

Just out of interest i was wondering if many folk on here use Centos. I've decided now to stop using *buntu after 5 years. I've had a few gripes with *buntu in the past and two bugs in xubuntu i found in (im)Precise - time for a change. Besides that i've been wondering why some packages are being left out - apparently dpkg have changed their description fields and if the author doesn't amend they are left out. *buntu seem to be going on a downhill slide in lots of areas and before unity. james

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?Ubuntu 12.10 Boot Issues
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 21 Jan '13

21 Jan '13

Hi all, I was on an old version of Ubuntu, started getting messages about it not being supported any more and so decided to update. I decided to install the lubuntu-desktop package, then do updates until I was up-to-date. So now, I'm up to Lubuntu 12.10. When I booted it, it hang big-time before getting into the GUI. I Hard-booted and selected a different kernel, and it booted fine. After experimentation it seems that booting into the kernel described as "Ubuntu 12.10, kernel 3.5.0-10-generic" causes the machine to hang before getting into the GUI. I've just tried making LUbuntu and XUbuntu 12.10 CDs and booting from them, but both of them hang, I presume when trying to load the Kernel. Trying to boot via the "kernel 3.5.0-10-generic recovery mode" boot menu option also hangs. I've not had a problem like this before. Does anyone have any advice on diagnosing what's causing this hang? Any logs to examine would have to survive a hard-reboot, or are there any debug options I can put on the grub boot line. Or am I doomed, or have to wait for a new kernel to come out, or keep using the old one. Any advice or comments would be appreciated. I haven't googled much as I don't quite know what to search for (you may tell me I'm a numpty for this!) Hardware is a Dell Lattitude D410. Cheers Steve

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Are there any linux based NAS systems out there with reasonable audio output?
by Chris Green 10 Jan '13

10 Jan '13

I want a compact, low power Linux box to use as a NAS and audio streamer (probably running mpd). This is a slightly odd mix of requirements, does anyone have any suggestions of what to look at? Alternatively maybe a 'media streamer' would provide what I want, but I need it to have audio outputs and be able to run something like mpd so that it can run headless and be driven remotely. A custom built Linux box is a valid possibility too but getting a small, low-power one isn't trivial. (Raspberry Pi is out because its audio is notoriously bad and there seem to be few workarounds to avoid its sound problems) -- Chris Green

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Reassembling RAID array
by Mark Rogers 10 Jan '13

10 Jan '13

I had a RAID5 array set up as /dev/md1 using 4 external USB3 drives. Following a reboot (I assume, although to be honest I'm not sure what caused it) the array hasn't come back up correctly: $ cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md1 : active raid5 super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/0] [____] md0 : active raid5 sda1[0] sdb1[1] sdd1[3] sdc1[2] 5860535808 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/4] [UUUU] unused devices: <none> Note: /dev/md0 is a separate array and is working fine; md1 should comprise sd[fghi]1 All the "missing" partitions are present, eg: $sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdf Disk /dev/sdf: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 81 heads, 63 sectors/track, 765633 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x2c2d5341 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdf1 2048 3907029167 1953513560 fd Linux RAID autodetect (same applies for the other three disks). How do I get mdadm to add my disks into the array, both now and after a reboot? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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USB Memory Sticks
by Michael Goddard 06 Jan '13

06 Jan '13

An odd request, but what is reasonable brand of USB M S for use with Linux? My reason for asking is that I've found of late some of these items, after a period of use, give a misleading response eg, describe item to be "full, no space", when user knows this to be untrue! tia Michael

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[OT] Google search without cookies
by Dan 06 Jan '13

06 Jan '13

Dear All, Since yesterday, Google web searches all come up blank unless I allow Google to set cookies (Firefox 10.0.7 on Gentoo). Google's privacy FAQ still says that Google search will work without cookies, and I find that Google Image, Books, and Scholar searches work just fine without cookies, so it doesn't appear to be a deliberate change of policy on Google's part. Anyone else experiencing similar symptoms? -- Thanks, Dan

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Sound - how to get 'Output devices' to appear in PulseAudio?
by Chris Green 01 Jan '13

01 Jan '13

I am slowly getting to understand what's going on with sound on my little Acer Revo. However I still *don't* understand why sometimes PulseAudio can see some output devices and sometimes it can't. When it has no output devices not surprisingly I can't get any sound out of it, I then curse it for a while, run various things to see if I can understand what's going on, and at some point it works - but I can never understand why! So, how does one get output devices to appear? Then, further, how does one do this from the command line, because I want to run this headless and will only have ssh access. (Running X remotely doesn't work with modern applications as they use DBUS which breaks X) -- Chris Green

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3Com 8 port hub
by Chris Walker 29 Dec '12

29 Dec '12

Does anybody want one of these? http://www.amazon.co.uk/3Com-3C16750-US-OfficeConnect-Speed-8-Port/dp/B0000… One of my sons gave me one of these things over Christmas as he has never used it and he's in a 'tidying' mood! I think he's had it for some time and never used it. All I've done is find a power lead for it and switch it on. It lights up as expected but I haven't hooked up any LAN connections. It's free for the first person that shows an interest.

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Sound problem (no sound) Ubuntu 12.10 - command line
by Chris Green 29 Dec '12

29 Dec '12

I'm trying to get sound working on an Acer Revo R3600 which has Ubuntu Server (i.e. no GUI) installed on it. When I run something like mplayer I see (among other things):- AO: [pulse] Init failed: Connection refused Failed to initialize audio driver 'pulse' This happens even when mplayer is run as root (and anyway I have added the relevant users to the audio group). It's the only significant difference I can see between this system and other systems where mplayer works OK. Google hasn't helped much. Does anyone have any idea what may be wrong? -- Chris Green

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xilence psu
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Dec '12

27 Dec '12

Thanks for the advice on this. The 250 watt came, it went in and works just fine, and it can be recommended. Very quiet. The first one, evo by brand, had a high pitched whine. This one is just about audible and not annoying at all. However, the lesson I learned is that when putting together an sff machine, its better to go one bigger than min-itx form factor, and matx is the way to go. Reason being, the bigger case is quieter in itself, and it will take standard atx power supplies - at least the Sliverstone one does. And this means more choice, and fanless is available too. Yes the bigger Sugo is less portable. But its still compact enough for a desktop, its a medium shoebox rather than a very small one, and its quieter even with similar levels of fan throttling. The other thing about the mini is that it has one large front fan. That's fine. But it collects dust like crazy in the filter. So it has to be vacuumed out every so often. The psu blowup was a blessing in disguise, I'd never have known. They are both running Debian, and its getting to be time to move to wheezy one of these days. Backup first! Al

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