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Up for grabs...
by Bellphegore 20 Jun '10

20 Jun '10

Flexible, roll-up, rubber, USB keyboard. Red (in case that matters). Say, and it's yours at the next pub-meet. Bellphegore bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com montmorency(a)ukfsn.org

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Any git users here?
by Jenny Hopkins 20 Jun '10

20 Jun '10

Hullo, Does anyone use GIT? I want to know if one can use git-archive to retrieve a tarball snapshot of head revision at or before an instructed date. Google is not being my friend. Thanks, Jenny

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HOWTO: Getting started with OpenVPN
by Martin A. Brooks 20 Jun '10

20 Jun '10

I wanted an OpenVPN server, but didn't want to mess around with client certificates. It took me more googling than I liked to figure it out, so I wrote the procedure down: http://hinterlands.org/wiki/index.php/OpenVPNQuickstart

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DropBox Wont Install
by Simon Royal 18 Jun '10

18 Jun '10

Hi I use DropBox to backup my pictures. I have used it for years and think it is brilliant. I sync my pictures folder across different machines including my iBook G3 and my XP partition on my ThinkPad. I had it also installed under Xubuntu on my ThinkPad, however I cannot get it to work under Ubuntu. I installed the package from the Ubuntu Softwre Centre, that went fine. The first you run it it has to download the daemon and that is where it goes wrong. It is very slow downloading it and then it sits at 91% and doesnt move. Any ideas? I tried Googling the problem but I couldn't find any answers. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Ubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/ We want to hear all your funny, exciting and crazy Hotmail stories. Tell us now

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Ubuntu Start Up Sound All Of A Sudden
by Simon Royal 18 Jun '10

18 Jun '10

Hi As you probably know I have finally gotten sound working on my ThinkPad. I got audio CDs working, MP3s working and web sounds like YouTube. I have had it working for about a week and it has been fine. However, this morning I turned on my machine, booted it, installed the updates Update Manager told me to and rebooted. On reboot, I heard for the first time ever on this machine the Ubuntu start up chime. I've not changed any of the settings apart from installing the updates, and my sound voulme has always been up full.Just curious to why it has suddenly started. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Ubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

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Signal to switch GNOME "workspaces"
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 18 Jun '10

18 Jun '10

Hi Folks, I run GNOME with 20 "workspaces", between which I normally switch using keys Ctrl+Alt+<arrow key>. I'm looking for a way to get an application (or script) to send a signal to the display manager such that the display would switch automatically switch from whatever "workspace" it is in to some other designated one (i.e. so that I don't have to use the keys -- it would be under program control). By the way: I'm not sure which "display manager" programme looks after switching between "desktops" -- is it gdm, metacity, or what? With thanks for any suggestions, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 18-Jun-10 Time: 09:47:38 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Ubuntu Update Manager Oddness
by Simon Royal 18 Jun '10

18 Jun '10

Hi. Im running the latest Ubuntu. Update Manager popped up saying I had 80 updates. So I thought ok, ill update. I clicked the Install Updates button and it asked for my password. I typed it in and it did nothing. It just went back to the update screen. After a couple of days of trying I realised I was typing the wrong password in and once I typed the right one in it worked fine. My point is, it never told me I had typed the wrong password in, which I thought was very stupid. I use very old hardware and sometimes Ubuntu doesnt play right because I am using it on such under powered hardware and at first I thought that was the problem. Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 17 Jun '10

17 Jun '10

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

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OT
by Anthony Anson 17 Jun '10

17 Jun '10

Should anyone be interested, the King's Head on Magdalen Street is a fussball-free zone... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Using the Alug mailing list - Attachments and html
by Adam Bower 15 Jun '10

15 Jun '10

Hi All, Can I please remind everyone that Alug is supposed to be a plain text mailing list only, I do approve the odd html post here and there to keep communication up but it's getting more and more frequent. Can people please check their mail client is set to only send plain text to this mailing list. Also, sending attachments to this list will result in them being rejected (mostly). If you do have a large file or log then consider putting it on some web hosting somewhere and providing a link or using a pastebin instead. Thanks Adam -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please.

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Possible job opportunity
by Mark Rogers 15 Jun '10

15 Jun '10

(Please note the cross-post) My company, More Solutions Ltd, may shortly have a programming vacancy. I'm not sure how to describe what we would be looking for, other than "a programmer". Much of the software we work with is in proprietary languages so we'd be looking for someone who can turn their hand to languages they've not seen before, but we do also do a lot in PHP so some familiarity with PHP would likely be a necessity. However, I need to be clear that from our experience the majority of people who "do" PHP are not programmers, and we *are* looking for a programmer - someone who understands the merits of code re-use, error handling, etc. From an infrastructure point of view, all our internal and externally hosted servers run Linux (mostly Ubuntu Server), and we all make our own desktop choices (most run Windows but mine is Ubuntu). That said, some of the applications we work in are Windows-only, much to my frustration! Anyway, we don't currently have a job spec, and we may not take anyone on at all; it will very much depend on whether we find someone we like. (There will definitely be a vacancy in the next couple of weeks, but we won't fill it unless we find someone we're happy with.) Salary would depend on experience and skills. It's a small, interesting and varied company with interesting clients, and if a high salary is the main priority then unfortunately (spoken as the recipient of a salary here!) there are probably better places to go looking. But CV's or other enquiries welcomed. -- 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] EeePC 701 with DebianEeePc - can't get WiFi working
by Anthony Anson 14 Jun '10

14 Jun '10

Chris Green wrote: > On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 05:44:00PM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote: >> Chris G wrote: >> >>> Any ideas or pointers to useful web pages would be much appreciated. >> Since Xandros (installed on earlier Eees) is derived from Debian, I >> would have expected it to have noticed the wireless. >> >> That's not a lot of help, I know, and without going through bundles >> of saved mail, I can't point you at a URL, but there's a forum on >> www.asus.com >> > Yes, I was a bit surprised that DebianEeePc didn't work. I had > previously installed (partially) xubuntu, it filled the 2Gb disk half > way through the installation but mostly worked. I was just trying to > sort out the 'half installation' mess. > > Another off-list E-Mail suggested eeebuntu, since I knew that ubuntu > detected the WiFi OK I installed Ubuntu Server base system and then > added just xfce4 to give me an X desktop and - eureka! - all is well. > > I now have a working eeePc with WiFi and the disk is only 60% full. Good. When I get the Acer fettled to my satisfaction I shall play with my Eee - but as it only has the 4 GB HDD, I shall be listening to advice... I have a sort-of hankering to load Tom's and have nearly all the HDD available... The Eee doesn't seem to have the capability of booting from USB - BICBW. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Ubuntu Sound Success
by Simon Royal 14 Jun '10

14 Jun '10

Hi I had Xubuntu 10.04 installed on my ThinkPad 600 and had audio problems. I finally got it working sort of and then decided to switch to Ubuntu. 10.04. Ubuntu runs a lot better by the way, but a fresh install meant fresh audio problems. After following some instructions for 7.10 I got it working. Now if I roll the mouse over an MP3 it plays fine and RhythmBox plays it but it is a bit jerky. Movie Player wont play it but it is more than I ever got out of Xubuntu. Considering Xubuntu is supposed to be aimed at lower hardware I was dissapointed by its performance and hardware support compared to Ubuntu. On the whole I am very pleased with Ubuntu 10.04 on my ancient 300mhz P2, better than Xubuntu. One thing I would like is some kind of frontend for mpg123 so I could play mp3 files with ease on low hardware, so it doesnt use too much processor/ram. Movie Player and RhythmBox are too heavy for my ThinkPad. Simon -- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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Multi-Image formats, PDF and SimpleScan
by Steve Fosdick 14 Jun '10

14 Jun '10

Up until now scanning applications I have used have tended to work around the page or sheet as the fundamental concept to each page scanned gets written to its own file and, when a document has multiple pages, the link can be indicated by putting the page files into a directory or naming then in a consistent way. For the page files themselves I have always used PNG which I almost always use for single images that are not photographs. I've recently been trying a new Gnome application that came with Ubuntu 10.04 called SimpleScan. Unlike previous applications this is document based in so far as you can scan a number of pages (including the whole contents of the document feeder) and then save them together either as a single file or a set of related files (one per page). This has got me thinking again about files that can hold more than one image so the file then corresponds to a document and the application that views the file presents the various pages as needed. PDF is very fashionable for scanned documents and this is one of the options available for saving. I note from the Wikipedia article that PDF has now been standardised by ISO but is encumbered by patents which Adobe licenses royalty free. Any thoughts on how good a standard this is for long term storage and whether there are better alternatives?

