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Linux Certification...
by James Elsey 04 Mar '09

04 Mar '09

Hi Guys, I’m thinking about taking some kind of Linux certification, and I’m wondering if any of you have done this and what views/advice can you give. I’m interested in taking the Ubuntu certification, primarily because that’s the distro I’m most familiar with, yet I’d still class myself as a “beginner” user ( I can install software, work my around the terminal etc etc) I’ve read that you need to take LPI 101, 102, and 199 for this, but I’ve also read that the UCP is somewhat of a gimmick compared to the Red Hat certifications Are these qualifications recognised well, i.e. did they help you with new jobs in the past? I’d love to hear any advice you can give regarding Linux certifications. I don’t get to use Linux as much as I would like to, so I’m hoping these will provide me with some incentive to “knuckle down” and get on with it :) James Elsey Junior Developer Serengeti Systems Limited Serengeti House Kersey Maltings Kersey, Ipswich IP7 6DP Company registered in England & Wales Registration No: 3578108 T: 01473 825 002 D: 01473 825 013 E: HYPERLINK "mailto:chris.roberts@serengeti-systems.com"james.elsey(a)serengeti-systems.com URL: HYPERLINK "http://www.serengeti-systems.com/"www.serengeti-systems.com No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.11.6/1980 - Release Date: 02/03/2009 23:02

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Alug 10th anniversary!
by Adam Bower 01 Mar '09

01 Mar '09

Hi all, May 2nd this year marks the 10th year of alug! (well, of the kit meetings anyhow, it did exist as a mailing list before that for a while). Anyhow, in recognition of this who wants to have a kit meet? I'd like to arrange something for the weekend of the 2nd/3rd May and the precise day depending on who is available and wants to come along. As yet we have no planned venue either! Anyhow, who is out there who wants to come along? Will a kit meet format be suitable? Is there something else we should do? Should we have some vintage Linux distros? Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li

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Watch this space - just got Lenny and There-Will-Be-Questions[TM]
by Anthony Anson 01 Mar '09

01 Mar '09

Just received a 5 DVD set of Lenny, and am building a box to keep him in. In the meantime, I'm going to put it all on a HDD on this box (HD0 in a tray) ATM the HDD (40 GB) is hosting a cut-down version of Sarge - which I've never got on with, preferring to run Knoppix from DVD. However, that's by-the-bye, I'll be able to find old friends (fiends?) like Gnome on the CDs - the entire contents of which I intend decanting into magnetospace. Anyone used VirtualBox for Windows-based programs, especially anything written in VB-net? -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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Network Browsing via Homeplug
by steveydoteu 01 Mar '09

01 Mar '09

When browsing the home network, specifically on Windows as far as I can recall, there seemingly is no other device on the network in the entire house, which is of course not the case at all. Obviously this causes issues when trying to browse shared folders and so forth. Internet is connected to the system from a LAN switch which in turn is connected to a homeplug device, that obviously, recieves the internet from the router upstairs. I am wondering if there is a simple solution that I am missing here!

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puzzling result from who command
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

I needed to run the who command, and was surprised to discover that my user was logged in three times. It was something like the following: al@athene:~$ who al pts/1 2009-02-27 07:19 (:0.0) al pts/0 2009-02-27 07:19 (:0.0) al pts/3 2009-02-27 07:19 (:0.0) Though the dates on one of the entries was different. Like an idiot I failed to copy the thing when it was showing. I then shutdown and rebooted, and it now comes up with one login as expected. Why would this happen? Peter

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J2ME / Netbeans
by Stuart Bailey 25 Feb '09

25 Feb '09

Any J2ME experts? I have a small project in development using J2ME to run on mobile phones. It's mostly complete, but probably needs about 3-4 days to finish off. Any one interested in a little extra work? Stuart -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Managing Director) Linux Specialist & Software Developer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Phone: (0845) 658 3563 Direct: +44 (0)1953 878162 Fax: +44 (0) 1603 858583 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.linusoft.co.uk http://www.bluetoothadvertising.org.uk ---------------------------------------- -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Trying to get rid of dollar symbol for pound sterling symbol
by Jenny Hopkins 24 Feb '09

24 Feb '09

Hi All, Happy New Year! I'm trying to replace the $ symbol on a friend's laptop with a £. The laptop is American, with only a $ key (HP Pavilion DV9600), and is running kubuntu 8.04. Running locale shows LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en and some other stuff - I'm not sure if that has anything to do with anything. Can anyone offer assistance? Thanks, Jenny

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How to execute something when I log out from X?
by Chris G 24 Feb '09

24 Feb '09

I run xubuntu 8.10 and I want to shut down my VirtualBox guest machine when I log out. That is I want to shut it down automatically, I usually remember to do it before I logout but sometimes I forget and it is then shut down 'ungracefully' with risk to its contents. One would have thought that there would be 'hooks' for running stuff at shutdown but I can't find any at all. Does anyone have any suggestions? -- Chris Green

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lenny and virtual box
by Peter Alcibiades 24 Feb '09

24 Feb '09

I run VB under Lenny, W2K, for a specialist CAD program. Works perfectly. Would probably work better with more memory, the rest of the system does slow down a bit. Only have 1G of which 512 is allocated to the VM. I can't get shared folders to work, which is tiresome, so I email files back and forth - once they are exported in dxf they can be worked on in QCAD. Peter

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Email editing with TB - you can use any editor!
by James Freer 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

Recently i had wanted to use a text editor to speed up answering emails and considered Mutt and Emacs. I had used Thunderbird for sometime and liked the app but editing emails takes too long. Setting up Mutt was ok but still involved quite a bit of work. Yesterday i came across a Thunderbird addon Muttador (still beta stage - vi editor) and today came across a non-mozilla TB addon called Exteditor... just what i've wanted and didn't think it existed! http://globs.org/articles.php?lng=en&pg=2 Some v.kind person has developed an external editor addon instead of the TB editor. It allows emacs, vi, joe, gedit or whatever to compose emails. Should be of interest to anyone who wants to increase their productivity and say goodbye to the mouse while editing emails. james

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Symchronization, nearly have what I want now
by Chris G 21 Feb '09

21 Feb '09

I've been niggling away at my Nokia E71 synchrnozation problem ever since I posted here about it. I think I now have a workable solution, it's not perfect but it's good enough for the present. The downside is that it involves a web 'out there' intermediary, I am using ScheduleWorld (http://www.scheduleworld.com). I have my Nokia E71 synchronizing via my local wifi to ScheduleWorld and I have installed the SyncEvolution plugin for Evolution that synchronizes with ScheduleWorld too. It's *slightly* clumsy in that I have to do two separate synchronizes, one each for the E71 and Evolution but it does, I suppose, give me web access to my contacts and calendar. There are plugins/conduits for most devices and software for ScheduleWorld so I could move to Thunderbird/Lightning if I decide to do so. I'd really prefer a lightweight syncMl server for my home machine, the syncEvolution site does mutter about such a thing being on the way so we can but hope. -- Chris Green

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Problems with Monitor in standby
by Alex Scotton 21 Feb '09

21 Feb '09

Hi All, As a result of not being able to define in a google-able way whats wrong with my setup at the moment, I have resorted to mailing you guys... As I have seen hundred of problems solved by you guys.. My problem is a simple, yet annoying one... Whenever my system (Ubuntu 8.10 | Kernel 2.7.11) is IDLE for long enough to turn the monitor "off", the monitor goes into standby fine (green light turns to orange light) but every so often the monitor will boot up again, and flash up on the screen "No Signal" and go back to standby mode... there seems to be no consistency to it, it is very random.. However as I dual boot with windows, I was able to identify that the monitor works fine in windows, and I haven't had these problems before.. Further Specs if required are available but you may have to tell me where to find those stats (as am still learning the basics) However I can tell you that it is a ViewSonic VP191b on a Nvidia geforce 6150SE using the proprietary drivers! Any help will be much appreciated, and to all readers the wishes of a good day! Peace! Alex

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Wireless Access Points
by steveydoteu 20 Feb '09

20 Feb '09

ALUG, I am looking into a purchase, nothing to high end, just as a means of discarding a number of cables in my room. The problem arises when I have no experience or knowledge of using WAPs before. My current setup is as follows: BTHomeHub (2nd gen I believe) is connected into powerline adaptors one of which is used as an outlet in this room. I have then connected a LAN switch to the adaptor, which is then cabled to all machines that require access. With this in mind all current devices can actually be used via Wifi, if it was not for the HomeHub wifi being utter crap. So I am looking for advice or suggestions for a WAP that is around ~£50 that will cope with a main desktop, media server, and various consoles. Cheers, Steve www.stevey.eu

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Re: [ALUG] Netbook?
by Tim Green 19 Feb '09

19 Feb '09

2009/2/18 mbm <mbm(a)rlogin.net>: > Could you let us have your views on the HP please? I guess I'm not > alone in considering purchasing a netbook now and I'd like to know why > you chose the HP over one of the others (Eee, Aspire One etc). And of > course, if any others on the list have views or preferences I'd > appreciate hearing. One of my colleagues has an early Eee, and likes its simplicity. Runs Linux, not sure which distro. Another of my colleagues has just bought a Samsung NC10, and loves its long battery life. Runs XP. Hope that helps! Tim.

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Toppy software for netbook?
by Ruth Bygrave 18 Feb '09

18 Feb '09

The Toppy (Topfield TF5800) is a PVR roughly comparable to the Humax. It has a USB port that can be accessed by a PC or Mac. Have now got a netbook (HP Mini-Note 2133). Since this is slightly more portable than my main machine (it doesn't have a slew of wires and a USB hub connected to it) is there a way I can set it up to talk to the Toppy? Can make nothing of the descriptions on this webpage: http://toppy.org.uk/downloads/linux.php The netbook runs SUSE Enterprise Edition 10, or that's what it says on the sticky label. I have an entire series of Heroes that I haven't watched yet, for example, so if I could move it I could format it for iPod and save it on a DVD, which would allow me to get all that space back. Regards, Ruth

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Re: [ALUG] Odd networking issue; losing packets?
by lists＠glover.uk.net 18 Feb '09

