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Blogging software that can be 'filtered' - any ideas?
by Chris G 12 Apr '11

12 Apr '11

I think I'm looking for some blog software (more to use for keeping tabs on my thoughts and as an aide memoire than for inviting comments) but I'd really like to be able to 'filter' the blog. I.e. I'd like to be able to tag entries in the blog with tags such as 'boat', 'motorbike', etc. and then have the ability to view the blog as a 'boat' blog or a 'motorbike' blog showing only the boat or motorbike tagged pages. One approach of course is simply to have separate blogs for each but it's also possible there will be overlapping tags and it would also be useful to see the whole blog at times. Any ideas if there's anything out there that can do this? If one could actually set the 'current tag' for a session that would be ideal. -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thurday 14th April
by Viperfang 11 Apr '11

11 Apr '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, 14th April at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on OFTC (irc.oftc.net) List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Cheap netbooks
by mick 05 Apr '11

05 Apr '11

Guys I know that some people on this list have expressed interest in cheap netbooks in the past. I have just noticed that Morgan computers are shipping refurbished HP Mini 110s (intel atom CPU, 1Gig ram, 250Gig hdd) for a very reasonable £175.00 inc VAT. OK, they have windows 7 installed, but that is fixable. (They also have the Acer netbook with windows 7 for £194.00 which they offer to "upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10" for ten quid!) 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Mini-itx case
by David Reynolds 04 Apr '11

04 Apr '11

Anyone have any interest in a Cubid 2699R mini-itx case? -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Strange mount problem, now fixed but I don't understand why
by Chris G 01 Apr '11

01 Apr '11

I have a 750Mb external hard disk that I use for temporary backups, moving stuff from system to system, etc. I has both eSata and USB interfaces. Yesterday I tried to use it to copy some files off my linux based WD NAS. I couldn't mount it:- root@backup# mount -n -t ext3 /dev/sdc1 /usbdisk mount: Mounting /dev/sdc1 on /usbdisk failed: Invalid argument (adding/removing the -n or -t options made no difference) Running fdisk on the drive showed the following:- Disk /dev/sdc: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 1 91201 732572001 83 Linux So I re-partitioned the disk with fdisk and recreated the file system with mke2fs. Now fdisk -l reports:- Disk /dev/sdc: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 1 91201 732572001 83 Linux Which is identical to what it reported before. However the disk now mounts successfully! root@backup# mount -n -t ext3 /dev/sdc1 /usbdisk root@backup# So what's different? I guess it must be something to do with the file system created by mke2fs. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Using rsync --link-dest continued, comments welcome
by Phil Ashby 01 Apr '11

01 Apr '11

Chris G <cl(a)isbd.net> wrote: > Well here's my initial attempt at writing the incremental backup using > rsync's --link-dest :- > ...[weekly rotating backup script] I got this going on my file server (not a NAS - it's a Debian box) using the following script, which can be executed at any interval that seems appropriate*, and retains a specified quantity of previous backups rather than a time limited number. I find that so little changes between backups that I can keep 100 of them on the same size backup media as the main storage (1TB, ~60% full). This should work in ash almost as-is, but you may need to use dc for the maths (subtracting 1) instead of shell built-in capability: TGT=`echo $BKP 1 -pq|dc` Notes: - This keeps the backup device mounted read-only unless a backup is in progress, to avoid 'finger trouble' nuking important stuff. - Uses the noatime option when mounted rw, to improve performance. - Since this is a full file system backup, it excludes rather than includes folders. - It doesn't try to back up if there is <10G of free space on the backup device (empirical determination, typically I see 10-20G of change at worst per backup). - Error messages (and debug) to stderr as this is run by cron so will get emailed to root (me). - Any issues are collected and stored in the backup folder. Phil. * - currently every 4 hours during the day but not overnight since the machine may be busy using my free overnight bandwidth :) ----8<---- #! /bin/sh # Take a snapshot of the current filesystem (minus snapshot folder and caches) #DBG=--verbose BACKUP_DEV="UUID=go-look-in-dev-disk-by-uuid-xxxxxxxxxxxx" BACKUP_DIR=/var/backups/snapshot EXCLUDES="/dev /proc /sys /mnt /media /tmp /var/cache /var/lock \ /var/www/.get_iplayer $BACKUP_DIR" # Time/date records BKSTART=`date` # Only keep up to 100 snapshots MAX_BACKUP=100 # 10GB in k MIN_SPACE_K=10000000 docmd() { [ -n "$DBG" ] && echo debug: "$*" >&2 $* } NEED_REMOUNT= remount() { docmd mount -o remount,ro $BACKUP_DEV $BACKUP_DIR } barf() { echo "$*" >&2 [ -n "$NEED_REMOUNT" ] && remount exit 1 } # Mount the snapshot folder read-write docmd mount -o remount,rw,noatime $BACKUP_DEV $BACKUP_DIR [ $? -eq 0 ] || barf "unable to remount $BACKUP_DIR rw" NEED_REMOUNT=1 # Space check docmd cd $BACKUP_DIR AVAIL=`df -k . |tail -1 |(read d b u a t; echo $a)` [ $AVAIL -gt $MIN_SPACE_K ] || barf "out of backup device space" [ -n "$DBG" ] && echo "debug: available space: ${AVAIL}k" >&2 # Rotate existing backups [ -d backup.$MAX_BACKUP ] && docmd rm -rf backup.$MAX_BACKUP BKP=$MAX_BACKUP while [ $BKP -gt 0 ] do TGT=$(($BKP-1)) [ -d backup.$TGT ] && docmd mv backup.$TGT backup.$BKP BKP=$TGT done # rsync changes into fresh backup, hard-linking unchanged files for p in $EXCLUDES do echo $p >>/tmp/backup-excludes.$$ done docmd rsync $DBG -a --link-dest=$BACKUP_DIR/backup.1 --exclude-from=/tmp/backup-excludes.$$ / $BACKUP_DIR/backup.0 >/tmp/sync-log.$$ 2>&1 if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo "rsync into $BACKUP_DIR had some problems, see log" >&2 docmd mv /tmp/sync-log.$$ $BACKUP_DIR/backup.0/RSYNC.LOG fi docmd rm -f /tmp/backup-excludes.$$ /tmp/sync-log.$$ # Time/date records BKSTOP=`date` docmd echo "Backup started: $BKSTART, completed: $BKSTOP" >$BACKUP_DIR/backup.0/README.DATES # Remount read-only NEED_REMOUNT= remount [ $? -eq 0 ] || barf "unable to remount $BACKUP_DIR ro"

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date command error
by James Bensley 31 Mar '11

31 Mar '11

Can anyone explain this? [user@machine ~]$ date Tue Mar 29 16:48:38 BST 2011 [user@machine ~]$ date --date="1 month ago" Tue Mar 1 15:48:47 GMT 2011 Shouldn't that last one say the date one month ago, not 28 days ago? (I suppose one month needs to be quantified). Not sure how 'date' has worked that out but I'm guessing the change in time zone might perhaps be to blame? Can anyone shed some light on this? -- James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/ There are 10 kinds of people in the world; Those who understand Vigesimal, and J others...?

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Using rsync --link-dest continued, comments welcome
by Chris G 31 Mar '11

31 Mar '11

Well here's my initial attempt at writing the incremental backup using rsync's --link-dest :- #!/bin/ash # # # Backup script run daily # dirs="chris dps laptop" today=`date +%a` case $today in "Sun") yesterday="Sat";; "Mon") yesterday="Sun";; "Tue") yesterday="Mon";; "Wed") yesterday="Tue";; "Thu") yesterday="Wed";; "Fri") yesterday="Thu";; "Sat") yesterday="Fri";; esac for dir in $dirs do # # # remove last week's backup # rm -fr /ExtendVolume/$dir/$today # # # Run rsync to create a new backup for today # rsync -a --link-dest=/ExtendVolume/$dir/$yesterday /DataVolume/$dir/ /ExtendVolume/$dir/$today done It works to the extent that it's creating the backup for 'today' on /ExtendVolume, I'll have to wait until tomorrow before I can tell if it's doing the hard links right. I get a warning error today of course:- --link-dest arg does not exist: /ExtendVolume/chris/Wed but that's fine, it's actually quite encouraging! :-) If anyone can suggest a better way of working out 'yesterday' than that horrible case sequence I'd love to see it. While the case works it grates rather when I look at it! (It has to be in ash or sh, the NAS doesn't have bash or similar) -- Chris Green

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Anyone know anything about rsync --link-dest option usage?
by Chris G 31 Mar '11

31 Mar '11

I'm aiming to use rsync's --link-dest option to do some incremental backups but I'm not absolutely sure I've got its use correct. What I'm going to do is maintain incremental backups for the last seven days, so they'll be in directories named for the days of the week. The script will work out values for today and yesterday and then do (example for today):- rm -fr /backup/Wed rsync -a --link-dest=/backup/Tue fromSource /backup/Wed Will this do what's intended? I'm less interested in detailed syntax errors but want to be sure I will get 7 days of incremental backups. -- Chris Green

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snd-hda-intel won't load automatically
by Jenny Hopkins 30 Mar '11

30 Mar '11

Hullo all, I've got an ubuntu (maverick) computer that is refusing to load sound modules on start-up. lspci: 00:08.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP79 High Definition Audio (rev b1) Subsystem: PC Partner Limited Device 437b Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22 Memory at fae78000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel The command 'sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel' loads the modules and all works, but this has to be run manually. The file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf: # autoloader aliases install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-0 install sound-slot-1 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-1 install sound-slot-2 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-2 install sound-slot-3 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-3 install sound-slot-4 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-4 install sound-slot-5 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-5 install sound-slot-6 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-6 install sound-slot-7 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-7 # Cause optional modules to be loaded above generic modules install snd /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-ioctl32 ; /sbin/modpro be --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq ; } # # Workaround at bug #499695 (reverted in Ubuntu see LP #319505) install snd-pcm /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-pcm $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-pcm-oss ; : ; } install snd-mixer /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-mixer $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-mixer-oss ; : ; } install snd-seq /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-seq $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-midi ; /sb in/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-oss ; : ; } # install snd-rawmidi /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-rawmidi $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-mi di ; : ; } # Cause optional modules to be loaded above sound card driver modules install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-emu10k 1-synth ; } install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-via82xx $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq ; } # Load saa7134-alsa instead of saa7134 (which gets dragged in by it anyway) install saa7134 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install saa7134 $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist saa7134-alsa ; : ; } # Prevent abnormal drivers from grabbing index 0 options bt87x index=-2 options cx88_alsa index=-2 options saa7134-alsa index=-2 options snd-atiixp-modem index=-2 options snd-intel8x0m index=-2 options snd-via82xx-modem index=-2 options snd-usb-audio index=-2 options snd-usb-caiaq index=-2 options snd-usb-ua101 index=-2 options snd-usb-us122l index=-2 options snd-usb-usx2y index=-2 # Ubuntu #62691, enable MPU for snd-cmipci options snd-cmipci mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388 # Keep snd-pcsp from being loaded as first soundcard options snd-pcsp index=-2 # Keep snd-usb-audio from beeing loaded as first soundcard options snd-usb-audio index=-2 options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=0 model=PC I added the last line after perusing the internet, but it doesn't help. Can anyone see what I can't? I'm not too hot on sound and modules and t'ing. Is this wrong: Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel ? Many thanks, Jenny

