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christmas dinner tonight
by Sam Tuke 10 Dec '09

10 Dec '09

Are we still on for this evening? Sam.

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Open Office - can one reduce the clutter for data entry on database forms?
by Chris G 09 Dec '09

09 Dec '09

I'm looking into using Open Office Base for creating some simple data entry forms, it's definitely a lot better than it was a few versions ago and is now a much more viable alternative to MS Access. However it would be really nice to have some way of reducing the 'clutter' (of Toolbars, status bars, etc.) around the window once a form has been designed and is being used for data entry. Ideally one would be able to display just the form one has designed, in much the same way as one can print a document without all the stuff around the edge (it would be a bit pointless if one couldn't!). Is there any way of getting just the form visible, or at least of toggling off all the toolbars etc.? I know quite a bit can be turned off using the View menu but how would one start up in this state? -- Chris Green

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Norwich Christmas Meal - 10th Dec
by Montmorency 07 Dec '09

07 Dec '09

I've just been in touch with the Coach and Horses. For the Christmas meal, they need to know the number coming, and the meals options people want, for first thing on Monday morning.. Menu here.... pick what you'd like. http://imgur.com/bcvVP.jpg If you want to come, reply to the mailing list with what you want. Now please! :) katsmeat Montmorency montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Eee desktop
by Anthony Anson 07 Dec '09

07 Dec '09

Does anyone know what the internet/work/settings/etc displays are called, and where I can find them? I want to put a link to Thunderbird on the internet one for starters - it's a bit of a pain doing it from File Mangler every time... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Christmas Meal selection at the Coach and Horses
by Ian 04 Dec '09

04 Dec '09

Hi, I'll go for the Roast Turkey followed by the Christmas Pudding. Ian PS. Any ideas what might cause KDE to drop a USB keyboard after a successful GUI signon?

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lp/lpr printing with CUPS version 1.4.1 is broken, fine with 1.3.9
by Chris G 04 Dec '09

04 Dec '09

I have one system on my LAN running Ubuntu server 9.10 and three running xubuntu 9.04. I have two printers, one a networked HP7310 and the other an HP1320 which is connected by USB to the Ubuntu server machine and is accessible via that from the other machines. So far so good, both printers work fine from all machines when used 'normally', i.e. for printing from Firefox or Open Office or whatever. The problem I have is that when I use lp or lpr from the command line on the 9.10 system the ouput is in a silly typeface and a silly size and the normal command line options have no effect. So if I do, for example, "ls -al | lpr -P HP7310" on my desktop 9.04 system I get a neat output in Courier 10 on the printer. However if I do exactly the same on the 9.10 system I get a horrible mess in some wierd typeface at about 5 cpi so some of the lines wrap and overprint themselves. Unfortunately, since the HP1320 is connected via the 9.10 system (it doesn't have its own network connection) all lpr output from any system to it goes via the CUPS on the 9.10 server and has the same bug, prints at about 5cpi. Ubuntu 9.10 has CUPS version 1.4.1 whereas the older 9.04 has CUPS 1.3.9 so it would seem that there's a bug in CUPS 1.4.1. However I can't find any reports of such a bug in CUPS, does no one print from the command line any more or is my Googling incompetant? In addition to the incorrect default print size the CUPS 1.4.1 command line appears to ignore any options like "-o cpi=10" which might otherwise be used to work around the problem. Does anyone have any suggestions as to where to look for a fix or a workaround? I'm in the process of submitting a bug at the CUPS web site as I can't find anything relevant there. -- Chris Green

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Ipswich ALUG Christmas Meal? January Tutorial?
by samwise 04 Dec '09

04 Dec '09

Hi, Last month's Ipswich ALUG turnout (13) was huge, so it appears there may be enough potential for a Christmas meal in Ipswich next month. Can anyone who might be interested in such an event, please drop me an email. If there's enough of us, we can work out the best date and book a table. On another note, we're trying to bring back bi-monthly tutorials at the request of some members. Following the one we've just had, the next one is scheduled to be on 18 January, next year. Is there anyone who'd like to volunteer to putting together a little something to show off? It can be on anything you like and doesn't even have to be a subject you know well - just something you're willing to spend an hour or two looking at before the meet (I'm certainly no Android expert!). Cheers, Peter.

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Re: [ALUG] Norwich Christmas Meal on the 10th
by Sam Tuke 04 Dec '09

04 Dec '09

On Thursday 03 Dec 2009 19:55:31 Montmorency wrote: > Menu here.... pick what you'd like. Risotto > Turkey > Christmas Pudding please, assuming that we are having starters. If not, just the last two please. Thanks for organising this event! Sam.

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Hello! Bad penny strikes again
by Anthony Anson 03 Dec '09

03 Dec '09

Since Zetnet has been dying I've been unable sensibly to retrieve any postings since August. Now with a proper ISP again I really *NEED* access to the list as my (Shhh!) Windows box has suddenly refused to take part in anything NT-related. DOS and Win 98, yes, but not 2000 or anything subsequent to that. Box still runs Lenny with no problem, also (unsurprisingly) Knoppix from DVD. This Eee is still running Fisher-Price for now. So, hello again, and if anyone has a reasonably-priced laptop for sale, I'd love to hear about it. Eees are ok - at a pinch innit. -- Tony

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How do you get podcasts/iPod apps etc without itunes?
by James Elsey 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

Someone here must have an iPod/iPhone/iTouch, how do you tap in to the apple store directory of podcasts, applications and such, without using itunes? There are some podcasts I'm subscribed to, but after replacing window7 with fedora12, I can't get hold of any updates. They are only hosted via the itunes store and not available as downloads from websites I did mention something on IRC about running iTunes under wine, but lets not go there.. :P I can't see any immediate way of Rhythmbox having access to the podcast listings, at least I haven't found a plugin yet. Any suggestions? Whack XP on virtualbox and get them via itunes? Cheers James Elsey

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Cross-Compiling Debian Kernel - AMD64 and i386
by Steve Fosdick 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

It occurred to me that building a kernel for an older Pentium 4 machine would be much faster on a three-core AMD Phenom than on the original P4 as long as I can get it to cross compile. I found that with the following command line: make-kpkg --revision 1 --us --uc --rootcmd fakeroot --cross-compile - --arch=i386 --initrd --append-to-version=-scenic --config gconfig kernel_image make-kpkg appears to run 'make config' with defaults for the target i386 architecture and when it moves on to the build step is invoving gcc with options telling it to generate i386 code. The fly in the ointment is that at the end it then wraps the kernel up into a package whose architecture as declared in the filename and in the control file as AMD64. When looking inside the package though all the modules are ELF32 as I would expect for i386. I have checked the man enty for make-kpkg but didn't find any other clue as to how I get make-kpkg to feed through whatever options are required to get the final package the correct type for the architecture it was actually build for. Any ideas? TiA, Steve.

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FW: Re: Using ImageMagick to overlay text
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

Apologies -- I just noticed that at the end of the message below which I recently posted, I said "the length of "This is my Text" in inches, when printed in Helvetica-Bold in point-size 15." That was incorrect, since everything preceding was done in terms of Courier-Bold! To see what it comes to in terms of Helvetica-Bold, substitute "HB" for "CB" in the commands. Thus: echo "\f[HB]\w'This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t/{sub(/t/,""); print $0/72000}' results in 0.988889 the length in inches of "This is my Text" in Helvetica-Bold in the default point-size of 10 points, while echo "\f[HB]\w'\s[15]This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t/{sub(/t/,""); print $0/72000}' results in 1.48333 the length in inches of "This is my Text" in Helvetica-Bold in 15-point (1.5 times as long as in 10-point). Also note (which I forgot to mention) that this length takes account of kerning (the slight left-shift of some letters relative to a preceding letter -- e.g. in "Text" the "ext" is moved left so tht the "e" is slightly overlapped by the preceding "T"). Kerning can be suppressed. Also, of course, the length is computed in terms of the font-metrics in the font files referred to by troff, and in other applications different font files may be used; however, the result is unlikely to be greatly different. Sorry for the sloppiness! Ted. -----FW: <XFMail.091201122319.Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk>----- Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:23:19 -0000 (GMT) Sender: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk From: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] Using ImageMagick to overlay text On 01-Dec-09 09:06:14, Mark Rogers wrote: > MJ Ray wrote: >> I'd either run identify on the image beforehand, or test PHP's libgd >> module to see if it was good enough for this. > > I will try GD today and see what the results are like (the results from > ImageMagick are pretty amazing, to be honest). > > I'm not sure what you mean about using identify though - I can see how > I'd use it to work out the size of the image but I can't see how I'd > use > that information to calculate the pointsize to use with my text? > > -- > Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 Your basic problem here is to find the printed length of a given text string, in a given font, at a given point size! You could incorporate something like the following in a script: echo "\f[CB]\w'This is my Text'\fP" | troff -Tps from which the output (to screen, when I entered the above on the command line) is; x T ps x res 72000 1 1 x init C p1 x font 6 CB f6 s10000 V12000 H72000 md DFd t90000 n12000 0 x trailer V792000 x stop The key line in there is t90000 which is the evaluation of the width ("\w'...'")of the string "This is my Text" in point-size 10 (the default) using font Courier-Bold ("\f[CB]"). The numerical result "90000" is the length of the text in units of (1 point)/1000, i.e. 1/72000 of an inch, so the physical printed length would be 90000/72000 = 1.25 inches You could feed that to 'awk' to do the sums (and this time I'll feed in an explicit point-size 15 ("\s[15]...\s0") as well): echo "\f[CB]\s[15]\w'This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t'/ results in: t135000 while echo "\f[CB]\s[15]\w'This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t/{sub(/t/,""); print $0}' results in 135000 so, finally, echo "\f[CB]\w'\s[15]This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t/{sub(/t/,""); print $0/72000}' results in 1.875 which is (15/10)*1.25, the length of "This is my Text" in inches, when printed in Helvetica-Bold in point-size 15. There may be some discrepancy, depending on how spaces are handled in the output. You can probably exploit the above ideas to get what you want! Hoping this helps, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Dec-09 Time: 12:23:16 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! --------------End of forwarded message------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Dec-09 Time: 14:22:46 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Using ImageMagick to overlay text
by Mark Rogers 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

