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Re: [ALUG] Machine won't boot after re-install
by Jim Rippon 04 Apr '12

04 Apr '12

Re-posting as my reply wasn't to the group at large last time. Grub2 introduces further complications, and I'd have to refer you to your distribution's documentation on the subject, or a search for "grub2 configuration" - wayne's suggestion to not overwrite /boot with your restore is important. Jim > Hello Jim, > > I'm writing this from a webmail account so apologies for not snipping > anything. > > 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: title Arch Linux root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda3 ro initrd /initramfs-linux.img The important lines are: * root (hd0,0) -> pointing at the first disk, and first partition as the location for the boot files (the grub files and kernels where you found this config file normally - either your root partition or a seperate boot partition) * kernel /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda3 ro -> this is the line which starts the kernel from your boot partition and tells it where to mount its root filesystem (in my case here, my system has created an initial ramdisk and its root partition is /dev/sda3 - partition 3 on my first SATA disk). Hope this helps point you the right direction. Jim > > I do have a liveCD - I run Mandriva 2011 - but I want to make sure I > don't > screw up anything else in trying to fix this problem. > > One other source of rogue files is the /run folder as that has a > couple of > files in /run/udev/rules.d/99-root.rules and 99-resume-link.rules but > even > deleting those had no effect so that's when I went looking for other > causes. I've examined the .tgz backup files under Windows (the > machine > dual boots) and that's where I've just discovered the grub files. > > Regards > Chris

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Machine won't boot after re-install
by cdw_alug＠the-walker-household.co.uk 04 Apr '12

04 Apr '12

I did a backup of my machine using tar commands and have then resized the various partitions. I reinstalled the OS from the original DVD and then started to restore the original files, extracting them from the various tar files - I wrote a separate tar file for each of the folders in starting from / such as '/opt-backup.tgz' I took notice of what Brett said last week about not doing a backup of /dev so that should remain untouched from the install. But now having restored everything, it comes up with the message 'No root device "block:/dev/disk/by-uuid/<disk-id here>" found and then 'resume device /dev/disk/by-uuid<another disk-id>' If I start again with the install, which of the various tar files should I *not* restore to avoid this problem ad infinitum? TIA.

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

03 Apr '12

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

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Processing power and bandwidth needed for streaming internet radio
by Chris Green 02 Apr '12

02 Apr '12

I'm confused! (so what's new?) My Acer Aspire laptop runs the little dedicated internet radio application I found quite recently with no problems at all when I run it at home. There it has an ADSL connection with something between 3Mb/s and 4Mb/s. However when I try it here (in France) using the WiFi service here it's completely useless, i.e. it produces about one second in five of actual sound. The bandwidth here is quite good though, the BBC iPlayer bandwidth check (which should be vaguely relevant as I'm trying to listen to the BBC) tells me:- Download speed: 1778 kbps Streaming speed 1: 1512 kbps Streaming speed 2: 1958 kbps Streaming speed 3: 1122 kbps Which the BBC says isn't quite enough for HD TV (!) but should manage anything else - all I want is a single radio channel! Does a lower connection speed require a faster processor to keep up or should I be looking somewhere else for what's causing the totally broken up internet radio here? -- Chris Green

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Really odd USB error/failure with Genius mouse
by Chris Green 02 Apr '12

02 Apr '12

I'm not really expecting a solution to this, just ranting/reporting an oddity. It confirms my general distrust/hatred of USB in general! :-) I have a little Acer Aspire netbook that I use (as I am now) when away from home, it runs xubuntu 11.10 (though I'm fairly certain I saw the same problem with previous versions of xubuntu). I use a Genius/Kye Traveller 350 mouse with it rather than the horrible touchpad. This works beautifully as it's actually a trackball rather than a mouse and has a scrollwheel and a fourth button that I have programmed as a double click of button one - bliss! :-) However after a random amount of time the Genius mouse stops working, since this is quite a long time (like hours rather than minutes) it doesn't often worry me too much as I don't spend hours on my laptop. Tonight though I decided to have a play and see if I could work out why it stops working (as the netbook had been left turned on and the mouse had, as usual, stopped working). I have the mouse plugged into the left hand side of the netbook where there are two USB ports as I usually use it left handed (even though I'm actually right handed). Since it had died just now I unplugged it and plugged it back in a couple of times, nothing, dmesg/syslog shows nothing, it's as if the mouse doesn't exist. If I reboot though it will work with no problem. Then I tried plugging it into the USB port on the RHS of the netbbok, and it works! It's still working. I can plug/unplug it repeatedly and it works every time. If I plug it in to the LHS ports there's still nothing happening though. Other devices (e.g. memory sticks) plugged into the LHS USB ports work perfectly though. It's just the mouse that won't work in the LHS ports (until I reboot!). Wierd! I think USB is a creation of arcane beings. -- Chris Green

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Directories to exclude on a backup
by Chris Walker 01 Apr '12

01 Apr '12

I'm about to backup my system as I want to resize the sda1 partition and I didn't think it was possible to do that with an existing system. So I looked online and found a Ubuntu guide to it which suggests excluding the following directories :- /proc /lost+found /mnt /sys/ I intend to backup /home separately so I will also exclude that but is the list reasonable or are there others I should also exclude? TIA

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 2nd March.
by Viperfang 28 Mar '12

28 Mar '12

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

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Re: [ALUG] Best mobile phone for Linux nowadays?
by Chris Green 27 Mar '12

27 Mar '12

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 12:40:16PM +0100, Tim Green wrote: > > Chris Green <cl(a)isbd.net> wrote: > > >My wife's Palm Treo has died (after bing dropped for the umpteenth time) > >so she needs a replacement. > > > >The fundamental requirement is a phone which will synchronise contacts and > >calendar with Evolution or Thunderbird/Lightning. > > > >So what's the best way to go nowadays? > > > >We'd prefer direct phone <--> desktop synchonization but I suppose it's > >not absolutely vital. However I'm happy enough to install a sync server > >of some sort (though my experience with Funambol was not an entirely > >happy one when I was trying the same with my Nokia E71 a year or so > >ago). > > > These days all the cool kids sync with the cloud (e.g. with Android its Google). Is that an option for you? > Sort of, that's what I meant by "We'd prefer direct phone <--> desktop synchonization but I suppose it's not absolutely vital. We defnitely *do* need it to be easy/transparent to keep Evolution (or Lightning) calendar in sync with phone calendar. If this goes via the cloud then so be it but the cloud bit will only be used as a sort of server. So to have to explicitly synchronize Evolution <-> cloud and then separately synchronize phone <-> cloud is out. On the other hand it it can be made to just happen when changing things at either end then that's fine. Something that *relies* on having an internet connection all the time to work is out as we are often out of reliable mobile phone network coverage. At home the mobile coverage is often flakey and when we're on the boat in France it may be non-existent at times. -- Chris Green

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Wanted - command line program for listening to BBC radio streams
by Chris Green 27 Mar '12

27 Mar '12

I'm looking for a command line program to listen to BBC radio live streams. I'm a bit of a newbie with trying to do this and I'm a bit confused by the fact that all of the URLs I can find for 'streaming' are actually playlists. But anyway, be that as it may, I have tried a couple of programs to listen to the .asx streams that seem to be the most readily available BBC streams with mostly rather poor results:- mpg321 - doesn't seem to recognise URLs at all though the man page says it should. mpg123 - recognises some URLs (in particular .pls ones) but doesn't appear to understand .asx. mplayer - this manages to play .asx URLs but it's really a movie player and thus drags in far more bits and pieces than I want, playback is still choppy. How much processor power and/or bandwidth is required to play a basic radio stream? -- Chris Green

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Mail Server
by Paul Grenyer 27 Mar '12

27 Mar '12

Hi all I want to create an email server so that I can send and receive email for a number of my domains. I've tried using postfix, but it's a pig to setup and it appears I need to have a user account on the server for every email address and I can't restrict one user to only one domain. e.g. if I create a user called paul and I have two domains, I get paul@domain1 and paul@domain2. Of course this could be my misunderstanding. So, I would like recommendations for a mailserver to run on ubuntu. Ideally I'd like it to be: 1. Easy to setup 2. Not require a user to be created for each email address. 3. Be able to create email addresses for individual domains 4. Web interface 5. Work with mailman 6. Support pop/imap 7. Support email forwarding. Any suggestions? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer

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Login Problems
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 26 Mar '12

26 Mar '12

Hi all, I'm having problems logging in. Initial login takes an age (~1 minute). Sudo in a terminal takes also take an age, but if I log out and log back in again, I get an immediate login. I think I've had a problem like this before where I had set up something wrong, so that the thing that was handling the login was trying to connect to a non-existant windows server to verify the login, waiting for a time-out, then handling the login itself. On subsequent logins, it's like it knows it's timed out, and doesn't bother trying. This is on my server, and it should be responsible for it's own log-ins. It's running dnsmasq, and is a samba server. I've set samba so that it says it is the authoritative nameserver. Any idea what's going wrong, or what I can look at to work out what's going wrong. There's nothing obvious to me in the log file viewer, or Dmesg. Any other log files to look at or config files to tweak? Any way to view what the login process is doing?? Ubuntu server 10.04.4 LTS Any help gratefully received. Steve

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How to decide which printer driver to use in CUPS?
by Chris Green 26 Mar '12

26 Mar '12

Does anyone else suffer from this dilemma? Whenever I install my HP Laserjet 1320 printer I wonder which of about a dozen or so alternatives that CUPS offers to use. For HP 1320 I see:- HP Laserjet 1320 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.7 Simplified (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/Postscript (en) HP Laserjet 1320 Foomatic/pxlmono (recommended) (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpijs, 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 hpijs pcl3, 3.11.7 (en) HP Laserjet 1320 pcl3, hpcups 3.11.7 (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 3.11.7 (en) There's no 'help' to click on to give any guidance, I *guess* I can't use the Postscript ones as my printer doesn't have Postscript (and, yes there really are three apparently identical Postscript entries). But how do I decide between that odd mix of pcl3, hpijs and hpcups? -- Chris Green

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Best mobile phone for Linux nowadays?
by Chris Green 25 Mar '12