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wireless card conundrum
by Jenny Hopkins 14 Jun '10

14 Jun '10

Hi all, I bought a wireless network card RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g last week for my amd64 debian squeeze machine. I plugged the card in, installed firmware-ralink (via wired connection), modprobed for rt61pci, and sat back watching the shiny new connection and gloating at the easiest install of hardware I have ever had. I duly moved the pc to a room with no wired capability, and network manager (running under gnome) detected and connected me to the wap netgear with a not bad signal. A few hours later, the connection suddenly went down. All efforts to ifupdown wlan0 or stop and start network manager failed to connect again, with dmesg reporting "wlan0: deauthenticating from <blah> by local choice (reason=3)". Only a reboot seemed to sort it, and then only for a short while. Oh yes - I also got some ridiculous ping times for the gateway, even though the signal was fairly strong, which reduced to a sensible amount when I succeeded finally in quashing the wired interface eth0. I've come back after a week away, however, and it won't connect at all. syslog reports "rt61pci firmware: requesting rt2561.bin" , modinfo rt61pci shows a bunch of useful stuff that assures me it is all loaded. It can't be a firmware issue, surely, as it worked at first? I just keep being told "ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready" Neither giving wlan0 a fixed IP in interfaces, or telling it to request an address from a dhcp server makes any difference. (The request for an address isn't even getting as far as the dhcp server). I'm stumped - any suggestions where to look for clues? I did read it could be a clash between udev and network manager, I also have no idea whether invoking iwconfig and iwlist scan makes any difference. I'm sure I've tried every combination possible by now. Thanks, sorry if this isn't very clear, I've been going in circles for so long I think I've forgotten where I began. Jenny

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Missing sound from FlashVideo copy
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 13 Jun '10

13 Jun '10

If I play the following in my broswer: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vOhf3OvRXKg (well worth watching, by the way -- sand-art telling a family's story before, while and after Ukraine is bombed by German planes in WWII), I get the video and the sound fine, with the browser (iceweasel on Debian) using the Flash plugin. The sound effects are an essential part. While this is going on, a file in /tmp builds up, with a name like /tmp/FlashyfCGik When it reaches the end, the movie pauses with option to replay. At this point the /tmp file is fully downloaded. Now I copy it down to main storage, and rename it to have ".flv": e.g. ~/Downloads/FlashyfCGik.flv NOW: If I play this with totem, I get the video but no sound. So let's try getting the browser to open it: File -> Open File -> ~/Downloads/FlashyfCGik.flv and it recognises it as Flash Video and offers to "open it with movie player (default)". There is no other option for opening it. "Movie player" is an alias for totem ... so again it plays the video without the sound! Presumably if the browser used the Flash plugin for the local file I would get the sound as when viewing from the Web. But I can't see how to get that to happen. Any suggestions? Thank, Ted. PS: Warning -- you can get hooked on sand-art! -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Jun-10 Time: 01:48:26 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Linux speech recognition software recommendations?
by Sam Tuke 12 Jun '10

12 Jun '10

Suffering from RSI, I have tried a few systems. I don't know of any sufficient FOSS option at present, but keep a close eye on simon listens, which promises to provide full speech recognition functionality in future with a great interface. Currently it can only control applications (such as firefox), and cannot handle dictation. See here for preset simon 'scenarios' for controlling different applications: http://kde-files.org/index.php?xcontentmode=692&PHPSESSID=c5b8ecb5c140ab6d6…. Also bear in mind that you have to install the HTK back-end for simon to use separately thanks to our Great British university of Cambridge licensing it under uncooperative terms. Personally I use Nuance Naturally speaking 10.1 preferred under wine. It works on my Kubuntu 9.10 installation, but not on my Ubuntu 10.04 install (to my intense annoyance). It works pretty well on my Kubuntu install - I can dictate text fine for the most part. It doesn't interact with any other apps however. You'll probably need to use Wine Tricks to install an extra DLL or two but this is a simple task. If you find any other solutions, please let me know! Simon listens is the great hope, and they desperately need resources, so if you can spare time/money/promotion then please hand it to their team. Sam.

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Linux speech recognition software recommendations?
by Srdjan Todorovic 11 Jun '10

11 Jun '10

Hi all, Has anyone used any speech recognition software in Linux (FOSS/closed-source/freeware/commercial etc) that was of sufficient quality that it could be used to dictate a large document, or many small documents, with reasonable accuracy / least mistakes? If so, could you please let me know which software it is? This page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition_in_Linux , lists some solutions. Is anyone able to offer their personal experiences and recommendations for any of those? Thanks, Srdjan

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EeePC 701 with DebianEeePc - can't get WiFi working
by Chris G 09 Jun '10

09 Jun '10

I avoid WiFi like the plage if I possibly can but since I want to carry this eeePc around and use other people's network connections I really need to get WiFo working. I have gone through the steps outlined at the following:- http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/Wifi I.e. I have used the Debian backports to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.30 and have installed the other bits and pieces suggested plus wicd. However when I run wicd (the wicd-client that is) it just says "No wireless networks detected". There definitely is a wireless network running here as my 'phone can detect it. So how can I progress this at all? I've done a few rather fruitless Google searches and haven't found much pitched at my level of knowledge apart from the link above. The wireless on the eeePc used to work with the original Linux installation (why did I replace that you may ask - I'm wondering too, though it was getting a very tight fit in the limited memory). Any ideas or pointers to useful web pages would be much appreciated. -- Chris Green

2 3

PHP question, any PHP gurus here?
by Chris G 09 Jun '10

09 Jun '10

Well maybe not PHP gurus, just web/apache/php knowledge required. I want to pass a value from one web page to another, or to be exact from one piece of PHP (on web page A) to another piece of PHP (on web page B). Having said that I can sort of understand the problem, there's nothing necessarily tying the two pages together, they *could* be running on different hosts under different web servers for all the web servers know about it. So, I have a Wiki where page A has a link to page B and I want to be able to pass some data from page A to page B. They *are* displayed by the same web server (which is apache2) and they *are* on the same host. I can't use cookies because by the time I can execute some PHP code the headers are long gone. So how can page A 'send' a value to page 'B'? Am I reduced to the nasty (but perfectly possible) expedient of page A writing something to a file somewhere and page B reading it? -- Chris Green

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Kernel options for Intel 945GME graphics card?
by Dan 07 Jun '10

07 Jun '10

Dear All, Can anyone suggest what kernel options are best for driving the board that appears in lspci as 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) please? (I think I've got the wrong ones, sice DPMS is flaky and I'm getting quite frequent kernel panics related to intelfb.) -- Regards Dan

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Rescuing SVN repository
by Richard Lewis 07 Jun '10

07 Jun '10

Hi ALUG, I have a Subversion repository which is trapped on a server to which I no longer have (reliable, at least) shell access. (ATM, in fact, I don't even have access to the WebDAV interface as Apache is down.) I want to move this repository to a different server and would be happy to convert to a different SCM if possible (quite fond of darcs, keep meaning to learn more about git). I still have the most recent working copy checked out. Is it possible to use this working copy to start a new SVN repository, retaining all the history? Or can I only dump from the current *repository* (on the server) to make a new repository? 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/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +----------------------------------------------+ | Support open access to scholarship | | http://freeculture.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ | +----------------------------------------------+

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Re: [ALUG] Anglian Developer Network?
by Paul Grenyer 05 Jun '10

05 Jun '10

There's one. Anyone else? ------Original Message------ From: Ian Porter Sender: ianporter1976(a)gmail.com To: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com Cc: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] Anglian Developer Network? Sent: 2 Jun 2010 20:00 Hi Paul, On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Paul Grenyer <paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi All > > I'm a software engineer at Validus on Princes Street in Norwich and have been an active member of the ACCU (www.accu.org) for nearly 10 years. While I was working for Lehmans at Canary Wharf I helped set up the London ACCU chapter. It continues to run monthly development related events, which usually take the form or a 60min presentation by a speaker. > > I think there are about 5 ACCU members in Norwich, which isn't really enough to setup a local chapter, but there are plenty of software companies (validus, virgin money, virgin wines, aviva, etc). > > So the reason I'm emailing you guys is to see if there's an appetite for doing something similar in Norwich..? Maybe quarterly to begin with. > > What do you think? How many here are developers? > > Thanks > Paul > I am a software developer and interested in the above. Regards Ian

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Printing to remote CUPS server?
by Srdjan Todorovic 03 Jun '10

03 Jun '10

Hi all, Been having problems figuring out how to print to a remote CUPS server. Followed a couple of "tutorials" [1] and spoke to people in #cups but nothing seems to help. Environment: - Fedora Core 6 machine "A" (CUPS server, CUPS 1.4.x) - Fedora Core 6 machine "B" (CUPS client, CUPS 1.2.x) - USB printer ASCII Art: [B]--------[A]-----[Printer] Goal: Enable machine B to print to the Printer, using the CUPS server on A. Guides tell me to run lpstat -t on both A and B to verify that the printers are detected. lpstat -t on A: scheduler is running system default destination: Brother_QL-1050 device for Brother_QL-1050: usb://Brother/QL-1050 Brother_QL-1050 accepting requests since Wed 09 Dec 2009 04:50:22 PM GMT printer Brother_QL-1050 is idle. enabled since Wed 09 Dec 2009 04:50:22 PM GMT lpstat: No printer-uri in request! lpstat -t on B: scheduler is running no system default destination lpstat: No printer-uri in request! Looking at the logs (with debug2 enabled) on machine A, it seems that it never returns sensible values in return to a CUPS-Get-Printers command when requested by machine B. The logs are very long, so I paste-binned them at: http://pastebin.com/Han6qXkv Server (host A) config after web interface was used: http://pastebin.com/g9aqUr4b Client (host B) has lines ServerName and BrowsePoll with the appropriate host names for the server A, and host B can resolve and ping it. When lptstat is run on machine A, the correct output seems to be: D [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] cupsdReadClient: 11 1.1 CUPS-Get-Printers 1 d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] cupsdProcessIPPRequest(0x80b4b1c0[11]): operation_id = 4002 D [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] CUPS-Get-Printers d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] get_printers(0x80b4b1c0[11], 0) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] cupsdFindPolicyOp(p=0x80aed258, op=4002(CUPS-Get-Printers)) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] cupsdFindPolicyOp: Found wildcard match... d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] cupsdIsAuthorized: con->uri="/", con->best=0x80b35648((null)) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] cupsdIsAuthorized: level=CUPSD_AUTH_ANON, type=None, satisfy=CUPSD_AUTH_SATISFY_ALL, num_names=0 d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] cupsdIsAuthorized: op=0(unknown-0000) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] cupsdIsAuthorized: auth=CUPSD_AUTH_ALLOW... d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] add_printer_state_reasons(0x80b4b1c0[11], 0x80aed3c8[Brother_QL-1050]) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] copy_attrs(to=0x80b2dc90, from=0x80b36208, ra=0x80b2e390, group=0, quickcopy=0) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] copy_attribute(0x80b2dc90, 0x80af28e0[printer-name,4,42]) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] copy_attribute(0x80b2dc90, 0x80aeeb70[printer-info,4,41]) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] copy_attribute(0x80b2dc90, 0x80afa838[job-sheets-default,4,42]) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] copy_attrs(to=0x80b2dc90, from=0x80aebe90, ra=0x80b2e390, group=0, quickcopy=0) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] copy_attribute(0x80b2dc90, 0x80b36040[printer-make-and-model,4,41]) d [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] copy_attrs(to=0x80b2dc90, from=0x80aebe08, ra=0x80b2e390, group=0, quickcopy=-2147483648) D [03/Jun/2010:08:48:00 +0100] Returning IPP successful-ok for CUPS-Get-Printers (no URI) from localhost I have also used elinks and set the printer sharing option, and allow from Internet is enabled. Is anyone able to offer any hints please? Thanks very kindly, Srdjan [1] - http://www.tjansson.dk/?p=54 - http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/printing-howto.xml - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Y9-bp2ok5uUJ:avasys.jp… - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=93328