I'm playing with ImageMagick's "convert" program to add text to an image. I have something like this (which works): convert "infile.png" -font "font.ttf" -gravity 'south' \ -stroke '#fffc' -strokewidth '3' -pointsize '300' \ -annotate 0 "Test" "outfile.png" However, the only way I can find to size the text is using the -pointsize option. What I want to do is make the text proportional to the image size, eg have the text work out to 50% of the available width, or similar. I can't find any good way to do this - and nor can I find a suitable query for Google to assist me. The "convert" program is being called as part of a PHP script so I can be quite flexible in what I do if I need to be (eg if I need to create dummy images to see what sizes they come out as, etc). Suggestions for other programs I can use instead welcome. I know ImageMagick and I know I can trust it with high quality images if I need to (and will need to here) which is why I stated there. -- 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] Using ImageMagick to overlay text
by Mark Rogers 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

James Taylor wrote: > I think there is a question about whether swapping from inside PHP to > ImageMagick and back is a good thing or not - why spawn a separate > process to do essentially the same work? > > Another possibility is: > > 1) Load image. > 2) Create new image to store text in > 3) Render text (make it vector based if possible) > 4) Resize-text-image to being correct size/proportion > 5) Merge text-image over image > The actual processing is slower than the spawning, so it's not particularly a problem, but I am moving towards using the Imagick PHP libraries which will bring the processing inside PHP rather than spawning a new process. Spawning a process has the advantage that I can experiment at the commandline first (and can seek advice from a wider range of people), but the options are pretty straightforward to convert between library and commandline. -- 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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Hi to All
by Rob Snow 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

Hi there Luggers, I have just signed up to this list and the lug. My interest in Linux stems from a spell working in the Charity Sector. We managed to convert our whole organisation to Linux across ten to fifteen sites (It varied as the project evolved and then unfortunately wound up). My current interest is fueled by offering family and friends an alternative to the commonly available "commercial" offerings. My favored flavors are Opensuse for modern kit and Puppy for the rest. I have recently moved to Norfolk near Downham Market, and am currently a full time parent! I look forward to meeting you all, either on-line or at one of the social meets. Regards Rob

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remote update of debian etch to lenny
by mick 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

Advice please people. I have two VPSs. One runs Lenny, the other etch. There are sufficient differences between the two for me to want to standardise on lenny. (I also run lenny internally on a couple of NSLU2s). Upgrading should not be a problem. I have experience of doing exactly that on local machines - but I have never done it from the end of an ssh connection when the machine in question is housed in a remote datacentre (and, moreover, is a virtualised image). The debian site (at http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.html) recommends against upgrading remotely using telnet, rlogin or rsh, but suggests that ssh will be OK. So, before I jump in with both feet, any experience anyone could share would be good. Particulary I would like to be aware of any potential gotchas. I really don't want to be stuck with a partial upgrade that I can't get back in to. Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Christmas Meal - Who's coming?
by Montmorency 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

OK... for the Christmas meal at the Coach and Horses on the 10th of December. we have: Sam Tuke Ian <ian(a)titanexplorer.co.uk> Steve <steve(a)offend.me.uk> Adam Bower Richard <richardbensley(a)gmail.com> Myself Bill Hill Reply to the mailing list if you want to come. The menu is here http://i.imgur.com/bcvVP.jpg I'll repost this on the mailing list in a week's time as a final-call. Then get in touch with the pub next Tuesday or Wednesday to let them know the number coming. Montmorency montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Cannot copy/paste between two screens on a xinerama/twinview setup
by Srdjan Todorovic 27 Nov '09

27 Nov '09

Hi everyone, Got a strange thing happening on this machine - I can copy text by selecting and highlighting, and pasting by pressing middle mouse button (wheel button). This works fine as long as the copy text source is on one screen, and the paste destination is on the same screen. But it does not work if I have text on one screen and want to paste to another screen. Two physical monitors are plugged into the same video card. TwinView is enabled. Is this a: - nvidia issue - X11 issue - KDE issue - kubuntu issue - legacy software issue? It's as if each physical screen has a separate copy/paste buffer. As long as a small portion of a window is over both screens, I can copy/paste from that window into each. This is very annoying! Anyone have ideas? Thanks! Srdjan

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gdi and raw printing
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

Wayne, do you then mean to set up CUPS with a printer defined as raw, ie with no ppd defined, and then print using that? Its not networked, its local mode only, parallel, and it will just print a few lines very fast, so there is no real way it can need to queue jobs. I came across the suggestion to do cat > [filename] >lp0 elsewhere and now have confirmation from the supplier that the printer will simply print plain text sent directly to it. So this will probably work. Thanks all.

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gdi and raw printing
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

OK, still struggling with this stuff, and yes, I have googled it to death with mixed success. How does raw printing work exactly? Do you get to send an ascii character stream directly to the printer, and how does the printer know what to do with it? Are there any decent references anywhere? All I am looking to do is send a few characters and line feeds, and don't care about fonts or formatting of any sophisticated sort. One would think it should be possible using lpr, but if anyone has actually done this, it might save a lot of time and experimentation. This is just printing characters, its not real document printing, layout, all that stuff. Peter

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touch screen packages
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

Don't really like all-in-ones - you get more flexibility with separates, that's my feeling anyway. My friend down the road is stuck, for instance, with a perfectly decent 24 inch apple screen, which has some kind of werid obsolete computer welded to it, and he is going to end up replacing the lot at vast expense, when were they separates, £300 would give him a screamingly fast (by comparison) replacement....An exaggeration, but not much of one. They are convenient, yes. But for us, it will definitely be separates. Peter

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Reasonable good-quality touch-screen
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

Hi Folks, Apologies for cross-posting b A project I'm involved with -- setting up an educational display at a local museum, with (modest) Royal Society funding: see http://www.prickwillow-engine-museum.co.uk involves installing a wall-mounted screen for animated display under touch-screen control. The cost needs to be reasonable (euphemism for "as cheap as poss, subject to acceptable quality"). One of us has poked around a bit, and found: [A]"The MSI Wind top AE1900 is the most expensive at £465 ex VAT but has a 19" screen and Windows XP home. Availability is uncertain and it has no wall mount." [PCworld review at http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/61134/review/wind_top_ae1900.html ] [B]"The Asus ET1602 is 15" widescreen and £355 ex VAT including Windows XP home and is wall mountable though it requires a difficult to source adapter." [PCpro review at http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/desktops/256873/asus-eee-top-et1602 ] [C]"TheShuttle X50 is 15" widescreen and is available "bare bones", no memory, hard drive, or software. It does have the dual core version of the Atom processor, the others are single core, and does have the industry standard VESA wall mount fixings. With 1GB ram and 160GB hard drive, no operating system it's £379 ex VAT. With Windows XP home it's £415 ex VAT." [PCworld review at http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/55884/review/x50_aio.html ] There is willingness to use Linux (and some of us know our Linux)! One issue is that a 15" screen is probably too small for wall mounted display to (e.g.) visiting school groups, so there's interest in the larger screen. Reviews of [A] and [B] are critical of display quality ("the ropey screen" for [B]) and no great enthusiasm overall for any of the three. If we do go Linux (which I'd like) there'll be an issue of adequate touch-screen drivers for the hardware we actually get. I see that X11 now has quite an array of touch-screen modules, so it possibly might work "out of the box". The reviews (and the home pages) for the three above don't seem to mention what cards/screens they have, so I haven't been able to identify these to the point of being able to cross-check with X11. So I'd be most obliged is anyone who has experience of any of the above could comment or advise, in the context of our intended use. Also, advice on Linux-based solutions to the general question of touch-screen boxes with wall-mountable screens, preferably larger than 15-inch, and broadly in the price range £350-450 (we prefer the lower end ... ) would be most welcome. The guy who poked around wrote: "I would favour the Shuttle X50, we will want a secure wall mount." With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 25-Nov-09 Time: 20:25:11 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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touch screen packages
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

I have no experience. Not yet at least. But was proposing to use on a similar project an Iiyama PLT1930SR/19 for £385 from ebuyer - 19 inch monitor. And put it together with Acer Aspire Revo R3600 Desktop PC, Atom 230 1.6GHz, 160GB HDD, 1 GB RAM, HDMI, nVidia GeForce 9400 ION, WIFI, Linux Which is on sale at ebuyer for 150. Or use some other atom based sff machine, but this one is so cheap. I was thinking of getting one of those compact flash to ide adaptors, then using the debian variant that is firefox only, so its basically debian with the only thing on it a browser. I guess you could do it yourself, but this is prepackaged. There is also browsermode linux. There seem to be a couple of these around. We are a little way away from doing it, I first have to do a demo not on a touch screen, then get funds committed if they still like it.... Peter

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Replacing duplicate files with hard links
by Mark Rogers 25 Nov '09

25 Nov '09

Does anyone make use of any tools which can search for duplicate files and (assuming they're on the same filesystem) replace the duplicates with hard links to the first copy of the file? There seem to be a few scripts around but since it'll be messing with my files I'd rather go by recommendation if I can. (The plan is to free up some space on a server which has lots of duplicate images.) Also, any "gotchas" that should put me off trying this would be appreciated. -- 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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Any ADSL experts here?
by Mark Rogers 25 Nov '09

25 Nov '09

Sorry, another OT post on an ADSL subject - if anyone has some suggestions of decent technical ADSL lists or forums please let me know. One of our customers migrated from one ISP to another, from a reasonable speed (3-4Mbps we think, it as never an issue so they never made a note of what it was), which immediately on migration dropped down to silly figures - their BT speedtest results hover between 100kpbs and 200kbps and their most recent result was 40kbps! Despite numerous faults to BT via the ISP, little has changed to date (the migration was in May!); apparently they changed the linecard yesterday and it seems to have been that the change to the linecard is what has given the end user the record low speed of 40kbps. The IP profile for the line is 7150Kbps, and their sync speed is over 7Mbps, and their upload speed is around 800kpbs. (Bandwidth figures for the connection tie in with this data, so it's not as if there's some underlying data transfer that's tying up the connection somehow.) We've changed the end user kit and filters (although bear in mind the original kit was working fine pre-migration) to no avail. Speed tests using different accounts (eg test accounts at the ISP, or bt_test@startup_domain, etc) all give similar results. I need to find someone who has seen something similar and has some sensible suggestions as to what to try next. (Is the fault likely at BT or the ISP?) -- 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] using windows printer drivers
by Peter Alcibiades 25 Nov '09

25 Nov '09

Sorry, should have said what printer. It is a Star SP300 dot matrix parallel interface. I made a silly mistake - the 500 has linux drivers, but the 300 does not. Partly I don't want to be out £40, but also at this point there is an intellectual challenge involved! I think it might be possible to print directly to it in 'raw' mode - there are hints about this on the net. ls > dev/lp0 and there is something about setting up the printer as make = raw, with model as raw queue, after which you are supposed to be able to print to it with lpr -P queuefile If I can figure out how to get some characters, any characters, sent over to it to print, then I can certainly find a way to format the string so they come out right. I do have windows drivers, and can experiment with them if I can figure out what experiment to do.... Peter

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USB device, detected OK but nothing appears, what next?
by Chris G 25 Nov '09

25 Nov '09

I have a new memory card reader which 'does all the right things' when you plug it in but nothing appears on my desktop. An older, very similar, device works OK and the memory card appears as a drive on my desktop. How does one diagnose this sort of problem? When I plug in the reader (and card) that doesn't work I see the following in syslog:- Nov 24 21:49:16 chris kernel: [34956.231212] hub 2-1:1.0: USB hub found Nov 24 21:49:16 chris kernel: [34956.231361] hub 2-1:1.0: 3 ports detected Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.508106] usb 2-1.1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8 Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.600669] usb 2-1.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.600753] hub 2-1.1:1.0: USB hub found Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.600887] hub 2-1.1:1.0: 3 ports detected Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.881611] usb 2-1.1.1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9 Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34957.031679] usb 2-1.1.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34957.031947] scsi7 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34957.032114] usb-storage: device found at 9 Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34957.032116] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning Nov 24 21:49:22 chris kernel: [34962.033925] usb-storage: device scan complete Nov 24 21:49:22 chris kernel: [34962.043387] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic Ultra HS-SD/MMC 1.82 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 Nov 24 21:49:22 chris kernel: [34962.058283] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk Nov 24 21:49:22 chris kernel: [34962.058361] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0 So what's wrong? -- Chris Green

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Christmas Meal
by Ian 24 Nov '09

24 Nov '09

You can put me down for food on the 10th.