25 Mar '12

My wife's Palm Treo has died (after bing dropped for the umpteenth time) so she needs a replacement. The fundamental requirement is a phone which will synchronise contacts and calendar with Evolution or Thunderbird/Lightning. So what's the best way to go nowadays? We'd prefer direct phone <--> desktop synchonization but I suppose it's not absolutely vital. However I'm happy enough to install a sync server of some sort (though my experience with Funambol was not an entirely happy one when I was trying the same with my Nokia E71 a year or so ago). -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Mail Server
by Stuart Bailey 25 Mar '12

25 Mar '12

Hi Paul, I think postfix is still tour best bet. You can authenticate users against MySQL, ldap or sasldb, so you don't need a linux account for each user. You email addresses can be handled the virtual domains, so Paul@anydomain can be configure to go to one account for Paul, or you can have separate accounts for Paul. Any combination can be configured. 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 ----- Reply message ----- From: "Paul Grenyer" <paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com> To: "ALUG ML" <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk>, "accu-general" <accu-general(a)accu.org> Subject: [ALUG] Mail Server Date: Sat, Mar 24, 2012 20:57 Hi all I want to create an email server so that I can send and receive email for a number of my domains. I've tried using postfix, but it's a pig to setup and it appears I need to have a user account on the server for every email address and I can't restrict one user to only one domain. e.g. if I create a user called paul and I have two domains, I get paul@domain1 and paul@domain2. Of course this could be my misunderstanding. So, I would like recommendations for a mailserver to run on ubuntu. Ideally I'd like it to be: 1. Easy to setup 2. Not require a user to be created for each email address. 3. Be able to create email addresses for individual domains 4. Web interface 5. Work with mailman 6. Support pop/imap 7. Support email forwarding. Any suggestions? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! __________ Information from ESET Mail Security, version of virus signature database 6995 (20120324) __________ The message was checked by ESET Mail Security. http://www.eset.com

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Mangled pemnissions in a directory
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 24 Mar '12

24 Mar '12

Greetings all! I have a wierdly mangled directory ("funny-dir" for present purposes). This may have occurred during a machine crash (I'm running this in a VirtualBox machine hosted on Windows and I recall that a few days ago the Windows host crashed). Basically: from the parent directory, if I do 'ls -l' I see: drw-r--r-- 2 ted ted 4096 2012-03-11 18:53 funny-dir and that looks fine. But if I then do 'ls -la funny-dir' I see a lot of stuff all looking like: ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? funny-dir/. ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? funny-dir/.. ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? funny-dir/file1.pdf ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? funny-dir/file2.pdf [and so on] Note that the "/." and "." both get the "?" attributes when viewed using 'ls -la funny-dir', as compared with the normal results viewed using ls -l' as above. Finally, if I try 'cd funny-dir' I get: bash: cd: funny-dir: Permission denied However, if I 'su' to root, 'ls -la' gives: drw-r--r-- 2 ted ted 4096 2012-03-11 18:53 funny-dir/. drwxr-xr-x 4 ted ted 4096 2012-03-24 21:07 funny-dur/.. -rw-r--r-- 1 ted ted 4766 2012-03-10 16:18 funny-dir/file1.pdf -rw-r--r-- 1 ted ted 4738 2012-03-10 16:19 funny-dir/file2.pdf [and so on] which is all as it should be! I can also, as root, 'cd funny-dir', and again things look normal from inside funny-dir. Can anyone say (a) What's going on? (b) How best to fix it? This is the first time ever thar I've seen this sort of thing happen. I'd like to be able to fix it directly, since the files were put in there by saving them out of several emails, each with several attached files with daft ("Windows" style) names which I had to change (every one); there are over 40 files, and it took ages!! With thanks, and best wishes to all, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 24-Mar-2012 Time: 21:33:56 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

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Government ePetition
by Montmorency 21 Mar '12

21 Mar '12

Don't think too many ALUGers would disagree with this one. e-Petition to put Alan Turing on the next £10 note: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/31659 Montmorency montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Java not installed?
by Chris Walker 21 Mar '12

21 Mar '12

I'm trying to install this - http://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/wiki/How%20to%20install%20Necessitas%20… but it keeps telling me that I need a java compiler. I've installed java-1.6.0-openjdk but I'm still getting the same message from Necessitas. I've tried issuing the urpmi command to install openjdk and it tells me :- No package named openjdk The following packages contain openjdk: java-1.6.0-openjdk, java-1.6.0-openjdk-demo, java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel, java-1.6.0-openjdk-javadoc, ... My system is Mandriva 2011.0 64bit. Any ideas how I can overcome the error message please?

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Scanners
by Bev Nicolson 21 Mar '12

21 Mar '12

Have scanner won't scan. We've been there before but not with Simple Scan. It knows my AGFA Snap Scan is there but says it's unable to connect. It is plugged in! I've tried gksudo simplescan (was that right?) and nothing happened. Is it another case of having to install VueScan?* And if it is, can someone kindly take me through how to install it? Many thanks. Bev. (11.04.) *That's what I had to do with my last computer to get it to work.

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Really strange automount symptoms
by Chris Green 20 Mar '12

20 Mar '12

I have been trying to diganose/fix this automount problem for quite a while. Automount of CDs, DVDs and USB sticks works fine on two of my xubuntu 11.10 systems but not on my desktop system. While trying to diagnose this I have found that it makes a difference using a remote display! If I run thunar on my system called 'test' where it works I see:- thunar-volman: Unsupported USB device type. thunar-volman: Unsupported USB device type. thunar-volman: Unknown block device type. ... and the USB stick automounts fine. If I do exactly the same except by a remote ssh connection to 'test' from my desktop system 'chris', I see:- thunar-volman: Unsupported USB device type. thunar-volman: Unsupported USB device type. thunar-volman: Unknown block device type. thunar-volman: Could not detect the volume corresponding to the device. ... and the USB stick *doesn't* automount. When I run thunar locally on my desktop system I see the same output (and failure to mount) that I see when running via ssh on 'test'. What on earth is going one? -- Chris Green

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TeamCity & Jenkins behind Apache2 Proxy
by Paul Grenyer 19 Mar '12

19 Mar '12

Hi All (Please excuse the cross posting) I've Jenkins and TeamCity running on two separate VMs within my home network. I have another (physical) box running, among other things, Apache 2 (on Ubuntu server) and I have port 80 forwarded from my router to it. I've configured a number of virtual hosts on Apache, which work fine, and have proxies to two other web applications (subsonic & Nexus) running on Tomcat on the same box. What I want to do is add proxies for Jenkins and Tomcat. This is my configuration: <VirtualHost *:80> ... ProxyRequests Off ProxyPreserveHost On <Proxy *> Order allow,deny Allow from all </Proxy> ProxyPass /subsonic/ http://localhost:8080/subsonic/ ProxyPassReverse /subsonic/ http://localhost:8080/subsonic/ ProxyPass /nexus/ http://localhost:8080/nexus/ ProxyPassReverse /nexus/ http://localhost:8080/nexus/ ProxyPass /teamcity/ http://192.168.1.x1:8080/ ProxyPassReverse /teamcity/ http://192.168.1.x1:8080/ ProxyPass /jenkins/ http://192.168.1.15/ ProxyPassReverse /jenkins/ http://192.168.1.x2/ </VirtualHost> I think the Apache 2 configuration is fine and that the problems reside in the TeamCity and Jenkins configurations. I access them like this: http://<mydomain>/teamcity/ http://<mydomain>/jenkins/ In the case of TeamCity, it tries to redirect me to login.html, but looses the /teamcity/ part from the URL. In the case of Jenkins, the first obvious issue is that the CSS isn't referenced properly and some of the links don't work. I've done the obvious stuff like update the server URL for both TeamCity and Jenkins (just like I had to with Nexus). I've restarted everything, even the boxes/VMs. And Iv'e googled. I'm still stuck. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer

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Backup Trigger Method
by Paul Grenyer 18 Mar '12

18 Mar '12

Hi all I want to setup some regular backups on my Ubuntu server box. I have done this before, but it was a while ago and I don't remember how I did it. I seem to remember dropping some scripts into directories the contents of which are executed at a particular interval. However, i can't find these directories on the server i did it on and google isn't helping, What's the best way to schedule backups? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer

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How do USB drives get automounted? (mine don't and I'm trying to work out why)
by Chris Green 18 Mar '12

18 Mar '12

I have three xubuntu 11.10 systems running here, one is a 32-bit laptop and two are 64-bit desktop machines. USB drives plugged into the laptop and one of the dekstop machines get automounted correctly but on the other desktop machine although the USB drive is recognised (appears in dmesg as it should) it doesn't get automounted. So how can I diagnose what's wrong or missing on the desktop machine where the automounting doesn't work? I think it's *possible* that I have removed something necessary and/or misconfigured something as this machine is quite heavily customised. As I have a working machine and a non-working one I may be able to compare things between the two machines to see what is wrong but I need to know the sort of places I should be looking. What processes and packages are involved in automounting a USB drive? As I said it appears to be recognised correctly by the kernel, messages in dmesg and syslog are the same on both the system where it's not automounted and the system where it is. After the kernel has recognised the USB device as a mass storage device what then mounts it automatically and (if configured to do so, which it is) pops up thunar? Any/all help would be most welcome as this problem is getting really annoying! -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 17 Mar '12

17 Mar '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 Monday, 19th March, 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. *** I'll be there to start with but due to a rather big family medical issue, I may not be able to stick around for more than an hour. Will have to see on Monday. *** 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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Determining "my" LAN IP
by Mark Rogers 16 Mar '12

16 Mar '12

What's the best way (programatically) to determine the local IP which would be used to make a connection to a specific destination? By way of example, the following works: $ tracepath -n 192.168.251.132 1: 192.168.251.140 3.816ms pmtu 1500 1: ... $ tracepath -n 10.0.0.1 1: 10.0.0.140 1.455ms pmtu 1500 1: ... In other words the PC I ran it on has several IP addresses (and several interfaces), but from the above I can determine that for destination 192.168.251.132 by source IP will be 192.168.251.140, but for destination 10.0.0.1 it will be 10.0.0.140. However this is quite slow and messy, and there is surely a better way! Mark Rogers -- 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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Any UDP comms experts here?
by Mark Rogers 16 Mar '12