3 5

Is there a Linux file like Windows' Startup?
by Anthony Anson 02 Jun '10

02 Jun '10

I want to have a text file appear on firing-up any of the boxen - two running Debian and the other, Xandros. Not sure where to search in / so I'm saving time - with any luck. The idea is to (first, remember to) make a note of future appointments, jaunts, meetings, reminders to do things, etc., so I can ignor^h^h^attend to them and erase jobs done, etc.. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Anglian Developer Network?
by Paul Grenyer 02 Jun '10

02 Jun '10

Hi All I'm a software engineer at Validus on Princes Street in Norwich and have been an active member of the ACCU (www.accu.org) for nearly 10 years. While I was working for Lehmans at Canary Wharf I helped set up the London ACCU chapter. It continues to run monthly development related events, which usually take the form or a 60min presentation by a speaker. I think there are about 5 ACCU members in Norwich, which isn't really enough to setup a local chapter, but there are plenty of software companies (validus, virgin money, virgin wines, aviva, etc). So the reason I'm emailing you guys is to see if there's an appetite for doing something similar in Norwich..? Maybe quarterly to begin with. What do you think? How many here are developers? Thanks Paul

7 10

Why are lookups so slow?
by Chris Walker 01 Jun '10

01 Jun '10

My machine is a dual-boot i7 machine running on one side Windows 7 and here, Mandriva 2010 (64 bit). I've complained to my phone provider in the past about things slowing down after a period of a few hours so they changed the router. I now have a Huawei HG520b instead of the D-Link I had previously. I'd done a factory reset on that before swapping it out but then the new router arrived so I stuffed that in its place without testing the reset. With the Huawei, Windows will do lookups fine but Mandriva takes ages for everything, web searches, mail and so on. Sending this message sat there for ages doing a lookup for the smtp address before I cancelled it to add this. I *think* I've got both sides, Windows 7 and Mandriva, setup the same with DHCP for both IP address and DNS servers but is there anything I can try before I rip the Huawei out and put back the D-Link? TIA. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Re: [ALUG] PowerPC Linux
by Simon Royal 31 May '10

31 May '10

Hi Also, the burning problem with unsupported drives was generally only with iApps and Finder. Third party apps like Toast never had a problem. Simon -- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

1 0

Re: [ALUG] PowerPC Linux
by Simon Royal 31 May '10

31 May '10

Hi You dont need a specific firmware or drive to burn in OSX. You used to in early versions of OSX, but havent come across it is Tiger and upwards. You also used to have troubles booting from a non-Apple drive but even that is pretty obsolete these days. Simon -- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

1 0

how to do this? networking two interfaces?
by Peter Alcibiades 31 May '10

31 May '10

I have a case with two wired devices with network connections. Downstairs, we have a computer which is connected to an ADSL router via cable. Then, upstairs, there is going to be a networked printer. The problem is, running the network cable to connect this printer from upstairs into the router is not decoratively acceptable. Its an old house. So I have bought one of those little wireless usb adaptors, and we happen to have an old wireless cable router lying around. The idea would be, wire the printer into the wireless router upstairs, then talk to the wireless router over wireless from the usb adaptor in the computer downstairs. This would be two network connections from the same computer, one wired, the other wireless, with the wireless one going only to the printer, and the wired one going to the ADSL router for Internet access. This must be possible, you would think, but how do you set it up? I had intended to use homeplug, ethernet over mains, but the problem is that the two parts of this particular house are on different mains supplies with separate meters. Its an old house. Also, I can't move the ADSL router upstairs, because there are no phone sockets upstairs. They use cordless phones. So assuming its possible, the simplest would be wireless to the printer only. So this would be using eth0 for Internet access, and eth1 for printing only. Can you do this, and if so how? Peter

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PowerPC Linux
by Simon Royal 31 May '10

31 May '10

Hi Does anyone have any experience with Linux on PowerPC Macs. Im a long term Mac user and have an iBook G3 which might not be the fastest machine in the world - a 500Mhz G3 with 640MB RAM, but compared to my ThinkPad which is a 300Mhz P2 with 296MB RAM it is a speed demon. I know officially Ubuntu stopped PPC ports in version 7, but community ports are still going strong. There is a PowerPC version of 10.04 although I havent tried it yet. I did try version 5 a while ago and it was pretty good. I also know there is no official support for Flash - although some claim to have it working and a lot of software that is for Ubuntu will only work with x86 devices and not PPC. PowerPC Linux is very thin on the ground, Ubuntu and Xubuntu seemingly the biggest two. Yellow Dog is another and there might be a Suse or Mandriva if I remember correctly. Is it worth pursuing? Is PPC Linux any good? Or should I ditch my iBook and my ThinkPad and get faster P2 or P3 machine. In the mean time I am going to try Ubuntu 10.04 for PowerPC on my iBook. Any help and advice would be appreciated. Simon Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Ubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ We want to hear all your funny, exciting and crazy Hotmail stories. Tell us now

3 4

Mint Linux
by Simon Royal 29 May '10

29 May '10

Hi I am quite liking Xubuntu at the mo, but I do have a habit of flitting from distro to distro. Ive been looking at Mint Linux and it looks great, a streamlined and polished Ubuntu. Is it just a fancy looking Ubuntu? Is it a cut down or lightweight version? Would it run better than Xubuntu? Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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Alphabetical sorting in EN-UTF8
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 28 May '10

28 May '10

Hi Folks, I have encountered a weirdness in alphabetical sorting. It originally popped up in an application, but experiment reveals that it arises from the Linux UTF8 collation system. First, check whether this may interest you by executing locale from the command line. If you see in the output: LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8" or similar, then read on. When I run the following commands (which you can mouse-copy into a concole for yourself) I get the results shown in the lines starting with "#" (you can copy these in too -- they will be ignored): sort << EOT "AACD" "A CD" EOT # "AACD" # "A CD" sort << EOT "ABCD" "A CD" EOT # "ABCD" # "A CD" sort << EOT "ACCD" "A CD" EOT # "ACCD" # "A CD" sort << EOT "ADCD" "A CD" EOT # "A CD" # "ADCD" >From the above, it would seem that in en_GB.UTF-8 the SPACE character " " is sorted to a position betwee "C" and "D", since "AACD", "ABCD" and "ACCD" all sort prior to "A CD", while "A CD" sorts prior to "ADCD"! That strikes me as completely nuts! I would welcome any comment about it. I have tried to track down where this is done, and to locate on my system (Debian Lenny, also occurs on earlier Debian Etch) any system file which defines the sort order (i.e. collation order) of the standard ASCII (and other) characters. All help and/or insight much appreciated! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 28-May-10 Time: 20:57:48 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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PowerPC Linux
by Simon Royal 28 May '10

28 May '10

Hi Does anyone have any experience with Linux on PowerPC Macs. Im a long term Mac user and have an iBook G3 which might not be the fastest machine in the world - a 500Mhz G3 with 640MB RAM, but compared to my ThinkPad which is a 300Mhz P2 with 296MB RAM it is a speed demon. I know officially Ubuntu stopped PPC ports in version 7, but community ports are still going strong. There is a PowerPC version of 10.04 although I havent tried it yet. I did try version 5 a while ago and it was pretty good. I also know there is no official support for Flash - although some claim to have it working and a lot of software that is for Ubuntu will only work with x86 devices and not PPC. PowerPC Linux is very thin on the ground, Ubuntu and Xubuntu seemingly the biggest two. Yellow Dog is another and there might be a Suse or Mandriva if I remember correctly. Is it worth pursuing? Is PPC Linux any good? Or should I ditch my iBook and my ThinkPad and get faster P2 or P3 machine. In the mean time I am going to try Ubuntu 10.04 for PowerPC on my iBook. Any help and advice would be appreciated. Simon --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Ubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

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Re: [ALUG] Ubuntu Alternative Fails
by Simon Royal 28 May '10

28 May '10

James Well a retry of 10.04 worked. I went out and when I got back it was asking about grub. i set it, rebooted and is working fine. Havent tested it thoroughly but it seems fairly nippy. Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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Xubuntu Menu Bar Still Missing
by Simon Royal 27 May '10

