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ProFTPd
by Richard Lewis 31 Mar '06

31 Mar '06

Hello, I've just changed my FTP daemon from ftpd to ProFTP so that I can set up anonymous FTP access to my server. Anonymous and normal accounts both work but I can only login from the localhost. If I try to login from elsewhere I get: ftp> open domain.net Connected to domain.net. 500 Sorry, no server available to handle request on domain.net Does anyone know how I can make it possible to login from anywhere? Cheers, Richard -- --------------------------- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ ---------------------------

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linux file/print server at home
by Neill Lillywhite 31 Mar '06

31 Mar '06

hi i'm new to linux but do have a wide experience in XP. however, not much networking beyond basic workgroups i'm looking to revamp my home network now the kids want their own PCs and i'm looking at configurations what i want to be able to do is: * store all the various people's data on a single server and back it up from there as appropriate * map the various 'My Documents' folders on the PCs directly to folders/shares on the server * share some printers on that server * i don't need true 'roving profiles' as such (but that /is /a possibility - my only concern really is the bandwidth overhead associated with XP syncing on logoff) * what i do need to do is have the various user folders read/writeable by the users *and *readable by the server admin group (ie: me) * any password changes that the XP users make need to be automatically synced with the various server accounts most of the PCs will be 'single user' only but one will need to allow 2 users access to their files - so if i go for roaming profiles fine, if not it's 2 users on that PC i guess i've done a fair bit of reading around this and am currently tinkering with fedora 5 trying to get it to act as a PDC - with spectacular lack of success thus far it has to be said !! so, first question i need to answer is - given the above functionality needs do i go down the workgroup or domain route ? once i know that i can practice on the fedora box and try to get it to do whatever i need to and take it from there (of course whatever route i go down i'm bound to screw up and come begging for help - but let's leave that for another day !!) thanks for all and any advice/suggestions neill

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Re: main Digest, Vol 9, Issue 32
by Tony 31 Mar '06

31 Mar '06

Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:37:34 +0100 From: "Keith Watson" <keith.watson(a)kewill.com> Subject: RE: [ALUG] linux file/print server at home To: <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <63F7A21F1CA18143AFDBF28E2A7D6BBA030BDD52(a)endor.kewill-europe.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > From: Paul Sent: 31 March 2006 10:21 > > Hi Neill > > On Wednesday 29 March 2006 17:33, Neill Lillywhite wrote: > > i'm looking to revamp my home network now the kids want their own PCs > > and i'm looking at configurations > > > i've done a fair bit of reading around this and am currently tinkering > > with fedora 5 trying to get it to act as a PDC - with spectacular lack > > of success thus far it has to be said !! > > This sounds like an ideal application for LTSP from > www.ltsp.org - I've seen it in use in a domestic environment > and it appeared to work well. This may not be the best system > to set up without some experience of Linux, but it should > provide some food for thought. > > Of course, for file & printer sharing, a simple Samba server > may suit your needs better. I've never needed to fully > configure it, only once did I have to set up basic services > for a solitary W95/98 box.. If I had to do it again, I would > strongly recommend getting a copy of the "Linux Cookbook" by > Schroder. It covers virtually all the topics encountered when > building a network. > > And when the cookbook fails to answer a question, we are > always here to act as a safety net ;) > > Regards, Paul. I have a feeling that I've seen a thread along similar lines somewhere on the Ubuntu forums (or maybe it was the wiki), anyway why not pop over to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.ubuntuforums.org/ and see if the search facility turns up anything? Regards, Keith It is very easy to do with Ubuntu, there are detailed instructions at http://www.howtoforge.com/samba_setup_ubuntu_5.10 but most of the instructions would apply to a Fedora setup. If the OP would like an original copy of Ubuntu, drop me a line and I'll stick a copy in the post. I found it much easier to set up than using Fedora especially using wireless (Ubuntu detected wireless adaptor automatically where Fedora didn't). Tony

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xdcmp
by Peter 31 Mar '06

31 Mar '06

Hoping this is not a silly question.... Is it possible, and if so how, to set up gdm (or kdm or xdm) so that when the login chooser comes up, it only offers the user to log in to an xdcmp session on the server? I have a user who cannot be expected to do anything except turn the machine on and log in. So navigating to xdcmp chooser from the welcome screen is not practical. Peter

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RE: [ALUG] linux file/print server at home
by Keith Watson 31 Mar '06

31 Mar '06

> From: Paul Sent: 31 March 2006 10:21 > > Hi Neill > > On Wednesday 29 March 2006 17:33, Neill Lillywhite wrote: > > i'm looking to revamp my home network now the kids want their own PCs > > and i'm looking at configurations > > > i've done a fair bit of reading around this and am currently tinkering > > with fedora 5 trying to get it to act as a PDC - with spectacular lack > > of success thus far it has to be said !! > > This sounds like an ideal application for LTSP from > www.ltsp.org - I've seen it in use in a domestic environment > and it appeared to work well. This may not be the best system > to set up without some experience of Linux, but it should > provide some food for thought. > > Of course, for file & printer sharing, a simple Samba server > may suit your needs better. I've never needed to fully > configure it, only once did I have to set up basic services > for a solitary W95/98 box.. If I had to do it again, I would > strongly recommend getting a copy of the "Linux Cookbook" by > Schroder. It covers virtually all the topics encountered when > building a network. > > And when the cookbook fails to answer a question, we are > always here to act as a safety net ;) > > Regards, Paul. I have a feeling that I've seen a thread along similar lines somewhere on the Ubuntu forums (or maybe it was the wiki), anyway why not pop over to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.ubuntuforums.org/ and see if the search facility turns up anything? Regards, Keith ____________ When you boil rice, regard the cooking pot as your own head. - Zen Saying

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Kit meet in Mid Suffolk
by John Woodard 30 Mar '06

30 Mar '06

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- ALUG kit meeting. Mid Suffolk venue Syleham and Wingfield Village hall for a kit meet on Sunday 30th April 2:00pm - 6:00pm. Details of the venue and a map are available at http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/syleham.html. Normal waivers apply, your kit is your responsibility, please mark it and any associated cables etc. I will open the hall up at around 1:30ish to allow kit to be assembled etc. and will get the bar open if it is required. Any questions please post to the list. Cheers, BJ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.3/296 - Release Date: 29/03/2006 ----- 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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Slightly off topic - domain registration question
by Chris Green 29 Mar '06

29 Mar '06

I'm afraid this isn't really a Linux question but I'm sure I'll get a helpful answer here anyway. I have some domains registered via http://www.ukfsn.org/extras/ (it's ukfsn reselling a US domain registry) and now I want to host the actual sites with another US company where we have isbd.biz registered and hosted. To do this properly do I need to transfer the domains the to registrar that hosts isbd.biz? I know I can forward from the existing host but I believe that does have some down sides to it. A FAQ or something on the general suject of domains would be useful, the FAQ's at the hosting/registration sites tend to have a rather narrow approach. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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RE: [ALUG] Re: Any kit meets planned ?
by Keith Watson 29 Mar '06

29 Mar '06

Might also want to take a look at the Kororaa Xgl Live CD <http://kororaa.org/static.php?page=static060318-181203> , although I've seen a couple of comments saying that it can be flaky for some combinations of h/w. I've run it on my old Athlon 1.3Ghz + nVidia GForce setup and it works ok but nothing to tempt me away from bog standard Ubuntu :o). Regards, Keith ____________ BORE, n. - A person who talks when you wish him to listen. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary > From: Peter Onion Sent: 29 March 2006 10:18 > > > If I do come is anybody (who hasn't got the patience or hardware to > > get it running properly themselves) interested in a demo of XGL and Compiz ? > > > > My machine is running it quite smoothly now..but it's a lot of kit to > > lug down if nobody is particularly interested. > > Yes please. I do have hardware capable of running it, but > I'm a bit reluctant to "break" my current working setup until > I've actually seen it working to decide if it really is > anything other than "3D eye candy". > > Peter

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Help!
by Peter 27 Mar '06

27 Mar '06

Hi guys, Do you know of a nice competent person in London who would be willing to help a lady with her Windows laptop, for a reasonable fee? The problems are to do with the broadband connection, and most recently with BSOD occurring on sending mail. A hard crash, the only way to restart was by removing the battery. Also the Windows firewall switches itself on and off for no apparent reason. This is an extremely intelligent and competent person, but with little technical knowledge. Once properly set up and working, will be fine to use it going forwards. I'm not able to support this over the phone, and am not there often enough to do it in person. I have wondered about whether Linux would be a more predictable environment, but that would be complicating things again, and further reducing the number of people who can give support. If you do know of someone who you could vouch for personally and professionally, who'd be willing to fix windows for her, I'd be very grateful, Peter

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 27 Mar '06

27 Mar '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Trying to contact someone
by Stuart Fox 23 Mar '06

23 Mar '06

Is anyone in contact with Tony Bronze? Im having trouble sending email to his freeserve address, well ANY freeserve email addy Cheers Stuart -- The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

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Talks offered Ted Haegar from Novell and Jono Bacon
by David Reynolds 23 Mar '06