16 Mar '12

I have a device I need to talk to via UDP from within PHP (although it feels like my problem here is a Linux one not a PHP one as everything is being done at the socket level anyway). I am sending a request to an Ethernet module in a PLC, and if I get the addressing wrong in my request then I get an error response back from the PLC as expected (by which I mean a 22 byte message sent via UDP containing the relevant error code) - I see this in my PHP code and in a Windows (Winsock-based) app I have that lets me send test queries and see the responses. However, when I get my addressing correct, whilst the Windows app gives me the response associated with the request I made, in my PHP/Linux code I just get no response (my code hangs up waiting). The PHP code I'm struggling with is: // Create a socket $socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, SOL_UDP); // Build the message $msg = hex2str('80 00 02 00 01 00 00 11 00 00 05 01'); // Send the message socket_sendto($socket, $msg, strlen($msg), 0, '192.168.251.132', '9600'); // Get the response - this line never returns socket_recvfrom($socket, &$buf, /*Max response length*/250, /*Flags*/0, &$ip, &$port); I would guess that the Ethernet module in the PLC either responds immediately with a response to tell me I have the address wrong, or else has to go off and collect some data before sending it back, although the time this takes is milliseconds. If I set Flags to MSG_DONTWAIT the code no longer hangs; it just returns no characters, even if I put a delay of a couple of seconds before the function call. I'm pretty sure that the key to the solution lies in getting the flags right but there I'm stumped due to lack of knowledge (and everywhere I can find sample code the above works fine). The list of possible flags is in the PHP docs[1] but I think a fuller list would be those listed in "man 2 recv" Any suggestions? [1]http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.socket-recvfrom.php -- 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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How to get rid of this duff directory?
by Chris Green 15 Mar '12

15 Mar '12

I think this may well be connected with my recent question about automounting. How do I get rid of this broken .gvfs directory:- -rw------- 1 chris chris 0 2012-01-03 10:28 .gtk-bookmarks -rw-rw-r-- 1 chris chris 82 2011-12-29 11:18 .gtkrc-2.0 d????????? ? ? ? ? ? .gvfs drwxr----- 2 chris chris 4096 2012-03-11 17:04 .hplip drwxrwxr-x 3 chris chris 4096 2012-02-15 20:20 .icedtea I can't even ls it directly:- chris$ ls -d .gvfs ls: cannot access .gvfs: Permission denied -- Chris Green

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What do these "Kernel Errors" mean?
by Chris Green 11 Mar '12

11 Mar '12

In my daily logwatch E-Mail I have just noticed the following:- WARNING: Kernel Errors Present EXT2-fs (sdd): error: can't find an e ...: 1 Time(s) EXT3-fs (sdd): error: can't find ext3 ...: 1 Time(s) ... ... ... usb 2-1.1: device descriptor read/64, error -32 ...: 4 Time(s) This possibly explains why the USB flash drive that was /dev/sdd failed to automount. It can be mounted without problems manually using a straightforward mount command. Can anyone explain what I need to do to fix it? The flash drive has a FAT16 file system on it as is normal I think. -- Chris Green

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Gimp help for non-artistic amateur...
by Mark Rogers 09 Mar '12

09 Mar '12

I have a (more-or-less) circular logo. I want to create a new logo which is basically a stack of coins, with the circular logo being the head of the top coin. Sounds simple but it's a bit beyond me - anyone with some actual talent care to point me in the right direction? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

OT: Reliable ADSL VPN routers with 3G fallback?
by Mark Rogers 09 Mar '12

09 Mar '12

Any recommendations? Draytek 2830 (about £140+VAT) seems to be popular, although you need a 3G USB dongle as well. I'm going to be installing a small Linux box (see, almost on topic really!) at a remote site; it's job will be to collect data and send it to us via ADSL or (if ADSL unavailable) via 3G; VPN access required to allow us to reliably get back into the unit remotely if we need to. Not going to see all that much data traffic and never more than 1 or 2 people connected via VPN (usually nobody), so the Draytek may be overkill. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

4 5

1s cron-a-like
by Mark Rogers 08 Mar '12

08 Mar '12

I need to run a script every second. The script will complete within milliseconds so the hardware is capable, all I am looking for is a reliable way to schedule it. Basically I want a higher-resolution cron. Any suggestions? One option is to write a script which runs every minute and does along the lines of: for($i=0;$i<=59;$i++) { // do something sleep(1) } .. but I'd much rather find a daemon capable of kicking off the script every second (and ideally more flexibly like cron does, and with the logging capability etc that cron has). -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

4 5

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th March
by Viperfang 05 Mar '12

05 Mar '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, 8th March 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

Outlook "Rich Text" format (Not OT!!)
by Mark Rogers 02 Mar '12

02 Mar '12

One of my customers (using Outlook via Exchange) keeps sending me winmail.dat attachments. I know from experience that this means somewhere the message is being sent as "Rich Text" rather than "HTML". However he's checked and Outlook is set to use HTML. Any suggestions? I don't have Outlook installed (I don't think they have a Linux version yet :-), although I think it's possibly at an Exchange level anyway, and I know some people her administer both. It seems to be only affecting me - they haven't explicitly said this but I get the impression they can send attachments to (eg) Hotmail and Gmail which (as far as I know) don't support Rich Text either, so it may be something somewhere as got configured against my email address. But I'm just speculating! Something else they haven't said, but I can hear them thinking it, is "why don't you just use Outlook like everyone else", so I'd like to show this is a config problem their end not just me being "non-standard". Grrrrr.... Mark PS: I do have tnef installed so I can extract winmail.dat files but when all they're sending me is screenshots it's a pain not to be able to read them inline in Thunderbird. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

3 4

Is it just me?
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 29 Feb '12

29 Feb '12

Hi Folks, For the last couple of days, readers' comments on articles in the Cambridge News can not (for me) be read beyound the first bunch. This looks like a Javascript problem (and I never had it before this week on this site). For example, have a look at the article: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/ Passengers-stranded-as-doors-closed-too-soon-29022012.htm [also = http://tinyurl.com/6u9u599 ] You can read the first bunch of comments (currently 5 ot them) direactly at the end of the article. However, there are (allegedly) currently 4 bunches of comments in all (not surprsing for a story likr this). But if I click on any of the numbered boxes (or on the "Next", or "=>" arrow, or "Last" button), nothing happens. My firefox tells me that underlying the [1], [2], [3], [4], Next, and Last are: javascript:__doPostBack('ctl04$CommentTopPaging$rptPaging$ctl00$lbPage','') javascript:__doPostBack('ctl04$CommentTopPaging$rptPaging$ctl01$lbPage','') javascript:__doPostBack('ctl04$CommentTopPaging$rptPaging$ctl02$lbPage','') javascript:__doPostBack('ctl04$CommentTopPaging$rptPaging$ctl03$lbPage','') javascript:__doPostBack('ctl04$CommentTopPaging$lbNextPage','') javascript:__doPostBack('ctl04$CommentTopPaging$lbLastPage','') Do other people experience the same problem? If so, is the nature of the problem recognisable from these Javascript commands? With thanks, and best wishes to all, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 29-Feb-2012 Time: 19:24:02 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

2 1

ftp on the blackboard
by Anthony Anson 29 Feb '12

29 Feb '12

Have Linux Phrasebook (Essential Code & Commands) and I can find no reference to ftp there. Could some kind person suggest a good place (webwise) to start looking for gen? (The button on the Firefox add-on won't appear, and demands new files, so can't use that, and it's irksome to have to use another box, fire-up XP, update AVG definitions, and use WS...) In case I haven't mentioned it, I managed to change the Eee's root password at last. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

2 1

support for an end user in North London
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Feb '12

27 Feb '12

Hi, Does anyone know someone who would be prepared to support an end user in North London? There are two a standard Debian installations, used mainly for writing, web, email. One is a Thinkpad, the other a desktop. Happy to pay standard rates. It should not be all that often, but I am travelling to London less often than in the past and am looking for someone else to be able to refer him to. Write to me off list if there's anyone you can vouch for. Peter

1 0

automount of USB drives not working - where should I look?
by Chris Green 22 Feb '12

22 Feb '12

I've just discovered that automounting of USB drives isn't working on my xubuntu 11.10 system. I can see the device with lsusb:- Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0951:1607 Kingston Technology DataTraveler 100 but no sign of it automounting. The "Mount removable drives when hot-plugged" setting is ticked and it always used to work (though I'm not absolutely sure it has worked since I upgraded to 11.10). Any ideas? -- Chris Green

1 0

SQL question, I suspect I need some sort of inner join
by Chris Green 21 Feb '12

21 Feb '12

I have a sqlite table of temperatures with columns as follows:- id, Date, Time, Inside_Temperature, Outside_Temperature How do I get the date and time for the minimum and maximum temperatures for a specific year? It's easy enough to get the required temperature:- SELECT min(Inside_Temperature) from temperatures; ... and even to get the Date and Time associated with that:- SELECT Date, Time FROM temperatures WHERE Inside_Temperature = (SELECT min(Inside_Temperature) FROM temperatures); However if I want to find the minimum temperature in 2012 I'm a bit stuck. SELECT Date, Time FROM temperatures WHERE Inside_Temperature = (SELECT min(Inside_Temperature) FROM temperatures WHERE Date like '2012%'); ... returns dates in other years where the temperature happened to be the same. I can make the outer SELECT only look in 2012 but that's beginning to get a bit messy. Is there an easier/better way where I join using the id which matches the minimum temperature to select the other columns I want? -- Chris Green

3 7

Off topic: dot IT domains
by John Woodard 20 Feb '12

20 Feb '12

Sorry if this is slightly off topic but I know the collective wisdom out there will know the answer to this one. Who is a good uk agent to reg a .it domain? The usual bulk reg sites like 123-reg don't seem to do them. Cheers, BJ

3 2

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

18 Feb '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 Monday, 20th February, 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. ** I'm not going to be able to attend this month, as I'm going to be in London attending a gaming industry panel event [https://baftagamesqt1.eventbrite.com/] on Monday evening, so please shout up on the mailing list if you're attending so other attendees know who to look out for. ** 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 lack of PHP error reporting
by Chris Green 14 Feb '12

14 Feb '12

I'm having a real hard time at the moment because for some reason PHP errors (in web pages) don't seem to get reported anywhere. I've narrowed the problem down a bit, if I put a PHP file in my root web directory then any errors *are* reported. However if I put an error into some of the code in my wiki nothing happens except that I get a completely blank page. I've looked at the .htaccess file, no joy there, doesn't set anything relevant. There's nothing appearing in the apache log file either, total silence. Any ideas? -- Chris Green

2 2

How to set permissions on an ethernet port?
by Chris Green 14 Feb '12

14 Feb '12

How can I set the permissions on eth0 to allow me (as opposed to root) to modify it? I want to use macchanger from a script and I don't want to have to enter my password every time I run the script. I assume it's the same sort of permission that one would need to be able to use ifconfig to change things on a network interface. -- Chris Green

3 3

GIMP
by Bev Nicolson 13 Feb '12

13 Feb '12

I may have a book on it, I may have the online manual but can I get GIMP to heal a smudge on a photo? Not so far. Anyone got any tips? Many thanks. Bev.