27 May '10

Hi I am running Xubuntu and the other night the menu bar at the top and bottom disappeared. I can get them to return via typing 'xfce4-panel' into terminal. After pressing enter, typing 'disown' is supposed to make it stay there when you close terminal which is did last night. However, on reboot it was missing again and now I cannot get the 'disown' thing to work so whenever I close terminal both the bars disappear again. I've got 39 updates waiting to be installed, so I will install them and see if that resolves the problem. Can anyone think of how to resolve this if these updates don't make any difference. Someone suggested right clicking on the area, but it does nothing except bring the contextual menu up, the same as anywhere else on the desktop. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Xubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

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Xubuntu Menu Bar Disappeared
by Simon Royal 26 May '10

26 May '10

Hi Suddenly today the menu bar at the top of the screen has disappeared. I have tried a reboot and nothing has made any difference. Xubuntu 10.04. Any ideas? Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Xubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

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Re (passim) booting Eee from USB
by Anthony Anson 26 May '10

26 May '10

AFAICS, you can't - well, not this early model anyway. he trader who sold me the Acer tried to get one to boot from DVD via USB last week, and he couldn't, either. I wonder - if I put Grub on the HDD, whether, having fired-up, it might then boot from USB? Does one need an actual distro on the same drive as Grub? If so, would Tom's suffice? Compared with the Acer, the Eee's such a handy size and weight, though the battery's a bit weedy for (say) a train journey to Manchester. Copes with oe to Farnborough (Hants) OK. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

1 0

Old machines
by Steve Engledow 26 May '10

26 May '10

Mornin' all, While I'm on a spate of posting things to the list, I have quite a lot of computer parts laying dormant in my spare room and should probably get rid of them. So does anybody need a load of spare parts (I can compile a list if anyone cares that much) or a low-spec PC? I think I've got enough parts to build 3 complete machines apart from cases (I've only got one of those spare). Cheers, Steve --- There are 11 kinds of people in this world, but you'll have to work it out for yourself.

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Re: [ALUG] OT Trinary WAS:Movie Editing
by James Bensley 26 May '10

26 May '10

On 26 May 2010 10:31, Steve Engledow <steve(a)offend.me.uk> wrote: > Sorry, forgot to hit list-reply. *facepalm* And again, double face palm! http://brotch.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/double-facepalm.jpg And no it shouldn't be that, it should be what ever I want it to be ;) -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/ - There are only 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand trinary, those who don't understand trinary and those who don't understand trinary.

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Movie Editing
by Wayne Stallwood 26 May '10

26 May '10

I just bought myself a SSD based video camera (Sanyo VPC-CG10EBK) This writes out video as H.264 / AVC with mpeg-4 AAC audio What are my best options for basic editing, adding filters, transitions, effects and re-encoding to different formats. Also is there any suitable way of doing framerate conversion to make this compatible with DVD players etc (it defaults to either 30 or 60fps depending on resolution) Previously I have used kino to reasonable effect with raw DV and it seems to fail to import the audio and then plays back at about 20x speed. Are there other solutions people out there have used for this type of file ? Aviddemux-gtk seems to work but feels clunky and limited in operation compared to kino.

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Pan
by Anthony Anson 25 May '10

25 May '10

On recommendation (ALUG Passim), went looking for Pan and found quite a lot of sites. It seems that it's written for Gnome, which is fine on the Acer as I use Gnome on that, but this Eee is under the thrall of KDE. Any reason why Pan can't be accessed from that? TAAAW, it's listed as a newsreader. Does it do mail a) at all? b) well? Any outstandingly important reason why it is recommended that I should correct any errors on 'my PC' before downloading? Oh, and a totally wild and OT shot in the dark - anyone on the list interested in target shooting? -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Bashed...
by Anthony Anson 24 May '10

24 May '10

Tired of three-stage shutdown in Tellytubbies Eee, I opened a terminal and tried: shutdown -h now Ripost was: Bash: shutdown: command not found (Original command taken from The One Page Linux Manual) To save me lots of GPRS-wasted time, does anyone know what the magic words are, pretty please? -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Thunderbird colours in Ubuntu 10.04
by Mark Rogers 24 May '10

24 May '10

I've just upgraded to U10.04 using the default (I think) Radiance theme. I'm slowly getting used to the new min/max/close icon positions. However, in ThunderBird, the folder listing used to show folders in three different styles: bold black for folders with unread email in them, bold blue for folders with *new* unread email in them, and black (not bold) otherwise. Now, in U10.04, the folders with new unread email are still bold but now in a light grey colour, making them far less prominent than the other two folder states despite being the most important. (a) Is this just me? It could be something I've tweaked in the past and need to un-tweak (b) Any idea how to change this? -- 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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Virtual Box Query
by Mark Jonathan Myatt 23 May '10

23 May '10

Hello all - I have been running Fedora Core 12 for the last few months having previously been using Core 11. I am now wishing to have the use of a virtual box to run an existing MS Family Tree package on Windows 2000 professional. I have been unable to find a comparable Linux product. Whilst I have been using Linux for a number of years now I remain uncomfortable using Bash although I have some successes. So for the purposes of this enquiry please treat me as a 'terminal' user. I have been unable to complete the loading of the virtual product provided by Oracle: "Oracle VM Virtual Box 3.2.0.r61806". Although the software has been loaded correctly as well as Windows 2000 when trying to start it the following error message appears: "Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908) The VirtualBox Linux kernel driver (vboxdrv) is either not loaded or there is a permission problem with /dev/vboxdrv. Please reinstall the kernel module by executing '/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup' as root. Users of Ubuntu, Fedora or Mandriva should install the DKMS package first. This package keeps track of Linux kernel changes and recompiles the vboxdrv kernel module if necessary." I confirm DKMS and GCC have already been installed. When I do as instructed above the following error message appears: "[Mark@Mark ~]$ su Password: [root@Mark Mark]# /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup Stopping VirtualBox kernel module [ OK ] Recompiling VirtualBox kernel module [FAILED] (Look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out what went wrong) [root@Mark Mark]# " When I look at /var/log/vbox-install.log I get the following response: "[root@Mark Mark]# /var/log/vbox-install.log bash: /var/log/vbox-install.log: Permission denied [root@Mark Mark]# " The when I look at Var/log etc to see what can be done the following message appears: "Attempting to install using DKMS removing old DKMS module vboxdrv version 3.2.0 ------------------------------ Deleting module version: 3.2.0 completely from the DKMS tree. ------------------------------ Done. Creating symlink /var/lib/dkms/vboxdrv/3.2.0/source -> /usr/src/vboxdrv-3.2.0 DKMS: add Completed. Error! Your kernel source for kernel 2.6.32.12-115.fc12.i686.PAE cannot be found at /lib/modules/2.6.32.12-115.fc12.i686.PAE/build or /lib/modules/2.6.32.12-115.fc12.i686.PAE/source. You can use the --kernelsourcedir option to tell DKMS where it's located. Failed to install using DKMS, attempting to install without Makefile:159: *** Error: unable to find the sources of your current Linux kernel. Specify KERN_DIR=<directory> and run Make again. Stop." It is at this point I am now lost ! I don't fully understand the question. Any help on this will be gratefully received. One other query while I am writing; as follows: I have been trying to regularise the setup of my two HP printers. When using bash using the command hp-setup I get the following error messages:- "HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.10.2) Printer/Fax Setup Utility ver. 9.0 Copyright (c) 2001-9 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details. QGtkStyle was unable to detect the current GTK+ theme. Qt: Session management error: None of the authentication protocols specified are supported (process:8072): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed (process:8072): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed (process:8072): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed (process:8072): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed". Help towards sorting this out will be much appreciated Mark Myatt (Saxmundham)

2 1

Random Lock-ups of my Ubuntu Box?
by James Bensley 22 May '10

22 May '10

Hey List, I have an Ubuntu 9.10 box on which I recently created a software RAID6; you can see what it looks like in rather good detail if I may say so my self ;) here: http://i48.tinypic.com/30jrbdl.jpg After this set up was all done I shut the machine down for the night. Now when I boot the machine up to start using the array it wants to run the file system check utility, fsck I believe (like it normally does, every N days or N mounts, "which ever comes first"). This is fine, I assume it wants to do this because its a new volume and I like to know everything is working fine so I would always let this run on any of my machines but on this machine, it gets to the desk top, I can see the process is running via top or the process monitor, but within 1 minute of being on the desk top the machine will locks up and is unrecoverable so I am forced to turn it off? This happens every time, so ever since a week ago when I first made this RAID array, I haven't actually used the damn thing yet! I can't understand why this would be; I thought it may have been the power supply as it is only 250 watts but I have the machine connected to a watt meter and I added the drives one at a time watching the watts increase, we are only at 140 Watts? I had thought that maybe it was to many devices on one single power cable coming out of the power supply as I have had to use splitters on the power cables so I swapped the power supply out temporarily for one in another machine that is rated for 500 watts and had more power cables coming out of it but no...I also stood another machine next to it, turn them on at the same time and used the 2nd machines power connectors to power some of the drives so the power was shared between the two PSUs, but no it still locked up Next I thought it was the south bridge being over run but surely it wouldn't of been able to sit there for 20 hours building the RAID and formatting it? Is it possible that the building of the RAID wasn't very intense and now its all set up, when it tries to boot to the desktop and run fsck this is now making the drives work hard and so that only now the systems weakness is showing? (I did try increasing the south bridge voltage but the options in the CMOS are very limited and so I think there was a difference, it stayed on the desktop for 2 minutes before locking up instead of 1, but I can't remember, this would need validating). I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on how I can get this working again? P.s. sorry for the length! -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/ - There are only 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand trinary, those who don't understand trinary and those who don't understand trinary.