23 Mar '06

Hi, Jono Bacon (of Lugradio fame) visited us in #alug today and has offered his and Ted Haegar talks. I thought I'd post it to the list since a lot of people don't hang in the IRC channel all day. Details are below: Begin forwarded message: > Hey, > > Both Ted Haegar from Novell and myself will come and do some talks. > Both Ted and I offer two presentations each, so you can pick one for > each of us: > > Ted's Presentations: > > * Linux Desktop Innovation at Novell - demonstrating such elements as > Xgl, Beagle, the new Main Menu for Gnome, and Novell's latest > contributions to OpenOffice.org. > * Implementing Novell AppArmor - providing a practical how-to on > quickly securing desktop and server applications with Novell AppArmor. > > My presentations: > > * On the Front Line: Convincing People the Inconvincible - this > presentation covers how to perform effective advocacy, and covers a > number of areas and concepts that LUG members can make use of. > * Building the Next Generation Linux Desktop - this presentation > discusses where the desktop came from, how it developed, and where it > is going in the future. This will include coverage of bleeding edge > software and coverage of usability issues. > > We are thinkin of scheduling this for Thu 21st April. > > If you could let me know how much interest there is that would be > great. > > Jono As he says, could we have a show of hands as to who is interested and can make it on August 21st? Cheers, Dave -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Video DVD Copying
by Keith Watson 22 Mar '06

22 Mar '06

Having last night successfully rescued (i.e. copied) a favourite DVD that had a crack slowly spreading from the centre outwards, I wondered if there are any favourite (preferably OSS) DVD clone packages list members may have? . I looked at various Windows and Linux options and eventually gave k9copy a try and was pleased with the straightforward way it worked. Regards, Keith ____________ I would love to change the world, but I can't get the source code to compile without errors.

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PowerPC Linux
by Simon Royal 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Hi ALUG Hope you can help. I have been toying with Linux for a number of years. I detest Windows (as most people do) and partly because I am a designer and partly because it is simple, reliable and fast my OS of choice is Mac OSX. As any Mac OSX user knows, it is built around Unix and shares similar attributes with Linux. I have a 1Ghz eMac and want to run Linux on it. I have been using the live Ubuntu distro on an old G3 iBook at work and loved it. I now want to run it at home on my eMac, but don't want to lose my OSX, so would like to dual boot. How do I do this without wiping everything off my Mac and is Ubuntu the best choice for PowerPC users? I have noticed a few others but Ubuntu always seems to come out on top. Yellow Dog is a little behind and I am not sure about OpenSuse? Will any of the PowerPC distros take advantage of my Airport Extreme card, my DLink router and my iPod. I have tried all my other hardware from scanners, digital camera and memory sticks and these all seem to work fine under Ubuntu, but eventually if I can get everything I need from Linux I would scrap Mac OSX altogether. You help would be very much appreciated? Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.simonroyal.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac

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Re: [ALUG] MySQL Dynamic/index tables
by Richard Lewis 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

On Thu, 2006-03-16 at 09:56 +0000, Stuart Fox wrote: > > Hello ALUG, > > > > I hope you don't mind me asking a MySQL question here? > > > > I've got a very slow query on my database which uses a lot of LEFT JOINs > > in order to do a sort of keyword search across a number of tables. It > > seems to me that if I could create a sort of permanent temporary table > > which stores the result of this query, add a FULLTEXT index to it and > > then do my keyword searches on this table things would be a lot quicker. > > It would be like a sort of dynamic or index table because its contents > > would have to change as the other tables change - it would have to > > reflect the current state of the rest of the database. > > > > Does MySQL provide functionality to do this sort of thing? If not I > > suppose I could set up a cron job to perform the query and update the > > table every 10 minutes or so... > > > > I've searched for things like "temporary tables", "index tables" and > > "dynamic tables" but haven't really found anything particularly useful. > > > > Any thoughts? > > > > Cheers, > > Richard > > > > > > You coultd try a "view" if you are using mysql 5, not sure how you do them > but it may be what you are after > > Stuart Thanks for this suggestion. I've just got around to upgrading my MySQL and trying it out. I found the VIEW syntax all right but unfortunately its a bit like a sort of "query template" and it actually /performs/ the defining SELECT statement every time you make a query on the view. So, of course, that doesn't solve the problem because it stills takes around 10 seconds to execute. However, I have been reading the (woeful) MySQL manual and have found that you can create a table using a SELECT statement to define and populate it /and/ it lets you add a FULLTEXT index at creation time. So I've done this and it works great. Of course, the table takes around 10 seconds to create but I only need to re-build it every few hours and, because its one table with a FULLTEXT index, queries are really quick. I just thought I'd let you know how I got on... Cheers, Richard -- --------------------------- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ ---------------------------

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Gnome Screenshot
by Wayne Stallwood 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

I am still trying to work my way through the remaining xgl related bugs on my system. Here is another one "Take a screenshot" works from the gnome menu..however my prt sc button used to launch this as well. Since getting compiz going it seems to be broken. xev gives me the following for the button press KeyPress event, serial 29, synthetic NO, window 0x4400001, root 0x52, subw 0x0, time 437305737, (232,143), root:(252,233), state 0x0, keycode 111 (keysym 0xff61, Print), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: XFilterEvent returns: False KeyRelease event, serial 29, synthetic NO, window 0x4400001, root 0x52, subw 0x0, time 437305825, (232,143), root:(252,233), state 0x0, keycode 111 (keysym 0xff61, Print), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: If I run the keyboard shortcuts wizard thing from the Gnome menu I get the following Take a screenshot print Take a screenshot of a window <alt>print Interestingly if I try to reset the first one I get the following message "The shortcut "Print" cannot be used because it will become unusable to type using this key." Setting it to <crtl>Print doesn't work either. Somebody told me that there may be something in gconf-editor for this...but I can't find it at the moment...any other ideas ? I've been all over the Ubuntu wiki and the dapper forums to no avail

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Training for a non-profit organisation.
by rob page 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

Hello all, I'm currently doing some voluntary consulting for a non-profit organisation. They've been using Linux for a while, mostly due to the political aspect, however due to a number of problems with it, they were considering switching back to Windows entirely, but I've agreed to help implement a dual-boot solution so they can stay with Linux, whilst still have Windows available for when they need it. During my first session with them, one of the things they mentioned, was that while it is very easy for them to get funding to buy capital (ie, software), it is much much harder for them to get funding for training. In short, does anyone know of any cheap (ideally free, but I'm aware this is unlikely) Linux training courses in the Norfolk area aimed at teaching a fairly non-technical user basic Linux administration. Thanks, Rob.

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BOM software
by Guy Eastwood 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

Yikes that Compiere wants 6gb of Oracle installing! However a search for 'ERP' yielded TinyERP (in apt, no less!) so I'm giving that chap a go. was a faff to setup but seems to be going now, anyway :o) G

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Wanted: USB 2.0 PCI Card
by Simon Elliott 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

Hello, As you may or may not know, I recently purchased a second hand machine. It came with a whopping 6 USB ports, the big problem is - they're all USB 1.0 - And thus, slow as anything. It's taking over an hour to transfer a few gigabytes of data. Not acceptable seeing as I'm using the thing to back a lot of data up for burning to DVD... So I was wondering if anyone had a USB 2.0 PCI card, lying around, perhaps discarded in a drawer, but still looking for a new home that I could buy / scrounge / permanently borrow / take off their hands?? Thanks a lot.. -Simon (aka. Sionide ala IRC)

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BOM Software
by Guy Eastwood 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

Does anyone know of any BOM (Bill Of Materials) management software? Either standalone on Windoze or web-based (LAMP, etc) ? My sister is after something to do this for her jewellery design biz but I don't wanna write it (and have the pain of maintaining it) but I thought there must be a free thingy to do this somewhere so she doesn't fork out for something nuts like SAGEware or similar when there's no need to. G

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Linux Laptop from major supplier
by Ian bell 16 Mar '06

16 Mar '06

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X… Not the best but it's a start. Ian

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Ubuntu apt question
by Stuart Fox 16 Mar '06

16 Mar '06

Hi all Im new to the apt system, is ther a way to completely remove a virtual package and its dependencies? I've just put dapper on my laptop as an experiment and I want to replace gnome with kde (not starting a gnome/kde war, i just dont like gnome) I know I *could* just leave gnome in place but it urks me having all that *stuff* under the hood that I dont want there. Cheers Stuart -- The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

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MySQL Dynamic/index tables
by Richard Lewis 15 Mar '06

15 Mar '06

Hello ALUG, I hope you don't mind me asking a MySQL question here? I've got a very slow query on my database which uses a lot of LEFT JOINs in order to do a sort of keyword search across a number of tables. It seems to me that if I could create a sort of permanent temporary table which stores the result of this query, add a FULLTEXT index to it and then do my keyword searches on this table things would be a lot quicker. It would be like a sort of dynamic or index table because its contents would have to change as the other tables change - it would have to reflect the current state of the rest of the database. Does MySQL provide functionality to do this sort of thing? If not I suppose I could set up a cron job to perform the query and update the table every 10 minutes or so... I've searched for things like "temporary tables", "index tables" and "dynamic tables" but haven't really found anything particularly useful. Any thoughts? Cheers, Richard -- --------------------------- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ ---------------------------