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Re: [ALUG] date command error
by James Bensley 29 Mar '11

29 Mar '11

Hmm, yes I see there are multiple ways to deal with it. This runs in a script, it runs with %Y-%m --date="1 month ago" but today it was of course returning "2011-03" so that is what sparked my question initially. I will change it and parse a day also as Ted mentioned, thanks all for your input, it is appreciated :) --James. (This email was sent from a mobile device)

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Archiving mail from an Exchange Server into something more "sensible"
by Mark Rogers 29 Mar '11

29 Mar '11

I have an "old" Exchange Server (2008), which I'm decommissioning. On it there are several mailboxes which I'd like archived so that I can access them as IMAP folders on another (Linux) machine in future if I need to. We no longer have an internal mail server of any variety to host the mailbox archive (we've moved to Google Apps) so I'll be settings something up specially (probably a virtual machine). The majority of the mailboxes are "general" ones like sales, accounts, etc, and a lot of the others are for people who no longer work for the business, so ideally I'll move the email into one new account with folders for sales/accounts/etc rather than create them as different accounts. Any suggestions as to the best way to do this? There will be several GB of email in total. My main concern is to retain as much information as possible, such as email headers and timestamps. I considered pulling all the email via POP3 into a mail client on my desktop but I'm not confident that I won't end up losing some of that information (timestamps being the main thing: I still want to see when the email "arrived", not have it look like the email arrived at the time I did the POP3 transfer). -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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ASDA online shopping -- website doesn't seem to like linux?
by James Freer 23 Mar '11

23 Mar '11

using Ubuntu 10.04 [also tried on my old machine on 8.04 and clean install on spare PC Xubuntu 10.04] Does anyone shop online with Asda. I've been using it for over a year now. End of Feb it started coming up with "our website is experiencing difficulties... please try again later". So i did... and got the same message every time i tried. I thought i'd made a breakthrough when instead of first 'booking a delivery slot', did the shopping (didn't get their message) and then after booking the slot back it came. I telephone and filled out their online form and apparently the website is working fine. It seems a] their website has been updated and doesn't like linux (which doesn't make sense using Firefox browser) b] Macintosh machines seem to get the same message It would appear they've done something on the website so linux users have problems. Does anyone else shop online with Asda by any chance... any problems? Any suggestions from a geek what could be wrong or what i could suggest in my next letter? thanks james

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Media playing software - do they all build their own indexes or what?
by Chris G 22 Mar '11

22 Mar '11

I'm just beginning to dip my toe(s) into moving recorded music and other such things (e.g. radio programmes) onto a computer or computers. One thing I'd prefer is to be able to keep all the files in a directory hierarchy of my own making rather than using a media player's own way of doing things. How does most media player type software handle this? If you point them at a hierarchy full of sound files do they build their own indexes from the shape of the hierarchy and the content (as in genre information etc.) of the files or what? Are there any (all?) that work like Digikam with images for instance where you can tell it to keep *all* of the information in the image files (as well as building its own index) so that if you move the hierarchy or want to access it with other software everything works still? -- Chris Green

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OT: Embedded development project anyone?
by Phil Ashby 22 Mar '11

22 Mar '11

Hi all, I've been offered a small development contract that I can't take up at the moment, and was wondering if anyone hereabouts would be interested. Details that I have at present: Porting C from AVR to Cortex M3 based SolderCore board (www.soldercore.com) Rowley Associates IDE available Please contact me directly if you are interested in more info and I'll put you in touch with the request originator. Phil.

1 0

Ubuntu Theme
by Simon Royal 21 Mar '11

21 Mar '11

Hi I use Ubuntu 10.10 and the default theme is an orange and black combo called 'Ambiance'. Every so often my EeePC boots to a different looking theme, a grey one that looks like a 9.10 theme. It doesnt do it every boot. I cant replicate it. If I go into Appearance then I can change it back. Any ideas? Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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PLay CDs with shift of pitch?
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 21 Mar '11

21 Mar '11

Greetings! The nub of my query: is there a program which will play an audio CD, with an option which allows the pitch to be shifted? Background: Since quite a while ago (at least back to the 80s) you could buy "Music Minus One" records (on 33rpm vinyl then), along with an appropriate printed musical scores. The idea was that you could buy, say, a piano concerto "Minus One Piano", so it just played the orchestral part, and you would play along on your piano. Likewise say a piano quintett "Minus One Piano", or a string quartett "Minus One Cello". If you are playing a missing string (e.g. violin) part, you can of course easily tune your instrument to the pitch at which the record-player is playing. Not so easy if you are playing the piano part -- you don't want to re-tune your piano each time! However, in those days you could find record players with a knob which allowed you to change the speed of rotation of the turntable, so you could tune the playback pitch of the vinyl disk. It seems Music Minus One is still available, but now they're on CDs, not on vinyl disks. And, for personal reasons, what I want is the "Minus One Piano". While I have a few of the old ones on vinyl, the disks are no longer in great shape, and also I no longer have a speed-adjustable turntable. Therefore, on the basis of the above logic, I'm looking for a program which can play back a CD with adjustable shift of pitch (and that's a "proportional" shift, of course, so that say lowering it by 1/4 of a semitone means 1/4 of a semitone throughout the whole bass-treble range). Any suggestions appreciated! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 10-Mar-11 Time: 17:49:19 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Kiddy Friendly Browser
by Simon Royal 18 Mar '11

18 Mar '11

Simon Just thought I would point out a serious flaw with the Firefox addon. It has to be manually activated by clicking on the K icon in the Firefox toolbar. There is no way of launching Firefox ready in kiddy mode, which I think kind of defeats the point. Simon ----- Original Message ----- From: Simon Elliott To: Anglian Linux User Group Subject: Re: [ALUG] Kiddy Friendly Browser On 13 March 2011 16:21, Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> wrote: > So at present they are running Windows XP on some good spec P4 Celeron > 2.5Ghz machines, but with all the anti-virus and anti-malware software > it makes the machines crawl. They are also using a kiddy safe browser > called KidZui which I think is a kiddy front end for IE You are mistaken.. Kidzui do a Firefox add-on. Problem solved? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/kidzui/ Looks like it runs full screen when you click the K on the toolbar, I wonder if there's a command line switch to launch Firefox with Kidzui enabled full screen automatically, pop that in the start up applications and you'd be away. -Si _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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Any suggestions for a simple way to print four passport photos on one sheet of 4 x 6 paper?
by Chris G 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Has anyone got any ideas of how to print four copies of a single image on a 4" x 6" piece of paper? I guess one way would be to put them into an Open Office document to position them but it seems a bit overkill for such a simple thing. -- Chris Green

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Is there a way to provide a secondary/backup SMTP server for Evolution?
by Chris G 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

We have (at least) two SMTP servers available to us for sending mail, in fact we have way more than that as we have two ADSL connections from different ISPs (hence two SMTP servers from them) and we also have two hosting services separate from the ISPs and they too provide SMTP servers. Is there any way that we can use these to provide some redundancy when sending mail from Evolution? At present I can't see any really easy way to do it as Evolution doesn't really allow for the use of more than one SMTP unless you manually change accounts. I run postfix on one of the machines here, I could point Evolution at postfix for sending mail, can one tell postfix to try an alternative SMTP server if the main/default one is down? It feels like the MX records for the 'smarthost' that we send our mail to (both from Postfix and Evolution at the moment) should provide this but I'm not convinced that it does. E.g. the mail relay I'm using for my local postfix is relay.mail.gandi.net and that doesn't return any explicit MX records in response to a query. The mail relay used by evolution is provided by my hosting at TsoHost and is mail.isbd.net, that does have an MX record:- chris$ host mail.isbd.net mail.isbd.net is an alias for isbd.net. isbd.net has address 188.65.115.75 isbd.net mail is handled by 0 isbd.net. I can manipulate the zone file for isbd.net but I'm not sure if that will actually do what I need. Can anyone help/elucidate/point me somewhere useful? A bit of Googling suggests that maybe Postfix's fallback_relay is what I need but I'd like to find a tutorial/howto because the basic manual is a bit concise shall we say. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Ugliest sites on the net.
by Phil Ashby 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

On 16/03/11 12:00, Bill Hill <mail(a)wbh.org> wrote: > Following from the pubmeet talk about the worst websites out there, (frames, > flash, geocities, vbsript!) well, after a bit of searching I've found again my > contender for this hotly contested category. > > http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/indexpage.html Ye gods (literally!). Did anyone dare to click through to the main page? This appears in a large font: "Pressurous Moments Storybook Collection" It's almost as if someone is doing it on purpose ;) P

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Ugliest sites on the net.
by Bill Hill 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Following from the pubmeet talk about the worst websites out there, (frames, flash, geocities, vbsript!) well, after a bit of searching I've found again my contender for this hotly contested category. http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/indexpage.html %-)

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Dual Boot On 8GB
by Simon Royal 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Hi Do you think it is possible to Ubuntu and XP, dual booted on an 8GB SSD? Im running Ubuntu on my EeePC, but I would like to run XP for a few apps. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Kiddy Friendly Browser
by Simon Royal 14 Mar '11