3 5

Re: [ALUG] Another thing...
by Wayne Stallwood 09 Feb '12

09 Feb '12

On 07/02/12 12:28, Anthony Anson wrote: > > Why do I need Nero? Several times I've burnt a CD or DVD using the > offerings with Squeeze, and sometimes, all that was laid down was a > batch of empty directories. Hmm I have had that a few times with the built in Gnome burning....k3b however has been good to me over the years even if it does need a million KDE libraries installed.

2 1

Regular expression question
by Chris Green 08 Feb '12

08 Feb '12

I want a regular expression to select text between /x and /, e.g. I'm wanting to look at something like:- /x This is a load of multi-line text and some more and more / ... and get the three lines of text (with/without the end bits). However I want it to be non-greedy so that:- /x Here is some text / and some more / ... will return only the "Here is some text" bit. So, a simple regular expression like '^/x[^/]*/' gets me what I want. However, I'm trying to make this a bit cleverer so that embedded / characters don't break it. So the next try is '^/x.*/\n', this works to an extent but it's 'greedy' so giving it the second example means that it returns both "Here is some text" and "and some more". Is there a way of saying "not /\n", or any other way of saying 'non-greedy'? This is using PHP regular expression searches. -- Chris Green

2 2

Distro for ARM
by Dan 06 Feb '12

06 Feb '12

Dear All, I currently have a fairly minimal Gentoo install in a chroot, on my ARM-based Android 'phone. The reason it's fairly minimal is that compiling additional packages is very slow. Hence, I've decided to replace the Gentoo install with a binary distro. I've got debootstrap installed under Gentoo, and am ready to go - but I'm a little confused as to what architecture I need to tell debootstrap to install for, since as I understand it, not all ARM binaries will run on all variants of ARM processor. Can anyone advise, please? The specific processor is a Qualcomm MSM7200A, and the compiler options I use in Gentoo are: CFLAGS="-march=armv6 -mtune=arm1136j-s -mfloat-abi=soft -O0" (the -O0 was a vain attempt to reduce compilation times to a manageable level.) -- Thanks, Dan

7 9

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 9th February
by Viperfang 06 Feb '12

06 Feb '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 February 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

Re: [ALUG] Another thing..
by Phil Ashby 06 Feb '12

06 Feb '12

On 04/02/12 12:00, Anthony Anson wrote: > I have a (legal) XP Pro CD, SP 3, and WGA Crack. > > What is the concensus of the cognoiscenti - should I install a severely > truncated XP to USB memory, or run a similarly curtailed XP in Virtual Box? I would recommend the virtualization route every time - migrating XP between hardware platforms is nigh on impossible. > Oh, I want XP (well, anything which will run Paintsho Pro, Photoshop and > Irfanview) for some programs which IMO Linux-based programs can't match. Wine seems to get on ok with Photoshop and Irfanview: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=17 http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=163 not so happy with PSP.. P

1 0

Another thing...
by Anthony Anson 04 Feb '12

04 Feb '12

The copy of XP home which was on the Asus laptop when I bought it remains, surrounded by Squeeze and all its works. Squeeze and all its works work better, andbut... The XP volume was not installed properly, and some things do not work - for example, some software installations will not proceed beyond a certain - or rather, an uncertain - point. In any case, even for Billyware, XP runs at a snail's pace. It takes several minutes to unmount a USB memory stick. "Oh, reinstall it!" is the usual Billyware user's remedy. As Penguinistas will well know, this will result in XP marking all the territory round it like an incontinent dog - so - here is the question: I have a (legal) XP Pro CD, SP 3, and WGA Crack. What is the concensus of the cognoiscenti - should I install a severely truncated XP to USB memory, or run a similarly curtailed XP in Virtual Box? I tend towards the former solution as the XP can then run any of my machines (any which will boot from USB, that is...), and running a virtual XP will surely take up nearly as much HDD space as keeping it in its own partition? And, can I install it on a memory stick on the Acer without XP scribbling all over Squeeze? Oh, I want XP (well, anything which will run Paintsho Pro, Photoshop and Irfanview) for some programs which IMO Linux-based programs can't match. Please don't suggest The Gimp... I *do* use The Gimp, but only when I CBA to reboot into that very sub-standard XP installation. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

3 2

Re: [ALUG] Another thing...
by Tim Green 03 Feb '12

03 Feb '12

On 3 February 2012 15:16, Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk> wrote: > Tim Green wrote: >> On 3 February 2012 14:22, Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk> wrote: >>> And, can I install it on a memory stick on the Acer without XP scribbling >>> all over Squeeze? >> >> XP will let you choose your install partition, so it shouldn't trash >> the other partitions. It might puke over the MBR, so be prepared to >> fix that afterwards. > > If I install it on the Acer's HDD, it will scribble over everything, whether > it concerns it or not. Is that the recovery/ factory restore install? Booting from an install CD should, after you agree to the EULA, present a white on blue list of disks, partitions and free space. > I *might* just throw together a load of old bits to do the job with... > Ta. I might need it -I haven't installed BillyOS since (IIRC) Win 2000 The XP installer was written in 2001, so it still uses text mode for the first part of the install. Regards, Tim.

1 0

You may remember me looking for a straightforward 'grid' editor for sqlite - found one!
by Chris Green 02 Feb '12

02 Feb '12

Well after hunting around for absolutely ages I think I have finally found what I needed for editing the data in sqlite tables, in place, in a grid. The program is tksqlite, it takes a while to dig down to find the current version, it doesn't live in any of the normal places and, at first glance at http://reddog.s35.xrea.com/wiki/TkSQLite.html it looks as if there's nothing newer than 2006 but on digging further I found:- http://sourceforge.net/projects/kbskit/files ... and there's recent builds there for 32-bit and 64-bit Linux. (OK, sourceforge *is* one of the usual places, but it's not at all obvious that tksqlite is there). It does almost exactly what I want and is also a very neat sqlite3 database administration tool, much less clunky IMHO that either sqlitebrowser or sqliteman. I just wish I could find some more complete documentation and/or a support list of some sort. -- Chris Green

1 0

Probably asked this before...
by Anthony Anson 01 Feb '12

01 Feb '12

I want to make a bootable USB memory stick with the Eee's operating system so I can run down my use of Xan-Dross. I've changed the root password so I can now tell it to do all those things it has steadfastly refused to do until now. What do people recommend? Ideally, a mirror of the HDD would be best. Now to discover how to devastate the unwanted pogroms... The next question is, what distro to put on the Eee instead of Xan-Dross, bearing in mind I use Debian as my main OS -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Does anyone else miss the pull-down list that used to be adjacent to the Back button in Firefox?
by John Woodard 27 Jan '12

27 Jan '12

Cool I'd wondered where that had gone. Cheers, BJ

1 0

Does anyone else miss the pull-down list that used to be adjacent to the Back button in Firefox?
by Chris Green 27 Jan '12

27 Jan '12

Back around version 3.x and before of Firefox there was a V symbol (i.e. a down pointer) next to the < (Back) button that would provide links back to the last few pages viewed before the current one in the same TAB. I used to find this very useful if one wanted to go back to a page before, for example, filling in a form. Using the Back button produces all those warnings about having to resend information. This has disappeared in current versions of Fifefox, has it gone for ever? -- Chris Green

3 3

Mint Issues
by Paul Grenyer 26 Jan '12

26 Jan '12

Hi All I've come back to the Linux fold, mostly because I'm developing in Java again. At the recommendation of a friend of mine I've installed Mint Linux 12 (Gnome) and I really like it. However, at what seems like random intervals I am unable to click anything. So I can't change between applications, I can't scroll scroll bars, I can't pull down, menus, etc. I can move the mouse and I can turn caps lock on and off. I'm running on a 2007 Think Pad T60. Has anyone else seen this problem or know what it might be? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer

2 2

RAID Problems
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 26 Jan '12

26 Jan '12

Hi Gnu Grub Gurus! I've just spent an unpleasant evening getting my server to boot again. Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS, fully patched and up-to-date. Running Raid 1 with 2 active disks. Historically, got a error reported on 1 of the disks, so brought some bigger ones. Marked one of the old disks as "Failed" and added one of the new ones. Waited for it to synch. Marked the other old disk as "Failed", added the other new one. Waited for it to synch. That left me with 4 disks in the raid array, 2 new ones active, the old two marked as failed, but still connected. Was meaning to reboot this when I had time to fix any problems that may occur on rebooting. Tonight, I forgot that and rebooted the machine after something crashed. Then the machine wouldn't boot. Got all the bios screens, disks recognised etc, then I got an error along the lines of udevd-work mdadm --incremental /dev/sdd1 unexpected exit with status 0x000b Managed to boot from a live cd. Hacked around a bit, discovered I hadn't marked the new disks as bootable, and the partition type was wrong - Raid, as opposed to Raid-autodetect. Changed that disconnected the old disks, rebooted, and after the bios screens, where I would hope to see the grub boot menu, I just got a flashing cursor. This is the problem I want to solve - how to get it to boot with just the new disks in it. I shut it down again, reattached the old disks. Rebooted. It now has 4 disks, 2 new ones active, 2 old ones as spares (not synched). Could my problem be that Grub is not installed on the new disks. If that's the case, how can I check. How can I fix it if this is the problem. NB I'm using grub legacy (V0.97) If that's not my problem, what is my problem and how do I fix it? Something like what's listed here? http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1360445&highlight=grub2+fakeraid <http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1360445&highlight=grub2+fakeraid> Any help appreciated! Steve

2 2

Is there a utility to spot missing/out of sequence files?
by Chris Green 24 Jan '12

