March 2013 - main

[ALUG Announce] Norwich Raspberry Pi User and Developer Group's third meetup
by Steve Pearce 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Greetings ALUG. I'm writing to let you know that we'll be holding the third Norwich Raspberry Pi User and Developer Group meeting next Saturday, 9th March 2013. We'll be meeting at a new venue: The Soup Lab, 5 St. Benedict’s View, Grapes Hill, Norwich, NR2 4HH. See the website norwichrpi.org for more details about the group, and see thesouplab.co.uk for venue info. Hope to see you there. stevepdp ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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old tat going free
by mick 23 Apr '13

23 Apr '13

Or really useful old hardware..... Another clear out means that I have some old tat to get rid of. Someone may find some of it useful. If so, let me know, otherwise it's going to the wee recycling dump. Two EZ PCMCIA 10/100 ethernet adaptors (cards slot into old adaptor slots and provide RJ45 ethernet connectors) One Dell external CD/DVD drive wich uses the Dell connecting cable (with cable) One Dell external CD/DVD drive which uses USB connecting cable (with cable) One 5 1/4" floppy drive (really). I have also found a box of Digital Research 5 1/4 floppies with GEM etc dating from 1987 if anyone is feeling really nostalgic. One "universal modulator" from Maplin (one of these http://www.maplin.co.uk/programmable-universal-modulator-33050) Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- blog: baldric.net gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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What does group 199528447 mean
by Chris Walker 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

Having dutifully followed advice and backed up my NAS drive using rsync, I have formatted the NAS and now want to write the contents of the rynced drive back to the NAS. But it gives me lots of 'Permission Denied' errors. I thought I'd re-created the NAS as it was but that's done through a web browser so I might well have screwed it up but it seems to be working, albeit that I can't now write to it. So once and for all, I'd like to fix the problem so that in the future, I can read and write files to the NAS without experiencing permission errors. I tried to find the cause of this error on google but it only returns one result and that's no help at all. I then looked at the groups configuration GUI on the machine but there are no groups numbered above 500 so how come this one is saying 199528447? If it helps, the user number is the same. So where do I start with trying to fault find this?

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Diagnosing high X CPU usage
by Mark Rogers 04 Apr '13

04 Apr '13

According to "top", /usr/bin/X is using between 30% and 60% of my CPU (and can go higher). this is on an AMD A6-3670 (quad core) system running Kubuntu (13.04 beta), and my new nVidia G210 graphics card with proprietary drivers. I had the same problems with the onboard GPU in 13.04 and 12.10 before it. Eg: PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1357 root 20 0 321m 207m 49m R 48.9 1.3 214:58.86 Xorg Why would X CPU be so high, and what can I do about 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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Open/Libre Office and docx
by Bev Nicolson 02 Apr '13

02 Apr '13

I've been finding that opening MS docx files with Libre Office makes the formatting go ever so slightly awol. Is there another office program I could use that doesn't have this problem? Bev.

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Network printing
by Chris Walker 28 Mar '13

28 Mar '13

I got fed up with the Huawei router that Talktalk supplied, and wanting to have network printing I bought a Buffalo ADSL router. That has a USB port on it to enable network printing. But I can't make it work. According to the stuff I've looked at, it should be as simple as finding the IP address of the router and configuring the printer to be that address. I know the IP address of the router, it's 192.168.1.1 but I can't get beyond that. Where am I going wrong? Can anybody help please? If it helps, I'm not running ddwrt which is one of the options. When it came to the initial setup of the router, I chose to keep things simple as I was having to copy settings from the Huawei.

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Basic (I think!) Python problem
by Mark Rogers 27 Mar '13

27 Mar '13

I'm a programmer, but I'm not a Python programmer, yet. So I'm sure what I'm doing wrong here relates more to my lack of knowledge than anything else... I'm looking at a Websockets example here: http://eventlet.net/doc/examples.html#websocket-server-example On my Ubuntu system I have tried: sudo apt-get install python-eventlet (which installs Eventlet 0.12.1, which appears to be the current version) I then try to run the example and get: $python eventlet.py Traceback (most recent call last): File "eventlet.py", line 1, in <module> import eventlet File "/home/mark/python/eventlet.py", line 4, in <module> from eventlet import wsgi ImportError: cannot import name wsgi If I Google the error, using the assumption that stupid errors are made by lots of people so I won't be alone, I find only two hits neither of which are remotely related. But I've tried this on more than one system without success. Suggestions? I don't have the relevant build tools installed to try using easy_install instead but as 0.12.1 is the latest version I don't think the install method is the problem here? -- 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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Recommended "entry level" nVidia graphics card
by Mark Rogers 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