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Kororaa Xgl Demo Live CD (Version 0.1) has been released
by Keith Watson 15 Mar '06

15 Mar '06

http://getkororaa.com/ Regards, Keith ____________ BAROMETER, n. - An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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Anyone want some work?
by Joe Button 15 Mar '06

15 Mar '06

Hi. One of our ex-clients has asked us to do some (unspecified) reconfiguration to their Debian server. Apparently we don't want to do it, but I've been asked if I could find any other takers. If interested please complete the following sentence: "I am good at reconfiguring debian servers because .........." and we will pick a winner at random out of a hat. Cheers, Joe

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RE: [ALUG] USB DVD Reader/Writer
by Keith Watson 15 Mar '06

15 Mar '06

> From: Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk > Sent: 14 March 2006 22:51 > Any further comments welome -- I've never dabbled yet in the > DVD world. Neither had I until recently, I found this very useful <http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/coasterless_dvd.htm> Regards, Keith ____________ We don't see the world as IT is. We see it as WE are. - Anaïs Nin

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Free to a good (or bad) home
by Wayne Stallwood 15 Mar '06

15 Mar '06

I am having a bit of a clear out and just stumbled across the following bits...all free to anyone willing to come and get them...If not then I'll bring them to the next hardware meet. eMachines eTower 700ir Mini Tower PC Fitted with Celeron 700,Heatsink/Fan, Mainboard (Intel 810 chipset),CD-ROM,Modem and a floppy drive...Everything else has been robbed. Integrated Video and Audio, no AGP slot, 3 PCI's. Seems to run fine with a test PSU and some RAM (PC100 DIMM)...you'll probably have to junk the case because the PSU is one of the less common sizes. Plextor SCSI (SCA connection) SCSI CD ROM. 40x speed. DXR3/Hollywood hardware (DVD playback) Mpeg card, Drivers to make it work with Xine exist. Strange Compaq all in one PC (integrated monitor etc) with a Massive 8MB RAM and bohemouth 400MB Hard drive I believe it has a 486DX2/66 Processor. Works. Was going to be part of a long forgotten MiniITX project so now heading for the bin (unless anyone wants to save it)

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USB DVD Reader/Writer
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 15 Mar '06

15 Mar '06

Hi Folks, Can experienced persons recommend an external USB DVD reader and writer which works well with Linux? (I would be driving it from a Red Hat 9 laptop). Also: would there be any problems writing files to it from filesystems on other machines which are NFS-mouted on the laptop? (I would chiefly want to use this to make backups of large chunks of filespace, and there would not be space on the laptop to clone the files from the other machines, only one of which has a USB port which may or may not be OK for this -- SuSE 7.1 from around 2000). Thanks for any advice, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 14-Mar-06 Time: 16:58:34 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Windows Vista UI
by Wayne Stallwood 14 Mar '06

14 Mar '06

It's always worth looking at beta's of upcoming OS releases to see where they are heading...you never know there may be one or two good ideas that should be in Linux....But looking at these shots of Vista I am wondering if MS have sacked half their UI team (if they haven't they should do) http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1931914,00.asp Check out the media player shot non standard widgets, confusing boundaries between content tree and content files, media buttons that force you to mouse down to the bottom middle of the screen....madness or unfamiliarity clouding my opinion ? We stuck IE7 preview on a spare XP machine at work, same UI issues, looks pretty but is totally unusable for power users...The only good thing I would like to see implemented in firefox is the tab preview button that gives a screen of thumbnails of all current tabs.

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Wireless "N"etworking
by Martin John Collins 14 Mar '06

14 Mar '06

Evening all, Slowly but surely my Linux knowledge is growing but I have always avoided the big "N" as the alien terminology tends to make my head spin after about 5 mins of reading! But I'm going to give it a go. A full tutorial through the LUG is not what I'm after, but a few pointers of where to start would be appreciated. There's a desktop in the lounge (which will be the server) connected by cable to a Linksys wireless broadband router for ADSL internet access. My laptop connects to the internet wirelessly (ndiswrapper) through the router. Both machines connect to the router via DHCP and there are firewalls enabled on the desktop, the laptop and internally on the router. In the next couple of months I will be putting another desktop in my son's bedroom upstairs. All three machines will be running SUSE 10.0 All I really want is one shared folder on the server for moving files around all machines and for the laptop and upstairs desktop to be able to print to the printer connected to the desktop server. I don't know what route to go. I've read a little about internet printing protocol and configuring cups but that only covers the printing. Samba seems to address both but my first initial attempts have failed. I set up the workgroup COLLINS-NET through the SAMBA SERVER module in YAST which also opens up a firewall port on the server. I then configure the SAMBA CLIENT through YAST on the laptop and after entering the username and password it seems to connect (this is only after I shut down the laptop firewall manually - God knows what port the SAMBA CLIENT needs open!). However when I try to browse the network through konqueror "smb://collins-net/" I get the error "could not connect to host for smb://collins-net/". So I don't know - is SAMBA the way to go or is there a simpler solution? Your comments suggestions would be much appreciated. In the meantime I'm shutting down now and going for a sit down with a beer and a SuSE 9.2 Administration Guide!!! Cheers, Martin

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MySQL on Ubuntu 5.10
by David Noble 14 Mar '06

14 Mar '06

Hi!, After getting my bulletin board to work on my Debian system, I decided that as it wasn't using too many resources I might as well move it onto (another) old school computer (Celeron 600; 64m ram)... I performed a fresh installation of Ubuntu 5.10 (server), as I had a disc lying about. I installed the 'dev tools'(?) package, copied the MySQL source over to the machine, unpacked, ran configure (with relevant options). This worked, found gcc, g++, and all that, but came to a grinding halt, reporting "no curses/termcap library found". I checked that I had ncurses installed- I have ncurses-base. However, an "apt-get install ncurses-devel", or an "apt-get ncurses-dev" returns no results. What should I do- I don't seem to be able to find any relevant .deb packages on the 'net. I also have no internet access to this ubuntu machine as I am at <strike>prison</strike> school. Any suggestions appreciated, Dave.

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locale problem - what has changed to cause this?
by Chris Green 13 Mar '06

13 Mar '06

Until a couple of days ago I had my locales working OK, I just had all the LC_xxx environment variables set to their default value of "C" except for LC_TYPE set to "en_GB". This allowed accented characters to work correctly in mutt and tin. However something I have done over the weekend has broken this, now whenever I start tin for example I get the message:- Can't set the specified locale! If I set LC_CTYPE back to the default "C" then the message goes away so, for some reason, setlocale() cant find then "en_GB" locale. I've tried some other locales and I get the same message so I seem to have lost all of them. I haven't *really* lost all of them, the locale database is still in place at /usr/lib/locale. The most likely candidate for breaking this as far as I can see is that I upgraded the glibc library to get the latest Bluefish to work. What I don't know is how to get my locale database working again. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

2 3

Thunderbird and Sent-Mail
by linux＠davebriggs.net 13 Mar '06

13 Mar '06

Hi chaps Does anyone know if it is possible to get Thunderbird to download messages in the sent-mail folder of an inbox as well as those that are in the inbox itself? I tend to use a webmail interface to check emails while I am at work, and it's annoying that any sent from there don't download onto my machine at home. Any help appreciated. Cheers Dave

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New Mail Notification Evolution
by Richard 13 Mar '06

13 Mar '06

Hello, Does anyone know how to make the New Mail Notification applet for Evolution display in the GNOME Notificiation Area? I've got evolution-plugins installed and the plugin is ticked in Evolution's plugins list. I've also found the option to make Evolution beep when new mail arrives but I'd like to be able to "close" Evolution and have a little icon in the Notification Area which lets me know when new mail arrives. (Plus, my machine has a bit of a problem with beeping...) Cheers, Richard --------------------------- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ ---------------------------

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 13 Mar '06

13 Mar '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

1 0

XGL on Ubuntu
by Wayne Stallwood 12 Mar '06

12 Mar '06

Anybody played with XGL yet....just upgraded my machine to Ubuntu dapper 6.04 ? Looks like getting XGL and Compiz working on a 64bit machine is "fun" at the moment but I am going to give it a try later. Slightly put of by all the warnings on the forums that it is highly unstable at the moment...but hey nothing ventured and all that. Apart from that the dapper upgrade went fairly well (considering Ubuntu are currently considering holding off the scheduled release for 6 weeks to tidy up the remaining bugs) I had a slight problem with Openoffice2 during the upgrade but removing the installation packages and then reinstalling after everything else was upgraded seems to fix it...at least all the important stuff seems to be working, but the default theme is still a bit of a mess.

