January 2015 - main

O.T. Problems with USB sticks
by Chris Walker 11 Feb '15

11 Feb '15

I have a few USB sticks which I use in my car to allow me to listen to things like iPlayer downloads. But only one of the three is recognised by the car now. I've reformatted them under both linux and Windows 8.1 on my wife's laptop but the problem persists. The thing that the two 'failing' discs have in common is that I have also in the past used them on my tv to record stuff. The tv reformats them to NTFS whereas the car expects them to be FAT32. Are there are utilities I can use to see what might be different between the various sticks? For info, one of the 'failing' discs is of the same type as that which *is* recognised in the car whereas the other disc is an almost new 32GB stick from Maplins. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Laptop GPU
by Mark Rogers 02 Feb '15

02 Feb '15

I'm in the market for a new laptop, primarily because I'm fed up with my existing one using loads of CPU doing things the GPU should be doing (compiz being the main culprit). The existing laptop has an AMD graphics chipset which is apparently well supported but reality is less kind... My usage as far as graphics is concerned is nothing special; I'd like the laptop to be able to run VirtualBox comfortably and handle several (outbound) remote desktop sessions so having memory and CPU available matters more than GPU, as long as the latter can do everything expected of a "modern" distro (Ubuntu 14.10 currently). I don't turn on extra graphics effects but don't want to have to turn off the basis either. My instinct is to look at Intel GPUs as they seem to work well with FOSS drivers. I don't have a strong position on proprietary drivers but my experience is that if I want to still be using the laptop in 5 years time then relying on AMD to keep supporting it is unwise. But it's a long time since I looked at graphics chipsets so any comments welcomed. I'm undecided whether to get a cheap laptop (~£200) or go for a better one (say £400) but I'll take some convincing to go beyond that. -- 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 device detected but not mounted
by Chris Green 31 Jan '15

31 Jan '15

I have a new Lumix TZ60 camera, when I plug it into my xubuntu 14.10 laptop I see (in dmesg) :- [22802.981555] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pci [22803.076937] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=04da, idProduct=2372 [22803.076944] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [22803.076948] usb 1-1.2: Product: DMC-TZ60 [22803.076952] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Panasonic [22803.076955] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 0000000000000000001X1314210434 [22803.077932] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 5 [22803.108684] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage Is there anything I can do to get it to do better? -- Chris Green

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[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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ssh configuration, I have multiple usernames on one host
by Chris Green 23 Jan '15

23 Jan '15

My hosting provider (TsoHost) provides ssh access for each domain hosted. The ssh login is of the following format:- <site>@shell.gridhost.co.uk The <site> is the first 8 characters of the domain name. What I would like to do in my ssh_config file is something like:- Host site1 site2 site3 site4 HostName shell.gridhost.co.uk User %h However this doesn't work of course becase the %h doesn't work in the User field. Can anyone see any easy way of doing this except to simply repeat the whole block for each domain, as in:- Host site1 HostName shell.gridhost.co.uk User site1 -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree ALUG
by samwise 18 Jan '15

18 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 ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back tomorrow, 18th January, at 20:00: The Mulberry Tree 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 225776 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA WWW: https://www.facebook.com/MULBERRYHOSPITALITY The Mulberry Tree, previously known as The Milestone Beer House, is a grade 2 listed building in the centre of Ipswich. It is located at the intersection between Woodbridge Road and the A1156, across the road from the old Odeon cinema and not far from the Regent Theatre. It re-opened on Thursday March 29th 2012 after a major refurbishment, under its original name of The Mulberry House and has already begun to regain a good reputation for its selection of beers and ales. It has a sizeable car park to the rear of the building. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. I'll be arriving late, before 21:30, but hopefully there will be other regulars there to look out for. Cheers, Peter. -- I am aiming to run the London Marathon 2015 in aid of the PSP Association. All sponsorship gratefully received. :) http://www.bagshot-row.org/marathonformum ----- 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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Re: [ALUG] Ubuntu 14.04 LTS get clean
by Richard McLellan 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

The apt-get autoremove worked. The other commands were not removing data in the correct place, wherever that was. Thanks for the help. Richard

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Comparitive security of different encryption schemes
by Chris Green 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

This should start a good arg...., sorry, discussion going! :-) I currently store various bits of sensitive information in files encrypted using my editor's (my editor is vile) 'crypt' option. This uses the system's crypt() function to encrypt/decrypt the files. The big advantage is simplicity, I simply do:- vi -k <password> file and the file is automatically decrypted and encrypted for me. There are some weaknesses though, crypt() isn't very secure (but see below, it's not *that* bad) and the password floats around in RAM and the environment. So I have been looking for improvements but I want to keep a simple interface. So what I have found so far (including the existing scheme) are as follows:- Existing Scheme =============== The vile editor using the -k command line option. The password is possibly visible to someone who has access to my machine while I'm using it but that's a fairly unlikely scenario. In addition the non-alphanumeric characters I have in my passwords mess up the dispay somewhat. The crypt() encryption isn't very secure *but* it's actually not easy to brute force. I tried encryption breaking tools like unixcrypt-breaker and they only work if the 'statistics' files have stuff quite similar to what you're decrypting. Since the files I have encrypted are fairly random (very few actual words in there) the encryption breaking generally produces rubbish. The only case where it came up with one approximate hit was where I had put a password string repeatedly in the statistics files which was also on the file to decrypt (thinks, vary my passwords more!). Use an encfs file system ======================== This is fairly simple, I already use it for some other storage, it wouldn't be too difficult to write a wrapper script for my editor to simplify usage. It uses the AES cipher, 192 or 256 bits. There are some reports that it needs updating to be really secure in the modern environment but it's probably 'good enough'. Use 'pass' with a GnuPG key =========================== The 'pass' program is effectively a wrapper script that makes it easy to use a GPG key for encrypting files. I've played with it a bit and (once I'd worked out how to generate my GPG key) it was pretty simple to use and provides me with the sort of interface I want. This thus gives a choice of key types and sizes. The object of the exercise (encrypted files) is to keep important, confidential things safe but easy to access. In particular I have electronic banking details and such in one file, that's probably the most sensitive one. Ease of access is important, as is portability, I need to use this on more than one computer. A USB stick is *not* the answer for me, I'll lose the stick! The big advantage of the 'existing scheme' is simple portability as it's just part of the editor I use everywhere. It's to protect against people finding out my passwords etc., the computers with the files on are reasonably secure (as in unlikely to be stolen). I guess the most likely thing to happen is someone getting access to the files so the most important thing is to be sure that the encryption is difficult to break. So - what to choose? I think my feeling is that the choice is between 'do nothing' (vi plus crypt()) and 'pass' with a GnuPG key. What does the team think? -- Chris Green

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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS get clean
by Richard McLellan 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

Hello folks. I am very much lost with all the programs taken out of this version. I last used a version 10.xx with lots of programs. However, I am unable to clear a folder which is low on space. I forget where the folder is but it's where the updates are stored. The popup box tells me to use sudo apt-get clean but this does nothing when I use the terminal. How can I get this resolved? Thanks. Richard

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One fine Thursday
by Anthony Anson 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

Was the Norwich meeting last week or will it be tomorrow? Nothing seen in Announcements. -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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