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Running vnc server on startup
by John Woodard 12 Sep '12

12 Sep '12

I want to run a vnc server on startup as a user rather than root and seek opinion to where the best place to put the command tightvncserver :1 -geometry 1280x1024 -depth 16 -pixelformat rgb565 etc/rc.local cron job? Not sure here really if it needs to be before login so thought it prudent to run as a user. Cheers, BJ

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 13th September
by Viperfang 10 Sep '12

10 Sep '12

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 13th September 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 http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Anyone know about and/or use libgda (gnome DB library)?
by Chris Green 05 Sep '12

05 Sep '12

While searching for ways to access databases I have hit upon libgda which is the Gnome generic DB access library. What has attracted me specifically is the gridWidget which appears to give me exactly the sort of interface to a DB table that I have been after for quite a while. (See http://www.gnome-db.org/ScreenShots at the bottom). Does anyone here have any experience with libgda? -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Using Android phone as dial-up modem
by Phil Ashby 05 Sep '12

05 Sep '12

On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 16:53:55 +0100, Mark Rogers <mark(a)quarella.co.uk> > To: alug-main <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Using Android phone as dial-up modem > Message-ID: > <CADK3ZeF40qKGcxh=ezyAb=aPiTG6evz7O0N9qoYcKOWAeSFpEw(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > On 28 August 2012 18:38, mick <mbm(a)rlogin.net> wrote: > > > I think tethering (be it over USB, wifi, or bluetooth) of the phone to > > a laptop will only give you access to the carrier's network > > connection. I don't think that the GSII has an analogue modem which > > will allow connection to a remote modem. > > > > I wondered about that, but also wondered whether it needed specific > hardware to do this; it can obviously connect to an analogue phone line > just fine, surely after that it's just a case of sending the right > "squawks" over the connection? It's possible to access the built-in modem capability on a GSII: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1471241 ..but not simple unless your phone provider includes host drivers (which it seems some do). Once you have the right modem device exposed, connecting it into PC Anywhere should be a breeze :) Or you can look at soft modems like SpanDSP: http://www.soft-switch.org/spandsp_faq/index.html http://www.soft-switch.org/spandsp-modules.html with the audio paths physically connected through your mobile from the sound card, but that seems a bit silly when the GSM baseband chipset can already provide what you want, if the manufacturer will let you use it. Phil.

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How do I decide which printer driver to use in CUPS?
by Chris Green 04 Sep '12

04 Sep '12

I recently found that my printers were no longer working with one particular application (glabels). The error message from CUPS was "/usr/lib/cups/filter/hpcups failed" and a bit of Googling suggested that changing the printer driver selected in CUPS might fix the error.... and it did. I'm using the hpijs driver now instead of the hpcups driver. However it raises the question of how one decide which of many drivers available for a given printer one should select. For my HP1320 there's quite a lot to choose from:- HP Laserjet 1320 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.8-pre1 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/Postscript (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/pxlmono (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpijs 3.12.12 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Series hpijs 3.12.12 pcl3, (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Series pcl3, hpcups 3.12.12 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Series Postscript (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpcups 3.12.12 (en) ..., and yes, the Postscript one is repeated three times with no visible differences. So how is anyone supposed to decide which driver to use, I've not found any useful guidance anywhere. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] 2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 7th September.
by Paul Grenyer 04 Sep '12

04 Sep '12

Hi The site appears to only have August's meeting on it. When I click on the 2600 link at the top of the page I get: High Risk Website Blocked Location: www.2600.com Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/HTMLGen-A has been found on this website. Return to the page you were previously viewing. from inside Aviva. -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer SyncNorwich: http://www.syncnorwich.com ACCU Member: License to code: http://www.accu.org

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 7th September.
by Viperfang 04 Sep '12

04 Sep '12

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Using Android phone as dial-up modem
by Mark Rogers 29 Aug '12

29 Aug '12

Situation: PC running pcAnywhere, accessible via dial-up (you know that thing we used to use before broadband? :-) At present I have to be sat in my office (or somewhere with a phone line), using a laptop with a modem in it, to dial in to site (the site does not have Internet access). Can I use my Android mobile (Galaxy SII) as a traditional modem, eg via USB connection to PC? PC would ideally be Linux but I have pcAnywhere installed on both. 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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Samba usershares, symlinks, etc
by Mark Rogers 27 Aug '12

27 Aug '12

If I create a Samba share (eg directly in /etc/samba/smb.conf) I can enable following of symlinks (for just that share) with: follow symlinks = yes wide links = yes unix extensions = no When instead added to a usershare (ie in /var/lib/samba/usershares/myshare) this doesn't seem to work. Indeed, these files seem very "fussy"; just moving lines around or leaving lines commented out (with # or ;) seems to break the share completely. However I can't find them documented anywhere (nor indeed can I find usershare_acl properly documented anywhere). So: Is there a way to have a usershare with the ability to follow symlinks (without globally enabling them, which is what I've done so far)? Is there some documentation I'm missing that explains how these work? I can see why allowing users to enable that functionality may not be wanted, but on the other hand having to enable it globally doesn't seem like the best alternative. Should I just add my share to smb.conf and be done with it? [Ubuntu 12.10 alpha, although I'm sure I've had this problem before on older versions.] -- 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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Attempt to use openvpn client as proxy server
by Jenny Hopkins 26 Aug '12

26 Aug '12

Hullo alug, I've got a computer here at home running debian that gets packages from a remote repository running behind a firewall at work using an openvpn connection. Local address is 192.168.10.6, remote webserver is known as repo.tcl.office. Remote nameserver is 192.168.10.10. Openvpn uses a tunnel of 12.3.3.0. I have a second computer on my internal network, address assigned as 192.168.1.whatever by the dhcp server (192.168.1.2) that i would very much like to be able to access this repository. At the moment all the second computer (a balloon-type board) knows is that it is on the network 192.168.1.0 and that its nameserver is 192.168.1.2...not much use to me at all, especially as the nameserver is not on the openvpn and has no idea about tcl.office. I had a try at assigning a static address on the 12.3.3.0 network to no avail, it couldn't ping the computer here on its tun 12.3.3.6 address. Adding various addresses to /etc/resolv.conf on the balloon make no difference. Is this an impossible mission, or are there any tricks and tools i can be using to make this happen? Running openvpn on the balloon is not an option, alas. Hints gratefully received. Thanks, Jenny

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Screen resolution stuck
by Bev Nicolson 23 Aug '12

23 Aug '12

Screen resolution is resolutely stuck at 1024 x 768. Attempting it increase this or decrease it results either in it going awol (higher) or impractically large to deal with (lower). I can't do anything with the auto button the monitor. >From xrandr (I have been googling) : Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 8192 x 8192 VGA1 connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 304mm x 228mm 1280x800 59.8 1280x768 59.9 1024x768 75.1 75.0 70.1* 60.0 832x624 74.6 800x600 72.2 75.0 70.0 60.3 56.2 848x480 60.0 640x480 75.0 72.8 72.8 66.7 60.0 59.9 720x400 70.1 So, people, does this mean a new/another monitor might be an idea? Is there anything else I can try? (Ubuntu 11.04) Bev.

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[ALUG Announce] Announcing Norwich Raspberry Pi User and Developer Group's First Meeting!
by Steve Pearce 23 Aug '12

23 Aug '12

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 just writing to let you know of the Raspberry Pi event that will soon be taking place in Norwich. >From the website: Our first meeting will take place at House Cafe on Saturday 25th August between 12:00-17:00. House is an artistic and community friendly venue with a large carpeted sofa area suitable for running talks and demonstrations. We’re planning to run the event like a small scale unconference. The idea is that there will be a short pre-arranged talk schedule, and then we’ll open up the stage to anybody who wishes to demo their projects and ideas on the provided Raspberry Pi and display. The venue welcomes the use of laptops too, so we’re hoping to teach and collaborate on projects and such things too. Whether you’re an experienced programmer, a novice or are simply curious as to what this whole Raspberry Pi movement is all about, there will be something to gain for everyone who attends. To submit talk ideas, please send an email to info(a)norwichrpi.org and Steve will add you to the list. If you come up with an idea for a talk on the day, then that’s fine too! We’ll simply add you on to the end of the pre-arranged folks. 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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Random incidental ALUG meet-up opportunities
by MJ Ray 23 Aug '12

23 Aug '12

Are any ALUGgers going to be at the Tour of Britain grand depart (Ipswich waterfront - where's a good place to park?) or finish (Norwich showground) on Sunday 9th September? Anyone like to meet up for an ale (well maybe not at the start: 10am!) and some tech chat while we wait for the race? Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/

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Re: [ALUG] OT Maths Jam
by Steve Engledow 21 Aug '12

21 Aug '12

Morning all, I've been in conversation with the maths jam organising folks and... Norwich maths jam is go! I'm in the process of setting up a mailing list so if you want in, please email norwich(a)mathsjam.com and I'll make sure you're on it. I'll send emails out from that address once a venue has been confirmed etc. The maths jam is on the second-to-last tuesday of the month which makes the 1st Norwich jam the 18th September. Whether you're interested or not, please forward this email onto anyone you think might be. Steve ----- Forwarded message from Steve Engledow <steve(a)offend.me.uk> ----- Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:20:03 +0100 From: Steve Engledow <steve(a)offend.me.uk> To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: OT Maths Jam Hi folks, Would anyone be interested in a Norwich maths jam? See http://www.mathsjam.com/ for (fairly vague) details or check the twitter account (@MathsJam). tl;dr: We get together in a pub on the second-to-last tuesday of the month and be geeky. I know, it sounds like the pubmeet; but this time we be geeky about mathsy things! I reckon there ought to be enough maths geeks among the linux geeks for this to be relevant :) Steve ----- End forwarded message -----