I have a PC with on-board ATI HD-6530D. The motherboard is less than a year old, but apparently this is far too old for AMD/ATI to still support the chipset so proprietary drivers don't exist for it. I'm using the FOSS drivers (which would be my preference anyway) but I'm having issues in X that are causing it to die one way or another every day or so. The research I've done so far suggests that I have two options: give up half my life to working out what's going on, or accept it and move on. With the latter option in mind, that means I want to buy a cheap PCI-X video card, but I'd like to get one that's at least as "good" as the HD6530D. And for reasons of lack of support I'd like to avoid AMD/ATI. That pretty much means nVidia (unless someone tells me they're just as bad?). Any recommendations? No gaming, so just responsive desktop graphics, and reliable under Linux. (I'm on Kubuntu 13.04 (beta) at the moment, which I upgraded to in part to see if it improved things, which it didn't.) Aside: I did manage to install the ATI drivers and it did seem better, albeit with an "unsupported hardware" logo permanently on my screen, which it may be possible to get rid of. But I didn't stick with it long enough to see if it really made things better. If nVidia/ATI are as bad as each other then I'd consider either brand's card that's currently supported if it's cheap enough, especially if it's reliable under the FOSS drivers. I was sure that AMD made some moves to open sourcing their drivers, but I must have dreamed 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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SyncIpswich
by Laurie Brown 22 Mar '13

22 Mar '13

Folks, I don't know how many here have heard of the Sync<city> initiative. I hadn't until recently, but according to the website for the Ipswich one (http://www.syncipswich.com) this is the rough idea: ---- cut here ---- "SyncIpswich is all about getting Ipswich and Suffolk's technology communities together to form new ideas, new startups and push local business growth. Ipswich is an ever improving town with many local & national technology companies, design & marketing agencies, developers, designers, business owners and more. SyncIpswich is an open community for all technologists, creatives, entrepreneurs and graduates to meet up, flaunt ideas, recruit help and expertise and learn new things. Its a community by the people for the people. Regular meetups with exciting talks and demo's in sociable surroundings. We look forward to meeting you. We'll be meeting once a month in the evening; its free to attend with free snacks and drinks." ---- cut here ---- Thus far, Norwich and Ipswich are the only ones, but Cambridge is due to start one soon, with more to follow. Last night I attended the inaugural "meetup" with a talk by Daniel Wagner-Hall from Google, talking about their software testing regime, philosophy and culture. It was really good, and a great insight into Google. Some of the stats were astonishing: Nearly 20,000 developers More than 100 million lines of code Up to 200 tests PER SECOND, and so on... Some comments made by attendees (there were 70-odd people there) can be seen here: http://www.syncipswich.com/events/101237482/?a=uc1_te A review (from one of the sponsors) can be fond here: http://paulgrenyer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-first-syncipswich.html There was free beer (Peroni), soft drinks, nibbles, and lots of techy people many of whom use Linux day-to-day. We repaired to Issac's afterwards for more beer. I didn't see anyone from ALUG there, but in truth, my recent attendance to the monthly meetings has been woeful, so I might be wrong. It was a good opportunity to meet new people, make contact with ex-colleagues I hadn't seen for 20+ years, and generally network. I recommend Ipswich ALUGers to attend the next meet, or at least roam through the web site. Of course, you guys in Norwich should check out your own! See you at the next meet then? Cheers, Laurie. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie(a)brownowl.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Free hardware
by Srdjan Todorovic 19 Mar '13

19 Mar '13

Hi all, I've got some stuff that I don't need: 1. Domex 3194UP SCSI card. 32bit PCI slot. I've got one SCSI cable to go with it. Not used it in years, so don't know if it still works. Was working when it was removed. It was supported in Linux with the 'initio' driver on 2.6.x kernels, but I have no idea about 3.8 that was just released. 2. Universal Scientific Industrial BD-B022 "Remote Access Host Card" PCIe 1x slot. I think this is a Dell product (FX100 Remote Access Host Card?). Has 2 DVI ports and one RJ45 port. Has a JTAG connector, I2C connector (some of the pins are bent), RS232 (one bent pin). I don't know if this is even working. If anyone wants them, give me a shout and I'll bring them to the next pubmeet, otherwise they will be going to the bin / council recycling centre (landfill?). Regards, Srdjan

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