2 5

Best Linux Out There?
by Simon Royal 12 Mar '06

12 Mar '06

Hi I have posted a few posting for opinions on some distributions of Linux and have still not come to any conclusions. What is the best Linux out there in terms of user interface, compatibility with 3 party hardware and general range of software available. I know more and more software developers and producing linux versions of their software but I want to run Linux on a laptop with wireless internet, any suggestions please. Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.simonroyal.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac

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iso burning with cdrecord
by Ian bell 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

I've been wanting to try out syllable from this moths LXF cover disk which involves buring a (bootable) iso file to a CDR. This is casuing me some grief and only a small amount of success. I tried two different windows progs on the wife's (XP) laptop, Nero and Sonic - neither works. The I downloaded a free CD burner for windows, tried the 'burn iso' option, gave it the file name and bingo it worked. So at least I know the iso file is OK. The I dug out my old Iomega 4X USB 1.0 burner and plugged it into my Slackware laptop. As roo cdrecord -scanbus shows the drive OK. However, according to LXF all I need to do to burn the iso is: cdrecord -v dev=1,0,0 isofilename.iso cdrecord goes off and writes a file of the right size, I can see where it has been burned on the disk but it don't boot. What am I doing wrong? Ian

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Virtual K(V)M
by Peter Onion 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

Does anyone know of any existing tools/programs that allow a single keyboard and mouse to be switched between multiple machines ? For example, if I move the mouse off the left edge of host1's screen I would like it to appear at the right edge of host2's screen. I've already been looking at evdev and that seems like a good starting point. Sometimes 4 keyboards and mice get in the way ! And please don't reply with "buy a KVM" because that would be a kludge ! Peter

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CPU temperature monitoring
by Chris Green 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

My computer happily tells me how hot all the bits are and allows me to set alarms etc. but doesn't give me a clue as to what is 'too hot'. So, what sort of temeperatures are reasonable to see for 'CPU' and 'System'? Currently the CPU is 56 degrees celsius. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Re: Re: [ALUG] Best Linux Out There?
by Peter 10 Mar '06

10 Mar '06

There is a lot to be said for Mandriva. It has very comprehensive set of configuration guis - most ALUG people do not need them, but its nice for the rest of us. It will install all the desktop environments you will ever want with no strain. Its easier to install new stuff than Suse because you do not seem to get caught in the endless circle of dependencies as much. It is quite stable. There are lots of rpms for it. I prefer it to Suse, which I have installed with a couple of people, and have had some irritations with. The only real criticism is that moving from version to version is a bit problematic, and you have to agree with what most informed people say, that it is a bit ridiculous to have to do a clean install for every major upgrade. But this applies to everything except Debian or maybe also Gentoo. I think Suse is a bit better, it has a sort of cleanup tool, which seems to work. if you want Debian based, and you want simple and ordinary user friendly, its worth looking at PCLinux and Mepis. Both use apt for packaging. Both come on one CD. PCL has all the Mandriva admin stuff. Worth a serious look. Both are only KDE, but you can add Gnome easily enough. The one I really like is elive. That is a work of art. From the country that brought you the Trappist Triple, and the paintings of Breughel, and you know it as soon as it starts up.... If you want fairly stripped down and reasonably fast for an old machine, Vector and Vector Soho are not bad. If you want super stripped down and very fast for a very old machine, DSL. But if you want to laugh aloud, elive. Peter

1 0

15" monitor for a poor student
by Paul 10 Mar '06

10 Mar '06

Hi Simon (Cyanide ?) Didn't note your email addy last night... Have a Compaq 15" monitor sitting here - Contact me off list and we can make arrangements for it's collection sometime next week. Regards, Paul.

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RE: [ALUG] Best Linux Out There?
by Keith Watson 09 Mar '06

09 Mar '06

> From: Simon Royal Sent: 09 March 2006 14:52 > > Hi > > I have posted a few posting for opinions on some > distributions of Linux and have still not come to any conclusions. > > What is the best Linux out there in terms of user interface, > compatibility with 3 party hardware and general range of > software available. > > I know more and more software developers and producing linux > versions of their software but I want to run Linux on a > laptop with wireless internet, any suggestions please. > My personal favourite is the latest release of Ubuntu (5.10 - Breezy Badger). I've found that it seems to support everything pretty much out of the box and seems to be good at recognising laptop h/w. See <http://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportMachinesLaptops?highlight=%28lapt op%29> for more info. Being based on Debian using Synaptic to keep the system up to date is a doddle. I haven't tried the next release (6.04 Dapper Drake) so can't say how much improvement there's been between it and 5.10, but I found 5.10 to be a lot better then the previous Warty Warthog release and, hopefully, Dapper will improve on 5.10 as much. Try going over to the Ubuntu wiki site <http://wiki.ubuntu.com> and searching for pages with Dapper, Laptop or Wireless in their titles. Lots of info. Regards, Keith ____________ The natural order of things includes us, and its laws are our laws. We are an endless moving stream in an endless moving stream. - Jisho Warner

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APT GPG error
by Richard Lewis 09 Mar '06

09 Mar '06

Does anyone know why I get the following warning message whenever I use apt-get update? W: GPG error: http://mirror.ox.ac.uk unstable Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 010908312D230C5F W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems Is it to do with the mirror.ox.ac.uk mirror? Or is it my set up? I also get a warning when I use apt-get install and upgrade that the packages can't be authenticated which I assume is another symptom of the same problem. Does anyone know what it is? Cheers, Richard --------------------------- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ ---------------------------

2 3

CUPS
by Andy Trevor 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

Hi guys, anyone know if it is possible via CUPS to tag the bottom of each page with the user ID that printed it ? This is aimed at schools where the users are less than careful with their paper usage. I have generic quotas per user per printer per day but would like to know easily who printed what. -- Regards Andy Trevor Technical Director Cutter Project Limited Tel: 07840988311 Fax: 08704781495 http:www.cutterproject.co.uk -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 06 Mar '06

06 Mar '06

The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 9th March. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. People will be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. Topics for discussion will no doubt be as varied as ever. The Reindeer has a reasonable selection of beer as well as decent coffee (with biscuits, if you're lucky). Directions to the Reindeer can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/reindeer.html Pictures of some of the regulars, and irregulars, and, well, just some pictures of people that might or might not turn up are available from: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2006-02-ALUG/ (this was the last meet) http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for. We're /normally/ just to the left of the main entrance, though sometimes we've ended up at the far end of the pub beside the pool table, as there are comfy seats at that end. J. -- 101 things you can't have too | .''`. Debian GNU/Linux Developer much of : 41 - Tea. | : :' : Happy to accept PGP signed | `. `' or encrypted mail - RSA + | `- DSA keys on the keyservers.

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KDE System/Storage Media
by Richard Lewis 06 Mar '06

06 Mar '06

Hello list, This is an extremely non-urgent question: I recently did a fresh install of Debian unstable (20060219) from DVDs on my laptop. I use KDE (3.5.1) and have found that the handy little icons for my media storage devices from the URI system:/media (or just media:/, I think its the same thing) have all gone except for the mounted hard disk! I used to have ones for my /unmounted/ CD drive and my /unmounted/ USB stick. They re-appear when I mount either device but I'd like to have them available all the time. (Not for any good reason, I just like them!) They're also not present on KDE's Media Storage panel applet (which I guess probably uses the media:/ URI to get its information). I've looked around the KDE Control Centre and the /usr/share/kde -like and ~/.kde directories but I can't seem to find how the Media Storage section of the system:/ location is controlled. Does anyone how I may be able to make them come back? Cheers, Richard

1 0

Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 06 Mar '06

06 Mar '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

1 0

DMA errors
by Barry Samuels 06 Mar '06

06 Mar '06

Wayne Many thanks for your help it is much appreciated. On 2006.03.03 23:06, Wayne Stallwood wrote: > On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 22:11 +0000, Barry Samuels wrote: > > > > to get a full drive status and test results...if you can't make > > > sense of them then post the results here. > > > > Results below. > > Looks to be shot I am afraid, however your drive has warranty until > this time next year so I'd copy your system over to another drive and > get that one sent away on a RMA request. > > The logged errors are showing as external interface errors, but the > internal self test failed at block 49372246. Usually this means that > the drive has so many bad sectors that it cannot remap any > more..currently your drive thinks it has remapped 208 sectors. > > You'd probably find that if you ran badblocks on it (be very very > careful with badblocks some of the options will overwrite all the > data in a particularly unrecoverable way) you would find some bad > sectors scattered all over it....Check your backups and replace it > ASAP is my advice. Badblocks had got up to 1700+ bad blocks when I finally stopped it. This, incidentally, appears to affect only one partition. > One more thing..for a 7200 RPM drive I would say that 51 degrees is a > little on the warm side...Even my music server which is in a really > poorly vented NAS box case with no fans other than a sub miniature > case fan has a 7200 RPM drive that has never been over about 42C > > Whether this has caused the failure (through bad case ventilation) or > is a symptom of the failure I am not sure...I would check the temp of > the other drive though. If that is equally high then I'd consider a > case fan. On a standard ATX case there is sometimes a place for a fan > in front of the drive bays..put a fan to suck air in on this > position...if there isn't a space there then put in a rear fan (which > should be set to blow air out). One thing that I'm really good at is forgetting - in fact I would say I'm a 'Master' on that subject. I have only just realised that this problem coincides with the fitting of a hard drive silencing kit. Removing that from the drive reduces the temperature to 21 degrees. The case cooling is fine. It has one fan at the front and one at the back and both are 120mm. CPU temperatures are also fine. The silencing kit and the drive came from the same retailer so I shall tackle them about it. It certainly appears that the silencing kit has caused the overheating and damage. I already have a duplicate drive in the case which is mirroring the working drive and I booted from the mirror drive yesterday to test it and it all works. I shall be swapping that as the working drive and the faulty one can go back with the silencing kit. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

