- main - earth.li

How to remove password having got root access to a system?
by Chris Green 17 Dec '11

17 Dec '11

Well, after a fair amount of hassle, I've worked out how to get root access to the hard disk on the system I have installed xubuntu 11.10 but the main account password is broken. You boot the "Live CD" system and you can then mount the disk and use sudo to become root. So, I can edit /etc/passwd and I can edit /etc/shadow but removing the password field from my main/default user in the /etc/shadow file *still* doesn't allow me to login. Grrrrr!!! What are the requisites for a login to have no password? I thought it was a 'x' in the password field in /etc/passwd and nothing in the password field in /etc/shadow but that seems not to work. -- Chris Green

3 3

Can't get Grub menu to appear, nor the boot sequence text
by Chris Green 17 Dec '11

17 Dec '11

Sort of going on from investigating my boot times I've just realised I seem to be unable to see/start the grub menu on my system. All I see is the BIOS boot sequence, finishing with the SATA drives being detected, then there is a blank screen (though the monitor indicates it is being driven) for several seconds followed finally by the login screen. I have just changed /etc/default/grub to:- GRUB_DEFAULT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true GRUB_TIMEOUT=10 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian` GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" ... and I still see absolutely nothing between BIOS and login screen. Any ideas as to what I can do to see the grub screen? Apart from anything else if I have some sort of catastrophe it's going to be a bit difficult to get into single user/command line mode. -- Chris Green

5 8

PCI SATA Card
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 17 Dec '11

17 Dec '11

Why is nothing ever simple? Replacement Sata disks sourced, purchased, plugged 1 in. Spins up, but not detected. Turns out my Motherboard has a SATA 1 controller chip that will not work under any circumstances with SATA 2 disks, even if you tell the disks to pretend to be SATA 1 disks. Don't suppose anyone has a linux compatable PCI SATA controller card with 2 Sata channels lying around that they don't need do they? (Note, that's PCI, not PCI-X, or PCI Express). What a waste of an evening! Harumph!!! Steve

1 0

Have I got a disk failing - or what?
by Chris Green 14 Dec '11

14 Dec '11

My logwatch presented me with this (among other things) this morning:- --------------------- Kernel Begin ------------------------ WARNING: Kernel Errors Present [ 7.192693] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ...: 1 Time(s) [ 7.386581] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ...: 1 Time(s) [ 20.697614] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ...: 1 Time(s) [ 20.824819] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ...: 1 Time(s) [ 20.861868] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ...: 1 Time(s) [ 20.907760] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ...: 1 Time(s) [ 20.945476] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ...: 1 Time(s) [ 21.031194] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ...: 1 Time(s) [ 27.012635] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,comm ...: 1 Time(s) [ 28.113740] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,comm ...: 1 Time(s) [ 28.463488] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,comm ...: 1 Time(s) [ 33.145286] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,comm ...: 1 Time(s) [ 33.649576] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,comm ...: 1 Time(s) [ 34.486168] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,comm ...: 1 Time(s) [ 45.508896] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,comm ...: 1 Time(s) [ 49.252032] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,comm ...: 1 Time(s) ---------------------- Kernel End ------------------------- Should I be worried? That's my 'root' disk:- /dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0) It doesn't have either /home or /bak on it so it's just system configuration that needs to be preserved (which it is). -- Chris Green

2 4

Replacing RAID Disks
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 13 Dec '11

13 Dec '11

Hi Guys & Gals, I have a server running Ubuntu Lucid 10.04. It has 2 sata disks running as RAID level 1 (simple mirror) using MDADM. Recently there's been an error on 1 of the disks. After a reboot, the raid array resynchronised itself, but I'm taking this as a warning and an excuse to replace the disks. I have several questions. First of which is, is MDADM still the way to go? I seem to remember reading that you can set up RAID 1 with just using ext4. Presumably MADAM is still the best. Next, my original partitioning scheme was one / (root) raid device with partition, and one swap raid device swap with partition. I presume that a better layout would be to have / (root), home and swap raid devices with partitions. Should I be using LVM as well, or just shove a partition directly on the raid device? I don't want to do a fresh install, I want to copy the data over from the old disk to the new ones. What's the best way of going about this? I can only have 2 drives connected at a time, but I could put the new disks into a spare computer and transfer files over the network if necessary. I'm hoping that I may be able to get away with this: Using the appropriate raid controls, remove the "faulty" drive from the raid array, then physically remove it. Then physically mount one new, bigger drive. Create 3 raid partitions on the and format one as / (root) and one as swap, leaving the other one empty for a bit. Using the appropriate raid controls, mount the new devices and let them synch. Unmount and remove the remaining old drive. Mount, partition then add the new drive to the raid. Let it synch. Once that's all happened, boot from a live cd, mount the devices, format the spare partition as "home", copy (move) files from the home directory to the new home partition. Would this work? Or is there a better way? Any comments appreciated. Steve

3 3

Where is all the time going?
by Chris Green 13 Dec '11

13 Dec '11

Feeling a bit bored (and waiting for some replies to questions elsewhere) I decided to look and see where all my boot time is going. There are two very obvious pauses in the dmesg output:- [ 2.934091] ata8: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 2.934130] ata7: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 18.251024] Adding 9936892k swap on /dev/sda5. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:9936892k [ 20.088037] <30>udev[292]: starting version 167 [ 20.133565] lp: driver loaded but no devices found ... ... ... [ 23.959982] FS-Cache: Loaded [ 24.133173] FS-Cache: Netfs 'nfs' registered for caching [ 24.143427] Installing knfsd (copyright (C) 1996 okir(a)monad.swb.de). [ 24.353496] type=1400 audit(1323793685.691:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" na> [ 24.353957] type=1400 audit(1323793685.691:11): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name=> [ 34.486168] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 [ 36.986993] svc: failed to register lockdv1 RPC service (errno 97). [ 36.987111] NFSD: Using /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery as the NFSv4 state recovery directory [ 36.996319] NFSD: starting 90-second grace period ... ... ... [ 38.612346] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready [ 49.294292] eth0: no IPv6 routers present I don't think that last gap waiting for IPv6 routers is relevant, I can do just about anything before that happens. So, any ideas what may be causing that first 16 second gap and/or the second ten second gap? -- Chris Green

3 4

X over ssh problem
by mick 12 Dec '11

12 Dec '11

Hi guys I use ssh tunneling to manage my remote systems, but until today I have never attempted to forward X over a tunnel (I don't have X servers running remotely and I have never seen the need to run X based graphical programs on those servers). Today I wanted to run etherape on a remote server so that I could watch the traffic patterns. So. I changed the remote server's sshd_config to enable X forwarding ("X11Forwarding no" becomes "X11Forwarding yes") and restarted sshd. On my desktop I similarly changed my local ssh_config file to allow X forwarding ("ForwardX11 no" becomes "ForwardX11 yes") to obviate the need to use the -X switch on the command line. I then installed etherape on the remote server and fired it up only to get the message "Error: no display specified". Sure enough "echo $DISPLAY" shows nothing. But I thought (and everything I have read confirms) that ssh should take care of setting the appropriate display when X11 forwarding is set. I then tried setting a display manually (export DISPLAY=localhost:10.0 on the remote server) and got the response "Error: cannot open display: localhost:10.0" I must be missing something. What am I doing wrong and how can I fix it? Surely I don't have to have an X server running on the remote host? Thanks in advance. Mick

2 3

Set up Raw Printer with CUPS (Debian+Gnome)
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 11 Dec '11

11 Dec '11

Greetings all! I am in one of my occasional struggles with CUPS (which I hate -- as compared with good old LPD)! Not helped by the unhelpful Gnome: Desktop --> Administration --> Printing "assistant". Basically, I have an HP LaserJet 1300 which I want to use as a raw printer (I do all my printing via PostScript files which I create myself, and the HP has built-in PS capability, so it's just a matter of piping the PS file straight into the printer, with no intermediate processing). The printer is to be connected to a laptop via a USB cable. So all I want to do is set up printing on the laptop so that when I issue a command lpr filename.ps the PS file gets printed by being sent straight to the printer over the USB port. So how do I set this up as a raw printer? There seems to be no route to this (that I can detect) via the above "assistant". Maybe there is a direct method using CUPS-oriented commands from the command-line, but I can't manage to suss that out either! Any help (especially from people who have done this successfully for themselves) will be highly appreciated! Thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 08-Dec-11 Time: 19:52:40 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

2 2

How to test if a cat5 (or cat6) is working as well as it should?
by Chris Green 06 Dec '11

06 Dec '11

I have a number of quite long (i.e. 30 metres or more) cat5e cables strung about the place and would like to test how 'clean' they are. It's easy enough to test their basic integrity (i.e. if all 8 wires are correctly connected) and I have done that. However I'd like to see if they are actually good enough to provide maximum performance when running gigabit. Presumably if they aren't working too well one will see errors and retries at the hardware level - is there a tool for monitoring this? Mostly these cables have just one switch between the ends but there are a couple where there may be two switches involved. -- Chris Green

7 12

Problems with new[ish] Firefox on Ubuntu 11.04
by Chris Green 06 Dec '11

06 Dec '11

I have just upgraded my system to xubuntu 11.04 and I have a couple of problems with the version of Firefox it has installed. The first problem is that I can't even see what version of Firefox it is as the main menus have disappeared (that's the File, Tools and other menus, including the Help menu which tells you which version of Firefox you have). How on earth do I get those menus back? Secondly the new Tab layout is a pain, I've turned off 'Tabs on top' but the tabs are still in a sill place because the leftmost tab sits above the sidebar, not above the web display area. Is there any way to get back to the old layout where the tabs are actually above the pages they refer to? -- Chris Green

3 4

Burning to a remote drive
by Wayne Stallwood 06 Dec '11

06 Dec '11

Hi there. So I am on a laptop now which means the built in optical drive has sub par performance, currently I am archiving a good deal of material from old DVD's onto a Media Server (HP MicroServer) The MicroServer has a bay for a SATA optical drive so I am going to add one anyway....for the archiving I can just run local copies on the server which will be fine. However I got to thinking that sometimes I have a bit of a run on making discs as well and it would be nice to be able to burn from CD burning software on the laptop to the remote drive. When the laptop is docked there is a Gig-E connection between the two and I assume that NBD's support burning as it is just native access to the raw block device over the network ? But has anyone actually done this and did it prove reliable ? Or is there a better way, Am I better off using iSCSI rather than NBD's ?