18 Feb '09

> I have a Windows XP box and a Ubuntu 8.10 box plugged in to the same > router. > FWIW, it's a BT HomeHub 2 that I'm currently trialling. > > Both work, although for some reason the Ubuntu box has an odd tracert: > > $ sudo tracert 216.239.59.147 > traceroute to 216.239.59.147 (216.239.59.147), 30 hops max, 40 byte > packets > 1 BThomehub.home (192.168.1.254) 55.623 ms 55.417 ms 55.174 ms > 2 217.47.200.58 (217.47.200.58) 33.711 ms * * > 3 * * * > 4 * * * > 5 * * * > 6 * 217.41.170.65 (217.41.170.65) 41.333 ms * > 7 * 217.41.170.122 (217.41.170.122) 31.084 ms 33.988 ms > 8 * * * > 9 * * * > 10 * * * > 11 * * * > 12 * * 195.99.125.82 (195.99.125.82) 33.735 ms > 13 * * * > 14 * * * > 15 * * * > 16 * * * > 17 gv-in-f147.google.com (216.239.59.147) 45.999 ms * * > > Compare that with the Windows box; > C:\>tracert www.google.com > > Tracing route to www.l.google.com [216.239.59.147] > over a maximum of 30 hops: > > 1 43 ms 100 ms 99 ms BThomehub.home [192.168.1.254] > 2 476 ms 395 ms 435 ms 217.47.200.58 > 3 179 ms 184 ms 187 ms 217.47.250.161 > 4 191 ms 32 ms 62 ms 217.47.200.10 > 5 63 ms 63 ms 153 ms 217.41.170.21 > 6 82 ms 62 ms 97 ms 217.41.170.65 > 7 234 ms 215 ms 122 ms 217.41.170.122 > 8 206 ms 183 ms 183 ms 217.41.170.50 > 9 230 ms 244 ms 245 ms 217.47.200.241 > 10 470 ms 320 ms 307 ms > core1-pos0-0-0-5.ilford.ukcore.bt.net[194.72.20.113] > 11 370 ms 367 ms 369 ms > core1-pos14-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net[195.99.125.225] > 12 423 ms 490 ms 453 ms 195.99.125.82 > 13 422 ms 423 ms 409 ms 209.85.255.175 > 14 45 ms 67 ms 93 ms 209.85.250.216 > 15 101 ms 151 ms 123 ms 66.249.95.164 > 16 203 ms 184 ms 185 ms 216.239.49.114 > 17 249 ms 249 ms 242 ms gv-in-f147.google.com [216.239.59.147] > > Trace complete. > > It seems to me that the Linux box is losing lots of packets. Many get > through, but many do not. Or am I just worrying about nothing, given that > it > seems to work OK. On the bright side, those packets that do get through do > so a lot quicker than those on Windows, but that may be just because my > Linux box is less archaic. > > Any ideas? > > Thanks, > Hi Greg, Linux traceroute and WIndows traceroute work in different ways. Linux uses UDP packets, and WIndows uses ICMP. From your Linux machine try traceroute -I www.google.co.uk and then try without the -I. THe -I forces the Linux traceroute to behave like the Windows one. Some routers block excessive UDP traffic, as they see it as an attack. My Draytek router blocks UDP pings, I always have to use -I on traces. Hope that helps Chris

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GMail plain text
by Richard Lewis 17 Feb '09

17 Feb '09

Hello ALUG, Just a note for GMail Web UI users: The GMail Web interface defaults to sending multipart HTML emails. The ALUG lists bawk on HTML emails and block them for manual moderation. In order to get your messages to the list straight away you need to make sure you're sending plain text emails. When composing a message, you can click the 'Plain text' option near the formatting options to switch to plain text editing. I'm sure you used to be able to configure the GMail Web interface to default to sending plain text email to certain contacts. I can't work out how to do this now, though. If anyone works it out then do let us know! Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +-------------------------------------------------------+ |Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.| |http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html | +-------------------------------------------------------+

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Fwd: Are there any remote backup systems that don't require ssh access??Recommendations?
by James Taylor 17 Feb '09

17 Feb '09

Sorry, replied not replied-all. I don't do much email ok? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Srdjan Todorovic <todorovic.s(a)googlemail.com > wrote: > Hi > > 2009/2/4 Chris G <cl(a)isbd.net>: > > I still don't think it addresses the problem, unless it's an > > incremental backup. If someone breaks into 'my' machine (the machine > > being backed up) then they can send rubbish data to overwrite the good > > backups can't they? This is the specific possibility I'm trying to > > protect myself against a bit. > This is the old replication argument - Replication produces hot backups for failure, not backups for bad data. (and also other benefits..) > > Now that I remember, there was an article in one of the Linux Format > issues where you could use Subversion to hold incremental, versioned, > logged home directories. > > Anyone tried it in general? Anyone tried it specifically for this kind > of backup setup? > (or anyone tried other version control software (git?) for this?) > Me, I used a combination of SVN and Tortoise on windows to do "backups" of all my files for quite a long time. The system is perfect for a "smallish number of files" - that is my entire OS has something like 50k files in it, I wouldnt want to commit the lot to SVN ;) The idea is perfect because if I got a virus, that destroyed some files, that would then get automatically backed up, I could just run back to a particular date. I'm not sure about the efficiency of this backup system though. If you have a program that makes large changes to "binary working files" then you would probably end up in troubles. > Interesting thought. One problem would be that it's not automated (you > would have to write a log)... > Not too difficult - I had a few shell scripts on cron and windows schedule that ran. > > You can do ssh+svn:// so there might be a possibility of using ssh > keys if you really wanted. > Which helps on the automatic scripting.

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Odd networking issue; losing packets?
by Greg Thomas 16 Feb '09

16 Feb '09

I have a Windows XP box and a Ubuntu 8.10 box plugged in to the same router. FWIW, it's a BT HomeHub 2 that I'm currently trialling. Both work, although for some reason the Ubuntu box has an odd tracert: $ sudo tracert 216.239.59.147 traceroute to 216.239.59.147 (216.239.59.147), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 BThomehub.home (192.168.1.254) 55.623 ms 55.417 ms 55.174 ms 2 217.47.200.58 (217.47.200.58) 33.711 ms * * 3 * * * 4 * * * 5 * * * 6 * 217.41.170.65 (217.41.170.65) 41.333 ms * 7 * 217.41.170.122 (217.41.170.122) 31.084 ms 33.988 ms 8 * * * 9 * * * 10 * * * 11 * * * 12 * * 195.99.125.82 (195.99.125.82) 33.735 ms 13 * * * 14 * * * 15 * * * 16 * * * 17 gv-in-f147.google.com (216.239.59.147) 45.999 ms * * Compare that with the Windows box; C:\>tracert www.google.com Tracing route to www.l.google.com [216.239.59.147] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 43 ms 100 ms 99 ms BThomehub.home [192.168.1.254] 2 476 ms 395 ms 435 ms 217.47.200.58 3 179 ms 184 ms 187 ms 217.47.250.161 4 191 ms 32 ms 62 ms 217.47.200.10 5 63 ms 63 ms 153 ms 217.41.170.21 6 82 ms 62 ms 97 ms 217.41.170.65 7 234 ms 215 ms 122 ms 217.41.170.122 8 206 ms 183 ms 183 ms 217.41.170.50 9 230 ms 244 ms 245 ms 217.47.200.241 10 470 ms 320 ms 307 ms core1-pos0-0-0-5.ilford.ukcore.bt.net[194.72.20.113] 11 370 ms 367 ms 369 ms core1-pos14-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net[195.99.125.225] 12 423 ms 490 ms 453 ms 195.99.125.82 13 422 ms 423 ms 409 ms 209.85.255.175 14 45 ms 67 ms 93 ms 209.85.250.216 15 101 ms 151 ms 123 ms 66.249.95.164 16 203 ms 184 ms 185 ms 216.239.49.114 17 249 ms 249 ms 242 ms gv-in-f147.google.com [216.239.59.147] Trace complete. It seems to me that the Linux box is losing lots of packets. Many get through, but many do not. Or am I just worrying about nothing, given that it seems to work OK. On the bright side, those packets that do get through do so a lot quicker than those on Windows, but that may be just because my Linux box is less archaic. Any ideas? Thanks, Greg

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

16 Feb '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 tonight (Monday 16th February) at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. We'll attempt to improve on last month's fiasco - I'll most certainly be there from 20:00. If anyone is planning on turning up late, please let me know by email or via the mobile, so I'll know to hang around, if the turnout is low! 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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Problems with Maxtor Basics 1TB USB Hard Disk
by Jan T. Kim 15 Feb '09

15 Feb '09

Dear All, I continue to have problems with a 1TB "Maxtor Basics" USB hard disk, after returning one disk of this kind and getting it exchanged on warranty this is now the second one that's developing problems so I wonder whether I'm doing something wrong. The disk came with an NTFS partition which I scrapped and replaced with an ext3 partition using gparted. That seemed to work ok, although I recall that I wondered a bit about the noises it made already at that time. After putting a bunch of files (movies from a Topfield PVR) onto the disk, the file system developed problems that weren't fixable with fsck. I therefore partitioned and formatted the disk again. First I tried fsck -c option to check for bad blocks. After running a whole night, fsck had gone to (about) 1200000 out of 200000000 blocks, and the hard disk made a rhythmic, clicking noise. It had obviously slowed down during the night (it was at about 1000000 blocks when I checked before going to sleep), so I stopped that. Now I've done things from scratch the traditional way with fdisk and mkfs (without -c). The disk made a lot of weird noises while mkfs was running, but eventually mkfs completed. I then mounted the file system and exercised it by repeatedly copying a Linux kernel source tree onto it. This worked ok for a few times, then I decided to have a look with du at the growing amount of stuff on the disk. Upon that, the copying process started to fail with messages like cp: writing `/media/mnt/dummy0008/include/net/ieee80211.h': Read-only file system cp: cannot create regular file `/media/mnt/dummy0008/include/net/checksum.h': Read-only file system and ``tail -f /var/log/messages'' at this time showed multiple repetitions of Feb 15 14:01:31 paxarchia kernel: [ 8431.175590] Info fld=0x0 Feb 15 14:01:31 paxarchia kernel: [ 8431.175590] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: Internal target failure Feb 15 14:01:32 paxarchia kernel: [ 8431.280559] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE,SUGGEST_OK Feb 15 14:01:32 paxarchia kernel: [ 8431.280559] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] The hard disk made a constant, whirring sound and its green LED was blinking at 1Hz (approx). When I umounted the file system, the whirring continued for several minutes and the umount command hang. After several minutes, though, the hard disk made a few clicks and stopped whirring, and umount completed. Can any of you make sense out of all this? Best regards & thanks in advance, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | email: j.kim@.uea.ac.uk | | WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*

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Acer Aspire One Wireless
by Richard Lewis 15 Feb '09

15 Feb '09

Hello ALUG, How's anyone else's experience with wireless on their Acer Aspire One? I'm running Debian unstable on mine and wireless is quite dodgey. It's the stock 2.6.26 kernel from unstable along with the madwifi drivers (0.9.4) installed via m-a. Initially, if I do $ sudo iwlist scanning it says: wifi0 Interface doesn't support scanning. ath0 Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down it's only after I've done: $ sudo ifup ath0 that it'll actually search for networks. This doesn't seem right. This aside, once I've added a suitable configuration to my /etc/network/interfaces it's very reluctant to connect to it. Normally when I do $ sudo ifup ath0 the little wifi LED doesn't flash, it waits for 20 seconds or so while it does DHCPDISCOVER a few times and then gives up. After this iwlist returns no results: wifi0 Interface doesn't support scanning. ath0 No scan results Then occasionally it connects. The LED flashes as normal, it connects almost immediately and reconnects without problems after suspend to RAM or shutdowns. Usually I go all day Saturday without it working and then it starts working on Sunday. (During the week I use ordinary ethernet.) But this weekend the wifi elves seem to have forgotten to visit my computer. I wondered whether being on AC power vs. battery may make a difference but it doesn't seem to. (Thankfully. It'd pretty useless if it needed to be plugged in to connect to a wifi network.) I also tried installing the 2.6.28 kernel from sidux which has the ath5k drivers in it but that doesn't seem to make any difference either. Is anyone else finding their's bad? Or is it just me? Best, Richard PS. resending after some SMTP error. Apologies if it comes twice! -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +-------------------------------------------------------+ |Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.| |http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html | +-------------------------------------------------------+

