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Using a Blackberry as a modem
by Paul Grenyer 10 Apr '10

10 Apr '10

Hi All Does any one have thier Blackberry working as a modem with Ubuntu 9.10. I've found plent of stuff on google, but nothing works. Help! -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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OS Map Data ???
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 10 Apr '10

10 Apr '10

Hi Folks, Has any one tried to actually download any of the OS Map Data, supposedly just released on "OpenData" access? As detailed, for instance, by the Guardian today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/02/ ordnance-survey-open-data [equivalent: http://tinyurl.com/yf9dr5y ] I've tried three times today. When you choose a map to download, you fill in a form including your email address. When it is complete, you are told that they will email you the links for download. If you don't get an email within two hour, you are invited to try again. I went through the process for two maps about 4 hours ago, and have heard nothing. I have recently repeated it for one of them (the "Land-Form PANORAMA (vector)" map -- see the Guardian article), and still have heard nothing. Anyone want to compare notes? Thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-Apr-10 Time: 14:25:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Digital Ignorance Bill
by Richard Lewis 09 Apr '10

09 Apr '10

http://i.imgur.com/1pXlO.jpg Doesn't bode well for digital Britain :-/ -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +----------------------------------------------+ | Support open access to scholarship | | http://freeculture.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ | +----------------------------------------------+

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Ubuntu Wireless
by Paul Grenyer 09 Apr '10

09 Apr '10

Hi All I'm after some wireless card advice. I have the latest Ubuntu installed on my wife's old: HP Pavilion Pentium 4 and I'm using it as a build box. I need to go wireless. The machine has a couple of PCI slots free. What would people recommend in terms of a wireless card? How would I then go about setting it up? I also have an old USB Belkin F5D6050 wireless adapter. I think it's only 16 bit. Could I use that? I have no idea where to start to set it up.... -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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Static HTML templating
by Mark Rogers 08 Apr '10

08 Apr '10

I'm (fairly) sure someone here was talking about a templating system for generating static HTML (ie you write the templates, run a script, and get a set of HTML that you upload to the website). I can't find it by searching my ALUG archive for phrases like static, HTML or template, though. Does anyone recall what it was? If not (or regardless), does anyone have any recommendations? I'm building a website for someone who will need to maintain the static HTML themselves when finished. Since all the pages have common elements it's a pain not templating it for my own benefit, however. I could just work in PHP/Smarty as I normally would, then "wget --mirror" the site to generate the static HTML, but if there are better solutions I'm always happy to learn something new! -- 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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Slow network performance with lots of connections
by Mark Rogers 08 Apr '10

08 Apr '10

When my Linux box has a lot of connections (eg when downloading an ISO via BitTorrent), the network connectivity gets very slow for other things. Now this could be because the total bandwidth usage is high, but I'm seeing this even when the total bandwidth on my cable connection is say 50kbps down, 10kbps up. As this is cable, I may be hitting Virgin bandwidth limits (I'm not sure how to tell), and this may sometimes be the case because if I test with another PC on my home network I sometimes find it is also slow. Other times the other PC is fine. In any case, killing the torrent download usually (not always) speeds everything up. So, there seem to me to be several possible issues (any/all of which may be applying at different times), but I don't know how to diagnose it. For example, it may be the total number of connections at the router (a cheap Netgear wireless cable router supplied by Virgin), or maybe even at the virgin cable modem box? I try rebooting any of these and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I am very aware that I'm just trying random things and not really getting anywhere! -- 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] Increasing Tomcat Memory
by Paul Grenyer 07 Apr '10

07 Apr '10

Hi > On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 10:47 AM, James Elsey <james.elsey(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> From this forum post[1] you should just be able to modify the catalina >> startup script, >> >> Gotta go out so I don't have time to try it myself, but good luck! >> >> [1] >> http://www.coderanch.com/t/421341/Tomcat/change-JVM-setting-Xms-Xmx#1858331 > > I've managed to increase the memory by adding: > > export CATALINA_OPTS="-XmX2048 -Xms2048" > > to /etc/init.d/tomcat. However, it hasn't fixed my deployment problem: > > > deploy-webapp: > > BUILD FAILED > java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space > at java.util.Arrays.copyOf(Arrays.java:2786) > at java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream.write(ByteArrayOutputStream.java:94) > at sun.net.www.http.PosterOutputStream.write(PosterOutputStream.java:61) > at java.io.BufferedOutputStream.write(BufferedOutputStream.java:105) > at org.apache.catalina.ant.AbstractCatalinaTask.execute(AbstractCatalinaTask.java:215) > at org.apache.catalina.ant.DeployTask.execute(DeployTask.java:201) > at org.apache.tools.ant.UnknownElement.execute(UnknownElement.java:288) > at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) > at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) > at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) > at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) > at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.java:106) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:348) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:357) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.performTasks(Target.java:385) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeSortedTargets(Project.java:1337) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTarget(Project.java:1306) > at org.apache.tools.ant.helper.DefaultExecutor.executeTargets(DefaultExecutor.java:41) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTargets(Project.java:1189) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.runBuild(Main.java:758) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.startAnt(Main.java:217) > at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.run(Launcher.java:257) > at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:104) > > And now I look at the stack trace a bit closer, I wonder if it's Ant > that's running out of space. It was Ant by the look of things. In the end I added: ANT_OPTS="-Xmx1024m -Xms1024m" export ANT_OPTS to /usr/share/ant/bin/ant and it appears to have fixed the problem. -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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Re: [ALUG] 2 part question!
by Paul Grenyer 06 Apr '10

06 Apr '10

Hi I can't access the link properly on my Blackberry. As it's Qt is it C++? Paul ------Original Message------ From: Chris Walker Sender: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk ReplyTo: cdw_alug(a)the-walker-household.co.uk Subject: [ALUG] 2 part question! Sent: 6 Apr 2010 16:23 I am going to have a go at writing an application for my Nokia N900 phone based on this - http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/f28e1110-5ef3-4e24-8ff0-29a… What I would also like to do is have a similar database on my desktop machine - it runs Mandriva 2010 64 bit so that I can update one and 'sync' it with the other one. Can somebody point me in the direction of some suitable SQL Lite code please? I've looked and I'm even more confused than I was when I started. TIA. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________| _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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2 part question!
by Chris Walker 06 Apr '10

06 Apr '10

I am going to have a go at writing an application for my Nokia N900 phone based on this - http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/f28e1110-5ef3-4e24-8ff0-29a… What I would also like to do is have a similar database on my desktop machine - it runs Mandriva 2010 64 bit so that I can update one and 'sync' it with the other one. Can somebody point me in the direction of some suitable SQL Lite code please? I've looked and I'm even more confused than I was when I started. TIA. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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MySQL Arrrgg!
by James Bensley 06 Apr '10

06 Apr '10

Knowers of all (I have cross-posted this question to two different lists hence the BCC to not cause unwanted traffic so reply either on list or directly to me off list, its your choice); I am trying to execute the following MySQL statement and am coming up a croppa' SELECT name FROM `visitor` WHERE dob = DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 21 YEAR) This is to select everyone from a table who is 21 years old, just as an example. The statement runs and returns with no errors but returns no entries (and there are entries that are 21 years old) Ultimately I am going to do something like this (I am just free-writing this so the syntax is probably wrong but hopefully you will get the idea); SELECT name FROM `visitor` WHERE dob BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 21 YEAR) AND DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 30 YEAR) to get everyone who is between X and Y years old. Do people think the problem is in my statement or my database? -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/

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Fwd: [Gllug] Open Source Hardware - event & list.
by Richard Lewis 06 Apr '10

06 Apr '10

Hi ALUG, I know there are a few very keen hardware geeks reading this list. The following may be of interest. I guess meetings will be in London, but the list <http://oshug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/oshug> may be quite fun. Of course, there's also the question of whether LUGs should splinter off hardware enthusiasts; after all, hardware is pretty useless without software and software is pretty tedious without hardware. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +----------------------------------------------+ | Support open access to scholarship | | http://freeculture.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ | +----------------------------------------------+

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Re: [ALUG] Increasing Tomcat Memory
by James Elsey 04 Apr '10

04 Apr '10

>From this forum post[1] you should just be able to modify the catalina startup script, Gotta go out so I don't have time to try it myself, but good luck! [1] http://www.coderanch.com/t/421341/Tomcat/change-JVM-setting-Xms-Xmx#1858331 James Elsey On 4 April 2010 10:37, Paul Grenyer <paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi > > On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 10:34 AM, James Elsey <james.elsey(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > Hey Paul, > > > > Have you tried playing with the xmx options? > > > > From command prompt, run java -X > > > > There are some options to set the heap size/maximum heap size > > Yeah, my problem is which script to put those options into. > > -- > Thanks > Paul > > Paul Grenyer > e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com > b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com >

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Increasing Tomcat Memory
by Paul Grenyer 04 Apr '10

04 Apr '10

Hi All I've installed Tomcat 6.0 on my build server running ubuntu 9.10. I followed the instructions here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/installing-tomcat-6-on-ubuntu/ And it's been working well. However, I think my application has got too big now (lots of third party JARs) and I keep getting out of heap space on deploy. I've googled but I'm struggling to find a way to increase the memory that works. Can anyone give me some pointers, please? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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Can anyone help me with this problem
by Tony Aldous 03 Apr '10

03 Apr '10

Hi I'm ald0; Can anyone help me with my Ubuntu installation, I get this message "fsck from-linux-ng 2.16 /dev/sda7: clean, 129398/616512 files, 852648/2465969 blocks" & then everthing stops. Being new to Ubuntu I don't know what to do to sort it out.