14 Mar '11

Hi I have young children who have computers. They used to have Macs which were running Safari, which had a great built in restricted web access and you could lock down the whole system so it was tamper proof. They moved to PCs as their Macs were getting a bit old and they use a lot of Flash sites and Flash is not well developed for PPC Macs. So at present they are running Windows XP on some good spec P4 Celeron 2.5Ghz machines, but with all the anti-virus and anti-malware software it makes the machines crawl. They are also using a kiddy safe browser called KidZui which I think is a kiddy front end for IE, it too is really bad. Its slow and chokes all the time, but it provides a massive selection of preapproved sites, vids and games. I ran Ubuntu on from a Live CD on one of theirs and it screamed. They both have the same machine and running one with Windows XP minus safety software and the other from a Live CD, the Live CD beat it hands down. KidZui is a Windows only thing and I wondered if there was anything like it for Linux, then I could dual boot Win/Linux for the odd occasion they might need Windows. I found some kiddy friendly distros but I am just after a way of letting them only have access to certain stuff on the web without too much hassle and not a whole new distro for me to learn. There was an excellent Firefox addon called Glubble we used for a while that offered a platform independent safe surfing environment but it no longer works. My kids are only 6 and 8 so it is only sites like CBeebies, NickJnr and Lego that they need access to. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Find environment variables used by some process
by Richard Lewis 14 Mar '11

14 Mar '11

Hi ALUG, Is it possible to query the environment variables being used by a specific process; from the outside? Specifically, I want to know if a running Apache has a particular environment variable set. 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/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Sent from my [insert device/mail clinet here]

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Ubuntu Update Manager Says No Internet
by Simon Royal 13 Mar '11

13 Mar '11

Hi Update Manager told me there were 6 updates, but when I go to download them it says I have no internet. I know I do as I have been on eBay this morning and am writing this in GMail webmail. Anyone else experiencing problems. Most of the updates were for Firefox and Firefox branding, so I thought closing Firefox might help but it didnt. SImon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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"top -bn1p1" shows constant system CPU usage of 4.9%
by Mark Rogers 09 Mar '11

09 Mar '11

top -bn1p1 .. should return the data for (b)atch processing, without any refreshed (n1), for process 1 (p1). (The p1 is there just to save it sending me data for all processes, I'm not interested in anything apart from the header information.) It always[*] on my test system shows 4.9%sy If I run top normally, I notice now that it always shows 4.9% on the first scan, then starts to vary. Any suggestions as to why it never deviates on first scan? [*] "Always" in as much as I have some code that logs the value every 5 mins, and for over a day it hasn't changed; it's a test server that is fairly heavily used during the day and not at all at night, so I'd expect some variation. All the CPU usage figures are almost static, there's max 0.1% variation in some of the others. Also, suggestions as to other ways to get this sort of information would be welcomed. All I want is some sample data to use in another process, so I'm logging CPU, memory and disk usage (etc) as reported by top and df. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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ssh conundrum
by Chris G 08 Mar '11

08 Mar '11

I have a shell login on host cheddar.halon.org.uk, while I was away for a few days recently (that bit's irrelevant really), cheddar.halon.org.uk was (presumably) moved to an new machine and thus its host key changed. So, when I came home, my passwordless login to cheddar.halon.org.uk failed with the usual ssh message about 'host key has changed', maybe a man in the middle attack, etc. I removed the relevant line from ~/.ssh/known_hosts, logged in again, the correct line was added to ~/.ssh/known_hosts and all was well again, or so I thought. However, it doesn't all work again as it did:- While ssh logins to cheddar.halon.org.uk from terminal windows on my GUI desktop are passwordless logins from shell console terminals (i.e. CTRL/ALT/n ones) ask for my password at cheddar.halon.org.uk (N.B. they don't ask for the key to my passphrase, it's the cheddar.halon.org.uk password that is asked for). I'm sure these used to work. More to the point my rsync backup to cheddar.halon.org.uk that runs as a cron job has also stopped working, it's expecting a passwordless login to cheddar.halon.org.uk but like the ssh login from a console it's failing because cheddar.halon.org.uk is asking for a password. So both the above problems point at some sort of screw up with ssh_agent but it's complicated by the following:- The file ~/.ssh/config contains:- Host cheddar.halon.org.uk IdentityFile ~/.ssh/np_id_rsa and ~/.ssh/np_id_rsa and ~/.ssh/np_id_rsa.pub haven't changed so why isn't it being used? Any ideas as to what else might have been affected by the host key change at cheddar.halon.org.uk? It's possible some previous misconfiguration was masking something such that the passwordless login was working for some other reason than the config file above but I still need to sort it out. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Best Format For External Drive
by James Bensley 07 Mar '11

07 Mar '11

On 7 March 2011 21:30, Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> wrote: > James > > I thought about NTFS, but it just doesnt play nice with OSX or Linux. > OSX hsa native read capabilities but its a struggle to get it to write > well - even using ntfs-3g. > > Simon Agreed (mostly). I would have mentioned the lack of write support from OS X as I use it every day but you only mentioned Linux and Windows in your original post. However, I'm surprised people still have any mentionable issues with Linux, I haven't in a long time (not to say that isn't just a fluke though!). If Mac wasn't going to be an issue I would have went NTFS simply because you never know what's going to be happening 6 months from now, however it may obviously be the case that you do know this...Evil which doctor :D -- James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/ There are 10 kinds of people in the world; Those who understand Vigesimal, and J others...?

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[ALUG Announce] Norwich 2nd Thursday Pub Meet
by Viperfang 07 Mar '11

07 Mar '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, This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 10th March at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). There should be people there from 8pm, although some poeple meet up 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 OFTC (irc.oftc.net) List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Mobile to PC software
by Bev Nicolson 07 Mar '11

07 Mar '11

I'm not wholly convinced Phone Manger is the one I'm after or if PC Suite will work happily with Ubuntu. (Actually on looking at PC Suite, it's got more features than I want or need.) My phone is a Sony Ericsson W205. All I want to do is save text messages onto my computer when my phone gets too full. Ta. Bev.

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Android mail client
by Richard Lewis 06 Mar '11

06 Mar '11

ALUG, We get a few messages blocked for moderation because (I think) they are base64 encoded; that is, the Content-Transfer-Type header says "base64". (Note that this is distinct from Content-Type; a text/plain message can be base64 encoded.) The pattern seems to be that all such messages are created using the Android mail client. A cursory Web search has turned up no solutions, but I did find an issue report: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2630 which I didn't read carefully enough to notice whether it includes a work-around or fix. This message is merely for information. 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/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------------ Every time you send an MS Office document, Bill Gates kills a kitten. ------------------------------------

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Iceweasel "mail client"?
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 05 Mar '11

05 Mar '11

Greetings, In order to bypass a possible "spam block" on my normal email client, I brought up the destination on their web page in Iceweasel, and clicked on their "mailto:" link. This opened a mail-composing window, into which I entered my message (with Cc: and Bcc: to my own address). I then clicked "Send". Since then nothing has happened. Seeking to try to track down what may have gone on when I did the above, I have tried to locate anything to do with email in Firefox itself. Complete blank! Can anyone point me to what this Iceweasel/Firefox email client is, what it does with emails composed as above, where it stores any copies, indeed where it stores anything at all to do with emails sent by this route? And what about any incoming mail? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-Mar-11 Time: 20:32:35 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Best Format For External Drive
by Simon Royal 05 Mar '11

05 Mar '11

Simon I plumped for FAT32 in the end. A nice all round compatible format. NTFS is a bit better but still has poor support under Linux and Mac OSX and while ext3/4 is a great one, it is only if you are using Linux only. Im only storing music and pics, none of which are over 100MB each file so FAT32 is good enough. Its only storage and backup and will not be accessed very often, mainly written to with new files. Simon ----- Original Message ----- From:Simon Elliott

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stupidly high load averages when VM is doing nothing
by mick 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

Hi Guys I am having a lot of trouble with one of my VPSs - a new one I bought for threepence halfpenny from ThrustVPS. I won't bore you with all the details of the problems I am having (I think the systems are HUGELY oversold) but I have one oddity which I am not sure is the ISPs fault or mine. The server is a XEN VM running Ubuntu 10.04 (server edition). I am seeing ridiculously high loads (regularly 2.5 upwards) when the server is actually supposed to be doing nothing. The only process I can see which may be responsible is a kernel process called events/1 which is chewing silly amounts of cpu - see top display below. PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 16 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 85 0.0 569:39.41 events/1 3196 root 20 0 19224 1420 1072 R 0 0.3 0:00.16 top 1 root 20 0 23688 1828 1244 S 0 0.4 0:00.90 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 kthreadd 3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.06 migration/0 4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 76:43.23 ksoftirqd/0 5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0 I confess I have /no clue/ what this means and I can't find anything useful through searches. Has anyone any idea where I should start looking? (uname -a Linux beam 2.6.32-28-server #55-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jan 10 23:57:16 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux) 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Our shiny new Alug twitter account
by Adam Bower 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

Hi All, I've setup a twitter account for Alug today which can be found at: http://twitter.com/#!/anglianlug For the moment we're planning to use it for meeting reminders and also as a central hub for finding Aluggers on twitter. Currently I'm running the account with Viperfang (Ben), if anyone has any suggestions for what else we could use it for they'd be welcome! Thanks Adam -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please.

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Best Format For External Drive
by Simon Royal 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

Hi I am about to format an external drive. I have a 60GB IDE laptop drive in an enclosure full of stuff and it is FAT formatted. I have a blank 120GB SATA laptop drive in an enclosure and I want to format it for use in Linux and Windows and then move everything from the IDE to the SATA. What is the best format. FAT32 is a bit old and clunky, what about NTFS. If it was just for Linux then I would pick ext3 or ext4. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Posting on the list
by Wayne Stallwood 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

This has been covered in responses to individual threads but I think it is time a global appeal was made. Please can we stop reposting the same question or updates to the same topic under different threads and/or with slightly modified subject lines. Those that are doing this may think that by "bouncing" their question like this they will raise the chances of someone with a solution responding but the reality of this is that it makes some of us not feel like trying to help at all. The specific objections to this are that beyond cluttering the list for those of us that employ a threaded view of posts this also..... Makes the archives harder to use, speaking for myself I take comfort in that by replying with a (hopefully) helpful response I am not only trying to assist the original poster but anyone else who searches the archives later on with a similar problem..if responses are split between threads regarding the same subject then it becomes less likely that the solution will be found. also By seperating the discussion across multiple threads the chances of advice being repeated is increased as it is less obvious what has been previously suggested by others. This doesn't help anyone...particularly the person with the original question. Many Thanks Wayne

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Re: [ALUG] Best Format For External Drive
by James Bensley 03 Mar '11

03 Mar '11

What about NTFS? If you mean, is it any good, it will probably be more beneficial than FAT32 (larger max file size, hopefully more stable). --James. (This email was sent from a mobile device)

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External CDRW
by Simon Royal 03 Mar '11

03 Mar '11

Hi I still havent been able to get my spare combo drive to work properly in my ThinkPad R31. It will burn CDs once into Ubuntu and XP but it will not boot a CD from it, so I have to keep popping back my original IBM CD-ROM drive. My other alternative would be to keep the original CD-ROM drive in and get an external USB one. Can anyone recommend a relative small/portable cdrw drive that will run on USB 1.1 (although I do have a USB 2 PCMCIA card but my wireless card takes up that slot). If possible I would like it bus powered and it needs to work under Ubuntu 10 or will pretty much any drive work. I dont do much burning, apart from the odd distro and a few music CDs. Simon.