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 20 Aug '12

20 Aug '12

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 tonight - Monday, 20th August, 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. Oops. Apologies for the late notice - I've been pretty busy most of the day. Anyway, I intend to make it out tonight and will probably be soliciting advice from anyone who's got any recommendations for what to try out with rooted Android devices. Peter. ----- 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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Android updates for cheap tablet
by Mark Rogers 20 Aug '12

20 Aug '12

I have a cheap Android tablet, branded Synapse, I think it's this model although I paid nothing like that for it: http://www.dee-sign.co.uk/products/synapse-tablet-top-spec What are my options for playing with Android versions? I'd like to experiment with (eg) CyanogenMod but haven't done it before; I was thinking it better to risk my cheapo tablet than my Galaxy SII but on the other hand at least the GS2 has been well tested... I believe the tablet is just the same as any number of cheap imported tablets and I don't want it to be stuck on the version it shipped with (albeit that it came with ICS). -- 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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Keyboard and mouse 'crash'
by Bev Nicolson 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

Every so often (not too often happily) both keyboard and mouse will stop functioning. It seems to happen most often when I plug a camera or MP3 player in. The only way to get them going again is to switch everything off. (If I touch the off button it will shut down in 60 seconds from the shut down dialogue box.) What I'm wondering is, has anyone here come across this problem and is there another, more permanent, solution to it? I would add that I've never had to install any drivers for any such devices, so I'm pretty confident that's not the issue. [Unbuntu 11.04.] Bev.

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Wanted - algorithm for bufferless search for a pattern in a stream
by Chris Green 08 Aug '12

08 Aug '12

I can see how to do this in principle but I can't iron out the details and I'm sure there must be some ready made code for doing it 'out there' on the internet. It's just rather difficult to come up with search terms when I don't know what to call it. To explain in detail I want to search for a (constant) string in a byte stream that I can't rewind and I don't want to use any significant buffer space (the constant string I'm looking for is quite long). So, obviously one reads a byte at a time from the stream to see if it matches the first character of the constant string, if that matches one moves on to the second, etc. When the whole string has been matched then it's found - so far so good. However, when a character *doesn't* match one can't go back up the input stream, *but* we know the previous characters as they're the ones in the constant string that we have matched so far. Thus we can 'wind back' by using the constant string for the number of characters that did match and then continue down the stream. If anyone can follow that rubbish explanation then could they possibly tell me what the algorithm is called and/or point me at some sample code? -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 9th August
by Viperfang 06 Aug '12

06 Aug '12

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 9th August 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 http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Forcing "Sender:" in exim4
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 05 Aug '12

05 Aug '12

Greetings All! I have just (!!! -- after about 4 years ... !!!) that in my Debian Etch setup 'sendmail' is aliased to 'exim4': ls -l `which sendmail` /usr/sbin/sendmail -> exim4 My mailer (MUA) setup presumes sendmail. I have configured the MUA so that, in the headers for outgoing mail, I have set: Sender: ted.harding@wlandres (same as my "From:" and "Reply-To:" addresses). That is how the header appears while the message is still in the "outbox" folder. However, when I send the mail out, it seems that exim4 changes the "Sender:" address to "ted@deb", "deb" being the name of my machine on my home LAN (as set in /etc/hosts), and "ted" being the user. As a result, when the mail is received outside my LAN, the receiving host sees the header: Sender: ted@deb instead of what I want it to be! This sometimes results in rejection when the receiving host does not recognise the sender domain. Now, while I know my way round sendmail itself, I find I am disorientated by trying to make out how to customise exim4 configuration. (I've tried reading the man pages). What I want to do is ensure that exim4 (aliased as 'sendmail') either does not change the "Sender:" header as it is while still in the outbox, or else sets it anyway to Sender: ted.harding(a)wlandres.net And it could also be useful, though not essential, if, should I happen to mail as a different user on the same machine, e.g. "efh", it could preserve the domain and insert the user, e.g. Sender: efh(a)wlandres.net My mind is blank about how to set about configuting exim4, so I need very basic instructions (preferably with outline explanation). Maybe a configuration file (where and how?) change, or a command line option to exim4 (the latter is probably simpler for me, since I can enter such options in my MUA setup). With thanks! Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 04-Aug-2012 Time: 17:07:50 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

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For Pi users
by nev young 03 Aug '12

03 Aug '12

Something that may be of interest to both ALUG and 2600 members is this magazine (it's free) for the Raspberry Pi. The url is http://www.themagpi.com Nev

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LAN traffic sniffing/monitoring - good tools and methods - help wanted
by Chris Green 31 Jul '12

31 Jul '12

I want somehow (if it's possible) to monitor the packets going into and out of one ethernet address/MAC address on my LAN. I think it's currently plugged into a port on my 8-port Gigabit switch but I'm not absolutely sure of that. The LAN comprises a Draytek Vigor ADSL router talking to the outside world and a Linksys 8-port Gigabit router with most of my LAN systems plugged into that. I think a couple of the four ports on the ADSL router may be in use in addition to the one that connects to the 8-Port Gigabit switch. Is there any 'easy' way to monitor all traffic to/from one specific IP address on the LAN from my desktop computer or will the switches on the LAN prevent it seeing most of the traffic? Actually even being able to see all traffic between my desktop and the device I'm interested in would probably be sufficient as 'lack of traffic' might well be enough to tell me what I want to know. So what are the best/easiest packet sniffers to run on a desktop machine that would allow me to 'see' all traffic to/from a specific IP address? -- Chris Green

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 3rd August.
by Viperfang 31 Jul '12

31 Jul '12

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Xen and OOM killer
by Richard Lewis 30 Jul '12

30 Jul '12

Hi ALUG, I've been managing a Xen hypervisor for about nine months now and occasionally I get problems with DomUs running out of memory. The clients are all students and most of them are running WordPress blogs. The instances of OOM errors I've seen seem to be related to Apache and students serving up large image files. I'm thinking that this shouldn't really be happening; serving up a few ~1MB files shouldn't really be causing Apache to make the OS exhaust *all* available memory, should it? Even if it were servicing several requests simultaneously. Some details: * The host is a Dell PowerEdge x86_64 system with 32 GB RAM * The host OS is Debian 6.0 * We're running Xen 4.0.1 from Debian * The guests all run Debian 6.0 * Each guest has 15 GB of storage, 512 MB RAM, and 1 GB of swap * We currently have ~40 guests running Below is some console output from a DomU that suffered this problem earlier today. You can see that the OOM killer killed Apache. And I'm guessing it killed sshd too as I couldn't connect to the guest. I couldn't find any errors in Xen's logs. Any thoughts on what might be going on here? And come September we'll have a short window in which we could alter out setup. Any suggestions for better ways of providing virtual machines? Perhaps alternatives hypervisors? Or some mechanism other than hypervisors? Cheers, Richard (Working from home: <http://pic.twitter.com/NetsgOS2>) -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London t: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 j: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li @: lewisrichard s: richardjlewis http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [ 1656.306197] rs:main Q:Reg invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x201da, order=0, oom_adj=0 [ 1656.306215] rs:main Q:Reg cpuset=/ mems_allowed=0 [ 1656.306222] Pid: 1135, comm: rs:main Q:Reg Not tainted 2.6.32-5-xen-amd64 #1 [ 1656.306230] Call Trace: [ 1656.306242] [<ffffffff810b7318>] ? oom_kill_process+0x7f/0x23f [ 1656.306251] [<ffffffff810b783c>] ? __out_of_memory+0x12a/0x141 [ 1656.306259] [<ffffffff810b7993>] ? out_of_memory+0x140/0x172 [ 1656.306268] [<ffffffff810bb742>] ? __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x4ec/0x5fe [ 1656.306278] [<ffffffff810bcca9>] ? __do_page_cache_readahead+0x9b/0x1b4 [ 1656.306286] [<ffffffff810bcdde>] ? ra_submit+0x1c/0x20 [ 1656.306294] [<ffffffff810b5a66>] ? filemap_fault+0x17d/0x2f6 [ 1656.306302] [<ffffffff810cba22>] ? __do_fault+0x54/0x3c3 [ 1656.306313] [<ffffffff8130c7d1>] ? __wait_on_bit_lock+0x76/0x84 [ 1656.306323] [<ffffffff8100c3a5>] ? __raw_callee_save_xen_pud_val+0x11/0x1e [ 1656.306333] [<ffffffff810cdda8>] ? handle_mm_fault+0x3b8/0x80f [ 1656.306342] [<ffffffff8100ecf2>] ? check_events+0x12/0x20 [ 1656.306351] [<ffffffff8130fb26>] ? do_page_fault+0x2e0/0x2fc [ 1656.306360] [<ffffffff8130d9c5>] ? page_fault+0x25/0x30 [ 1656.306366] Mem-Info: [ 1656.306370] Node 0 DMA per-cpu: [ 1656.306376] CPU 0: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 [ 1656.306381] Node 0 DMA32 per-cpu: [ 1656.306388] CPU 0: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 75 [ 1656.306397] active_anon:55210 inactive_anon:55287 isolated_anon:1350 [ 1656.306398] active_file:10 inactive_file:11 isolated_file:26 [ 1656.306400] unevictable:0 dirty:0 writeback:171 unstable:0 [ 1656.306401] free:1180 slab_reclaimable:922 slab_unreclaimable:2187 [ 1656.306402] mapped:16 shmem:7 pagetables:7768 bounce:0 [ 1656.306422] Node 0 DMA free:2032kB min:80kB low:100kB high:120kB active_anon:6168kB inactive_anon:6312kB active_file:0kB inactive_file:0kB unevictable:0kB isolated(anon):0kB isolated(file):0kB present:14868kB mlocked:0kB dirty:0kB writeback:8kB mapped:20kB shmem:0kB slab_reclaimable:0kB slab_unreclaimable:76kB kernel_stack:16kB pagetables:292kB unstable:0kB bounce:0kB writeback_tmp:0kB pages_scanned:3 all_unreclaimable? yes [ 1656.306456] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 489 489 489 [ 1656.306467] Node 0 DMA32 free:2688kB min:2788kB low:3484kB high:4180kB active_anon:214672kB inactive_anon:214836kB active_file:40kB inactive_file:44kB unevictable:0kB isolated(anon):5400kB isolated(file):104kB present:500960kB mlocked:0kB dirty:0kB writeback:676kB mapped:44kB shmem:28kB slab_reclaimable:3688kB slab_unreclaimable:8672kB kernel_stack:1232kB pagetables:30780kB unstable:0kB bounce:0kB writeback_tmp:0kB pages_scanned:328 all_unreclaimable? yes [ 1656.306501] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 0 0 [ 1656.306512] Node 0 DMA: 4*4kB 1*8kB 0*16kB 1*32kB 1*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 1*512kB 1*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 2040kB [ 1656.306537] Node 0 DMA32: 232*4kB 2*8kB 1*16kB 0*32kB 1*64kB 3*128kB 1*256kB 0*512kB 1*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 2688kB [ 1656.306561] 8628 total pagecache pages [ 1656.306566] 8586 pages in swap cache [ 1656.306571] Swap cache stats: add 1078026, delete 1069440, find 120149/196407 [ 1656.306579] Free swap = 4kB [ 1656.306583] Total swap = 1048568kB [ 1656.308293] 131072 pages RAM [ 1656.308302] 4044 pages reserved [ 1656.308307] 22558 pages shared [ 1656.308311] 123779 pages non-shared [ 1656.308317] Out of memory: kill process 489 (apache2) score 125474 or a child [ 1656.308324] Killed process 964 (apache2)