1 0

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th December
by Viperfang 05 Dec '11

05 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 ----- Hello Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 8th December 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

ALUG Hello everyone :)
by wiedxma k 03 Dec '11

03 Dec '11

Hi everyone, I joined the mailing list yesterday and I thought I would introduce myself. I am a woman. And I work and live in Ipswich. I’ve been interested in GNU/Linux since 2002/2003. The first distro I saw and got installed on my HP nx9020 laptop was Slackware. Someone told me ‘if you learn Slackware, you will be fine with any distro”, so I gave it a go. I used to work on Windows 98, Windows XP and HP, HP-UX. The job I do now has nothing to do with Linux or computers. I neither am IT professional nor a geek. (OK, maybe a very little one:)) Today I use Ubuntu on my old HP nx9020 and Windows 7 on my brand new, shiny, lovely ThinkPad T420s. It’s just a few weeks old baby and the only reason it’s got Windows 7 on board is that I was curious how it looks and feels like and if it’s any better than XP. I’m not impressed. Actually, it annoys me more and more every day. So, the time to install some nice and working OS is coming. I like reading books, walking, chatting on IRC and learning new things. I’m not a very talkative person (as for a woman!) so you may see me hanging quietly at #ALUG quite often. So, this is me. And I look forward to chatting to all of you ALUGers! Krystyna (Medea)

7 6

USB Port Replicators
by Jim Rippon 02 Dec '11

02 Dec '11

Hi everyone, I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck or otherwise with USB Port Replicators - and specifically the sound and serial outputs on them. I've a system at home that lives underneath my desk, but has no sound card, but given my radio is on the blink I was looking at getting some use out of my mp3 collection and rediscovering some old tunes. Looking at something like the following ebay lot: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Targus-Mobile-USB2-0-Port-Replicator-PAEPR092E-NE… Appreciate any feedback :) Jim

3 2

Energy monitoring
by Mark Rogers 01 Dec '11

01 Dec '11

I'd like to play with one of the various energy monitoring gadgets that seem to be everywhere these days. I'm looking for one that will transfer data to my PC, and obviously that PC is running Linux (Ubuntu 11.04 at the moment, not sure if it will go to 11.10 yet...) Any suggestions/recommendations? I'm as lazy as they come so ideally I'm looking for something that can be permanently connected to my PC (therefore presumably a wireless connection will be involved at some point); I don't really want a box that collects data that I then take to my PC to download it once a week/month/year/never. And I'm also looking for access to the raw data, but also suggestions for suitable GUIs welcome too. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

5 21

Any PHP PDO/Sqlite experts here, can't fathom this error message
by Chris Green 28 Nov '11

28 Nov '11

I'm flummoxed by this error, even worse is that the code seems to work sometimes but I can't see any pattern in the data that causes it. The code is as follows:- try { $insQuery = "INSERT INTO log "; // $insQuery .= "(seqno, year, month, day, hour, minute, waterway, pk, place, distance, eng_hrs, fuel_cm, fuel_lt, note, type, sailing)"; $insQuery .= "(seqno, year, month, day)"; $insQuery .= " VALUES "; // $insQuery .= "(:seqno, :year, :month, :day, :hour, :minute, :waterway, :pk, :place, :distance, :eng_hrs, :fuel_cm, :fuel_lt, :note, :type, :sailing );"; $insQuery .= "(:seqno, :year, :month, :day);"; $st = $db->prepare($insQuery); foreach ($rows as $row) { $row['seqno'] = $seqno++; $st->execute($row); } $st->closeCursor; } catch (PDOException $e) { dbglog("PDO() insert error" . $e->getMessage()); dbglog("insquery: $insQuery"); foreach($row as $k=>$v) { dbglog("k is: $k, v is $v"); } } ... and what I'm seeing in the log is:- 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: PDO() insert errorSQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 25 bind or column index out of range 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: insquery: INSERT INTO log (seqno, year, month, day) VALUES (:seqno, :year, :month, :day); 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: year, v is 2011 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: month, v is 11 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: day, v is 12 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: hour, v is 10 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: minute, v is 00e 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: waterway, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: pk, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: place, v is Cappy 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: distance, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: eng_hrs, v is 2695.3 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: fuel_cm, v is 8.5 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: fuel_lt, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: note, v is Engine started after replacing blown mega-fuse, all OK otherwise 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: type, v is TEF 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: price, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: sailing, v is 1 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: seqno, v is 0 So what does "General error: 25 bind or column index out of range" actually mean, I could find nowhere that explains it. Now my guess is that it's telling me that I have a column name wrong somewhere but my 'log' table definitely has columns year, month, day and seqno of the correct type. Maybe I have the syntax wrong somehow for the VALUES() bit but again I can't find any really good explanation of exactly what the syntax is, it seems decidedly woolly. -- Chris Green

2 2

Any WordPress users here - is it really this awful to change a WordPress domain?
by Chris Green 24 Nov '11

24 Nov '11

I've been developing a simple web site for someone using WordPress (along with zillions of others I believe). I've now discovered that it is horrendously awful to move it to another domain! Not only are links in WordPress absolute but there are also loads of database entries which have the absolute URL in them. So one has to fix all the links in pages one has created *and* one has to search through the database and fix URLs there too. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!! Setting the 'WordPress Address' and the 'Site Address' on the dashboard settings page only fixes URLs generated by the code (i.e. the menu links to pages). Apart from anything else it makes doing maintenance/development a nightmare. Is there any way around this or is the only approach for maintenance to have two parallel sites one 'development' and one 'live' where one tries out changes on the development site and then repeats them (hopefully correctly) on the live site. -- Chris Green

4 5

Clam
by Bev Nicolson 23 Nov '11

23 Nov '11

Now it may be that I've missed something obvious here but I've got Clam installed but can't see anyway of running it, either with mouse clicks or otherwise. How do I do that? (Lucid, 10.10) Bev.

4 4

bash getopt
by samwise 21 Nov '11

21 Nov '11

Hi, Has anyone done anything with GNU enhanced getopt in bash to process incoming command line parameters? My understanding is that I have the choice of using the built-in "getopts" command within bash (on a CentOS 5.3 derivative distro), which doesn't support long options (e.g. --long-option as opposed to -l), or I can use the getopt (enhanced) 1.1.4 binary which lives in /usr/bin/getopt. I want to use long options, so I'm using the GNU getopt binary. An example script is below. Note that there is one oddity - for compatibility with some other related scripts, I need the first parameter to be something else ... so the first few lines are intended to munch $1 and pass all the remaining parameters to getopt. I don't think that should affect anything, but I've left it in as that's how I'm currently testing it. My problem is that I don't seem to be able to get the parsing to work as I expect. Specifically: # ./cmd.sh . -i -o 1 input -i is -o So the problem here is that it's quite happy to set the required parameter for -i to be -o ... when actually I was expecting it to catch that -i was missing a parameter. I think I had this working using getopts, but I need to be able to support long options now. I've messed around a bit with several different ways of writing the case script, but not managed to get it working any better. So, idle question ... has anyone got a script like this where the error checking is a bit more robust than the sample below? Cheers, Peter. #!/bin/bash paramArray=("${@}") unset paramArray[0] paramArray=("${paramArray[@]}") getopt -T if [ "$?" != "4" ]; then echo GNU enhanced getopt not detected. Quitting ... exit 1; fi # Override defaults with incoming parameters, if specified PN=`basename $0` ARGS=`getopt --name "$PN" --longoptions input:,output:,noshort:,verbose --options i:o: -- "${paramArray[@]}"` if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo "Invalid option specified or expected parameter argument missing. Quitting ..." exit fi eval set -- "$ARGS" while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do case "$1" in -i | --input) echo input $1 is "$2"; shift;; -o | --output) echo output $1 is "$2"; shift;; --noshort) echo noshort $1 is "$2"; shift;; -v | --verbose) VERBOSE=yes; shift;; --) shift; break;; esac shift done exit;

1 1

Relative risks of different ports/services being open
by Chris Green 21 Nov '11

21 Nov '11

I'm wondering what are the relative risks of the different ports I have opened up on my firewall. Currently the ports I have open are:- 22 - ssh (but limited to only allowing two IP addresses to connect) 80 - http 25 - smtp 873 - rsync (not sure if I actually use this now, must check!) I'm considering what the risks of opening up port 443 (https) are to use with shellinabox and ssh. This would allow ssh from a web browser anywhere into my desktop machine (in addition to https access to the apache server of course), is this a significantly bigger risk than the limited ssh access that I have now? My thinking is that the port 443 access to ssh *is* significantly riskier than my existing ssh access, however I'm not sure if I'm being overly paranoid given that I already have open access on port 80 to my web server. What I'm really asking is whether worrying about open ssh access (with a good secure password) is a bit irrelevant given that port 80 is open to web browsers? Or is the damage that could be done if someone *does* guess my password (or it gets out by some other means, quite possible) for ssh much worse than anything using a browser/apache exploit? Any/all help appreciated, including ways that I could limit the shellinabox access to specific clients. As it is the client I'm thinking of is my Kindle but nothing at the shellinabox end can see anything to do with the Kindle because the proxying in between effectively anonymises the connection. -- Chris Green

2 2

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 21 Nov '11

21 Nov '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 21st November, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://www.pjmcgintys.co.uk/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. We're usually to be found in the lowest section of the bar, near the library entrance to the pub. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

2 1

How can I deny certain countries access to my website
by Ian Douglas 19 Nov '11

19 Nov '11

For about a month one of my websites (or rather the "Contact Us" form on that website) has been under regular, daily, attack from hackers. The attacks are consistently coming from IP Addresses in Rumania and Russia. Each time an attack occurs I use my webhost's cPanel to manually add the IP to my cPanel "IP Deny Manager" list. This is however becoming rather tedious and time consuming and seems the wrong way round to do things as I am denying IP Addresses AFTER they have tried to hack in rather than blocking them BEFORE they attempt it. Is there a way I can simply deny access to my website (or, better, just it's home-made PHP based "Contact Us" form) to all Eastern European visitors? Alternatively, since my website is primarily focused on UK customers, would there be an easier way to deny all visitors access unless they came from UK, USA Canada, Eire or Australia? I realise that this is not specifically a Linux question but any suggestions would be welcome. Ian.

10 10

How to diagnose problem with special characters in a 'shellinabox' ssh login?
by Chris Green 19 Nov '11

19 Nov '11

I have set up shellinabox on my home system to allow me to connect from the web browser in my Amazon Kindle. I have it working OK to the extent that I can log in as a user whose password has no special characters in it, so the basic communications and connections are working. However my own password has non-alphanumeric characters in it and when I try and log in from the Kindle using shellinabox it always fails authentication. It fails if I log in directly or if I try and 'su -' from the login that I can do successfully. Logging in to shellinabox from Firefox works OK. So the Kindle->shellinabox connection is losing/changing something. When I type the non-alphanumeric characters in the working login they are echoed correctly so it's down to something in the interaction with login I think. Can anyone suggest a way of diagnosing this? -- Chris Green

1 1

Apache2 magic
by Barry Samuels 17 Nov '11

17 Nov '11

I have set up a second virtual site on my computer so that I can use www2 instead of www because that's already used and I want to keep it separate. I have a very simple html page in www2 and this is the exact code: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">  <html> <head> <title>6 Hour Live data usage</title> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10" > </head> <body> <img width="1250" height="800" src="/graphs/Power-6hr.png"> </body> </html> Notice the meta tag in the header which refreshes the page every 10 seconds. If I access this page with a web browser as a file i.e. file/// it works as expected, although I have to change the src= path to include / var/www2, but if I access it using http:// it doesn't update and if I use 'view/page source' I see that: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10" > has been replaced with: <link rev="x-refresh" href="" > Why should that happen? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

3 5

BOINC
by Chris Walker 14 Nov '11

14 Nov '11

I've recently installed (using the app manager and not by command line) the boinc program on my Mandriva machine but it's not connecting. I'm stuck now despite looking at the help pages. The manager program fires up and tried to connect to localhost and fails. If I click on the various tabs, it shows that 0 bytes of disc space are being used because it's not connected to any projects. But all the commands under the Projects tab are greyed out. So does anybody have any ideas where I'm going wrong please and what I need to to fix it? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Need to add remote screen to linux box
by Mark Rogers 14 Nov '11

14 Nov '11

On 09/11/11 17:29, Tony Tibbenham wrote: > Or you could go for something like > http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc2/testimonials/ for a truly tiny PC Thanks for this, I think this one looks pretty promising: http://fit-pc.co.uk/Trim_Slice_Value--product--41.html -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Energy monitoring
by Mark Rogers 14 Nov '11

14 Nov '11

On 14/11/11 11:23, Andy Taylor wrote: > Take a look at this - > http://www.retrocomputers.eu/2011/01/11/how-much-electricity-are-you-using/ > > Software logs to a MySQL database with a web front end. My meter is > connected to my server via a serial to USB cable. Thanks, that looks like the sort of thing I'm after. I've found what I hope is a suitable meter on eBay and will have a play. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

Network magic
by Barry Samuels 13 Nov '11

13 Nov '11

My computer has two network interfaces, eth0 (wired) and wlan0 (wireless), to connect to my router. The wired connection goes via a small network switch to which a laser printer is also connected. The computer normally uses the wired connection but sometimes I need to disconnect that and use the wireless so that I have a wireless connection to the router but the cable is disconnected from the router leaving my computer connected to the switch which also has a laser printer connected to it. Is there any way that I can use the laser printer via eth0 when my computer is running on wireless? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

3 4

Need to add remote screen to linux box
by Mark Rogers 10 Nov '11

10 Nov '11

I have (or will have) a small Linux server running a minimal desktop distro and web server. The server will be used daily by someone sat next to it (using a web browser). In addition, I need to put a 42" display elsewhere in the building which will use a web browser to show a page from the same server. There'll be no local mouse or keyboard. There may be more than one such display in future. Any good options? Presumably I could use an extra video card for a second display (not sure the server will have a spare slot but maybe a USB video card would do) and run everything from the server, however I don't think I can be sure to stay within distance limits for USB. On the other hand I could just stick a PC with the 42" display, but that would be overkill. Having something that sat on ethernet (and perhaps could be configured via SSH) would be ideal, I'm just not sure what exists? Note that the web application makes use of jQuery and AJAX so it may place some limitations of the choice of browser. The ability to restart the browser periodically would be useful, knowing how they all seem to leak memory! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

7 11

basic question about scripts, change user in midstream
by James Bensley 09 Nov '11

09 Nov '11

Hi Peter, I dont understand exactly what you're getting at here. Is the -u option of the `sudo` command what you're after? sudo -u fred whoami This would echo "fred". James.