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Personal thingies....
by Montmorency 02 Apr '10

02 Apr '10

Thanks for all the positive responses, both on the list and by email. A fair number of people claim to be unsurprised. Which I guess shows how generally crappy I am about being closeted. Also, as somebody commented, April 1st, was possibly a VERY BAD day on which to post such a thing, but I guess I didn't think. Anyway, thanks again. katsmeat. montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Personal Announcement
by Bellphegore 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

People don't seem to do much in the way of personal announcements on this list. But I though what the hell as a handful of ALUG people already know about me, as do almost all of my non-ALUG friends. I thought there'd be no harm in throwing it out there, with the vague hope that nobody will actually give a damn. So yeah.... I'm actually one of those funny transexual people. Which really amounts to finding the whole maleness thing a complete annoyance and wishing it would go away. Actually, when I say annoyance, I mean gut-churning feeling of fundamental wrongness that's there 24/7. The next point is what am I doing about it? Well, early days and all that. I've been seeing a therapist, and living part-time as a woman. Sort-of a try-before-you-buy deal, trying to seeing if being a woman actually works for me. It actually does, though at the moment, nothing is certain. The whole process of physical transformation, which is lengthy, expensive and complicated, seems to be a possibility right now, rather than a probability. I'm simply engaging in a process of exploration to see if it'd be right for me. The third point is how does this affect you? Well, if you don't show up to the Norwich pub meets then you've just wasted 30 seconds of your life reading something that's completely irrelevant to you. If you do come to the pub meet, then you may see me come in female role. That's about it. I get the impression this isn't amazingly uncommon in the tech field. A surprising number of geeky women became geeks before they became women, it's not unlikely you know, or know of, some already. Anyway, please view this as my small, personal contribution to redressing the gender imbalance in tech. Katsmeat bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com montmorency(a)ukfsn.org

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Firebug, how to use it to investigate CSS?
by Chris G 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

I'm trying to work out another CSS conundrum and, as per Brett's advice, I am trying to use Firebug to do it. However, at the moment, I really can't see how Firebug can be used to help me find what CSS is applied to a specific bit of HTML. I can follow the HTML facilities of Firebug OK, how it highlights the sections of a page as you click on different bits of HTML in the Firebug window. However I'm not at all sure how to then try and work out what particular bit of CSS is affecting something. Can anyone (Brett?) elucidate a little for me. -- Chris Green

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Graphics package to produce neat, aligned protocol table (TCP header) pictures?
by Srdjan Todorovic 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

Hi, Lets say I'm documenting a low-level protocol or file format and want to produce a picture such as the TCP header (etc) table (http://izecksohn.com/pedro/pub/tcp_header.jpg), what's the best program to use for that? Another example: http://www.wtcs.org/snmp4tpc/images/TCP-Header.jpg I have tried Openoffice drawing tool in Writer, and it does not align well. Inkscape might be good as I can snap to grid. I could use a spreadsheet and then export to picture. Is there a special purpose application for this that anyone has used and would reccommend? I need to be able to insert text into the cells or perhaps refer to the cells in some markup way - also the cells should be fixed width as each cell would represent one byte. Any suggestions please? How would, for example, a graphics designer go about doing this? Thanks all, Srdjan

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Replacing popped-off key onlaptop
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 30 Mar '10

30 Mar '10

Hi Folks, Appealing to the hardware-savvy anongst you! I have an Advent 8117 laptop (nice machine, by the way), and one of the keys has popped off (the down-arrow key near the bottom right). For the life of me I can;t suss out how to put the key back on again. The details are probably not specific to this particular machine -- they may well be identical on other makes and models, so if you recognise the description below and know how to put a key back on, I'll be pleased to hear! The key itself has a kind of "trestle-like" hinged frame underneath it, whose function seems to be to keep the key-top level as it goes up and down. This is very tiny. It is presumably also intended to attach itself to something on the keyboard (see below). The bed of the keyboard has a little rubber/plastic nipple which is pushed down by the key (and, lacking the key-top, I can operate it by pressing on the nipple). Above and below this nipple are two lttle metal mountings, each with two little metal flanges projecting upwards. The two flanges on the top mounting have each a little notch near the keyboard bed, as if something is supposed to go in there. The two flanges on the bottom mounting also have a little notch each, in this case being directed somewhat upwards. I guess that the "trestle" structure on the key-top is meant to somehow engage with the notches in the flanges as described above. However, no matter how I try to manipulate things, I can NOT get the key-top to re-attach! I hope that's enough to describe the situation to Those Who Know. Looking forward to very simple and easy-to-execute instructions on how to put things together again! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 29-Mar-10 Time: 20:42:24 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Version control choices for web development
by Mark Rogers 27 Mar '10

27 Mar '10

I've experimented a little with version control over the years (cvs, svn) but never used it in anger even though I know I should. The thing that's always stopped me is that I've never found one that I've liked for web development. What I have is a server in my office that everything gets developed on. When I am happy, I use unison to synchronise the changes to the live site. What this gives me, is no ability to roll back changes if something goes wrong. What I want is for the version on the live site to just be a checked out version from a version control system, with the changes on the dev server being checked in to the version control as we develop. However, to me the logical location for the version control system is therefore my dev server in the office (which has plenty of disk space), but I don't want to open up ports to allow live servers to "pull" a version from the system. I want to be able to "push" a version to the server from the dev server, and that's where I get stuck. The best solution I've ever come up with is to check out a separate local copy which I then unison to the live site, but this is two steps instead of one and (more importantly) means duplicating the site locally for no real benefit - which is a pain if a site has several hundred MB of images, for example. The other part that I've never found a good solution for is handling databases; ideally there should be a way to perform diffs against different MySQL database schemas and apply them but I'm not aware of a way to do this either. On the other hand, what I want to do seems like a fairly "standard" thing so I'm sure either there must be a way or that other people in similar situations have found a better way to do it than I am suggesting? -- 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-ordering columns in an sqlite database
by Chris G 26 Mar '10

26 Mar '10

I know it isn't really necessary as it doesn't actually affect anything (except my sensibilities) but I'd like the ability to re-order columns in some sqlite databases. Well, it *does* have some advantages, it would mean I can do things like "SELECT * FROM database" and get the columns displayed in the order I want rather than the order resulting from database creation followed by adding extra columns as I found I needed them. So, is there any way to re-order columns other than by creating a new table with the required column order, copying all the data across, deleting the old table and renaming the new one? I can't find any neat utilities out there to do this for me. -- Chris Green

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iTunes on EEE
by Mark Rogers 26 Mar '10

26 Mar '10

I've done a bit of Googling but as a non-iTunes user I'd like some real user experience if possible. A customer of mine has ended up with a "ASUS little shitty netbook thing" (his words!) for his daughter, and with the requirement that "all she wants to do on it is surf the internet & manage her itunes on it". They don't like the noddy interface (presumably Xandros?) and I could replace that for him. But iTunes I know nothing about. I gather that Songbird is a suitable replacement, but I have no idea how similar it is to iTunes and whether it'll allow her to manage her music files. Surfing the internet is easy, and they can already do it. What they'd like, of-course, is the XP model. But installing XP is expensive and I'd like to show them that they don't need XP to do what they want. Assuming that they can.... -- 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] Re-ordering columns in an sqlite database
by Govind Chandra 26 Mar '10

26 Mar '10

Brett Parker wrote: > In case one wasn't aware, all fields in sqlite are text. Nothing else. > It doesn't do type checking. It is not really so simple. Please have a look at http://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html For reordering the columns of a table one could resort to a temporary table. create temporary table temptab as select column4, column3, column2, column1 from sometable; select * from temptab; I think that this is more flexible than reordering the columns of the main table. Remember that "temptab" is temporary and lasts only the current session, something I consider a feature. Govind Chandra

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Hi, Geeks!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 22 Mar '10

22 Mar '10

It's been a nice sunny day, and all that; and I've been out enjoying it; and got back to find myself wondering where the word "geek" comes from (dunno why). So on to Wikipedia. Excerpt: "Formerly, the term referred to a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken, bat, snake or bugs." Well, yeah, "bugs" connects. But I hadn't been aware that my very first OS, CP/M, might stand for "Chicken Post/Mortem". Just a thought. And it's still nice and sunny out there, chicks. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 21-Mar-10 Time: 17:23:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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NumLock at startup
by Chris Walker 22 Mar '10

22 Mar '10

As per my other mail, I'm trying to make Mandriva switch off the NumLock LED at switch on. I've got it switched off in the BIOS but when I get to the login screen, Mandriva has already put it back on. I've got it switched off in the control panel but that doesn't affect startup. Any pointers as to where I should look for this? So far all my searches tell me how to switch things on, not how to stop the wretched thing coming on. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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flv video issue
by Bev Nicolson 21 Mar '10

21 Mar '10

The problem is this. Whenever I try viewing a .flv video, Firefox crashes. I have, for another issue a while ago, reinstalled flash and that hasn't made any difference to this particular problem. Any ideas? Bev.

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help with xinput
by Chris Walker 21 Mar '10

21 Mar '10

Hello, Due to health issues, I am trying to use an Evoluent Vertical Mouse with Mandriva linux. http://www.evoluent.com/vm3.html I'm using KDE as my desktop and have been unsuccessful in mapping the buttons. If you look at the picture in the above URL, you can see that the mouse has 3 buttons and a scroll wheel on the right side. It also has another button on the left side, shown in 'Familiar Grip' as button 5. I'm trying to map what is shown as button 2 as a double-click. I can do it under Windows 7 providing I use some extra software as the mouse isn't supported past XP but despite using xinput under Mandriva like this - xinput set-button-map 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 3 9 10 11 12 13, it isn't working as a double click. I also need to map button 5 as a refresh for use in web browsers. I haven't tried that yet as I didn't want Firefox to confuse the issue. I want double-click to work within the desktop. Has anybody done anything similar to this and can point me in the right direction as I'm getting nowhere fast. I also have a special keyboard and want to switch off NumLock at startup as Mandriva is switching that back on but I'll put in another mail for this. TIA. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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port forwarding wierdness
by mick 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

OK - I know this isn't strictly a linux problem (though it may be) but someone here may be able to help, I have an odd problem with port forwarding through a linksys WRT120N router. My network looks like this: outside - Cisco ADSL - DMZ - Linksys - inside The DMZ net is 192.168.1.0/24 inside is 192.168.10.0/24 The DMZ has two debian ARM boxes on it, inside has several different debian/ubuntu boxes, but crucially has my dnsmasq DNS server on 192.168.10.50. That server lists all my local machines. The linksys has NAT turned on. It also allows port forwarding of both TCP and UDP on port 53 from the outside (i.e. the DMZ) to 192.168.10.50. Now the wierd bit. DNS lookups from the DMZ to the inner server through the linksys only work once every 4-5 minutes. So if I fire up nslookup or use dig to resolve any of my internally named servers I can do it immediately, but then get "connection timed out; no servers could be reached" for the next 4 or five minutes whereafter I can again resolve a host. Can someone please suggest what may be going on? Anyone else using a WRT120N? I can't find anything on the obvious forums. (And yes I know I could move the DNS server to the DMZ......) 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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We're not evil??
by Martin Collins 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