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Re: [ALUG] using windows printer drivers
by Peter Alcibiades 24 Nov '09

24 Nov '09

Thanks for a most helpful reply. Meanwhile I have looked into the Linuxant wrapper, which also seems confined to network drivers, and have found the potentially useful ddiwrapper, which seems a possible if problematic solution. The only posting on experience so far reports getting it to install, and apparently using the driver, but failing to obtain any output at the printer. Peter

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using windows printer drivers
by Peter Alcibiades 24 Nov '09

24 Nov '09

I don't really understand, well don't understand at all, how ndiswrapper works. Is it possible to use it to wrap a windows printer driver? I have a POS printer which I'd like to use in Linux, but just find out that it has no Linux drivers. it does have something called a JavaPOS driver from back in 2002, which seems fairly horrendous to get to work. Is there any way of using the XP one with ndiswrapper or anything else? Peter

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CUPS problem with default font/size, can't change it.
by Chris G 24 Nov '09

24 Nov '09

I have an HP1320 printer connected to my 'server' machine which runs Ubuntu 9.10. The CUPS version is 1.4.1. The printer works fine for 'formatted' output from such things as Firefox, Open Office, PDF files, etc. However I can't get it to print text files in a sensible format, when I do something like:- ls -al | lpr I get a printout in a a rather odd typeface and much too big, it looks something like 5 characters per inch. It makes not difference if I set the default options using lpoptions, nothing seems to change the size of the text. It's also the same whether I print locally (i.e. from the command line on the server machine) or remotely from other machines on the network. If I do the same thing to my other printer (an HP7310 inkjet which has its own network interface) then I get exactly what I hope/expect, i.e. the printout is at 10cpi in something that looks like Courier. That of course doesn't go via the server machine, CUPS on the client machine sends direct to the printer. Aaaahhhh, the problem is with CUPS 1.4.1. The HP7310 wasn't installed as a printer in CUPS on the server machine (didn't really need it) but I have just done so and printing from the command line on *that* machine to the HP7310 produces the same wrong/too big output. So, it's CUPS 1.4.1 that gets the command line defaults wrong. Any ideas how to fix this anyone? -- Chris Green

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Mac To Ubuntu Switcher
by Simon Royal 23 Nov '09

23 Nov '09

Hi. I'm an experienced computer user, repairer, upgrader etc. I switched from Windows to Mac about 10 years ago and am now thinking of switching to Ubuntu. I have used Ubuntu since about version 5 and the newer versions - especially 9.10 have really impressed me, with just how easy to use and how intuitive it has become. Being a Mac user puts you in the minority of computer users anyway and things are never as straight forward as Windows. I preferred older Macs so am used to hacks, mods and tweaks to get the best out of it. Mac OSX is built around a Unix base so has more in common with Ubuntu than Windows, but it is still a very GUI orientated OS, with only a few things needed so do in Terminal or Open Firmware. Is there any advice or stories people would like to share with a Mac to Ubuntu switcher? I've been running the latest Live version on my wifes Windows machine and testing out my peripherals and everything seems to be ok. As I have a mixed OS household I tended to buy hardware that would work on both Mac and Windows and format drives/flash drives to NTFS or FAT32 anyway, so this gives me a bit of a head start in moving over. I have an old 40GB iPod which I have found out I can use in Ubuntu as long as I change it from a Mac formatted one to a Windows formatted one, so that is good news. I have an old Epson Stylus Photo 1200 which I can't find any reference to but suppose it would require CUPS or Gutenprint to work possibly. I've read that RaLink RT2500 chipset based PCMCIA cards and USB wireless dongles tend to work out of the box with Ubuntu so that takes one less thing as I have an Asus WL-117G USB wireless dongle. I'm getting there. It has always been a side passion of mine and now I want it as a main machine, so need to check as much as I can prior to wiping and installing. Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Use Hotmail to send and receive mail from your different email accounts http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/186394592/direct/01/

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More about monitors
by Chris G 22 Nov '09

22 Nov '09

Well after asking here (and a couple of other places) I decided to buy an LG W2453TX monitor. It seemed a reasonable price with the resolution I wanted and the inputs I wanted. However it isn't as good as I expected and I'm returning it, hopefully under DSR so I won't lose much money. The problem I have with it is the inconsistency of brightness/contrast/colour across the screen. I may be extra critical because I have 'tall' (i.e. 60 line) terminal windows on the screen running mutt etc. but for me the inconsistency is *very* noticeable. E.g. my mutt screen has cyan[ish] status bars at the top and bottom and they are quite different colours on the W2453TX. Playing with the angle of view varies the difference between top and bottom but you can never get it the same. In addition the text at the bottom of the screen is very 'spindly' compared to the top. My old screen (a Dell 2001FP) is *miles* better, the status bars are near enough identical (well I can't see any difference) and the text looks the same everywhere. Since this (minor) debacle I have done a bit more research into LCD monitors and their technology and have discovered that there are two or three fundamentally different types. I've discovered some useful sites with information about this:- http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/ http://www.flatpanelshd.com/ The types are:- TN - most cheap and fast displays are TN, good for gaming but colour rendition and viewing angle poor. PVA and MVA - sort of middle of the road, not as fast as TN but better accuracy. IPS - best for accuracy, but expensive. It turns out that the Dell 2001FP I have is an IPS screen so I have been spoilt as regards accuracy. Current 24" screens using this technology are *expensive*, like £500 and upwards! I'm trying to find a PVA (or maybe MVA) screen which isn't too expensive but at the moment I'm not having much success. I guess much of the problem is that the main pressure nowadays is towards response speed and TN screens win on that front. The trouble is that they are rubbish for viewing angle which is a much maligned figure as far as I can tell. The W2453TX has a figure of 170 degrees for viewing angle which is a total joke, any angle much more than 45 degrees off centre produces all sorts of odd effects. The 2001FP on the other hand one can look at from any angle and the colours are unchanged. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Christmas Meal
by Sam Tuke 21 Nov '09

21 Nov '09

I'll have the lot please (three courses). Need we pay in advance? Sam. > I'm in for the full-on, three course jobbie. > > I think it'd be best if everybody emails with what they want. Then, a > few days beforehand, I'll count them up and phone the Coach and > Horses with the numbers. > > katsmeat

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Christmas Meal
by Montmorency 20 Nov '09

20 Nov '09

I'm in for the full-on, three course jobbie. I think it'd be best if everybody emails with what they want. Then, a few days beforehand, I'll count them up and phone the Coach and Horses with the numbers. katsmeat Montmorency montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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ALUG Christmas Meal 10th December
by Richard 20 Nov '09

20 Nov '09

Evening all, 10th December is the last ALUG meeting for 2009, and of course time for our Christmas Meal! We have a table booked as always under the name of Morton for December 10th. You can find a Christmas menu here: http://imgur.com/bcvVP.jpg They are serving their normal dishes throughout the evening also. If we can finalise numbers, orders and a time as soon as possible that would be great :) Richard

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antec 900 II
by Peter Alcibiades 20 Nov '09

20 Nov '09

Well, just to let you know after my query, this arrived and its amazing. Heavy, very solid construction, fans all over the place, and its quiet. Its not silent, but the sound is unobtrusive enough that you can have it on a desktop and its not at all irritating, just moderate frequency rushing of air. None of that high pitched whirring. There are nice easy racks of bays for the drives, directly cooled by fans. The blue neon lights, well, you have to be 15 to appreciate that stuff, but OK. I was really pleased, and so was the user. The top fan, huge, is as predicted, quite quiet but is moving a lot of air. It was proably overkill for this installation with a moderate graphics card and only one hd, but it is probably the last case you will ever need to buy. We also called Novatech support because a router we had got was defective. Its a wait to get them, but when you do, they are quick, good tempered, and know what they are talking about. And not in Bangalore! Al

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PCMCIA Wireless Card Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

Hi. I am still getting to grips with Ubuntu. I have just picked up a laptop to further my knowledge and hopefully switch from Mac to Linux completely. Does anyone know which wireless laptop cards (PCMCIA) work with Ubuntu 9.10 out of the box with WPA encryption? Regards Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ View your other email accounts from your Hotmail inbox. Add them now. http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/186394592/direct/01/

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Can one reduce text size in the sidebar in Firefox?
by Chris G 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

Further to using the Sidebar Bookmarks in Firefox, is it possible to reduce the text size? I mean of course reduce the text size in the sidebar without changing the default text size for displayed pages. -- Chris Green

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debian problem with usb printer and scanner
by Peter Alcibiades 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

Does this sound familiar at all? On a squeeze installation, there is a usb scanner. Works just fine. But for unclear reasons every now and then, it may be because someone plugs in another computer to the usb hub to print, not quite sure, when xsane starts up it gives the usual message about not being able to start the scanner. I fix this by brute force, I start up a demo copy of vuescan, after which all is well again. But I have no idea why this should work. However, on another machine running Lenny, this did not work. Vuescan could now not find the scanner. Also (this is an MFP) I was unable to get the printer to work. I had downloaded the drivers (its a Brother) and installed them using gdebi. So, I tackled the scanner problem first. sane-find-scanner found it, and scanimage -L also found it. Attempting to scan from the command line did not. Running short of time, this was a friends machine, I took the brute force approach again and installed Mandriva 2010. Got the drivers, installed them, and bingo, everything works fine. Must say, this was wonderfully easy, all the bookmarks and the toolbar configuration came up intact. Could not have been easier. Mandriva will be easier for him to run, at least, until we want to upgrade it. But, what on earth could be going on? Peter