1 0

basic question about scripts, change user in midstream
by Peter Alcibiades 09 Nov '11

09 Nov '11

How do I change user in a script, and then carry on with the task at hand? What I need to do is get the user to su to root, give the password of course, then carry on. For instance: su [and this then prompts for his password of course] cd /home/fred/Desktop [ now I would get him to enter a file name of a folder on his desktop and then...] chown -R fred filename What happens when I try this is that after changing accounts, the script stops. Very basic question.........., sorry. Peter

2 1

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 10th November
by Viperfang 07 Nov '11

07 Nov '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 ----- Hello Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 10th November at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

A more subtle (?) sqlite (or actually just SQL) question
by Chris Green 06 Nov '11

06 Nov '11

I have a database which, among other things has a date column and also has some text columns. Is there any way to ask for:- The value of a text column for the last date less than the current date E.g. I have data like the following:- Date Text --------- --------- 2011-11-4 Cabbages 2011-11-5 Fireworks 2011-11-7 Nutcase and I want the result 'Fireworks' given the date 2011-11-6. SELECT Text from db WHERE Date < '2011-11-6'; will give all previous rows, not just the row I want. I sort of need to to say:- SELECT Text from db WHERE Date 'is the biggest one less than' '2011-11-6'; I guess I can do:- SELECT Text from db WHERE Date < '2011-11-6' ORDER BY Date DESCENDING; and use the first row returned but this somehow seems inelegant. Does anyone have any better ideas? -- Chris Green

2 2

How to work out what "SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 25 bind or column index out of range" actually means
by Chris Green 06 Nov '11

06 Nov '11

I'm getting this error when using PHP's PDO to insert records into an sqlite3 database. It's only happening on some inserts. SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 25 bind or column index out of range Now I realise it's probably telling me that some column constraint is being contravened or maybe that I have an invaldid column name or something in the insert. However I can't work out what the error is and without some sort of pointer as to which column (or whatever) is causing the problem I'm at a bit of a loss to find the error. The insert query string being handed to the prepare() function is:- INSERT INTO log (seqno, year, month, day, hour, minute, waterway, pk, place, distance, eng_hrs, fuel_cm, fuel_lt, note, type ) VALUES (:seqno, :year, :month, :day, :hour, :minute, :waterway, :pk, :place, :distance, :eng_hrs, :fuel_cm, :fuel_lt, :note, :type ); and the execute query is being handed an array with matching keys. I'm *wondering* if the issue may be that a couple of fields have characters like '-' and ',' in them, do I need to quote or escape these maybe? -- Chris Green

1 1

HTML question - any way to do this other than using tables?
by Chris Green 02 Nov '11

02 Nov '11

I know HTML isn't strictly linux, but still it's related isn't it and there are lots of clever and helpful people here. I want to lay out some web pages in the following sort of fashion:- Top of Page Heading Sub-heading C1 Data C2 Data C3 Data More C1 data More C2 data More C3 data Sub-heading C1 Data C2 Data C3 Data More data More data More data and more etc etc Sub-heading Etc. Etc. Etc I want all of the columns under the sub-headings to be the same widths so they're aligned all the way down (i.e. the same column widths under all of the sub-headings). Using tables one could either set all the column widths explicitly (but very difficult to make it work at different resolutions then) or one could make the sub-headings a column span and just make the text bold (so as a result it's all one table). Is there any other way that would be less painful? I suppose using the column spanning method isn't too awful but it's a really pity that HTML has no other way of putting text in columns. Note that the columns are not all the same width as I have shown above. -- Chris Green

4 10

Problem 2 - System won't start again after CMOS battery failure
by Chris Green 01 Nov '11

01 Nov '11

I have a fairly infrequently used system in our lounge that I use occasionally when I want to display stuff on the telvision. Yesterday it failed to boot when I tried to use it so, after a few failed retries I went and got my laptop. As per "Problem 1" *that* wouldn't connect to the WiFi. To get round the immediate problem I got a long patch cable and connected that way, so we could see the pictures I wanted to show on the TV! So, I'd like to get the dead CMOS system back up and running. I've replaced the CMOS battery and loaded "Optimised defaults" into the CMOS. That didn't initially work at all because it didn't enable the SATA ROM and the system, though a few years old, has just one disk drive which is a SATA disk. I've now enabled the SATA disk and the SATA ROM in the CMOS and it gets a bit further, GRUB comes up and offers me three or four kernel versions plus memtest. Memory checks OK. If I just let it go on to the default kernel it pops up the disk ID, thinks for a while, then pops up the disk ID again with "Starting system" below, and that's it. I tried the recovery mode and it looks as if it can't read the SATA disk drive, though obviously the CMOS can as otherwise it wouldn't boot into GRUB at all. It goes through a load of timeout messages and then there's a kernel panic. I was going to try and produce some detail by copying to my laptop but that's waiting for the solution to "Problem 1"! Is there any way to copy/save the boot messages produced by GRUB in recovery mode so I can Google for them and/or show them here so that someone might be able to decipher what's wrong? ... and/or can anyone suggest something deep in the CMOS settings that might have been lost and is necessary for Linux to boot from SATA successfully? It's running Xubuntu 10.10 (I think!). -- Chris Green

4 13

Android phone management with Linux
by Mark Rogers 31 Oct '11

31 Oct '11

What is the best way to manage my Android phone with my Linux (U11.04) desktop? I don't currently use it for music etc, and all the stuff I've found so far seems to focus on syncing to banshee. I'm more interested in contacts, SMS/MMS, and maybe photos (I say "maybe" because it's easy enough to just drag photos off via USB anyway). I'm not particularly looking to sync the contacts etc with something else, just back them up, although sync would be fine. (Specifically: I went to NY recently and got a local PAYG SIM for the duration, then lost my UK SIM, so I now have a new SIM and have discovered just how many of my contacts were on the SIM not on the phone... Also, for the contacts that were on the phone it was obvious when I tried using them in NY just how many were prefixed 0nnn rather than +44nnn and a way to easily edit them all would be nice.) Also I'd like to archive off my SMS messages, so again it's not really about sync but just backup. Phone is an HTC Desire HD, although I will probably replace it with a newer Android (Samsung Galaxy S2 looking likely) in the near future. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

5 10

Agile East Anglia
by Paul Grenyer 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

Hi All I've not been around here for a while, but now I'm back! And I'm promoting a new group in Norwich which I suspect would be right up some people here's street. Inspired by the Extreme Tuesday Club (XTC) in London, Agile East Anglia's intention is to organise regular informal meetings for people new to Agile, Agile practitioners and Agile experts to meet, discuss ideas and network. I'm hoping to arrange the first meeting in late November at the Coach and Horses on Thorpe Road in Norwich. http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Agile-East-Anglia-4149630 -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer

4 5

Login puzzle
by Bev Nicolson 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

I now have a new to me machine. (Ubuntu 10.10, plus all updates.) On logging in I get an error message for the monitor to say (I think) that it's signal is out of range though it's fine once I'm in. However, oddly, I don't get to enter my password. This is, admittedly tricky when you've got a box right over the bit you need to type in but how do I sort these two things out? I hope this isn't a dumb question. I seem horribly good at those just now. Bev.

3 3

Problem 1 - Can't get WiFi to connect - always get "Bad Password"
by Chris Green 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

This is only one of several problems in a row that I'm having trying to get an Ubuntu 11.04 machine back to life after its CMOS battery died. However this WiFi problem isn't directly related, I wanted to use my laptop next to the dead computer to do some Google'ing for the error messages and I can't get the laptop to connect to my WiFi (I normally just plug it in to the ethernet). The laptop *does* connect successfully to other WiFi networks, it currently has wicd rather than trhe default Network Manager. The symptoms, such as they are, are that it sees the WiFi network with the correct SSID and everything but although I have checked and rechecked the password it fails to connect with a pop-up window saying "Connection Failed: Bad Pasword". Other computers can connect to the WiFi OK and I have checked that they are using the same password, they are. It's a fairly simply password so I'm sure I'm not mis-typing it. So, all I can think is that there is some sort of incompatibility between wicd and the router. In wicd I'm selecting "Use Encryption" and "WPA 1/2 (Preshared Key)", on the router (Draytek Vigor 2820n) I'm setting "WPA Pre-Shared Key(PSK)" Is there anything else anyone can suggest that might be causing the failure? -- Chris Green

1 1

Is it possible to prevent this web redirect?
by Chris Green 29 Oct '11

29 Oct '11

This isn't specifically linux but there are lots of knowledgeable people here, so ..... I'm trying to go to the following web page:- http://auberge.delecluse.free.fr When I load the above in Firefox (or IE for that matter) it pops up the web page momentarily but then, within a second or so, redirects me to http://www.cibleclick.com/. I've seen this sort of thing before but I'm more interested in seeing the 'right' web page this time. If you use lynx or w3m to go to http://auberge.delecluse.free.fr then you don't get redirected, but of course there's not much in the way of pictures to look at. Is there any way I can get Firefox (or something else) to show the wanted web pages? -- Chris Green