Anybody use magnatune for streaming through rhythmbox? See this link: http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2010/03/new-business-model-for-magnatune… This would make magnatune more like spotify. Does this mean free listening is coming to an end? Personally I'm a bit cheesed off with it, as I don't listen enough to make a subscription worthwhile, nor do I have internet access 365 days a year so I wouldn't get what I was paying for. However, I did buy 3 or 4 albums from them a year. Forcing a business model on me, although not evil, certainly isn't angelic! Martin

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the problem with lp was the usb parallel converter
by Peter Alcibiades 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

Turns out that the problem with using lp must have been the adaptor. Its a parallel printer, and it was being connected through one of those parallel to usb adaptors. With a parallel cable, and redefined as /dev/lp0, it works. The original method of cat > /dev also works on this definition. No idea why, though. I have used those usb adaptors successfully in the past and if it were possible to hit it using cat >/dev, it seems puzzling that lp could not drive it. Should have thought of trying this earlier, but of course, SFF machines now often don't have parallel interfaces. I also now do lprm on starting up the program to clear the queue, just in case. Regards Peter

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Skype problem
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 19 Mar '10

19 Mar '10

Hi Folks, Maybe some of you can elucidate a Skype puzzle. I have Skype on Win XP (v. 4.0.0.216) and on Linux (v. 2.0). I usually use the Win XP version because it works better. As of yesterday, I had the same Skype name and password on both. I hadn't used Skype for a couple of months, but yesterday evening started it up in Win XP and entered the password. It hung for several minutes, then came up with a message that it had failed to connect. I repeated this several times (thinking maybe Skype was clogged, or something). Same result. And the same result with the Linux version ("P2P connection failed"). Repeatedly. So I wondered if their might be a password problem, therefore logged in to www.skype.com using it, and got in OK. Nevertheless I decided to reset the password anyway. I was sent a password token to log in to the secure site for doing this, and set about re-entering the old password. Got a message "Password too easy to guess" (also required numbers + letters, which it hadn't done before). So I chose a different password. After that, I had no problems using the Win XP Skype with the new password, but when I tried Linux Skype with the new password it still failed to connect. Re-tested again this morning: Win XP Skype works, Linux Skype does not. One remaining issue might be that the Linux Skype version (2.0) may now be too old to be acceptable to Skype, though that would be surprising. I'm aware that Skype can go real flaky at times (though not very often, in my experience), but the above strikes me as puzzling. Any comments and suggestions welcome. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 18-Mar-10 Time: 10:45:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Another HTML question, again about unwanted space
by Chris G 18 Mar '10

18 Mar '10

I seem to suffer from this all the time, too much space between headers and the things underneath them. ... and I've simplified it down to the following:- I have the following HTML:- <p> Paragraph1 </p> <p> Paragraph2 </p> In the CSS I have:- p { background: blue; padding-bottom: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0; } (The background: blue; is just to prove it's being acted on) ... and there's still a great wide white space between the two paragraphs. How can I get rid of it? -- Chris Green

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Ubuntu 9.10 graphics issue
by Mark Rogers 17 Mar '10

17 Mar '10

See screenshot: http://www.more-solutions.co.uk/files/12032010325.JPG I have tried two identical PCs in case the problem is system or video memory. Initially I had the monitor through a KVM, which gave me a lower resolution but usable screen, although with square blocks on the screen where it wasn't updating properly. (I tried to open a terminal window and just got a white box which I could move around but could see nothing in the box.) It was when I bypassed the KVM and rebooted that it identified the screen and gave me a decent resolution login screen followed by the linked screenshot after login. Chipset is Intel 82810E DC-133 (CGC) according to /var/log/messages Suggestions? I'm hoping the screenshot will tell someone exactly what is wrong, but I can't google a screenshot and can't work out how to describe it in words! -- 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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VCF - Bletchley Hotel / [Ips]: Peter Jennings walk
by samwise 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

Following up from last night's discussions, the Peter Jennings ghost walk (which they proudly proclaim has been featured on GMTV!) round Ipswich is on the first Thursday of each month from the Tourist Information Centre, St. Stephens Lane and costs about a fiver, I think. If enough ppl contact me off-list, I'll see if a date can be agreed upon. Also, for those who expressed interest in the Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley Park, here's the link to the The Campanile Hotel which has a preferential rate for VCF attendees: http://www.tnmoc.org/vcf-gb/hotels.aspx And, who knows, maybe by next month Adam can convince the landlady of McGintys to give us a tour of the tunnels underneath the pub ... ;) Cheers, Peter.

1 0

MySQL BETWEEN
by James Bensley 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

SELECT blah, blah, blah FROM tblBlah WHERE date_entered BETWEEN '01/01/2010' AND '20/01/2010' This will select records from my table who's date_entered field is from 01/01/2010 and 19/01/2010. This is because the BETWEEN command seems to go UP TO the day specified but not inclusive. So I thought I would just add +1 on to the data submitted from the PHP search page which works just great except for when you put 31 in as the day of the month, (so say we search from 01/01/2010 to 31/01/2010) it makes it into 32 and the querie returns 0 rows. However if I add an IF statement to not increment the day value by 1 if "31" is given as the last day in the query, we then only get results for 01/01/2010 to 30/01/2010. How can I combat this or is there a "proper" way of doing this as mine almost defiantly isn't going to be the best method? -- Regards, James ;) Jonathan Swift - "May you live every day of your life." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jonathan_swift.html

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raw printing, yet again
by Peter Alcibiades 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

OK, following or trying to follow, Wayne's advice, I am attempting to use lp -d star temprint.txt. to print to a raw printer. It does not work. My user account is in the lp group, the printer is set up as raw in cups, and it is named star. When I do lpstat -P star all the jobs have piled up there one after the other, and can be cleared by lprm. There are no failure messages however. I have tried lp -P star -o raw But it seems to not recognize the raw option and to only expect page numbers. On the other hand, cat temprint > /dev/usb/lp0 works just fine. If you use cat as above, there is a real risk as Wayne pointed out. If the printer is offline, then its true, the application freezes. This is not desirable at all. Though, its a pretty robust printer, so maybe this is a chance I have to take. And maybe I could provide some kind of choice to just turn off the printing command and clear the queue and tell the user to call for assistance. But it is not good at all. Its a disaster waiting to happen. So it would be nice to be able to use lp. But how? And does anyone have any suggestion why it might not be working or what to check? I also cannot figure out, despite much googling, how to test for whether the raw printer is on line and functioning. Nothing I have tried gives any different result if it is powered on or off. Peter

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I was thinking about going tonight
by Ian Porter 15 Mar '10

15 Mar '10

Just wondering who else is going ?

9 15

VNC problem
by Torben Stones 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

I'm having an interesting but very annoying problem. I have set up xtightvncserver (client) on one machine in listen mode, and then use x11vnc (server) on another machine. I connect the server to the viewer using the -connect argument. This works fine, as I can see the servers desktop on the client box as expected. Now I change my routers firewall rules to forward port 5500 to the client, and then try to connect the server to the client, again using the -connect argument, but this time using my external ip-address. This is where it gets odd. The vnc viewer on the client never seems to get a connection from the server. But if I look at the routers logs I can see that a message was received and matched against the correct firewall rule. I have used ngrep to find out if anything was appearing on port 5500 on the client, and I can see that there is indeed something coming in on port 5500. In ngrep it just appears as user@localhost:~$ sudo ngrep -d wlan1 port 5500 interface: wlan1 (192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0) filter: (ip or ip6) and ( port 5500 ) ### T 192.168.0.2:45401 -> 192.168.0.6:5500 [R] ...... ### T 192.168.0.2:45401 -> 192.168.0.6:5500 [R] ...... All this means to me is that something is appearing on port 5500, but as it isn't connecting then I can only assume that the wrong stuff is coming in. When I just use the internal address then I can see alot more on port 5500 for example the name of the display. Can anyone help me with the next step as I don't know what to do next. Thanks Torben -- You've got a lot of choices in your life. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 12 Mar '10

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

1 0

OT: GPU fans
by Mark Rogers 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

The fan on the cheap PCI-X graphics card in my Linux box is failing. It's a little (40mm I think) fan mounted into the heatsink. Does anyone know if these can be replaced? It may only be a cheap card but it still seems silly having to pay for a new card just because the fan is dying! Or is there any way to rejuvenate a fan? -- 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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Recommendations: Linux Small Form Factor PC
by samwise 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

Hi, I'm considering building a small form factor PC to live under and output through my HD TV, primarily for running SDL games initially and I expect I'll stick some form of 64-bit Debian on it. I'm thinking a Mini-ITX size would be about right - something that will fit comfortably under the TV, but doesn't need to be too small. I'd like to stick in a pretty big hard drive (> 1 TB) and probably 4GB RAM at least. Graphics wise, I've had issues getting the official Nvidia binary drivers in the repositories working with Debian, but given it's intended use that's probably not reason enough to switch to ATI (binaries direct from Nvidia do work, albeit need manually updating every so often). I'd like it to support 802.11g wi-fi and preferably bluetooth internally (might require the use of a combo wifi/bluetooth internal card), and as many USB connectors on the front as I can get away with (4, 6?). Support for media cards etc. would be a nice bonus too. I've done some reading around but most hardware reviews don't generally cover linux compatibility, so just wondered whether anyone might have recommendations either for suitable PCs or suppliers I could be investigating. Cheers, Peter.