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Firefox bookmarks in sidebar annoyance, any way around it?
by Chris G 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

I've been using a bookmarks 'server' for a long time (sitebar) but I've just realised it's actually rather pointless now I don't want to access my Firefox bookmarks from anywhere else except my home system. So I'll use the built-in bookmarks, so far so good. I liked the sitebar ability to put bookmarks in the sidebar so, after a bit of mucking around found how to put Firefox's bookmarks in the sidebar (well, not much mucking around, it's in the View menu). BUT there's one big drawback, for me anyway, if you click on a 'bad' (as in no such page) bookmark in the sidebar then the error is displayed in the sidebar rather than in the main Firefox display area and I can't find any way to get the bookmarks back in the sidebar except by pulling the View menu down again. Is there any way to avoid this 'infelicity'? In fact is there any way to force Firefox to *always* show the bookmarks in the sidebar, or at least to default to doing so? -- Chris Green

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OT: ADSL configuration
by Mark Rogers 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

I have just spent the afternoon trying to get my head around this one and failed. A customer has been set up with a new ADSL account with the following IP addresses: 88.x.a.116/30 (routed IP range) 88.x.b.170 (static IP). I need to configure the router to everything to a firewall that'll route traffic accordingly. I can't even work out from this configuration how many usable external IP addresses this will give them? (I can get the router connected with the static IP in a normal configuration without problem.) PS: God bless my Ubuntu Live CD, the tools you have to manage without on Windows! -- 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] a weird network configuration, does this make any sense at all?
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 17 Nov '09

17 Nov '09

runlevel ten wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 11:22 AM, <steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk > <mailto:steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk>> wrote: > > > On the other hand, the adage "If it aint broke, don't fix it" is > often relevant! > :-) > Steve > > > The trouble is, there are many people in this world who use that > phrase to mean "It is broke, but let's not fix it until it stops > working, hopefully it will be someone else's problem by then.". > I don't think I've come across that usage. As far as I'm concerned, if it's working it aint broke, and if it is not working it's broke and required fixing. Simples! Steve

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Re: [ALUG] Burn, mount DVD and then eject fails?
by Srdjan Todorovic 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

Augh! Sorry - accidentally sent this to Wayne only. Sending to the list now. Srdjan 2009/11/16 Srdjan Todorovic <todorovic.s(a)googlemail.com>: > 2009/11/16 Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk>: >> Srdjan Todorovic wrote: >>> >>> Initial searching suggests and issue with HAL. I've found that it >>> seems k3b is still running and can be seen to have /dev/hda still open >>> using lsof. Killing the process causes it to not appear in the lsof >>> output, but still cannot eject. So it may even be a bug with K3b. >>> >> >> Do you have the "verify written data" option checked in k3b's burning window >> ? > > No, I've not had that working for a long time, so I usually resort to > creating an md5 sum file of the files, then burn the disk, then verify > once mounted. > >> For some time now that hasn't worked for me and leaves k3b holding onto the >> burnt disc. Although it visibly errors on the verify which you don't >> mention. > > K3b does not report any errors. > I can burn the disk, and press eject button on the drive itself, and > it will open. I can put the disk in, mount it, read the files, > unmount, but then never eject as my normal user. > > If I just use a disk without having burnt anything that day, then I > can eject as my normal user without problems. > So it suggests it's somehow related to k3b's interaction with the rest > of the machine. > > At some point I'll do a test to see if exiting KDE and logging back in > clears the issue. > > Thanks > Srdjan >

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Burn, mount DVD and then eject fails?
by Srdjan Todorovic 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

Hi all, Got this weird problem for a few weeks now where I cannot eject optical disks after buring. (strangely, my old Tiberian Sun game disks can now be read, whereas previously could not on the desktop...). I burn an optical disk using K3b -> burn succeeds and can mount it and read all the files using md5sum to compare against known checksum file. I want to eject the disk, and then KDE pops up a message: "The device was successfully unmounted, but the tray could not be opened". I also cannot eject using /usr/bin/eject Stracing it: open("/dev/hda", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK) = 3 ioctl(3, CDROMEJECT, 0x1) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) ioctl(3, SG_GET_VERSION_NUM, 0x7fffdc13f47c) = 0 ioctl(3, SG_IO, 0x7fffdc13f3d0) = -1 EFAULT (Bad address) ioctl(3, FDEJECT, 0x1) = -1 ENOSYS (Function not implemented) ioctl(3, MGSL_IOCGPARAMS or MTIOCTOP or SNDCTL_MIDI_MPUMODE, 0x7fffdc1440e0) = -1 ENOSYS (Function not implemented) Oddly there's not close(3) but maybe it's not needed. Another run: open("/dev/hda", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK) = 3 ioctl(3, CDROMEJECT, 0x1) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) ioctl(3, SG_GET_VERSION_NUM, 0x7fff97ef8fac) = 0 ioctl(3, SG_IO, 0x7fff97ef8f00) = -1 EFAULT (Bad address) ioctl(3, FDEJECT, 0x1) = -1 ENOSYS (Function not implemented) ioctl(3, MGSL_IOCGPARAMS or MTIOCTOP or SNDCTL_MIDI_MPUMODE, 0x7fff97efdc10) = -1 ENOSYS (Function not implemented) The device is the correct device, and perms are: brw-rw---- 1 root cdrom 3, 0 2009-11-16 08:57 /dev/hda And I'm in the 'cdrom' group. From this moment onwards (until a reboot I guess), I have the same behaviour with optical disks: I can mount them, read them, unmount them, but cannot physically eject the drive, even if pressing (and/or holding) the drive eject button. Running eject as root works perfectly, which seems to suggest a permissions problem. As root: open("/dev/hda", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK) = 3 ioctl(3, CDROMEJECT, 0x1) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) ioctl(3, SG_GET_VERSION_NUM, 0x7fff6f0d36ec) = 0 ioctl(3, SG_IO, 0x7fff6f0d3640) = 0 ioctl(3, SG_IO, 0x7fff6f0d3640) = 0 ioctl(3, SG_IO, 0x7fff6f0d3640) = 0 ioctl(3, BLKRRPART, 0x7fff6f0d3640) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) close(3) = 0 and again as root: open("/dev/hda", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK) = 3 ioctl(3, CDROMEJECT, 0x1) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) ioctl(3, SG_GET_VERSION_NUM, 0x7fff93f2ffac) = 0 ioctl(3, SG_IO, 0x7fff93f2ff00) = 0 ioctl(3, SG_IO, 0x7fff93f2ff00) = 0 ioctl(3, SG_IO, 0x7fff93f2ff00) = 0 ioctl(3, BLKRRPART, 0x7fff93f2ff00) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) close(3) = 0 Initial searching suggests and issue with HAL. I've found that it seems k3b is still running and can be seen to have /dev/hda still open using lsof. Killing the process causes it to not appear in the lsof output, but still cannot eject. So it may even be a bug with K3b. Any ideas, please? Thanks Srdjan

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NAS box mount problems
by Chris Walker 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

I have setup my Edimax NAS box with various users and I can see it from this machine when in Windows mode and from my wife's laptop, also in Windows. Although I can see it from this machine in Linux mode using FTP and can send files to it, I can't seem to mount the thing. I've been googling this morning and found the smbclient command. Using that, I can finally connect to it and can see that there are no files present - not entirely unexpected! I get this from smbclient :- [root@Epox chris]# smbclient -L storage_server Enter chris's password: Domain=[STORAGE_SERVER] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.20] Sharename Type Comment --------- ---- ------- FTP_RAID_C Disk Linux Share Epox_Share Disk Windows XP Share Laptop_Share Disk Asus Laptop Share IPC$ IPC IPC Service (NAS SYSTEM) ADMIN$ IPC IPC Service (NAS SYSTEM) Domain=[STORAGE_SERVER] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.20] Server Comment --------- ------- Workgroup Master --------- ------- MY.HOME MY.HOME WORKGROUP STORAGE_SERVER I think I should now be able to mount the thing using the correct user, Mandriva and can do so like this :- [root@Epox chris]# smbclient //storage_server/ftp_raid_c -U Mandriva Enter Mandriva's password: Domain=[STORAGE_SERVER] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.20] smb: \> ls . D 0 Sun Nov 15 11:16:28 2 .. D 0 Sun Nov 15 11:16:28 2 58643 blocks of size 16777216. 47828 blocks available But how do I transfer files from linux to the NAS box? I thought I would need to mount it but if I try smbmount, I'm told that the command doesn't exist. I'm using Mandriva btw. I've also been trying to mount the thing using smbfs but have had no more luck using that. I get this message when I do :- [root@Epox chris]# mount -t smbfs -o password=Mandriva //storage_server/ftp_raid_c /mnt/Edimax/ mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //storage_server/ftp_raid_c, missing codepage or helper program, or other error (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might need a /sbin/mount.<type> helper program) In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so Message from syslogd@Epox at Sun Nov 15 11:42:47 2009 ... Epox klogd: smbfs is deprecated and will be removed from the 2.6.27 kernel. Please migrate to cifs So I'm a bit stuck now. Can anybody help please?