6 8

Re: [ALUG] Google Chrome - anyone use it?
by mick 27 Oct '11

27 Oct '11

On Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:22:03 +0100 James Freer <jessejazza3.uk(a)gmail.com> allegedly wrote: > > I wonder what you'd have written if i said i'd installed Chromium! <tinfoil beanie hat> Much the same. Chromium, or any OS which relies primarily on web (or "cloud") based storage and applications, has the same implications for reductions in privacy. Any use model which stores my data (in the broadest possible sense) on someone else's systems, particularly where those systems may be in a country where UK laws on data privacy do not apply, bothers me. When that system is owned by a company which explicitly makes money by aggregation of personal data and whose CEO has the ludicously cavalier attitude towards personal privacy demonstrated by Eric Schmidt (c.f. wonderful remark: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" [1]) I get even more bothered. > Installing Chrome was part of my hunt to find a better browser. I find > Firefox 'hangs' after any lengthy browsing... it always seems to have > done, i recall switching to Netscape back in about 2004/2005 because > it was so bad and hasn't improved much in many ways. Seamonkey seems > to have inherited some of that. I started looking for something better > and wasn't too impressed by Epiphany which is supposed to be Debian's > default browser [i think]. You could try opera. It isn't open source, or truly free in the "freedom" sense, but it is free of cost and it works well under linux. But beware here too of opera's ability to track your usage through its "opera turbo" option. This can be a useful option for speeding web browsing on a slow link, but it does this by pulling the data from opera's own caching proxy service. You pays your money.... > It seems google have taken the OS code and made their own - with it > perhaps some of their "sinful additions". I thought it was easier to > reply by numbering the paragraphs. > > 1] In my mind is do they really collect data about individuals? One > can suspect them of doing such things but why would they do it. They > are a business focussed on developing search on the internet. I see no > reason to believe they actually do anything with that data other than > pursuing that objective. Would they take passwords and look in detail > at what individuals access? The security risk is far too high. Someone > would have got into the google complex and splashed it across the > world by now - google would be dead within a couple of days. I'm sure > the google complex security is ten times that of Fort Knox but even > so. Yes they do. In the name of "personalising your experience" they will do all that they can to get as close to you as an individual as is possible. Consider how you are "encouraged" to sign up to google services "for a richer experience". And it matters not at all whether google itself uses that data, the very fact that it has that much data aggregated makes it an attractive target for those of malign intent (or governments armed with warrants). > 2] I don't find it ok but... i recognise that for them to provide an > excellent service finance has got to come into the picture somehow. > The fact that the advertising means that an organisation for a high > fee gets pole position on page one of a google search compared with > that pays less. BUT if one compares with other search engines it's > surprising how much they vary... but then only some of the time. So > how are Altavista, Ask.com etc getting funds to pay staff. I haven't > done any comparisons for a few years now i admit. I've just used > google as i've felt they were more ahead in research than others. > Google are very smart i must say... the features they provide for free > are excellent - they wouldn't be able to do that without finance > somehow. What have i browsed today; Spaceship Galactica, ebay, solid > fuel stoves - so what. In summary perhaps it's appropriate to say one > should be WARY of google recording visits. But then again one can > search 'death camps'... and all these places spring up across a > certain country - no one knows why/what purpose they are for [gosh > what have i written perhaps i'll get 'neutralised' next week by men in > black... google might be studying this email]. Google are not in business for my benefit, they do it to make money. I have no problem with any company making money (it's what makes the western world work (or not, depending upon your perspective) but I do have a problem when their primary mechanism of funding leads them to a position where taking liberties with personal privacy becomes the norm. > I have not found any evidence that google has blocked information >or in effect provides contrived searches.> Ummm proving a negative is difficult. How exactly would you know with any certainty that search results had not been tampered with? And in fact, "tampering" with search results is exactly what google is offering you in the name of "personalised experiences". (As an aside here, I was intrigued to discover that I cannot now view the onion news article I reference below without "signing in" to youtube. I get the messages: "The video that you have requested has not had a rating provided by the content owner and may not be appropriate for younger audiences." and "To view this video or group, please verify that you are of the appropriate age by signing in or signing up. If you would instead prefer to avoid potentially inappropriate content, consider activating YouTube's Safety Mode." No google, I will /not/ bloody well sign up just to view a video about you. See [4] for the image of the page I get. Maybe they are on to me. :-) ) > 3] You raise an good point here. I had a website that i used to test > out some mindmapping. I was chuffed that google had found it... maybe > it was from google toolbar - but i also tried a search at school and > it found it (no google toolbar used). I merely used google toolbar to > stop me deleting my valuable bookmarks when i did a reinstall [but > that was a while back and i'm rather better now at backups! I'd > remember everything apart from bookmarks]. Google is for finding info > and that's what it did - just because there were no links... doesn't > necessarily mean that google toolbar was reporting pages - it found > them. Since using bookmarks (html stored in home directory) over the > last few weeks i must say it's quicker than using google bookmarks via > the toolbar so i doubt if i'll be using it again. I should try > Chromium... but i've read a load of bugs and yet to see many for > Chrome. With respect, I think you missed a point here. The issue is that google toolbar reports searches to google. Once google has then indexed the pages (if they are not already public) they become available to anyone, regardless of whether that later searcher has the toolbar installed. So your finding the pages from a search at school is not surprising. No search engine can discover truly "orphaned" web pages unless the engine is pointed to those pages in some way. So google cannot just "find" web pages, they have to have an external link. That is one reason that google toolbar is sneaky. > 4] You could well be right. But they want to stop that legislation as > it would limit their scope for a search engine. Stuff shouldn't be on > the web if it's not to be found and read. I've been surprised at what > google's found when i've posted on various forums on topics of > gardening, dogs and classic cars. (Minor correction here. I meant "do not track" not "do not follow", but the issue is the same.) Implying a motive here is difficult I agree. But consider the track record. I tend to agree with the author of an article in wired [2] when he said "it’s about money that Google stands to lose if users of its browser get an easy way to opt out of its advertising tracking." > Perhaps i'm naive but i think google are very smart and deserve their > success. The World watches them but i think they're clean. As for > gmail; there are some things that irritate me but AOL and other's > nothing like as good. The 'conversations' make list replies very easy, > one can set an email client but i find them far too slow for my amount > of mail - only one i've found useable is Alpine but for > 'conversations' far too slow. Star important emails i don't want to > delete and when it comes to 'clearing', search the 'unstarred' and > then delete. Sure, I agree that they are smart. But I don't agree that they are clean. For an amusing, irreverent, and not entirely unbelievable view of google's attitude to privacy, see the onion news opt out video at [3] Mick </tinfoil beanie hat> Notes [1] See http://www.osnews.com/story/22603/You_Have_Zero_Privacy_Anyway_--_Get_Over_… [2] http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/04/chrome-do-not-track/2/ [3] Onion News Network on google opt-out http://www.theonion.com/video/google-opt-out-feature-lets-users-protect-pri… [4] http://rlogin.net/google/google-opt-out.png

3 4

Hello everyone on the mailing list!
by Adam H 25 Oct '11

25 Oct '11

Hi there everyone, I joined the mailing list today and thought I would introduce myself. I'm a software developer, writing mainly smartphone apps but occasionally I kludge together small bespoke tools when my boss decides he wants the workflow to be made easier/faster! I've been interested in GNU/Linux since around 2000 and installed my first distro (Mandrake Linux) around 2002-03. Today I use Puppy on a USB stick, because I have to use a Macbook Pro for work. Aside from things learned along the way as part of my job, I know quite a bit about GNU tools and software, but I'm still learning the guts of Linux, so to speak. I'm a complete geek, so as long as I'm fueled by PG Tips: ask me anything! I look forward to chatting to all of you :) Adam

11 14

Routers (as in ADSL routers and similar) and DHCP and DNS
by Phil Ashby 24 Oct '11

24 Oct '11

On 23/10/11 12:00, Chris G <cl(a)isbd.net> wrote: > Is it just me or are most routers' DHCP servers close to useless? > ... > However *none* of them provide name access to clients on the LAN, so I > have printers, a VOIP server, etc. on the LAN to which the router gives > IP addresses (using DHCP) but the router *doesn't* allow one to > reference anything by name. > ... > Am I just unlucky in the routers I choose or are they really all like > this? I'm running OpenWRT on my old Netgear DG834, this uses dnsmasq to serve DHCP and DNS, which automatically adds/removes local DNS entries when DHCP leases are granted/revoked. This works nicely for the PCs (linux or Windows) and my printer... Phil.

1 0

Routers (as in ADSL routers and similar) and DHCP and DNS
by Chris G 23 Oct '11

23 Oct '11

Is it just me or are most routers' DHCP servers close to useless? I have several, all of which can provide DHCP and most of them also allow you to set them as the DNS server such that they forward (most?) requests to your ISP's DNS server. However *none* of them provide name access to clients on the LAN, so I have printers, a VOIP server, etc. on the LAN to which the router gives IP addresses (using DHCP) but the router *doesn't* allow one to reference anything by name. This makes the DHCP server completely pointless! If I want, for example, to be able to refer to my VOIP server by name (it has a web server for configuration) then I have to give it a fixed/static IP address and put it in /etc/hosts everywhere, by the time I have done that for the printers too I might just as well turn the DHCP server off in the router. Am I just unlucky in the routers I choose or are they really all like this? -- Chris Green

3 4

HP Laserjet P1102
by Bev Nicolson 23 Oct '11

23 Oct '11

People may remember me wrestling with another HP a while ago. This is a new machine but I wondered if the results from CUPS below shed any light on the topic on why it says it may not be connected? E [22/Oct/2011:11:51:56 +0100] [cups-driverd] Unable to write "/var/cache/cups/ppds.dat" - Permission denied E [22/Oct/2011:11:52:19 +0100] CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer: Unauthorized E [22/Oct/2011:11:52:31 +0100] [cups-driverd] Unable to write "/var/cache/cups/ppds.dat" - Permission denied E [22/Oct/2011:11:53:21 +0100] CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer: Unauthorized Bev.

1 1

Open Office failing
by Chris Walker 23 Oct '11

23 Oct '11

I have Open Office running here (Mandriva 2010.2) on my 64bit i7 machine. It also runs on the Windows 7 side as the machine dual boots. The Windows side works and I use it to save some multi page spreadsheets. But whenever I try to open any of the spreadsheets here, OO fails to open them. It says it will try to recover the docs but as it doesn't seem to open them, it never manages to recover. The machine has gone through several updates/upgrades and yet the problem persists. Can anybody suggest what I might do to fix OO here please? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

1 0

Google Chrome - anyone use it?
by James Freer 21 Oct '11

21 Oct '11

[running Xubuntu] Just wondering if anyone uses it and what their thoughts are! I decided to have a change from Firefox. I liked Chrome and didn't find any problems - except for the bookmarks. In FF i installed the google toolbar and had all my bookmarks stored in my gmail account. Useful while i was teaching and using lots of different machines...(no longer) but i've got into the habit so i wanted to do that with Chrome. Setting up Sync and logging in to gmail i don't find it syncing at all. Having installed Chrome i then found that FF google toolbar bookmarks didn't work. Assuming there was conflict between the browsers i removed FF and google toolbar - problem remains. I think i've found a glitch somehow and will only know when i install the new Xubuntu release. james

2 2

sshd in single-user mode, resizing root ext3 partition
by Richard Lewis 21 Oct '11

21 Oct '11

Hi ALUG, So we've recently purchased a new server on which we intend to run Xen and hand out some virtual OSs to the students our Digital Sociology and Digital Journalism courses. The server machine has two HDDs and I allowed the Debian installer to set up LVM using just one of the drives, leaving the other un-partitioned. I let it create swap and root logical volumes with the root logical volume taking up all the volume group space not used by swap. Now, however, I realise that what I really wanted was a small root LV and then a large LV for Xen to use to store guest OSs which could use physical extents from both HDDs. In principle this should be a matter of: 1. Reduce the size of the / filesystem 2. Reduce the logical volume on which / is mounted 3. Create a new partition on sdb 4. Add sdb to the volume group 5. Create a new logical volume using all of the remaining space 6. Create a new filesystem on the new logical volume 7. Mount this new filesystem in the place where Xen stores its guest OSs However, I can't resize the root filesystem while it's mounted. And now the server has been moved to the rack. Before I face the ITS staff and ask to be allowed to login locally in single user mode in order to resize the root filesystem, I wondered if there's any way to, either: 1. Resize the root filesystem while it's mounted (it's an ext3 filesystem) or; 2. Log in to the computer remotely in single user mode so that the root filesystem is mounted read-only and is thus resizable? (such as running sshd in single user mode) I know this is total schoolboy stuff and please feel free to point and laugh. But after that, any advice would be very much appreciated. Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1 1

ubuntu 11.10
by nev young 20 Oct '11

20 Oct '11

Oh my. Oh dear. I've just upgraded (one of) my ubuntu VBoxes from 11.04 to 11.10. How do I get the nice previous gnome desktop back and get rid of the abomination that has replaced it. Of course, I 'spect everyone will think the BIG clicky bar down the left is k3wl and I'm just being an old fart. Looks like the entire household may have to go minty. -- nev

7 16

RIP DMR
by mick 20 Oct '11

20 Oct '11

For anyome who hasn't seen it, Jon "maddog" Hall wrote a nice piece in Linux Magazine. http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddo… Mick

1 0

Watching "Look East" on line
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 20 Oct '11

20 Oct '11

Greetings all! I am not managing to watch the BBC "Look East" news programme on-line. I start with http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv then set "Your location" to "Ely, Cambridgeshire", then select "Full Schedule" under "BBC One". Up comes the schedule for the day, and at 13:00 there is "BBC News at One" followed at 13:30 by "Look East - East". Also, at 18:00 there is "BBC News at Six", again followed at 18:30 by "Look East - East". But, in either case, if while the main "BBC News" programme is on I select "Watch Live", after the end of the main News programme it is followed by the London programme and not by Look East. Also, if I click on the "Look East" link, there is no option to watch today's Look East, but although yesterday's is allegedly "available on BBC iPlayer", when one clicks on this it is "no longer available"!!!! Any solutions? Or am I somehow just confused? Thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-Oct-11 Time: 18:59:59 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