1 0

Samba share permissions
by Maz Walker 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

I meant to send this to the list but sent it to mark by mistake, sorry! Been lurking for a while so I guess this is hello! > Is there a better way for me to be connecting to the Linux-based server so > that I can access the same files that the Windows users are using through a > mounted share? Yes, the way we do it at work is like this [sharename] force group sambafiles force user sambafiles path = /where/it/is create mask = 0660 directory mask = 0770 writable = yes write list = @users You need to create a user and group called sambafiles that must not be used for anything else, you can control read and write to this share by using groups, all the files will be owned sambafiles:sambafiles which means all users in the allowed groups can read and write. maz

2 2

server startup
by Peter Alcibiades 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

Thanks to Mick for offline help. Meanwhile, can I ask for help on something which is so simple no-one seems to write about it? I have installed minimal debian, and then added the requisite stuff for nfs and cherokee and SSH. I'm fine with configuring both of them through the command line, and then in the cherokee case login in and using a web browser. Vi or emacs it will never be, but nano is fine. The command line in general is fine. Its just I never set up a server before. The thing I do not know how to do, is have the installation start up with nfs and cherokee at power-on. And I don't understand what the relationship is between the server function and user accounts. So, when I did the minimal install of Debian, I did one user and set up the root password, and also set up a separate home partition without knowing if this is right or wrong. Was that right? The result is two partitions, one about 10G for / and the other with the rest. Presumably the nfs area will be in the rest. But how do I tell it that? When the server starts, I think this is done by putting entries in init.d, yes? When it starts, does it start with a user login? Or is it running with no users logged in? It will be without screen or keyboard, so I am assuming I do SSH to the IP address. And then login as root? Or as the user? Oh dear, this is so basic. Once its done, it will be fine. I can write little scripts and use awk and manage the system from the command line with no problems, so once I know what to do it will be OK, but at the moment am rather peering into the mist. Peter

2 1

X authentication issue/question
by Chris G 10 Mar '10

10 Mar '10

I have a headless 'server' system which runs Ubuntu Server. Nearly all of the time I do maintenance, updates, etc. on the command line so it's just a matter of 'ssh server ....' to do what I need to do. However, occasionally, it's nice to use a GUI application to do something. Until now these have always needed root on the server system and the following sequence works OK:- chris$ ssh -X server chris@server:~$ sudo -s [sudo] password for chris: root@server:~# <run GUI program> The trouble is that when I try to do the same for a non-root user on the server system I get:- chris$ ssh -X server chris@server:~$ sudo -s root@server:~# su www-data www-data@server$ sqlitebrowser X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication. sqlitebrowser: cannot connect to X server localhost:12.0 I have xhost allowing the following:- chris$ xhost access control enabled, only authorized clients can connect NIS:www-data@server NIS:root@server SI:localuser:chris SI:localuser:gdm SI:localuser:root So why can root GUI programs display on my screen while non-root GUI programs can't? I've tried 'xhost +' to allow anyone to connect but I still get the same error. $DISPLAY is correctly carried through the various logins, I've checked that. Also www-data is the same UID on both systems though I don't really see why that would be relevant. OK, I *could* run sqlitebrowser as root (I have tried and it works OK) but I then end up with lots of files having wrong permissions, it would be much nicer if I could run it as www-data. -- Chris Green

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Any sqlite (ot other SQL database) experts here - how to copy a table?
by Chris G 10 Mar '10

10 Mar '10

It sounds like it should be easy but I can't see any reasonable way of doing it. How do you make a copy of a table in an sqlite3 database? I can copy the database, that's trivial, but I want to duplicate a *table* within a database and that seems distinctly un-trivial. Any ideas/suggestions anyone? -- Chris Green

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Recommend a DNS Provider?
by Greg Thomas 09 Mar '10

09 Mar '10

For a number of years, I've been happy with my hosting provider, 1&1. I've only really got two complaints; a) Lack of IPv6 support. Hopefully that will come in time, and b) They only support 10 sub domains for each DNS domain you have with them. It's the second that looks like it may begin to bite soon. Can anyone recommend a reliable DNS provider that will allow me an order of magnitude more subdomains (*) if I move my DNS to them? TIA, Greg (*) OK, so 20 would probably be enough for the forseeable future, but then I thought we;'d never get near 10 ...

4 4

Moving mailboxes
by Chris Walker 08 Mar '10

08 Mar '10

Ive just bought myself a new machine and am wanting to move the mailboxes from this one to the new one. This one runs Mandriva 2010.1 and the new one runs the 64 bit version of it. I use both Sylpheed and Thunderbird on here so need to know how best to do it. Both machines dual boot and I've sort of managed it for Sylpheed under Windows XP and completely for Thunderbird on XP. Half the messages are missing on Sylpheed though and none of the accounts have transferred. I chose Sylpheed for XP as it started life on *nix and to date it's been much more reliable than Pegasus which is what I used before. But I want to avoid the same problem under Linux that I've just encountered under XP -> 7. Any help appreciated.

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[ALUG Announce] Norwich Thursday Pub Meet, March 11th (this Thursday)
by Jonathan McDowell 08 Mar '10

08 Mar '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 ----- This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 11th March 2010 at The Coach and Horses: 82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ There will be people there from 8pm (possibly earlier). If you are unsure you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or via IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. J. - who plans to make an appearance this month. -- Most people are descended from apes. Redheads are descended from cats. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley Park: 19-20 June 2010
by samwise 08 Mar '10

08 Mar '10

Hi, I don't know if this floats anyone else's boat but just an FYI - there's an event coming up in June at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. More info here: http://www.tnmoc.org/36/section.aspx/131 First confirmed speaker is Sophie (nee Roger) Wilson, co-designer of the BBC micro and developer of the RISC/ARM processor. I heard Prof. Steven Furber give a good talk last year about the development of the RISC processor so I'm hoping this should be as entertaining. I reckon this one looks quite interesting and more all-round than the usual gaming-type events I've been to so if anyone was considering a trip to Bletchley Park this year (a good place to visit, at any time), it might be worth coinciding it with this event. If you can't get that far but have an interest in old computers, the Centre for Computing History is based in Suffolk and at some point this year, I have intentions of arranging a gathering off-list. If anyone wants in on that, drop me a mail. Peter. Full Disclosure: I know at least one of the guys who's involved on the periphery with the organising of this event, but he's involved more with organising other exhibits like the working Acorn setups e.g. there should be a BBC Domesday Project running; that sort of thing.

1 0

Samba share permissions
by Mark Rogers 08 Mar '10

08 Mar '10

I have a Samba share setup thus: [projects] path = /var/flexshare/shares/projects comment = Projects Drive create mask = 664 directory mask = 775 force group = user public = no valid users = @user browseable = yes writeable = yes This has files written to it by a number of users on Windows, and myself from a Linux desktop. When the Windows users create files, they're group writable (ie any of us can modify them), but when I create them nobody else gets write access. I am accessing the share through a cifs mount, as follows: //10.0.0.14/projects /smb/projects cifs credentials=/smb/.credentials,dir_mode=0775,uid=1000,gid=1010 0 0 (word-wrap added for email). Any ideas what is wrong? Something to note is that all users exist on the file server, and if I look at the directory listings in the shares from the file server then files are all owned by <user>.user (eg mark.user) depending who created them (to be clear, the group name is "user", the user name is that who created the file). However, if I list /smb/projects from my local machine, then all files are shown as owned by me (mark.user) regardless of who created them. This isn't a problem in itself, I only mention it in case it is relevant. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

3 6

simple file and web server
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Mar '10

07 Mar '10

What would you use for a very simple file and web server? I have looked at freenas, and it seems to fit the bill quite well, but no web server. Looked at Clear, which seemed unduly complicated and comes with apache, which is probably beyond me. Looked at voyage which promptly froze amid complaints about respawnings as soon as it was started up. Where I'm ending up is to do a basic debian install, then add nfs and one of the very simple stripped down web servers. Sensible? Its strictly for internal use, and all I need is central file storage, and very limited internal web sites, mainly photo galleries. Minimal traffic. By the way, the answer to the previous question, apps locked to specific machines, discovered after some work and consultation with a friend who only emerges from his basement after dark, seems to be to virtualize the app. A lot of work, but that's the answer. It all keeps blood flowing to the brain! A powerful preventative against intellectual infirmity, or so we hope. Peter "The best medicine we have for the heart is liberal quantities of sweat, taken externally " -- Eminent Cardiologist.

4 3

Strange permissions problem with NFS, works from one system but not another
by Chris G 06 Mar '10

06 Mar '10

I have one home directory which is shared across our SoHo LAN, the /etc/exports file on the server has:- /home/isbd chris(rw,all_squash,anonuid=1002,anongid=1002,no_subtree_check) /home/isbd maxine(rw,all_squash,anonuid=1002,anongid=1002,no_subtree_check) On 'chris' mount shows:- server:/home/isbd on /home/isbd type nfs (rw,addr=192.168.1.2) ... and on 'maxine' mount shows:- server:/home/isbd on /home/isbd type nfs (rw,addr=192.168.1.2) ... and one the server /var/lib/nfs/etab is:- /home/isbd chris.isbd.net(rw,sync,wdelay,hide,nocrossmnt,secure,root_squash,all_squash,no_subtree_check,secure_locks,acl,anonuid=1002,anongid=1002) /home/isbd maxine.isbd.net(rw,sync,wdelay,hide,nocrossmnt,secure,root_squash,all_squash,no_subtree_check,secure_locks,acl,anonuid=1002,anongid=1002) I can happily create, write and read files in /home/isbd from chris@chris, I can only read files on /home/isbd from maxine@maxine when I try and write anything I just get "Permission denied". So what's the difference? Both chris and maxine systems are running xubuntu 9.10, everything looks the same but one works and the other doesn't. (Oh, for information, isbd is UID 1002, GID 1002 on the server system) (I think it's the gods getting their revenge because I said I preferred the simplicity of NFS!) -- Chris Green

2 4

Does synchronization mean something different to other people?
by Chris G 06 Mar '10

06 Mar '10

After having a hard time trying to 'synchronize' a couple of applications which use iCalendar .ics files I had a little Google around to see if I could understand the problems I'm having. I think quite a lot of the problem is that what I call synchronization is quite different (and rather more than) what everyone else means by the word. For example I found several places with quotes like the following:- How to sync your google calendar with Evolution The access is read-only which means you cannot add events in Evolution and have them show up in your google calendar, but your events in google calendar will be available in Evolution for you to read. That's not even *remotely* synchronization! What I'm actually trying to do is to allow two people on a LAN to share a .ics file saved on a server, hardly hi-tech, but I'm really finding it well nigh impossible. A section of a whiteboard would be easier at the moment. If anyone has any ideas for implementing a way to share a calendar stored on a server than they'd be very welcome. One end will probably be using Evolution (but doesn't absolutely have to), the other end is very flexible and can use any available application really. -- Chris Green