2 1

Simple photo manager utility - recommendations
by Chris Green 05 Mar '06

05 Mar '06

What do others use as a file manager for photographs? I think what I'm after really is a simple file manager utility that shows files as thumbnail images rather than just filenames so I can see what the pictures are, select them and organise them in folders. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Routing/URL qustion
by Chris Green 05 Mar '06

05 Mar '06

I get my ADSL service from UKFSN and from the outside world my domain name is 84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net, I have my firewall set up so that HTTP requests get routed to my Slackware Linux box. In addition I have www.isbd.ltd.uk at Just-The-Name with web forwarding set up so that it routes HTTP requests to my home Linux system. Is there any way that I can set my home system so that URLs of the form http://www.isbd.ltd.uk/<something> will work from systems on the LAN behind the firewall? If it can be made to work for all systems that would be great but just the Linux box would be better than nothing. As it is it is quite difficult to be sure that when I post a URL (for an image I want to refer to in a mail for example) that it is correct. As it is at the moment if I go to:- http://isbd.ltd.uk/myimages/toggle.JPG The URL gets translated to:- http://84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net/myimages/toggle.JPG which is correct, but I get a wierd error page which says:- Object Not Found The requested URL '/myimages/toggle.JPG' was not found on the RomPager server. Return to last page Maybe I've got the URL wrong but, if so, how do I diagnose it? There is nothing in the apache error log. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

2 1

DMA errors
by Barry Samuels 05 Mar '06

05 Mar '06

My computer has 1 main (primary) IDE drive of 250GB. Recently I have added anothe 250GB drive onto the same cable as secondary. At a set time during the night changed files from the primary drive are backed up onto the secondary drive using Find/CPIO. When this backup happens I get many of the following errors in my logs: Mar 3 07:35:16 dataman1 kernel: hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError}, LBAsect=440937085, high=26, low=4729469, sector=232525840 Mar 3 07:35:16 dataman1 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:02 (hda), sector 232525840 Mar 3 07:35:16 dataman1 kernel: hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } The values vary but the messages are basically the same. After the backup at 1:00 AM there are no more messages until Cron Daily is run at 7:30 AM when they repeat. However after that, whatever I do on the computer, there are no more DMA error messages until the next backup. This did not happen at all until the new drive was installed and the backup sessions started. Both drives are set for UDMA5 (it says in the BIOS). I don't see why these errors should occur for hda as it is only being read during the backup whereas hdb is being written to but then I don't know anything about DMA. I tried changing UDMA5 to UDMA3 on hda to no effect. It is now back to UDMA5. I would dearly like some suggestions from the experts. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Humax PVR9200T and Linux per USB -- any experiences?
by Jan T. Kim 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

Dear list, The PVR-9200T is a DVB-T receiver / HD recorder with an USB interface, see http://www.humaxdigital.com/uk/products/pvr-9200t.asp Does anyone here know what the USB interface has to offer from a Linux perspective? The technical specification and user manual are not too informative, they just indicate that there is some "media eLinker.exe" program included, which allows copying recorded video from the recorder's hard disk to a computer, but it's not clear to me whether I could also do this with Linux (the docs just mention the Windows software and don't provide any technical details about the device's USB port). Ideally, I would like to simply mount the recorder's HD and copy the recording in question to some more permanent storage -- but does the PVR-9200T implement the USB mass storage class? Best regards, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | email: jtk(a)cmp.uea.ac.uk | | WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*

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my computer frozes at boot loading
by Paul, Jean R 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

I am wondering if anyone has encountered the same problems. I have installed dual boot with Mandrake 10 and windows XP. When i turn on my computer if either frozes before the LILO or restarts after i have chosen the operating. Recently when Windows was chosen the computer didn't load XP at all. In addition while i am working with linux, the computer frozes at any time, or just reboots. i would appreciate any help from people who have had the same experience with their PC.

6 5

"keyring camera"
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Hi Folks, Does anyone either have (and be willing to sell for a reasonable price), or know where in the Norwich/ K.Lynn/Ely/Cambridge/BSE area one could buy, one of those little "keyring" style digital cameras (e.g. Phillips 007, but not necessarily)? Flash not required, but reasonably decent photo quality is desirable. The usual shops, even specialist digitial photo shops, don't seem to have such things at the moment, but maybe I'm not searching web sites efficiently. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 02-Mar-06 Time: 16:32:22 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

2 1

RE: [ALUG] "keyring camera"
by Keith Watson 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

> From: Keith Watson Sent: 02 March 2006 16:40 > > From: Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk Sent: 02 March 2006 16:32 > > > > Hi Folks, > > > > Does anyone either have (and be willing to sell for a reasonable > > price), or know where in the Norwich/ K.Lynn/Ely/Cambridge/BSE area > > one could buy, one of those little "keyring" style digital cameras > > (e.g. Phillips 007, but not necessarily)? > > > > Flash not required, but reasonably decent photo quality is > desirable. > > > > The usual shops, even specialist digitial photo shops, > don't seem to > > have such things at the moment, but maybe I'm not searching > web sites > > efficiently. > > > > With thanks, > > Ted. > > <http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=35313&DOY=#DOY&criteria=#c riteria> > > Regards, > > Keith > ____________ > Live life as life lives itself. - Zen Proverb Unfortunately doesn't seen to be Linux compatible. Regards, Keith ____________ CLAIRVOYANT, n. Persons who have the power of seeing that which is invisible to their patrons, namely, that they are fools. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

2 1

RE: [ALUG] "keyring camera"
by Keith Watson 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

> From: Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk Sent: 02 March 2006 16:32 > > Hi Folks, > > Does anyone either have (and be willing to sell for a > reasonable price), or know where in the Norwich/ > K.Lynn/Ely/Cambridge/BSE area one could buy, one of those > little "keyring" style digital cameras (e.g. Phillips 007, > but not necessarily)? > > Flash not required, but reasonably decent photo quality is desirable. > > The usual shops, even specialist digitial photo shops, don't > seem to have such things at the moment, but maybe I'm not > searching web sites efficiently. > > With thanks, > Ted. http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=35313&DOY=#DOY&criteria=#cr iteria Regards, Keith ____________ Live life as life lives itself. - Zen Proverb

1 0

transfer pictures cured
by robert 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

I found out that all i had to do was to send a picture message direct to my email address,though i might have to print it out first before i can use it(A4 size). Robert

5 8

Transferring pictures
by robert 01 Mar '06

01 Mar '06

I was just wondering whether you can transfer pictures from a mobile phone to a compter with Linux on.On Suse 9.2 my Sony Ericsson registers but only the modem in it.The phone came with a pc disk but only works on Windows XP which i don't have(hence Linux).My phone is Sony Ericsson k608i Thanks Robert

4 5

Charity Webhosting
by Tony 01 Mar '06

01 Mar '06

Can anyone recommend a reliable host for a local registered charity (based in Suffolk). I'm looking for Linux hosting with PHP and MySQL. I don't expect a lot of bandwidth use initially - their previous website had hardly any hits but hopefully with some fresh ideas, useage will increase. They are reforming with a new name so domain name (.co.uk) required. They are a charity that provide support to the voluntary and community sector throughout Mid Suffolk and serve other charities. They are quite happy for the hosts logo to be displayed on the site (provided it is not too overpowering!). Chances are that follow up business will follow from other charities so would be interested in details of what the host can offer on a commercial basis in respect of business introduced from other charities (and non charities). Main thing I am looking for is reliablility with very little down time. Also daily backups would be good as the site will be dynamically produced. Thanks Tony

4 3

RE: [ALUG] Windows Vista UI
by Keith Watson 01 Mar '06

01 Mar '06

> From: Wayne Stallwood Sent: 01 March 2006 00:30 > > What do we think the implications will be for Linux when > Vista becomes available, will the KDE team try to follow on a > similar path ? Will Gnome look really old and outdated to > users coming from Windows ? well, I think Gnome, KDE, et.al. are already streets ahead when it comes to theming the UI anyway. Whenever I have non-linux aware friends/family looking over my shoulder when I'm using my system they nearly always remark on how great my "Windows" theme looks. Regards, Keith ____________ 'I can see nobody on the road.' said Alice. 'I only wish I had such eyes,' said the King 'to be able to see Nobody! And at this distance too!' - Lewis Carroll

1 0

miniBB
by David Noble 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Do any of you have much experience in editing the php.ini file? I compiled php without the mysql option, and although the phpinfo function and other basic functions work, for some reason I can't connect to mysql from php. I am able to connect to mysql directly; and it appears to function normally otherwise. Cheers, Dave.