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Cant Format SD card.
by Simon Royal 03 Mar '11

03 Mar '11

Hi I have an SD card in my EeePC and it is auto mounted at boot. I am trying to format it but it wont let me unmount it using the format or disk utilty. I configured it using Storage Device Manager which is a front end for fstab. Options set are: defaults,uid=1000,umask=0 It is a FAT32 formatted SD card. I am having problems with DropBox and one of the suggestions is to format it to ext3 or ext4. I can unmount it in Storage Device Manager, but then I cant format it. Any ideas? Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Re: [ALUG] Anyone use BBC iPlayer streaming? How fast a CPU for full screen?
by James Bensley 02 Mar '11

02 Mar '11

On 18 Feb 2011 21:05, "Chris G" <cl(a)isbd.net> wrote: > > I can't find anything helpful on the BBC site about this. > > What sort of processor speed (and memory or whatever else might affect > it) is needed to run BBC iPlayer streaming full screen? Full screen in > this case means 1920x1080. > > -- > Chris Green One PC is a Core2 clocked at 2.72Ghz, about 20% on both cores. But another PC has a Core2 at only 2.0Ghz, I don't watch iPlayer on there but watching 30GB BluRay rips/15Mbps video (so higher quality than the beeb offer), I get about 10% usage, like Wayne, on this box VDPAU is my friend also :) --James. (This email was sent from a mobile device)

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the continuing touch struggle - still baffled
by Peter Alcibiades 02 Mar '11

02 Mar '11

Thinking this must be down to the kernel version, I downloaded and installed the 2.6.36 kernel from Ubuntu and installed it using gdeb on my wheezy install. No, it don't make the touch screen work! Now, its true this is not the natty narwhal one, so that is maybe the thing to try next. All this is in aid of getting a version of webconverger that will drive touch screens for this kiosk project. However, thinking laterally, or maybe simply desperately, what we are now coming to is just to put in Fedora 14, which does definitely work with touch screens, then lock it down to some extent using pessulus. Not perfect, but given that life is short maybe this is the smart way to go. And yet, and yet, surely if all these other distros work out of the box, there must be some simple way to make debian work too.... Oh well. Peter

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Auto starting/stopping Linux virtual machine with VirtualBox on Win7 host
by Mark Rogers 28 Feb '11

28 Feb '11

Sorry, not entirely on topic here... I have a working ubuntu-server virtual machine, on a Win7 host. I need to make that virtual machine start automatically when Windows starts, and also have it shut down gracefully when Windows shuts down. Only one of these bits is really on topic: assuming I can send an ACPI shutdown signal to the virtual machine, what do I need to do in order to get the VM to shutdown? Anyone who can advise the correct method to run/stop the VM on Windows start/stop from the Windows end I'd also love to hear from you.... All my Googling so far (no doubt with the wrong search!) seems to be finding me support for a Linux host and a Windows virtual machine. I'm hoping that someone else here just happens to have done what I need! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Re: [ALUG] baffled by touch still
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

Fedora also works perfectly. It must be a question of the kernel version. Peter

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baffled by touch still
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

I'm completely baffled by this. It works perfectly under natty narwhal, booting from the live cd and doing no additional installs. Natty is rather unstable, but the touch screen stuff works. Natty is on 2.6.38, don't know if that is materially different for touch screen drivers. I am trying to see why it doesn't under debian. try xev, and it shows nothing happening when the screen is touched. The debian kernel is 2.6.32. When I do lsusb, it sees the device, gives bus 003 and dev 007. When I plug it in and out and try cat /var/log/dmesg I find this buried someplace in the results: [ 6.937367] generic-usb 0003:0408:3000.0003: hiddev0,hidraw2: USB HID v1.10 Device [Quanta Computer Inc. Optical Touch Screen] on usb-0000:00:02.1-3/input0 So it seems to be seeing the device itself, and it seems to be logging when its plugged in and out. There is no xorg.conf file in Squeeze, or in Natty. So my old quick and dirty approach to this will not work - generate one and then copy it over. Maybe try another live CD? Any suggestions? Peter

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touch screens yet again
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

In a fit of brilliance, this is really a partially sighted guy stumbling around amid the rocks, I did cat /dev/usb/hiddev0 and then touched the screen. This produces a string of garbage! So I know that the usb link to the touch is working, its actually sending data. Why then does not the system pick it up and treat it like a mouse movement? Peter

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/ full
by Chris Walker 26 Feb '11

26 Feb '11

I was trying to dd a laptop drive to an image file on a NAS drive and managed to fill up the / partition. I've now fixed that but in order to avoid the same problem, can somebody tell me how to duplicate a drive, or at least the recovery partition (it's a Windows drive) by specifying where the temporary file can go? Or if there's a way to do it without generating an intermediate file it would be appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Deleting Files In Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 26 Feb '11

26 Feb '11

Hi When you delete a file in Ubuntu it gives you no warning. Now I know that sounds pretty stupid and most of the time it is a time saver as you don't have to click 'Yes' at the 'are you sure' button, but it does mean things can accidentally get sent to the bin. Is there a way of getting it to ask before sending it to the bin? Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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question about touch screens
by Peter Alcibiades 24 Feb '11

24 Feb '11

I have a touch screen, T2250MTS, by iiyama. Boot from a Natty Narwhal CD, and it works perfectly. How do I find out what it is using on NN, and get Debian to use the same drivers, so it works on Debian too? I have installed the tslibs, and that does not seem to help. Peter

1 0

Installation fled to the bowels of /
by Anthony Anson 24 Feb '11

24 Feb '11

On the flatpot running Lenny, installed the Vodafone dongle using (if I remember the name corretly), Gdeb Ran the files down in user/shared, but can find no way of putting a link up to the 'desktop' or anywhere sensible, like Applications/internet Anyone have a pointer, please? -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Taking Music From iPod
by Simon Royal 24 Feb '11

24 Feb '11

Hi I am looking for a program to remove music from my iPod. It works fine in Ubuntu - it is an oldish 40GB iPod Photo - I can play and add music to it, but I need something to pull the music off. I had a couple of tools on the Mac to do it, YamiPod and Senuti, but havent found anything for Ubuntu. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Getting started with git
by Mark Rogers 21 Feb '11

21 Feb '11

Hopefully a quick and easy question... I have some code developed for a website on a test (Linux) box, which I'll call TestServer. A colleague has a copy, mostly in sync (manually), on his Windows desktop, ("WindowsDesktop"). Both of these are in my office behind my office firewall. I need to get the code onto a Linux box located in another office ("RemoteServer") in such a way as to allow me to make changes anywhere and manage the synchronisation, so I plan on setting up a git repository on my external server ("HostedServer"), and pull the site from (and push back changes to) it from RemoteServer. Of-course my starting point is that all of this has been done so far without any version control or other synchronisation. So, are there any pitfalls I should be aware of if I now try to get everything into git? Should I at least try to get everything synchronised in one location first? (I'd rather not, as I'd prefer to use git to manage that sync.) Are there any issues I need to be aware of given that one person will be using a Windows box? (I'm assuming they'll use TortoiseGit; I'll probably set things up on my Windows laptop too.) I've asked questions about git here here before and played around with it but still not used it in anger, but now I have someone I need to share development with I'm determined to finally get it together and use git properly. I don't want to ruin that ambition and fall flat by starting out wrong! Secondary issue: the sites make extensive use of a database. I should at least make attempts to ensure that the database schema is managed by git (but not the data in the database). Any suggestions as to how best to do this? Mark Rogers

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Anyone use BBC iPlayer streaming? How fast a CPU for full screen?
by Chris G 20 Feb '11

20 Feb '11

I can't find anything helpful on the BBC site about this. What sort of processor speed (and memory or whatever else might affect it) is needed to run BBC iPlayer streaming full screen? Full screen in this case means 1920x1080. -- Chris Green

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Woe upon woe...
by Anthony Anson 20 Feb '11

20 Feb '11

OK, not o bad as that perhaps, but I told Lenny to install Pan. Wanted a password, of course, which I tryped-in. Spat it out. I presumed it was the root password? (Can't unforget the term it used, but it wasn't my user one.) Now, I know the root password, or I thought I did - being paired with my user password in a reminder sort-of way - and I wasn't surprised when it rejected it, as for several weeks it had refused to let me in as user, even though I was feeding it the correct password. (Nev will remember it, in the Fat Cat). Now it has agreed that I really *do* know my password, I can get in as user, but not as root, so, thinks I, I'll do a search in / for the passworm file - search on - contains: my admin password. It failed to find it, or at least, to divulge it. So, I'm up a gumtree. But, I know there's a way of changing the root password without being root because a lot of years ago at a kitmoot a certain Mr. Ray did just that for me when I forgot my root passworm for Woody. Help? Pretty please... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

1 2

A proper newsreader?
by Anthony Anson 19 Feb '11

19 Feb '11

I'm getting a bit ipssde-off with Thunderbird ATM - none my news items will go - and I tried setting-up a new account with Eternal-epteber, and that won't send, either. So, I'm looking for a sensible newsreader which has decent filters - a crosspost filter is a necessity, and TB2 doesn't have one. I've been back through he ALUG archive (on pooter) and not noticed anything - a good search facility would be an advantage with any new newsreader, too... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Shoutcast list no longer available to Linux?
by Chris G 19 Feb '11

19 Feb '11

Does anyone here use shoutcast to find stations? I can't get it to work again (after an interval of several months) in either Exaile or Rhythmbox. When I try and download the Shoutcast station list nothing happens, or at least nothng gets downloaded. Are there any alternative station lists which are anywhere near as comprehensive as shoutcast? -- Chris Green

2 1

Recommendations wanted for small, probably laser, printer
by Chris G 19 Feb '11

19 Feb '11

We're after a small printer for use on our boat, doesn't have to be battery powered or anything like that, mains power is available. The main criterion is that it should be as small as possible because space is at a premium, I think also laser is preferable to inkjet because it will spend quite long periods idle. So, any recommendations, obviously we want it to be Linux compatible as well, but that's about it - compact, laser, linux compatible. Size doesn't seem to be an important criterion any more when searching for printers so it's difficult to find particularly compact ones. -- Chris Green