3 5

OT Maths Jam
by Steve Engledow 26 Jul '12

26 Jul '12

Hi folks, Would anyone be interested in a Norwich maths jam? See http://www.mathsjam.com/ for (fairly vague) details or check the twitter account (@MathsJam). tl;dr: We get together in a pub on the second-to-last tuesday of the month and be geeky. I know, it sounds like the pubmeet; but this time we be geeky about mathsy things! I reckon there ought to be enough maths geeks among the linux geeks for this to be relevant :) Steve

3 3

Pubmeet report
by Steve Engledow 25 Jul '12

25 Jul '12

Hi all, It's been a while since a pubmeet had a write-up but I thought it was worth a go :) On a suggestion from rlp10, last night ended up being somewhat of a PGP key-signing party. All of us around the table (there were 6 of us) - plus one passer-by that I happened to know - had PGP (or rather GPG) keys so, over the course of the night, we managed to each sign eachothers keys. There was even provision of ID and encrypted emails sent to verify identity and key ownership. A fairly textbook key-signing I'd say. Additionally, we collectively managed to get a sensible mutt config together for getting GPG integrated and working. For reference, the magical invocation to make mutt understand encrypted/signed mail from Macs and Thunderbird is: message-hook '!(~g|~G)~b"^-----BEGIN\ PGP\ (SIGNED\ )?MESSAGE"' "exec check-traditional-pgp" Stick that in your .muttrc and it all works nicely. (You need a `source /path/to/muttrc.gpg`) line in there somewhere too. The path varies by distro.) Aside from the PGP-related fun, katsmeat had brought an interesting old PC that had a built-in LCD display and ran Microsoft BASIC (I don't remember what the machine actually was) and I offloaded a load of old hardware onto rlp10 \o/ The food didn't seem as good as usual. The beer did. Until next month! Steve (Stilvoid)

6 18

SyncNorwich
by Paul Grenyer 25 Jul '12

25 Jul '12

Hi All I just wanted to make sure you guys were all aware of www.syncnorwich.com, a new group for people in Norwich interested in Technology, Startups and Agile. Out next event is some lightning talks on the 16th August and there's a Norwich lunch on the 23rd August. -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer SyncNorwich: http://www.syncnorwich.com ACCU Member: License to code: http://www.accu.org

1 0

kernel:journal commit I/O error
by Mark Rogers 19 Jul '12

19 Jul '12

I have an ARM box which was working fine until it went to site. It's running Debian and I only have access to it via SSH (although at the moment I have someone on site who can force it to reboot). Twice today I've received the error "kernel:journal commit I/O error" to my SSH terminal, after which point the root filesystem gets unmounted and I can't do anything even though the unit is still "up". Eg: $ ls -bash: /bin/ls: No such file or directory Any ideas what would be causing this? It's an expensive SD card in these units (not a cheap no-brand) This is the unit in case anyone is interested, it's running Debian 6: http://www.newit.co.uk/shop/proddetail.php?prod=DreamPlug_N I'd also be interested to know if there's anything I can do down an SSH connection to force it to reboot, given the lack of access to the filesystem to even run "sudo" never mind "reboot". I'm guessing that sending Alt-Ctrl-Del or Alt-SysRq-B via SSH are out... -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

4 15

linux apparel
by Peter Alcibiades 18 Jul '12

18 Jul '12

Hi everyone, I have three huge, I mean xxxl, linux apparel t-shirts looking for a good home. One looks like its been worn a couple of times since the brilliance of the yellow has faded slightly, the other two I don't think have been. Does anyone want them? They are fairly brilliant yellow, with a large black and white plastic penguin on the front, and on the back there is a black and white legend to the effect that this garment requires appreciation of open source freedom. Several years old. Maybe 10? Should have brought them to last Thusday, but I have not come to those for some time now. I can mail them if you let me have an address. Otherwise, its going to be the charity shop. Peter

1 0

torcl
by richard.lee.parsons＠gmail.com 14 Jul '12

14 Jul '12

Hi all After some conversations with some Aluggers, I've thrown together a bash script for downloading torrents from the commandline. It searches isohunt, downloads your selected torrent file and kicks off the torrent client all from the warmth and safety of your favourite terminal. Perhaps it may be useful to some others on the list. https://github.com/rlp10/torcl It's pretty ugly scripting, so please forgive that. :) Richard

1 0

Calendar GUI that has hooks for entering code when you click on a date
by Chris Green 14 Jul '12

14 Jul '12

I'm looking for a basic calendar display program that has a hook to allow me to execute a script (or other code) when I click on a date. Can anyone suggest anything like this? It can be desktop or Web. -- Chris Green

1 0

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 13 Jul '12

13 Jul '12

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 this week - Monday, 16th July, at 20:00: The Mulberry Tree 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 225776 Email: mulberrytree.ips(a)btinternet.com 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. After a stupidly quiet meet last time, let's see if we can drag a few more people down this month. I'll be there, and we may also have a couple of guests including, possibly, a friendly chap a few of us ALUGers met recently in the pub, who has a fair share of career stories involving the likes of Chris Curry, Clive Sinclair etc. and is currently involved in a project building unmanned aerial drones. Plus someone else may arrive armed with a MacBook who is looking to be persuaded why he should try out Linux ... Hope to see some of you there! Peter. ----- 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

1 0

Strange code in DNS packet unravelling - any ideas why anyone?
by Chris Green 12 Jul '12

12 Jul '12

This is again related to my Nanode (Arduino lookalike) programming, it's more of a "why on earth is it like this" sort of question than needing to know how it works. The Nanode/Arduino sits waiting for things to do which are sent as requests to its ethernet interface. It also handles DHCP, DNS, ARP and other requests in the same loop. When it gets a DNS request it checks a few things and then does the following:- // // // Check if we have a valid query for us, compare name in DNS request with our name // p=(uint8_t *)settings.Name; // set pointer to our name stored at startup if (valid) // valid set by earlier checks { for (i = NBNS_NAME+1; i < NBNS_NAME+1+32; i += 2) { c = ((buf[i] - 0x41) << 4) + (buf[i+1] - 0x41); if (*p) { if (*p!=c) { valid=0; } p++; } else { if ((c != 0) && (c != 0x20)) { valid=0; } } } } The comment at the top is mine, I *think* that's what it's doing! However I really don't understand why it's doing that strange shifting and subtracting 0x41 (yes, I know it's 'A'). It's as if the name coming in with the DNS query is two bytes per character with a strange encoding as well. I can't see anywhere else in the code where characters are spread over two bytes, and the SPI interface seems to transfer 8 bit bytes all the time to/from the ethernet hardware. I also don't understand why it's comparing only 16 characters (is it just an arbitrary local limit) and/or why the name it's receiving in the DNS request is just the hostname, not a fully qualified name. It doesn't work for lower-case characters either, the name defined for the Nanode/Arduino has to be upper case for it to respond to DNS requests. If valid is still non-zero after this it sends its IP address back to the DNS requester. Have I missed something obvious or is this really wierd? Any/all ideas very welcome. -- Chris Green