24 Jan '12

I suspect I'm going to have to write a utility to do this for me but there *might* be something to do it for me. I want to spot files missing from a sequence, e.g. if I see:- dscf1253.jpg dscf1254.jpg dscf1256.jpg dscf1257.jpg dscf1258.jpg dscf1259.jpg I want to be told that dscf1255.jpg is missing. -- Chris Green

3 6

How to execute something from a web page (i.e. hung on a button) without affecting the web page?
by Chris Green 24 Jan '12

24 Jan '12

I want to have a button on a web page that executes some code (currently a bash script) but which isn't 'real' CGI in that it doesn't send anything back to the web server. I want nothing at all to happen to the web page when the button is clcked. Is there some sort of CGI 'output' which does nothing at all? -- Chris Green

3 3

"unwritable" external USB drive
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 23 Jan '12

23 Jan '12

Greetings All. I wonder if anyone can give me some advice! Seeking a device to take backups onto, I bought a Western Digital "My Passport Essential" external USB hard drive (500 GB, USB 2.0 and 3.0). When I plug this in (Debian Lenny) I get a pop-up which says: Cannot mount volume Invalid mount option when attempting to mount the volume 'My Passport' dmesg | tail -35 gives: usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9 usb 4-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice scsi8 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices usb-storage: device found at 9 usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning usb 4-3: New USB device found, idVendor=1058, idProduct=0740 usb 4-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=5 usb 4-3: Product: My Passport 0740 usb 4-3: Manufacturer: Western Digital usb 4-3: SerialNumber: 575839314138315934373632 usb-storage: device scan complete scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access WD My Passport 0740 1003 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 scsi 8:0:0:1: Enclosure WD SES Device 1003 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Spinning up disk....ready sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] 976707584 512-byte hardware sectors (500074MB) sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 47 00 10 08 sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] 976707584 512-byte hardware sectors (500074MB) sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 47 00 10 08 sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through sdc: sdc1 sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk ses 8:0:0:1: Attached Enclosure device fdisk /dev/sdc gives: Disk /dev/sdc: 500.0 GB, 500074283008 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60797 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00038a56 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 1 60798 488352768 7 HPFS/NTFS Then, as root (remote login): mount -t ntfs /dev/sdc1 /mnt apparently mounts OK, and then: ls -la /mnt gives: drwx------ 1 root root 4096 2012-01-19 13:11 . drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 4096 2009-04-17 19:52 .. drwx------ 1 root root 4096 2011-03-10 00:48 Extras drwx------ 1 root root 0 2012-01-19 13:11 $RECYCLE.BIN drwx------ 1 root root 0 2012-01-19 13:10 System Volume Information drwx------ 1 root root 0 2011-03-10 00:48 User Manuals -rw------- 2 root root 3290480 2011-03-09 22:43 WD Quick Formatter.exe drwx------ 1 root root 4096 2011-03-10 00:48 WD SmartWare -rw------- 2 root root 4246384 2011-03-09 22:43 WD SmartWare.exe drwx------ 1 root root 0 2011-03-10 00:48 WD SmartWare for Mac and I can read the user manual under "User Manuals". However, I want to make a new directory on the USB disk, so as a test I try: mkdir /mnt/Test which gives: mkdir: cannot create directory `/mnt/Test': Operation not permitted (despite the fact that /mnt, and /mnt/Test and all subdirectories, apparently have write permission for root). Also, in /media I have: -rw------- 1 root root 0 2012-01-23 18:37 .hal-mtab-lock which was not there before I plugged it in (well, it was from a previous session, but I deleted it before starting this test). SO: How do I make this thing writeable??? (This is the first time I have had a USB drive so this on me). With thanks, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 23-Jan-2012 Time: 18:41:46 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

4 5

A very simple/silly HTML question about 204 response
by Chris Green 21 Jan '12

21 Jan '12

I want to have a CGI script return a 204 response so that the calling page doesn't change but I can't get it to work cleanly such that I don't get an error as follows:- Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@localhost and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log. The CGI script is currently just:- echo HTTP/1.0 204 No Change echo Content-type: text/html echo The apache error log says:- [Sat Jan 21 16:19:24 2012] [error] [client 192.168.1.4] malformed header from script. Bad header=HTTP/1.0 204 No Change: wikiedit.cgi, referer: http://wiki/info:money:jessica?do=edit Removing the "echo Content-type: text/html" makes no difference at all. According to what I can find on Google about "204 No Change" it's all I should need. Any ideas? -- Chris Green

1 1

Wifi access point recommendation for use outside?
by Srdjan Todorovic 21 Jan '12

21 Jan '12

Hi all, I just got a call from my dad asking about a wifi access point that: 1. is good (how does one quantify this?) 2. has a 30m range (wikipedia suggests 32m indoor range, and 95m outside as normal ranges for b/g) 3. can support 10-20 connected peers on the wifi interface (I'm guessing there would be a resource limit, but I don't know what it would be, or what is normal) 4. can be used for yard applications a) either is rugged / waterproof enough to be mounted outside, with power and ethernet pulled outside, or b) would be effective enough mounted on the side of the window indoors and remain hidden from view, and the antenna can still pick up wifi peers, and the wifi peers can pick up the AP signals. 5. secured - most should support WEP and WPA, but I'm not sure what the actual requirements for this are - depends on what encryption the users would have, but I'd hope they'd all support WPA-PSK as a minimum. I suspect most wifi access points would satisfy all of these requirements (except maybe ruggedness in case it was to be mounted outdoors). Does anyone have any suggestions for a wifi access point that would meet these requirements? Thanks, Srdjan

2 1

SQL question - any other way to do this?
by Chris Green 21 Jan '12

21 Jan '12

I have the following typically horrible bit of SQL to get a result I want:- SELECT Date, Description, Credit, (SELECT SUM(Credit) FROM jessica j2 WHERE j2.Date <= j1.Date ORDER BY j2.Date) AS TotCredit FROM jessica j1; This is actually slightly simplifed but illustrates the problem. It works OK if run as shown but unfortunately I don't actually have the ability to create the whole thing in the application where I'm using it. All I can do is specify the SQL for the individual selected colums, I *can't* specify the final "FROM jessica j1", it's actually just "FROM jessica". So, what the application executes is:- SELECT Date, Description, Credit, (SELECT SUM(Credit) FROM jessica j2 WHERE j2.Date <= Date ORDER BY Date) AS TotCredit FROM jessica I can change the (SELECT SUM(Credit) FROM jessica j2 WHERE j2.Date <= Date ORDER BY Date) to anything I want, can anyone suggest a way to get the running total that I want just by adjusting this part of the SQL? -- Chris Green

1 0

Evolution oddness
by Bev Nicolson 20 Jan '12

20 Jan '12

To be honest Evolution's been odd for a while but anyway. Opening it up I wasn't asked for my password (I don't login to my computer now. No idea why. If anyone's got a cunning way of changing that, do tell. The request to put my p/w in comes randomly.) Today I can't open any emails. Essentially it's behaving as though there's not internet access (though as you can see, there is, cos I'm typing this.) I see others have had problems like this with too on the Ubuntu forum. Hmm.

1 1

Text editor that can edit columns easily/well?
by Chris Green 20 Jan '12

20 Jan '12

Does anyone know of a text editor that will edit columns of text well? By this I *don't* mean one that can handle rectangular areas, my preferred editor (vile/xvile) can already do that easily. What I want is a text editor that will maintain existing columns while allowing one to add/edit/delete text within them. E.g. if I have:- Some text in column Text in column two Column 3 column 1 continued and more in here etc etc bla bla bla goo goo goo ding ding ... and I edit it as follows:- Some more text in column Text in column two Column 3 column 1 continued and more in here etc etc bla bla bla goo goo goo ding ding I want it to maintain things as above without me having to delete the four extra spaces between columns one and two. I want to be able to add text to a line in a column and have it expand the whole column down the file. I.e. there is some sort of 'virtual' delimiter between the columns which is kept vertically aligned, I'm quite happy for this to be an actual character although I'd prefer it to be invisible like a TAB if possible. Thus the above *could* be:- Some text in column | Text in column two | Column 3 column 1 continued | and more in here | etc etc bla bla bla | goo goo goo | ding ding ... and I edit it as follows:- Some more text in column | Text in column two | Column 3 column 1 continued | and more in here | etc etc bla bla bla | goo goo goo | ding ding ... then add even more text:- Some more text in column | Text in column two | Column 3 column 1 continued | and more in here | etc etc bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla | goo goo goo | ding ding with the editor keeping the |s vertically aligned for me. The 'table' add-on for Emacs almost does this but it's for a table (as in text in boxes) rather than text in columns. Searching for 'text edit columns' just comes up with loads of editors that can handle rectangular areas which I can already do. -- Chris Green

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Can I switch these off?
by Chris Walker 17 Jan '12

17 Jan '12

The store I'm using is an Edimax NS2502 and I'm connecting to it using lines like this in the /etc.fstab file :- //storage_server/FTP_RAID_C /media/linux_Share cifs user,credentials=/etc/samba/auth.storage_server.Mandriva 0 0 The auth file just contains a userid and password. Like others I've found online, my NAS drive is creating 77 cifsxxx files as soon as I delete them. Is there a way to stop this? One person thinks this is a bug - https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=740572 but that was in 2009 and it still seems to be occurring. Am I doing something wrong here? Perhaps I should explain that these files are in the /media/linux_Share/Linux_Backups/hourly.1/localhost/usr/bin/ directory and I'm trying to remove everything from the Linux_Backups directory prior to initiating a backup procedure using drakbackup.