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DropBox SD Card
by Simon Royal 18 Feb '11

18 Feb '11

Hi I am having problems with DropBox under Ubuntu. I sync 3000 pics across an XP machine, an old Mac laptop running OSX and I used to do it on my ThinkPad running Ubuntu. I am now trying to set up the same sync on my EeePC. Ive not had a problem before and I have in the past used a custom location for my folder. In fact my ThinkPad had a shared partition for XP and Ubuntu and my DropBox folder sat in there where both OSes could access it and sync. It seems an issue with using an SD card as the source and I dont think - from I can find out - it is directly Ubuntu related. It also seems this worked until recently although people cannot determine whether it was a DropBox update or Ubuntu update. It just continually says 'Downloading ??? files', yet it isnt. If I pop the DropBox folder on the internal SSD then it works fine. Can anyone shed any light. I found some info about mounting fat formatted drives in a certain way using fstab, but that made no difference. If it a particular problem with FAT32 then I could change it to NTFS or EXT4. Any help would great, I need my DropBox working. Oh and one more thing. Uploading works fine. If I drop a file in my DropBox on my EeePC then it will upload no problem and the rest of the machines sync it. Obviously not the other way. If I drop a file in my DropBox on my Mac then it syncs all the other machines but not the EeePC. -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 18 Feb '11

18 Feb '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 next week, Monday 21st February, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://www.pjmcgintys.co.uk/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. We're usually to be found in the lowest section of the bar, near the library entrance to the pub. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. This month will hopefully see the return of Mr. Jamieson who's been out of action for several months, so be on the look-out for the loud guy who's clearly out on the town for the first time in a while. I'll also let ppl know about a new regular coding discussion meet-up (Java/Groovy/Ruby/anything etc.) which is due to be starting in Ipswich on the fourth Monday of the month (not fixed yet), if anyone's interested. Other than that, I might start another religious debate on vi versus emacs as I'm trying to make a sincere effort to pick one up again this year. Hope to see some of there! Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

Sort dd/mm/yyyy
by Richard Parsons 18 Feb '11

18 Feb '11

Hi everyone I have some data like this: something:01/01/1980:something something-else:12/05/1993:foobar another-something:32/01/2012:barfoo etc In other words, it's a colon delimited file in which the second field is a date in the form dd/mm/yyyy. How do I sort the whole file in date order by the second field? I can see that 'sort -k' allows me to pick the positional part of the fields and -t allows me to pick the delimiter. But I can't work out how to combine them so that the whole file is sorted. Thanks Richard

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EeePC
by Simon Royal 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

Hi First can I start by apologising for mutliple threads. I have started this one, but will keep all future questions within this thread. I am having sleep/suspend issues on my EeePC. It is odd as it works 50% of the time fine. I close the lid, it goes to sleep, I open the lid and press Esc and it wakes fine - sometimes. It is a 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. I cant replicate it or work out what is causing it not to work other times. Any ideas? Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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question about logging user activity
by Peter Alcibiades 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

Hi, We have got a grant from a charity to install a system which gives public access to a few hundred graphical exhibits, basically stuff we would like to have on display, but either they are too fragile, they are too big, or there is no space to hang them. To make the thing accessible we really need to have a reasonable amount of the information associated with the graphic, a few hundred words of prose, and probably a thumbnail. The grant was enough to buy is a nice big screen, we will reuse an older computer to drive it, and we'll mount it on a suitable stand for the public, and it also covered scanning these often very large graphics. We have pretty much decided to use tellico as the interface for this purpose. This is partly because all the information is in tellico already, its what we use for the main catalogue, so it saves work, and it means that keeping everything in sync is real easy. I feel OK about all this part, its just background and not the thing I'm asking about. A condition of the grant (as is apparently usual nowadays) is that we do tracking and evaluation on how much and if possible how the system is being used. This is the question. In the above circumstances, what would you use to log user interactions? If we only logged numbers of uses of the app, that would be a start, and a lot easier than getting questionnaires filled out, which people probably will not do anyway. If we could log which graphcs are being looked at, and how often, that would be very nice as we could think about other ways of making them more accessible. Any suggestions? I am sure it must be possible, but a quick pointer to what people have used successfully for this kind of thing could save an awful lot of flailing around. Peter

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Re: [ALUG] EeePC
by Alex Scotton 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

I was purely commenting on the irony behind apologising for multiple threads, within a new thread... I have no issue with the multiple threads, I use gmail which groups emails of similar subject anyway so pfft On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Alex > > Like I said I will not be starting any more threads. > > I don't really understand what the problem is anyway. > > I have a sleep issue - I write a post about it. Someone will reply if > they want to. I have a different problem on the same machine - I write > a post about it. Someone will reply if they want to. > > If all problems are in one thread it makes it hard to follow and check > if things have been resolved. > > I am on a number of groups and they all use separate emails for > separate issues, hence the reason I do it here. > > Simon > > On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Alex Scotton <alex.scotton(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> You've started another thread, to apologise for creating so many >> threads?.... interesting >> >> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Hi >>> >>> First can I start by apologising for mutliple threads. I have started >>> this one, but will keep all future questions within this thread. >>> >>> I am having sleep/suspend issues on my EeePC. It is odd as it works >>> 50% of the time fine. I close the lid, it goes to sleep, I open the >>> lid and press Esc and it wakes fine - sometimes. >>> >>> It is a 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. >>> >>> I cant replicate it or work out what is causing it not to work other >>> times. Any ideas? >>> >>> Simon >>> >>> -- >>> --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: >>> http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. >>> --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' >>> running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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! >> >> >> >> -- >> Alex Scotton >> mob: 07950 524744 >> home: 01603 768361 >> Web Design | Graphic Design | MySQL Design and Optimization | SEO, >> advertising and Marketing Services | Computer Repairs | Network, >> Active Directory and Streaming Services | NLB and Bandwidth Shaping >> http://goo.gl/FIbia >> > > > > -- > --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: > http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. > --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' > running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1 > -- Alex Scotton mob: 07950 524744 home: 01603 768361 Web Design | Graphic Design | MySQL Design and Optimization | SEO, advertising and Marketing Services | Computer Repairs | Network, Active Directory and Streaming Services | NLB and Bandwidth Shaping http://goo.gl/FIbia

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EeePC Suspend Linux
by Simon Royal 15 Feb '11

15 Feb '11

Hi Well everything is working under Ubuntu on my EeePC 701SD, almost everything. Sound, wifi, webcam and screen worked out of the box, but I am having suspend problems. I have searched the net and cant find any references to new versions of Ubuntu, they all relate to version 7 and 8. When I shut the lid, the EeePC goes to sleep. All the lights go off and the power light flashes which is it sleeping/suspending. When I open the lid it doesnt wake. I got a brief glimpse of the desktop for a spit second but then the screen stays blank. The lights change back to what they were before but no screen. Any ideas. EeePC 701SD and Ubuntu 10.10. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Eee Experience
by Simon Royal 15 Feb '11

15 Feb '11

Hi For anyone interested, my EeePC arrived today and I thought I would share my experience. I played with the built in Xandros system and agreed it was rubbish. It lasted about 2 mins before I was installing Ubuntu. I installed it via USB stick and it went on, no problems with the install. It took about 20 mins. So far everything is working out of the box, sound and wifi at least. Screen size seems fine. I have not tried out the built in webcam or mic yet but even if these do not work out of the box I can sort these out later. Mine is a 701SD with 8GB SSD. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Sysadmin work, anyone?
by Jenny Hopkins 15 Feb '11

15 Feb '11

Sorry to post to main with this, but if anyone would like a spot of work this guy is looking urgently for someone. I've taken on more work than is comfortable already, so have no time. Let me know if interested and I'll pass on his email etc. Thanks, Jenny Hi Jenny, About 4 months ago my mum passed me your email address about a bit of freelance sys admin work for a site I’ve been building with a friend for the last couple of years. In the next couple of weeks we are finally starting a proper advertising campaign, hence I’m panicking about having absolutely no concept of when/why/if our site will get overloaded/crash/go down. We are currently on a 1GB slice with slicehost.com, running a Django 1.1 site, with a PostGreSQL database and Apache 2/memcached (the memcached thing I am taking on faith from a previous developer who said he’d set it up, but he wasn’t the most trustworthy guy!). the website is www.gayhop.com, and at present have never had more than maybe 10-20 people online at one time (at that was just for a few days when we told friends about it, generally it’s just 2 or 3 of us connected simultaneously). I know from various reading around and asking slicehost support that our options are either to simply throw more servers into the equation (which I guess gets expensive pretty quickly) or go for a setup similar to this: http://rackerhacker.com/redundant-cloud-hosting-configuration-guide/ with a DB server, a static media server, a load balancing server, and an actual app server (or several of each). As you may guess, I know very little about sys admin stuff. I’m a frontend developer mostly, although I’m fairly competent with Django now, having had to write a lot of code to get things working the way we want after our Django developer left in September. But I know nothing of Apache/linux/server setup. I guess what would be great is to know: a) What you think we should do regarding our setup to minimise the chance of going down b) How much you’d charge to advise us and do the work, OR if you’re way too busy – whether you can recommend anybody else? {I asked him for a few more details....} Hi Jenny, thanks for your response. The idea for now would be hiring somebody to do a one-off job of advising us on the best steps to take to cope with higher numbers, and then implementing those. so for now no support contract, although if we find somebody good that would obviously be something we will need in the future. Our slice was setup by our last developer, I did none of it and really do know nothing! It’s running Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid) according to SliceHost. In terms of user numbers – really no idea! I’d want a setup that can at the very least cope with 100 online users at one time (maybe our current one can – I’ve no clue), though if advertising goes well this would hopefully quite soon get up towards the thousand mark. At that point though I’m sure we would need to re-evaluate our server setup anyway, and get a sys admin to do serious upgrading for us. Thanks again for your help already. Kyle Duncan

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Truths In SSD Writes
by Simon Royal 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

Hi I am awaiting the arrival of an Asus EeePC, which is SSD based. Ive been reading about the limited writes on SSD, with conflicting info. Does anyone have a clear info on this. Do they have limited write capabilities? Is this within a normal users/machines lifespan? What happens when it reaches it write limit. There are tricks to reduce write such as use a non-journalised file system like ext2 instead of ext3/4 and do not use a swap partition. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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USB Booting
by Simon Royal 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