2 2

Re: [ALUG] ubuntu 11.10
by Ben Bewick 16 Oct '11

16 Oct '11

I agree, I dislike the way the ubuntu desktop experience has evolved. I've always liked gnome 2, and would like to stay with it. Just a note, 11.04 is the current LTS Viper On 17 October 2011 00:18, Ben Bewick <viperfang(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I agree, I dislike the way the ubuntu desktop experience has evolved. > I've always liked gnome 2, and would like to stay with it. > > Just a note, 11.04 is the current LTS > > Viper > > On 16 October 2011 23:53, Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> wrote: >> On 16/10/11 22:29, James Freer wrote: >>> >>> As Wayne said once don't swop distros too much but get to know >>> one really well. >> >> That wouldn't be the same Wayne who is typing this from a shiny new >> installaiton of LMDE after giving up (for the time being) with Ubuntu >> 11.10.....? :D >> >> To be fair though I have been a solid Ubuntu user since just before 5.04 >> came out so I am long overdue a look around to see if the grass is greener. >> Pretty sure I could have wrestled it into something close to usable although >> still at a loss as to how or if it is possible to configure around some of >> the things like that "dash" that were annoying me. >> >> Will probably take a look back at Ubuntu for the LTS release. I am not too >> unhappy with some of the overall concepts in Unity I just think the >> implimentation is a bit off at the moment. >> >> As to LMDE...well too early to tell but everything I really care about is >> working. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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! >> >

1 1

Wanted - HTML 'report generator' for sqlite (or maybe mySql) database
by Chris G 16 Oct '11

16 Oct '11

I am looking for a way to display information from an sqlite3 database on web pages in the sort of way that a 'report generator' provides. I.e. I want to be able to have breaks and indents in the report with sub-headings etc. with the breaks being set by changes in the data. For example I might have weekly timesheet information and I want it output with weekly and/or monthly sub-totals:- Week 1 ------ Day Job Hours Monday ABC 1.5 XYZ 6.5 Tuesday ABC 8 Wednesday XYZ 8 Thursday AAA 7 XYZ 1 Friday ABC 6 38 (Maybe the totals for ABC, XYZ, etc. here too) Week 2 ------ ... and so on. It's pretty standard report writer stuff but I can't find anything that does it for web output. There are full blown application frameworks that can maybe do it but they are rather lower level than I want as the database already exists and is created by other tools. I just want a configurable report writer. Open Office can do some of what I want but it's clumsy with sqlite3 and I'm not sure if it can produce an HTML version of the report. -- Chris Green

1 0

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 14 Oct '11

14 Oct '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 next week, Monday 17th October, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://www.pjmcgintys.co.uk/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. We're usually to be found in the lowest section of the bar, near the library entrance to the pub. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

R.I.P. Dennis Ritchie
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 14 Oct '11

14 Oct '11

Good morning. This morning's news reports the death of Dennis Ritchie: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15287391 at the age of 70 (I hadn't realised before that he was younger than me ... ). That news article is not bad on the importance of UNIX and C. However, it could have tried a bit harder to describe the merits of UNIX as an operating system. I like to think of using UNIX as though it were a system of mountain streams, some of them torrents, some trickles, but all joining up and crystal clear. You could get to any part of the system by climbing the rocks, if you are agile enough. The things you drop into them here and there get carried down and emerge in the desired order and relationships, provided you drop them in at the right times and places. By contrast, systems which emerged 20-30 years after the early years of UNIX are more like the garishly decorated interior of a sluggish pleasure cruiser, with smudgy windows that you can't see out of while being served with cheap champagne and burgers, as the vessel lurches along a stagnant drab canal and lumps of effluent slap up against its bows, sometimes piling up and bringing it to a halt -- whereupon it sinks, leaving the passengers spashing and floundering in the mess. I hope we shall be seeing proper tributes to the clarity, simplicity and completeness of the original UNIX concept and implementation, and to its well deserved longevity, which owe so much to Dennis Ritchie and the other founder members of the UNIX team. Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 14-Oct-11 Time: 08:44:50 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

3 2

.htacces question - how to prevent access to sub-directories?
by Chris G 12 Oct '11

12 Oct '11

I have a common .htaccess file that I use for a number of wiki directories scattered around my server. I keep it along with the wiki software in git. This makes it easy when I fix/change things in the wiki software etc. as I can copy the whole lot out to all the wikis when I do an upgrade. I want to prevent access to some sub-directories of the wiki (specifically the data, conf, bin and inc directories) and I can't see any easy way to do this. OK, I *could* put a .htaccess file in each of data, conf, bin and inc but that seems a lot of unnecessary junk. If I could dream up a directive to put in the top level (wiki top level that is) .htaccess to deny access it would be much simpler to maintain. I'm only using .htaccess anyway because it simplifies maintenance, I could of course put all the contents of the .htaccess files in <Directory> sections of the main apache.conf file, it would be more efficient but I'd have to have a <Directory> section for every wiki and, if I moved a wiki, I'd have to change the apache.conf file. It's much easier to maintain if I put the wiki specific stuff in the .htaccess file. -- Chris Green

1 0

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 13th October
by Viperfang 10 Oct '11

10 Oct '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 ----- Hello Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 13th October 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

Web/Javascript (I assume) question - horizontal scrolling text from newsfeed - how?
by Chris G 09 Oct '11

09 Oct '11

Considering how many of these things you see around the web I thought it would be easy! I've been asked to put a horizontally scrolling text feed onto a web page and my Google searching has just turned up loads of sort of messy half-working bits of Javascript. Many of the sites which supposedly show how to do this don't even seem to work themselves which isn't very encouraging! So, is it really that difficult to display something like an RSS feed (could just be text headlines collected manually actually) as a horizontally scrolling line of text? Any pointers to examples of how to do it or to sites that explain it well would be very welcome. -- Chris Green

1 0

DHCP not setting /etc/resolv.conf
by Chris G 06 Oct '11

06 Oct '11

I am trying out my new TP-Link TL-WR743ND Wireless Client router. After a couple of minor configuration issues I have it working as a WiFi client to my main WiFi, this is in preparation for doing the same thing when it's on our boat using the marina's WiFi. One fundamental thing that I had to fix was to change its IP because (not surprisingly) it didn't want to work with the same 192.168.1.x subnet as the main WiFi/LAN. So it's now 192.168.13.1 and I have it working. However I'm currently having to manually edit /etc/resolv.conf every time I start up because Network Manager is emptying it. The TL-WR743ND is set up to provide DHCP and the settings look right to me. It's working to the extent that it's giviing the client laptop I'm using to test it an IP address of 192.168.13.100 which is the start of the DHCP range in the TL-WR743ND. The default gateway is 192.168.13.1 and the primary DNS is 192.168.1.2 (I have a dnsmasq server for the local LAN running there). But on rebooting I just get:- # Generated by Network Manager and nothing more in /etc/resolv.conf. The client laptop is directly plugged in to one of teh LAN ports on the TL-WR743ND and it has its wireless turned off so that *shouldn't* be interfering. Does anyone have any ideas what might be wrong? It seems unlikely that the DHCP server on the TL-WR743ND is that broken, is it?! -- Chris Green

1 0

Norwich 2600: This Friday!
by Ben Bewick 04 Oct '11

04 Oct '11

For those of you who are interested, there is a 2600 meeting in Norwich this friday, full details on our website! http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Efficient/simple basic data entry application for sqlite3 or mySql database wanted
by Chris G 04 Oct '11

04 Oct '11

I want a simple, straightforward way to enter data into a sqlite3 database, by this I mean:- I want to be presented with the existing table contents with rows across the page (it will fit across the screen, the database will have only five or six columns). It would be nice if I can customise the sort order. I want to be able to add data at the bottom where there will be an empty row by simply typing the data in and tabbing to the next field, no pop-up boxes or other hoops to jump through. None of the applications that I can find provide anything remotely as easy as this, both sqlitebrowser and sqliteman are very painful to use for entering data. The application can run on the local PC or as a web application. I already have a plugin for my Wiki that does most of what I want with the database but it can only do data entry with a single row of the database shown (i.e. what Access calls 'columnar'), what I want is what Access calles 'tabular'. If there's nothing suitable for sqlite3 I could use mySql instead. -- Chris Green

1 0

How to enable WiFi from cammand line on eeePc?
by Chris G 03 Oct '11

03 Oct '11

I have an Asus eeePc 701 running Ubuntu 10.04, no GUI just the base installation plus a few bits I needed. We now have WiFi available on the boat (where the eeePc is) and so I want to use it from the eeePc - does anyone know how to do it? The eeePC sees the Wifi as an ifconfig returns some information about it, what command line tools etc. do I need to configure it? The WiFi is pretty standard with "WPA & WPA2 Personal" security. -- Chris Green

2 5

cisco router
by mick 01 Oct '11

01 Oct '11

Hi Guys Clearing my cupboard again I have an old Cisco SOHO 97 (837 equivalent) ADSL router going spare (free to a good home). Could be useful to sopmeone who wants to be able to play with cisco IOS (trust me, you wouldn't want to use the web interface, it's crap). 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

Need some router/WiFi/routing help and advice
by Chris G 26 Sep '11

26 Sep '11

I need to 'rearrange' the internet connection on our boat. We used to have a connection via a 3G router with a Mobistar (Belgian) SIM in it and everything on the boat (two PCs, printer, VOIP base station) just plugged into the router. It was flakey at times because we didn't have a good signal, but it worked. However we are now permanently in France and our long term mooring has WiFi available (whoopee!) This rather spoils my nice simple setup and I need some advice to work out how to rejig things. The trouble is that neither the printer nor the VOIP base station can do WiFi so I need to have a switch at least to interconnect things. However even that isn't straightforward (at least not to me!). What's needed is:- Local (i.e. LAN) connection between PCs and printer, can be provided by a switch or router but needs to be routed correctly so PCs use the WiFi for everythng except the printer. At present I have to disconnect WiFi and connect wired LAN to print and then vice versa to use the internet. I need to connect the VOIP base station (wired ethernet only) to the WiFi somehow so we can use the phone. The ideal solution would be if I can persuade the 3G router (which does have wireless) to connect to the WiFi here and then provide hard wired services to PCs, printer and VOIP. Is this a normal sort of thing to be able to do? The router does have something about WiFi relay in 'Lazy', 'Bridged' and another mode, should I be looking at these? -- Chris Green

3 9

usb to parallel printer converter
by Peter Alcibiades 24 Sep '11

24 Sep '11

Does anyone have any idea for this? I have a star receipt printer with a parallel interface and no linux drivers. So I am printing to it using lp and just sending raw text to the device itself. The command in question, which works just fine, is: lp -d star temprint.txt In the same way, I send the hex characters to make it cut the receipt and also to open the cash drawer. I say it works fine, it has one slight issue which we can live with, that being that if the printer goes offline, all the print requests queue up and print out in a batch when it comes back. However this being an industrial strength receipt printer, its something we can live with, it hardly ever happens. Leaving that aside.... I set up the printer in CUPS with the name of star, and addressed as parallel:/dev/lp0 Now comes the problem. Parellel interfaces having gone the way of the dodo, the new computer I'm seeking to use only has a usb port. So I got a usb to parallel converter cable. I have played with this by stopping cups, then editing the /etc/cups/printers.conf file. I can't get it to work. Supposedly from the gentoo wiki, which is usually very helpful, you should address it as parallel:/dev/usb/lp0 On the grounds that linux still thinks its dealing with a parallel port. Makes no sense to me, but I tried it, and no luck. The cable itself is recognised and visible if you do lsusb. Also, I know it works fine as cable because I can connect another printer with a parallel port for which I do have drivers, and successfully print a test page on it over that cable. I must be doing something obvious wrong, but what? How do you address the usb port directly and just send it a stream of text, as in my present setup? Is there a way? Peter

3 2

Restarting Firefox from the commandline
by Mark Rogers 23 Sep '11

23 Sep '11

I have an Ubuntu box which I can access remotely via SSH. It is primarily a server but has a GUI with Firefox running on it for people on site to access the web interface that the server provides. Firefox, being Firefox, sucks up memory the longer it's running. So I'd like a way to force it to restart via my SSH connection, and assuming I'm happy with the results probably via a cron-job every night. I can obviously "kill" it, but I'm not sure how I then restart it given that I'm not running from within the GUI environment myself; also, I don't want it to start up offering to restore tabs from a crashed session, I just want it to go to it's configured home page. Suggestions? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

3 6

Partitioning Laptop
by Richard Parsons 20 Sep '11

20 Sep '11

Hi, I've recently bought a Compaq laptop. It currently has Windows 7 installed and I want to dual boot with Ubuntu. Unfortunately, Compaq have already partitioned the hard disk into four partitions. The largest partition, which is 480GB is the second. If I begin the installer, and resize the second partition to create free space, then I'm told that it is "unuseable". I believe that the extra partitions are for recovery etc. So what can I do? Is there a way of getting Ubuntu installed without disturbing the contents of the partitions already setup? Thanks in advance Richard

12 22

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 16 Sep '11

16 Sep '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 next week, Monday 19th September, 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, so if any one new wants to drop in, look for the guy in the corner with the latest copy of LXF ... ;) 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

Running CUPS as normal user
by Dan 16 Sep '11

16 Sep '11

Dear All, On my Gentoo system, /usr/sbin/cupsd has permissions -r-x------ i.e. it can't be run (nor even read) as a normal user. Does anyone know why, please? Is it safe just to chmod the file then run it as a normal user? (Background: my new printer, an Epson SX525WD, needs proprietary drivers - and I like to run proprietary software only as a special, low-privileged user.) Thanks -- Regards, Dan

3 5

GIMP frustration
by Bev Nicolson 09 Sep '11

09 Sep '11

I half expect someone to say how easy this is but I'm trying to join three photos together to form one jpg file. Easy to do in OO. In GIMP, I have no idea and the tutorial page doesn't seem to say anything on the topic. Help. Bev.