1 2

deb/alien dependencies
by Mark Rogers 11 Jul '12

11 Jul '12

I'm trying to install hamachi [1] on Debian (arm). I want the smallest install I can get away with, but at the moment I'm getting the following dependencies: alien at autopoint bc binutils build-essential bzip2 cpp cpp-4.4 cups-bsd cups-client cups-common debhelper dpkg-dev fakeroot g++ g++-4.4 gcc gcc-4.4 gettext gettext-base git html2text intltool-debian libalgorithm-diff-perl libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl libalgorithm-merge-perl libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libcurl3-gnutls libdpkg-perl libelf1 liberror-perl libgmp3c2 liblua5.1-0 libmail-sendmail-perl libmpfr4 libnspr4-0d libnss3-1d librpm1 librpmbuild1 librpmio1 libstdc++6-4.4-dev libsys-hostname-long-perl libtimedate-perl libunistring0 linux-libc-dev lsb-core lsb-release m4 make manpages-dev ncurses-term patch pax po-debconf rpm rpm-common rpm2cpio time It installs and runs OK but I don't want all that stuff on my box afterwards! Seeing alien in the list makes me conclude that this is a repackaged rpm and maybe that's what's causing the problem. However if I try to "apt-get remove alien" afterwards, hamachi gets removed. What are my options to work around this? Unfortunately Hamachi is not free and therefore I don't have access to the source. [1] https://secure.logmein.com/labs/ -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

4 8

Capturing Olympic torch relay footage from BBC website
by Mark Rogers 09 Jul '12

09 Jul '12

Does anyone have any idea how to capture the torch relay footage from the BBC website? I expected get-iplayer to do the job but it can't find the stream if I just paste the URL in. Specific example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/torchrelay/day46 (Afternoon section) Mark Rogers

3 5

FTP server mirroring (push not pull)
by Mark Rogers 06 Jul '12

06 Jul '12

I have a system which uploads data to my FTP server periodically. I need to upload any files that arrive to a second (and possibly third) FTP server. The points that make it not fit a traditional mirroring is that (a) my FTP server needs to push the files out to the other server(s) rather than have them pull the files in, and (b) the data needs to be synchronised as fast as possible after it arrives (the files are alarm logs amongst other things). So an hourly or daily cronjob won't suffice. Although I have control over my own FTP server, I can't make any assumptions about the third party servers in terms of their O/S, functionality, FTP server software, etc. Any suggestions for the best place to start with this? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

Barclays Online Banking
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 05 Jul '12

05 Jul '12

Greetings all! Anyone out there who banks with Barclays and is having problems accessing Online Banking with Linux? I last logged in 6 days ago with no problems. Today, when I try to access it, no login page comes up -- it just hangs forever. So I can't even try to get started! I'm using (an admittedly slightly elderly) Iceweasel 2.0.0.19 of 2006 on a Debian Etch 2.6.18 last updated Feb 2010. Any suggestions most welcome! Best wishes to all, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 12-Jun-2012 Time: 19:00:45 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

4 6

Storing data samples with low overheads
by Mark Rogers 04 Jul '12

04 Jul '12

I'm writing an application to run on small ARM units. It collects data from various sources at varying frequencies (up to once per second) and needs to store them. The number of discrete values will vary but we're running tests on around 200 data points dropping the data into MySQL. By "varying frequencies" what I mean is that some items will be read every second, others less frequently (say once every 30mins), so I need a data structure that will cope with that but my tests are currently on the worst-case of storing everything every second (or trying to!) One option is to have a table per item, comprising little more than timestamp and value. Our tests so far have taken 2-5s to store 200 samples this way. We're looking at other ways (eg one table for all samples, storing an item id, timestamp and value). However I can't help think that MySQL is overkill and an overhead we could do without. So, does anyone have any suggestions? We could build our own data storage system - the applications I've seen before that do this would probably have a single binary file per day/week/month of data for any single item, storing a single timestamp (marking the start of the file) and sample period, followed by 4 bytes per sample at the appropriate offset into the file from there; reading or writing just becomes a case of working out which file to look at and the offset into that file. But I'd rather not go quite so low-level if I can avoid it. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 12th July
by Viperfang 04 Jul '12

04 Jul '12

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 12th July 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 http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 6th July.
by Viperfang 03 Jul '12

03 Jul '12

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Lenovo T520
by Paul Grenyer 02 Jul '12

02 Jul '12

Hi All I'm still having lots of wifi and 3G card related problems with my Lenovo T520 and Linux Mint 13 (I though it was 12, it was 13). Does anyone have a similar machine (or even the same machine) that they're successfully working with? Maybe I could pick your brains at one of the pub meets? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer ACCU Member: License to code. (http://www.accu.org)

5 20

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 1st June.
by Viperfang 29 Jun '12

29 Jun '12

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Open source alternative to full fat Adobe?
by Bev Nicolson 26 Jun '12

26 Jun '12

Evince is great for what it does, imo, but you can't extract pages with it. Does anyone round here know of a good alternative to the full-fat, all singing all dancing but not very cheap Adobe? Does such a thing exist? Bev.

7 9

SOund unavailable on Flash Player
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 24 Jun '12

24 Jun '12

Greetings All! Just now, wanting to play a YouTube video, I found that the sound on Flash Player is turned off, and I can find no way to turn it on again. The "speaker" icon in the bottom bar as an "X" beside it, indicating that it is turned off, and I can find no way to turn it back on again (e.g. clicking on the icon, or on the "X", produces not response; and looking into Settings after right-clicking on the Flash Player screen offers no help). However, everything was fine a few days ago, and I'm not aware of having done anything which might cause this problem. Also, the YouTube video is indeed the same one which I had watched a fews days ago with no problem. Can anyone offer any help with this problem? Adobe Flash Player 10 Iceweasel 3.0.6 (2009) Debian Lenny 2.6.26 ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 24-Jun-2012 Time: 12:23:35 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

1 1

Wierd hang(s) when using grep
by Chris Green 20 Jun '12

20 Jun '12

Over the past few months I've noticed that when I run grep it sometimes appears to hang, I had put it down to doing "grep -r" down a rather large file hierarchy but now it's happening with a perfectly simple grep:- www-data$ ls *.txt sidebar.txt start.txt www-data$ grep xxx *.txt www-data$ grep fred *.txt www-data$ grep 'CLEARFLOAT' *.txt ... and there it sits, still (like 5 minutes later). The two .txt files are only a few tens of bytes long. It's not using any processor time, it's just stuck. I have just done it again in another terminal window, quotes removed but otherwise the same:- www-data$ grep fred *.txt www-data$ grep CLEARFLOAT *.txt ^C www-data$ ... and with a different user (in the same directory):- chris$ cd /home/www-data/www/wiki/data/pages chris$ grep fred *.txt chris$ grep CLEARFLOAT *.txt ^C chris$ So, what am I missing? -- Chris Green

5 11

Getting MAC address in a shell script
by Mark Rogers 20 Jun '12

20 Jun '12

This works: mac=$(ifconfig eth0 | grep -Eo '..:..:..:..:..:..' | sed -e 's/://g') .. but I'm sure there's a better way. Suggestions? Also, if I have something like: echotemplate="This is my MAC: (MAC)" mac=$(ifconfig eth0 | grep -Eo '..:..:..:..:..:..' | sed -e 's/://g') echo $(echo $echotemplate | sed -e "s/(MAC)/$mac/") .. is there a better way to do the substitution in the last line? I can't swap the top two lines around (one is a user-defined setting at the top of the script, the value of $mac is calculated in the body of the script), otherwise I would just use echo "This is my MAC: $mac" .. which would be nice and easy! But I'm using this as a learning exercise. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

5 9

Getting round lack of suid on scripts (not to become root!)
by Chris Green 20 Jun '12

20 Jun '12

Is there any way to run a script such that it executes as another user than the person running it? Normally (well, old-fashionedly) one would have set the SUID bit in the permissions, made the script owned by the desired user and that would be it but nowadays it no longer works because SUID on scripts is disabled. Is there any reasonably simple way to work round this? All I have found searching so far is to write a short C program to do the SUID change and use that to execute the script. I could do this I suppose but I'd really prefer an easier way to do it as the C program method needs to know both the desired UID and the name of the program to run so, while hardly complex, it will need command line parameters etc. -- Chris Green

2 3

Does anyone here know how gmail works?
by Chris Green 19 Jun '12

19 Jun '12

I am trying to sort out moving someone else's hosting. The web hosting has transferred fine along with the domain hosting but I'm a bit stuck with their E-Mail. I have their name/password for logging on to gmail but when I try and change things it just says:- Manage account information Google can't change personal information for jane(a)reshapers.org. To change the information, contact your reshapers.org administrator. Learn more ... er, but the reshapers.org administrator is now me and I haven't any idea how the E-Mail *was* getting to gmail from the old hosting account. Presumably there was some cleverness with MX settings or something but it seems a wierd way of doing things. Is there some sort of 'hidden' gmail address that a user has on gmail that I can forward mail to from the new hosting site? -- Chris Green

3 4

svn file "sets"
by Mark Rogers 18 Jun '12

18 Jun '12

I have a library of code already in svn. I want to create subsets of it that I can either export or checkout, so that I only download the files needed for a specific job. I know about (by reading[1], not doing) sparse checkouts, eg: cd C:\path\dir svn checkout https://server/path/to/trunk/dir/dir/parent_dir--depth empty cd C:\path\dir\parent_dir svn update filename.log (Edit filename.log) svn commit -m "this is a comment." (Copy and paste from an example, hence the Windows-esque paths, although I'm only working on Linux myself.) This will do what I need, except that I'm looking for a simple way to replace "filename.log" in the example above with a name for a set of files. Depending on what I'm trying to do, I might want to export that set of files rather than do a checkout. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/122107/checkout-one-file-from-subversion -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 17 Jun '12