2 1

Cant enable DMA
by Ben Whyte 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Hi guys Appreciate all the assistance that anyone can provide. I have an ABIT IG-80 motherboard, which uses an intel 915 chipset. When I do an hdparm -t -T /dev/hda I get the following result /dev/hda: Timing cached reads: 3928 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1963.32 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 8 MB in 3.32 seconds = 2.41 MB/sec Now the drive is a 200gb, pata drive and when I try and activate DMA using hdparm -d1 /dev/hda it comes back with /dev/hda: setting using_dma to 1 (on) HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted using_dma = 0 (off) I am using the defualt debian kernel 2.6.15. Any ideas as to why it wont let me activate DMA ? Ben

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Irony....
by Peter Onion 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

"We don't want customers to be forced into buying something that isn't going to meet all their needs," said Barry Goffe, Microsoft's director of Windows client product management. Strikes me as ironic ! Peter

1 0

Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

1 0

Once again I try - and fail!
by Barry Samuels 25 Feb '06

25 Feb '06

I had some help from the group a little while ago when I was trying to get my Thinkpad to boot from an external (USB/IDE) drive and, with various peoples' help I finally suceeded. Now I'm trying to do the same thing with a drive from another computer. I'm part way there but during boot I see: pivot_root: No such file or directory /sbin/init: 431: cannot open dev/console: No such file kernel panic: Attempted to kill init! Then the process proceeds with a few more lines about USB and SCSI until: Attached scsi disk sda at scsi1, ... etc Attached scsi generic sg1 at scsi1, ... etc and here it stops. I don't remember seeing these errors on my previous attempt. Any suggestions (in the nicest possible way of course) would be appreciated. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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[ALUG Announce] Autistic GNU/Linux User Group http://autisticlug.org/
by MJ Ray 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- From: Steve Parkes Like many Linux users and contributers I am on the Autistic spectrum. Over the last few years I have ranted over and over at friends and colleagues about how existing LUGS are failing their membership I took the logical next step and formed a LUG for people on the Autistic spectrum or with co-morbid communication and self esteem issues. The Autistic GNU/Linux User Group is open to anybody on the Autistic Spectrum, with other communication or social issues or who wishes to be a friend of people with these problems. Membership is open to anybody using or interested in using a Unix™ like system with particular emphasis on Free and Open Source Software. We have a mailing list where people can geek out and no question or comment is considered off-topic from the uber deep geekery of kernel development to the newbie questions about ls, a wiki for knowledge management and hope to provide a link to local LUGS via our membership so our members can reach out into the wider Linux community and meet like minded people. With the support of mailing lists from lug.org.uk we hope to provide a worldwide virtual LUG with a membership stretching around the glode making visits to events and meetings anywhere in the world an enjoyable experience for people on the spectrum. http://autisticlug.org/ Please forward this message to anybody you think may be interesting in joining the LUG or helping support autistic Linux users when visiting your LUG. cheers sparkes ----- 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

2 1

Icon editor - any ideas?
by Chris Green 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

I am looking for a simple icon editor for my Slackware system. The only two Linux icon editors I can find are babygimp (which almost works on my system but I get a perl error when it runs) and kIconEdit which seems to want an ancient version of QT for it to build. Does anyone have any other ideas (like should I just use gimp?). -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

3 3

That old SCO chestnut.
by Ten 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

I'm sure a lot of us have spent a fair amount of time reading about and discussing this matter, so if you've been living underground and don't know what the heck I'm on about, I shan't recant at length about it - a swift google or a look at http://www.linux.org/news/sco/timeline.html will see you right. So anyway, I expect people have heard about this, but here's some links anyway: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060221220214214 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060223040825533 Ignoring the unnecessary crowing for a minute, I'm skeptical about how IBM are going to make anything of this, but wouldn't it be marvellous if they did? I'll bet the direct subpoena to MS is nothing more than an empty gesture evidence-wise, but there might just be a chance of catching them by the BayStars. I'm not of the ilk that wring their hands and chant at night over the fate of Microsoft, but I can't help thinking that if their supreme arrogance dropped them in serious guano over a silly legal feint like this, the line of sympathisers would be mighty short. Ten. -- There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.

1 0

[ALUG Announce] Monitors
by Laslett Studio 22 Feb '06

22 Feb '06

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- I have several monitors that need a good home -- I can't guarentee they all still work -- but they did when they went in the garage -- I am in Norwich You can call me 01603 617632 Patrick ----- 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

2 1

Convert a photo (.JPG) to an icon - how?
by Chris Green 22 Feb '06

22 Feb '06

This is probably a trivial question, but still.... How can I convert a photograph (probably stored as a JPEG file) to an icon file that I can use as my favicon? It would be useful if, on the way, some sort of tone separation process was available to make it work better as an icon too. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

2 2

Bash script to test serial ports
by Stuart Bailey 22 Feb '06

22 Feb '06

HI, I'm trying to test serial ports using a bash script. Currently I have: DATA="1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" stty -F /dev/ttyS0 ispeed 115200 ospeed 115200 stty -F /dev/ttyS1 ispeed 115200 ospeed 115200 echo -n " Sending data from /dev/ttyS0 to /dev/ttyS1:" ./send_data.sh /dev/ttyS0 $DATA & exec 3</dev/ttyS1 while read -t 2 -u 4 RESULT do if [[ "$RESULT" == "$DATA" ]] then echo " PASSED" else echo " FAILED" fi done I repeat this script for data in the other direction. This seems to work fine if a cable is connected between the two ports, and data transfers are successful. However, if the first time round, but if no cable is connected between ttyS0 and ttyS1, the first test reports FAILED, and then the script hangs. BTW the send_data script is a follows: sleep 1 echo $2 > $1 2>/dev/null I thought the read -t 2 ... should timeout after 2 seconds if no data is received. Any idea why this hangs? Also, is there a better way to test these ports? The system I am trying to test is limited - perl and awk are not installed. Many thanks, Stuart. -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) Linux Specialist (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ----------------------------------------

2 2

64bit computing on the cheap
by Wayne Stallwood 20 Feb '06

20 Feb '06

Anybody interested in mucking about with an Alpha box ? I have a spare one now due to an upgrade, AlphaServer 1000 Big unit but not as noisy or power hungry/space heating as it looks. 1GB of RAM, complete with ECC parity modules. 266 Mhz Alpha processor (a bit faster than it sounds) 7 hot swap bays ( a selection of drives will be supplied to go in these, mostly 2.1GB units but I do have at least one 4.3 to go in there) Dat drive (untested) Had it running the Debian alpha port...it can also run OpenVMS (hobby licence is available for free still I think) and Tru64 (again you'll need a licence) or Windows NT (not much point, there are hardly any binaries available) or BSD Unit is currently set to a local (VGA monitor PS2 KB/mouse) console but I can reconfigure for serial console if required. ECU floppy included for hardware configuration and I'll shove in a Ethernet card that Debian understands easily. Any offer considered...otherwise it is going on Ebay Also may have a DSSI disk array/host adaptor and disks, depending on if I get time to wipe them...However these need the Array controllers reconfiguring (which requires a special serial lead) and I have never been able to get the adaptors to play on Debian anyway. Also they are 6x2.1GB which hardly seems worth the effort.

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 20 Feb '06

20 Feb '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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FW: UKUUG Spring Conference 2006 - Durham, 21-23 March
by Alasdair G Kergon 20 Feb '06

20 Feb '06

The UKUUG's annual Large Installation Systems Administration (LISA) conference will take place in Durham from Tuesday 21st to Thursday 23rd March 2006: http://www.ukuug.org/events/spring2006/ This is the UK's only conference aimed specifically at systems and network administrators. It attracts a large number of professionals from sites of all shapes and sizes. As well as the technical talks, the conference provides a friendly environment for delegates to meet, learn, and enjoy lively debate on a host of subjects. The conference itself will be preceded by a full-day tutorial on "Managing Samba 3.0", with core Samba developer Gerald Carter joining us from the US. Delegates then have a choice of two workshops on the first morning of the main conference: "LDAP in depth", or "Firewalling with OpenBSD's PF packet filter". The main conference stream will focus on systems administration: the nuts and bolts of running large computer installations. The keynote will be given by James Youngman, now of Google Inc, who will be giving us the low down on how Google's systems are put together. This year, for the first time, we have almost an entire stream dedicated to a BSD MiniCon, and are pleased to welcome Dru Lavigne who will be joining us from Canada, as well as a number of speakers from the UK BSD community. We hope you will be able to join us in Durham for what is set to be one of our biggest and best conferences of recent years. -- Ray Miller, UKUUG - the UK's Unix and Open Systems User Group http://www.ukuug.org

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FOSDEM: Brussels, Sat 25 - Sun 26 Feb 2006
by Alasdair G Kergon 19 Feb '06