2 2

comparing two drives at very low level
by Peter Alcibiades 06 Mar '10

06 Mar '10

We have a sort of iTunes type of software, which loads up a compact flash card. It is proprietary to the very expensive device which uses the content on the card. The expensive device has not yet arrived, so I am trying out loading cards. This software will run under Wne, and it appears to format and load the content onto the card. However, when the supplier gets the card, he says its not recognised by the equipment. This is really funny, since when he then reformats and reloads the card i Windows, it is still not OK. He is going to send me back a working card and mine so I can compare the two. At the moment, its hard to see is it just a bad card, or is there something about what the software did in Wine (or maybe what mtools did when formatting it to FAT16) that makes it unusable even when reformatted. It seems unlikely, but maybe it is the boot sector that is a problem. Wine running as an end user will probably not be able to rewrite boot sectors? Question: is there any software which will do a diff at a low level on two cards, the one he sends me, and a new one I generate using Wine? If they are different, we could tell how and maybe even hex edit and correct it. Or I could take an image of both, and is there any way of doing a diff on images? Peter

2 2

Is it me, or BBC?
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 04 Mar '10

04 Mar '10

Greetings all! I have just been trying to "Listen Again" to File on Four (BBC Radio 4, 8pm Tuesday 2 March): I got the message "Insufficient bandwidth to play this programme, click here to find out more" So I did that, and the Beeb put me through a series of speed tests, with results: 1. Your connection 3028 kbps Your available bandwidth is 3028kbps. 2. TV - HD 3500 Uses 115% of your available bandwidth.kbps [with "Red Cross"] 3. TV 1500 kbps Uses 49% of your available bandwidth. [with "Green Tick"] 4. TV 800 kbps Uses 26% of your available bandwidth. [with "Green Tick"] 5. Radio 128 kbps Uses 4% of your available bandwidth. [with "Green Tick"] And this was on "Low Bandwidth version", tried after "Normal Bandwidth" had hung. So, on the face of it, it looks as though the Beeb are saying I can't listen to a Radio programme (for which I have 25 times the required bandwidth) because I don't have enough bandwidth for HD TV!!! Any comments? (And, by the way, were shall we be after the Beeb have halved their website?) Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 04-Mar-10 Time: 11:41:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

2 3

ThinkPad... Xubuntu... Maxxed Out Memory
by Simon Royal 03 Mar '10

03 Mar '10

Hi I have been running my ThinkPad 600 300Mhz P2 with 160MB of RAM with Xubuntu 9.10. It has been an ok experience. Better than you think. Better than Windows XP. I ordered another 128MB RAM stick and it arrived today. So it is now maxxed to 288MB and I must say it runs a lot better. It boots a lot faster and web browsing is a lot better. It doesn't seem to be accessing the hard drive so much, which is a good thing. It is nowhere near as sluggish and is quite nice to use. On a whole Xubuntu at such a low spec runs very well, but I recommend using the alternative CD which has a text based installer rather than the pretty Ubiquity installer from the regular Ubuntu/Xubuntu CD. As it installs a lot faster. I have gotten quite attached to this little beast and with the extra RAM it makes it a lot nicer to use. I shall be keeping it a lot longer. Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Tell us your greatest, weirdest and funniest Hotmail stories http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

1 0

Train Tickets for Sale
by James Bensley 03 Mar '10

03 Mar '10

Got some unwanted train tickets between Norwich and Nottingham. Two adult returns booked for this Friday, they are non-refundable but I can reschedule them. If anyone wants a pair of adult return tickets between Norwich and Nottingham for any date other than this Friday I can have them rescheduled, sent to me and then I will post them to you? They were £50 so if anyone wants to make any sort of offer (even though its most unlikely anyone wants to go between Norwich and Nottingham) just let me know! -- Regards, James ;)

1 0

Xubuntu vs Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 02 Mar '10

02 Mar '10

HiI am a big fan of Ubuntu. It got me really interested in Linux and gave me the push to leave Mac and Windows behind. I had Ubuntu 9.10 running on a Samsung A10 1.1Ghz Duron and loved it, then the laptop died. I then was given an IBM ThinkPad 600 and after running a few ' lightweight' distros have been quite impressed with Xubuntu 9.10 on it.A few people said not to both with Xubuntu, some even said it was more RAM intensive than Ubuntu. So I am beginning to wonder whether my ThinkPad would run better with Ubuntu rather than Xubuntu.I tried Xubuntu with LXDE window manager and didn't like it and didn't find it very fast. I like the Xfce as it is very close to Gnome. Is it more than just RAM that would pose a problem with Ubuntu as opposed to Xubuntu.I know a bit more RAM would help whatever distro I use, but 160MB seems to handle the basics under Xubuntu, but would it be enough for Ubuntu - even though there are reports Xubuntu is more RAM heavy than Ubuntu.According to the specs Ubuntu only requires a 300Mhz and Xubuntu requires 333Mhz, but I have Xubuntu running on a 300Mhz just fine.Ultimately my question is, would Ubuntu run better than Xubuntu? I am trying to squeeze every ounce of power out of this beast.Regards Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

5 4

Xubuntu nm-applet
by Simon Royal 01 Mar '10

01 Mar '10

Hi I have been running Xubuntu for a while and loving it. I finally sorted out sound on my ThinkPad 600, but I have one more thing I cant get round. When I boot up I get faced with a keyring password request box. It is to do with Network Manager or nm-applet. It appears because my ThinkPad automatically connects to my wireless network which is WPA protected. However, I cannot find out how to stop this box coming up. I need some kind of auto authentication to stop it asking everytime I boot. I have searched the net and can find instructions for Ubuntu and early versions of Xubuntu, but not Xubuntu 9.10. Any ideas? Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

2 1

Plain Text Test
by Simon Royal 01 Mar '10

01 Mar '10

Hi. Ignore this please or at tell me if this email is coming through as plain text. I use Windows Live (the new Hotmail) and it was sending all my mail out in rich text which ALUG seems to moderate. I have just changed it and just wanted to make sure it works. Regards Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ We want to hear all your funny, exciting and crazy Hotmail stories. Tell us now http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

3 2

Text insertion point - do others find it irritating?
by Chris G 01 Mar '10

01 Mar '10

I am *forever* getting text inserted at the wrong place because it's inserted at the mouse cursor rather than the text cursor. This happens particularly in web textareas but the problem is common to most/all GUI applications I think. (I just tried in OpenOffice and it's the same there). Surely by default one would expect text to be inserted at the *text* cursor, not where you've moved the mouse cursor to which is often out of the way to avoid it obscuring what you're typing. My editor (xvile) manages to do it right, it's a GUI application but text inserts where I'm typing. Is there a setting somewhere to say "insert text at the text cursor"? -- Chris Green

9 24

Xubuntu... Or Something Else On TP600
by Simon Royal 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

Hi. I have been running Puppy Linux on my ThinkPad 600 for a few days. It is the best distro I have tried on it in terms of speed, but it is a little limited. The software repositories are small and getting sound to work is a pain. It is a 300Mhz ThinkPad 600 and at present it only has 160MB of RAM. When I first got it, I wanted to run some kind of *buntu distro. I know Ubuntu probably will never run on it, so I was looking around at lighter versions. I ran Crunchbang for a little while, but even that struggled. Would adding another 128MB of RAM make a lot of difference or is it more of the processor speed that is making this machine slow? The hard drive in it is a 4200RPM drive, would upping it to 5400 or 7200RPM drive make any difference? It did in an Apple PowerBook I had about a year ago. Would Xubuntu run comfortable on a 300Mhz with 288MB of RAM? What would your advice be. What do you lot recommend. I don't have any money to buy a new laptop so I need to get as much out of this as I can. Regards Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Tell us your greatest, weirdest and funniest Hotmail stories http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

6 6

Apache configuration test on Ubuntu
by Mark Rogers 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

In recent Ubuntu versions (no idea if this is inherited from Debian or not), the apache user is set in /etc/apache2/envvars, which is processed when Apache is [re]started via /etc/init.d/apache2 [re]start. However, running apache outside that script will then cause errors. So for example, apache2 -t .. which should test the configuration without restarting, instead generates errors "bad user name" errors because the environment variable relied upon in apache2.conf is not being set. So, is there a "correct" way to test the configuration? (The solution I always end up with is editing apache2.conf to set User/Group to www-data directly.) As an aside, is there any way to make logrotate not kill Apache if there's an error in the apache configuration file? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

3 3

Xubuntu... On 300Mhz... Not Bad
by Simon Royal 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

Hi Well, yet another day and a different distro. This poor little ThinkPad is being put under a lot of work, I have tried about 8 distros on this thing. I was running Puppy Linux and while it was nice and fast, it was a bit basic. I tried Fluxbuntu last night and after getting past the dodgy screen res, I just didn't get on with it. It might be Ubuntu based but it is still quite ropey. So I downloaded the Xubuntu 9.10 alternative installer - as the standard Xubuntu disc wouldn't install - and started the install last night. It took about 90 minutes which was ok. I must say I am quite impressed. It gives the ease of use of Ubuntu and all the software packages it comes with and are available for it. I know a couple of people said not to install it because it would run quite badly, but it isn't too bad. Booting is a little slow - although quicker than I thought it would be and there isn't too much lag navigating around the system. I only use this machine for surfing and writing, so nothing too intense. With only 160MB of RAM it isn't going to do anything too processor intensive, but with a little more in it could be quite a capable machine under Xubuntu. I have just installed Google Chrome browser and it is whizzing along surfing pages. Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

2 1

CSS question, paragraph margins/padding etc.
by Chris G 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