17 Jun '12

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 this week - Monday, 18th June, 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. Hopefully, those there last month will remember that we've reverted our regular venue to be The Mulberry Tree, which was our home a few years back, after a successful trial at May's meet. Unfortunately, I may not be able to make it this month as I have a work evening do that I'll struggle to get out of. If I can make it, I'll arrive later on in the evening. A shame as I finally have a new gadget to show off! :) Peter. ----- 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

1 0

Sort of philosophical question about Web/Client/Server workings
by Chris Green 17 Jun '12

17 Jun '12

Every time I try and do some web application programming that involves forms (i.e. getting data from a user) it ends up being far more complicated than I expect (and more complicated than it should be I feel). Anywhere else that one programs something to get some data from a user it's fairly direct and simple:- Output something to ask a question Wait for user to enter response Get return with the response OK, it's a bit more complex/messier when using a GUI because there isn't necessarily a simple single thread but it still comes down to the program waiting for an event and, when the event happens, it gets handed some data. However when web programming it's nothing like this, one can't simply ask a question and get the answer. Say one has a PHP script running server side, it creates a form which is then displayed when the client requests it and the client fills in the form. The trouble is that there's no direct way for the PHP script that created the form to get the result - at least there isn't in any of the environment/frameworks that I've used. What happens is that there is *another* script which gets run (server side) when the client submits the form duly filled in. This other script has no direct connection with the script that created the form, no common environment, nothing. It's thus very difficult to write simple form driven applications as one can't simply display a form and get the data from the form in 'one place' as it were. Am I missing something obvious here? -- Chris Green

10 17

xterm input delay and alsamixer display screwed up
by Srdjan Todorovic 16 Jun '12

16 Jun '12

Hi all, If I run KDE on the laptop and run Konsole or xterm, I can type commands immediately. Running alsamixer is also fine. Running fluxbox with xterms, input into xterm is delayed on startup by at least 10 to 30 seconds. Nothing echoed to the terminal while I type. Eventually it will show up. Running alsamixer in it caused bits of the ncurses display to screw up, last time I ran it. The volume control levels would be half-drawn etc. Any suggestions what might be the cause and how to fix? I'll try disabling xorg compositing as suggested here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/xterm-delayed-input-fr… but I'd rather like to keep compositing alive any time I run KDE... Thanks, Srdjan

1 0

How to get rid of "Notice: trying to get property of a non-object" errors in PHP
by Chris Green 15 Jun '12

15 Jun '12

I'm trying out a chunk of downloaded software and it's actually quite close to what I want. However it's outputting *hundreds* of "Trying to get property of non-object" errors which are somewhat distracting as there are more of them than actual data. I'm pretty sure the reason they're appearing is because the code is accessing lots of values before they're created (and presumably doing the right thing when they're null). It's not just in one place in the code so I can't very easily go and change the code at every place this is happening. Is there a way to turn of this particular warning? I'd rather not turn of all warnings and I'd rather do it just for this application rather than everywhere (I want to see warnings on code I've written!). -- Chris Green

1 1

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 14th June
by Viperfang 14 Jun '12

14 Jun '12

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 14th June 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 http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

3 2

Linux Mint 12 Wireless Issues
by Paul Grenyer 13 Jun '12

13 Jun '12

Hi All I've a new Lenovo T520 and I've installed the latest Linux Mint on it, but the wireless is painfully slow. I can't even log into my router's admin page. If I reboot into Windows 7 the speed is fine. I haven't tried a wired connection yet. I'm hoping that the wired connection is fast and might update some drivers as part of the general update process. However, if that doesn't work, I really don't have a clue where to start. The wireless adapter in the T520 is an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000. Can you guys give me any pointers, please? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer ACCU Member: License to code. (http://www.accu.org)

1 1

Scientific Linux
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 13 Jun '12

13 Jun '12

Hi All Anyone using Scientific Linux? Not that there's anything specially scientific about it in its generic form. It's basically a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and it's called "Scientific" because it was put together by FermiLabs and CERN. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Linux and https://www.scientificlinux.org/ I'd be interested to hear of experiences with it (especially from anyone who has installed scientific extras). Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 12-Jun-2012 Time: 23:04:55 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

2 1

How would the team produce a simple web page with a running balance/total on it?
by Chris Green 12 Jun '12

12 Jun '12

I've wanted to do this at several different times and places, some of my solutions are OK'ish but I've not really come up with something neat and tidy for doing it. I want a simple (for the user, and preferably for me too in creating it) web page where a user can enter an amount, probably with a date and a description, that gets added to (or subtracted from) a running total. The user can also see the list of transactions that contributes to the current total. I.e. I want something that looks like a bank statement but can be changed easily on the web page itself. So we'd have something like:- Date Descritption Credit Debit Balance 2012-01-01 Start of year 1234.00 1234.00 2012-02-14 Valentine Pres 12.34 1221.66 2012-03-01 Paid for joke 99.00 1320.66 etc. Plus either a blank line at the bottom of the table to enter new values, or some edit boxes to add new values. There's lots of online spreadsheets out there but since they all tend to be Excel lookalikes they don't do running balances very easily, you have to keep re-entering the balance calculation in the balance column, there doesn't seem to be any easy way to say a column is a calculated value that is always the same calculated value (or at least I've not found it). My implementations so far have either used a database with a very nasty complicated calculated value in the Balance column (that depends on the ordering of the date column which isn't always a good idea if there's more than one entry on the same date) or uses a plugin I have developed for my Wiki which requires the user to edit the wiki page - OK for me usually but not very good for other users. Any bright ideas anyone? Doesn't actually have to be web accessible as it will only have one or two users for each instance so could be done with a dedicated application and a shared file for example. -- Chris Green

1 0

Email clients! - Alpine... anyone use it?
by James Freer 04 Jun '12

04 Jun '12

For a while i've just used the browser for email having found Thunderbird, Evolution and similar so slow on imap. Mutt i managed to set up but being so configurable wasn't to my liking. Alpine seems the fastest of any i've tried... easy to setup - just wondering if anyone else on here uses it. If they do any problems? jmaes

3 5

Multi-VPN configuration
by Mark Rogers 04 Jun '12

04 Jun '12

I always get into a muddle when I try to set up VPN connections but I'm going to have another go.. What I have is lots of Linux "devices" (typically ARM boxes running Debian) which will be plugged into networks giving them Internet access. What I want to achieve is to have them auto-connect to a VPN, such that I am able to access all of them, but also that the end user can connect to their own devices but nobody elses. Ideally I'd also like other VPN capable devices, such as Draytek routers, to be able to join in the party. My starting point - which may well be wrong, is to assume that I want a server running OpenVPN somewhere on t' Internet. (Is that the right place to start?) I find the OpenVPN documentation to be very detailed but hard to narrow it down to any particular usage case unless it's a standard config (eg "road warrier"). What I don't want at my end is to *have* to connect separately to each VPN. Doing so optionally would be good (but would be possible in the same way an extra device could), but it could be I end up with dozens or hundreds of separate segregated VPNs. Furthermore, it's likely that I will want all of the VPNs to have access to certain facilities (eg databases, FTP) on other servers without having to make the other servers join multiple VPNs. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

3 5

How to print stupid Royal Mail price list?
by Chris Green 01 Jun '12

01 Jun '12

The Royal Mail used to provide a neat PDF file which fitted A4 to show their postage prices. The latest version though is a 'booklet' so I can't see any way to actually print it on an A4 printer. This is the link to the PDF:- http://c435158.r58.cf3.rackcdn.com/Royal_Mail_Our_Prices.pdf Can anyone tell me how to split it up into printable pages? I've tried ImageMagick's convert but that didn't default to what I wanted, maybe I need some more options to tell it what to do. -- Chris Green

4 5

Programming question - different approaches to classic command parsing
by Chris Green 29 May '12

29 May '12

Well my Nanode project is progressing (it's the one that has the rather idiosyncratic ethernet handling). The next question is whether to rejig the basic command handling. The Nanode software I'm maintaining/improving is basically very simple, after initialisation it waits for an ethernet UDP packet with a command code and data in it, then it acts on the command and returns (via UDP again) some sort of response. There are currently 34 commands, this will expand somewhat but is unlikely to ever be more than 100 or so. The existing code simply has a switch/case block switching on the command code with the cases handling each command. It's a bit long but is manageable. I'm wondering whether to stay with the existing structure or to go to some sort of table driven approach with an array of something like:- // // // Command table entry structure // struct command { uint32_t cmd; // the command code int (* fnc) (int addr); // the address of the function to call char * str; // the associated LCD string }; (obviously the function parameters may extend/change) A linear search of an array of these won't waste much time, speed isn't of great consequence anyway. Then each command will be a function, tidier and more modular, but will it actually win me anything (or lose anything)? In particular will it use more space, in code or RAM? In code there will be, say, 50 function calls plus a table instead of a switch statement with 50 case: blocks. In RAM there will be lots of smaller functions using a small amount of stack space instead of one big one with lots of local variables. This is using the gcc-avr compiler by the way. My gut feeling is that it probably won't make a big difference either in code space use or in RAM use but it will probably use a little bit more of both. The question then is whether the significant amount of rewriting is worth it for the more elegant (and hence easy to maintain) code. If there's another approach to managing this sort of command driven interface then I'd be interested in hearing about it. -- Chris Green