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Google question, somewhat OT
by Chris G 15 Feb '09

15 Feb '09

I know this isn't strictly a Linux question but it is general computer knowledge. I've been hunting for suppliers of the Foxconn G31MG-S motherboard over the past few weeks. There's one hit comes up in Google Products but I'm not entirely sure that I trust it so I've been doing straight Google searches as well. I've just noticed that if I search for just "G31MG-S" (no quotes) and click on the "pages from the UK" button I get just 26 results whereas if I search for "Foxconn G31MG-S" (again no quotes) I get "about 244000", huh? I thought adding terms was meant to narrow the search. In fact lots of the "Foxconn G31MG-S" results don't appear to have "G31MG-S" in them at all - is Google losing the plot and trying to be too clever for its own good? I don't want it second guessing me and offering results with only some of my search terms in them. -- Chris Green

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1234567890
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 13 Feb '09

13 Feb '09

Hi folks, It's almost upon us: $ date -d "20090213 23:31:30" +"%s" 1234567890 Enjoy! it won't last. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Feb-09 Time: 18:56:07 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Network connections hanging - further info
by Chris G 13 Feb '09

13 Feb '09

Well after a while I have just got a network connection hanging and was able to do a traceroute to the site:- chris$ traceroute www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk traceroute to www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk (195.224.249.41), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 * * * 2 * * * 3 * * * 4 * * * 5 * * * 6 * * * 7 * * * 8 * * * 9 * * * 10 * * * 11 * * * 12 * * * 13 * * * 14 * * * 15 * * * 16 * * * 17 * * * 18 * * * 19 * * * 20 * * * 21 * * * 22 * * * 23 * * * 24 * * * 25 * * * 26 * * * 27 * * * 28 * * * 29 * * * 30 * * * Hmmmm. The rest of the internet works fine, no problems at all but any connection to anywhere on www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk just hangs. A host or dig to www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk works fine. So I think it something getting stuck at this end but I wish I could work out what! Ah, another clue (or not), connecting to www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk from another computer on the LAN here works OK while the connections from my desktop are still hanging. Connecting from a different browser on my desktop computer doesn't work though. Any suggestions for further diagnosis? -- Chris Green

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Diagnosing web page timeouts
by Chris G 12 Feb '09

12 Feb '09

I seem to be suffering from a lot of web page timeouts at the moment. I navigate around a site for a while and then I can access no more pages at that site, if I leave the browser tab waiting I eventually get a timeout error. Usually if I then retry the page appears instantly. Can anyone suggest what might be going on and/or any way to diagnose what the problem is? Just being able to work out whether it's something wrong at my end or if there really is something wrong with the site I'm accessing would be useful. -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 12 February 2009
by David Reynolds 11 Feb '09

11 Feb '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, The monthly second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 12 February 2009 at The Reindeer (10 Dereham Road, Norwich, NR2 4AY; tel. 01603 762223). It's very near the junction of Dereham Road and the Norwich inner ring road (Grapes Hill) and serves a selection of real ales, nice pub food (if you fancy going early to eat) and coffee. There are generally people there from 20:00 onwards and we tend to sit to the left of the main entrance. We look forward to seeing you there. Cheers, David -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

USB sticks and Acer Aspire One's
by Mark Rogers 10 Feb '09

10 Feb '09

An uncle (just mistyped that as "unclue", oops!) of mine has bought an Aspire One and can't get his USB stick to work. Can anyone offer advice? His message below: ------------------- I've just bought an Acer "Aspire One" note book and it runs on Linux It's got 120Gb of memory which is useful and so I want use some of the space so I thought I'll use a memory stick. But I can't make it work........ having searched the Help files(under Using removable media" that "Thunar supports removable media if it is built with support for HAL" My memory sticks are either Sandisk Cruzer or I have a Freecom "Toughdrive" neither seem to work. So had a look on the internet and it seems to be a common problem "Hal compatibility with memory sticks". Is there anything you can recommend, Ideally I want to use this notebook as a secondary backup and at the moment it's looking a bit useless! ------------------- -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

2 4

Netbooks, Xandros and 3G USB
by James Taylor 09 Feb '09

09 Feb '09

Lo all, long time reader, haven't posted in a while, but for once a serious question (passed on from a friend). He's bought himself a net book running Linux and a broadband dongle, but is having some problems: "I have been and bought a mobile broadband dongle today from O2, It is a Huawei E160 but the Xandros does not see it." I'm not good when it comes to Linux on the desktop, can someone give me a hint what I should be looking for when I go back to him. Best Regards, thanks in advance, etc etc etc JT / mchicago

5 5

monitor traffic to usb port
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Feb '09

07 Feb '09

Hi, I've a couple of usb dataloggers on order, which are said to be incompatible with Linux. They record events, and then you plug them into the usb port to use a windows only software package to pull the accumulated records off them. Without really knowing how much of a task this might be, I'm wondering about using a usb logger to catch the messages. But which one? Any ideas or suggestions or experience? And then writing my own little hack to do the same from linux using some suitably noddy high level language of course. Has anyone ever done this, and is it going to be so forbiddingly difficult that it should not even be attempted? Or did you do it and it was a snap? Or somewhere in between? Peter

4 3

Linux coping with mainboard, memory and graphics card replacement?
by samwise 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Hi, My PC hardware is getting somewhat long in the tooth now, and is running Debian Testing AMD64. At some point, I'll probably end up inheriting or buying a new mainboard, RAM and graphics card. I've spent an awful lot of time getting my OS configured the way I like it, though, and am not really looking forward to having to rebuild it again. How well would Linux cope if I swapped out the guts of the PC like this? I appreciate I'd have to update X to use the correct drivers for the new graphics card, but I'm not sure about the on-board sound card. That was auto-recognised on install, so is it likely to be detected if the mainboard is changed? Perhaps also worth mentioning that I selected to encrypt my OS hard drive when I installed it. Thoughts on anyone who's tried it ... ? Peter.

4 4

Are there any remote backup systems that don't require ssh access? Recommendations?
by Chris G 05 Feb '09

05 Feb '09

I backup our important data (e.g. /home and some other bits and pieces) to a couple of remote 'servers'. At present I'm using rdiff-backup which does what I want except for one issue - it needs passwordless access to the remote system if it is to run unattended. (At least I think it does, I'm willing to listen to anything that suggests it doesn't) Having passwordless ssh access to the backup machine means that a malicious attacker who gets into the backup client machine can destroy all the backups as well as the files being backed up. While this is a fairly remote possibility (a malicious attacker getting in) I'd like to protect against it if I can. So I'm looking for a backup/mirror/remote copy facility that will allow me to 'push' files from a client machine to the backup machine without needing passwordless access. It also needs to do either timed or incremental backups in some shape or form as otherwise, of course, destroying files on the backup client would probably also destroy them on the backup. Any ideas anyone? I'm toying of playing with rsync with an rsync server on the remote backup machine though I haven't investigated this enough to see if it will work as I hope. There are a number of backup utilities that use rsync and provide timed and/or incremental backups but I'm not sure if they'll use rsync server on the remote. -- Chris Green

6 15

Importing a big mail hierarchy into Evolution - how?
by Chris G 03 Feb '09

03 Feb '09

I am moving my wife over to xubuntu from windows XP, the move has been precipitated by the disk drive on her XP system dying. Fortunately I was able to extract all the data before it expired completely - but that's another story. (I'll post about that in a minute) She was using Thunderbird and Firefox on XP so the initial transition to Linux has been fairly painless. I have got all of her Thunderbird mail on the Linux system now. However it would be better if I could move her to Evolution because that synchronizes "out of the box" with her Palm Treo - I have the synchronization working already. The trouble is I need to get all of her mail across from Thunderbird to Evolution. It's easy enough copying individual mailboxes across but she has an extensive, hierarchical, mail archive with hundreds of messages in a complex hierarchy of fifty or sixty folders. It would take forever to copy this folder by folder. So, can anyone suggest a way to export the folders from Thunderbird and import them into Evolution preserving the structure? I have found the ImportExportTools add-on for Thunderbird but Evolution doesn't seem to understand the format of what it exports. -- Chris Green

6 16

"Cannot run druid if PDAs or devices already configured" - what's druid?
by Chris G 03 Feb '09

03 Feb '09

When I start up my wife's new machine it pops up an error box saying:- Cannot run druid if PDAs or devices already configured I assume this is something to do with the gpilot set up for her Palm hotsync but I'm not clear how to fix it. Even when there's no actual USB cradle plugged in it still gives the error. -- Chris Green

3 6

Securing wireless on a dedicated laptop/netbook
by Mark Rogers 02 Feb '09

02 Feb '09

Suppose I have a "black box" (which is Ubuntu Server 8.10) running in a cupboard and accessible via a web interface from the local network. Suppose also that they want some kind of access in the event of the local network going down. One idea I had was to add a USB wireless dongle to the black box and supply a small laptop or netbook, and set up the laptop so that it can access the web interface on the box. However, I need to make sure that this access is reasonably "secure" in that only that laptop can access the box. I can set the laptop up using wireless security passwords/keys which are not disclosed to the end user, however the end user will of-course have access to the settings from the laptop which they could duplicate on another laptop should they choose to, and we've been asked to tie it to the laptop that's supplied as far as possible. Presumably: (a) I should be able to find a USB wireless dongle with suitable drivers to make the initial connection work on Ubuntu, in ad-hoc mode (I have very little experience of wireless under Linux having had little need for it), (b) I should be able to restrict connections to specific MAC addresses? Is there anything else I should be able to do that would make it hard to duplicate the connection to other hardware? Is there any reason why something like an EEE or any other Linux based netbook wouldn't be ideal for the laptop end? In case it's not obvious, keep in mind that the black box has no GUI installed. -- 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 8

".ece" file -- aka "The Lords Video"
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 31 Jan '09

31 Jan '09

Hi Folks, Having read, a couple of days ago on timesonline, that: Exclusive: Peers for cash investigation - new undercover footage The Sunday Times has released secret video and audio in which Lord Truscott offers to help reporters 'facilitate' a bill amendment I clicked on the link [see below]. Where the video should have been was a blank space with a box which said: THE VIDEO YOU ARE TRYING TO WATCH IS CURRENLY UNAVAILABLE. PLEASE CHECK BACK SOON. After checking back a few times over the next couple of days, with the same result, I thought: "Either the lawyers have put this in a locked box, or else I'm supposed to be using WIndows". So, just now, I went to the same URL using Internet Explorer, and enjoyed a nice little video. Just the job if your self-righteousness needs a boost. Then went back to Linux (just in case), but with the same negative result as before. The URL is: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5618786.ece A bit of browsing on "ece file" linux threw up: http://www.fileinfo.net/extension/ece .ECE File Extension File Type Escenic Dynamic Web Page Category Web Files Common? No File Description Web page dynamically generated by the Escenic Content Engine, an advanced platform for Web publishing and content management; typically contains server-side code that is parsed by the Web server, which generates HTML for the Web page. The ECE file extension is used for news article pages on the independent.co.uk and timesonline.co.uk websites. (which was my experience). I have no trouble with "ordinary" web pages in timesonline or independent, but this one is a show-stopper. Any suggestions for viewing such stuff on Linux? My web-browsing didn't throw up anything that looks useful. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 31-Jan-09 Time: 13:05:00 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

