November 2018 - main

Reformatting a PDF
by Mark Rogers 03 Jun '19

03 Jun '19

On the Royal Mail website is a "handy" price guide available as a PDF: http://www.royalmail.com/sites/default/files/Royal-Mail-Our-Prices-March-20… It's only actually "handy" if you have a weird printer (or at least very unusual sized paper). I'm not sure what size/shape you'd call it but it would go into a DL envelope without folding... What I'd like to do is split the individual pages out and merge them to get three (maybe four) "pages" per A4 sheet so that I can print it on my very normal A4 printer. Suggestions? This is an annual headache and I'm fed up with a different manual solution every year. -- 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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OT: Domain registration/DNS hosts
by Mark Rogers 29 Nov '18

29 Nov '18

(OT but I think there's likely to be both knowledge and interest here. Correct me otherwise!) Most of my domains for historical reasons are with 123-Reg and I've been looking to move somewhere more reliable for years. 123-Reg has the advantage for me that I know it well but it's time I moved if that's the only thing keeping me there. All I *need* is to register/renew domains and handle their DNS. Ideally I would also *want* to have email/web forwarding. However I will never need them to provide email/web hosting. Most of the domains are .uk but with some exceptions. Who do others use and why? Who should I avoid? Mark -- 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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Hard disk drive partitions and memory
by Bev Nicolson 18 Nov '18

18 Nov '18

1) Noticing that this PC gets glacially slow occasionally (it probably means get a new one and soon but bear with me for the moment) I had a look at the hard disk. 77 GB is 84.4% full. I have two partitions though. One 'extended partition', the other a swap partition. Both 3.1 GB. Could I unmount the first (extended partition) safely? 2) What is it full of and how could I clear stuff out, again, safely? Bev. (braced for the worst.)

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Unreliable USB3
by Mark Rogers 13 Nov '18

13 Nov '18

I frequently find USB3 unreliable, on more than one PC (but not all). Typical usage will be to take images of SD cards via a card reader or to access data from a hard disk via USB->SATA. Generally, it'll connect and be visible for a short while before erroring. My current PC lists its controller as: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 31) How do I go about diagnosing this? Is it likely to be the driver, the hardware, or the external devices? syslog from most recent failure follows. On this occasion, I was connecting through an unpowered USB3 hub, but the problems are pretty typical regardless. Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4184.999569] usb 2-4.4: new SuperSpeed Gen 1 USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4185.026221] usb 2-4.4: New USB device found, idVendor=1f75, idProduct=0621, bcdDevice= 0.36 Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4185.026227] usb 2-4.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=4, Product=5, SerialNumber=6 Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4185.026231] usb 2-4.4: Product: Ext. HDD Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4185.026236] usb 2-4.4: Manufacturer: Innostor Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4185.026239] usb 2-4.4: SerialNumber: 20030225 Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu mtp-probe: checking bus 2, device 4: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-4/2-4.4" Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4185.293229] usb-storage 2-4.4:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4185.293858] scsi host4: usb-storage 2-4.4:1.0 Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4185.294091] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage Nov 13 13:00:13 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4185.298900] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas Nov 13 13:00:32 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4203.492176] usb 2-4.4: device not accepting address 4, error -62 Nov 13 13:00:43 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4214.500585] usb 2-4.4: device not accepting address 4, error -62 Nov 13 13:00:48 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.136105] usb 2-4.4: Device not responding to setup address. Nov 13 13:00:48 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.344806] usb 2-4.4: device not accepting address 4, error -71 Nov 13 13:00:48 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.348168] usb 2-4-port4: cannot disable (err = -71) Nov 13 13:00:48 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.355169] usb 2-4-port4: cannot reset (err = -71) Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.798423] usb 2-4-port4: cannot reset (err = -71) Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.897949] usb 2-4-port4: cannot reset (err = -71) Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.901440] usb 2-4-port4: cannot reset (err = -71) Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.904914] usb 2-4-port4: cannot reset (err = -71) Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.904922] usb 2-4-port4: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad? Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.908444] usb 2-4-port4: cannot disable (err = -71) Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.911947] usb 2-4-port4: cannot disable (err = -71) Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.972838] usb 2-4: USB disconnect, device number 2 Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.972843] usb 2-4.1: USB disconnect, device number 3 Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4220.974004] usb 2-4.4: USB disconnect, device number 4 Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4221.353012] usb 2-4: new SuperSpeed Gen 1 USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4221.376022] usb 2-4: New USB device found, idVendor=05e3, idProduct=0612, bcdDevice=92.24 Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4221.376028] usb 2-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0 Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4221.376032] usb 2-4: Product: USB3.0 Hub Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4221.376036] usb 2-4: Manufacturer: GenesysLogic Nov 13 13:00:49 mark-ubuntu kernel: [ 4221.379203] hub 2-4:1.0: USB hub found Mark -- 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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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th November
by Viperfang 05 Nov '18

05 Nov '18

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 8th November at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Is there a way for an ssh connection to allow the server to send a file to the client?
by Chris Green 02 Nov '18

02 Nov '18

I am looking for a way that will allow my ssh 'server' machine (desktop running xubuntu 18.04 at home) to send a file back to the client machine (laptop running xubuntu 18.04 which may be anywhere including behind a firewall etc. and behind NAT). I need the server machine to be able to do this from a script running on the server at some indeterminate time after the ssh connection has been made. The only remotely possible way I can think of to do this is to run something via the 'LocalCommand' option in the client ssh configuration. However, at the moment, that's about as far as I can get. I can't think of a way of actually doing it at the moment. The best I can come up with is to have a script (run as a LocalCommand) that uses sshfs to mount a server directory on the client. Then a server script can simply copy a file to the mounted directory and it will be visible on the client. Job done..., or not. There are problems with this however. Firstly as I often have several ssh connections running at the same time there needs to be some way to prevent the LocalCommand running multiple sshfs instances. This isn't too bad to overcome but the second issue is how to pull down the sshfs connection when the last ssh exits, at present I can't see any way to do this, there isn't the equivalent of LocalCommand which runs when a connection is about to be closed. Does anyone have any ideas which might help? -- Chris Green

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