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back this Monday 16th November, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. This month will hopefully comprise of the tutorial on Android Application Development which was postponed from last month, due to appalling attendance. It'll cover what the Android platform is, what technologies are behind it, how to get a development environment up and running and the creation of some simple applications. Remember to call or email me, if you're arriving later and want to ensure I don't wander off, which I have a tendency to do if the turn-out hits rock-bottom ... Hope to see you there, Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Sony Ericsson Symbian Phones with Linux
by Mark Rogers 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

I'm looking at a phone upgrade, and current favourite is the new Sony Ericsson Satio. Given that it's new I can't find a lot of info about connecting it to Linux, but as it's Symbian based I figure a lot will depend on how well other SE Symbian phones work with Linux. I had a look at the Gammu phone database and they fairly well supported (much better than the Nokia's I'm more familiar with). But does anyone have any real experience of using their SE phone with Linux in any way? Ideally I'm looking to archive stuff like text messages onto the PC for storage, syncing contacts and calendar, and transfering photos and video. I'm as much interested in SE's attitude as what works and what doesn't though. (Nokia are very proprietary and almost nothing works without using Nokia's own software on Windows.) -- 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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Video conversion problem -mpeg2, mpeg1, etc.
by Chris G 15 Nov '09

15 Nov '09

My wife wants to play some videos on a projector while she does a talk. Inevitably there will only be Windows machines available to do this (or possibly her laptop which, unlike everything else, is also Windows). She has chosen the files she'd like to run, they're all MPEG2. It turns out that Linux is actually better at doing this than Windows but this doesn't help the current issue. I want to concatenate five or six MPEG videos and play them, by default on Windows this means they have to be MPEG1. I'm trying to convert them using ffmpeg but at present I'm failing miserably. Can anyone tell me, in simple terms, how I can convert some MPEG2 files to MPEG1? I'm currently trying:- ffmpeg -i 'Head In The Clouds.mpg' -target vcd -y /home/chris/tmp/maxine/hitc.mpg but this produces a zero length output file, do I need something more to get it to work? -- Chris Green

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Monitors
by steveydoteu 14 Nov '09

14 Nov '09

Having seen the recent suggestions for a new 24" I thought I would go ahead and get some input on my issue. I currently have a 15" CRT but it is too large to put on a new desk, so I therefore need to get an LCD around 15-19" but am unsure as to what to look for regarding models and so forth.

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[ALUG Announce] Alug Norwich 2nd Thursday Pub Meet 12th November @ The Coach & Horses
by Adam Bower 13 Nov '09

13 Nov '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Dear ALUG, This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 12th November 2009 at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ ). This is our second meeting in the Coach and Horses and it offers food, a good selection of real beer (including takeouts!) and reasonably good connections for travel and parking. There should be people there from 8pm, hopefully someone will bring Tux to aid people in recognising us. I look forward to seeing you Adam -- new signature required, old one is too boring. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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UltraEdit for Linux
by Mark Rogers 12 Nov '09

12 Nov '09

Just a heads-up for anyone who might be interested: a native Linux version of UltraEdit has been released: http://www.ultraedit.com/Newsletters/nov09-uex/index.html It's chargeable ($40 introductory, $70 full price) and I've not tried it yet (I'm half-way through an Ubuntu 9.04->9.10 upgrade, so now probably isn't the time to install it!) but I know there's been interest in a UE-like editor on Linux expressed here before (as much by me as anyone). I know the majority won't be interested on price/freedom grounds. Personally I've not found anything as good on Linux as FOSS (primarily stuff like column editing). (Since the software is commercial I should point out that I am not affiliated with UE in any way.) -- 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 wanted for new 24" monitor
by Chris G 12 Nov '09

12 Nov '09

It's not specifically Linux but it is computers. My Dell 2001FP is beginning to show its age so I'm after a new monitor, the 'sweet point' for me seems to be a 24" wide screen running 1920x1600 as the current Dell runs at 1600x1200 so the new one would be similar but a little wider. I need two inputs (VGA and DVI-D/HDMI), I don't really need speakers. So has anyone here got something like this and/or bought one recently? Any ideas or recommendations would be most welcome. I'd like to keep the price below £200. My current front runner is the LG W2452TX which is £169 from CCL. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Recommendations wanted for new 24" monitor
by barrie jones 12 Nov '09

12 Nov '09

On Wed Nov 11 17:48:13 GMT 2009 Chris G wrote: >My Dell 2001FP is beginning to show its age so I'm after a new >monitor, the 'sweet point' for me seems to be a 24" wide screen >running 1920x1600 as the current Dell runs at 1600x1200 so the new one >would be similar but a little wider. I bought a Samsung SM2343BW 23" widescreen about 3 months ago. I got it from eBuyer for £170 delivered. It runs at 2048 x 1152 resolution and, bearing in mind that anything like this is very subjective, I really haven't been able to fault it - it's absolutely brilliant. I had been using a Sony 19" crt at 1600 x 1200 up to that point and had been very pleased with the quality (I'd had it for about 6 years), but the Samsung has really been a revelation. It's equally good for video, photos/images and for text - I had wondered a bit about the latter as it has a very high resolution, but even the smallest text size is absolutely clear and sharp. I use the DVI input, but the VGA input seems to be of very similar quality. I looked at a range of 22-24" monitors up to £220 before settling on this one, and haven't been disappointed. eBuyer have customer reviews on their website (I didn't do one!) and 13 of 14 ratings were 5 stars out of 5 with the other one 4 stars. Hope this helps Barrie _________________________________________________________________ Use Hotmail to send and receive mail from your different email accounts. http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/167688463/direct/01/

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Blogging tools for Wordpress blogs
by Mark Rogers 12 Nov '09

12 Nov '09

Does anyone here use any GUI tools for updating a Wordpress blog? Cross-platform ideally, as I want to get others using the same tools who haven't yet discovered the joys of a Windows-free desktop. -- 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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Moving To Linux
by Simon Royal 12 Nov '09

12 Nov '09

Hi. I am thinking of moving to Linux. I have been into computing for about 17 years. In 2000 I switched from Windows to Mac. For the past few years I have followed the Ubuntu development. Just lately I have lost my enthusiasm for the Mac platform and have been thinking of switching permanently to Linux. I currently have a PowerBook G4 15" and love portable computing. I was thinking of downsizing to a small netbook running Linux. I have played around with DSL, DSL-N, Vector Linux, Corel Linux and played quite a bit with Ubuntu. I dual booted it with OSX for a while and quite liked it. My only requirements are built in wifi, built in bluetooth, built in webcam and USB 2. My current Mac is only 867Mhz and maxxed at 1GB of RAM, so most of the netbooks should run a bit faster than my current machine and I would like a higher limit that 1GB of RAM. I don't want a silly size screen like 7", as this will be my everyday machine. I also don't want a cut down Linux distro as I would still need a machine capable of web, email, writing web pages, ftp uploading, editing pictures and Skype. I would also like to be able to hook up flash drives and external drives, my mp3 player and printer as well as possibly convert videos and music files between formats. Any suggestions or help would be gratefully appreciated. I might be very experienced in computing, but too much in Linux. Regards Simon Royal --- Site: http://www.simonroyal.co.uk. Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal . Skype: Simon-Royal. (PowerBook G4 867Mhz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD, SuperDrive, Mac OSX 10.5)

3 3

Edimax NS-2502 NAS Server
by Chris Walker 11 Nov '09

11 Nov '09

I've just bought one of the above boxes and have stuffed a couple of 1TB drives in it to use as a backup device for this 'ere Linux machine and it's other half - Windows XP (it's dual-boot). I've formatted the 2 drives as a RAID 1 array so it now shows 931GB available. Can I mount the thing as an attached device so that I can simply copy stuff to it, or can I only FTP to it? My problem here is that I don't know how to attach it. I've tried issuing a mount command to /mnt/Edimax but the machine complains at that and I don't know what to do next. I have added a user to the Edimax as Mandriva but I'm not sure about groups. Is there anywhere I can learn a bit more about this stuff? Any help appreciated.

2 1

Does this page look blank for you too?
by Chris G 10 Nov '09

10 Nov '09

The picture/menus at the top of this page are blank in my Firefox on Ubuntu 9.04. Why? Is it Flash (but I have Flash 10.0 installed) or is it something else even less compatible? It shows up alright (if slowly) in IE. -- Chris Green

4 6

Re - a weird network configuration, does this make any sense at all?
by Peter Alcibiades 10 Nov '09

10 Nov '09

Yes, you are probably right, after getting a bit more on the history, the explanation is probably that the printer suppliers set up the IP addresses, the computer shop did not dare to change them, or did not know they could. They then didn't understand why they could not access them from the 192.168 address which the router was handing out to the computer. They then started to try all kinds of things to make the installation work somehow, and came on the remedy of installing multiple network cards. And it did work, its just that when you come to change out the computer its a weird configuration. Windows and the wizards are at fault, they give you the impression that you know what you are doing, but they're an obstacle to any real understanding outside that narrow world. Not that I'm any kind of expert on any of this. Partially sighted would be a fair description! Anyway, we'll swap it all out when the new stuff arrives next week so we'll see. Thanks a lot for the helpful comments. Its interesting to know that its not an unfamiliar sight, this sort of stuff. Al

1 0

Laser colour compatible cartridges
by Chris & Barry 10 Nov '09

10 Nov '09

Hi Just a couple of quick questions Has anyone used compatible laser printer cartridges ? and if so what is the verdict on them? The reason for this is that the Samsung colour laser cartridges for my Clx 2160 printer now cost nearly £130 for the set of 5 and compatibles cost less than half that. which is ok if they work as good as originals. Also has anyone been able to get the firestarter firewall to start automatically on system start up, as i have yet to get this to work. I am using the easypeasy version of Ubuntu Linux. ThanX

1 0

a weird network configuration, does this make any sense at all?
by Peter Alcibiades 10 Nov '09

10 Nov '09

Its funny, I read the list faithfully, but go months without having anything to say or ask. And then come three things in a row! A friend asked for help, and when I looked at his (business) setup I found the following. One moderate spec machine, now a few years old and in need of renewal, with two network cards. One card is DHCP to the one-port router, which goes to the ADSL connexion, which is fairly lightly used. This is getting an address in the range 192.168.0.x, as usual. the other card is set up for static addressing, runs off an independent hub, and its using the range 172.16.0.1, with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0. I was all set to find that there was some huge network behind this, but in fact all there is is two printers. Yes, this network has one computer and two printers and appears to be using an internal Class B address for it, if I understand the situation correctly. This was set up by a local computer store after apparently a great deal of head scratching. Well, I too am scratching my head and trying to figure out could anyone have a legitimate reason (ie not simply they failed to understand networking) for doing this. Like, if I really wanted to have the two printers on a separate net, why not just use a subnet mask of 255.255.255.128 and get two subnets that way? But in any case, why make life complicated with subnets, why would I not just assign them addresses in the 192.168.0.x range. What I usually have done in these situations (but I'm an amateur at this stuff nowadays) is put the printer on a static address of 192.168.0.100, have the router assign addresses to the computers in the low numbers, and everyone seems to print just fine. There are only two printers and one computer here, so what could the problem be? It seems that the simplest thing to do is take all this stuff out and use a 5 port router/modem, and just make the two printers 101 and 102, why would this not work? Is this missing something obvious? Cheers Al

5 5

Face Recognition
by Mark Rogers 09 Nov '09

09 Nov '09

On the back of a bus I saw an advert for the Apple Mac talking about its ability to use face recognition when processing photos. Is there anything like this in Linux? It looks like Google had it planned for Picasa back in 2006: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/better-way-to-organize-photos.html .. but as far as I know it's not there yet? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

4 9

novatech i5 barebones, antec 900 II case
by Peter Alcibiades 08 Nov '09

08 Nov '09

A friend of mine is thinking of buying one of these. It seems pretty decently equipped for the price. My only worry is the case - it has lots of large fans. Has anyone heard one of these things in action? Is it going to be too noisy for a desktop? The nice thing is, you can turn them all down to low speed, and they should still move lots of air, being so huge and many. http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BB-I5754G Its going to be a dual boot with winxp, and I'm assuming that on both that and Debian it will scream along. Peter

4 3

Help with YouTube videos
by Chris Walker 07 Nov '09

07 Nov '09

I've just visited my son and installed Mandriva for him, the same version I have here. As he's of a different generation to me, he likes watching videos. The problem is sound. He is being prompted to pay 28 euros for a codec pack whereas when I play them (both of us are using Firefox 3.0.15), they work fine and I didn't cough up any dosh. An example is this one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQcNiD0Z3MU Any ideas anybody please?