4 5

aptitude
by James Freer 29 Jan '09

29 Jan '09

"aptitude is a terminal-based package managemer with a number of useful features, including: a mutt-like syntax for matching packages in a flexible manner, dselect-like persistence of user actions, the ability to retrieve and display the Debian changelog of most packages, and a command-line mode similar to that of apt-get. aptitude is also Y2K-compliant, non-fattening, naturally cleansing, and housebroken." Using ubuntu 8.04 LTS. I was a bit surprised to find in synaptic the above - is this someone poking fun, if so it doesn't seem very professional to me. I read that Aptitude was the Debian preferred package manager and i use to use it with versions 6.10 ,7.04. In 7.10 i found that it didn't seem to close and was listed in launchpad. Since then i haven't used it and the fault doesn't seem to have been rectified. Has anyone else found this. james

5 8

Getting a message when something remote stops - how to do easily?
by Chris G 29 Jan '09

29 Jan '09

I want something that will tell me when something on a remote system has stopped working. I.e. I want silence (no E-Mail) when it's working and I want to receive an E-Mail when it stops working. For local tasks cron does this quite nicely, as long as the job produces no output (no errors), cron is silent but as soon as there's an error that produces output you get an E-Mail message. The task I want to keep tabs on is a cron job on a remote system, it's OK as long as the remote system is up and running and connected. The cron job will work similarly to a local cron job and will send me an E-Mail if anything goes wrong (well, most things). However if the system dies completely or if one can't connect to it then I'll never know. I suppose all I need to have is a silent test to see if I can connect to the remote system which becomes non-silent if one can't connect. I can then run this from cron. As long as I can connect to the remote system its cron will tell me if the job I'm interested in has worked. Can anyone suggest such a test? I guess a script using ping could do it but is there a more elegant and/or ready made utility to do it? -- Chris Green

2 1

A complement to Asus for a BIOS fix
by Chris G 28 Jan '09

28 Jan '09

Ever since I built my latest box I've had *very* occasional total crashes. By "very occasional" I mean once a week or even less, they only ever occurred when I was actively using the system, it runs all the time as a disk server for our home LAN and never died in the middle of the night or while we were away. Just recently (like yesterday and the day before) it crashed more frequently, like twice or three times, and I decided to try and work out what the problem was. A quick Google showed that I was getting kernel panics as when the system froze the Caps Lock and Scroll Lock lights flashed which apparently indicates a kernel panic. There was absolutely no clue in the logs anywhere, not a murmur of anything wrong before the burst of messages for the reboot. A while ago (when I first built the system) it seemed as if it might be an Intel video driver issue but there have been a few updates since then and I decided to see if there might be a hardware problem. First I looked at the temperatures, nothing untoward there, CPU was 32 degrees, motherboard was 20 degrees. Then I tried running the memtest you can get to from the Grub menu, aha! Test 5 produced some errors (it's the block copy test). I tried moving the DIMMs around to see if that helped, it just moved the errors around but didn't fix them so it seemed there was a real error. Then I looked at the Asus web site (and my motherboard manual) to see if there were any clues there. The latest BIOS upgrade says "1. Improve the compatibility with some memory.", hmm, I wonder if that means me? So a BIOS upgrade seemed a good idea, first looks suggested that it might be a bit difficult because I don't have a floppy disk drive in the system. However I was pleasantly surprised to find that the BIOS upgrade utility built into the system BIOS which you get to by hitting ALT/F2 at boot can read the BIOS file from CD and USB as well as from a floppy (this wasn't very well documented anywhere) so I needed neither a floppy disk nor an MS operating system. I just wrote the updated BIOS file to a CD and the system did the rest. .... and now I appear to have error free memory according to memtest! :-) It remains to be seen whether it *was* the memory problem causing my kernel panics but it does seem likely. So, thank you Asus for finding the bug and fixing it and for providing utilities etc. that will work on Linux. They also have Linux drivers on their web site (not that I needed them, ubuntu detected everything without problems). -- Chris Green

1 0

Postfix store-and-forward
by Mark Rogers 27 Jan '09

27 Jan '09

Any Postfix gurus here? Some time ago I set up Postfix based on a collection of How-To's and it works but I don't sufficiently understand the configuration to make changes safely. At the moment it received email on port 25 for a number of domains (specified in a MySQL database); it sends them via a dspam content_filter which redelivers on port 10026 from which the majority of email is dropped into MailDir mailboxes for Dovecot to make available via POP3, although some mail is forwarded to other addresses (eg gmail accounts). All of that is working. What I want to add is that for some domains, after spam checking they get forwarded to another SMTP server (specified in the database per-domain). Those servers will typically be Exchange servers within people's offices. I'm not sure what info I can offer to enable someone to help me, as I'm sure the above is nowhere near enough. I'm running on an Ubuntu server using standard repo packages only. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

1 0

How to override X security to run a remote network-admin?
by Chris G 26 Jan '09

26 Jan '09

I'm trying to run network-admin on a remote[ish] system on my LAN. I.e. I'm using ssh to connect from my desktop machine to another machine on the LAN (same subnet) and I want to run network-admin on that machine. Whatever I do to relax X security I still get:- root@garage:/home/chris# network-admin X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication. X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication. (network-admin:9918): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: localhost:10.0 I have connected to the garage system using both 'ssh -X' and 'ssh -Y' and I have done 'xhosts +' on the desktop system so that *any* X connection should be allowed. I'm still getting the above error. What do I need to do? Ah, a little further information, I can run network-admin as the non-root user on the remote system with the display on the desktop system. However it's no use because the 'Unlock' button is greyed out. What's the command line equivalent to network-admin? I know it's not a single program, I just want to 'un static IP' the remote system and the easiest way was (except for the above problem) to run network-admin. What files do I need to edit to undo the static setup? OK, I can find out myself really by looking at an un-static system. -- Chris Green

4 6

Is there a lightweight version of YP/NIS for sharing passwords?
by Chris G 25 Jan '09

25 Jan '09

I'd like to make my life even easier by having some sort of simple/lite version of YP/NIS+ on my home system. I now have three xubuntu boxes and would like to be able to set up user logins in one place for all three systems. Is there some moderately easy way of doing this? -- Chris Green

1 0

Local machine names/DNS - how to handle?
by Chris G 24 Jan '09

24 Jan '09

I know we've been here before but now I actually have everything working pretty well I'd like to decide how I *should* be doing this, i.e. the most elegant way of doing it. Our home network has a number of machines and devices on it:- My desktop machine - xubuntu 8.10 The TV/Lounge machine - xubuntu 8.10 The garage backup machine - Ubuntu server (8.10 too I think) An HP7310 printer A Siemens DECT VOIP box My wife's Windows XP machine plus occasional 'visiting' machines and devices These are all on the same 192.168.1.xxx subnet and a Draytek Vigor 2820n router connects them to the internet. There is a second backup ADSL connection provided by a BT "Business Hub" (2Wire) router on a different subnet. The Draytek Vigor shares its own ADSL and that of the BT router between users. I want to be able to refer to machines on the network by name, e.g. they are called isbd, lounge, garage, hp7310 etc. The methods I know about are:- Static IPs plus dnsmasq: Currently I do this by giving them fixed IP addresses which I put in the /etc/hosts file on my desktop machine (which runs all the time) and run dnsmasq in that machine to provide the other local machines with access to the names. Static IPs I used to set up /etc/hosts in all machines (well, all the Linux machines) separately before I used dnsmasq but although very simple it gets annoying to do this when a something is added or removed. It also means that one has to set up DNS host addresses everywhere. Dynamic IP This is where I get a bit lost. If I let everything go the the default then all IPs are assigned by DHCP. I.e. an ubuntu machine 'as installed' will ask for DHCP on the LAN, similarly the printer and the VOIP box will do so. The Draytek Vigor 2820n provides (as do nearly all routers) a DHCP service. If left like this though nothing wil have a name (as far as I know) and I will have no easy way to ssh to the garage machine for example. People keep telling me that this should be easy to resolve using (if I understand it correctly) the router but at the moment I don't really see how. If I *could* get names for everything using dynamic IP (i.e. DHCP provided by the router) then it would make for a simpler life as, at present, I have to change the Ubuntu default networking to give machines static IP and I also have to do slightly more configuration on the printer etc. There's a section in the router set-up called "Bind IP to MAC" which will allow the router to always give the same IP to each device/system but I don't see how I can get names in there. Am I missing something obvious somewhere? I don't think I've seen the ability to attach names to MAC addresses in any of the routers I've used over the past few years (Zyxel, Speedtouch). The BT 2Wire router allows you to manually give names to the MAC addresses but I'm not sure that it will let you use them to refer to them. -- Chris Green

3 5

recommended commercial hosting companies?
by mbm 23 Jan '09

23 Jan '09

The recent discussion about mail access via ssh and ssh tunnels prompts me to ask about list members' experience of commercial hosting services. I have long since ceased to have any direct responsiblity for publicly accessible servers and my only network is now my home system. As I have said in earlier posts, I don't run 24/7 servers on that network and my only public servers are those provided by my (limited, home user) 1and1 contract. However, I have recently been playing with egroupware and a few friends and colleagues have asked if I could make the poc system I have built at home available on a public server. 1and1 provide good, reliable, fast, mail, DNS and web services, but they also offer virtual servers for the home user at around 15 UKP pcm. The other likely looking candidate is fasthosts who are a lot cheaper, have no traffic cap, but have different limitations. What I am looking for is a good quality commercial provider offering the following: root ssh/sftp access to a linux server apache/mysql/php/perl (preferably with no limit on the number of mysql databases, but I'd settle for 5 rather than the typical 1). ssl certificates for the webserver personal DNS management ideally local email server not too many restrictions on the outbound traffic (e.g. I'd like to be able to ssh out as well as in...) Any recommendations? TIA Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a Microsoft free zone. Please do not send me Microsoft Word Documents. For some reasons, see: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------

2 4

Why is it so hard? (Making Ubuntu Work)
by Mephi 23 Jan '09

23 Jan '09

Ok, I've been using Debian on my server for years and Knoppmyth (Debian based) on my media centre for slightly longer. But I've not really done much on the desktop. Since I do a fair amount of gaming, I've stuck with windows for my desktop. Recently though I've only been playing one game a lot (Guildwars) which is supposed to work fine under wine. Also I play GW with friends and we use skype. Which has a linux client, so I thought I'd give it a go... I downloaded and installed the 64-bit version of ubuntu, setup the ATI graphics card, setup the medibuntu repository and apt-getted skype and wine. So now I have 3 problems. 1. Now they're using something new in Ubuntu called Pulse Audio, which puts another layer between your devices and your applications, and apparently it's why I can't get my microphone working in skype. So, I've been working through everything on the Ubuntu forums (it appears I'm not the only one) documented by someone else here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1006163 But nope, none of that works... 2. I'm trying to setup my screens to work at their native resolution. I've got one that runs at 1680x1050 and another at 1280x1024. I managed to get them to run correctly, but the settings don't stick. It boots with both screens set at 1280x1024. To get them to work I do the following steps through the ATi Catalyst Control Centre: 1. Disable the second screen (1280x1024) 2. Reboot 3. Set the first screen to its correct resolution (1680x1050) which wasn't available before the reboot. 4. add the second screen in. Then it works, until I reboot. The third problem is that Guildwars doesn't want to run under Wine. I've not yet looked into this in great detail yet, as I've usually given up by this point and booted back into windows. Matt