5 6

Re: [ALUG] main Digest, Vol 75, Issue 8
by Bradley Simpson 07 Sep '11

07 Sep '11

Just Delete a Partion. Hello this is the first time i have ever replyed so i am sorry iff i am a bit crap. I had the same problem with a HP i have got so i figured out which partion was useless and deleted it using GParted and the resized the HD with GPated again pretty simple, Hope that helps. On 7 September 2011 15:26, <main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk> wrote: > Send main mailing list submissions to > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > You can reach the person managing the list at > main-owner(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of main digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Partitioning Laptop (Richard Parsons) > 2. Re: Partitioning Laptop (Tim Green) > 3. Re: Partitioning Laptop (steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk) > 4. Re: Partitioning Laptop (Brett Parker) > 5. Re: Partitioning Laptop (Richard Parsons) > 6. Re: Partitioning Laptop (samwise) > 7. Re: Partitioning Laptop (Richard Parsons) > 8. Re: Partitioning Laptop (Stuart Bailey) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 13:16:36 +0100 > From: Richard Parsons <richard.lee.parsons(a)gmail.com> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: [ALUG] Partitioning Laptop > Message-ID: <20110907121636.GA7728(a)myfreesolicitor.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > Hi, I've recently bought a Compaq laptop. It currently has Windows 7 > installed and I want to dual boot with Ubuntu. > > Unfortunately, Compaq have already partitioned the hard disk into four > partitions. The largest partition, which is 480GB is the second. If I > begin the installer, and resize the second partition to create free space, > then I'm told that it is "unuseable". I believe that the extra partitions > are for recovery etc. > > So what can I do? Is there a way of getting Ubuntu installed without > disturbing the contents of the partitions already setup? > > Thanks in advance > Richard > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 14:05:28 +0100 > From: Tim Green <timothy.j.green(a)gmail.com> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Partitioning Laptop > Message-ID: > <CAE-w7J+rNTsE+pe1WNRxRAhC+oLKAOk0i0HGx9n46rq8W=YVdg(a)mail.gmail.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > On 7 September 2011 13:16, Richard Parsons > <richard.lee.parsons(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi, I've recently bought a Compaq laptop. ?It currently has Windows 7 > installed and I want to dual boot with Ubuntu. > > > > Unfortunately, Compaq have already partitioned the hard disk into four > partitions. ?The largest partition, which is 480GB is the second. ?If I > begin the installer, and resize the second partition to create free space, > then I'm told that it is "unuseable". ?I believe that the extra partitions > are for recovery etc. > > The partition is probably tagged and formatted with NTFS - delete it > from within Windows to be sure it is the right (empty!) one. When you > start the Ubuntu installer again it should see the hole. > > Good luck, > Tim. > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:33:29 +0100 > From: steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Partitioning Laptop > Message-ID: <4E6772A9.3070709(a)hst.me.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > I'm no expert, but I believe that a HDD set up with a partition table > can handle at most 4 "primary" partitions. That sounds like how your > laptop has been set up. > > If you change one of the "Primary" partitions to an "extended" > partition, then you can add extra "logical" partitions within the > extended partition. > > I doubt that it is possible to change a partition from Primary to > Extended c/w logical partitions without destroying the data on it. That > would imply having to backup, repartition, then restore. > Also, I don't know how Windows would cope with the new logical > partitions. In my previous experience, it can be quite fussy about > drive letters etc. > > I would also be quite dubious about the "recovery" partitions still > working if you change the partition structure that they're expecting to > see. > > I suppose it depends what's on the 2nd partition. Is it just for data? > Is Windows on partition 1? If that's the case you might get away with > it. e.g. > 1) Backup partition 2 (whatever drive letter it is). > 2) Delete partition 2. > 3) Recreate Partition 2 as an Extended Partion using all the free space. > 4) Create a Logical partition to restore the windows data onto. > 5) Create as many logical partitions as you need to need to install > linux. e.g. 2 / (root) and swap > 6) Restore the windows data onto the relevant partition. > 7) Install linux... > > Good luck! > And backup ***EVERYTHING*** before you start!!! > Steve > > On 07/09/11 13:16, Richard Parsons wrote: > > Hi, I've recently bought a Compaq laptop. It currently has Windows 7 > installed and I want to dual boot with Ubuntu. > > > > Unfortunately, Compaq have already partitioned the hard disk into four > partitions. The largest partition, which is 480GB is the second. If I > begin the installer, and resize the second partition to create free space, > then I'm told that it is "unuseable". I believe that the extra partitions > are for recovery etc. > > > > So what can I do? Is there a way of getting Ubuntu installed without > disturbing the contents of the partitions already setup? > > > > Thanks in advance > > Richard > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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! > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 14:41:28 +0100 > From: Brett Parker <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Partitioning Laptop > Message-ID: <20110907134128.GA29936@miranda> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > On 07 Sep 13:16, Richard Parsons wrote: > > Hi, I've recently bought a Compaq laptop. It currently has Windows 7 > installed and I want to dual boot with Ubuntu. > > > > Unfortunately, Compaq have already partitioned the hard disk into four > partitions. The largest partition, which is 480GB is the second. If I > begin the installer, and resize the second partition to create free space, > then I'm told that it is "unuseable". I believe that the extra partitions > are for recovery etc. > > > > So what can I do? Is there a way of getting Ubuntu installed without > disturbing the contents of the partitions already setup? > > You're basically screwed - you can only have 4 primary partitions, > usually when wanting to go over this you make on of those 4 an extended > partition and new partitions get created in that. > > I'd take a diskimage of the disk in current state, using something like > clonezilla, then rejig the disk to remove any partitions that you don't > need, (you'll probably want a couple of partitions for linux), and go > from there. > > The reason for using something like clonezilla to take an image first > should be reasonably obvious, means that if you need to get back to that > state you can :) > > Cheers, > Brett. > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 5 > Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 14:43:13 +0100 > From: Richard Parsons <richard.lee.parsons(a)gmail.com> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Partitioning Laptop > Message-ID: <20110907134312.GA7897(a)myfreesolicitor.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 > > On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 02:05:28PM +0100, Tim Green wrote: > > On 7 September 2011 13:16, Richard Parsons > > <richard.lee.parsons(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi, I've recently bought a Compaq laptop. ?It currently has Windows 7 > installed and I want to dual boot with Ubuntu. > > > > > > Unfortunately, Compaq have already partitioned the hard disk into four > partitions. ?The largest partition, which is 480GB is the second. ?If I > begin the installer, and resize the second partition to create free space, > then I'm told that it is "unuseable". ?I believe that the extra partitions > are for recovery etc. > > > > The partition is probably tagged and formatted with NTFS - delete it > > from within Windows to be sure it is the right (empty!) one. When you > > start the Ubuntu installer again it should see the hole. > > Thank you for that tip. I'm hoping to keep the windows partition though. > My idea is to reduce the windows partition to say 80GB, to free up > approximately 400GB for the Ubuntu installation. If I delete the second > partition won't the windows installation be lost? > > > Good luck, > > I think I'm going to need it! I'm wondering whether what I want to do is > even possible. Perhaps I need to be looking at a tool like Ghost? > > Richard > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 6 > Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 14:28:09 +0100 > From: samwise <samwise(a)bagshot-row.org> > To: ALUG <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Partitioning Laptop > Message-ID: > <CAEW9pC43xiSRGcWObteijh7+oMyyin0f1XNQC8DGv-2FaY7taw(a)mail.gmail.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > > Hi, I've recently bought a Compaq laptop. ?It currently has Windows 7 > installed and I want to dual boot with Ubuntu. > > > > Unfortunately, Compaq have already partitioned the hard disk into four > partitions. ?The largest partition, which is 480GB is the second. ?If I > begin the installer, and resize the second partition to create free space, > then I'm told that it is "unuseable". ?I believe that the extra partitions > are for recovery etc. > > > > So what can I do? ?Is there a way of getting Ubuntu installed without > disturbing the contents of the partitions already setup? > > > > Thanks in advance > > Richard > > Richard. > > The problem is that there can only be a maximum of four primary partitions > on a > disk, and your laptop ships with all four of them already in use. Simply > resizing one of the existing partitions won't help, because you won't > be permitted to create a fifth primary partition in the freed up > space. > > The easiest option is to just delete the two recovery partitions (you > should already have made some recovery DVDs from Windows, before doing > anything at all). That will allow you to resize the Windows partition > and create a new one for Linux. This approach means that if you ever > need to restore Windows on your laptop from scratch, you will be > wholly reliant on the recovery DVDs you made. > > The more complicated option is to backup the two existing recovery > partitions to files, and make a note of their partition information. > Then you can delete them both and create a new extended partition in > their place. This extended partition can contain multiple logical > partitions with it - so you can recreate the recovery partitions from > the files you backed them up to, within the new extended partition. > This approach will allow you to then create a new additional Linux > partition, either as a primary partition or within the extended > partition. If you ever need to reinstall Windows again, this way you > will have the choice of rebuilding the laptop from either the recovery > partitions on the disk or from the recovery DVDs you made instead. > > When I bought my HP laptop last year, I used GParted Live > [http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php] implement an extended > partition. The recovery partitions were fairly small in relation to > the total size of the disk so I figured it wouldn't hurt to leave them > intact. > > Peter. > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 7 > Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 15:04:15 +0100 > From: Richard Parsons <richard.lee.parsons(a)gmail.com> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Partitioning Laptop > Message-ID: <20110907140414.GA7947(a)myfreesolicitor.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 02:33:29PM +0100, steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk wrote: > > I'm no expert, but I believe that a HDD set up with a partition > > table can handle at most 4 "primary" partitions. That sounds like > > how your laptop has been set up. > > Yes, I'm pretty sure that's how it it. > > > If you change one of the "Primary" partitions to an "extended" > > partition, then you can add extra "logical" partitions within the > > extended partition. > > > > I doubt that it is possible to change a partition from Primary to > > Extended c/w logical partitions without destroying the data on it. > > That would imply having to backup, repartition, then restore. > > Also, I don't know how Windows would cope with the new logical > > partitions. In my previous experience, it can be quite fussy about > > drive letters etc. > > Yes, and sorry, I now realise that I'm asking about Windows, which is > hardly fair for a Linux mailing list! > > > I would also be quite dubious about the "recovery" partitions still > > working if you change the partition structure that they're expecting > > to see. > > Yes, good point. > > > I suppose it depends what's on the 2nd partition. Is it just for > > data? Is Windows on partition 1? If that's the case you might get > > away with it. e.g. > > I believe that Windows is installed on the second partition, but now I'm > even unsure about that. I find it hard to understand why Windows would > require four partitions. > > > 1) Backup partition 2 (whatever drive letter it is). > > 2) Delete partition 2. > > 3) Recreate Partition 2 as an Extended Partion using all the free space. > > 4) Create a Logical partition to restore the windows data onto. > > 5) Create as many logical partitions as you need to need to install > > linux. e.g. 2 / (root) and swap > > 6) Restore the windows data onto the relevant partition. > > 7) Install linux... > > > > Good luck! > > Thanks > > > And backup ***EVERYTHING*** before you start!!! > > Good advice. > > Do laptops ever have room for putting in a second hard drive? That would > be a better option. I suspect they don't though... > > Richard > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 8 > Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 15:26:15 +0100 > From: Stuart Bailey <stuart(a)linusoft.co.uk> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Partitioning Laptop > Message-ID: <201109071526.18015.stuart(a)linusoft.co.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > On Wednesday 07 September 2011 13:16:36 Richard Parsons wrote: > > Hi, I've recently bought a Compaq laptop. It currently has Windows 7 > > installed and I want to dual boot with Ubuntu. > > > > Unfortunately, Compaq have already partitioned the hard disk into four > > partitions. The largest partition, which is 480GB is the second. If I > > begin the installer, and resize the second partition to create free > space, > > then I'm told that it is "unuseable". I believe that the extra > partitions > > are for recovery etc. > > > > So what can I do? Is there a way of getting Ubuntu installed without > > disturbing the contents of the partitions already setup? > > > > Thanks in advance > > Richard > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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! > > Hi Richard, > Why don't you make an image of the windows partition using dd, then > repartition > as you like. dd the image back to the disk (same partition size of course), > then > install Ubuntu with dual boot. You won't need to worry about NTLDR in the > MBR, > since you will be using GRUB to boot either. > > This way also gives you a backup of Windows should things go wrong. > > Stuart > > > > Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS > LinuSoft (Managing Director) > Linux Specialist & Software Developer > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Phone: (0845) 658 3563 > Direct: +44 (0) 1953 878162 > Fax: +44 (0) 1603 858583 > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > http://www.linusoft.co.uk > > > __________ Information from ESET Mail Security, version of virus signature > database 6444 (20110907) __________ > > The message was checked by ESET Mail Security. > http://www.eset.com > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > > > End of main Digest, Vol 75, Issue 8 > *********************************** >