3 2

touch screens
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Nov '09

07 Nov '09

Thanks everyone, for the comments on this. Bottom line seems to be that it will most likely work, maybe not plug and play, but with a bit of tweaking, so maybe the thing to do is buy one and make quite sure, before committing to a bunch. They are getting quite reasonably priced now - ebuyer has the Ilyama 19 inch one for under 400, which is just about affordable. Thanks for the comments about kiosks also. The security issues are not too bothersome. We will not allow outside net access at all, we'll put these machines on a separate subnet, and if there is no keyboard and it boots from read only media....? Well, famous last words! Never underestimate the ingenuity of a bored 12 year old. Peter

1 0

Anacron error
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 07 Nov '09

07 Nov '09

Hi, I use Ubuntu. I installed NTOP briefly, then decided I didn't want it. I then uninstalled it using Synaptic's "Completely remove including all configuration files". I then upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10. Every day since installing and removing, I have received the error email below. I have searched the pc (including hidden files) and I cannot find any reference to ntop in etc or var or subdirectories thereof. I've googled and can't find a reason why this is. Most answers I find on google say there's a residual ntop file somewhere in etc or var, but I can't find it. There is a package file in /var/cache/apt/archives and a file called /var/lib/update-rc.d/ntop containing the text update-rc.d -f ntop remove Any idea how I can stop this happening? Regards Steve -------- Original Message -------- Title: Anacron job 'cron.daily' on myserver Subject: Anacron job 'cron.daily' on myserver Date: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:53:13 +0000 From: Anacron <redacted> To: <redacted> /etc/cron.daily/logrotate: error: error accessing /var/log/ntop: No such file or directory error: ntop:1 glob failed for /var/log/ntop/*.log

5 9

Some advice needed
by Alistair Macgregor 06 Nov '09

06 Nov '09

Can someone please help with some advice. At the moment I run a dual boot system, with Windows XP and Ubuntu sharing my hard drive. I would like to go the whole hog and rid myself of windows. I know I can do 90% of what I use my computer for under Linux, office, graphics and music. The only thing I'm having trouble with is an equivalent for Planetside Terragen landscape generator. Is there anything compatible or am I stuck running it in WINE. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Alistair

14 31

Difficult to diagnose ssh problem - can't connect at all
by Chris G 06 Nov '09

06 Nov '09

I'm trying to get connections working from the outside world into my SoHo LAN via my *second* ADSL. I'll try and explain the set-up. The SoHo LAN all sits on a 192.168.1.x/32 subnet connected to a Draytek Vigor 2820n ADSL router which connects to the internet via a standard ADSL connection with UKFSN. That all works fine and I have set up 'pinholes' through the firewall to allow incoming ssh, SMTP and HTTP connections. Thus I seem to know how to set up the firewall on the 2820n. The 2820n has a second WAN port which is an ethernet port, I have that connected to a BT Business Hub (2Wire 2700HGV) ADSL router which connects to the internet via a second phone line. The 2820n is set up to share the two connections and that works OK too. I.e. outgoing connections go via whichever of the two WANs is less busy. There are some things which are configured to use only one or the other WAN (e.g. SMTP, HTTPS). What I am trying to do (and failing miserably at) is to get incoming connections for a couple of protocols working through the 2Wire router. I really want to get SMTP working but I am also trying to get ssh working as that is (possibly) easier to diagnose. So, I have the 2Wire router set up so that it tells me the following 'pinholes' are set up in its firewall:- Device Allowed Applications Application Type Protocol Port Number(s) Public IP 192.168.13.65 SMTP Server - TCP 25 81.158.147.90 SSH Server - TCP 22 81.158.147.90 Device 192.168.13.65 is the WAN port on the 2820 router so that ssh and SMTP connections from the outside should get routed to the 2820n. I then have the 2820n set up (firewall and port forwarding) so that ssh and SMTP connections from WAN2 (the 2Wire WAN connection) get passed to my 'server' machine which is 192.168.1.2. It all *seems* to be correct, when I try and ssh from outside to 81.158.147.90 then the 2820n shows a NAT route to 192.168.1.2. If I 'telnet 81.158.147.90 22' from the outside I actually get an SSH 'hello' from 192.168.1.2, exactly the same as the one I get if I 'telnet 192.168.1.2 22' from inside my LAN. *BUT* ssh from outside doesn't work, no response at all, it just times out. ssh from inside works fine. I've tried winding up debug to maximum on ssh but it hasn't told me anything. I've stared intently at the port forwarding, NAT and firewall set-up on the 2820n and it all seems correct. Oh, and I can 'ping 81.158.147.90' OK from the outside. I'm stumped, any ideas for how to diagnose this? -- Chris Green

3 4

touch screens
by Peter Alcibiades 05 Nov '09

05 Nov '09

Has anyone used these - touch screens? And how exactly do they work - I mean, stuff like clicking on a link or a button in a program? And are there generally linux drivers available, and do you need specific drivers or do they look like mice? My charity is thinking of a LAN based web site, internal only, accessed by touch screens so we don't have to have a keyboard out to get dirty and for mischevious hands to play with.... All you could do is click on what there is. Well, its a hope. We'd use browser Linux booted off an internal flash card, read only. Might be safe. But that part I can manage, its some experience with touch screens that would be appreciated. Peter

4 4

open office calc problem
by Jenny Hopkins 05 Nov '09

05 Nov '09

Hullo there - is this a bug, or an error between chair and keyboard? The problem may be better asked in an open office forum, but just in case anyone here has come across this problem: I have an OO calc spreadsheet with a bunch of columns. The columns are summed in a final row using the SUM function button ("=SUM(A1:A10)" e.g.). I open a second spreadsheet and wish to reference these cells from the new sheet. First method tried: hit the equals button and click on the appropriate cell in the first sheet for each column. Result: some of the results show the correct value for the referenced cell, most do not. Second method: name the final row from first file as a named range. In 2nd file, use the insert and link external data button, selecting the appropriate sheet and range from the proferred choice. Result: all values show 0 where referring to a cell that was a SUM of other cells. I was playing with this on behalf of my other half, who wants to have a summary sheet of all his various site worksheets. For a start, it looks as though he would need the second link method as that is linked and therefore refreshes. Not much use if it shows 0 from summed cells however. I was also very curious why the first method didn't show the correct values. Thanks, Jenny

3 2

Open Office spellchecker won't play ball
by Bev Nicolson 05 Nov '09

05 Nov '09

That sums it up really. I'm typing a document up and it would be _really_ helpful if the spellchecker underlined the words it thinks are misspelt but I've unchecked and checked boxes, I've installed the English language dictionary (having googled the problem) and nada. Zilch. Nothing. Help! Bev.

1 1

FSCONS
by Sam Tuke 05 Nov '09

05 Nov '09

Is anyone going to FSCONS (Free Software Conference and Nordic Summit) the weekend after next (13-15th Nov) in Sweden? Ryanair still has flights for £10 (about £20 with fees). I calculate that in total the trip will cost approx. £200, including conference fees, food, accommodation, public transport and flight (assuming that the flights are still available). Amongst others Wikipedia and Nokia will be there, in addition to speakers on Hackerdom, writing kernel drivers, FOSS in public sector any many others. Sam.

1 0

Testing new mail server without turning off the old one - how?
by Chris G 04 Nov '09

04 Nov '09

I am moving my mail server from my desktop machine to a server machine. Both these machines are on my SoHo LAN behind a NAT router. Thus to move incoming mail from one to the other I have to change the port forwarding and firewall setings in the router. Can anyone suggest a way to either send incoming mail to both machines or some other way of testing the new mail server before committing all my incoming mail to it? I already copy all my mail to another user where it isn't sorted but just gets kept for seven days and then deleted. That is done on my hosting companies system. So I have some protection from total disaster! In addition of course the 'sender' (my hosting supplier) will wait and retry if/when I stop accepting mail so mail shouldn't be lost but I'd really like to do at least some simple testing before the big switch over. -- Chris Green

3 6

Network Manager job
by Christopher Dawkins 04 Nov '09

04 Nov '09

This job http://www.computerweekly.com/jobs/job/network-manager-essex-200615684.htm says "with particular skills in UNIX (preferably FreeBSD)" which is very unusual for a school. But with 13 OSS servers and 22 routers running OSPF over a 90-acre 25-building site, it's serious, and I hope they get someone with those skills. -- Christopher Dawkins Garnetts Corner, Braintree Road, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DS cchd(a)pjcd.org 07816 821659 01371 821076

1 0

OT: ADSL T-Bar?
by Mark Rogers 03 Nov '09

03 Nov '09

One of our customers has been advised that something called a "t-bar" (phonetic spelling, I or he may have misheard and I've probably mis-spelled otherwise anyway) will improve his ADSL connection. Professor Google hasn't helped me work out what he is being told, does anyone here know? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

5 5

Are there any good iptable routing configuration utilities out there?
by Chris G 30 Oct '09

30 Oct '09

I've been Googling around for a while and can't find any good utilities (command line or GUI, don't mind too much) for configuring iptables routing. Part of the trouble is that 'iptables configuration' mostly means firewall set up and I don't want/need to do that as it's in my ADSL router. What I want is to configure routing tables in a Linux 'server' box on my network. It *may* be that some of the firewall utilities will do what I want but it's difficult to penetrate the mass of information about firewall set up. I think Smoothwall can probably do what I want but is possibly overkill. Quagga maybe too but it is definitely overkill, I don't have complex requirements, just slightly non-standard ones. There are sites like http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html which tell you how to do some of what I want but they're very old and I wonder if they're still the right way to do things. They're mostly four or five years old and the kernel and routing have probably moved on somewhat since then. They don't really handle failover either. -- Chris Green