4 5

Can anyone explain why this HTML table displays as it does?
by Chris G 21 Jan '09

21 Jan '09

I'm trying to create a fairly simple table to lay out an itinerary. Currently I'm using OpenOffice as it makes it easy to generate the table with row spans and column spans etc. It actually seems to produce quite straightforward HTML. However neither Firefox 3 nor IE 7 seem to display the table borders correctly. Firefox 3 does really wierd things to some of the borders and IE 7 just shows them with differing thicknesses. All I want is the same cell/table borders everywhere. The url is:- http://www.isbd.net/images/itinerary.html There's very little CSS and not much HTML so why are the borders so wonky? -- Chris Green

8 22

Re: [ALUG] [ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting: McGintys, Northgate Street (samwise)
by Adam Reid 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

So... I'm currently sat in McGinty's, have been for well over an hour now; a couple of members have appeared and left due to a distinct lack of anyone other than me being here, and issues with bus times. The barman doesn't know anything about a Linux group having either been here or moved on to pastures greener, and unless you're hiding down the well you certainly don't appear to be anywhere in the vicinity. The IRC channel hasn't a clue, not that anyone there is Ipswich-based but if it were cancelled/relocated it'd be handy to stick a note there or on the wiki and/or mailing list. Suffice to say I'm slightly cheesed off, I took time off of a rather tight project deadline to make the meet this month, and now have a half-hour walk back home again toting a laptop. So I have to ask, what the blazes happened? Did the regulars just not turn up, and the whole thing just fizzle out, or...? O_o

3 2

Unbootable 2.6.28 kernel
by Dan Hatton 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

Dear All, When I try to boot into kernel 2.6.28, I get a kernel panic with message `VFS: Cannot open root device "hda1" or unknown block (0,0)', followed by a list of available partitions which suggests that, between kernels 2.6.27.10 and 2.6.28, the drive on which I keep my root filesystem has changed its name from /dev/hda to /dev/sda. Is this expectable behavior? Should I edit my "root" boot option and fstab accordingly? Or does it indicate something wrong? -- Thanks, Dan

6 15

Killing all programs on a virtual terminal
by Steve Fosdick 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

Apart from the SAK Magic SysRq sequence does anyone know of a way to kill all the processes that have a particular virtual console open? TiA, Steve.

3 3

Magic SysRq and odd scan codes
by Steve Fosdick 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

Related to my other message I found that, with my current keyboard, Magic SysRq is not working. It is definitely compiled into the kernel. Documentation/sysrq.txt in the kernel tree suggested that the SysRq sending a strange scan code may be the reason. Running showkey -s gives me the following codes for SysRq: 0xe0 0x2a 0xe0 0x37 - on key down 0xe0 0xaa 0xe0 0xb7 - on key up. This does not match the description in setkeycodes which says that keys generate one or two byte sequences whereas this is clearly a four byte sequence. Has anyone seen anything similar or have any ideas if the necessary mapping can be established? Regards, Steve.

1 0

HTML table editor - any recommendations?
by Chris G 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

I'm looking for a simple way to create HTML tables. In particular I want to be able to create tables with various (and fairly random) row spans and column spans. I don't really mind how it works, it can be a Web based application, a word-processor look-alike, or something that converts a text 'source' file into tables. I just want it to be simple to use. Currently I'm using reStructuredText which does most of what I want but its "Grid Table" syntax for tables is laborious to use and its "Simple Tables" don't give me all the row and column spans I need. I might take a look at Open Office, I assume that can generate HTML, what's its tables like? -- Chris Green

3 3

Wireless keyboard with trackball for Linux - any experience?
by Chris G 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Does anyone here have any experience of using a wireless keyboard with trackball built in with Linux? E.g. something like:- http://www.kenable.co.uk/product_info.php?referer=froogle&products_id=1789 I guess it will probably "just work" but I'd like to be sure there aren't any odd issues before I buy one. It's for a multimedia (well more of a photo display) box to go with the big new TV. -- Chris Green

3 3

Wierd DHCP problem - help!
by Chris G 16 Jan '09

16 Jan '09

I have just built (well, re-installed the OS on) a new system and have connected it to my LAN. It's running xubuntu 8.10 and uses the TV as its display device (probably irrelevant). It all installed fairly smoothly and appeared to work OK except that the networking was a bit 'jerky'. I then found that I couldn't ssh from the new machine to my desktop machine whereas other machines on the LAN could connect OK. It turned out that this was because the machine had the *same* IP address as my desktop machine. This of course explains the 'jerky' networking too! However I really can't understand *why* it has decided its IP address is 192.168.1.4. OK, some details, the router IP is 192.168.1.1 and it's the router that provides DHCP to the network. Most machines have static addresses, in particular my desktop machine (as noted above) is 192.168.1.4. The router is set up to start handing out DHCP addresses starting at 192.168.1.64 and this does work as there is a device (a VOIP server) which gets the address 192.168.1.64. The 'new' xubuntu system has default network setup, I have given it the name 'lounge' (which is different from all others) and it acquires its IP address and networking setup automatically on startup. So *how* is it getting 192.168.1.4 as its IP address? OK, I can fix the problem fairly easily by giving it a fixed IP but I'd love to know what's gone wrong. -- Chris Green

2 4

Prescott - how many CPUs???
by Ian Thompson-Bell 16 Jan '09

16 Jan '09

My Nephew, who is a bit of a computer whiz, recently gave me an 'old' 2.6GHz Prescott CPU to replace the Celeron in my desktop PC. This I have done and it is certainly faster. However, I use gkrellm to monitor resource usage and whereas with the Celeron just a single window occurred for the CPU usage, now with the Prescott gkrellm shows two windows labelled CPU0 and CPU1 respectively. Googling Prescott I can find no mention of more than one core but it does have hyperthreading. So my question is, how many (effective) CPUs do I have and is gkrellm accurately reflecting them?? Cheers ian

2 2

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

16 Jan '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 next week (Monday 19th January) at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://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. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard to find the pack, look for those huddled around a laptop! Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. This week we'll probably have a chinwag and maybe a demo of the iPlayer / ITV Player stuff and what's required to capture the High Quality flash videos from the beeb site, instead of just the simpler iPhone quality ones. I'll probably rant a bit about my desire for an Android phone, but how the shocking battery life of the T-Mobile G1 is putting me off ... :) 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

1 0

Enjoy
by Ian Thompson-Bell 10 Jan '09

10 Jan '09

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8yrOAjfKM&feature=related Cheers ian

1 0

Printing problem - not printing
by Chris G 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

I'm trying to print some images from Digikam and having no luck at all. I have two printers both of which have been working quite happily over the past few months, one is an HP7310, the other is an HP1320. The HP7310 is connected by ethernet, the HP1320 is connected via my router (USB printer -> router). When I print from Digikam everything appears to work perfectly but nothing actually comes out of the printers. Digikam finishes, the print jobs appear in CUPS and that's where they stay for ever as far as I can see. They stay in state 'processing' for a while and then end up 'pending'. Any ideas how to get something actually printed? -- Chris Green

4 7

Motherboard with unrealistic amount of RAM supported
by Srdjan Todorovic 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Hi, My motherboard, Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4, supports 16GB DDR2 RAM. It has only 4 RAM slots. Crucial website says: "Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-6400,DDR2 PC2-5300,DDR2 PC2-8500 with a maximum of 2GB per slot." So that's 8GB maximum... Why does the motherboard then support 16GB maximum? Or is it that currently (with the current BIOS), the firmware (BIOS) or northbridge(which is the CPU) can only support 8GB for the moment, but once 4GB RAM modules are more common, they can be used one a firmware upgrade is completed? Or maybe one has to use coreboot/LinuxBIOS to be able to use that much RAM (if it has to do some 'special' SPD stuff)? Anyone have any insight in to this? Srdjan

4 4

Re: [ALUG] Motherboard with unrealistic amount of RAM supported
by Srdjan Todorovic 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Ergh. Forgot to send to the list. Sorry! (/me slips into the lagoon of fail) 2009/1/9 Srdjan Todorovic <todorovic.s(a)googlemail.com>: > Hi > > 2009/1/9 Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk>: >> Is it possible that both the supported modules list on the Gigabyte site >> and the Crucial scanner have both not been updated to reflect the more >> recently available 4GB modules ? > > Where can one get them? I usually look on Ebuyer and so far have never seen > RAM of that density before. > >> It is not unheard of for mainboard manufacturers to say they support a >> memory configuration that is not possible (at the time of writing) with >> current module densities, but that would be possible at a latter point >> when the larger modules become available. > > I suspected as such, and was wondering if someone knew if this was > definitely the case. > Perhaps I'll send an email to gigabyte to ask for more info about it. > > Thanks > Srdjan >

1 0

media players for bbc downloads Was: finally BBC iplayer linux
by Albert Vilella 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Just to check with people in the list: what is the video quality that you get when downloading with get_iplayer and playing it with you favourite media player? I've tested the stock mplayer and vlc that come with ubuntu, and my feeling is that vlc gives me a better quality image than mplayer. Here are the configure options for vlc: [00000001] main libvlc debug: libvlc was configured with ./configure '--build=i486-linux-gnu' '--enable-maintaner-mode' '--enable-release' '--prefix=/usr' '--enable-libtool' '--enable-fast-install' '--with-binary-version=1ubuntu3' '--disable-update-check' '--disable-gnome' '--disable-gtk' '--disable-familiar' '--disable-fb' '--enable-ggi' '--enable-sdl' '--enable-esd' '--enable-mad' '--enable-arts' '--enable-jack' '--enable-pulse' '--enable-lirc' '--enable-a52' '--enable-aa' '--enable-dvbpsi' '--enable-mozilla' '--with-mozilla-pkg=libxul-plugin' '--disable-kde' '--enable-mp4' '--enable-dvb' '--disable-satellite' '--enable-ogg' '--enable-vorbis' '--enable-shout' '--enable-qt4' '--disable-slp' '--enable-flac' '--disable-skins' '--disable-basic-skins' '--enable-skins2' '--enable-freetype' '--enable-mkv' '--enable-speex' '--enable-caca' '--enable-live555' '--enable-libmpeg2' '--enable-fribidi' '--enable-cdio' '--enable-mod' '--enable-theora' '--enable-modplug' '--enable-dvdnav' '--enable-gnutls' '--enable-ffmpeg' '--enable-ncurses' '--enable-smb' '--disable-gnomevfs' '--enable-bonjour' '--enable-mpc' '--enable-vcd' '--enable-vcdx' '--enable-notify' '--enable-twolame' '--enable-x264' '--enable-faad' '--disable-zvbi' '--enable-telx' '--enable-mediacontrol-bindings' '--disable-atmo' '--enable-taglib' '--enable-libass' '--enable-libdca' '--enable-alsa' '--enable-dv' '--enable-v4l' '--enable-v4l2' '--enable-pvr' '--enable-svgalib' '--enable-dvd' '--without-dvdcss' 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-g -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-Wl,--as-needed' 'CPPFLAGS=' 'CXXFLAGS=-g -O2' Cheers, Albert. On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Jon Dye <jon(a)pecorous.co.uk> wrote: > 2008/12/22 Albert Vilella <avilella(a)gmail.com> > > >> http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/download_programmes/desktop_linux >> >> >> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Jon Dye <jon(a)pecorous.co.uk> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> 2008/12/21 Albert Vilella <avilella(a)gmail.com> >>> >>>> Hi everybody, >>>> >>>> As you may all know by now, we finally have a BBC iPlayer for Linux! >>>> >>> >>> Where? >>> >> > Thanks. > > I just tried installing it on my eeepc and the interface is too big to fit > on the screen. I've ended up installing get_iplayer instead, it's interface > fits on one line :-) > > JD >