2 1

time for an upgrade
by nev young 22 May '10

22 May '10

Hi, So I've been running kubuntu 8.04 (i386) for a couple of years now on my main PC and I'm seriously thinking of loading up ubuntu 10.04. Mainly because both laptops run ubuntu (one 10.04 and one 9.10) and the differences between gnome and kde keep catching us (me & the missus) out. I'm thinking of using the 64 bit version of 10.04 to get more out of the machine[1] but can not decide whether to load ubuntu server and load the destop bits or load ubuntu desktop and load the web and file server bits. Any advice or suggestions over and above my current plan of split the root partition[2] into 3 and have a triple boot to try each in turn. -- Nev [1] AMD AthlonX2 64bit dual core @ 2.2GHz [2] 135GB free, 9% used.

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Re: [ALUG] ALUG meeting lift?
by Anthony Anson 20 May '10

20 May '10

Srdjan Todorovic wrote: > On 20 May 2010 17:03, Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk> wrote: >> Srdjan Todorovic wrote: >>> Have you managed to find someone that can give you a lift? >> Unfortunately, no. >> >> It's a bit late now, as my bus to Norwich leaves at around 9.50 am. >> >> It'll have to be next time now. >> >> (Besides, I spent a bit more than I ought to have done on homebrew kit and >> ingredients yesterday...) > > Ah. It's just that I will probably be leaving for Norwich soonish > (maybe - possibly having food in a different pub with some other ALUG > people before main pubmeet), and I am based in Wymondham. Next month might be a better bet, I think, if the offer is still open, and if I haven't got the motorcycle on the road by then. (Have to renew my licence too, as I've reached a 'landmark' bidet.) > I usually leave the pub at about 10:45 pm ish... so might have been > able to give you a lift back. Only problem is I have no idea where you > live... The Wymondham end of Bunwell... > If some fuel money was on the table (a fiver?) then I could perhaps > give you a lift if you are not going to stay past sort of 10:50pm ish. > > Otherwise, not sure anyone else is going past your area.... Looking in my wallet, there's a big hole there with about fifteen quid unspoken for, cowering in the corner. This has to last me until Monday. OK, if in Norwich I could raid the hole in the wall, but it is getting a little late in the day for tidying everything away into the workshop, cleaning-up and finding a presentable change of clobber. Been power-sawing logs... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Mystery!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 20 May '10

20 May '10

Sorry to be completely off-topic, but there's quite a few of you who are savvy in rare areas; plus, you're local! Scenario: At times during the last few days I've seen a low-slung white car/van driving around. It has "Anglian WILLHIRE" on the sides. On the roof is mounted a blackish flat plate, about 15in x 9in in size and angled so that it is elevated about 45deg above the horizontal and facing forward. Perpendicular to this plate (therefore pointing upwards at about 45deg to the vertical) is an array of rods, which seem to be about 3in long and about 1/2in (or a bit smaller) in diameter. I couldn't count exactly, but I'd say it looks like a 4x6 array. (All quantities in this description are approximate!) I first saw this vehicle driving over the farmer's field opposite my house last week, some yards in from the edge and driving parallel to the edge. It was actually driving on the earth of the field, not on any track. I've subsequently seen it 3 times, driving along the road (a) between my house and the fields, (b) coming back over the bridge to the NorthEast over the Little Ouse river. See at postcode CB7 4TG on google maps for topographical reference (The "A" pointer you will get is close to the point from which I first observed it). Clearly this is monitoring something, but I cannot imagine what. What would the little rods on the plate be for? Any ideas? With thanks, and apologies once again for going OT! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-May-10 Time: 11:09:34 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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[ALUG Announce] Norwich Meeting Thursday 20th May @ Coachmakers, Thorpe Road.
by Steve Pearce 19 May '10

19 May '10

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Due to last week's football madness, the second Thursday monthly meeting for Norwich was cancelled. Several regulars have confirmed they will be getting together this Thursday to make up for it. The meeting will be held at the usual venue from 8pm: The Coach and Horses 82 Thorpe Road Norwich Norfolk NR1 1BA Website: http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ Hope to see you there! Steve ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

3 2

MP3 Plays Only In Command Line
by Simon Royal 18 May '10

18 May '10

Hi I am still battling with sound on my ThinkPad 600 running Xubuntu. I have managed to get some sound and even play MP3 via command line - mpg123 and mplayer. But I cannot get any program to play it. It either doesnt play at all or plays so crackly you cant even hear the music. Is this a hardware limitation or am I doing something wrong? Please help, I am a fairly new Linux user. When using mplayer via command line I noticed that it said 'pulse' is this the audio output engine/settings it is using as under Mixer there is also a mention of Pulse under one of the Output options - along sine OSS and Alsa. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Xubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ We want to hear all your funny, exciting and crazy Hotmail stories. Tell us now

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Re: [ALUG] C beginner question
by Phil Ashby 17 May '10

17 May '10

On 16/05/10 02:04, Ian wrote: > > Incidentally, this is such a common requirement ISTR there are some > library functions that do these tests for you but I cannot for the > life of me remember where they are! getopt is the 'normal' way of parsing command line options in C, although I rarely use it for less than 4 options (too much pain just to avoid a few extra lines, and not posix): http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_1.2.0/gLSB/libutil-getopt-3.html I typically write: #include <string.h> // For strncmp() etc. ... main (int argc, char **argv) { int arg; char *str_arg = "default"; ... for (arg=1; argc; arg++) { if (strncmp(argv[arg], "-h", 2)==0) { // They need help :) return usage(); } else if (strncmp(argv[arg], "-o", 2)==0) { str_arg = argv[++arg]; } else if (strncmp(argv[arg], "-x", 2)==0) { ... } else { return usage(); } } ... } Using strncmp() instead of strcmp() means this supporta shorter options identified by their unique prefix parts (eg: -o[ption] -x[tend] etc.) HTH, Phil.

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 17 May '10

17 May '10

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

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C beginner question
by James Bensley 16 May '10

16 May '10

Hey List, I have what is hopefully a beginners C question which will be easily answered (this following little app is for converting watts, amps and volts); I have the following code: http://pastebin.com/m30x4G17 The problem I have is although the code works, it is because I have used the strncmp function to compare the first pasted argument and a string value such as "-watts", "-volts" or "-amps" because without it I was getting errors about comparing integers and pointers but I am confused as to why C thinks this. Using if(argv[1]=="-watts") produces no errors but the if statements are never hit, as in the if statement is never met and the code is never run. How should I be coding this to make these comparisons? -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/

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Web Dev Job
by Sam Tuke 14 May '10

14 May '10

I'm moving to Berlin in July to work for the Free Software Foundation Europe. As a result, my primary client is looking for a new developer to telecommute and work on their website www.donttravelempty.com . Those interested please email me directly at sam(a)donttravelempty.com. The site uses lots of FOSS (see http://www.donttravelempty.co.uk/about-site.php ), and you'll need good PHP, MySQL and communication skills. Number and spread of hours + pay are negotiable. Sam.

1 0

Pub Meet Suggestion
by Steve Engledow 13 May '10

13 May '10

Hi all, Following the recent heads-up about the impending football mob, I'm suggesting we move to the Cider Shed on Sprowston Road. It's too far out of the city to be mobbed, there's good beer and cider (Fat Cat beers!) and there's a car park. So, any takers? Steve

2 1

Norwich Pub meet heads up
by Montmorency 13 May '10

13 May '10

Just letting everybody know... there's some kind of football parade going on in the city this evening, on account of Norwich City winning something or other. I heard a crowd of 30,000 is expected. I imagine parking around the Coach and Horses is going to be non-existent. Furthermore, the C&H is a bit of a football pub, on home-game days. So I imagine it'll be packed out - standing room only. Sixteen stone men with beer guts, wearing replica football shirts intended for 12 stone profession athletes, are definitely not a pretty sight. So I'm going to skip it this evening. katsmeat

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Xubuntu, Sound, mplayer. Help!
by Simon Royal 13 May '10

13 May '10

Hi I am still trying to fathom out MP3 playback on my ThinkPad 600. Sorry if I seem to ignore peoples suggestions, but I'm not. I must have just missed the reply. Anyway. I trying installing mplayer from Synaptic, and it appears to me to be Movie Player, which is already installed in Xubuntu. Correct me if I am wrong. Now I am back to getting no sound at all. I still get the crackling of the speakers on boot - like it is initialising them. However, it will not play any type of audio file. I have tried MP3, MID and WAV in both Movie Player and Exaile and no sound at all. I tried playing with Aumix and it looks like it is set ok, I also raised all the levels in Mixer for all instances. I also tried playing an audio CD, to no avail. You see the timers going but no sound comes out. Any help please? Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Xubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

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Re: [ALUG] Xubuntu ThinkPad Audio Oddness
by Simon Royal 12 May '10

12 May '10

Marcus Before I was getting no audio, now it is just MP3s. i want to know if it can be fixed or if it is an outdated hardware problem. Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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Xubuntu ThinkPad Audio Oddness
by Simon Royal 11 May '10

11 May '10

Hi. For the past few weeks I have been trying to get audio working on my ThinkPad 600 under Xubuntu 9.10 and now 10.04. I followed some instructions I found online for manually editing modprobes etc... and I still couldnt get MP3 to work and assumed it was all audio not working. However, a few days ago I got a 'blip' sound while FaceBook chatting and today I played a YouTube video and it played the sound, however I cannot get an MP3 to play. Is it my machine is too old? All I get is crackling. I have tried Amarok, Exaile and Movie Player. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Xubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