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Re: [ALUG] cp -a puzzle
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 16 Jan '12

16 Jan '12

On 14-Jan-2012 James Bensley wrote: > rsync has this option Unfortunately rsync is not present on that system (SuSE Linux 8.2 installed in 2003). I should add that I'm doing this for a friend (predominantly a Windows user) who wants to dispose of the machine, but keep the files. I do not have access to the installation disks (and they may well have gone into a black hole by now). Thanks for the suggestion! Ted. > On Jan 14, 2012 9:12 PM, "Ted Harding" <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> wrote: > >> Greetings All, >> I am currently engaged in copying files from a desktop >> machine to an external USB hard drive. >> >> The machine has both Windows 98 and Linux on it, and >> dual-boots. Because Win98 does not recognise the external >> drive, while the Linux installation does, I'm booting >> into Linux to do the copying. >> >> The objective is to transfer every file on the desktop >> onto the external drive. The external drive is mounted >> as /media/sda1 in Linux, and has a vfat filesystem. >> >> The Windows drives \C, \D, \E, \F are mounted, when the >> machine is booted into Linux, as: >> >> /windows/C /windows/D ... /windows/F >> >> With the Windows files, no problem: I make the directories >> /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/C >> (and similar for .../D, .../E, .../F, these being all the >> Windows drives). Then I do the likes of: >> >> cd /windows/C >> cp -a * /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/C >> >> (and similar for D, E and F). This has worked fine. >> However, I now want to copy over all the Linux files >> as well. I have made a directory >> >> /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/LinuxFiles >> >> but now, of course, >> >> cp -a /* /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/LinuxFiles >> >> will not work, because the external drive is mounted >> under / and so will be itself copied and recopied in >> an infinite recursion. There would be no problem if >> there was an "exclude" option for 'cp' (say "-X") so >> that >> >> cp -a -X /media /* /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/LinuxFiles >> >> would inhibit anything under /media from being copied. >> But I can find no such option for 'cp'. >> >> So how to proceed??? >> >> With thanks, >> Ted. >> ---------------------------------- >> E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> >> Date: 14-Jan-2012 >> Time: 20:49:49 >> >> This message was sent by XFMail >> ---------------------------------- >> >> _______________________________________________ >> main(a)lists.alug.org.uk >> http://www.alug.org.uk/ >> http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main >> Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! >> ---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 14-Jan-2012 Time: 22:07:57 This message was sent by XFMail ----------------------------------

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Naive spreadsheet question - how to produce a running total?
by Chris Green 16 Jan '12

16 Jan '12

I'm a total newcomer to spreadsheets but I think/hope a spreadsheet is what I need to fulfil a very simple requirement. I want to maintain a simple balance of income and outgoings, e.g.:- Date Description Credit Debit Balance 1/1/2012 Monthly charge £200.00 -£200.00 5/1/2012 Received cheque £200.00 £0.0 21/1/2010 Miscellanous expense £5.00 -£5.00 .... etc. I can manage the various data entry columns in Gnumeric but what formula do I need in the Balance column? Firstly I can't find the syntax for "all cells to the end", all the Help seems to tell me is how to enter a range, i.e. C2:C12 means the range from C2 to C12, but how do you say "to the end"? Secondly how do you get a running balance without having to re-enter the formula in the Balance column for every row you enter? -- Chris Green

4 7

cp -a puzzle
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 15 Jan '12

15 Jan '12

Greetings All, I am currently engaged in copying files from a desktop machine to an external USB hard drive. The machine has both Windows 98 and Linux on it, and dual-boots. Because Win98 does not recognise the external drive, while the Linux installation does, I'm booting into Linux to do the copying. The objective is to transfer every file on the desktop onto the external drive. The external drive is mounted as /media/sda1 in Linux, and has a vfat filesystem. The Windows drives \C, \D, \E, \F are mounted, when the machine is booted into Linux, as: /windows/C /windows/D ... /windows/F With the Windows files, no problem: I make the directories /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/C (and similar for .../D, .../E, .../F, these being all the Windows drives). Then I do the likes of: cd /windows/C cp -a * /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/C (and similar for D, E and F). This has worked fine. However, I now want to copy over all the Linux files as well. I have made a directory /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/LinuxFiles but now, of course, cp -a /* /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/LinuxFiles will not work, because the external drive is mounted under / and so will be itself copied and recopied in an infinite recursion. There would be no problem if there was an "exclude" option for 'cp' (say "-X") so that cp -a -X /media /* /media/sda1/WinLinMachine/LinuxFiles would inhibit anything under /media from being copied. But I can find no such option for 'cp'. So how to proceed??? With thanks, Ted. ---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 14-Jan-2012 Time: 20:49:49 This message was sent by XFMail ----------------------------------

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 13 Jan '12

13 Jan '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 Monday, 16th January, 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. ** I should be there this month to welcome in a new Linux year, after last month's absence. Hope to catch 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

bandwidth throttle needed
by mick 11 Jan '12

11 Jan '12

Hi Guys I have recently devoted a VM to tails (tails.boum.org). That VM appears in a DNS round robin with five other servers. When I first offered the server, trials showed I could expect to see outbound around 20-30 GB per day. I can live with that. Unfortunately, the traffic has now jumped to 150-180 GB per day. I can't live with that. It will cost me too much. So I need some advice on bandwith shaping. Can anyone recommend any tools which will allow me to set limits so that I can throttle web traffic to around 30 Gb per day (or 250 GB per week or 1000 GB per month for example). Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

2 2

Web photo management - are there any simple systems?
by Chris Green 10 Jan '12

10 Jan '12

I have a couple of family members who have photo albums on the web which I host. For the past two or three years I have been using gallery2 to do this but I'm getting increasingly fed up with the hassle involved whenever anything changes. A recent OS upgrade has made the gallery2 installations fall in a heap yet again and I'm wondering if I might find something easier than gallery2. Apart from not being easy to upgrade it requires quite a few non-standard changes to php.ini which I'd prefer to avoid if I can, and it uses a mysql database which I'd also like to avoid if I can. My two users don't need most of gallery2's abilities, all they want to do is to be able to upload photographs and organise them into albums with (presumably) thumbnails to select them. There's no need for multiple users, no need for tags, no need for extra information, just the EXIF and IPTC from the image files. So is there anything out there that can do this with as little hassle as possible? -- Chris Green

8 13

This apache2 default (maybe ubuntu's doing) seems a bit unhelpful
by Chris Green 10 Jan '12

10 Jan '12

In the default apache2 installation on Ubuntu you get the following setting in the default virtual host:- ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ This means that CGI scripts are in the /usr hierarchy which doesn't seem very helpful. Is the the norm for apache2 or is it just Ubuntu's doing? I'm thinking I either want to point it to some suitable /home/<user> directory or possibly somewhere below /var/www, is there anything wrong with doing either of these (assuming suitable security protection of course). -- Chris Green

2 2

Is there a known security weakness in gallery2?
by Chris Green 10 Jan '12

10 Jan '12

Well after having decided I don't want to run gallery2 any more I have another question related to it. I'm getting hundreds of hits (well, attempted hits, it's no longer there) on the old gallery2 site, logged by logwatch as follows:- /mandy/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=shutterfl ... en=26321822fb67: 1 Time(s) I seem to get thirty or forty every day and today's logwatch has logged well over a hundred. It's not a issue really as it's not eating much bandwidth or loading my web site significantly but I was just wondering if anyone knows whether it's a well know security weakness in gallery2 or what? Or is someone just very desperate to look at the pictures on Mandy's blog? :-) Maybe I should put a note at /mandy/gallery2 saying that the pictures have moved. Though come to think about it the link from the blog now points at where the pictures really are so whatever is hitting that gallery2 URL must be pretty mindless. -- Chris Green

3 5

Is there anything better than 'locate'?
by Chris Green 10 Jan '12

10 Jan '12

I find (pun not intended) the locate command very painful, it rarely produces anything useful when I use it and its command line options don't seem to help very much. First problem is that by default it returns every single file that has the search expression in its path, so if I search for 'home' for example I get thousands and thousands of lines returned because it lists every sub-directory and file under /home. Surely it would be more useful if it just returned /home plus any files (or other directories) actually called 'home'. As it is the default is nearly always not what one wants. Secondly I want a search for 'home' to return files and directories called 'home', not ones called 'homeAndAway' or anything else with 'home' in them. If I'm searching for something which has 'home' in it then I'll search for '*home*'. I know there are ways of getting over the above two problems but IMHO the syntax to do so is a bit clumsy and inconvenient. The man page gives the syntax (in the only example it gives, maybe suggesting others have the same complaints as I do) :- locate -b '\home' Finally I want some way to exclude large chunks of my system from the search (or to *include* specific areas), my short-term backups are on my desktop system under /bak. As a result locate finds dozens of hits for any file which happens to be in the incremental backups. If only locate worked the same way as find does, find does almost exactly what I want most of the time (but is very slow of course because it's not got a cron built database). I guess I'm going to write a custom script round locate that makes it produce results much like find, but quickly. I'm just wondering if someone happens to have done it for me already. -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 12th January
by Viperfang 09 Jan '12

09 Jan '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 January 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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Fwd: [Gllug] OSHUG #15 — Wireless (Hacking Commodity Wireless, Practical Wireless, Contiki OS, CWIG) — Thursday 26th January
by Richard Lewis 08 Jan '12