Hi I am awaiting the arrival of my EeePC, which should be here tomorrow. It is still running Xandros - the lightweight Linux distro it comes with - and I would like to run Ubuntu on it. Is there anyway of testing if a USB stick will boot or is bootable if you have no machines that will boot to USB. I made a USB stick of Ubuntu 10.10 using Unetbootin. However, I have a 1.5Ghz PC tower that does not boot to USB, a Toshiba SP A10 that does not boot to USB, a IBM ThinkPad R31 that does not boot to USB and an Apple PowerBook G3 which is not x86 nor does it boot to USB. So, I have no way of testing whether this stick will actually work, although I see no reason for it not to. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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EeePC Users
by Simon Royal 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

Hi Are there any EeePC users out there running Linux on one? Mine should be here tomorrow and I am hoping to run the full Ubuntu 10.10 - not the Netbook version - on it. Has anyone any experience? It is a 701SD, so it is a 7" model with 8GB SSD. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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EeePC users
by Chris Walker 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

I've seen a few people here complain about their EeePCs so is this any help for you? - http://www.android-x86.org/ Scroll down a little and you will see this - ASUS Eee PCs/Laptops -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Overview
by Anthony Anson 11 Feb '11

11 Feb '11

The link 'Overview of all lists etc on the ALUG website is 404 (I was trying to navigate to a list for a new (Welshish) Ubantu user.) -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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SD & Flash Drives
by Simon Royal 10 Feb '11

10 Feb '11

Hi How reliable and durable are SD Cards and Flash memory. Im thinking of getting an netbook, one of those little EeePC things but the earlier models have limited internal Flash memory. So, extra storage would be in the shape of Flash drives or SD cards. How reliable are they for storing stuff? I read somewhere about the 100,000 rewrite limitation, but how true is this. Ive got a USB thumb drive that I have had for about 6 years and it is still going strong. It has outlasted some of my newer ones. It used to house my website files so was used on a daily basis, written to dozens of times at once. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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[ALUG Announce] Norwich 2nd Thursday Pub Meet
by Adam Bower 10 Feb '11

10 Feb '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 ----- Hi Geeks, This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place tonight which is 10th February 2011 at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ (website is now updated with new menus and booze lists). People will be there from 8pm, If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll hopefully point you in the right direction. Another possibility is to look for heaps of electronics on a table that look rather like explosives props from action movies, if you see them then you've found us. See you all tonight. Adam -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Cataloguing a phone
by Chris Walker 10 Feb '11

10 Feb '11

I've just bought my wife a new phone, a Nokia C6 and want to make sure that everything is off the old phone, a Nokia N95. If I hook them both up to the machine and run lsusb, I see this :- Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0421:032b Nokia Mobile Phones < - C6 Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0510:0032 Sejin Electron, Inc. Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 002: ID 1a7c:0068 Bus 005 Device 003: ID 041e:4052 Creative Technology, Ltd Live! Cam Vista IM Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 004: ID 0421:04f0 Nokia Mobile Phones < N95 But how do I see what's on them? My wife tells me that there are some important messages and pictures on the N95 which she doesn't want to lose. Using her Windows XP laptop, I did a backup of the 95 and Nokia PC Suite said that it had transferred everything over but we can't see those pictures anywhere on the C6. I did think that I could run a dd command to make an image of the phone and its associated memory card. The card is less of a problem as I can take that out of the phone and catalogue in a reader, assuming I have one for a MicroSD card. but the phone is not allowing me to talk to it so any help appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Is there any way to prevent those annoying 'share' pop-ups in Firefox?
by Chris G 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

Do those 'share' bookmarking pop-ups annoy anyone else? They drive me crazy popping up when the cursor moves over them. Is there any way to stop them popping up? They're obviously not standard pop-up windows because I already have 'Block Pop-ups' ticked in my preferences. -- Chris Green

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Wanted Hardware?
by Chris Walker 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

My son has given me 3 IDE Removable Caddy enclosures. If you don't know what I mean, take a look at these item numbers in ebay - 370480425397 or 320605837171 They don't come with drives but they're free if anybody wants them. They're white unlike one of the items I've listed and don't have fans. I'm in Wymondham if that helps but I do come into Norwich on occasions. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives
by mark fernandes (IFR) 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

Hi Simon, My 701 eeepc has had no problems with SD or other USB sticks when hooked upto a Huawei 3G soap-bar. Maybe Tony had a duff one. Interested in distro's too. Have used Multiboot to make a USB sick with multiple distros to check feature support. So far Ubuntu NBR 10.10, eeebuntu and Lubuntu (you may detect a theme here :-)) have been tried and am leaning towards lubuntu (as per my son's desktop PC). That said Xandros has been fine as long as you're using the eeepc as an appliance. USB sticks - I've had 2 fail in about 10 years - mainly corruption of files. As has been said it depends on repeated writes to same block and it is a MEAN time between failures (MTBF) so your mileage may vary (it's the distribution about the mean that matters). Regards, Mark ________________________________________ From: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk [main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk [main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk] Sent: 06 February 2011 12:00 To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: main Digest, Vol 68, Issue 5 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. SD & Flash Drives (Simon Royal) 2. FOR SALE: ThinkPad R31 (Simon Royal) 3. Re: SD & Flash Drives (Anthony Anson) 4. Re: SD & Flash Drives (Wayne Stallwood) 5. Re: SD & Flash Drives (Adam Bower) 6. Re: SD & Flash Drives (Anthony Anson) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 22:38:03 +0000 From: Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> Subject: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: Anglian Linux User Group <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <AANLkTik7dfeChRXk1X0psrX1EEsMr4GsK5ecDw0gJmUU(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi How reliable and durable are SD Cards and Flash memory. Im thinking of getting an netbook, one of those little EeePC things but the earlier models have limited internal Flash memory. So, extra storage would be in the shape of Flash drives or SD cards. How reliable are they for storing stuff? I read somewhere about the 100,000 rewrite limitation, but how true is this. Ive got a USB thumb drive that I have had for about 6 years and it is still going strong. It has outlasted some of my newer ones. It used to house my website files so was used on a daily basis, written to dozens of times at once. Simon -- --- Twitter:?http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal?- LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum?- Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1 ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 23:10:27 +0000 From: Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> Subject: [ALUG] FOR SALE: ThinkPad R31 To: Anglian Linux User Group <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <AANLkTi==ziQL1qaZo0bvvmqYBQ7Dj4JsCsMQX_eF1jPm(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi. I am looking at moving to an ultra portable netbook and to do so would need to sell my ThinkPad to make funds for it. So up for sale is my IBM ThinkPad R31. Celeron 1.1Ghz. 512MB RAM (1GB Max, currently has 1x 512MB) 60GB hard drive. CDROM. Comes with two batteries. One is dead, the other holds charge but is temperamental on charging. Original power supply. The rear USB port is broken, so I have put a piece of electrical tape over it. However, the side USB port works fine. Apart from this, it has no other faults. The screen has some pressure marks. Brilliant laptop currently running Ubuntu and XP. Has XP Pro COA sticker on bottom of laptop. Hard drive will be wiped before sending, so you will need your own OS. Could supply a wireless card if needed. It is a NetGear I think, not sure of compatibility with Linux. I would like to keep the Buffalo one I am using. If you are interested let me know. Make me an offer. Or swap for a netbook. Simon -- --- Twitter:?http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal?- LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum?- Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1 ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 01:23:05 +0000 From: Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk> Subject: Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: Alug list <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <4D4DF7F9.9090807(a)girolle.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Simon Royal wrote: > Hi > > How reliable and durable are SD Cards and Flash memory. Im thinking of > getting an netbook, one of those little EeePC things but the earlier > models have limited internal Flash memory. Never had any fail. My oldest one is 64 MB, and I had that when it was state of the art. If you do get an Eee and it has Xandros on it, I'd advise you to install a proper distro on it. I've had xPUD and Crunchbang recommended for the purpose. With Xan-dross on the Eee (or at least, my Eee) you can't use the USB for anything else if you have an internet dongle plugged in. If you then want to use anything else in the USB port(s) you have to remove the dongle and reboot first. The dongle won't work if you have a SD card in the slot either. Other distros installed on the Eee don't suffer from this failing, I'm told. I believe you can get at least 32 GB SD cards - but at a price. (8 GB is currently around ?23, but I am told that it's cheaper on the continent.) > So, extra storage would be in the shape of Flash drives or SD cards. > > How reliable are they for storing stuff? I read somewhere about the > 100,000 rewrite limitation, but how true is this. That's hardly a limitation. Don't forget, your Eee will have similar 'limitations'... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/ ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 01:19:53 +0000 From: Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> Subject: Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Message-ID: <4D4DF739.5020802(a)digimatic.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 05/02/11 22:38, Simon Royal wrote: > Hi > > How reliable and durable are SD Cards and Flash memory. Im thinking of > getting an netbook, one of those little EeePC things but the earlier > models have limited internal Flash memory. > > So, extra storage would be in the shape of Flash drives or SD cards. > > How reliable are they for storing stuff? I read somewhere about the > 100,000 rewrite limitation, but how true is this. > > I think modern and reputable make SD cards/flash memory are now durable to the point that unless you are using them in heavy write scenarios (swap or log files) then the lifetime will exceed the usefulness as technology advances. I have had a few usb flash drives die in my time but most of them have been due to rough handling/water damage/connector damage. I can't remember having an SD/CF card fail on me. Also bear in mind that these figures are talking about writes to a specific block. file allocation,fragmentation and wear levelling in the flash controller all have an effect on this so the real figure will be better. If you are really concerned then making sure you mount with noatime and using a non journalling FS will help prolong life..and improve speed as with flash memory writes are usually slower than reads. ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2011 09:51:31 +0000 From: Adam Bower <adam(a)thebowery.co.uk> Subject: Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Message-ID: <20110206095131.GC20675@electron> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 On Sun, Feb 06, 2011 at 01:23:05AM +0000, Anthony Anson wrote: > > I believe you can get at least 32 GB SD cards - but at a price. (8 > GB is currently around ?23, but I am told that it's cheaper on the > continent.) Wow, you must come from the past in a time machine! :) I got a 16GB micro-SD last month for ?18 and a 16GB SD for ?16. On top of that I paid a premium to make sure I got a card from a reliable retailer (so nothing fake) and getting fast cards. 8GB is around ?8-?10 at the moment, it now means that when I fill an SD card up in a camera that all I do is buy a new card and put the old one in the fire safe. Anyhow, as for the 100,000 writes thing. That is 100,000 writes per block (and is quite an old metric from ye olde days of flash). How often will you actually write to the card? I mean, assuming that you do actually do 100 writes a day to the *entire* card that's still nearly 3 years of life at which point you can throw it away and buy a new one that will have 8x the capacity of the same price..... Adam -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please. ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 11:58:18 +0000 From: Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk> Subject: Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: Alug list <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <4D4E8CDA.4080204(a)girolle.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Adam Bower wrote: > On Sun, Feb 06, 2011 at 01:23:05AM +0000, Anthony Anson wrote: >> I believe you can get at least 32 GB SD cards - but at a price. (8 >> GB is currently around ?23, but I am told that it's cheaper on the >> continent.) > > Wow, you must come from the past in a time machine! :) I got a 16GB > micro-SD last month for ?18 and a 16GB SD for ?16. Where? > On top of that I paid > a premium to make sure I got a card from a reliable retailer (so nothing > fake) and getting fast cards. 8GB is around ?8-?10 at the moment, Where? > it now > means that when I fill an SD card up in a camera that all I do is buy a > new card and put the old one in the fire safe. It's this 'reliable retailer' thang - The Swedes (Chapelfield Mall) charge ?23 for 8 giggle, as do various camera shops and allied businesses. I *KNOW* you can et them at sensible prices (a correspondent in Germany does), but apart from buying online *I* can't find anyone - in Norwich, at least. Online's OK unless you want one *now*. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/ ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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 68, Issue 5 ***********************************