3 4

Site down
by Ben Bewick 08 Jan '09

08 Jan '09

Alugers! Looks like the site is down, although lists.alug.org.uk is still working?! Would those with access kindly fix? Thanks Ben

2 1

[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 8th January 2009
by Ben Bewick 08 Jan '09

08 Jan '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, The monthly second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 8th January 2009 at The Reindeer (10 Dereham Road, Norwich, NR2 4AY; tel. 01603 762223). It's very near the junction of Dereham Road and the Norwich inner ring road (Grapes Hill) and serves a selection of real ales, nice pub food (if you fancy going early to eat) and coffee. There are generally people there from 20:00 onwards and we tend to sit to the left of the main entrance. We look forward to seeing you there. Cheers, Viperfang ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

FREEBIES!
by Richard Bensley 07 Jan '09

07 Jan '09

FREEBIES FROM TEATIME! 1x PCI Nvidia Vanta 1x PCI Ati Rage XL 1x PCIE x16 512MB Geforce 6800 Ultra (unkown if working) 1x PCI WinTV PVR TV card. I don't think it's freeviewable! 1x AGP Radeon 9550 256MB DDR 1x AGP Geforce Quadro 580XGL *LOW PROFILE* (probably AGP PRO port required) 1x SCSI RAID chasis for 12 drives + PCIX LSI controller card + 4x73GB 10k SCSI drives 2x Hyundai Imagequest CRT monitors VGA, I will throw in 2x DVI adapters Books: Official Blender 2.3 Guide Learning Maya 5 Foundation Stop Staring (Facial Animation) Using Dreamweaver 3 Flash 3, Macperl Learning Perl Dreamweaver 1.2 Databse Publishing with FileMaker Pro Email me directly (not the list) for my address, No Reserve, first come first server, I will answer questions on the products somethings have been tested recently. I wont be testing the component cards. I wont be delivering I don't have a car! If you want to come and get them before or after the meeting this week that is fine as I live in Norwich. Photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34099525@N06/ Cheers Richard (teatime)

1 0

having a fie out...
by mbm 29 Dec '08

29 Dec '08

All My wife has chuntered at me to clear out some of what she likes to call "junk" from my study - so I have gathered together sundry bits and pieces which may (or may not) be of use to someone else. The list is below. I can't be bothered with umpteen ebay bids and I'd really like it all to go as one job lot. I'm offering the lot here first because I guess some of you may actually have a use it. Sixty quid for the lot seems reasonable to me. If someone takes it all and then decides to offload some bits elsewhere, that's fine by me. But I really don't want to get into bids for individual bits. The idea is to get shot of it all. Cheers - and a happy new year to all Mick ------------------- <list> 1. Compaq Armada 4160T laptop (80Mb RAM, 6 Gig hard disk) - this dates from around 96 or 97 but still works. I have used it as an IPCOP firewall (and it comes with two PCMCIA ethernet cards if anyone wants to do this again). It currently has a clean new install of Debian Lenny. Oh, and a "laptop bag" to go with it. 2. Two of 2Gig 2.5" laptop hard drives. 3. 5.1 PCI sound card 4. AGP Video card - I think it is a 128Mb Radeon Sapphire. 5. BT Voyager 200 ADSL router 6. Maxtor 60 Gig 3.5" ATA hard disk 7. Dell latitude external floppy drive 8. Freecom Classic 80 Gig external USB disk 9. Two port Newlink PS2 KVM switch 10. Two port Sitecom USB KVM switch 11. Four port Aten PS2 KVM switch 12. Zoom X5V VOIP ADSL router (this is actually quite a good router - particularly if you want to use VOIP) 13. Two (yes, 2) BT Home Hubs - both reflashed to run Thomson 7G images - because BT pissed me off and I didn't like what they had done to the routers. I have the original images though if you want to flash them back to the crippled version. 14. Belkin PCI wireless card - 802.11g 15. One Microsoft USB fingerprint reader (it was freebie from MS - honest!) ------------- </list> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

2 2

A good brand of USB stick?
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 29 Dec '08

29 Dec '08

Hi Folks, Sorry for possibly irritating cross-posting! Fairly recently, on one of the Linux lists I read, someone (or more than one) made suggestions about good brands of USB sticks, with particular reference to lifetime under repeated cycles of writing, and general reliability. Unfortunately, I can't now find that discussion in my archives, and I've forgotten where I read it! Hence my shouting from the rooftops. Any suggestions and comments welcome. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 27-Dec-08 Time: 23:59:24 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

3 2

[FTAGH]Server Case
by Mephi 27 Dec '08

27 Dec '08

Free Server case, taker collects (its heavy) It has a redundant 300W PSU, fans and a caddy for SCSI drives. It was an impulse buy a while back but it never got used and now we need the space. I'm based near the middle of Ipswich. Anyone want it? Matt

1 0

ubuntu and windows Master Boot Record
by Barry Chater 24 Dec '08

24 Dec '08

HI I wonder if you could give me some advice. I am adding a hard drive to my desktop, but since both master and slave connectors are used on the first ide socket on the motherboard. I intend to use the second socket on the motherboard for the new drive, to which i want to install Ubuntu 8.04. windows xp is installed on the hard drive on the other socket, with DVD writer on the slave. I take it that Ubuntu on the second socket will also be a master. I am wondering if Ubuntu will try and overwrite the XP master boot files when i install it. Has anybody had any problems like this. also will tha computer recognise the dualboot or do i have to alter the Bios settings. All the problems i have read about ubuntu overwriting the masterboot files seems to be when two operating systems are on the same hard drive. Am i correct in this? thanks in advance Barry Merry　Ｃｈｒｉｓｔｍａｓ　ｔｏ　ｙｏｕ　ａｌｌ

1 0

"thumbnail"-type application
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

Hi Folks, I'm looking for an application (preferably light-weight) which sould do the following kind of thing. I have a good number of images (*.jpg) stored in sub-directories of sundry directories. The main directory names are rather generic (e.g. a regional location, or names of friends or family). The subdirectories are fairly specific and can descend to very spcific (e.g. a sub-sub-sub-directory with just a date, like "2007.03.05"). I'd like to be able to whistle up screenfuls of thumbnails, possible grouped thematically, with a property like being able to "hover" the mouse over a thumbnail and get a little pop-up with the date of the photo and a brief description. There's an implication, therefore, that there's a kind of basic database engine behind it, together with the "pop-up on hover" capacility. There's no shortage of applications capable of making a bunch of thumbnails (especially from a single directory), but I'm not aware of a light-weight application with the above capability. Gthumb does (clumsily) the sort of thing I'm after, so I could think of using it on machines with Gnome, but not, e.g. on KDE machines. Ideally, in a main directory I would do something like find . -name '*.jpg' -print > image.list edit the file image.list to remove uwanted stuff, and then submit this file to the thumbnail viewer. As an example of scale, one major directory has 4 principal subdirectories hanging off it, with sundry sub-dirs of these, and a total of 170 images. Another is similar, with 150 images. On could probably write something suitable in Tcl/Tk, butit would be nice to find one ready-made! Suggestions welcome. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Nov-08 Time: 09:07:15 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

7 8

finally BBC iplayer linux
by Albert Vilella 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

Hi everybody, As you may all know by now, we finally have a BBC iPlayer for Linux! I've tried it this afternoon, and started downloading stuff into my Ubuntu for my Christmas journey. Word of caution, the player will complain that you have reached the download limit very soon, unless you go to Settings and define a bigger "Hard disk space allocated". I haven't found any glitches or problems so far, apart from the fact that one cannot download stuff that is older than a given date. I wanted to get the full collection of "Stephen Fry in America" but I can only download the latest one. There is a "reporting participation" in the Settings that I am sure all the Linux users will leave ticked as to show how grateful are we of having a Linux version :-p Cheers, Albert.

5 8

Wierd problem when creating new users, .profile and .bashrc not executing
by Chris G 22 Dec '08

22 Dec '08

I have something not right on my xubuntu 8.10 system. When I create new users using 'useradd <username> they are created OK but don't get a home directory. I'm sure the default used to be to create a home directory and to copy its contents from /etc/skel but it's not doing that. If I do 'useradd -m <username>' then I get the files copied from /etc/skel but they don't get executed on logging in to the new account. Even if I log in to the newly created user and try and execute the files I get a really odd error message:- $ . .profile .: 13: .profile: not found $ The file .profile does exist:- $ ls -al total 32 drwxr-xr-x 5 isbd isbd 4096 2008-12-21 20:23 . drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 2008-12-21 20:24 .. -rwxr-xr-x 1 isbd isbd 220 2008-05-12 19:49 .bash_logout -rwxr-xr-x 1 isbd isbd 3115 2008-05-12 19:49 .bashrc drwx------ 5 isbd isbd 4096 2008-12-19 20:13 Mail drwxr-xr-x 2 isbd isbd 4096 2008-12-19 20:11 .mutt drwxr-xr-x 25 isbd users 4096 2008-10-07 19:20 oldIsbd -rwxr-xr-x 1 isbd isbd 675 2008-05-12 19:49 .profile Erk! What have I done? :-) Existing users work fine. -- Chris Green

5 9

Backups via samba share
by Mark Rogers 22 Dec '08

22 Dec '08

I'm sure this should be easy but I'm getting nowhere with Google... I've created a directory, /backup, which contains symlinks to a number of directories I want to backup across the network (eg /var/lib/mysql is symlinked into that dir). I need to create a samba share which provides read access to all files in that directory. So far I have: [backups] comment = Backups force group = root force user = root path = /backups writeable = no .. but the contents of the directories (like /var/lib/mysql) are not accessible. What am I doing wrong? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

2 2

Camcorders (Linux friendly, of course)
by Steve Fosdick 21 Dec '08

21 Dec '08

Does anyone have any experience of or recommendation for a camcorder? For me the top priority would be able to make backup copies of the video without resorting to proprietary software, i.e. it would need to record on media that be directly read under Linux or use a communication protocol for which there is a Linux implementation. It would also be good if the video/audio codecs used by the camcorder had a Linux implementation, at least for decoding, so that I could edit the video if I want to or watch it on the PC. Of course, if I can not play the video under Linux I would also want some way to be able to transfer it back to the camcorder for watching on the TV should the need arise. TiA, Steve.