19 Feb '06

The purpose of this email is to invite you to attend the 6th FOSDEM on the weekend of 25th and 26th of February 2006 in Brussels. Previous events were hugely successful with more than 3000 developers coming from all over the world to attend talks given by famous figures of the Free Software and Open Source community. See http://www.fosdem.org/ for more information. This year's speakers include: Alex Russell, Project Leader of the Dojo Toolkit Axel Hecht, Member of Mozilla Europe's Board of Directors. Crispin Cowan, Architect of the AppArmor Project David Roundy, Lead Developer of the Darcs Project Geert Bevin, Lead Developer of RIFE Greg Stein, One of the Early Designers of the Subversion Project Ian Pratt, Leader and Chief Architect of the Xen Project Jan Janak, Core Team Member of SER (The SIP Express Router) Jason Huggins, Original Author and Core Team Member of Selenium Jean-Marc Valin, Main Author and Maintainer of Speex Jeff Waugh, The Challenge of the GNU/Linux Desktop Jon Haslam, DTrace Project Jon Trowbridge, Maintainer of Beagle Julian Seward, valgrind Founder and Project Lead Mark Spencer, Founder of Asterisk Massimiliano Pala, OpenCA Project Manager and Chief Designer Michael Meeks, OpenOffice.org Richard M Stallman, Leader of the FSF Tomasz Kojm, Original Author and Project Leader of ClamAV Uriel M. Pereira, Plan 9 Hacker And many others who will be giving talks and tutorials... Several Free or Open Source Software projects have decided to hold a meeting during FOSDEM. It is a great occasion to meet core developers in the following developers' rooms: Ada, Calibre, GNU Classpath, Debian, Embedded softwares, Gentoo, GNOME, GNUStep, Jabber, KDE, Linux on Laptops, Mozilla, Opengroupware, openSUSE, Tcl/Tk, X.org. All those rooms have an internal schedule, including talks and presentations from lead developers. Don't miss other FOSDEM initiatives like the Key Signing Party, or the LPI exams. FOSDEM's goal is to provide Free Software and Open Source developers and communities the opportunity to learn and discuss the latest developments in the Free and Open Source arena and to promote the development and the benefits of Free and Open Source solutions. The speakers mainly talk about technologies and make technical speeches. The event is totally free. This is a non-commercial event organised by people from the community. So we would like to thank our sponsors who have understood this and helped us making FOSDEM possible to happen this year again in the same spirit. Those include: O'Reilly, Google, Argon7, Canonical, ESCAUX, GNU/Linux Magazine France, Linux Magazine, Misc, Nokia, Novell, SUN Microsystems, Think Wize, Freshmeat.net, Linux Magazin, Sourceforge.net and all of our donators without who organizing such an event wouldn't be possible. We encourage you to support FOSDEM if you appreciate the event and want it to continue in the same spirit. More information about the FOSDEM 2006 support operation at: http://www.fosdem.org/2006/index/support/ We hope to see you there. The FOSDEM team pr(a)fosdem.org

1 0

Wirelessness and XP
by Peter 19 Feb '06

19 Feb '06

Has anyone encountered anything like the following? Start out with a netgear ADSL wireless router, new laptop, XP up to date, and coming into the admin interface of the router through a wired ethernet connection on another computer. Plug in, and the wireless network is recognised immediately. However there is no authentication or security, and it is recommended to change the SSID. I change it, and reboot the device. The old SSID is now shown in XP, along with the new name as a second network. In the admin interface for the router, at the top level, the new name is shown. Further down in the stack, the old name is shown - there are two menus, one where you change the SSID, the other where you allow or don't allow multiple SSIDs. It is in the second one that the old SSID shows up. Delete the old network in XP, and try to use the new one. Can't. Delete all of them in both machines, create a new one on the device. Now no network is visible, though the admin interface says its there, and the wlan light is on. Decide to try creating a new one, on the device. The old one, now supposedly deleted, now appears and can be connected to. What is going on, asks my friend? I spent a couple of hours on this in increasing embarassment, and not understanding at all what was happening. How could it be that networks which the router thought were there should not be visible from XP, and vice versa? Why did rebooting the device not seem to work as you'd expect? The devices by the way were on the same table top, so signal strength wasn't an issue. Was I missing something blindingly obvious? Thought wireless Linux was difficult, but its nothing compared to this! Peter

2 1

DHTML date format - where can I find a description?
by Chris Green 18 Feb '06

18 Feb '06

I'm playing with tables in TWiki and one of the parameters for a date column is "DHTML date format" which specifies the format of the date (I assume). However I can't find anywhere that documents it, does anyone have any suggestions - either where to find doucmentation or a basic description? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Could this happen on Linux?
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 18 Feb '06

18 Feb '06

Hi Folks, I've just been reading a shocking story on R-devel (the developers' mailing list for the R statistical programming language). Quote: "Over on R-help, the old problem of floating point precision has come up again (see my example below, where calling RSiteSearch can change the results of the var() function). The problem here is that on Windows many DLLs set the precision of the fpu to 53 bit mantissas, whereas R normally uses 64 bit mantissas. (Some Microsoft docs refer to these as 64 bit and 80 bit precision respectively, because they count the sign and exponent bits too). When R calls out to the system, if one of these DLLs gets control, it may change the precision and not change it back. This can happen for example in calls to display a file dialog or anything else where a DLL can set a hook; it's very hard to predict." In other words (if I understand aright), certain programs or processes can change the way the CPU functions when doing floating point arithmetic with the result that other programs will subsequently operate in a different FP environment and get different answers. I'd like to think that Linux was immune to this kind of thing, but can't see an a priori refutation of the possibility. What are the informed views on such a question? Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 18-Feb-06 Time: 16:12:56 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

1 0

Anyone for Fat Cat tonight?
by David Noble 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

Anyone for Fat Cat tonight? --Daven

2 1

Belkin PCI wireless card
by Ian bell 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

I am having some trouble configuring a newly acquired belkin wireless network card. I have it working but it is a kludge and I don't know why it works so I would like some advice. I have sorted the kernel module (rt2500.o) and I have added modprobe wlan0 to the end of rc.modules tp load it. It loads ok and I can ifconfig to my heart's content but it won't connect to my wireless router. I ran netconfig to set up dhcp but the client dhcpcd does not seem to get run. Running from the console does nothing but await the timeout. route shows just the local loopback. However, by accident I discovered that if I ran kwifi and configured the card to look for my router in infrastructure mode, then if I run dhcpcd wlan0 everything works. route shows that dhcp has made the necessary connections. OK I can do this manually every time but I don't understand what it is that kwifi is doing. Obviously there is a step I am missing somewhere. Can anyone help? I am running Slackare 10.1 Cheers Ian

2 2

Colour lasers
by Barry Samuels 16 Feb '06

16 Feb '06

I want to get a colour laser printer but find the offerings rather confusing. Can anyone recommend one to work with Linux from experience? I want it to be capable of producing good prints from digital photographic images as well as general documents. I know that any Postscript printer should work with Linux but I remember seeing someone on ALUG say don't get one which uses Postscript as a layer over the printer's native language because it makes printing slow. A number of printers describe 'Postscript emulation' or 'Postscript simulation' - is there any difference? Are these the slow ones? Very often it is not clear whether a particular printer is true Postscript or not. What would I have to spend to get a true Postscript printer? Which ones should I avoid? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

5 6

How to become another user, without password, but keep environment?
by Chris Green 16 Feb '06

16 Feb '06

In my role at work at the moment I frequently have to become other users (mostly build management logins rather than specific user logins). To make this easier for myself I put myself in the user's .rhosts file so that I don't have to give the password every time I become the other user. This is inside a small[ish] development group so this doesn't raise any difficult security issues really. However if you 'rlogin -l newuser hostname' you get newuser's environment. This is OK sometimes but often is a bit of a pain because I need to reset DISPLAY to get X applications to work on my screen and I also lose my favourite editor, etc., etc. So is there any way to preserve the environment in the same way that would happen if I did an 'su newuser' but, on the other hand, allow me to login in without entering the password (as I can with rlogin)? I can thing of various nasty scripting ways of doing it but su is so close to what I want it seems a pity to re-invent an almost invented wheel. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

6 9

Firewall routing problems
by Stuart Bailey 16 Feb '06

16 Feb '06

Hi, I have a customer who is try to give me access to some data for testing, on one of their server, port 5000. If I telnet to their port from my server, I can't get a connection, unless I disable my firewall - not something I like to do. If I look at a tcpdump for port 5000, I can see the connection going out to the internet (5000 is enable in my firewall), and I can see that the masquerading ports are in the same range as when I send SMTP or HTTP packets - which work fine. Any ideas what else can be causing the problem? I'm using Guarddog to configure the iptables. Many thanks. Stuart. -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) Linux Specialist (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ----------------------------------------

1 0

Hosting questions
by Chris Green 15 Feb '06

15 Feb '06

My wife wants to register a set of domains for a small (long term) project she's thinking of starting. I've checked and a nice set of 'same name' domains are available as .com, .co.uk and .biz. The question is should I just register the domains and host them on the home Linux system or can I get a reasonable deal from anywhere for hosting and registration all in one go? Can anyone recommend a single registration company/site which can do all these TLDs at a reasonable price? I've used Just The Names for my isbd.ltd.uk domain and they are reasonably priced for .com and .co.uk but they're expensive for .biz. If I host them on the home system (which already hosts isbd.ltd.uk forwarded from Just The Names) is it possible to 'virtual host' a number of domains even when they're registered with (possibly) different companies? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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[OT] Fault puzzle
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 14 Feb '06