I have some generated HTML which is as follows:- <div class=level1> <p> This is the playground </p> <p><a class="folder" href="#folded_1"> Test</a></p> <div class="folded hidden" id="folded_1">This is the text that is hidden or shown</div> <p><a class="folder" href="#folded_2"> Test1</a></p> <div class="folded hidden" id="folded_2">This is some more hidden text</div> <p><a class="folder" href="#folded_3"> Test2</a></p> <div class="folded hidden" id="folded_3">And this is still more</div></div> <span id="folded_reveal" style="display:none;"></span> <span id="folded_hide" style="display:none;"></span> I want to pack the "Test", "Test1" and "Test2" closer together vertically and I'm having little success. I was expecting that setting the following would do it:- .folder { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0; font-weight: bolder; border-width: thin; border-color: blue; background-color: cyan; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 9px; background: url(closed.gif) no-repeat right center; } The font-weight CSS is having its effect, changing it does change the font weight, but the colours (e.g. the background colour) have no effect at all, and nor do the margin/padding/border settings. What am I doing wrong? Is there some 'outer' CSS that has priority over these settings? If so how can I override it? -- Chris Green

7 10

Network Monitoring Tools
by John Herd 25 Feb '10

25 Feb '10

Dear all, I've got some linux experience and thus far have managed to get a credible helpdesk/auditing setup with GLPI and OCS-NG. I like both of these as tools because they're pretty light on admin and very recoverable should a problem occur. Now I'm looking for a good network monitoring tool that would enable me to graph bandwidth use on switches, disk use on servers etc. I've got a mix of Windows servers and a pile of Cisco kit. There's a profusion of network monitoring tools out there, so I'm after advice on what kind of setups folks in ALUG have experience of, and actually like, rather than a best of breed run down. I should add that the "some linux experience" extends to Ubuntu server and a reasonable knowledge of apt-get, so go carefully with me here. :-) Regards John Herd

3 2

Of the website, backups and the mailing list...
by Brett Parker 25 Feb '10

25 Feb '10

Hi, I've just plonked a few more scripts about on my vps and added some useful hostnames to it... so, here's what I've got backup wise: * A read only copy of our wiki, updated daily from Noodle's backup: http://wiki.alug.itshall.be/ * A different interface to the mailing list archive (searchable) http://alug.itshall.be/ (Updated rougly hourly) (I've also got the normal pipermail archive sitting on disk, that's what I feed to lurker). So, the only thing that I'm missing, basically, is the users/subscribers for the wiki/mailing list... but this should put us in fairly good stead. Thanks, -- Brett Parker

6 7

New Alug wiki/website
by Adam Bower 24 Feb '10

24 Feb '10

Hi people, Due to the unfortunate disappearance of our old wiki and inability to contact anyone at the old hosting provider Noodles has very kindly changed over the DNS and pointed it at a new wiki hosted on his server. (thanks Noodles!) A side effect of this is that we have lost all the old wiki content so please visit the new wiki, create an account and get rebuilding! You can find the new wiki at http://www.alug.org.uk/ for those that didn't know. Thanks Adam -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please.

18 60

Nagios
by Mark Rogers 22 Feb '10

22 Feb '10

Does anyone here know if Nagios is something I need to install on every server I wish to monitor? Can I combine the results of multiple sites into single reports or do I just need to have multiple reports? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

5 6

Spreadsheet (Gnumeric or other) - how to insert a page break in printout?
by Chris G 21 Feb '10

21 Feb '10

This is a stupidly trivial question but I can't find out how to do it. I have a wide spreadsheet (currently in Gnumeric) and I simply want to tell it where (i.e. at which column) to start printing on a new page. I can't find *anywhere* that even seems to think that's something you'd want to do, let alone how to do it. If I could simply insert a fromfeed character into the first row cell in that column it would do but I can't even do that. Help!!! -- Chris Green

1 1

What 'conversion' changes those = and =E9 in text to the proper characters?
by Chris G 21 Feb '10

21 Feb '10

I have some text which has lots of '= ' and '=E9' strings in it which should be just spaces and è. What would convert this text to properly readable text? Mutt seems to manage it OK (it's a mail message) but I want to do it myself to display it elsewhere and it doesn't seem to be just a simple iconv() conversion as what seems to be in the message are actual '=E9' strings not iso-8859-1 characters with more than 7 bits. Presumably it's encoded to fit in strict 7-bit ASCII but how do I unencode it? -- Chris Green

2 2

Puppy Linux... Wow!
by Simon Royal 20 Feb '10

20 Feb '10

Hi. I tried the Puppy Linux live cd yesterday and I was impressed but I couldn't get wireless to work even though the Puppy forum said my devices should work out of the box. Well, I decided to install it to see how well it ran and whether the wireless would work. I am pleased to say it absolutely screams along even on a P2 300Mhz with 160MB RAM. It is amazing to watch. No other distro I have tried performs anywhere near as well. Also, my wireless devices work and after a bit of configuring - more of a way Puppy configures rather than how difficult it was to sort - I am pleased to say I am writing this email within Puppy running a Buffalo WLI-CB-G54A wireless PCMCIA card. I think I have found the best distro for such a low spec machine. It is amazingly fast and blows Windows 2000/XP out of the water. Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

1 0

Re: [ALUG] latest solar info
by Wayne Stallwood 20 Feb '10

20 Feb '10

Jenny Hopkins wrote: >> Confused about solar. Tony reckons the inox have mirrors on the >> outside that need servicing, but Wayne showed me that the solaressence >> ones trhat he has have a newer version that have them on the inside. >> > > Reflector details vary, but it's all terribly minor details. All you > should care about is overall cost vs. power output. Is tony suggesting > that you need to get up on the roof every 10 years and wipe down the > reflectors? Probably a good idea. Mine are still v.shiny after 2 yrs. > A wipe in another few years might be an idea. > > Internal reflectors must be smaller, by definition, so collect less > sun. Refelectors of any design make no more than 10% difference to > output. At most sun angles they are hidden behind the tubes. > > Is this from wookey ? I agree with everything he is saying there..the reflectors help with severely off axis sunlight and try and bounce some back onto the tubes...this helps me a tiny bit I think in the afternoons during the autum/spring where the sun's angle is such that as of about 3PM it is hitting the tubes more from the side than above. Yes my CPC mirrors are internal to the tubes and therefore smaller and less efficient than the ones that sit under the tubes with the advantage that they can't get dirty...but I can't imagine external CPC mirrors need frequent cleaning as has been claimed..and the tubes themselves will only get mucky at the same rate as a flat panel. The flat panel systems were shown to be the basis of less efficient systems (when a whole years savings were taken into consideration) in a DTI report done in 2001...since then Evacuated Tube panels have only improved (and as far as I am aware there have been no further developments in flat panel tech) As I understand it the issue with panels is two-fold...one there is a big surface area to radiate collected heat before it can be drawn down to the tank..so on cold but sunny days you are losing some potential. Also as soon as the light output is a bit too far off axis you get significant reflection losses from the flat collection area..whereas naturally with a tube, part of the surface is on axis at all time sun is hitting that area of roof. Generally everything I have read says that in a climate that can be cold but sunny or where there is frequent cloud cover you will see better results from a ET setup..which is why most modern installations in this country seem to be using that technology. This becomes even more important if you are considering a dual setup where it is going to be assisting heating as well as hot water as of course you want whatever you can get from the panel on the colder days. The other issue with FP collectors as I mentioned on IRC is that although FP technology is now 30 years old and well proven..if you do get a problem with a panel then the only option is to replace the whole unit which is both expensive and cumbersome..requiring a system drain and re-pressurisation afterwards (and probably lifting tackle/roof platforms if the repair was going to be done with health and safety in mind as they are very heavy). My tubes are indirect and can be replaced cheaply, individually, and without touching the solar circuit. Also a single damaged tube will not compromise the operation of the rest of that panel. The one downside here is that ET panels are relatively new technology and haven't been on anyones roof for more than 10 years or so..so long term life predictions are just that..predictions. Whereas I know there are people around with 25 year old flat panels that are still working. There are two (admittedly looking quite old) FP installations near me and both have a damaged panel now..one is just clouded so I assume a weather seal has gone somewhere and the other has what looks like it might have been some nutcase with a catapult because the FP is visibly cracked. Both have remained like that for at least a year, presumably because repair would be expensive. A single tube for my system costs about the same as a meal out somewhere and I could change it myself. All that said, It's one of those things where there is a lot of information out there..a lot of it is conflicting and each installer will have their own opinions, it's like buying a car or something. So maybe you *are* getting too wrapped up in all these technical details. The end story is as Wookey said cost vs power and remember you are tapping a free energy source so some losses here and there aren't the end of the world. As long as the system overall is making a net saving and the cost vs power ratio means it stands a chance of paying for itself at some point in the future then don't loose too much sleep. Ta Wayne

3 3

Recovering a borked upgrade
by Mark Rogers 20 Feb '10

20 Feb '10

A little story... I decided to upgrade an Ubuntu 8.04 install to 9.10. 8.04 to 8.10 went fine. 8.10 to 9.04 broke horribly: the PC seems to have a failing fan which caused it to overheat and die mid-way through the upgrade. Surprising it booted, sort of, but when I got to the login page that died, and Alt-F1 got me to a terminal with a stream of errors stopping me doing a lot. So I booted from an Ubuntu 9.04 alternative CD, in repair mode, and got myself a command prompt chrooted to the root partition. I manually mounted the boot partition, and ran: apt-get update dpkg --configure -a apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade .. then exited, rebooted, and got my system back fully upgraded. I didn't mention, by the way, that the system boots from a software RAID array, which "just worked". I don't expect things to work out like this when something goes horribly wrong, so it's nice to tell people when they do! (I used info from here: http://serverfault.com/questions/8540/recover-from-shutdown-during-ubuntu-d… .. to get it working.) I'm now midway through 9.04-9.10, just to prove that I haven't been put off! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

3 6

External Storage
by Paul Grenyer 19 Feb '10

19 Feb '10

Hi All I'm after a couple of TBs of external storage. I've found this on eBuyer: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168235 It doesn't mention if it's Linux compatible, any ideas how I find out? Or any suggestions for alternatives? It would be nice to have internal storage but I all the bays in my Shuttle are full and I don't know if I can run SATA drives from me IDE controller. -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