1 0

Re: [ALUG] cheap windows box
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Sep '11

07 Sep '11

On Wednesday 07 September 2011 18:58:15 you wrote: > Wow.. That website is absolutely amazing!! That's for posting it to > the ALUG list! Seriously tempted by the Optiplex 755 base units > they've got on there. Only £90 what a bargain!! > > -Simon > > > On 4 September 2011 22:31, Peter Alcibiades > > <palcibiades-first(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > > www.speedie.co.uk > > > > Peter > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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! Yes, they are not bad. I have bought from them in the past, and their stuff arrives promply, properly packed, and the price is reasonable. The available stock fluctuates wildly as you would expect. I bought a laptop for a charity a few years back, we put Mandriva on it, and its going strong today. I see they have quite a stock of laptops now. Peter

1 0

remote booting
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Sep '11

07 Sep '11

Question: is it possible to boot an existing system remotely, and if so how do you do it? The case I'm looking at is someone who wishes to just take the disk out of their desktop machine, and install it in a server someplace else in the building (for security reasons, it will be in a different secure environment), but boot from it over the network. So they would have a diskless workstation booting from their existing hard drive, but remotely. Is this possible? Or is there some way of doing something which comes to the same thing? I wondered also if the right way to go about this is xdcmp and remote login from a very basic desktop machine? Any suggestions gratefully received. Peter

4 6

Using sort
by Mark Rogers 07 Sep '11

07 Sep '11

I have a log file which looks like this: 20110905-000107 803 cmd1853 - Host:/127.0.0.1 opened command interface from port: 54365 20110905-000108 761 cmd1854 - Command: 20110905-000108 766 cmd1853 - Response: 201 Service ready 20110905-000108 766 cmd1854 - Response: 201 Service ready 20110905-000108 803 cmd1854 - Host:/127.0.0.1 opened command interface from port: 57052 20110905-000108 804 cmd1853 - Host:/127.0.0.1 closed command interface from port: 54365 20110905-000113 804 cmd1854 - Host:/127.0.0.1 closed command interface from port: 57052 20110905-000313 761 cmd1858 - Command: 20110905-000313 766 cmd1856 - Response: 201 Service ready 20110905-000313 766 cmd1858 - Response: 201 Service ready I want to sort it in numeric order on the cmd value. Note that the cmd number isn't always 4 digits and I want cmd9 to appear before cmd10, etc. Can I do this with sort? I've seen examples that suggest that something along the lines of sort -n -k3.4 .. would do it but I can't get it working in any of the various permutations I've tried. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

3 7

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th September
by Viperfang 06 Sep '11

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

1 0

cheap windows box
by Peter Alcibiades 04 Sep '11

04 Sep '11

www.speedie.co.uk Peter

1 0

Need a cheap windows box
by Montmorency 04 Sep '11

04 Sep '11

As in subject. At least 1.6GHz cpu; 2G of memory. HD doesn't matter. Even 40G would be fine. Katsmeat montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

3 2

A couple of git questions
by Chris G 02 Sep '11

02 Sep '11

While using git over the past few weeks a couple of questions have arisen. 1 - When doing a 'git commit' where does one, by convention, put the comment? Does it go before all the comments, after them, or what? I know it doesn't actually matter at all but I'd still like to know. 2 - What is 'git diff' invoking as a pager, and why? E.g. see the following:- chris$ git diff mychanges stable diff --git a/lib/plugins/config/settings/config.class.php b/lib/plugins/config/settings/config.class index 5075c60..01f15a5 100644 --- a/lib/plugins/config/settings/config.class.php +++ b/lib/plugins/config/settings/config.class.php @@ -774,8 +774,8 @@ if (!class_exists('setting_dirchoice')) { if ($entry == '.' || $entry == '..') continue; if ($this->_pattern && !preg_match($this->_pattern,$entry)) continue; - $file = (is_link($this->_dir.$entry)) ? readlink($this->_dir.$entry) : $this->_dir.$fil - if (is_dir($file)) $list[] = $entry; + $file = (is_link($this->_dir.$entry)) ? readlink($this->_dir.$entry) : $entry; + if (is_dir($this->_dir.$file)) $list[] = $entry; } closedir($dh); } (END) That (END) is a prompt waiting for me to do something to exit. This is on a 60 line high terminal window so the pager is unnecessary anyway! The real problem was that it took me quite a while to find out how to exit. -- Chris Green

2 2

Re: [ALUG] Updating Seamonkey
by Bev Nicolson 02 Sep '11

02 Sep '11

D'oh. Sent it Brett direct. Sorry. On 2 September 2011 10:48, Bev Nicolson <lumos60(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Why wait? If you want/need the newer software, you need to upgrade to >> a distribution that's < 3 years old... Getting more hardware shouldn't >> mean that you don't look after the old. Until the old goes in the bin, >> if it's being used, keeping it up to date is A Good Thing (tm). >> >> Brett. > > > Under normal circs I'd agree but what else can you do when your > computer refuses to let you upgrade? (It gets to certain point and > complains about lack of memory.) > > However, it seems there is a possibility of obtaining laptop sooner > than I thought. > > Bev. >

1 0

Church WiFi
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 01 Sep '11

01 Sep '11

Hi Folks, Back in the early 2000's, when Internet access in my Little Ouse/Brandon Creek area was limited to painfully slow dialup (not to mention many other remote places throughout East Cambs and North/West Norfolk), I remember discussing with fellow nutters in the Anglia Linux Users Group the feasibility (as I wrote at the time, Feb 2002) of the following: Come to think of it, ALUG should be a damn good place to ask this question ... A friend of mine, much knowledgeable, tells me that with directional antennae a line-of sight range of 10-15 miles should be attainable for wireless LAN. But it's equally a question of finding hospitality at the far end. Well, out here in the midst of optically flat nowhere, line of sight to almost anywhere is no problem. Problem is, almost everywhere is uninhabited. Nearest place which might have an accommodating college or such is Ely (10 miles, but on a nice mountain which boosts line-of-sight visibility). So there you are. I'm groping. But there must be some of you who've at least thought about this in similar terrain; so if anyone has any comments or suggestions I'd be most interested to hear! It might lead to an improvement on my current 33.6K bit rate ... and, come to think of it, converting Ely Cathedral to a LAN hub is a tempting notion. Best wishes to all, Ted. Well, the Broadband Revolution has rendered such thoughts obsolete at the Brandon Creek exchange, of course. But a news story this morning revives the notion, and has inspired me with a new twist to the idea. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-14734574 Inquiry into Norfolk church WiSpire scheme Plans to use church towers in Norfolk to transmit wireless broadband signals to provide better internet access for rural areas have stalled. [...] The scheme is a venture by the diocese and internet service provider Freeclix. Wireless receivers would be installed on church spires, acting as high spots, to give nearby businesses and homes access to high-speed broadband. Wi-fi hot spots would also be created in churches. So it seems there is still scope for my original concept out there in Norfolk. But I have a bigger concept now. These days, most people have Wireless Internet enabled mobile phones, so can be in contact wherever there is a signal. Not forgetting all those home computers. Which prompts me to think that we no longer have a need for priests and parsons to communicate with the Almighty. And the proposal that "Wi-fi hot spots would also be created in churches" is based on a narrow and outdated vision. I do not believe that God is so obsolete that he can't fill the Universe with WiFi signals, and receive any that are transmitted. He created all this stuff in the first place, and has been ahead of us ever since (though we may be starting to catch up). So, from now on, if you want to communicate with Him, just switch on your mobile and dial the Divine Number (which is not "666" -- that connects you to a different Infernet Service Provider). Then the ancient channels of Priest and Parson (whose information transmission rate has been stuck at about 0.001 bits/sec for millennia) can be closed down, and their infrastructure put to better uses (as seems to have been the idea behind the WiSpire idea in that news item, though still based on backward thinking). Then you can talk directly to God, and He can talk directly to you. If you pray ever so nicely, perhaps He will favour you by setting up a cosmic Internet hub, which will route all wireless communications from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. All He needs to do is to will it, and it will happen. Onward! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Sep-11 Time: 09:53:09 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

2 2

Updating Seamonkey
by Bev Nicolson 31 Aug '11

31 Aug '11

So, the best way of upgrading Seamonkey would be (I guess) via Synaptic, except Synaptic doesn't have the most up to date version available. <<apt get install>> followed by the version ? Or not? Thanks. Bev.