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Ethernet programming question
by Phil Ashby 28 May '12

28 May '12

Chris Green <cl(a)isbd.net> wrote: > I'm doing some programming of a Nanode board (not far removed from > Arduino) which has an ethernet interface based on the ENC28J60. > ... > However the loop that waits for ethernet packets and deals with them > seems a bit odd to me, in psuedo-code it's something like:- > > while (not reset) > { > get a packet from ethernet > > handle DHCP message > > handle message requesting local display on LCD > > handle ARP request > > handle DNS request > > handle NTP request > > if (still something left) > { > if (ping) > { > respond to ping > } > if (UDP message for us) > { > handle our message > } > } > } > > > What I'm not clear about is whether one packet can only be one of the > above things. Hence, if a DHCP request of some sort has been received > and handled can the *same* packet contain other requests? If not then > why is the code going through all the other calls? Hi Chris - you are correct in assuming that one packet can only be one thing, since a combination of packet type fields (Ethernet frame type, IP frame type, TCP/UDP port number) determine this. > OK, it makes for simpler looking code, no conditionals and/or > switch/case but it somehow seems wrong (and a bit inefficient as each > handle function gets called even if the packet has already been > handled). Just been and looked at the code in github for the Nanode Ethershield and all I can say is yuk! https://github.com/Nanode/EtherShield/blob/master/ip_arp_udp_tcp.c I quote: "The TCP implementation uses some size optimisations which are valid only if all data can be sent in one single packet. This is however not a big limitation for a microcontroller as you will anyhow use small web-pages." Hmmn. I found the code confusing, badly structured and incomplete (eg: it doesn't work if IP options are sent and there is nothing like the full TCP state machine with various timers, backoff controls and such, only a happy path). Of course I may have been looking at different code - got a URL? Phil. PS: http://code.google.com/p/avr-uip/ looks rather better!

3 3

Ethernet programming question
by Chris Green 28 May '12

28 May '12

I'm doing some programming of a Nanode board (not far removed from Arduino) which has an ethernet interface based on the ENC28J60. I'm only modifying the existing software rather than building from scratch but would like to tidy things as much as possible. The ethernet initialisation etc. is standard library code so is cast in stone as it were but I'm puzzling over the higher level ethernet message handling stuff a bit. The system basically handles incoming requests sent over the ethernet interface and replies with instrument data, this part of the code is pretty straightforward. However the loop that waits for ethernet packets and deals with them seems a bit odd to me, in psuedo-code it's something like:- while (not reset) { get a packet from ethernet handle DHCP message handle message requesting local display on LCD handle ARP request handle DNS request handle NTP request if (still something left) { if (ping) { respond to ping } if (UDP message for us) { handle our message } } } What I'm not clear about is whether one packet can only be one of the above things. Hence, if a DHCP request of some sort has been received and handled can the *same* packet contain other requests? If not then why is the code going through all the other calls? OK, it makes for simpler looking code, no conditionals and/or switch/case but it somehow seems wrong (and a bit inefficient as each handle function gets called even if the packet has already been handled). -- Chris Green

2 1

Ripping MP3s
by Chris Walker 23 May '12

23 May '12

I have a Creative Zen MP3 player which I use in my car. I want to tidy up a load of CDs which have accumulated over the years before they go to the bin. They're freebies from newspapers and so aren't worth anything and have the usual half dozen decent tracks followed a dozen rubbish tracks. But I'm stuck trying to rip them to MP3. I've tried k3b but that doesn't offer MP3 as an output option. I've also installed soundkonverter (rather than soundconverter as I'm using kde for a desktop) but despite saying that it can use FFmpeg as a plugin, there is still no MP3 option. Am I doing something wrong? The system is Mandriva 2011 64 bit.

9 14

[very off topic] drill press
by David Reynolds 22 May '12

22 May '12

Hi guys, Does anyone in the Norwich-ish area happen to have (or have access to) a drill press I could use? I am building a guitar from a kit and I need to drill 4 holes with said drill press. Can anyone help? -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

4 5

Tonight's Ipswich ALUG meet
by samwise 22 May '12

22 May '12

Well, looks like there's at least three of us out tonight. I thought I'd suggest that after giving it half an hour or so for stragglers, that we might want to try moving back to our old venue The Milestone (now The Mulberry Bush) tonight. It's been reinvented and is a proper real ale pub now, and may well be an improvement on McGinty's ... plus the poker night that turfed us out has long since gone. :) Not sure of the wi-fi situation but it can't be worse than McGinty's! So anyone who wants to come out to play tonight who might be late, come find us at The Mulberry Bush! Peter.

2 2

Can't get 1000Mb/s on ethernet port which should be capable
by Chris Green 19 May '12

19 May '12

I am backing up some data from a Dell Vostro V13 laptop which is currently running xubuntu 10.04 (the reason for the backup is that I'm aiming to install 12.04). The ethernet port is running at only 100Mb/s whereas it's supposed to be a gigabit capable port. Running ethtool shows:- Settings for eth0: Supported ports: [ TP MII ] Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full Supports auto-negotiation: Yes Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full Advertised pause frame use: No Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Link partner advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full Link partner advertised pause frame use: No Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Speed: 100Mb/s Duplex: Full Port: MII PHYAD: 0 Transceiver: internal Auto-negotiation: on Supports Wake-on: pumbg Wake-on: g Current message level: 0x00000033 (51) Link detected: yes Running ethtool on my desktop machine connected to the *same* switch shows:- Settings for eth0: Supported ports: [ TP MII ] Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full Supports auto-negotiation: Yes Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Link partner advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full Link partner advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Speed: 1000Mb/s Duplex: Full Port: MII PHYAD: 0 Transceiver: internal Auto-negotiation: on Supports Wake-on: pumbg Wake-on: g Current message level: 0x00000033 (51) drv probe ifdown ifup Link detected: yes So why are the two machines seeing different "Link partner" settings? I tried Googling for "Link partner" but couldn't find anywhere that actually tells me what they mean, it *sounds* like it's what the 'other end' is advertising but from what I see above maybe it isn't. By the way I have tried changing the ethernet cable, no change at all. Can anyone elucidate things? -- Chris Green

5 5

Back issues of Linux Format (97 Oct 07 - 127 Jan 10)
by Andrew Williams 19 May '12

19 May '12

Hello all. I'm having a clear out of some of my older Linux Format issues. Would anyone like them before I consign them to the recyling bin? Most DVDs also included. Cheers, Andrew.

1 0

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street ALUG ALUG
by samwise 18 May '12

18 May '12

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 next week - Monday, 21st May, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://www.pjmcgintys.co.uk/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. We're usually to be found in the lowest section of the bar, near the library entrance to the pub. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Peter. ----- 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

1 0

Anyone managed to acquire a Raspberry Pi?
by Anthony Anson 15 May '12

15 May '12

-- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

6 10

Some help with regex would be appreciated.
by Barry Samuels 14 May '12

14 May '12

I have to admit that apart from the simplest expressions I don't understand regex. I want to set up a logcheck ignore expression to ignore the following: kernel: [220359.596744] [drm] nouveau 0000:06:00.0: Setting dpms mode 0 on tmds encoder (output 2) The 220359.596744 number varies and so does the single mode digit, 0 in this instance, but the rest doesn't change. I have tried by copying some expressions parrot fashion but can't get it to work. Any help would be appreciated. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

4 8

CD based Linux which works with FaceBook
by Ian Douglas 11 May '12

11 May '12

Hi playmates, My wife's laptop (Samsung R20) currently runs MS Windblows Vista and now takes so long to boot she can make a cup of tea while waiting (literally). I have found an old 2005 version of Knoppix laying around and she is amazed at how quick it is (running off the CD) but I was wondering if there is an even faster/leaner distro she could use. The distro must run off the CD and the browser must be capable of accessing Facebook (about all she uses the computer for!). Any suggestions welcome. Ian.

5 8

Re: [ALUG] Cron oddity
by Mark Rogers 11 May '12

11 May '12

On 11/05/12 17:10, steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk wrote: > Cool. Hope it works for you. > Note this tho: > http://chrony.tuxfamily.org/FAQ.html#question_9.2 Noted, thanks. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

Cron oddity
by Mark Rogers 11 May '12

11 May '12

I have a script which runs from cron every minute. I've added some logging to the script and I can see it starting reliably every minute, usually around 1s past the minute. So far so good. Occasionally (about 30 times yesterday) the script will also start within the minute, and looking at the logs there's some consistency to it - most (but not all) started at 47s past the minute. So I end up with: 21:31:01 Start 21:32:01 Start 21:32:47 Start 21:33:01 Start What could cause this? The only thing kicking the script off is cron. (It's running Debian Wheezy on ARM.) Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 9

Re: [ALUG] Inserting env vars or other data into config files
by Mark Rogers 11 May '12

11 May '12

On 09/05/12 17:59, Martijn Koster wrote: > I'd use a little script that greps for some markers to see if the file needs > changing (or already has been), and then apply the required changes with > diff/patch. How would I make a change like this using diff/patch? Eg: If I have a config file that says (real example from ssmtp): .... AuthUser=someuser AuthPass=somepass mailhub=somehost:587 ... .. and I want to set the values of someuser/somepass/somehost, what would the input to patch look like? (A pointer to relevant resources would be fine!) Is there a reason why patch would be preferable to sed for something like this? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