14 Feb '06

Hi Folks, Your experience may help here. Today I was phoned by a friend who'd switched on her PC only to get the message "Operating system not found", together with the observation that "DHCP" and "MBA" had come up on screen. The only special circumstance was that the machine had been left unused and switched off for just over a week. So I went round and had a look. Switch on, and enter Setup. Check Boot Order: Floppy, CD-ROM, HDD, Network, and MBA-UNDI. So decided that this was consistent with failing to boot off HDD and proceeding to try booting off the network ("DHCP") which failed (since no network) and then "MBA-UNDI" (whatever that is). So tabbed over to IDE setup to see what whas there, or not. Apparently the HDD and its parameters showed up OK. So quit Setup without saving and let it re-boot. Success: clean boot off HDD. Repeatable -- shut down, switch off, disconnect from mains, re-connect, switch on -> clean re-boot as if nothing had ever happened. Provisionally, therefore, thought that the week's off-time had resulted in the CMOS battery draining, so that it had lost its data which were somehow restored when I went into Setup and poked around. But then it occurred to me that if that were so, then the CMOS clock should have the wrong time (e.g. some hours or days slow). Not so: in fact it was 5 minutes fast. So that seems to not favour my hyptohesis. Leaving me wondering what might really have happened. The only thing I did was have a look inside the Setup and re-boot, not altering a thing. Any ideas? With thanks, and best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Feb-06 Time: 22:00:00 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

4 7

Netmasks and IP addresses for dual homed hosts
by Peter Onion 14 Feb '06

14 Feb '06

All of my boxes have got ethernet AND wireless interfaces and everything works fine, but I want to move to using "zeroconf" networking so I don't have to maintain /etc/hosts files on every machine (or go to the bother of setting up a proper DNS server). I've got the avahi daemon working and nss-mdns is working for resolving ".local" host names. Now seems like a good time to review the way I've allocated IP addresses to hosts. My ADLS modem/ethernet router/WiFi access point is a Dlink DSL-G640T which has the address 192.168.1.1 How would you assign addresses to hosts that have wired and wireless interfaces? BTW at home I normally run with the Wireless interfaces turned off but use them if I take machines "away from home" so I don't have to bother with network cables and hubs etc. However laptops sometimes gets used with wireless interfaces at home. Peter

3 2

How to create an email autoresponder?
by Ian Douglas 13 Feb '06

13 Feb '06

Hi Folks, My little business currently has an automated brochure service describing the products we sell. The company has an "info" email address to which people can send keywords and receive an automatically generated email response describing that particular product. At the moment this "autoresponder" function is carried out by an ancient PC chugging away in a forgotten corner running Microsoft Outlook Express and using this program's message filtering rules to select and return the appropriate email/s in response to the keywords in incoming emails. It seems to work quite well and reliably but I was wondering if there was a Linux email prog which we could run on our fileserver to do this? I looked at this a year or so ago and found that although kmail (for example) could filter messages on keywords in the message body it was unable to respond by using this keyword to select an appropriate email reply (out of a possible 20) and actually send it (although kmail may have improved since then). Do any ALUGers already have a Linux based automated brochure service / email autoresponder running on their server? If so could you pass on some tips on how you set it up? Best wishes, Ian.

5 6

Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 13 Feb '06

13 Feb '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

1 0

Ignore last mailing
by robert 12 Feb '06

12 Feb '06

Hi i write this to inform you that since i sent out HELP WITH TARBALLS i have now got my snes9x up and running on Linux.Thanks Robert

1 0

HPLIP and PSC 500
by Dan Hatton 12 Feb '06

12 Feb '06

Dear All, Is anyone having any luck using the HP PSC 500 all-in-one printer and scanner (or any other HP all-in-one on a parallel port) under Linux? If so, please can you tell me how? The story so far: Once upon I time, I was printing and scanning happily, using the hpijs back-end to CUPS and the hpoj back-end to SANE. Then scanning stopped working, apparently due to the bug described at <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=339584>. About three weeks ago, I decided to deal with this by migrating to hplip's hpaio back-end to SANE, but have had no joy. Functionality seems to have steadily deteriorated since then, perhaps with successive upgrades to the SANE version in Debian Testing; at first, the scanner would freeze part-way through scans above a (low) critical resolution, then the scanner would freeze part-way through all scans, whatever the resolution, now SANE front-ends can't see the scanner at all. I note in passing that the list of available devices in CUPS contains the line "hp no_device_found," and I'm having to get printing to work using "Parallel port #1" from this list, which I suspect means I'm, in some sense, bypassing hplip, even though I'm using "HP(HPLIP)" as the model/driver option. I think this may have something to do with the following messages in syslog; maybe the first two lines represent two things happening in the wrong order? The first one seems to occur during loading of kernel modules, and the second on running of /etc/init.d/hplip start. Feb 11 19:21:36 (none) hp: unable to open /var/run/hplip/hpiod.port: No such file or directory: prnt/hpijs/hplip_api.c 84 Feb 11 19:22:04 (none) hpiod: 0.9.7 accepting connections at 32770... Feb 11 19:27:02 (none) tcpspy[4527]: disconnect: user hplip, local 127.0.0.1:52646, remote 127.0.0.1:32770 Feb 11 19:27:02 (none) tcpspy[4527]: disconnect: user hplip, local 127.0.0.1:32770, remote 127.0.0.1:52646 Any ideas are welcome. -- Thanks very much, Dan Hatton

1 0

New Laptop Success
by Peter Onion 12 Feb '06

12 Feb '06

If anyone is thinking about a laptop for linuxhere is asuccess story....... There was a time (not so long ago) when installing Linux on a laptop was a bit of a lottery with respect to getting drivers for all the hardware. I decided my trusty old Dell Latitude was up for replacement, and having just built a desktop with a AMD64 mobo I decided to go for a similarly powered laptop. For several reasons I decided on one of these http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/nbrange.html?CSF After a bit of a delay ( and some trouble with UPS (that's the courier firm! )) it finally arrived yesterday. I've installed SuSE 10.0 from DVD and EVERYTHING WORKS, even the built in wifi that uses a chip set I'de never heard of before! As with my other boxes I've added the ATI proprietry X server to get openGL support (1280x800 is nice!). Peter

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Help with tarballs
by robert 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

Hi i would just like to ask anyone if they know about installing snes9x emulator tarball as it seems a little different to the tarball i install on Gentoo. Thanks Robert

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Re: main Digest, Vol 8, Issue 15
by David Noble 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

re: the laptop- did it come with wireless drivers for Linux; or do you still need to use ndiswrapper?

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Where to find script
by Paul 10 Feb '06

10 Feb '06

A little titbit for JT arising from a conversation at the meeting earlier... The script utility can be found in bsdutils in Debian's packaging system. Regards, Paul. -- From the Klingon book of C: Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.

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i686 kernel on P4M
by Wayne Stallwood 09 Feb '06

09 Feb '06

P4M's should be i686 compatible shouldn't they ? I noticed the other week that the Ubuntu installer had selected the i386 kernel build on my Thinkpad...thinking that this was a mistake on the part of the installer I changed this to the i686 one (moving restricted modules over to i686 as well after my wireless broke) Since doing that I have experienced a couple of hard lockups...two when running Mozilla Firefox and one when using VMware Player (The VMware kernel modules taint the kernel but they don't usually give me any bother) Similarly I have never heard of Firefox crashes killing a whole machine. Moving back to the i386 kernel I cannot repeat these problems. My understanding is that i686 was everything from a Pentium Pro upwards..the P4M being based on the PIII core I thought this would be fine, but maybe there are some instructions not implemented on the P4M...Any thoughts ? My Music server (A real PIII) is running the i686 kernel and is rock solid.

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Re: main Digest, Vol 8, Issue 12
by John Seago 09 Feb '06

09 Feb '06

On Thursday 09 Feb 2006 12:00, Colin Rothwell <colin.rothwell(a)frambroadband.com> wrote: > Why do I like Linux? I think it mainly comes down to the fact that > it's free. I don't see why I should pay through the teeth for an > expensive micro$oft product when I can have one that is just as good > for free (i.e. Open Office org and Linux). There is however a slight problem with this consumer side outlook, those that build and make available the distribution/s your are downloading, are depending on other consumers, such as I, (I have a subscription to Slackware), to fund the development, their hardware, web sites and mirrors. The principle is, after all, ``Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free beer.'' See: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html If you want to take something, you have a responsibility to give something back. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://www.affs.org.uk/ HTML Mail Rejected

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Why I like Linux
by Colin Rothwell 08 Feb '06

08 Feb '06

Hello Everybody, Why do I like Linux? I think it mainly comes down to the fact that it's free. I don't see why I should pay through the teeth for an expensive micro$oft product when I can have one that is just as good for free (i.e. Open Office org and Linux). I also like having package management programs (portage, mainly) which allows me to do a search for a certain program and just have it installed. I also like not having to worry about viruses and spyware. Colin

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2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 07 Feb '06

07 Feb '06

[I did originally send this to announce@ yesterday, but as it seems to have been deleted without trace I'll just send it to main@] The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 9th February. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. People will be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. Topics for discussion will no doubt be as varied as ever. The Reindeer has a reasonable selection of beer as well as decent coffee (with biscuits, if you're lucky). Directions to the Reindeer can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/reindeer.html Pictures of some of the regulars, and irregulars, and, well, just some pictures of people that might or might not turn up are available from: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ (I'll bring my camera this week to try and get more up-to-date photos.) Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for. We're /normally/ just to the left of the main entrance, though the last few times we've ended up at the far end of the pub beside the pool table, as there are comfy seats at that end. J. -- ] http://www.earth.li/~noodles/ [] Reality is for people with no [ ] PGP/GPG Key @ the.earth.li [] grasp of fantasy. [ ] via keyserver, web or email. [] [ ] RSA: 4DC4E7FD / DSA: 5B430367 [] [

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