1 1

Youtube stops buffering
by Barry Samuels 30 Oct '09

30 Oct '09

Debian Testing with kernel 2.6.26 Flah version 10.0.32.18 My wife uses Iceweasel to access youtube and she discovered that recently when she tries to play something it starts to buffer the stream but after a very short while the buffering stops. When the play indicator reaches the end of the buffer mark it stops and won't play any more. She also uses BBC iPlayer but that doesn't give any problems. Can anyone nudge me in the right direction in trying to diagnose this? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

6 11

Routing/port forwarding question
by Chris G 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

If I set up a 'router' box which does connection sharing with something like the following in its routing:- ip route add default scop global \ nexthop via 192.168.0.2 dev eth0 weight1 \ nexthop via 192.168.0.3 dev eth0 weight1 (two ADSL modems/routers on 192.168.0/24 with approximately equal speed) Then how do I deal with SSL, incoming SMTP and similar which require that, once started, the 'session' continues to use the same interface? Is there a routing syntax that allows one to specify a port number which would override the above for specific port numbers? -- Chris Green

1 0

USB error messages in syslog - what do they mean?
by Chris G 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

I have just tried connecting my 2Wire 2700HGV router to my ubuntu 9.04 linux system using USB. This produces the following in syslog:- Oct 26 23:12:34 chris kernel: [230365.857016] usb 6-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3 Oct 26 23:12:34 chris kernel: [230366.039734] usb 6-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.219736] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.468009] rndis_host 6-2:1.0: RNDIS_MSG_QUERY(0x00010202) failed, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.708062] rndis_host 6-2:1.0: RNDIS_MSG_QUERY(0x01010101) failed, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.708067] rndis_host 6-2:1.0: rndis get ethaddr, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.709680] rndis_host: probe of 6-2:1.0 failed with error -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.709713] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_host Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.968010] rndis_wlan 6-2:1.0: RNDIS init failed, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.968036] rndis_wlan: probe of 6-2:1.0 failed with error -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.968064] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_wlan Is this an error (as in a bug in the Linux code) or is it just that the USB code in Linux doesn't know how to talk to the router? -- Chris Green

2 2

USB to Ethernet - works!
by Chris G 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

Well my new, cheap, generic USB to ethernet dongle 'just works', excellent! It was about a fiver from Lambdatek (along with some other stuff to avoid carriage being too significant). It's branded "Dynamode" USB-NIC-1427-100 if anyone is interested. It means I can add extra NICs to my little Acer Aspire Revo to my heart's content, I only need the one for the moment. By the way I have Ubuntu Server 9.10 (last release candidate) installed on the Revo, went without a hitch. I tried xubuntu but that fell in a heap, I suspect the display drivers are not fully up to it yet and, as I don't really need X, I just went for the server installation. Next to configure it to actually start doing useful things so I can turn my desktop machine off when I'm not using it and the rest of our little network will continue to be happy. -- Chris Green

1 0

Searching a web host for possible exploits
by Mark Rogers 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

In the past I've used a little script here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=92678 .. to scan my virtual hosts for any exploits that might have been uploaded (eg any PHP Shells, etc). It's quite a simple but effective script (just searching for keywords and emailing the offending section of code to me to investigate) but it isn't maintained and there's probably better tools out there. My question is: what tools do other people use/recommend? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

3 2

Naive Wireless LAN question(s)
by Chris G 27 Oct '09

27 Oct '09

Up until now I have avoided using Wireless LANs as far as possible, I find wired ethernet much easier to understand and get my head around. We have occasionally turned on the Wireless on the router to allow my wife's laptop to connect when she's out in the garden but have always turned it off again after use. I now want/need to do something a bit more difficult and really don't quite know how wireless will handle it (or even if it can). I'll try and explain what I want to do. I have two phone lines each with ADSL from two different ISPs. Currently it's all hard wired with a Draytek Vigor 2820n on one and a BT Business Hub (2Wire) on the other. The 2820n provides simple load balancing sharing requests between its ADSL and the BT/2Wire ADSL which is connected to the second WAN port on the 2820n. What I want to do is do load balancing/sharing in a Linux 'server' box rather than using the 2820n as the 2820n's load balancing is a bit limited and I think that (maybe) I can do better using something like Zeroshell or Smoothwall in a dedicated Linux box. I'm aiming to try using an Acer Aspire Revo as the 'server' box but it only has one wired ethernet NIC (as do nearly all reasonably priced low power boxes) so I'll need to use its wireless LAN too. I'd like to use its hardwired Gigabit interface to connect to my existing LAN with our desktop machines, NAS etc. So, I want to use the wireless LAN on the Acer Aspire Revo to talk to both the routers, is this possible? I.e. will they all talk together in the same way as they would if plugged into a switch? Or would I be better off getting the Revo to talk to one of the routers using wireless and then use the switch in that router to get the other router onto the same subnet? Any all advice welcome (if anyone has waded through this so far!). -- Chris Green

3 5

And now for something completely different - an iPlayer problem
by Barry Samuels 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

I'm having a BBC iPlayer problem. If I try to access content, using Iceweasel, I get a message "This content doesn't seem to be working" but my wife can access the same content from her computer connected to the same router. We are running the same versions of Debian and Iceweasel. I do have Flash enabled and I can access the ITV and Channel Four equivalents with problems. Any ideas? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

4 5

Any experience of USB to ethernet converters with Linux?
by Chris G 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

Has anyone here used a USB to Ethernet converter with Linux? I want to add a second ethernet interface to an Acer Aspire Revo and the most obvious way to do it is to use a USB to ethernet thingy. Will it 'just work' or are there issues? A quick Google search suggests that I should have no problems but it would be good to have specific recommendations if anyone has any. -- Chris Green

2 2

BBC iplayer desktop
by Bev Nicolson 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

Because the BBC programmes play back so badly if I watch them online I thought I'd try installing the desktop version of iplayer. However, towards the end of the process a message comes up saying 'Enter password for default keyring to unlock.' I had thought this would go away eventually but it hasn't. Googling tells me that this is used for wireless connection but of course all I wish to do is download a programme and I'm not able to. What do I do? Thanks. Bev.

8 14

Re: [ALUG] And now for something completely different - an iPlayer problem
by Barry Samuels 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

On 23/10/09 14:24:57, Dennis Dryden wrote: > > Can you access it from the same machine under a different account? > Might be a plugin or something. > > Dennis Dennis set me on the right track. I logged in as a different user and iPlayer worked so then I logged in as my usual user and set up a new iceweasel profile and iPlayer still worked. So far I was accessing bbc.co.uk by typing the URL then I imported my bookmark list and selected my bookmarked URL and I got that error message again. I realised at this point that the bookmarked URL was bbc.net.uk not bbc.co.uk and changing 'net' to 'co' cured the problem. I don't know how I got onto bbc.net.uk in the first place but that's the one I bookmarked by chance and that was the cause of the problem. A bit of a weird one that. Thanks to Dennis for the initial clue and to the others who tried to help. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

1 0

Re: [ALUG] And now for something completely different - an iPlayer problem
by Barry Samuels 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

On 23/10/09 14:24:57, Dennis Dryden wrote: > On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Barry Samuels > <bjsamuels(a)beenthere-donethat.org.uk> wrote: > > I'm having a BBC iPlayer problem. If I try to access content, using > > Iceweasel, I get a message "This content doesn't seem to be working" > > but my wife can access the same content from her computer connected > > to the same router. We are running the same versions of Debian and > > Iceweasel. > > > > I do have Flash enabled and I can access the ITV and Channel Four > > equivalents with problems. > > > > Any ideas? > > Can you access it from the same machine under a different account? > Might be a plugin or something. > > Dennis That's something I hadn't thought of. Tried that and got a little further to a picture with a 'Play' icon in the centre and a play button on the windows status bar but clicking either does nothing. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

1 0

blacklisting in Spamassassin
by Jenny Hopkins 21 Oct '09

21 Oct '09

Hullo, I'm finding mail headers a tad confusing. If the header of a mail is as below, what is the actual address that needs to be entered in a blacklist file in SpamAssassin? Or for the local user to enter into an evolution blacklist file on their local machine? info(a)courier.org smtpgw.nic.in ciyang22(a)yahoo.co.uk vastu3.nic.in wb.nic.in ? Many thanks, Jenny Return-Path: <info(a)courier.org> Envelope-To: user(a)dream.mydomain.co.uk Delivery-Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:01:09 +0100 Received: from stoneboat.mydomain.co.uk ([80.68.88.63]) by dream.mydomain.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from <info(a)courier.org>) id 1MzDaM-0005TE-SQ; Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:01:03 +0100 Received: from smtpgw.nic.in ([164.100.17.13] helo=vastu3.nic.in) by stoneboat.mydomain.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from <info(a)courier.org>) id 1MzDZG-0007Kq-6R; Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:59:55 +0100 Received: from vastu3.nic.in (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by vastu3.nic.in (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id n9HGohnY005375; Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:20:50 +0530 Received: from wb.nic.in (wb.nic.in [164.100.199.2])by vastu3.nic.in (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id n9HGnfAp005107;Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:19:42 +0530 Received: from wb.nic.in (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])by wb.nic.in (8.13.5/8.13.5) with ESMTP id n9HIAXt6014677;Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:40:33 +0530 Received: (from apache@localhost)by wb.nic.in (8.13.5/8.13.5/Submit) id n9HI9PTm014656;Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:39:25 +0530 X-authentication-warning: wb.nic.in: apache set sender to info(a)courier.org using -f Received: from 118.98.215.130 (proxying for 62.56.132.24) (SquirrelMail authenticated user pao-coochbehar) by wb.nic.in with HTTP; Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:39:25 +0530 (IST) Message-id: <44260.118.98.215.130.1255802965.squirrel(a)wb.nic.in> Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:39:25 +0530 (IST) (19:09 BST) From: Mr. Tomo Sand Nori <info(a)courier.org> Reply-to: ciyang22(a)yahoo.co.uk

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Cron format to run something every ten minutes, but not on the hour?
by Chris G 20 Oct '09

20 Oct '09

I thought I had this sussed:- 3/10 * * * * news <command> to run <command> every ten minutes starting at three minutes past the hour but it doesn't. It just runs the command at three minutes past the hour and not again until three minutes past the next hour. (Note this is in a file in /etc/cron.d, hence the 'news' for the username to run the command.) I thought that the first time I set this up it worked every ten minutes, but looking at my logs it seems I was wrong, oh well. I have to admit re-reading the man page I can't see how I expected it to work the way I thought. So I can change it to:- */10 * * * * news <command> but that means (presumably) that the command will run on the hour which I'd really prefer to avoid. Is there no way to say run at x minutes past and every ten minutes thereafter? I suppose I could do:- 3,13,23,33,43,53 * * * * news <command> Is that the only/best way to do it? -- Chris Green