08 Jan '12

Hi ALUG, It's not local, but the next meeting of the Open Source Hardware User Group may be of interest to some here. It's near King's Cross Station, and a quick trip round the Circle Line from Liverpool Street. Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > OSHUG #15 — Wireless (Hacking Commodity Wireless, Practical Wireless, > Contiki OS, CWIG) > > On the 26th January 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative > Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG, (51.529049, > -0.116436) > > ** Registration: http://oshug.org/event/15 ** > > At the fifteenth OSHUG meeting we'll be taking a look at wireless > technologies. We will hear how you can repurpose low cost commodity > equipment, we will be given an introduction to RF basics, we will > learn about the Contiki operating system, and we will be introduced to > Ciseco's new Wireless Internet Gateway. > > - Hacking Commodity Wireless > > Many people build their hacks from the ground up, but those short of > time sometimes prefer to repurpose cheap off-the-shelf components that > can be made to fit the bill. A good example being a wireless > thermometer for external use, where an off-the-shelf device provides > an inexpensive option complete with the requisite weatherproof > packaging. However, such devices typically use proprietary protocols > and good documentation is rarely available. This talk will look at how > to interface such devices where a degree of reverse-engineering is > frequently required. > > Paul Tanner is a consultant, developer and maker in wood, metal, > plastic, electronics and software. His day job is IT-based business > improvement for SMEs. By night he turns energy nut, creating tools to > optimise energy use. Paul graduated in electronics and was responsible > for hardware and software product development and customer services in > several product and service start-ups, switching to consulting in > 2000. > > - Practical Wireless > > Adding wireless connectivity to your latest open hardware project is > not difficult, provided that you take the time to understand some of > the principles of RF communication. In this talk we will learn about > the basics of wireless propagation, and take a look at some of the low > cost modules which now make adding wireless even easier. > > Ken Boak joined BBC Research Department after graduating and worked on > digital picture processing of HDTV images, and coding algorithms for > video distribution around studios. Since then, Ken has worked in > laboratory instrumentation, telecommunications, low power wireless and > consumer electronics produced in the Far East. With an interest in > renewables, Ken now develops laboratory instruments to teach > undergraduates the principles of photovoltaic and wind power. Outside > of work, Ken is interested in smart wireless sensors, open source > hardware and low cost solutions for the Internet of Things. > > - An Introduction to the Contiki O/S > > This talk is aimed to introduce the Contiki OS and some of the > development hardware. We will learn about the process of bootstrapping > the development environment and there will be a hands-on tutorial. > > Ilya Dmitrichenko was born in Soviet Latvia in 1985, grew up and > attended a secondary school there, and moved to UK as soon as Latvia > joined the EU. He attended the biggest university in London and was > rather disappointed with the education, but nevertheless carried on > and had fun working on a final year engineering project which served > as an introduction to the topic of this talk. Ilya is interested in > various aspects of hardware and software, spanning from WSN to DSP and > several other random fields. > > - CWIG — The Ciseco Wireless Internet Gateway > > The CWIG is a new open hardware device that is designed to be the "one > and only" platform you'd need for a wireless gateway. It employs the > same ATmega328 microcontroller that is familiar to Arduino users and > supports Ciseco's TI CC1110-based XRF module, XBee, Bluetooth, RFM12B, > X10/HomeEasy, FRAM, SD, Ethernet and over-the-air programming with > AVRDude. It's sized to be housed in a low cost, compact enclosure and > to be cheap to build using through-hole components. In this talk we > will be given an introduction to the CWIG and also to the XRF wireless > UART and programmable RF module. > > Miles Hodkinson's twenty-odd year relationship with IT ended around > six years ago when he decided that it was time to do something > completely different. He had looked around without success for > something to log and control his wind turbine, solar panels and Lister > single cylinder engine, and found that nothing was flexible enough for > the money he wanted to pay (tens of pounds per device), so he decided > he would try and build it himself. After a number of years working on > a human-focused method of networking originally built using XBee > modules and now termed LLAP, his company developed the TI CC1110-based > XRF module. > > Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the talks will start > at 18:30 prompt. > > ** Registration: http://oshug.org/event/15 **

1 0

Keyboard problem
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 08 Jan '12

08 Jan '12

Greetings All! I have a somewhat mysterious hardward problem. On a tower box with external keyboard connected via a PS/2 connector, with external monitor, A: During the BIOS phase of boot, if I enter the BIOS setup, I can use the keyboard to navigate round the BIOS menus, so the basic hardware handles keyboard input (and monitor output) fine. B: However, if I boot into Linux, the usual slew of boot messages scrolls up the monitor screen, culminating in the "Login:" prompt (X is not started by default on this machine, and needs to be initiated by a logged-in user from the command-line prompt); but at this point the computer does not respond to keyboard input. Nothing shows up on screen following key-presses. Even if I suppose that it might be an "output to monitor" problem, and try to log-in by typing the userid and password, nothing happens. However, if I connect to the machine from another one over the network, I can log in fine. If I then give the command echo "Hello" > /dev/tty0 I see "Hello" output on the monitor. So it doesn't look like a monitor problem, and therefore is most probably a failure to see the keyboard from Linux. The Linux system is a SuSE 7.2 (from 2001). This problem is recent -- a few days ago it wasn't happening. Now it is. Any suggestions? (It has nothing to do with X, of course). With thanks, Ted. ---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 07-Jan-2012 Time: 16:13:58 This message was sent by XFMail ----------

2 1

Postfix relaying when sasl authenticated
by Mark Rogers 06 Jan '12

06 Jan '12

I have an Ubuntu server running Virtualmin (with Postfix). It is steadfastly refusing to allow me to relay when I authenticate. However I can't make any sense of what is going on. Postfix's main.cf says: smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated permit_mynetworks reject_unauth_destination .. which I understand to mean that provided I authenticate I can send anywhere. The error I'm getting is: connect from [...] NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from [...]: 550 5.1.1 <user(a)example.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual alias table; from=<user@mysite> to=<user(a)example.com> proto=ESMTP helo=<[...]> disconnect from [...] .. where [...] is my IP/hostname, user(a)example.com is the address I'm trying to relay to, <user@mysite> is the user I'm trying to authenticate as. If I disable authentication in my mail client, I get "relaying denied" which I would expect. If I change my password I get a password error, so I am definitely authenticating correctly. If I try sending an email (no authentication, plain SMTP) to invaliduser@mysite I get the same error as above, which is when I would expect to get it (trying to send to a user on my server that doesn't exist). However I'm trying to relay to a different server altogether so I can make sense of the error message in that context at all? 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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Backing up databases - how?
by Chris Green 04 Jan '12

04 Jan '12

I nearly had a problem just now, having done a clean install (rather than an upgrade) of xubuntu 11.10 I needed to restore sundry mysql databases. Since they're not in /home nor in /etc I thought for a nasty moment I hadn't got backups because /var/lib isn't in my automatic cron backups. However I had done a one-off copy of the whole of /var before cleaning out the old installation and installing xubuntu 11.10 - phew! :-) It does make me want to find a sensible way of backing up those mysql databases though. My automatic (cron) incremental backups save /home and /etc. I have made /var/www a symbolic link to a 'home' directory for www-data (the apache UID) at /home/www-data/www so all my web stuff gets backed up too. The databases are not heavily used so there's a pretty good chance that I can get away with making straight copies of all the files in /var/lib/mysql without causing any disasters but what's the best way to do that? I *could* make /var/lib/mysql a link to somewhere that gets backed up but that really feels like a bit of a bodge. I'd prefer not to add /var/lib/mysql to my backup list though I suppose that's really the sanest way to do it. I use sqlite for as many databases as possible so that this isn't an issue but some applications insist on mysql (or postgres) and, even though my use is very lightweight and doesn't need a proper *database* backup strategy I need to do something. Any comments/ideas anyone? -- Chris Green

5 5

Adding an exception to iptables on ssh authentication
by Alex Scotton 04 Jan '12

04 Jan '12

Hi All, I rarely post to this list; mainly due to a lack of knowledge... but find the email chains fascinating and very informative. I was hoping you could help me out with a few security adjustments on my home development server running Ubuntu 10.10; I would like to achieve the following setup with iptables and maybe a script in sshd_config? * Accept any connection from within the LAN (192.168.0.*) * Deny All from outside LAN (Except to ports 22, 80, 443, and the range 8000 to 8999) (the above is admittedly easily done with a google search) but my skills cant quite stretch to finding out how to add an exception to iptables for the IP of any authenticated ssh session and on timeout or disconnect remove that exception. I could then allow external developers to develop on a private port range (7000-7999 - as I do internally) by just connecting to ssh with their public key. Is this possible? Festive Tidings Alex

6 11

Best replacement o/s for a Linksys WRT54GL
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 04 Jan '12

04 Jan '12

Hi, I've just got a Linksys WRT54GL and want to try replacement o/s on it. I've had a bit of a google and the main ones seem to be DDWRT, OpenWRT and Tomato. Anyone care to express a preference or a reason why I ought to use one of these over another? TIA Steve

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Spare hardware sought!
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

Greetings Folks! Hoping you had a good Christmas, and wishing you a Happy New Year. I have an old desktop box whose PSU has blown. So I'm looking for a compatible box to which I can transfer the hard drives and PCI cards. Basic requirements: Working AT box with motherboard & CPU, 64MB RAM or more, space for 4 IDE hard drives, PCI slots (for monitor, parallel, ethernet, etc. cards), PS/2 mouse and KB ports. So if any of you shed-stackers has something suitable, I'd be very pleased to hear. Willing to pay a reasonable reward for a suitable box of tricks! Best wishes to all, Ted. ---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 29-Dec-2011 Time: 11:24:50 This message was sent by XFMail ----------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] 2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 6th January.
by Ben Bewick 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

oops, sorry about the double posting! script ran twice, fixed now though :-) On 3 January 2012 00:49, Viperfang <viperfang(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, > more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! >

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

03 Jan '12

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

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

03 Jan '12

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

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icalendar/vcalendar question - how to clear 'up to now' occurrences of a repeating event?
by Chris Green 02 Jan '12

02 Jan '12

I suspect that this can't be done within the iCalendar specification but maybe I'm not understanding all of it. I (and I'm sure *lots* of other people) need a way to remind myself about repeating events like having to do quarterly PAYE returns and quarterly VAT returns. I thus need a way to set up a repeating reminder of some sort, this is quite easy using an iCalender 'object', and then I need a way to say "I've done this month's one of these". As far as I can see there is no way in the iCalendar format to do this. The only reasonably practical approach I can see is to delete the EVENT completely and create a new one that starts at the next repeat date. Using a TODO instead doesn't seem to help much, you can sort of bodge together a way of doing it but it's so messy and liable to confusions with different length months and such that it doesn't really work. Am I right, is the best/only way to do it deletion and re-creation? -- Chris Green

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Anyone want a router?
by David Reynolds 30 Dec '11

30 Dec '11

Hi guys, I have a couple of Linksys routers that I do not need anymore. I have: * Linksys WRT54GL v1.1 * Linksys WRT54GS v1.1 Both have stock linksys firmware but both could run openwrt if desired. I would like £10 (or nearest offer) for each. Anyone interested? (Please note: these are *not* ADSL routers) -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Synaptic with Debian
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 26 Dec '11

26 Dec '11

Greetings All! Hoping you have been enjoying the long weekend, etc. (especially the "etc."). I have a problem starting synaptic on a Debian Lenny. When it starts up, no packages are reported, and then a window opens with the error message: An error occurred The following details are provided: E: Encountered a section with no Package: header E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/ security.debian.org_dists_lenny_updates_main_binary-i386_Packages E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. E: _cache->open() failed, please report. When I click to close this window, synaptic then closes. I have had a look at the named file in /var/lib/apt/lists/ which is certainly there, and cannot work out how to fix it. Any suggestions? (And, in case I don't write again in time, Happy New Year). Ted. ---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 26-Dec-2011 Time: 18:41:15 This message was sent by XFMail ----------------------------------

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DVD's
by Bev Nicolson 26 Dec '11

26 Dec '11

So I have two DVD's I'd like to watch. However, computer says: Error mounting: mount: block device /dev/sr0 is write-protected, mounting read-only mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sr0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so dmesg | tail [ 22.650906] tg3 0000:03:00.0: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX [ 22.651116] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready [ 31.408759] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 [ 32.768019] eth0: no IPv6 routers present [ 37.097846] kbd_keycode: 30 callbacks suppressed [ 37.097851] keyboard: can't emulate rawmode for keycode 240 [ 37.105836] keyboard: can't emulate rawmode for keycode 240 [ 1245.695843] lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions [ 1921.458077] UDF-fs: No anchor found [ 1921.458083] UDF-fs: No partition found (1) Which I guess is because it's trying to boot from it. (Or is that a red herring?) So what do I do? I have googled and not got very far except installing xine which gets me the menu options but can't play the film which is all I wish to do.