5 14

machine ID
by Peter Alcibiades 19 Feb '10

19 Feb '10

Question: when you install some kinds of non OSS software, they generate a machine ID. You send this to the maker, they then send you back a registration code which works for that particular machine, and only that machine. Not even that machine, if you make too many changes of hardware. Is it possible to tweak a different machine so it generates the same machine ID? This is stuff that comes free with several thousand pounds worth of hardware, does something very simple, like generate a hash index of some sort on a flash card to make some standard format files accessible to the hardware. But for some crazed reason the suppliers of the hardware want to restrict the use of their stuff to one specific machine. I want to know there is a backup solution, should they go bust, or get acquired and suddenly charge exorbitant prices to move the stuff to a different machine. I am thinking, with considerable sense of humour failure, that one solution might be, install into a VM, then generate the activation for that VM, and then make an archive copy of the VM, so one would always be able to move that VM. I notice that vmware has an option for keeping the machine ID when you move installations. Which is totally ridiculous, but at least you would not have several thousand pounds worth of hardware at the mercy of a whim of some people you have never heard of somewhere in the wilds of Provence. Or their potential purchasers in Kazakhstan! Can you imagine then, you run Linux in a VM, then you run Wine in that VM, all to be able to be sure of having a moveable solution for your Windows package in case one of your machines explodes or gets stolen! Nuts. Is there a simpler way by spoofing the machine ID? Peter

4 3

MySQL table crashes
by James Bensley 19 Feb '10

19 Feb '10

Hey List, We have a CentOS VPS with a hosting provider hosting one of our company websites. We are finding recently that about once a week a table will "crash" and needs repairing via phpMyAdmin. This is a recent development as this never used to be a problem. I wondered if any has any insight as to why this might be happening? -- Regards, James ;) Stephen Leacock - "I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/stephen_leacock.html

4 3

Sheeva and other NAS solutions
by Peter Alcibiades 19 Feb '10

19 Feb '10

Do you generally think it best to make your own file server, or just buy one ready done? I'm wondering between the following 1) Sheeva plug off ebay, and add a usb hard drive. £100 or so. 2) The Ryan Alubox, which is around £85. I am having trouble seeing why the sheevaplug is better than this. http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/home.php?cat=842 3) Or, we could buy the £140 Acer with FreeNAS or Clark Connect and add a usb double enclosure to it for another £40. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/167153 4) Or the Netgear dual enclosure which right now is coming with a FREE 500G drive, and it does RAID automagically if you put in a second drive, and that is around £150 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149510 On the whole I'm inclining to the £140 Acer + usb enclosure, but I've never done this stuff before so would be really interested to hear the opinions of people who have. We do have one or two old machines lying around which we could fill up with drives, but I'm veering away from that as they are big, quite old, noisy, rather power hungry, and I am not certain of durability if running 24/7. Probably you guys have been through this and have favored solutions. Its a smallish charity with three or four computers which at the moment are only networked for printing. But we do need a simple internal web server, and we do need some central file storage, and we will have a couple of spare new 160G drives from another purchase. Peter

5 6

Virgin (ex NTL) Broadband with Linux - how to set up?
by Chris G 19 Feb '10

19 Feb '10

My brother-in-law has a new computer with Ubuntu 9.10 installed in it, we put it together here at my house and it connected to the internet with no problems via my router here - just plugged the RJ45 in and it worked. So, basically, it's networking must be configured about right. Now he's back home and wants to connect to the internet via an NTL cable modem (now Virgin Media). The cable modem model number is NTL 250 - Model E08c007. When the RJ45 from the cable modem is plugged into his old Windows machine it works, when it's plugged into his new Ubuntu machine it doesn't work. Can anyone tell me how to get this to work? Is it a question of telling NTL/Virgin that there's a new machine (with a new MAC address) connected or does the Cable Modem expect authentication across the ethernet cable, or what? -- Chris Green

7 8

Recommendations for Java Build Box Linux
by Paul Grenyer 19 Feb '10

19 Feb '10

Hi All I want to create myself a Java build box. Basically it requires: Java SDK Hudson TomCat Apache Webserver Ant SVN client MySQL Windows 2008 & SQL Server 2008 running on VirtualBox. All it will do is spend all day monitoring my SVN repository (which is hosted elsewhere), check out code when it changes, build the code, deploy it to TomCat and run some tests. So, VirtualBox permitting, all I think I need is a very simple server version of Linux. Any suggestions? Can I run VirtualBox on a Linux distro without a Windows manager? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

3 4

Site suspended?
by Chris Walker 18 Feb '10

18 Feb '10

I've just had a mail from sombeody that's trying to resubscribe to ALUG but when looking at the site, it says it's suspended with the owner being aware. Can anybody say what's going on here please as it's preventing the subscription? Thanks.

2 1

AMD-V
by Paul Grenyer 18 Feb '10

18 Feb '10

Hi All I've recently upgraded to the latest VirtualBox (3.1.4 r57640) and want to install Windows 2008 64bit. When I try and start the VM I get the error message: "VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration has been enabled, but it is not operational. Your 64-bit guest will fail to detect 64-bit CPU and will not be able to boot. Please ensure that you have enabled VT-x/AMD-V properly in the BIOS of your host computer." My first thought was to disable VT-x/AMD-V for the VM just to get it going, but it gets turned on again automatically. So, of course I checked the BIOS as I was sure I had turned virtualisation on already, and yet I have and I can't see any further relevant settings. My motherboard is a GA-MA770-DS3 (F6) and I have a Phenom Quad Core 9850 processor.Do I need to upgrade the BIOS to get this to work? If so, how to I find out which revision of the board I have? The ASUS site says there are three revisions..... Any advice greatly appreciated... -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

2 2

Last night's ALUG Ipswich meet
by samwise 16 Feb '10

16 Feb '10

Due to a combination family emergency and my Android phone getting confused about what day it was, and so failing to provide me with a timely reminder to send out my apologies, I ended up not turning up without any warning. Shockingly poor showing from my end. (though in my defence, this is my first no-show in the past few years!). Did any one else show up, to curse my name? If you wish to fill in a meeting report on the wiki ranting about it, I probably deserve it. ;) Peter. P.S. Pete #2 also earns a scathing mention for failing to turn up also!

2 1

SheevaPlug
by Mark Rogers 16 Feb '10

16 Feb '10

Has anyone played with a SheevaPlug or variant (TonidoPlug, for example)? Arm CPU, USB and network connectivity, running Ubuntu-derivative on 512MB built in flash (with 512MB RAM), all in a "plug" design. Looks like they can be had in the UK (ie with UK plug) for just over £60 but with £30 shipping (and 2-3 week delay) from the US. I think I will probably get one to play with, so I don't know if anyone else wants to combine shipping. But first off I'd like to know if anyone has played with one already. Obviously with it being Arm based there won't be many binary packes to install on it but the obvious suspects should cross-compile OK I would think. The obvious question is whether 512MB on-device storage is enough to achieve anything useful, but then I have relatively low aspirations anyway! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

4 8

Charset conversion confusion - mutt works, nothing else does
by Chris G 16 Feb '10

16 Feb '10

I have an E-Mail (well lots actually) which has a text part with headers as follows:- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable My system is all utf-8 now so just outputting the E-Mail via 'more' or opening it in vi doesn't decode/show the accented characters correctly. Mutt reads the above headers and converts the accented characters and shows them correctly. I want to do some processing on this file and then display the text parts but at the moment I can't get anything to do what mutt appears to be able to do with no effort! E.g. I have tried:- iconv -f iso-8859-1 <filename> and it doesn't change anything at all. Nor does viewing the file in Firefox with the charset set to iso-8859-1 work. What am I missing? It must be something blatantly obvious. -- Chris Green

3 8

User & Group in recent Linux (Debian)
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Hi Folks, I recently noticed something which struck me as strange. In the past, on my older Linux distributions, an "ordinary" user gets set up as user=<username> and group="users". Thus, for instance, on those systems an 'ls -l' gives the likes of -rw-r--r-- 1 ted users 16 Apr 2 2008 - drwxr-xr-x 3 ted users 20480 Jun 3 2008 00_junk drwxr-xr-x 2 ted users 4096 May 10 2005 00_misc drwxr-xr-x 2 ted users 4096 Jan 31 2008 00_realplay However, on recent Debian (since Etch), I see that it is user=<username> and group=<username>. Thus now 'ls -l' gives -rw------- 1 ted ted 4643403 2009-06-02 18:56 03-Iii_Sarabanda.mp3 -rw------- 1 ted ted 3476861 2008-04-27 21:38 2nd_week_004.jpg -rw------- 1 ted ted 2879890 2008-04-27 21:38 2nd_week_006.jpg So now I am user "ted" and am in group "ted"! This seems to have happened "in the background" without my being aware that it was going to happen -- I just happened to notice that it had happened! Is there a good reason for this change? And what would be the best way to revert to the old way (especially when creating new users)? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 14-Feb-10 Time: 22:10:47 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

5 7

Hot swap sata drives
by Barry Samuels 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Can anyone tell me how I can get a command to run whenever a sata hard drive is connected? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

4 5

JavaScript/HTML issue
by James Bensley 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Got a page with a frameset containing two frames (frame 0 and frame 1). The page in the top frames (frame 0) has links and each link calls the same JavaScript function parsing a different value. I want the bottom frame page (frame 1) to have its background colour set to the parsed value. My problem is, within the JavaScript function; window.parent.frames[1].document.bgColor = "#xxxxxx" Will change the bgcolor but I have since gotten round to implementing css. Now this won't change the bgcolor because of the css use of background-color. However; window.parent.frames[1].document.style.backgroundcolor = "#xxxxxx"; Doesn't change the background color. Internet Explorer shows me this error: 'window.parent.frames.1.document.style' is null or not an object I'm stumped? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! -- Regards, James ;) Charles de Gaulle - "The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charles_de_gaulle.html

6 12

Job Post: Flash Dev in Loddon
by Richard 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Hello all, I have recently started working with Oilenium and they are looking for a Flash Developer. Details are here: http://www.oilennium.com/jobs/flash-developer-coding/ Cheers -- Richard Bensley - 07540878285

2 1

Small Distro
by Simon Royal 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Hi. What are peoples recommendations for a lightweight distro? It needs to run on a sub 300mhz machine. I have been looking at DSL and DSLN but would prefer to stick with Xubuntu if possible. I havent been into Linux that long and have been using Ubuntu for the past couple of months. I have also used Fedora in the past too but not too keen on it. Simon --- Catch me on Twitter http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype me: Simon-Royal