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leafnode, any users here?
by Chris G 19 Oct '09

19 Oct '09

I seem to remember that there are some leafnode users here, if so could I ask a couple of questions please. I've looked at the leafnode web site but it doesn't really have much documentation that gives general information. I'm sure it's fine for details of how to instal it and configure it but I want to be sure it does what I want before I actually try and use it. So:- Will leafnode happily collect news from more than one NNTP server? Will it allow what feels like on-line use? I.e. I don't want something specifically for dial up, I want it to provide me with 'new' news all the time, not just once a day. -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 19 Oct '09

19 Oct '09

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 tonight, Monday 19th October, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Last month, we had a discussion about the old tutorials format. When we first started, we used to take turns showing off various programs and technologies to each other - which was a popular feature of the meets. Unfortunately, the number of volunteers began to drop off and it eventually fell on the shoulders of only one or two members to organise tutorials each month. This wasn't fair, so they dried up. However, we decided last month that if we dropped the tutorials to every other month then if we could get just three people to agree to be involved, that would mean they would only have to organise one twice per year. On that basis, we're going to trial bringing them back - I agreed to arrange the first one, this month. So tonight's tutorial is going to be on Android Application Development. I'll go through what the Android platform is, what technologies are behind it, how to get a development environment up and running and the creation of some simple applications. Remember to call or email me, if you're arriving later and want to ensure I don't wander off, which I have a tendency to do if the turn-out hits rock-bottom ... Hope to see you there, Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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playing guardian videos
by Peter Alcibiades 17 Oct '09

17 Oct '09

Hi, does anyone know how to do this? Play videos from the Guardian that is? I am doing open with from Konqueror. Mplayer seems not to be able to find the file. Totem wants a plug in text/html decoder, which I have not been able to find one. I seem not to be able to install vlc, this on Squeeze, because it requires vlc-nox, and that then requires a bunch of other stuff which I can't get. So apt-get says it has an unresolvable dependency problem. Seems odd, but there it is. But I don't see why totem should not work. Unless the Guardian is doing something odd? Peter

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slow wifi
by nev young 15 Oct '09

15 Oct '09

Just wondered if anyone here had a quick answer to this. Under windows my wifi network runs at 56Mb/s. However, the same (laptop) hardware running ubuntu (9.04) can only manage 11Mb/s. Is there a way to get the full speed out of it? Nev

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World of Goo 1 year old!
by Martin Collins 15 Oct '09

15 Oct '09

Just thought I'd let you all know of this offer. World of Goo was 1 year old on the 13th. If you follow the link they have an offer on until the 19th. You can pay whatever you think it's worth, from $0.01 to millions. Of course you all need the Linux version but I believe once you've paid you can download the versions for all three operating systems for the same price. DRM free - no keycodes or restrictions. I paid $19.99 not so long ago so this is a bargain. It's a good game and one of the few commercial titles available for Linux. http://2dboy.com/games.php Thanks all. Martin

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VB
by Mathew Moore 15 Oct '09

15 Oct '09

My names Mathew, I've been watching the VB .net story and would like to say that i also use VB2005 day by day and am happy with it, this is because it gets the job i need it to do without to much time wasted thinking about how it's done. All my users are MS users, as the company have forced that on us!?. Yes i've learn C++, done some Delphi (7 i think), but Basic has been with me since the ZX Spectrum 48K. Would love to come to the Alug meetings but will find it difficult due to hearing problems. As I understand it MS do allow code from the MSIL to run as native code but you have to create an image from the code (never actually do it), the documentation say that MSIL allows code to be JIT'ed for the target at runtime with optimzation thrown in. All that said I would like to learn C# just to look good on my CV. But learning how to code for a linux box would be a very good plus for me. Mat By the way, the C# book thing, any library can loan you a book for about 6 to 9 weeks in total this should give you time to see if that's the one for you to buy nor not, costing you nothing if it's not

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PHP rounding
by Mark Rogers 14 Oct '09

14 Oct '09

Can anyone explain this code's output? <?php $x = (15/100) * 10.7; $y = 1.605; var_dump($x, $y, round($x,2), round($y,2),round(1.605,2)); ?> Result: float(1.605) float(1.605) float(1.6) float(1.61) float(1.61) In other words there is a difference between the values of $x and $y where they should both be 1.605 (and var_dump shows them both to be 1.605). I assume this is because $x isn't really 1.605, but something very close to (and slightly below) 1.605 due to a rounding issue, so rounding to 2 decimal places causes it to round down not up. But I'm not sure how to change the code to give the correct results? (15/100 you may notice as VAT; this is a VAT calculation, therefore I'm kinda duty bound to get the right result!) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450C Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Hi
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 13 Oct '09

13 Oct '09

Hi, I'm Steve, I've been aware of ALUG for a while but never got round to signing up to the mailing lists. I've finally got round to it (obviously!) I've been using Linux for several years, I started with Fedora (FC3 I think), then swapped to Ubuntu. I used to be a programmer, but that was using Windows. I've not done any programming for Linux yet - I expect to try it one day, when I get some time! Regards Steve

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Re: [ALUG] PHP rounding
by Mark Rogers 12 Oct '09

12 Oct '09

I initially replied to James direct, as his email came to me not the list. This was my reply to him. His email to me wasn't exactly the same as his mail to the list so the quotes below won't match his list mails, but they're close enough. James Taylor wrote: > The problem here I believe is the .7 part of the 10.7. Try looking > into http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.bc.php if you require better > precision. (http://us2.php.net/manual/en/language.types.float.php has > a big warning box on it). > I thought the BC libraries would be my saviour, but: bcdiv("160.5",100,2) gives "1.60", which surprised me, given that 160.5 is now a string. (160.5 is 15 * 10.7). Unless the scale isn't supposed to round (making it equivalent to floor) in which case I can't see how I can then perform the rounding later without resorting to floating point maths at some stage. > Just out of interest, why do you round, and not floor or ceil (where > required?). I thought for tax you always rounded up (this is just my > own jumbled memories and might not be relevant or apply). > My understanding (and I'm neither lawyer nor accountant, and just write the code to meet the spec I'm given) is that there are lots of ways you can do VAT, but one way is to round each line on the invoice to the nearest pence (which is what we do), and another is to calculate the VAT against the ex-VAT subtotal (in which case you round up). However, the direction of rounding is presumably not significant in itself; I am sure there are calculations that could leave me rounding something like 1.70 up to 1.71 because 1.70 was actually a floating point value ever-so-slightly over 1.70. > Another quick solution is to try and move away from floats as your > currency - instead of representing things in pounds, we represent our > values in pennies, meaning we avoid using the decimal part - the > decimal part is ignored for the raw values: > We always do this for code we write from scratch; not least because its more reliable to store the pence value in a database and uses less storage space. But this code is something I'm maintaining and it supports currencies where there are more than 2 decimal places that are relevant, and it stores things as floats throughout. My idea to do a 2-stage rounding is easily proved to be a bad idea, btw: 1.6449 should round to 1.64, but if I round to 3dp then to 2dp I get 1.645 then 1.65 -- 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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Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th October.
by Montmorency 07 Oct '09

07 Oct '09

> Just a heads-up about the pub-meet tomorrow in the Coach and Horses, Thorpe Road. A table for ALUB has been booked. It is a large table, on the left- hand side of the glassed-in section at the rear of the pub. 7pm ish onwards. Montmorency montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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HP Photosmart R507 can't be mounted
by Jenny Hopkins 07 Oct '09

07 Oct '09

And even worse - now I've sent it to alug social list! Oh someone shoot me now, please! .... Sorry Mark - I just realised that I sent this mail to you a few days ago rather than the alug list. 2009/9/29 MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop>: > Jenny Hopkins wrote: >> I've got a problem with an HP Photosmart R507 camera on an ubuntu >> jaunty system. The camera is set to behave as a disk drive. When >> plugged into a debian system it is assigned to be /dev/hdc1 and can be >> mounted. However, with the ubuntu, it won't assign a device. here is >> the tail of dmesg: >> >> [14522.580027] usb 4-4: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 4 >> [14522.805646] usb 4-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice >> [14522.815803] scsi8 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices >> [14522.840286] usb-storage: device found at 4 >> [14522.840295] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning >> >> lsusb shows the camera listed. > > Doesn't matter. It's not recognising it as a SCSI disk. It would show > something like: > > scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access CBM Flash Disk 5.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 > usb-storage: device scan complete > > Does it complete the scan? The only time i have anything like that was after reboot, when i got: [ 22.880604] scsi scan: INQUIRY result too short (5), using 36 [ 22.880618] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access HP PhotoSmart R507 A001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 [ 22.896587] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 498176 512-byte hardware sectors: (255 MB/243 MiB) [ 22.901837] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off [ 22.901846] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 0f 00 00 00 [ 22.901853] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 22.921851] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 498176 512-byte hardware sectors: (255 MB/243 MiB) [ 22.928857] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off [ 22.928865] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 0f 00 00 00 [ 22.928870] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 22.928883] sdb: sdb1 [ 22.948024] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk [ 22.948163] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0 However trying to mount either sdb1 or sg0 denied they existed. Otherwise the plugging and unplugging of the camera just shows: [14522.580027] usb 4-4: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 4 [14522.805646] usb 4-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice [14522.815803] scsi8 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices [14522.840286] usb-storage: device found at 4 [14522.840295] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning and it never does. >Have you any suspicious-looking stalled > processes? Can you remove the USB devices and rmmod usb-storage or > does it complain that the module is in use? If so, something has > failed badly in the USB drivers and only a reboot will clear it, in my > experience. > The above reboot info suggests this could be a pointer. I'll check for stalled processes and do the rmmod things you suggest when i'm next in the same room as the camera and ubuntu over the next few days. > I've one camera (the Nisis DV4) which refuses to work on one > workstation in a similar way at the moment. I'm sure it used to work. > I think some USB devices are less than perfect and different kernel > versions trigger the problems. > >> I'm puzzled that lsmod doesn't show any e/ohci_usb type modules and >> won't probe for them, but maybe this is an ubuntu thing. > > "Won't probe for them"? Do you have the .ko files in /lib/modules? > Anyway, I don't think that's related. > Ok, I'll ignore it then. Thanks for the pointers - it would be great to go there and fix it instead of flapping around again. Someone muttered something about firmware - would there be any way i can check that out? Many thanks, Jenny

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