Small distro or compute cluster?
by Clark, Adrian F 11 May '12

11 May '12

Hello everyone, I'm in the process of building a couple of dozen oldish machines into a compute cluster. I'd like to install a fairly lightweight distro onto them, both to save on the install time and because the machines have fairly small disks. I'm keen to avoid installing unnecessary things such as documentation, X11 etc. I'm generally happier in the debian-flavoured world, and the distro will have to be loaded from a USB memory stick. Do people have recommendations as to a good distro to use? netinstall distros are fine. You can see I've spent too much time recently just installing and using Ubuntu! ..Adrian -- Dr Adrian F Clark M0PDF WEB: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~alien/ EMAIL: alien/at/essex.ac.uk TEL: +44 1206 872432 FAX: +44 1206 872900 PAPER: Comp Sci & Elec Eng, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK "The great tragedy of science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact" -- Huxley

2 1

Internet dongles
by Anthony Anson 10 May '12

10 May '12

I have a Vodafone dongle - an early-is one which gives me 1 GB of data-transfer for £15. While this may seem expensive, it has its advantages... Firstly, the early models had rollover, and my first fifteen quid kept me in touch for six months - very little web browsing, true, so mostly e-mail and Usenet. Even now, I'd seldom use one GB in a month, so I was relatively happy. I say 'relatively' because I only have a GPRS signal where I live, so I'm not tempted to wade amongst the websites. Then... It stopped working on the Eee, though it was fine on the Acer when it was in XP mode. I don't like using it under XP because it means I must keep AVG up to date, and that download alone takes a vast bite out of available credit, not to mention the clockface. Earlier, I'd become used to doing some shopping, finding wi-fi in The Fat Cat and elsewhere, or connecting over 3G with the dongle. When the dongle stopped talking to the Eee, and I couldn't get it to work with Squeeze (on the Acer), I just spent ages drinking tea and noshing cakes, sausage and/or bacon sandwiches etc in the Tea Room (*Highly recommended*). Recently, I stuck the dongle in the Eee's USB port, and lo! It worked. And its still working (touch wood). Anyone got any idea why/how the Eee refused to play nicely for - oh - nine months or more? -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

3 4

Wrong Desktop
by Chris Walker 09 May '12

09 May '12

Can somebody help me diagnose why my machine always starts up with desktop 4 instead of desktop 1 please? Or would it be simpler just to rename them 4-3-2-1 instead of 1-2-3-4? The machine runs Mandriva 2011 64bit.

1 0

Inserting env vars or other data into config files
by Mark Rogers 09 May '12

09 May '12

I'm using ssmtp to provide simple mail services on a Linux box. I want the configuration to be as simple as possible to migrate between different boxes, but using different users and passwords for different boxes. So for example I might decide to use the device's MAC address as the username, and derive a password from that somehow. That way, I can install a filesystem image onto a device and it will self-configure. (It may be that the device will call a web service with it's MAC address and retreive settings that way, but once the script knows what the user and password details are I still need a method to "insert" them into the configuration files.) So, my question is how best to "insert" these details into a config file (in this case /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf but I'm looking for a general solution). One option would be to simply recreate these files on startup inserting relevant details - or, better, to use sed (or maybe awk) to replace the relevant parts of the config. Is that the "right" way to do it? Obviously I'd need to restart any relevant services after this is done (or better, make sure it happens before they start). Is there a general way to insert an environment variable or other value into a configuration file? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 10th May
by Viperfang 07 May '12

07 May '12

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 10th May 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 http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Browser trouble
by Bev Nicolson 06 May '12

06 May '12

My connection is fine (I've rung my ISP) but I'm having trouble loading pages. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes, like now for example, it'll be slow, then when I go back to it, it springs into life. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox (not gone away) and Chrome's at it now too. Anyone got any ideas? Bev. (Ubuntu 11.04)

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ATD Hogging the processor
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 04 May '12

04 May '12

Hi folks, I've got a problem with my laptop that's recently occurred. The processor usage gets stuck at 100%, and I can't work out why. If I look at processes with top or htop, atd is the biggest user of the processor, with about 20%. Adding up all the processes gives a rough total of 30%. No idea of where the other 70% is going, yet the total at the top is 100%. Issuing the command sudo service stop atd almost immediately brings the total processor usage down to 2-18%. Then issuing sudo service start atd takes it right back up to 100% Any idea what atd is up to? How can I find out? I did get a disk space warning the other day, but have freed up a load of space since. Ubuntu 11.04, fully patched. No recent changes AFAIK apart from installing patches regularly. Any ideas? Steve

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Are there any DLNA/UPnP streaming *clients* for Linux?
by Chris Green 03 May '12

03 May '12

Maybe my multimedia naivete is showing through but I can't find any *clients* for DLNA/UPnP media streaming. I.e. I want to be able to use a laptop (or a desktop) to play music etc. stored on a media server using media server software rather than the file system. -- Chris Green

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FWD: Re: [Sheflug] UK Open Standards: Time to act
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 02 May '12

02 May '12

Greetings All! In case you may not be aware, I'm passing on this message from the Sheffield LUG. The original message (from Richard Ibbotson) gives the URL for on-line participation in the consultation. Gary Stimson's reply gives a link to a very interesting announcement from the Government Digital Service/Digital Cabinet Office. Feel free to pass this on to any other groups you think would be interested! Best wishes to all, Ted. -----Fwd: <4FA18654.2060800(a)stimson.org.uk>----- Date: Wed, 02 May 2012 20:09:08 +0100 Sender: sheflug-bounces(a)sheflug.org.uk From: Gary Stimson <bulk(a)stimson.org.uk> To: sheflug(a)sheflug.org.uk Subject: Re: [Sheflug] UK Open Standards: Time to act On 28/04/12 11:48, Richard Ibbotson wrote: > HI > > For those of you who have an interest in this.... > > http://fsfe.org/projects/os/uk-standards-consultation.html > > " The Cabinet Office is currently conducting an important consultation > on Open Standards The question is whether companies offering Free > Software will in future have the opportunity to sell their services to > the British government. Whether or not British money will continue to > be spent on supporting proprietary standards which lock in public > bodies, currently hangs in the balance. Thanks Richard. I strongly encourage everyone to respond to this Cabinet Office consultation. Our responses will have much greater impact than signing petitions etc. The consultation is very long but you don't need to respond to all of it. If you prefer, you can send some free text instead of answering the questions in turn. If the government wants to demonstrate support then they will count the responses, so yours does matter. If they want detailed analysis they have responses from FSFE, Open Source Consortium and more. If they want to ignore the consultation... they will. The deadline has been extended by a month (to 4th June) following an astonishing conflict of interest by a Microsoft advisor. http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/04/26/open-standards-consultation-… tant-update/ Again, please do take action on this. Gary _______________________________________________ Sheffield Linux User's Group http://sheflug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/sheflug_sheflug.org.uk FAQ at: http://www.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html GNU - The Choice of a Complete Generation --------------End of forwarded message------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 02-May-2012 Time: 22:33:08 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 4th May.
by Viperfang 01 May '12

01 May '12

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Forum access--browser problem?
by James Freer 24 Apr '12

24 Apr '12

[xubuntu 10.04..... just two days until 12.04!] I'm hoping someone can advise on what to look for with what seems to be a forum access problem. I belong to a classic car forum which has recently decided to change server and forum software. They claimed the vBulletin was having problems. This i question as the Ubuntu forum as many of you probably use is also vBulletin with 1.8 million members and doesn't seem to have problems. The car group are now using Xenforo - anyone any experience of it? I'm using the Chrome browser which i've found fast and without problems so far. I regularly use forums which have the phpBB, SMF and Invision software without problems and fast as well. The problems; difficulty logging in and logging out (like 3-4 attempts), navigating round the forum is very slow if in fact i can enter a particular thread (when i can another 3-4 attempts are required). Going into Settings then activated a window with a message saying a server problem. It would seem to me [not that much IT expertise!] that there is server problem rather than a browser problem. Emailing the Administrator revealed that he uses linux Mint with Firefox - i thought most likely a problem with linux when other folk are using windows. Could there be a problem with Xubuntu? Chrome problems... well i tried a few of the other browsers earlier today and little difference - so Chrome doesn't seem likely. If Xubuntu what could be the problem because i want to sort it before putting 12.04 on - wrong setting somewhere... he's able to use Mint ok! I know this seems vague but i'd be very grateful if someone could give some pointers to investigate. thanks james

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Re: [ALUG] Acer Aspire One can't keep up with audio streaming
by Srdjan Todorovic 23 Apr '12

23 Apr '12

On 23 April 2012 22:47, Chris Green <chris(a)isbd.co.uk> wrote: > I've just put it into exaile, it played for a few seconds then just said > "Buffering 0%..." and virtually completely stopped. Even producing no > sound at all virtually exaile is using 30% or more of the CPU. Seems like network or software issue. >> Please... no iPlayer / BBC links. Do you have any other links? >> > There are virtually no other usable links for BBC radio, since most of > the point of this exercise is to listen to the BBC I'm a bit stuck! Not everyone has, or wants, a license. Don't know what codecs they use. If they use dirac, I thought that was very experimental a few years ago. Regards, Srdjan

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Acer Aspire One can't keep up with audio streaming
by Chris Green 23 Apr '12