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FOR SALE: ThinkPad R31
by Simon Royal 05 Feb '11

05 Feb '11

Hi. I am looking at moving to an ultra portable netbook and to do so would need to sell my ThinkPad to make funds for it. So up for sale is my IBM ThinkPad R31. Celeron 1.1Ghz. 512MB RAM (1GB Max, currently has 1x 512MB) 60GB hard drive. CDROM. Comes with two batteries. One is dead, the other holds charge but is temperamental on charging. Original power supply. The rear USB port is broken, so I have put a piece of electrical tape over it. However, the side USB port works fine. Apart from this, it has no other faults. The screen has some pressure marks. Brilliant laptop currently running Ubuntu and XP. Has XP Pro COA sticker on bottom of laptop. Hard drive will be wiped before sending, so you will need your own OS. Could supply a wireless card if needed. It is a NetGear I think, not sure of compatibility with Linux. I would like to keep the Buffalo one I am using. If you are interested let me know. Make me an offer. Or swap for a netbook. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Re: [ALUG] EeePC Ubuntu
by John Woodard 04 Feb '11

04 Feb '11

Agreed the 9" Aspire One 150 is okay but the Asus has far superior build quality. Sorry about the top post anyone know how to make mt Blackberry conform? Cheers, BJ ------Original Message------ From: Wayne Stallwood Sender: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] EeePC Ubuntu Sent: 3 Feb 2011 22:16 On 03/02/11 16:32, John Woodard wrote: > I have 10.04 running on my Acer Aspire One Although to be clear on that if Simon is looking at 10" models avoid the Acer Aspire One 751 at all costs. The GMA500 gfx chipset is a troublesome beast on linux I have just converted my 751 back to a Windows machine and sold it because I was fed up with potential problems every time there was a kernel upgrade. _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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EeePC Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 04 Feb '11

04 Feb '11

Hi Has anyone any experience running Ubuntu on an EeePC machine. I have been very impressed with my ThinkPad and impressed with Ubuntu and have settled nicely into the Linux world. My ThinkPad is only a 1.1Ghz Celeron and with 1GB RAM Ubuntu screams along. Id like something a little more portable and compact and have been looking at these Asus EeePC machines, both the 7" and 10" models. The 7" models are 900Mhz machines, the 10" models are 1.6Ghz Atom machines. I only do basic surfing, listening to music, FaceBook etc and writing. I do YouTube from time to time. So nothing heavy. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

4 3

swap partition question
by Peter Alcibiades 03 Feb '11

03 Feb '11

OK, now that we managed to get the installation transferred to the new machine using clonezilla, just one more question. When I did the transfer, of course it duplicated the original partitions, so we had /, swap and home. The swap partition is sized for the old system, so it is only a bit under 2G. However, the new system has 4G memory. What is the right thing to do? Reclaim some space (it would need to be from / which is 20G or so, so it would be possible to take 6G fairly safely? Leave it alone? Delete it - because do we really need a swap partition if we have 4G memory? Peter

3 2

moving debian from amd64 to i3
by Peter Alcibiades 01 Feb '11

01 Feb '11

Finally got around to doing this. I took out the hard drive from the old machine and using a little plug in usb adaptor, really neat, £10 from ebuyer, and clonezilla duplicated it on the new machine. The problem however, and this has happened before with debian, is that xorg now seems impossible to configure if it doesn't work, except by editing xorg.conf by hand, which is not my favourite pastime. Seems it used to be possible to use dpkg and reconfigure xorg, but if its still possible I could not find a way. So I started up from a PCLinux live CD, became root, set up the screen, then copied the xorg.conf file over to the debian installation, started up from the hard drive, and it all works. This an i3 running on an AMD64 image. I am really a bit surprised that it works. But it seems to. Famous last words. Clonezilla is very easy, and reasonably fast considering the size of the partitions. Peter

3 2

Wanted - simple way to check mains power is available
by Chris G 29 Jan '11

29 Jan '11

I'm looking for the simplest possible way for a script (or any sort of program, can be C, Python, whatever you like within reason) to check whether mains power is on. The computer which is going to check this is running off batteries so will still be running (I'm not quite that stupid!). The easiest way I can think of at the moment is to have some sort of hardware with a presence on the LAN powered by mains so that one can ping it to check that mains power is there. However the 'simplest' device I have at the moment is an old router which seems rather overkill for such a simple requirement. Can anyone think of any better way of doing this for which I am likely to have the hardware available or which will cost very little? I'm quite happy to build simple bits of electronics. The computer running the check is an old eeePc so has only USB and ehternet connections as far as I remember. -- Chris Green

10 15

How to copy a file (using rsync or scp) only if the file exists?
by Chris G 26 Jan '11

26 Jan '11

I have an rsync copy command as follows:- rsync --remove-source-files cheddar.halon.org.uk:odin/tempdata ~/odin This copies tempdata from the remote system to the local system and also removes it from the remote. The file tempdata is put there by a cron job and I want to process the data once only and then wait for new data. This is fine as long as the cron job putting data onto the remote system runs every hour and the local rsync also runs every hour. However if the remote cron job fails then, although I don't process the data again, I get a "No such file or directory" from rsync. I suppose I could just throw the error message away but that would throw other error messages away too which might be important ones. Any ideas? -- Chris Green

1 0

Recommendations wanted for simple, command line, webcam capture program
by Chris G 24 Jan '11

24 Jan '11

I'm after a simple webcam image capturing program to run from the command line (well, ultimately from cron). It's to run on my eeePc on the boat so must be simple and lightweight. I am currently trying webcam and fswebcam without much success at the moment. If anyone has any experience of either of these programs then I'd be pleased to know. It seems that webcam is the nearest to working, I'm am trying to get it to store images locally rather than FTPing them anywhere. It seems to grab an image but then when it tries to copy it fails:- root@eeepc:~# mkdir -p /home/chris/public_html/images root@eeepc:~# webcam reading config file: /root/.webcamrc video4linux webcam v1.5 - (c) 1998-2002 Gerd Knorr grabber config: size 320x240 [none] input (null), norm (null), jpeg quality 75 rotate=0, top=0, left=0, bottom=240, right=320 write config [ftp]: local transfer /home/chris/public_html/images/uploading.jpeg => /home/chris/public_html/images/webcam.jpeg open filename: No such file or directory open filename: No such file or directory open filename: No such file or directory open filename: No such file or directory -- Chris Green

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Superblock problem
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 23 Jan '11

23 Jan '11

Greetings All! I have hit a big snag. On an old machine, I have a hard drive /dev/hda. I had to re-set the machine it when it seized up just now. On re-booting, it went of course into fsck and then announced: fsck.ext2: No such file or directory while tryin to open /hda1 The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid, and really contains and ext2 filesystem ... then the superblock is corrupt and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> ... fsck failed. Please repair manually and reboot. The root filesystem is currently mounted read-only. To remount it read-write do: .... At this point, [**] I logged in with the root password, and ran fdisk /dev/hda1, and I got blanks for all the fields. When I ran fdisk /dev/hda, I got Device Begin Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 1 1 1024 822525248+ 83 Linux Native which looks right. I then ran the suggested "e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hda1" alternative, and it went through the familiar series of checks and asked for approval for the familiar set of corrections. All semed to go well. Then it came boot to the root prompt "#" and, as usual, I pressed Ctrl-D to log out and reboot. Now, on re-boot, I get the same as before down to [**] above, and this time I do e2fsck /dev/hda1 and this time I get: /dev/hda1: clean, 213963/2058240 files, 3193368/8225248 blocks So it looks as though it succeeded. Now I again do Ctrl-D to reboot. But, on re-boot, I again get exactly the same as first time down to [**] above. So it is as though the superblock has not been fixed (though apparently the alternative superblock was fixed). SO: QUERY: How can I try to fix the superblock and get it booting normally? With thanks for any good suggestions! Bes wishes to all, Ted. ---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 22-Jan-2011 Time: 23:13:49 This message was sent by XFMail ----------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Ubuntu help
by Chris Walker 21 Jan '11

21 Jan '11

On 17/01/11 16:06, keithjamieson(a)hotmail.co.uk wrote: > > I'm trying to persuade a Virtual Ubuntu installation to talk to a > > Windows 7 host. > > > > What's frustrating is that one share works but another doesn't and I > > can't see why, other than the 'Protocol error' which is displayed. > > > > Is there somewhere on the virtual machine where this stuff is logged so > > that I can perhaps see what's going wrong? > > Only in the syslog of the virtual machine. I dont think there are > anything in the VM "program" to help. But I'll probably be proved wrong > in the next post! > > > I've looked in the syslog but that doesn't show any networky-type errors. > > Do both have the correct IP addresses AND netmasks? > Can they ping each other ? > Can you install Wireshark to see if packets are being received by the > other machine? > Does this install use the PC host as the NAT address, or the virtual > machine use a similar IP address? > Are there firewalls running on either of the machines? Before I answer those questions, can I just point out one thing that I mentioned above? One share is working fine. It's when trying to create another that it's failing. > Can you try a pre-rolled small VM, like Puppy ? Yes I can and have but didn't try multiple shares. I'll give that a go though to check. I'm writing this under Mandriva. There I can run Windows XP as a guest and despite having multiple shares on the host machine, in XP it will only allow me to have one share to a NAS drive - there are 4 shares to that under Mandriva - so I'm wondering if it's a Windows limitation that's preventing me having two shares to the host machine. I realise that this isn't the place to ask Windows questions so I won't pursue that here. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