2 1

HDD recovery
by Mark Rogers 19 Dec '08

19 Dec '08

I'm trying to recover data from a (Windows 2k) HDD belonging to my sister. I first tried with the drive in an IDE to USB adapter which wasn't recognised (the adapter was, the disk wasn't) which isn't good. So I'm now trying with the disk mounted in a PC. The BIOS can see the disk and correctly shows its manufacturer/serial/etc. I booted to an Ubuntu live CD and ran GParted, and it shows the disk as 18GB of unallocated space (which is the right capacity, although obviously I'd have prefered it to show an NTFS partition). fdisk cannot access the disk. I tried dd which gives a read/write error. The disk is spinning up OK and isn't noisy. Any suggestions? Professional data recovery could be considered but is probably too expensive. It's lost photos of my niece I'm trying to recover, amongst other things. Professional recovery is likely to be too expensive to justify unless it's under <£100 and I tend to assume anyone below that price isn't going to be doing anything I can't do myself with some Linux tools like scalpel, but if anyone knows otherwise I'd love to hear from you! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

9 16

Understanding rsync
by Mark Rogers 19 Dec '08

19 Dec '08

I'm trying to sync a directory on my PC with a directory online, using the following command: rsync -avz `pwd` user@example.com:`pwd` In other words, sync the current local working directory with the same directory on the server. Before the sync, I have 12788 files locally and 11433 files remotely. After the sync, I still have the same number of files at each end. rsync is not giving me any errors so what am I missing? (If I expand `pwd` out to the full path I get the same results so that's not the problem. The path doesn't have any spaces.) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

1 1

Gnome context menu integration
by Mark Rogers 19 Dec '08

19 Dec '08

I'm sure a suitable Google would help me here but I'm not sure what to search for; a few random attempts got me close but not close enough. I have to work a lot with XLS files which need converting to CSV files (using a tab separator). At the moment I do this using OOo which is overkill. I could do this from the commandline using htmldoc/xls2csv but that's not all that convenient in the GUI environment either. So what I would like to do is right-click the file in Nautilus and click a "convert to TSV" menu option that I set up to use xls2csv, taking blah.xls to create blah.csv. Where do I start? There's lots of similar stuff I'm used to from Windows (eg using the context menu to create/extract zip/etc files) although I wouldn't know how to do it on Windows either - I'd rely on the relevant apps setting that up for me. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

5 6

Jaw-dropper ...
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 17 Dec '08

17 Dec '08

Hi Folks, The following received this morning from the Seattle Linux List. (Still trying to recover from temporomadibular dislocation ... ). Ted. -----FW: <e35fe88f0812102328tbb31ac9m521c25f92fee2b10(a)mail.gmail.com>----- Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:28:34 -0800 Sender: linux-list-bounces(a)lists2.linuxjournal.com From: Jerry Horvath <jerroldhorvath(a)gmail.com> To: Seattle Linux Users Group <linux-list(a)ssc.com> Subject: [SLL] What is taught to some Austin, Texas students "In an age where Windows and OS X reign supreme, it's no wonder that a local AISD middle school teacher became enraged after discovering one of her students distributing what she believed to be bootlegged copies of an operating system in class <http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/ignorant-teacher-linux-in-education.html>." *No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.* <http://austinist.com/2008/12/10/aisd_teacher_throws_fit_over_studen.php> Regards, Jerry Horvath --------------End of forwarded message------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 11-Dec-08 Time: 12:01:37 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

11 13

sshd configuration problem
by Chris G 16 Dec '08

16 Dec '08

By default I have sshd set up to disallow root logins, if I want to get to root from a remote login I login as myself (one password) and then su to root (another password). However I want to allow root login from one other system on the local LAN. To this end I added the following to the end of sshd_config:- PasswordAuthentication no AllowUsers root(a)192.168.1.7 However this, of course, prevents anyone logging in from anywhere except for root(a)192.168.1.7. How can I allow any non-root user from anywhere but root only from 192.168.1.7? -- Chris Green

4 15

LAN addresses in /etc/hosts
by Chris G 12 Dec '08

12 Dec '08

Having got dnsmasq working somewhate better (thank you Brett!) I now need some advice on what to put in /etc/hosts on the machine that is running dnsmasq. The machine's name on the local LAN is "isbd", to the outside world it is known as "home.isbd.net". It has a static IP address on the local LAN of 192.168.1.4. "As built" ubuntu puts "isbd" in the /etc/hosts file as follows:- 127.0.1.1 isbd However I need dnsmasq to tell other machines on the LAN that "isbd" is 192.168.1.4. Do I just remove the above line and add:- 192.168.1.4 isbd Is the "127.0.1.1 isbd" only necessary when isbd's address is obtained using DHCP and thus not fixed so it needs to point at localhost? -- Chris Green

3 3

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 12 Dec '08

12 Dec '08

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back next week (Monday 15th December) 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. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard to find the pack, look for those huddled around a laptop! Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. 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

1 0

I can't get dnsmasq to work at all, ideas please
by Chris G 12 Dec '08

12 Dec '08

I have installed dnsmasq on my xubuntu 8.10 system using the standard ubuntu apt-get which gives me version 2.45 of dnsmasq. It seems to have installed a reasonable default configuration and dnsmasq has been started up. However I can't get it to provide answers to any DNS requests. As I understand it dnsmasq should read the contents of /etc/hosts and give out local network IP addresses in response to DNS requests, only passing requests on the the external server(s) in /etc/resolv.conf if the address requested isn't a local one. I have dnsmasq running on 192.168.1.4 whose /etc/hosts has the following in it (after the standard default stuff):- # # # Local additions # 192.168.1.1 vigor 2820n 192.168.1.4 home.isbd.net isbd 84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net chris.isbd.net 192.168.1.5 home 192.168.1.6 maxine 192.168.1.7 nas garage 192.168.1.44 hp7310 HPEDDBB7 HP000D9D068F7D 192.168.13.254 2wire BT2700HGV gateway.2wire.net I am attempting to use it from 192.168.1.7 which has no non-default additions to /etc/hosts and has the following in /etc/resolv.conf:- # Generated by NetworkManager 192.168.1.4 ... but if I do "host maxine" on 192.168.1.7 I just get:- ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached Sending signals to dnsmasq produces the expected responses in syslog so it is running and working, signal 1 reports "read /etc/hosts - 17 addresses". So it appears to have some addresses to respond with but the other systems on the LAN don't seem to be able to talk to it. Any ideas what might be wrong, or ways to diagnose it? -- Chris Green

2 2

What FS might be on this CD?
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 12 Dec '08

12 Dec '08

Hi Folks, I have a CD which was burnt using Windows Media Player on Vista. It carries a couple of directories with many (mostly PDF) files. When accessed with Vista, its contents are visisble and the files can be accessed. However, Linux doesn't want to know! For example: # mount -t auto /dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 mount: block device /dev/hdc is write-protected, mounting read-only mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdc, missing codepage or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so and # dmesg | tail hdc: media error (bad sector): error=0x30 { LastFailedSense=0x03 } ide: failed opcode was: unknown ATAPI device hdc: Error: Medium error -- (Sense key=0x03) Unrecovered read error -- (asc=0x11, ascq=0x00) The failed "Read 10" packet command was: "28 00 00 05 7c 80 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 " end_request: I/O error, dev hdc, sector 1438208 Buffer I/O error on device hdc, logical block 179776 UDF-fs: No fileset found Any ideas? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 10-Dec-08 Time: 23:17:09 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] What FS might be on this CD?
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 11 Dec '08

11 Dec '08

On 11-Dec-08 00:47:28, Ian Thompson-Bell wrote: > (Ted Harding) wrote: >> Hi Folks, >> I have a CD which was burnt using Windows Media Player on Vista. >> It carries a couple of directories with many (mostly PDF) files. >> >> When accessed with Vista, its contents are visisble and the files >> can be accessed. >> >> However, Linux doesn't want to know! > > I had this problem once before with A cd made by a friend with media > player under XP. It turned the disc had not be 'finalised' - I use the > term loosely - we put the disk back in the XP machine, ran media player > and did the finalizing and then linux could read it. > > HTH > Cheers > Ian I suspected that might be to root of the problem (given the error message). If so, though, how does one set about getting Windows (Vista) Media Player to "finalise" the disk as Ian describes? I can't find any option to get this to happen! (Sorry to bang on about such an unsavoury topic, but it's all for the sake of using Linux!) Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 11-Dec-08 Time: 09:16:33 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

2 1

power problem mandriva solved
by Peter Alcibiades 11 Dec '08

11 Dec '08

It turns out that disabling 'cool and quiet' fixes it, in case anyone else encounters it. At least, it does on this machine. Peter

1 0

Some python behind my apache server is *incredibly* slow
by Chris G 10 Dec '08

10 Dec '08

I have some python scripts which convert reStructuredText to HTML 'on the fly' when xxxx.rst files are browsed. When I look at the pages locally performance is acceptable but I have just tried remotely (from work) and it takes several minutes to display a new xxxx.rst page. Normal HTML and other stuff are shown at normal speed, I have some quite complex PHP (which I didn't write) being served by the same apache server and it's fine. The same rst to html conversion works fine on the old server system and I haven't changed the code significantly, my code is only a wrapper around some standard Docutils stuff anyway. Can anyone suggest any reason for remote access to this being so incredibly slow? It's probably some dire misconfiguration somewhere but I don't know where to start looking really. -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 11 December 2008
by David Reynolds 06 Dec '08

06 Dec '08

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, The monthly second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 11 December 2008 at The Reindeer (10 Dereham Road, Norwich, NR2 4AY; tel. 01603 762223). It's very near the junction of Dereham Road and the Norwich inner ring road (Grapes Hill) and serves a selection of real ales, nice pub food (if you fancy going early to eat) and coffee. There are generally people there from 20:00 onwards and we tend to sit to the left of the main entrance. We look forward to seeing you there. Cheers, David -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

odd problem with poweroff on Mandriva
by Peter Alcibiades 05 Dec '08

05 Dec '08

Wonder if anyone has any ideas. I had an installation of Mandriva 2008 KDE which worked OK as far as powering off was concerned, but just now did a clean install of 2008.1 (leaving /home as it was). Worked fine means that both shutdown now -h resulted in power going off, and also using the kde off button did the same. Now, it seems to be impossible to powerdown from the keyboard. Previously either the KDE button or shutdown now -h closed the system down in an orderly way and did poweroff. Now, whatever you do, you end up with just a halted system and then have to use the on-off switch to poweroff. This applies either to shutdown now -h, and also to poweroff invoked as root. I can't see anything in the bios which has changed - I've disabled and then reenabled ACPI. In the kde control panel, anyone is enabled for powering the machine down. Its an Asus barebones with AMD processor, if it makes any difference. American Megatrends bios. Any ideas? Peter

1 0

Issue/Bug Tracking Systems
by Mark Rogers 03 Dec '08

03 Dec '08

I have just found out that a client is looking at bug/issue management systems, with the ones they've mentioned being Axosoft, Track Studio and Projector. (All but the latter are easy to find online, I've not found Projector's website). The client will be using them, I believe, to track maintenance and other issues on their site (ie not software bugs). Are there any good FOSS alternatives I should suggest to them or should I stay out of their way? I suspect that none of the off-the-shelf packages will do what they want and a FOSS option would make it easier to modify, but the other suggestion of building something from scratch will probably be a big uphill struggle unless it turns out they have very simple needs. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Latitude ON with ARM system-on-chip linux in Latitude 4200 and 4300
by Albert Vilella 03 Dec '08

03 Dec '08

Hi all, Does anybody know if the Latitude 4200 and Latitude 4300 models sold in UK already come with the Latitude ON feature based on the ARM chip? It seems that Dell has split this feature in "Latitude ON Reader" and "Latitude ON full", the second one being the special purpose ARM chip in a mini-PCIe in the laptop running Linux. Looks pretty cool to me and want to get one early next year, so I am asking if someone else has looked into it as well, http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/12/dell-announces-new-latitude-e-series/ Cheers, Albert.