23 Apr '12

I have an Acer Aspire One 751h which has a 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z520 CPU. It seems unable to decode radio streams that run at 128k, all BBC radio streams stutter hopelessly whether I use a dedicated application (radiotray) or try listening using iPlayer in Firefox. Running top shows radiotray using around 60% of the CPU with pulseaudio using 10% or so, that doesn't leave much to spare! Do I really need a faster computer to listen to radio on line? I'm pretty sure it's not a bandwidth problem, the on-line BBC iPlayer bandwidth check tells me I have enough bandwidth to play HD television. Are there any audio/radio apps out there which specifically aim at using as little CPU as possible? -- Chris Green

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Detecting outgoing SPAM in postfix
by Stuart Bailey 23 Apr '12

23 Apr '12

Hello, Does anyone know if Postfix can detect outgoing SPAM, or more specifically bulk emails? I think a way to restrict or limit a hosted domain to sending only a few emails per hour would solve my problem. Many thanks, Stuart Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Managing Director) Linux Specialist & Software Developer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Phone: (0845) 658 3563 Direct: +44 (0) 1953 878162 Fax: +44 (0) 1603 858583 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.linusoft.co.uk __________ Information from ESET Mail Security, version of virus signature database 7068 (20120419) __________ The message was checked by ESET Mail Security. http://www.eset.com

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Re: [ALUG] Fwd: [Apologies to All] Paging Tony Anson
by Anthony Anson 20 Apr '12

20 Apr '12

I took this to e-mail, but it seems still to be turning-up on ALUG - or is that only in my installation of Thunderguts? -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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ARM emulation
by Mark Rogers 18 Apr '12

18 Apr '12

I want to play with Linux (inc. maybe Android) on ARM platforms, and figured the Raspberry Pi would be a good target platform, albeit hard to get my hands on right now. Has anyone here played with this who can give me any suggestions as to where I should start? I can see various suggestions on the R.Pi website (QEMU or Scratchbox) so I'm really just asking to seek the benefit of anyones experience here, otherwise I'll pick one of the examples out there and see where it gets me. Separately: I've not done a lot with ARM in the past. How transferable are skills learned (and code written) between ARM platforms? I quite like the look of some of the ARM dev boards you can get on eBay, for example, and I'm sure the range of options will only increase over time, so I don't want to tie myself to the R.Pi any more than I need to at this stage. -- 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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Job Vacancy: I'm moving jobs, and am looking for someone to fill my shoes
by Jim Rippon 18 Apr '12

18 Apr '12

Hi all, Let me start by saying I am not a recruiter, this is a genuine attempt to help my employers find a replacement for when I leave for pastures new in June. They are looking for a Network Admin / Linux Systems Admin based in Cambridge. Its working as part of a small local team, responsible for production and office systems in the UK and EMEA and as part of the larger organisation based in two locations in Canada. I can certainly recommend the job, the team are good and there's plenty of interesting work coming down the pipeline to get your teeth into, as well as the possibility of travel to other locations in the organisation as appropriate (for example, I have travelled to FOSDEM in Brussels this year with the company as well as trips to our datacentre and corporate offices). Systems I work on include: * Cisco switching, routing, security, vpn, mpls, vlan, qos * Juniper firewalls (SSG-series), ssl vpn (SA-series) * Sonicwall firewalls * Checkpoint firewalls * Linux (mostly RHEL/CentOS, also some ubuntu/debian) * HP Proliant Servers and storage * HP MSA SAN * NetApp iSCSI SAN * IoMega iSCSI NAS Software I use lots of: * RHEL 5/6, CentOS 5/6 * Puppet * Nagios * Cacti * Rancid * RT Request Tracker * Splunk * MySQL Useful skills: * Network design and security focus * Perl/Bash scripting They are looking for a network and security focus, so any Cisco, juniper, security certifications or experience would be a bonus, as well as any certifications and experience in Linux specifically RedHat. I'm not party to the budget for the position, but would expect it to be fairly competitive and there is the opportunity to join the on-call rota for additional pocket-money (roughly once every 4-5 weeks having 24/7 break-fix on-call responsibility for production systems, not usually too disruptive). If you are interested, or know someone who might be, please get in touch by email and I'll let you have more details and answer any questions that I can. Regards, Jim

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"stumbleupon.com"
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 17 Apr '12

17 Apr '12

Greetings All! I wanted to follow up on the Health and Social Care Bill 2012, and was led to the link: http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/2012/03/royalassent/ When I go to this using Mozilla Iceweasel, I get a brief glimpse of the relevant page, which opens: Health and Social Care Bill gets Royal Assent 27 March 2012 Then the screen goes blank, and the browser hangs forever (i.e. still hung after 20 minutes) with "Read platform.stumbleupon.com" showing at the bottom. This is with Iceweasel 2.0.0.19 on Debian Etch and Iceweasel 3.0.6 on the later Debian Lenny. However, when I tried the same link on Windows Internet Explorer there was no problem. The full page came up, and there was no mention of "stumbleupon". This is on Windows Vista (some years old). I've not had this problem with other sites, including Government websites such as http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/7/contents/enacted (another link in the Health and Social Care Bill search), so I'm wondering how it came about and what to do about it! Anyone else experiencing similar problems? An6y useful knowledge? With thanks, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 17-Apr-2012 Time: 11:08:07 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] ARM emulation
by Mark Rogers 16 Apr '12

16 Apr '12

On 16/04/12 14:48, Anthony Anson wrote: > Keep your eye on Clas Olsen (Norwich, especially) - it's possible that they > might be trying to get some Raspberries. I do have one on order (ie I got to the point of them taking my CC details, so I got past the waiting list to get that far) but no idea when I'll see the device for real. In any case I'd like to have an emulator to play with because that's more portable (ie I can play anywhere I have my laptop without taking hardware with me). -- 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] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street ALUG
by samwise 16 Apr '12

16 Apr '12

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 tonight - Monday, 16th April, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://www.pjmcgintys.co.uk/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. We're usually to be found in the lowest section of the bar, near the library entrance to the pub. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Peter. ----- 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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Pointing Device Problems
by Paul Grenyer 12 Apr '12

12 Apr '12

Hi All I've bought a LP107T from August International Ltd pointing device and I'm running Linux Mint. When I plug the device in, the buttons that should move my Libre Office slides actually just move the mouse from left to right. Is there a Linux configuration setting I can adjust to fix this? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer

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[Apologies to All] Paging Tony Anson
by Koralatov Koralatov 11 Apr '12

11 Apr '12

Could you please get in touch? -- Many thanks, Mike

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 12th April
by Viperfang 10 Apr '12

10 Apr '12

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 12th April 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 http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Re: [ALUG] Machine won't boot after re-install
by cdw_alug＠the-walker-household.co.uk 05 Apr '12

05 Apr '12

>> Hello Jim, >> >> I've fixed the fstab file but it's still doing it. I *think* the >> problem is the grub configuration. Is there any way I can fix that >> without another re-install? I have to say I'm getting quite adept at >> that now though! >> > Hi Chris, > > Depending on how your installer has managed the disk partitioning, you > will either find the grub configuration in /boot/grub on your root > partition, or on its own boot partition (check in the afore-mentioned > fstab file for an entry mounted at "/boot"). In here you'll have a grub > folder containing menu.lst > > This config file drives your grub bootloader, its possible that the > commands in here are pointing at a uuid or partition thats incorrect - > make a note of all the partitions you've installed to, and ensure they > appear something like the following for your linux boot entry: I've fixed the fstab and grub configs and now I can successfully log in so thanks to both you and Wayne for your help. But I need some more :-( All of the icons on the desktop (I'm the only user) have a red exclamation mark against them and won't run. I've looked at the properties of the icons and they show 'User: 500' and 'Group: chris'. If I look at the /etc/group file, part of it shows this :- chris:x:500: vboxusers:x:502:chris boinc:x:419:chris gnokii:x:418:chris nas:x:501:chris I've looked at various sites online trying to get to grips with groups and users but to no avail. What should I change/add/delete in this file to fix the problem? I think somebody did try to explain this to me in the past but although I kept the mail, I can't get Thunderbird to run so I can't find the relevant mail. The various files in /home/chris show up as 'chris chris' when listed with ls -la I have to confess that it may be caused by a typo on my part! I'm not sure if my account should be Chris or chris so is that likely to be the problem or a red herring?

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Does something happen to a WLAN connection every minute?
by Mark Rogers 05 Apr '12

05 Apr '12

I've spent pretty much a whole day on this.... I have a little (ARM-based) Linux (Ubuntu) box connected wirelessly to my LAN. Every minute (via cron) it runs a script which opens a UDP port, then sends a UDP message every second (for 59s) logging the result. For hours I could not work out why more often than not, the script would lock up to 45s then hang - subsequent runs would fail because the port was still held open, and I had to kill the previous instance of the script to get things working again. If I put delays in the script so it didn't do anything for the first (say) 40s, then it still failed at 45s. If I removed the delays so it ran all 60 requests without gaps, they all completed fine (in a couple of seconds). Then on a whim I rebooted and nothing changed, except that the 45s became 38s. Then on another whim, I plugged in a network cable and it's been stable since. So, what might be happening every minute that would cause an existing UDP "connection"[1] to fail? Looking at syslog, the 38s ties in with when NetworkMangler brought the wireless connection up (with dhcp). If it's likely to be hardware specific then I'll probably just change the hardware, but I'd like this to work wirelessly and if there's something happening behind the scenes that could cause this I'd like some clues as to what it might be! [1] Yes, UDP is connectionless so this phrase is a bit meaningless. Hopefully you know what I mean. -- 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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