2 1

Copy Evolution contacts, appointments, etc. - how?
by Chris G 10 May '10

10 May '10

I want to copy Evolution contacts, calendars, tasks and memos from one user to another and can find no remotely sensible way of doing it. I tried copying the whole .evolution hierarchy but that seemed to do nothing at all - I suspect possibly because of Evolution background processes hanging on to things. Copying addressbook.db apparently doesn't work according to what I can surmise from a bit of googling. Is there really no way to do this? -- Chris Green

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1/6/10, Cornhill, Ipswich: dorkbot anglia
by samwise 10 May '10

10 May '10

Hi, For anyone interested in cool things to do with techy stuff, dorkbot is coming to East Anglia. It's first announced date is at the Cornhill in Ipswich. Press release cut and pasted below. Go to the main website to see it with links etc. Peter. http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotanglia/ dorkbot anglia Thursday 1st July 2010, 8-10pm, Free Entry Town Hall Galleries, Cornhill, Ipswich, UK. IP1 1DH We are delighted to announce the inaugural meeting of dorkbot anglia, an evening of talks and conversations with "people doing strange things with electricity" in the East Anglian area. The event is part of the ip-art festival and kindly hosted by the Town Hall Galleries. David Chatting, cofounder of the Curiosity Collective, introduces: * Pixelh8 / Matthew C. Applegate makes music from reprogramming old and rare computers. http://pixelh8.co.uk/ * Tim Hunkin, engineer, cartoonist and maker of TV’s The Secret Life of Machines describes his humorous slot machines, automata and simulator rides on Southwold Pier. http://timhunkin.com * John Bowers, musician, sound artist, hardware hacker and academic discusses some of his most recent work. http://onoma.co.uk/ * Plus, "OpenDork" a short ad-hoc slot for anyone to talk about their work - the floor is yours! dorkbot encourages grassroots meetings of artists, engineers, designers, scientists, inventors and anyone else working under the very broad umbrella of electronic art. Started by Douglas Repetto at Columbia University in 2000, dorkbot is now global in almost 100 cities; dorkbot anglia is the newest. Our intention is for dorkbot anglia to run every two or three months in a different town in the region. If you would like to participate or could offer a venue, please get in touch - Please join the mailing-lists: the announce list for our monthly announcements and a blabber list for open discussion. Follow our tweets via twitter and find the event on facebook.

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Re: [ALUG] ssh assistance please
by mick 09 May '10

09 May '10

On Sun, 9 May 2010 15:29:18 +0100 "Martin A. Brooks" <martin(a)hinterlands.org> allegedly wrote: > You might have better luck using a regular VPN such as OpenVPN. > Here's a HOWTO: > > http://hinterlands.org/wiki/index.php/OpenVPNQuickstart > Martin/Brett Thanks - but unless I'm missing something obvious, the VPN solution won't work easily in my scenario. Bear in mind that I want 90% (or so) of my web browsing to go out normally (unproxied). I only want my tor traffic (from separately configured browsers on various clients) to go via the proxy to the external VPS. And I want a simple configuration which means I point to a local proxy. If I set up a VPN from my local proxy (say 192.168.1.20) to my VPS (say 195.195.195.195) that will give me a route to the VPS which is independent of the normal default route to the outside. That would mean that I would need to reconfigure my clients to add a new static route to the VPS via the tunnel on the local proxy. That adds a complication I don't want. Of course, if I could set up a VPN from my external router that would make it slightly easier, but I'm pretty sure my cisco wont run openvpn. So autossh looks like the way to go (thanks Brett). But I'd still like to know why the tunnel dies. 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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Re: [ALUG] ssh assistance please
by Martin A. Brooks 09 May '10

09 May '10

On Sun, May 9, 2010 13:01, mick wrote: > I have a problem with ssh tunneling that is puzzling me. > > I run tor on a VPS. My tor node also runs privoxy (chained to tor) so that I may use the VPS for my own tor browsing. > > When I want to use tor myself, I have for some time simply set up a tunnel to my VPS as so: > > ssh -N -C -l mick -f -L 2000:127.0.0.1:8118 tornode > > (so I am listening locally on 2000 and forwarding to privoxy on the tor node.) You might have better luck using a regular VPN such as OpenVPN. Here's a HOWTO: http://hinterlands.org/wiki/index.php/OpenVPNQuickstart

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ssh assistance please
by mick 09 May '10

09 May '10

I have a problem with ssh tunneling that is puzzling me. I run tor on a VPS. My tor node also runs privoxy (chained to tor) so that I may use the VPS for my own tor browsing. When I want to use tor myself, I have for some time simply set up a tunnel to my VPS as so: ssh -N -C -l mick -f -L 2000:127.0.0.1:8118 tornode (so I am listening locally on 2000 and forwarding to privoxy on the tor node.) Locally I use a completely separate browser (opera, suitably locked down) set to proxy through localhost:2000. This all works fine and I connect through tor as I would expect. But, I have several different client machines around (including one used by my wife). Rather than have the same setup on each machine (and possibly cause my wife difficulty she does not want) I have recently been experimenting with using one of my small debian devices (a sheevaplug) as a proxy so that all I have to do is set up the browser on each client machine. On the proxy machine I used: ssh -N -C -g -l mick -f -L 192.168.1.20:8000:127.0.0.1:8118 tornode (so I am now listening on 192.168.1.20 port 8000 and forwarding to privoxy on the tornode. The -g switch lets other hosts connect.) Again, this all works fine. The proxy has a listener on port 8000, it forwards correctly and my modified client browsers can successfully connect through tor. But here's the rub. The listener dies after some (as yet to be determined, but > 30 mins) period of inactivity. This means I cannot rely on the proxy being up when I (or more importantly, my wife) want it. I have searched for obvious timeout configuration options, but I confess I don't know enough about ssh to know what I should be looking for (ClientAliveCountMax, ClientAliveInterval server side? or ServerAliveCountMax, ServerAliveInterval client side? ) Any ideas anyone? 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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Large box of computer crud
by Martin A. Brooks 09 May '10

09 May '10

Hello I have finally got round to sorting out my office a bit and I have compiled a box full of stuff that's of no use to me but might be to you. This box contains (at least): * Dust * A 56k modem (ooooh!) * A USB TV tuner (ahhhh!) * A 128Mb pen drive (gasp!) * A USB ethernet adaptor * A CD-ROM drive * A boxed usb internet phone * A PCI TV tuner A many many more cables, fans, adaptors, convertors, screws, nuts, bolts, thermal paste, weird backing plates etc etc. Claiming this wonderful prize is easy. Please be the first person to say "I can come and collect this from your house -today-, I know you live at approximately RM3 7EG." The amount of money I would like for this is £0.00. I will even throw in an antibodyMX tshirt (please indicate your size M, L or XL).

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Grub Menu Editing Xubuntu
by Simon Royal 09 May '10

09 May '10

Hi. How do you edit the list in the grub menu in Xubuntu. Since installing 9.10 and upgrading to 10.04 I have been informed of updates to 'linux headers' and it keeps adding to entries. How do you delete older versions from the list? Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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Deleting directories which only contain old files
by Mark Rogers 08 May '10

08 May '10

Starting in a directory on my server, I need to delete all directories below it which only contain files older than a certain age. To be clear, I don't just want to delete old files; if a directory has any new files in it then I don't want to delete the older files that might also be in there. Background: I run dspam on a server, and it creates a directory for each mail address it scans, containing a log and a quarantine mailbox, amongst other things. I have many many directories that were created automatically for non-existent users and haven't seen any changes in months or even years, but "active" directories do have old files in them (preferences files, etc). So I want to find directories that haven't had any of their contents change in (say) 6 months, and then delete the whole directory. -- 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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Bluetooth - help!
by Chris G 07 May '10

07 May '10

I'm trying to get my desktop Linux box to talk Bluetooth and I'm *very* lost. I've plugged in a USB Bluetooth 'dongle' and it's sitting there happily flashing its blue LED. So now what do I do? :-) If I run bluetooth-wizard it loses me completely, I don't really know which 'end' it's asking for information about. The other end I'm trying to communicate with is a Nokia E71 phone. Can someone describe in simple terms what I should be doing to pair my computer with the phone? (Note: I have successfully paired other Bluetooth devices before now, in particular a SatNav and a bluetooth equipped crash helmet) -- Chris Green

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concatenate two jpeg images
by Ian Thompson-Bell 07 May '10

07 May '10

I have two jpeg images that I can arrange to have the same height. I want to combine then into a single image of the two, side by side. I cannot seem to find a way to do this in GIMP. Any ideas? Cheers Ian

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Thunderbird 3 Smart Folders
by Wayne Stallwood 06 May '10

06 May '10

Ok after an initial "ugh" when Thunderbird got updated to version 3 as part of my upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 I have sort of adjusted and it *is* better. But one thing that I can't get is adding smart folders properly...has anyone done this and how ? At the top of the folder tree I have an "Inbox" smart folder which is a combination of my local (pop collected) inbox and an imap work one I want to add another smart folder that only shows unread items in the same way just under this. I can change the filter on the existing "Inbox" smart folder so that messages are only shown if status-isn't-read and that works fine (although annoyingly it only updates if you leave it and navigate back) but what I can't seem to do is add an additional folder that behaves like this. I worked out that the easy way to add new smart folders is to perform a search and then in the search options click "save search as virtual folder" but this only allows me to add the virtual folder as a subfolder to one of my existing accounts...not put it at the top with the other smart folders.