1 0

Developer vacancy
by Steve Engledow 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

Hi all, My company is looking for another developer. We need someone with good all-round skillzzzz but particularly in java and webdev. Details are here: http://www.validus-ivc.co.uk/claims-analysis-vacancies.asp?i=44 If anyone's interested, give me a shout :) Cheers, Steve

1 0

Migrating e-mail _to_ pst
by Dan Hatton 28 Nov '08

28 Nov '08

(I guess this is about half on-topic. Apologies for the other half.) I'm helping out a user who would like to migrate from Evolution to Outlook. Which means I'll need a tool that works something like readpst in reverse. Can anyone suggest such a tool, please? Thanks, Dan

3 5

Display error when switching to console from X
by Chris G 27 Nov '08

27 Nov '08

I'm running xubuntu 8.10 (though I suspect the problem is common to all 8.10 ubuntu versions). I can run X fairly reliably though I do have some issues when logging in and out presumably due to switching resolutions. However switching to a console using CTRL/ALT/F1 (or any of the others) doesn't work. I just get an error message from my monitor saying the resolution is invalid. My monitor is a Dell 2001FP capable of up to 1600x1200 so I suspect that the CTRL/ALT/F1 is switching to a totally impossible resolution. How can I fix this problem? Is there any way to specify the mode and resolution to use for the text mode consoles? -- Chris Green

2 4

[Fwd: Re: Display error when switching to console from X]
by Stevey.eu 27 Nov '08

27 Nov '08

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 11:03:46AM +0000, Stevey.eu wrote: > > Chris G wrote: >> >> I'm running xubuntu 8.10 (though I suspect the problem is common to >> >> all 8.10 ubuntu versions). >> >> I can run X fairly reliably though I do have some issues when logging >> >> in and out presumably due to switching resolutions. >> >> However switching to a console using CTRL/ALT/F1 (or any of the >> >> others) doesn't work. I just get an error message from my monitor >> >> saying the resolution is invalid. My monitor is a Dell 2001FP capable >> >> of up to 1600x1200 so I suspect that the CTRL/ALT/F1 is switching to a >> >> totally impossible resolution. >> >> How can I fix this problem? Is there any way to specify the mode and >> >> resolution to use for the text mode consoles? >> >> > > Chris, > > > > Ever considered trying www.google.com it is a marvelous invention. > > Strangely enough I am familiar with Google, I'd recommend using www.google.co.uk personally, it does offer advantages for UK users sometimes (although not in this case of course). I have spent quite a lot of time searching around using Google on this issue and have follwed a few leads but I don't have a solution yet. Asking on alug was just another approach. -- Chris Green

2 2

What does 'seahorse' actually do?
by Chris G 27 Nov '08

27 Nov '08

Having just changed my login password on my new Linux box I have discovered that there's an application called 'seahorse' lurking in the background. After changing my password seahorse pops up a window when you log in to X demanding that you enter a password - what it's asking for is the *old* password which it has stashed away somewhere itself. What isn't clear though is what seahorse is for and reading the Help is no 'help' at all, it just tells you how to drive the program, which is fine in itself but doesn't help me at all in working out what it does. Can anyone here help? Does seahorse do the same as ssh-agent? Does it do it 'automagically' when you log in to X using your login password? I've found the seahorse home page http://projects.gnome.org/seahorse/index.html and that tells me just about nothing. The best there is (on the 'about' page) is:- With seahorse you can... * Create and manage PGP keys * Create and manage SSH keys * Publish and retrive keys from key servers * Cache your passphrase so you don't have to keep typing it * Backup your keys and keyring * more... It's rather a fundamental security thing to 'just happen' behind your back! -- Chris Green

1 0

sSMTP
by Torben Stones 26 Nov '08

26 Nov '08

I'm trying to setup sSMTP on a small home server, so that I can get the output from the cron jobs e-mailed to me. I believe that I've got it all setup correctly, as the message seems to be sent, but I'm never reciving anything. The config is so that every thing is sent to my gmail account and I'm useing smtp.googlemail.com as the smtp server. I'm trying to test using the command echo "Hello from sSMTP" | sendmail -v root >From the output it looks like it is working OK, but nothing ever arives. Has anyone set this up using google and/or does anyone have any idea as what I can check next. Thanks Torben -- You've got a lot of choices in your life. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.

2 1

PHP memory limit problem
by Chris G 25 Nov '08

25 Nov '08

I need to raise my memory limit as an upgrade of Gallery2 is failing due to running out of memory. I've increased the memory_limit in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini to 256M but something else is preventing this from working. Running phpinfo() shows the following information (among other things):- Loaded Configuration File /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini additional .ini files parsed /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/gd.ini, /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/mcrypt.ini, /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/mysql.ini, /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/mysqli.ini, /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/pdo.ini, /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/pdo_mysql.ini Local Value Master Value memory_limit 24M 256M So, what's reducing the "Local Value" to 24M? There's nothing in those other "additional .ini files parsed", has apache2 got some sort of limit of its own somewhere? How can I find what's limiting it? -- Chris Green

1 1

Security - part II
by Chris G 25 Nov '08

25 Nov '08

I.e. thoughts and questions on backups. Continuing on from making my system secure against the most likely attacks etc. I need to make backups of the 'important' data. Currently I backup from my main server system (the pre-update one at the moment) to a system on the home LAN in the garage. The garage is a fair way from the house so in the event of a serious disaster (e.g. a fire) it should survive. I also backup the *most* important files off-site to my account at my hosting provider. At the moment these backups are 'pushed' from the main system, i.e. it is cron in that system that runs the backups. This requires that I have passwordless access to the destination system and here I see a hole! If a hacker got into my main system [s]he could immediately gain access to the backup destinations as well and destroy data there. How can one overcome this issue? I can see a partial way around it for the LAN backups, I can remove the passwordless access to the system in the garage and change to a 'pull' backup that is run by cron on the garage system. The garage system can have passwordless access to the main system to enable this, there's no access through the firewall to the garage system so a hacker would need to guess the garage system passwords to get to it. This at least provides another layer of pretection against malicious attacks. However I can see no way to pretect the off-site (across the internet) backups from similar attacks. If the shell account at my hosting provider was to have passwordless access to my home system that would lay me open to all sorts of malicious attacks so obviously that's not possible so I can't use the 'pull' backup from there. If I'm going to backup as at present the passwordless access to the off-site system needs to remain and therefore is open to a malicious attacker. It occurs to me that I could *possibly* do the backups from the garage system to the off-site system, that would improve things somewhat. How does the world at large do backups to remote systems without incurring security problems? -- Chris Green

4 7

ALUG Ipswich Xmas Meal 2008
by samwise 25 Nov '08

25 Nov '08

Hi, At the last Ipswich meet we discussed repeating the Xmas meal we had last year. Would anyone else on the list be interested in attending? We talked about having it on a different day to the usual December meet so if anyone else wants to join in, drop me a line and I'll try and co-ordinate a day that fits for everyone. Cheers, Peter.

1 0

Is it possible to use DHCP for DNS only?
by Chris G 25 Nov '08

25 Nov '08

Is it possible to set up a Linux system so that it has a fixed IP address on the LAN but uses the addresses given to it by a router (using DHCP) for DNS? -- Chris Green

5 12

mySql - problems with passwords etc., is there no easy way?
by Chris G 24 Nov '08

24 Nov '08

I always seem to get in a tangle with installing and setting up mySql. The essential problem seems to be that mySql wants to refer to the local machine as 'localhost', and 127.0.0.1, and 'chris'. Thus when I try and add a user it seems that the user gets added with privileges for one (or some) but not all of 'localhost', and 127.0.0.1, and 'chris' and then doesn't work because I need to acces the database as one of the other host names. Adding a user as 'user'@* seems to be even worse and doesn't work at all. I also seem to be having trouble changing the password for the mySql super user, I tried doing it via phpmyadmin and that seems to have done nothing, I can't quite fathom the syntax for doing it in mySql from the command line in the mysql front-end. I *do* know SQL fairly well and usually once I have the password/host chaos sorted out mysql works well for me but this part of it really stinks IMHO when you're working on localhost (or is it 127.0.0.1 or is it chris?). It's fine when working remotely, there's only one possible name for the place where the database is. -- Chris Green

3 4

Some thoughts/questions re: ssh security
by Chris G 24 Nov '08

24 Nov '08

As I'm in the process of moving my 'home server' across to a new machine it seems a good time to check out the security aspects. The machine runs behind an ADSL router which provides the firewall. I have the firewall set up so that the only access allowed from outside the home LAN is:- ssh port access from two specific IP addresses http and https access from anywhere I have data on the machine which I don't want to lose but it's not valuable or particularly confidential so I don't think I need to protect myself against concerted attacks from the CIA or MI5. :-) What I do want to prevent as far as possible is malicious attacks from hackers who, if they did get access, would probably just 'make a mess of things' for fun. The two IP addresses from which ssh access is allowed are the public address of my work machine and a machine where I have a shell login at my hosting company. Thus they are both moderately secure themselves but there is always a possibility that someone 'unfriendly' might get access. The choice (for ssh) lies between public/private key and ordinary passwords. I *know* that in general public/private key is regarded as more secure but I'm leaning towards using password security for the following reasons:- The machine where the password shadow file is stored is (relatively) secure, the only user is me. If someone (hacker) has access to the shadow file to apply brute-force/dictionary attacks then I've already lost the battle. I make very sure that passwords on my home machine bear no similarity to those on systems outside so knowledge of my 'outside' passwords will not make guessing my home machine's passwords easy. Someone who has access to my work/hosting accounts may well get access to the public key part of the public/private key pair. This, ultimately, lays it open to attack. They have *no* access to my home machine and thus, although the shadow file is fundamentally weaker in itself there is no opportunity at all to attack it. The *only* way that an attacker can break in is by guessing passwords. Does the above make reasonable sense or have I overlooked anything obvious? Obviously physical security matters and also I need to have the 'other half' of security based on backups etc. (probably subject of another E-Mail). Final question, how vulnerable does running apache2 on the system with general access make it? Are buffer overflow exploits and other such things likely to make my careful ssh security pointless? -- Chris Green

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