4 6

sdb1
by Simon Royal 20 Jan '11

20 Jan '11

Hi When I boot my ThinkPad in to Ubuntu it gets stuck. It flashes on a screen and says something like unable to find sdb1. I have to press S to skip mounting it and continue booting. It is annoying. I think this has something to do with Storage Device Manager which I use to automount a FAT32 partition - which I use as shared storage for my files. I dual boot Ubuntu and XP and have a spare partition to put everything. I looked in Storage Device Manager and could find no reference to sdb1. sda1 = xp sda2 = ubuntu sda3 = swap sda4 = fat32 shared partition. sda4 is set to automount with correct rw permissions. This works fine. Any ideas? Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

2 1

Hang on resume from suspend to disc in 2.6.35
by Dan 20 Jan '11

20 Jan '11

Dear All, My Acer Aspire One, with the kernels known in Gentoo as 2.6.35-gentoo-r4 or 2.6.35-gentoo-r12, hangs on resume from suspend to disc - after counting up to 100% and printing the message "Suspending consoles (use no_console_suspend" to debug". Suspend/resume works fine with kernel 2.6.34-gentoo-r6. The 2.6.35 kernel configs were generated from the 2.6.34 kernel config using "make oldconfig". Firstly: does anyone immediately know what the problem is, please? If not: how do I persuade suspend/resume to produce an informative log file to help with diagnosis, given that the whole process happens while klogd and syslogd are stopped? -- Thanks, Dan

1 2

Internal Broadcom
by Simon Royal 18 Jan '11

18 Jan '11

Hi I am trying to get a permanent wireless solution for my R31. I have a variety of devices that work under Ubuntu but some have issues. USB Zydas stick - it works fine, but is taking up my only free USB port (as I broke the other). Edimax PCMCIA card - hangs the machine when on battery. Buffalo PCMCIA card - works great, but is my sons. Intel Mini PCI card - hangs the machine after a few mins. So far - apart from the USB stick - the Buffalo card which is Broadcom 4306 based card has been the most reliable. Whilst scouting around on eBay I found a Broadcom based Mini PCI card which uses the same chipset. Are the problems I have with my other internal card - the Intel 2200BG - related to my particular card, those Intel cards or Mini PCI cards in general? Would a different card suffer from the same problems? I know you cant really answer it, but does anyone have any experience or problems with other internal wireless cards. It is only a few pounds so I wont lose too much if it doesnt work when it gets here. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

2 1

DD-WRT VPN settings
by Ricky Bruce 18 Jan '11

18 Jan '11

Somewhat off topic but as dd-wrt is Linux based i tenuously justify it to myself. I use strong vpn along with a dd-wrt flashed router to create two seperate wifi SSID's from the same router. One is my standard wifi and routes all traffic normally through my UK IP. The other redirects it through the VPN through virtual network vlan3 and is used to access USA based services such as Netflix on devices that lack the ability to run a VPN client. (Dare i say Apple TV?) I followed the instructions in the strong vpn forum (http://strongvpn.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=806) to get it up and running and for the most part it is working great. However on occasion the router seems to drop the VPN connection and revert to the UK ip. Rebooting the router does not on its own fix it, neither does setting the router to reboot periodically once a day. The only way i have found so far to reliably establish contact with the VPN is to edit and then resave the firewall script, and then power cycle the router. I use Mint at home, and while i have been using Linux for sometime i have been lucky enough to never really have to go beyond configure; make; make install when using my machines, so my scripting knowledge is severely limited. Can anyone suggest any ways to make the router detect when it has dropped the VPN connection, reload the required script and reboot? Below is the copy of the firewall script that is in its current form. VPN_IPUP=/tmp/pptpd_client/ip-up grep -v "exit 0" /etc/config/pptpd_client.ip-up > $VPN_IPUP echo ' sleep 15 # Load ebtables for i in ebtables ebt_mark ebtable_filter ebtable_nat; do insmod $i; done # Clean up ebtables -t nat -F ip rule del from 0/0 fwmark 4 lookup 4 ip route flush table 4 # Hack: take QoS down (but we need it enabled for ebtables) iptables -t mangle -F # Set up ebtables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i wl0.1 -j mark --set-mark 4 ebtables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i vlan3 -j mark --set-mark 4 ip route show table main | grep -Ev ^default | while read ROUTE; do ip route add table 4 $ROUTE; done ip route add table 4 default dev ppp1 ip rule add fwmark 4 table 4 ip route flush cache ' >> ${VPN_IPUP} chmod +x ${VPN_IPUP} Kind regards, Ricky

1 0

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 17 Jan '11

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

1 1

Ubuntu help
by Chris Walker 17 Jan '11

17 Jan '11

I'm trying to persuade a Virtual Ubuntu installation to talk to a Windows 7 host. What's frustrating is that one share works but another doesn't and I can't see why, other than the 'Protocol error' which is displayed. Is there somewhere on the virtual machine where this stuff is logged so that I can perhaps see what's going wrong? I've looked in the syslog but that doesn't show any networky-type errors. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

1 0

migrating debian to another machine - update
by Peter Alcibiades 17 Jan '11

17 Jan '11

Sorry, should have said that the old machine is socket 754 with a 64 bit amd install, and the new one is an i3. Hi, can I pick your brains on this one? That time has come round again and I have to move someone to a new machine. What is the best way of doing it? Last time, I did a new install on the new machine, then moved the contents of the /home partition by copying, tracked down all the extra bits and bobs that we have installed, and got them again. It was quite a bit of work. I am wondering if it is possible to just move the hard drive subject to then reconfiguring the distribution? Or is it possible to copy over the partitions to the new hard drive, then....? Any suggestions gratefully received. I have also read about using netcat, is this possible or sensible? Peter

2 1

PCMCIA wireless
by Simon Royal 17 Jan '11

17 Jan '11

Hi Ive had a number of power problems under Ubuntu and finally worked out it was to do with my Edimax PCMCIA wireless card. It works fine but causes oddities when running off battery. I know it sounds odd but I have tried everything else to resolve it locking up under battery and without it in it works fine. So I switched to a USB wireless stick. Now, I broke one of my USB ports yesterday and would like to free up the other one by getting rid of the USB wireless stick I have. What I would like to know is, is my lock up problems going to happen with any PCMCIA wireless card or just my Edimax which is RaLink based. My USB stick is a PlusCom which in Windows shows up as a ZyDas. It is 1121B based, which is not RaLink. I have a Broadcom based Buffalo card floating around which I know works under Linux with additional drivers available. I need to work out whether it is the PCMCIA bus causing problems or just the card. Any help, advice or previous experience appreciated. Simon

1 0

migrating debian to another machine
by Peter Alcibiades 17 Jan '11

17 Jan '11

Hi, can I pick your brains on this one? That time has come round again and I have to move someone to a new machine. What is the best way of doing it? Last time, I did a new install on the new machine, then moved the contents of the /home partition by copying, tracked down all the extra bits and bobs that we have installed, and got them again. It was quite a bit of work. I am wondering if it is possible to just move the hard drive subject to then reconfiguring the distribution? Or is it possible to copy over the partitions to the new hard drive, then....? Any suggestions gratefully received. I have also read about using netcat, is this possible or sensible? Peter

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Mailing List Etiquette...
by Adam Bower 16 Jan '11

16 Jan '11

THANKS FOR THAT BRETT VERY USEFUL LINK TA! On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 01:03:46PM +0000, Brett Parker wrote: > Hi, > > Just thought that as we're getting a few more people joining the list, > it would be good to actually start documenting the mailing list > etiquette. > > So, I've started a magic page on our wiki, if people have more to add to > it, please feel free. > > The page is: > http://www.alug.org.uk/MailingListEtiquette > > Cheers, > -- > Brett Parker http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ > PGP Fingerprint 1A9E C066 EDEE 6746 36CB BD7F 479E C24F 95C7 1D61 > > _______________________________________________ > 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! -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please.

5 9

Re: [ALUG] R31 Sleep...Can We Resolve This
by Wayne Stallwood 16 Jan '11

16 Jan '11

On 15/01/11 21:48, Simon Royal wrote: > Wayne > > Setting my power management options to Suspend means my R31 wont wake > up. This is the problem I had before. > > This is why I had to use Hibernate as it will come back from that but > not Suspend. > Ahh ok, then you may want to google about a bit...a quick look around myself suggests that the R31 had problems even with some versions of Windows which were corrected with a BIOS update. The ubuntu forums might have something as well, look specific to the R31 and whatever version of Ubuntu you are on now you may find a fix. Whilst you have the browser open have a little look at http://www.alug.org.uk/MailingListEtiquette as well. I don't want to nag but top posting and then leaving the entire contents of the message you are replying to just makes it hard for others to dip into the conversation later. It becomes particularly important when someone later on is trying to make sense of the message in the archives.

1 0

R31 Sleep...Can We Resolve This
by Simon Royal 15 Jan '11

15 Jan '11

Hi I have just about sorted all the problems out on my ThinkPad R31 under Ubuntu, except sleep. When I close the lid I want it to sleep and then wake when I open it. I have been playing with the different settings and cannot it to work as I would like, so I thought I would throw it over to you guys to see if you could help. Ive always worked on laptops and never come across this problem. Mac OSX is the fastest for coming back from sleep, you open the lid and within two or three seconds it is up and running - even on my old 10 year old G3 PowerBook it does it. Windows XP takes a bit longer and then you get faced with a log back in screen. I find it odd that my 10 year old G3 500Mhz Mac can come back from sleep within seconds but my sons 2.2Ghz P4 laptop takes about 20 seconds to get back. Ive run Ubuntu and various other buntu and non-bunto based distros on other hardware - x86 and PPC - and never had sleep problems like this. I had a ThinkPad 600 and 240x about a year ago and they just worked with sleep. Open the lid and it comes back on, sometimes faced with a log back in screen but it worked. So why can I not get this R31 to behave in a similar way? Why would a 600 and 240x have better power down support than this R31? If I press Fn+F4 it will go to sleep, but then coming back on takes a boot (bios splash, grub etc) and then you get the log back in screen. That is my work around at present. It is slightly faster than a full boot but still not that quick. My other option is for when the lid is shut just to blank the screen but that doesnt shut any hardware off or conserve battery life. My PowerBook can sleep for about 5 days and then open it up and bang, its back on again. Thats what I would like for my ThinkPad. I have my laptops running 24/7, I have never turned them off, just shut the lid and open it when I need it. So if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated. I must add, that this is a Ubuntu issue - or Linux issue - as XP sleeps and wakes correctly. Regards Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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