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Re: [ALUG] Ubuntu 9.10, Networking and NFS
by phil.ashby＠bt.com 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Steve Fosdick <lists(a)pelvoux.nildram.co.uk> wrote: > > You may have read in another thread that I now have a NAS. The NAS > supports NFS so it seemed completely natural to NFS mount a directory > tree from the NAS on a desktop PC and to put this mount in the > /etc/fstab file so it is mounted whenever the desktop PC is started. I > did this and specified the 'bg' option so that if the file system > concerned is not available the mount is retried in the background. > > Upon the next reboot of the PC it got stuck in the boot process in such > a way that all I could see was the Ubuntu logo and no text. Using the > Ctrl-Alt combinations to switch virtual console did not make any > difference (no text appeared) and Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill a running X > server did not make any difference either. In the end I used the magic > SysReq to reboot the PC. > > Upon choosing the "recovery mode" from GRUB I found that the NFS mount > was not working because the network card was not up. It seems that when > you use the helpful GNOME-based network configuration to configure a > network connection it then does not get started early enough in the boot > process to support the NFS mount which is rather different than if it > had been configured in the /etc/network/interfaces file. I had a very similar issue with my studio machine connecting to the NAS in the house using NFS over a longish ethernet string (~50m). In my case I had used /etc/network/interfaces to permanently configure the network card, and all worked well with 8.04. Upgrading to 9.10 late last year and switching to 'upstart' caused the NFS mount to fail sometimes on startup. Further investigation of the 'upstart' configuration (in /etc/init/*) indicated that there was a race condition between the 'mountall' process and the networking startup: if the network came up quickly enough (which varies a bit depending on the rain and DHCP server response speed :) all was well; if the network init was a bit slow, then mountall would be stopped by the rcS event or exit of it's own accord and nothing would mount the NFS when the network did come up. I fixed this by the rather ugly hack of modifying the mountall-net.conf script to directly call mount on my NFS if it was unable to find mountall running. There are other similar problems it seems with upstart and NFS: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mountall/+bug/501678 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mountall/+bug/430348 Phil.

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Ubuntu 9.10, Networking and NFS
by Steve Fosdick 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

You may have read in another thread that I now have a NAS. The NAS supports NFS so it seemed completely natural to NFS mount a directory tree from the NAS on a desktop PC and to put this mount in the /etc/fstab file so it is mounted whenever the desktop PC is started. I did this and specified the 'bg' option so that if the file system concerned is not available the mount is retried in the background. Upon the next reboot of the PC it got stuck in the boot process in such a way that all I could see was the Ubuntu logo and no text. Using the Ctrl-Alt combinations to switch virtual console did not make any difference (no text appeared) and Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill a running X server did not make any difference either. In the end I used the magic SysReq to reboot the PC. Upon choosing the "recovery mode" from GRUB I found that the NFS mount was not working because the network card was not up. It seems that when you use the helpful GNOME-based network configuration to configure a network connection it then does not get started early enough in the boot process to support the NFS mount which is rather different than if it had been configured in the /etc/network/interfaces file. At this point I also found that one RAID array was failing to start which, after some investigation turned out to be a zeroed-out RAID superblock on one of the partitions which I will discuss in another thread. I now do not know if the failing NFS mount was responsible for the hung boot process and the superblock got corrupted by the magic SysReq reboot or if the superblock was corrupted by a failing drive and the NFS mount was a red herring but it was certainly somewhat surprising. Steve.

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Recovering a RAID Array
by Steve Fosdick 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

I mentioned in another thread that I needed to recover a RAID array when the RAID superblock on one of the partitions had become corrupted. I could not find any documentation that deals with this - most of the examples assume you are hot swapping a failed device from an array that is running whereas in my case the system would not start the array concerned. If I ran: mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/sda7 /dev/sdb7 /dev/sdc7 /dev/sdd1 I would get an error message about the superblock on /dev/sda7. After much fiddling about the answer turned out to be to add the --force option after which the array is started without /dev/sda7. After that the corrupt but working partition can be added back in: mdadm /dev/md0 -a /dev/sda7 and at that point the array is resynchronised to include /dev/sda7 . Regards, Steve.

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Re: [ALUG] JavaScript/HTML issue
by Ian Porter 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

I am on my mobile, but not sure if this helps ? http://www.codingfriends.com/index.php/2009/07/27/styles-alter-with-javascr… Hth Regards Ian Porter www : www.codingfriends.com On 14 Feb 2010, at 16:02, James Bensley <jwbensley(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Got a page with a frameset containing two frames (frame 0 and frame > 1). The page in the top frames (frame 0) has links and each link calls > the same JavaScript function parsing a different value. I want the > bottom frame page (frame 1) to have its background colour set to the > parsed value. > > My problem is, within the JavaScript function; > window.parent.frames[1].document.bgColor = "#xxxxxx" > > Will change the bgcolor but I have since gotten round to implementing > css. Now this won't change the bgcolor because of the css use of > background-color. > > However; > > window.parent.frames[1].document.style.backgroundcolor = "#xxxxxx"; > > Doesn't change the background color. Internet Explorer shows me this > error: > > 'window.parent.frames.1.document.style' is null or not an object > > I'm stumped? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! > > -- > Regards, > James ;) > > Charles de Gaulle - "The better I get to know men, the more I find > myself loving dogs." - > http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charles_de_gaulle.html > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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Re: [ALUG] Puppy Linux
by Sam Tuke 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

I've used Puppy a few times. I'd imagine that there's a good chance that it'll run on your machine. Puppy is *very* much lighter than Xubuntu in my experience. XFCE is really not king of the featherweight class any more. Puppy has been good for hardware on past machines of mine. However, it uses all its own configuration applications with their own quirks and so it can take a little while to get used to them at first. Puppy feels like its made to be used as a desktop distro - attractive intuitive desktop with all key apps pre installed, despite its small install size and minimal requirements. If the puppy desktop feels a bit foreign, I recommend that you try an LXDE based distro, as this has replaced XFCE as the most fully featured low spec DE in my view. You might want to investigate these distros as alternatives: tinyme, crunchbang, knoppix Sam. On Sunday 14 Feb 2010 10:17:42 main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > > Hi > > > > Has anyone used Puppy Linux. Im looking for a small lightweight distro with good hardware support. > > > > Puppy Linux seems to work on very low hardware, has flash support out of the box and good wireless support. > > > > I tried Xubuntu but couldnt get it installed. I tried Fluxbuntu but wasnt impressed. I tried DSLN but it required a lot of tweaking. > > > > I just wondered if any of you Linux lovers had tried Puppy Linux. > > > > Ive got a P2 300mhz with 160mb ram. > > > > Simon

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Puppy Linux
by Simon Royal 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

Hi Has anyone used Puppy Linux. Im looking for a small lightweight distro with good hardware support. Puppy Linux seems to work on very low hardware, has flash support out of the box and good wireless support. I tried Xubuntu but couldnt get it installed. I tried Fluxbuntu but wasnt impressed. I tried DSLN but it required a lot of tweaking. I just wondered if any of you Linux lovers had tried Puppy Linux. Ive got a P2 300mhz with 160mb ram. Simon --- Catch me on Twitter http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype me: Simon-Royal

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Linux equivalent to .hosts
by Paul Grenyer 13 Feb '10

13 Feb '10

Hi All I've finally manged to get Ubuntu to connect to my work's fortinet VPN. Yay! However, remote DNS does not work and sticking the company's DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf didn't fix it. What's the Linux equivalent to the windows .hosts file? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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Looking for a web mail viewing app - any ideas?
by Chris G 13 Feb '10

13 Feb '10

I'm looking for something that will allow me to view mail as web pages but I'm not after webmail, I'll try and explain.... I want to be able to incorporate sequences of mail (saved as maildir mailboxes) into a web site so that one can quickly look through an E-Mail 'conversation' via the web. As I said the E-Mail is already at in maildir mailboxes on the system where the apache server is running so the files are accessible, all I really want is a vaguely civilised interface that I can link to from other pages. For example the link might look something like:- http://home.isbd.net/email.php&Mail:boating:leBoat where email.php is the clever E-Mail reading bit and "Mail:boating:leBoat" is the path down through the mail hierarchy to the mailbox I want to show. Ideally you'd see a clickable list of E-Mails from the mailbox. Any ideas or places to look for such a thing (or bits to make it) would be most welcome. -- Chris Green

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Really silly monitor setup
by Chris G 12 Feb '10

12 Feb '10

I have just bought a new system to set up for a friend. Quite straightforward Asrock G41MH-GE motherboard with a HANNspree 23" monitor. It's been a right royal pain to get going as much because of the silly monitor and BIOS setups as because of a kernel/Intel incompatibility. The monitor initially seems pretty standard with on screen setup and buttons to move through the menus but the real pain is that if there is no signal input you can't activate the menu. It actually tells you this in the manual, I didn't believe it at first but it really is true. I had set the monitor to VGA input (it's dual VGA and HDMI) but (for various reasons, see below) I had the HDMI lead connected. Hit the 'menu' button and notheing happens because there's no input on the VGA connector, sort of Catch22 really, I had to actually connect something to send it a VGA signal to let me get the menu up to switch it to DVI input. OK, it would *probably* have managed itself if I'd left it at Auto input select but we wanted to specifiy which input was being used. Then onto the BIOS on the Asrock motherboard. The boot options only appear for a very short time, too short to actually read them so you have to look in the manual to find it's F2 to get the BIOS setup. The real oddity though is that the splash screen (with the options) *only* appears after a power on, hitting the reset button doesn't show it so then you are really in the dark. I've never come across a motherboard where hitting reset doesn't produce the same effect as power on. -- Chris Green

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Laptop Needed Urgently
by Simon Royal 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

Hi fellow Linux users. I am still im desperate need for a laptop. After only being in the linux world for a short while my Samsung laptop died. I am now without a laptop and have to grab the odd minute on my wifes Windows machine. Does anyone have an old laptop laying around doing nothing, that I could dust off and make use of? An old P1 or P2 would be fine. I would only be running Xubuntu or DSL-N. I live in Watton but can travel. Simon --- Catch me on Twitter http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype me: Simon-Royal

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