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Internet Facing Linux
by Paul Grenyer 23 Dec '11

23 Dec '11

Hi All I want create a small virtual machine running linux with pretty much only Apache2 to serve some static web content and proxy on to other servers. The idea being this is the only internet facing instance I have. Any suggestions for a small easy to use linux distor? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer

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Snowboarding On New Year's Day
by Montmorency 23 Dec '11

23 Dec '11

The Norfolk Snowsports club is running an open day on New Years Day, from 2pm to 6pm. I'll be one of the snowboard instructors helping out and number of ALUGers have mentioned to me on IRC and in person that they're keen on the idea of coming down to do a snowboarding taster session. Other activities such as ski-taster sessions (spits) and tubing (rolls eyes) will be happening. Furthermore, the club bar is cheap and has wireless. Booking is unnecessary; cost is £10 for an hour. Spaces on the taster sessions are limited and it's first-come-first-served, so showing up early is sensible. You will want to be wearing long-trousers and long sleeves, and bring a pair of gloves. Details are here: http://www.norfolksnowsports.com/node/3113 And the Norfolk Ski Club is here: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Norfolk+Snowsports+Club&ll=52.614332,1.3212… Montmorency montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Re: [ALUG] Internet Facing Linux
by Peter Alcibiades 23 Dec '11

23 Dec '11

On Friday 23 December 2011 11:53:44 Paul Grenyer wrote: > Hi All > > I want create a small virtual machine running linux with pretty much > only Apache2 to serve some static web content and proxy on to other > servers. The idea being this is the only internet facing instance I > have. Any suggestions for a small easy to use linux distor? Slitaz

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Running Jenkins on port 80
by Paul Grenyer 23 Dec '11

23 Dec '11

Hi All I have an install of Jenkins on an Ubuntu VM. I want it to run on port 80 rather port 8080 as I want to run a development Tomcat on port 8080. Goolging suggests the only way to do this is to use Apache to redirect from 80 to 8080, but that still leaves Jenkins running on 8080 which doesn't fix my problem. Has anyone solved this? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer

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Acer Aspire 5520 Linux shutdown problem and random power-offs
by Srdjan Todorovic 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

Hi all, I'm looking at my mum's Acer Aspire 5520 laptop with Kubuntu installed that seems to have strange shutdown problems. I can power the laptop on, but at random times (where t is generally < 2 minutes, sometimes up to 10mins, sometimes as little as 5sec) the laptop will power down completely with no user intervention. I've seen this happen while in the Grub boot menu, while Linux KDM login screen is displayed, while it's booting Linux, while it's running memtest and even while in the BIOS setup screens. This happens on the battery only, mains only and on battery and mains power combinations. At other times, it seems the laptop goes into some kind of sleep state where the hard drive, power button LED and power state LED flash at the same time (approx 1s on, 1s off but I've not measured this), and while in this 'state' pressing space bar 3 times toggles the wifi LED so that it flashes in the same manner as the power and HDD LEDs. When Linux does actually boot (rare given the quick power off), it appears to function ok, other than when powering off or restarting, the laptop is not actually powered down, and I can still switch virtual terminals but I cannot type anything in the getty (or whatever ubuntu uses) login processes. Some google results suggest the motherboard needs to be reflowed, and people suggest putting the laptop motherboard into an oven at 200 degrees C for 5 -7 minutes!! :( The CPU fan does come on and spins a lot in the grub menu (when the cpu should not be busy): I cannot tell if the CPU fan exhaust is hotter than normal, but this suggests that perhaps there's an overheating problem and some sort of thermal cut-out is powering down the laptop. I cannot see any abnormal amount of dust in any of the cooling vents, and there's no unusual rattling of the fan. Any suggestions please? Thanks, Srdjan

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Re: [ALUG] Machine won't start
by MJ Ray 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

Chris Walker <cdw_alug(a)the-walker-household.co.uk> > It offers a failsafe and another kernel option - 2.6.39 (I think) and > the 2.6 option works which is how I'm writing this. But how can I > faultfind the main kernel non-starting? The above doesn't say what distribution is in use, but generally, if it uses grub, press e to edit the command-line, edit the boot lines to try to disable all graphical splash stuff that hides the debugging output and then b to let it boot. When it fails, note any errors or whatever (maybe use a digital camera?) and then those should help you find help on search engines or forums, if it's not obvious (which it often isn't). Hope that helps, -- 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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Machine won't start
by Chris Walker 20 Dec '11

20 Dec '11

My machine has recently performed some updates and now it won't boot. It offers a failsafe and another kernel option - 2.6.39 (I think) and the 2.6 option works which is how I'm writing this. But how can I faultfind the main kernel non-starting? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Need FQDN, I seem to have lost it upgrading from xubuntu 11.04 to xubuntu 11.10
by Chris Green 19 Dec '11

19 Dec '11

I am trying to tidy up/reconfigure after upgrading from xubuntu 11.04 to 11.10. Most things are working but I'm getting a couple of errors that suggest that I have somehow lost my FQDN setting. Both apache2 and leafnode are complaining:- apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName #012Leafnode must have a fully-qualified and globally unique domain name,#012not just "chris". Now I know I *can* fix apache2 by putting a ServerName directive in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf but I didn't have one before. Also the leafnode configuration is unchanged from 11.04 so why am I now getting the error about FQDN? It's probably something very silly I have forgotten somewhere but I really can't see it at the moment. Has anyone any ideas what might be wrong/missing? Oh, the /etc/hosts file on the system is unchanged from 11.04 to 11.10 and has very little at all in it, the system (which is chris, 192.168.1.4) obtains its network settings by DHCP from the DHCP server at 192.168.1.2 which hasn't changed. -- Chris Green

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Digital Signage
by Stuart Bailey 19 Dec '11

19 Dec '11

Hello, I've been asked to look into digital signage options for an estate agent, to display photos of properties currently on the market. Obviously I would prefer a Linux OSS solution. Are there any suitable packages, distros or suggestions? A quick google has identified xibo and lintop - although lintop is not OSS. Many thanks 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 6717 (20111216) __________ The message was checked by ESET Mail Security. http://www.eset.com

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Can anyone suggest why a system can't see itself on the network?
by Chris Green 19 Dec '11

19 Dec '11

I have just installed a clean (i.e. from scratch onto a clean hard disk) copy of xubuntu 11.10 onto this system. I have installed a few extra basics I need (like mutt and postfix which I am using to send this) and it's all basically working, connected to the internet, etc.) However, it can't see itself on the LAN. I.e. I can ping localhost OK but I can't ping 'chris' or 192.168.1.4. It definitely *is* chris at 192.168.1.4 as that's........ Aaaaahhhhhh!!!!! :-) Although 'chris' is 192.168.1.4 my desktop system that's supposed to be chris is actually 192.168.1.89, not surprisingly it can't talk to chris or 192.168.1.4. I need to tell it that it has a static IP, or tell the DHCP server that this MAC address needs to be assigned to 192.168.1.4. ... another classic case of "explain the problem and you see the solution"! -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 19 Dec '11

19 Dec '11

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 19th December, 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. ** Unfortunately, I'm already booked out on a work engagement earlier tonight so I can't guarantee my attendance tonight. :( I wil endeavour to pop by the pub if I finish early, but if you're planning on attending, I'd recommend asking around on the main mailing list or on IRC to ensure there'll be others heading down! ** 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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Keyboard puzzle
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 18 Dec '11

18 Dec '11

Greetings Folks. I have been having problems with a couple of old machines, desktop boxes, which both recently (within a few days of each other) went into "won't switch on" mode. One of these is now solved: the internal power push-button (pushed via an external push-button) had slipped its moorings. Now re-moored, with a touch of superglue to inhibit future wanderings. (The other machine turned out to have a blown PSU, with a short somewhere in it, so probably irrecoverable). Anyway: to the Topic Of The Day. When I switch on the "solved" machine, the (external) keyboard works fine, e.g. I can press Delete to enter BIOS setup, and use the keyboard to navigate the BIOS menus. Also, when it does go into its Linux boot sequence, it happily gets as far as the GRUB menu, where I can choose which version of Linux to boot. Again, the keyboard works for this. Then it goes into the full Linux boot, ending up with a login prompt in a text-terminal console (X hasn't started yet). But, at this stage, the keyboard has no effect. If I enter a userid, nothing changes on screen. No keyboard press produces any effect. So it seems that, somewhere along the line of the boot sequence, it has lost track of the keyboard. No problem, however, with remote access via ethernet from another machine. Two questions: [A] Does anyone have any ideas about the possible source of this glitch, and how to set about fixing it? If relevent, the Linux version is SuSE 7,2 from 2001, with kernal 2.4.4. [B] Normally, there should be no problem using this machine, since I normally access it remotely anyway. However, every so often it will, during boot, decide that a hard drive has beeen unmounted too often without a file system check. So I will need to be able to use the keyboard for this (unless it works through it without problems, needing no intervention). In any case, if there is a power cut (as happens from time to time round here), then I will definitely need the keyboard during the fsck because the file systems will have been "not cleanly unmounted". Also, this state will have been reached before it sets about activating the ethernet ports, so in principle remote access will not be available. So: Is there some way of working round this so as to achieve remote access? With thanks, Ted. ---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 18-Dec-2011 Time: 16:57:55 This message was sent by XFMail ----------------------------------

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