3 5

Full swap space on vm
by Jenny Hopkins 29 Aug '11

29 Aug '11

Hullo there, I admin a vm with Bytemark, and am wondering why the swap is showing as full. Htop shows Mem usage to be roughly half (out of 984MB), but swap is at 255/255MB and hasn't shown any signs of changing for several hours now. vmstat procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 0 262116 237032 58540 258224 2 1 5 1 4 4 19 10 69 2 swapon -s Filename Type Size Used Priority /dev/vdb partition 262136 262116 -1 cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness 60 Is there any way i can see what the swap is full of, or why it is full when there is plenty memory available? Thanks, Jenny

2 5

Load averages
by Mark Rogers 23 Aug '11

23 Aug '11

I've been playing with monit[1] to monitor a server which has been having some problems (specifically a service would stop responding to TCP requests, so although it was still "running" it was no longer any use; monit is able to make connections periodically and check whether or not the they're being accepted and giving the expected response). It comes with an example configuration for monitoring the system (memory/swap/cpu usage, and load averages). I have it monitoring load averages based on the configuration but I'm getting a lot of alarm reports every day and I need to tweak the config. The existing config is fairly self explanatory: if loadavg (1min) > 4 for 2 cycles then alert if loadavg (5min) > 2 for 2 cycles then alert On other words, if the 1 or 5 min load averages exceed the level shown for two or more consecutive tests (which take place every 2 mins) I'll get an alert. My question is: what would be sensible load averages to set the thresholds at, or are they essentially meaningless and I should ditch them? The server has a AMD Athlon(tm) II Neo N36L Dual-Core Processor so as I understand it a load average of anything up to 2 means the CPU is under-utilised anyway? [1] http://mmonit.com/monit/ -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

Re: [ALUG] Transferring audio to CD
by Anthony Anson 16 Aug '11

16 Aug '11

nev young wrote: > On 06/08/11 17:13, Anthony Anson wrote: >> >> Thanks. I'll look into it further. To connect to the audio bit on the >> flaptop I've got to make-up the cables (phono to midi-jackplug) before I >> do anything else - > Rusty, Take care if you're using a flaptop. The mic input is mono. The > second ring on the jack supplies volts to the microphone. > > see: http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/sb_micinput.gif Ah, oh, ta. Has to be the flatpot because the hi-fi isn't portable, neither is the (full) tower with Lenny on it. Tower's upstairs and hi-fi's down. The record should be mono (1961), so I'll experiment with the headphone jack and the amp set to mono - output there is on volume control, and I have a suitable cable for that. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

6 13

How to find (or navigate to) parent directory *without* following symbolic links?
by Chris G 13 Aug '11

13 Aug '11

The subject says it all really. For example I have a directory /var/www/wiki/lib/plugins/indexmenu which is a symbolic link to /home/chris/src/dokuwiki-plugins/indexmenu. I want a way (in PHP in particular) to be able to navigate up to /var/www/wiki but everything I try program-wise takes me back to the /home/chris tree. I'm sure on the old SunOs/Solaris systems I used if you navigated up on the command line it didn't go backwards up symbolic links, but on this xubuntu 10.04 system if I do, for example, 'ls ../..' when I'm in /var/www/wiki/lib/plugins/indexmenu I see the contents of /home/chris/src which somehow feels wrong to me. The real issue is in PHP though as there are many places in dokuwiki which use ../../.. to access things and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to do this when there are symbolic links involved. One can use regular expressions to prune /var/www/wiki/lib/plugins/indexmenu down to /var/www/wiki/ but this seems a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut. -- Chris Green

2 4

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 13 Aug '11

13 Aug '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 next week, Monday 15th August, 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 definitely be there, so if any one new wants to drop in, look for the guy in the corner with the latest copy of LXF ... ;) We're normally in the downstairs-from-the-bar-bit, nearest the entrance on the library side. 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

Text email clients--Cone, Alpine, Mutt--anyone ever tried Cone?
by James Freer 12 Aug '11

12 Aug '11

I've just been installing the choice of text email clients - above three to try out. Mutt and Alpine fine, but Cone i can't get the smtp bit right. I've contacted the developer on the Cone list who just replies with very brief ambiguous replies. It can't be much different from Alpine but so far can't get it to go. To use Cone it seems one is expected to be a mind reader. I doubt if it's better than alpine but it would be nice to give it a go. I've got Alpine to work but setting 'Roles' for mail i'm still not 100% sorted. I never thought text email clients were worth bothering with... once i'd got Alpine going i could see why... speed. I find Thunderbird and Evolution too slow for large amounts of mail. Anyone really know the 'ins and outs' of email [oops on the witty side this morning!]. --james

2 1

Further, more 'philosophical' git questions
by Chris G 11 Aug '11

11 Aug '11

I'm getting my mind round the mechanics of using git better now but before I go too far I have a couple of more 'philosophical' questions about it - not in the Plato/Sophocles sense, more in the how to use it sense! :-) It seems to make sense to me to use git 'directly' to manage places like ~/bin where one has a mixed bag of shell scripts and python. I.e. make ~/bin into a git repository. I don't see any significant downside to this, ~/bin is only for one's own use so you modify/create a script, test it and then 'git add' it to preserve the history. However I'm not quite so sure how to handle bigger projects and/or ones where there are multiple users (or at least multiple installations on my system). Taking dokuwiki (my current example) I can set up a local git repository which is derived from the dokuwiki repository latest stable release and then I can add patches of my own etc. and when the stable release moves on I can merge the patches into the new release. So far so good. However I'm not clear how, having got the 'stable release plus patches' 'git add'ed into the repository how do I then copy out to the various installations? I can't just copy what's in the repository as it appears because that *may* have further un-added changes. I don't really want to run every installation as a git repository. Is there a command to extract all the files from a given branch in git (which doesn't create a new repository)? -- Chris Green

2 2

A rather more specific git question
by Chris G 10 Aug '11

10 Aug '11

OK, I have set up a local git repository on my machine and have checked out a mychanges branch so I can add local changes. Is there any git way of comparing the files in the git repository with files in a corresponding (but with *many* more files in) tree somewhere else on my system? I.e. I want to diff each file in the git repository with a file in a similar tree. I think all the git-diff commands just compare different branches within a git repository don't they? -- Chris Green

2 2

How to use git (or similar) for locally patched versions of installed software?
by Chris G 10 Aug '11

10 Aug '11

I'm wondering what is the best way of setting about this. I use a PHP application called dokuwiki, it's mostly 'as released' and this makes updates etc. fairly easy. However I have a few local patches which I would like to keep track of and also would like to be able to re-install if/when they get overwritten when I get a newer version of dokuwiki. How do I do this using git (or similar)? I don't want to sit at the bleeding edge of dokuwiki releases which is where I would be if I ran a local copy of the dokuwiki git repository. What I want to do is to be able to use the current released version of dokuwiki but maintain a local collection of minor changes and patches. (Dokuwiki isn't the only software I'd like to do this with, it's just the one that's obvious to me at the moment). -- Chris Green

2 2

Transferring audio to CD
by Anthony Anson 10 Aug '11

10 Aug '11

Something which (strangely) I've never tried, as my business, such as is remaining, is in audio, but I don't rate the quality of CDs... Last week I bought an interesting and scarce 45 rpm record - a university rag record - and several Sheddi (denizens of uk.rec.sheds) would like a copy and scan of the label. Scan's no problem, but what program (under Squeeze) would people suggest for writing the best quality audio files to CD (or DVD)? -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

5 25

sudo crontab -e vs /etc/cron.d/xxx vs /etc/crontab
by Mark Rogers 10 Aug '11

10 Aug '11

I have a script, /etc/init.d/xxx, which I want to restart at 3am every morning. If I use sudo crontab -e .. and add MAILTO=<my email> 0 3 * * * /etc/init.d/xxx restart .. I get an email at 3am telling me that start-stop-daemon can't be found, so I assume that the environment isn't set up correctly? If I try creating: /etc/cron.d/xxx comprising MAILTO=<my email> 0 3 * * * root /etc/init.d/xxx restart .. then restart crond, I get no email and nothing appears to happen (I've tried with/without the MAILTO). On the other hand, just straight editing /etc/crontab and adding MAILTO=<my email> 0 3 * * * root /etc/init.d/xxx restart .. works a treat. I don't want to be directly editing /etc/crontab so where am I going wrong? Note that /etc/init.d/xxx is hand-crafted so could well be at fault here. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

3 3

Scanner now...
by Anthony Anson 09 Aug '11

09 Aug '11

Same project - the record, but I want to scan the sleeve and the label. Plugged-in a scanner - HP ScanJet 4300C, switched it on, and the tube lit as it should. Opened XSane scan. It found the scanner and identified it. So far, so good. Adjusted parameters to desired resolution etc and told it to scan. Acer began working hard according to the fan noise, scanner made a 'Tump' noise, and nothing else happened. I suspect a faulty drive/carriage in the scanner (never used that one before). Before I carry the heavy HP ScanJet downstairs to try that (it works - it prefers an UW SCSI connection, but it will work OK on USB) - is there anything I might have missed? Running Squeeze with Gnome 'desktop'. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

3 8

Re: [ALUG] Intelligent Linux backups
by Mark Rogers 09 Aug '11

09 Aug '11

On 09/08/11 17:03, Martijn Koster wrote: > You want a backup and a restore; and I can't recommend anything for that. > > What you could consider (for the future) is to look at something like Chef, and use that for the initial config of a machine... Later you can them re-run that on a newer machine. And if you wanted you could setup a service to store backups somewhere and then have the machine initialisation scripts pull the data from there. Unfortunately, all the uses I can think of for this are retrospective, ie take that box that works and work out how to re-install it. I suspect that the information I'm trying to get out would be quite useful in setting up an install via Chef though. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

Intelligent Linux backups
by Mark Rogers 09 Aug '11

09 Aug '11

Something like this ought to be quite possible but I'm not sure if it exists. I'm using an Ubuntu Server install (11.04) 1. Make a note of the base install (eg ubuntu-server) and version, from which a fresh install could be done on new hardware 2. Create a list of all packages installed/uninstalled relative to that base (by name, not version, assume that a re-install would be applied to current versions of the same packages). 3. Backup all configuration files which were created by the above but have been changed from the distro installed versions, ideally as diffs against the original files. 4. Backup all files which are not part of the distro install (ie as defined by the above), with a list of exclusions (to avoid backing up log files, for example). Does anything like this exist? It seems to me that it should be fairly straightforward (but my knowledge of the relevant packing tools isn't very good so I might be wrong). In principle it would be quite easy from this to backup (say) an 11.04 server and restore to an 11.10 install, and have something which would probably be pretty close to working. As an additional step, say 3a, it would be nice to do intelligent backups of certain files (eg proper database dumps to SQL) which could then be excluded from step 4. Aside from the above, does anyone have a good recommendation for efficiently backing up an existing server via SSH without pulling all the base install stuff but without missing anything? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

How to set mouse actions for a KDE application in [x]ubuntu (i.e. gnome)?
by Chris G 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

I use xubuntu 10.10 on my desktop computer but run a couple of KDE4 applications, one in particular being digikam. I want to get a single click to open images in digikam but no matter what I've tried it stays determinedly double click. In particular I have tried putting:- [KDE] SingleClick=true into ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals, but to no avail. Can anyone tell me how to get single click opening back into digikam (I'm sure it used to work once). -- Chris Green

4 10

Firefox isn't using system default typeface, how do I make it do it?
by Chris G 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

I've obviously changed something somewhere that has made Firefox stop using the system default font settings but I can't fathom out what/where. By this I mean the font used for all of Firefox's menus, etc. not the font used when displaying web pages. On closer examination it seems that if I change the desktop settings to something very different (e.g. Courier), then everything changes to that font. However when I change to my preferred DejaVu Sans then everything *except* Firefox changes to that and Firefox changes to a poor imitation of it. The font used in Firefox is not so tall and is less bold. In addition Firefox seems unable to use DejaVu Sans for web pages too. It's as if Firefox can't see DejaVu Sans but can see all the other fonts. -- Chris Green

3 6

Re: [ALUG] Transferring audio to CD
by Anthony Anson 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

nev young wrote: > On 08/08/11 00:54, Anthony Anson wrote: >> (Ted Harding) wrote: I can get one of those USB sound cards (which >> should be safe). >>> In which case: Where's a good place to look, and which are >>> good ones? (Oh, and would Debian readily recognise it?). >> >> First I've heard of them too, but filed in the noddle for future >> reference. >> > I have a thingy that works under XP. (and vister and se7en) > It has red and white phono sockets for (line level) audio input and a > USB2.0 (must be 2.0) connection to the PC. > Also has a composite video input. > > While I got it to transfer my VHS tapes to the PC it has a audio to > mp3(I think) function. > > As you're only doing one record you're welcome to borrow it. > I've taken a holiday from the VHS transfer just now any way. Thanks for the offer. I'll probably get by with a cable thobut. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

1 0

forensic specialists
by Peter Alcibiades 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

Does anyone have a firm or person they have used for forensic investigations and would recommend? I have a disk (ntfs) which I am looking at and need a professional with a track record to help with. Data recovery. Yes, I did make a clone using dd and worked on that in my bumbling way, so the original is pretty much as was when obtained. I've got quite a bit of stuff off but suspect a secure delete tool was used on some parts. It would be nice to get this confirmed if possible. Peter

2 1

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

main