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Keyboard is king?
by Anthony Anson 06 May '10

06 May '10

Can anyone suggest why, occasionally, I turn on the Eee (t's still running Tellytubbies Xandros) and no keyboard function works. Right arrow, left arrow, tab, nuffin. Order is restored when the mouse is tweaked. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Re: [ALUG] Any raid experts among us?
by Adam Reid 05 May '10

05 May '10

Righty... the situation's changed a bit now, as Brett outlined. Raid is now repaired, but won't start on boot, for reasons not known. Syncing doesn't cause lockups, or that's not proven, but something does cause a USB devices to stop responding, eg keyboard & mouse. this happened on the live cd as well, although the PC was working normally otherwise. Basically, as it stands now, I have a working raid, in the live cd mdadm --assemble --scan /dev/md0 works perfectly, but something has changed that stops it being loaded at boot time; the kernel gives up waiting for the root device to be ready & drops me at busybox. I could make a backup of the array and reinstall the whole system, but I'd prefer to solve the problem if possible. I'm making a full backup tomorrow anyway, whatever happens.

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Any raid experts among us?
by Adam Reid 05 May '10

05 May '10

Allo all, I've run into a spot of bother (understatement of the year) while upgrading Ubuntu to 10.4. More specifically, after upgrading, the device names of my drives seem to have shuffled around a bit, and raid5 (softraid) broke. I'm unable to rebuild the array, as it seems to value the old device names more highly than the uuid's, and errors out. Pastebin of the current drive situation is at http://www.pastebin.com/2AT9fQYF . The drives used to be sda, sdb and sdc, but somehow the dvd drive took over sdb post-upgrade. You can see my attempts to sort the situation here, and the results: http://www.pastebin.com/t8wPxZHu . I can get to busybox on the PC, and am using a liveCD to try to repair it. I'm wondering whether shuffling the cables around to realign the drive letters is a sane idea ... or whether that'll make the problem worse. Any insight much appreciated.

4 3

Geekbench In Xubuntu
by Simon Royal 03 May '10

03 May '10

Hi I am interested in getting Geekbench in Xubuntu. I have downloaded the file from the website, unpacked it and went to Execute it, but it doesn't do anything. I'm dual booting XP and Xubuntu on my ThinkPad 600 and have benched XP and would like to see if there is an diference under Xubuntu. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

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Xubuntu Sound Problems Continue
by Simon Royal 01 May '10

01 May '10

Hi I still havent gotten any further with geting sound to work on my ThinkPad 600 under Xubuntu 10.04. I tried following some tips I found online and atleast got something to show up in Mixer. When the machine boots you hear the speakers being initialised - you get that crackle for a second or so. But when I play an MP3 in Exaile it plays all crackly and you cant even make the song out. However, tonight I was on FaceBook and someone started chatting to me and when I got a new message I got a sound. I have never had that before, so something must be working somewhere. I just double checked an MP3 again and no joy, and I then thought about playing an audio CD, but while the CD played I got no sound. Any further ideas? Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ We want to hear all your funny, exciting and crazy Hotmail stories. Tell us now

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Xubuntu Copy Dialog Box
by Simon Royal 01 May '10

01 May '10

Hi I was copying some file to my USB Flash Drive the other day from Xubuntu and it didn't come up with a copy dialog progress box. I didn't think too much of it at the time. This morning I was trying to create an alias of my windows partition on my desktop and accidently dropped it so it is copying the whole partition onto my desktop and there is no dialog or progress box. It is a 6GB partition and there is no way to stop it. I can here the hard drive chugging away so I know it is doing it. Why is there no box that comes up? Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ We want to hear all your funny, exciting and crazy Hotmail stories. Tell us now

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Xubuntu Sound Help Please
by Simon Royal 30 Apr '10

30 Apr '10

Hi I am running Xubuntu 10.04 - upgraded yesterday from 9.10. I have not had sound working in either versions. I have a ThinkPad 600 - which is notorious for sound problems. In Mixer it only listed Dummy as a device. I followed some instructions written for Ubuntu a while back specifically for the TP 600. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=188736 Now I have partial success. In Mixer it shows CS4237B (Alsa Mixer), CS4237B (OSS Mixer) and Playback: CS4237B Analog Stereo as well as a couple of capture devices. Now when I play an MP3 using Exaile playback is very choppy to the point of you cannot hear the music. I followed the instructions carefully and double checked I had everything for the sound written properly. II could not find on my system in the boot folder the menu.lst to edit the acpi settings and I am wondering if this has anything to do with it. Also on boot it shows on the screen the following message 'cs423x pnpbios unable to assign' or something like that as it shows only briefly before loading the desktop. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I seemed to have gotten this far. It would appear to me that the drivers or modules are loading correctly but it is a hardware conflict that needs resolving. Please help. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

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Xubuntu 10.04 First Look
by Simon Royal 30 Apr '10

30 Apr '10

Hi I installed Xubuntu 10.04 last night, updating via Update Manager option. It took a long while - about 12 hours - but I think this is more down to it only being a 300Mhz P2 rather than any reflection on the software. The general look is the same as 9.10. It seems generally faster. Firefox booted a lot quicker and page navigation was quicker. Boot time is considerably faster and has a new look boot screen. So far so good. Machine is a ThinkPad 600 P2 300 with 296MB RAM and 15GB HD. The update didnt resolve the audio problems, something I will have to resolve myself. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

2 1

Xubuntu 10.04
by Simon Royal 29 Apr '10

29 Apr '10

Hi I am currently running Xubuntu 9.10 on my ThinkPad. The new Ubuntu 10.04 LTS came out today and in my Update Manager it says there is 10.04 ready to be installed. I cannot find anywhere on the Ubuntu or Xubuntu site a reference that Xubuntu 10.04 has been released today as well. This is the first time I have upgraded from one major version to another. I am assuming the update available will install Xubuntu and not the latest version of Ubuntu over the top of what I have already? Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

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deja-dup and amazon s3
by Peter Alcibiades 29 Apr '10

29 Apr '10

Has anyone made deja-dup work with s3? Or indeed anything else work with s3? I have followed an excellent user guide, not that dd should hardly need one, its so simple, and it fails to work saying that there is no network connection available. Don't understand what I have to do to make it connect. Maybe I'm using the wrong host name - how does this have to be specified? Peter

1 0

Sleep In Xubuntu
by Simon Royal 27 Apr '10

27 Apr '10

Hi I am having a really annoying problem in Xubuntu. When my ThinkPad 600 goes to sleep it wont wake. I then have to take the battery out before I can turn it back on. This is annoying. It has been happening ever since I reinstalled Xubuntu a week ago. I had it running on there before and it never had this problem. I dual boot XP and Xubuntu and tried the XP out today. I don't use it very often. And it works fine and so does the sleep, so it cannot be a hardware fault as such. I am using exactly the same hardware inc wireless card in both XP and Xubuntu. I even tried turning off the sleep options in Xubuntu so that it didn't go to sleep when the lid was closed etc, but that seems to make no difference. Can anyone help? Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ We want to hear all your funny, exciting and crazy Hotmail stories. Tell us now

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What PDA to get for use with Linux?
by Chris G 26 Apr '10

26 Apr '10

My wife's Palm Treo is feeling its age in various ways and needs replacing. Currently she synchronises the Treo with Evolution in Gnome using the built-in Gnome/Evolution synchronisation software. So, what can we buy now to replace the Palm that will allow her to continue as far as possible in the same way? I'd prefer a solution that doesn't involve a separate server system/process, especially one 'out in the cloud', but apart from that we really don't have any major constraints. -- Chris Green

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iSync For Xubuntu
by Simon Royal 25 Apr '10

25 Apr '10

Hi I use iSync in Mac OSX to sync my phone contacts and it works flawlessly. Is there anything in Xubuntu that works the same? My mobile is a Sony Ericsson P990i. Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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Need any hardware?
by Chris Walker 25 Apr '10

25 Apr '10

I've long been a magnet for unwanted hardware and last week collected a couple of old PCs. One is a Time PC with an 800 MHz CPU, 128MB of RAM and a 30 GB hard drive. I've been playing with it for a few days trying out various linux installs including Puppy, aLinux but it currently has Debian installed on it. It's free if anybody wants it. The second is a small Patriot machine. I haven't played much with that and so it still has Windows 98 on it. This is the machine type - http://www.dansdata.com/bookpc.htm It says on that page that it's suitable as a "home theatre, entertainment and Internet access device" but I'd say the fan is too noisy. Other than that, it works. They both come with monitors but I only have one keyboard and mouse for them. I also have a Compaq NC3122 dual network card. See here for details - http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c003… PM me if you're interested in any of these. I'm in Wymondham if that helps. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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GIMP/ImageMagick question
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 25 Apr '10

25 Apr '10

Hi Folks, I have a JPEG (from rhe Web) of a map of the regions in The Gambia. I want to use that as the basis for preparing an EPS file of the various borders of these regions. The objective is to import it into a document (a number of times). If I just use ImageMagicks 'convert' program to convert the JPEG into EPS, it's big -- 2.4MB -- because it plants each pixel separately. So the resulting document would be enormous. Also the text in the JPEG doesn't come out too well. And, anyway, in effect it's still a bit-map under another name! I would be content with an EPS with just the outlines as vector graphics. So what I'm thinking of is using the JPEG as "background" or "underlay" in a drawing program so that I could simply use the mouse to plot in the outlines I want into a (transparent layer on top of that, and then save the resulting layer (outlines only, but maybe a few text annotations as well) as an EPS file. I'm not (so far) seeing anything that corresponds to that aim in ImageMagick (but could be wrong, because the documentation for that is massive). I'm guessing that the GIMP could, but I might need some initial guidance on how to start that up for this purpose! In short, I want to trace the outlines of an image on screen into an EPS file. There's another program called 'xfig', but I'm pretty sure this doesn't allow a background as I've described. Any suggestions/help/advice most welcome. Thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 25-Apr-10 Time: 19:13:45 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] main Digest, Vol 58, Issue 23
by Adam Reid 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

> Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:31:54 +0100 > From: gizbun <gizbun(a)aacute.co.uk> > Subject: Re: [ALUG] [ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social > Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Message-ID: <1271698314.7663.9.camel@gizbun-desktop> > Content-Type: text/plain > > Damn was looking forward to this and I have a migraine coming on! > > David I've re-recorded the videos to better show the process, and added some answers/demonstrations to questions asked. You can find them at http://dev.anyma.co.uk/presentation/PartOne.ogv (36mb) and http://dev.anyma.co.uk/presentation/PartTwo.ogv (55mb). Obviously just pause if you'd like to read something in more detail, or stop the cursor; I didn't realise how much I was moving it around until watching the video afterwards. Regarding vocaloids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBZOlipfjkQ a news article about them, gives a bit of background information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVHNgBj8sfs Anger - has excellent CG work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOt5tK1eZfY Part 1 of a live concert - as I said, the vocaloids have idol status in Japan. I love the leek glowsticks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXNH8TEP8vM and Double Lariat for Samwise

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Encrypted PDF with odd password
by Dan Hatton 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

Dear All, I have an encrypted PDF file that I can open just fine in Adobe Reader under Windows. But I'd really prefer to read it in Xpdf (or any open source tool). Unfortunately, Xpdf needs the password supplied on the command line, and the password contains characters that are special to the shell. (Actually, I don't think I need to be coy about this. It contains a percent sign, an ampersand, and a pound sign.) I've tried escaping the special characters with backslashes, enclosing the password in various types of quotes, and putting the password in an environment variable, but all of these result in "Incorrect password" errors and failure to open the document. Any ideas, please? -- Thanks, Dan

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Xubuntu Or Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 20 Apr '10

20 Apr '10

Hi. I am loving linux. After 10 years as a Mac only fan. A few months ago I bought a 1ghz Samsung laptop and ran Ubuntu on it. I loved it. The laptop died shortly after that and I got a Thinkpad 600 and running Xubuntu on it. I chose Xubuntu as it is only a P2 300mhz and was under the impression it was lighter than Xubuntu. After numerous threads it seems Xubuntu in fact is heavier on CPU usage and RAM than Ubuntu. So as I intend to stick with this ThinkPad for a while would there be any benefit in installing Ubuntu on it instead of Xubuntu. Simon -- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 19 Apr '10

19 Apr '10

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back this Monday 15th 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://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Nothing particular planned this month, though I'm sure we'll end up covering broadband speeds again, if only briefly, now that Infinity is being rolled out (nowhere near us, I hasten to add). I may have a whinge about nvidia graphics drivers, as well. Remember to call (mail me in advance for my mobile no.) or email me, if you're arriving later and want to ensure I don't wander off, which might happen if the turn-out hits rock-bottom ... Hope to see 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

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ThinkPad, Xubuntu, Wake Problem
by Simon Royal 18 Apr '10

18 Apr '10

Hi I am having problems with ThinkPad 600 running Xubuntu. I had it on there before, no problem. I took it off and reinstalled it recently and am having problems with it waking from sleep. I close the lid and leave it. When I go to open it, it wont wake. Nothing I do will wake it. I have to hold down the power button to get it to go off. It won't then power up. I have to remove the battery and put it back in and then it will boot fine and other than that it works fine. It has been doing it for about a week. Then today it stopped and would wake normally when the lid was opened. I thought the problem had gone away, however, it just started doing it again a few minutes ago. Any suggestions? It is very annoying. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

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SCSI Drives
by James Bensley 18 Apr '10

18 Apr '10

Hey Collective, Just got single Celeron old school beast server for my self to play with. Does anyone have any SCSI drives they want to (preferably) give me? It has 2x40GB 10K drives in it and I am looking for a few more so I can use it as a play ground at home. If anyone has got any I am after any size from 5GB > infinity as long as they are also 10K. TTFN. -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/

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ThinkPad 600 Xubuntu Sound Issues
by Simon Royal 15 Apr '10

15 Apr '10

Hi I have an IBM ThinkPad 600 - which I got from a fellow group member. I have installed Xubuntu 9.10 and am having some problems getting the sound set up. I understand they have a different sound chip to the 600E and 600X and that most distros detect it with the wrong sound chip. Can anyone offer any advice or help on how to get sound working on this machine. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/ We want to hear all your funny, exciting and crazy Hotmail stories. Tell us now

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Hosting
by Ian Porter 15 Apr '10

15 Apr '10

Hi all, I am presently hosting my personal domain (http://www.codingfriends.com) on a friends server, but would like to host on my own but not for £30+ p/m. Was just wondering if anyone recommend cheap hosting, but also reliable. I have done a small search on google and come back with http://www.uk-cheapest.co.uk/hosting-plans.php http://www.freevirtualservers.com/free-hosting.htm There is an average 300 page views per day and rising :) Cheers Ian

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Port 53662
by Barry Samuels 15 Apr '10

15 Apr '10

Can anyone suggest what traffic coming in to port 53662 might be? It originates from a number of different IP addresses. My router firewall is set to stop anything not resulting from an outgoing request which leads me to believe it's the result of browsing the web but that traffic is being stopped by my internal (software) firewall which has taken exception to it. If I think that it could be harmless I'll let it pass but I don't want to do that at present as I've no idea what it might be. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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skype and usb phones
by Peter Alcibiades 13 Apr '10

13 Apr '10

Any recommendations about usb phones that work on linux? Its for skype. I know you can get cordless dual phones that plug into the router, and presumably these are risk free, but they're £80 or so, which is a bit much.... Peter

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BIOS config question
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 12 Apr '10

12 Apr '10

Hi Folks, A little while ago I bought a second-hand laptop (Advent 8117). It came with Windows Vista Home Premium on its 120GB hard drive. I've put aside doing anything with it for a while, since I wanted to replace the HDD with a larger one, and then install Linux on virgin territory! I've now bought a new 500GB HDD, have just installed that in the laptop, and intend to get round to installing Linux in due course. However, I first wanted to see how the thing behaved by running Linux off a live CD. So, after switching on, I got the message "Press F2 for BIOS setup" (or words to that effect). So I did that, and promptly got the message "Operating system not found". That makes me think that the BIOS setup routines must have been stored in some hidden partition on the original HDD, since I've been able to go into the BIOS when that was still installed. If that's the case, then it leaves me wondering what to do about BIOS config after I've installed Linux. Or, perhaps, whether there's a problem at all. If it was just checking for existence of an OS on the hard drive before letting me into the BIOS, then perhaps when Linux is on it will find an OS and let me in. Or, if the BIOS config stuff really is on the original HDD, and it needs to be able to access that before entering BIOS setup, then I'd be stuck because that wouldn't be on the new HDD. And no obvious way of getting it onto the new HDD. I do also have another Advent 8117 which still has the original Win Vista on it (I run Linux on that using VirtualBox), so maybe if I knew where to look I could pull the BIOS config stuff off. But then there'd be a question of how to get it onto the new HDD! So a number of questions! I'd be very grateful for any comments or suggestions from any experts on this sort of thing. By the way: after booting from a live Knoppix DVD, it seemed to run very happily indeed. (Except that I'm no great fan of KDE ... ) With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 12-Apr-10 Time: 20:30:10 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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serial ports in wine
by Peter Alcibiades 11 Apr '10

11 Apr '10

Has anyone succeeded in using a serial port from Wine, and if so, how did you do it, and how did you test it? I have done the usual things, linked as the Wine guide says, my user is a member of dialout. I've also installed setserial and minicom, got the port configured correctly, and I have managed to connect two computers with a serial cable and then have stuff typed in one minicom window show up in the other. I have also tried setting /dev/ttyS0 to 775 so permissions should not be a problem. But what I don't seem able to do is have applications in Wine get to the serial port. And is there some kind of minicom package for windows that you should use, in the same way you can use the minicom on Linux, so that you can actually see the thing working? Sometimes people suggest you should make loopback by jumpering two of the leads on the serial cable. Have you tried that, and will it explode if you get the leads wrong? And what did you use, a bit of copper wire? Peter

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Youtube Flash player control weirdness
by Srdjan Todorovic 11 Apr '10

11 Apr '10

Hi All, I'm experiencing weirdness with Youtube flash player where one can play the video but sometimes (happens too often IMO) you cannot interact with the player controls (pause/play/position slider). Sometimes it can be "unstuck" if you randomly right-click on the HTML area of the page in Firefox. Anyone knows the cause and/or the solution to this? Firefox: 3.5.8 Shockwave Flash: 10.0 r45 OS: Linux Distro: Kubuntu 9.10 Thanks, Srdjan

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Now look out!
by Anthony Anson 11 Apr '10

11 Apr '10

Lenny now ensconced on the Acer Wide-screen flaptop, so it is likely that a superplethora of questions will cascade into the list innit. Most impressed by the relative loading and shut-down speeds as compared with the P it came with. Until everything is working sensibly, Mr. Grub gives me the chance to regress into a comfort-zone - like ATM, when the dongle won't connect... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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