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Re: Help! PostgreSQL corrupt system tables (Mark Rogers)
by Jenny Hopkins 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Mark Rogers wrote: > One of my customers has a corrupt postgreSQL system database. The error > he's getting is: > > template1=# select * from pg_database; > ERROR: invalid page header in block 1 of relation "pg_database" > > This happens at any point where postgres is trying to access the > database catalog, not for invididual db access but (for example) > trying to create / drop any databases. > > I can't help him as I know nearly nothing about Postgres (although its > about time I learnt). > Hi Mark, I asked my brother for you and he says: pg_dumpall new database install restore all databases might do it HTH Jen

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Martlesham Heath Robinson
by tom potts 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Good Grief - is that place still going - I left it 15 years ago and all I've heard about it it some bloke who keeps recycling other peoples ideas - he was stealing them when I was there. <RANT>I designed a 2.4G bit fibre optic I/O and similar electrical I/O when I was there - BT said they wouldnt develop it as they didnt do research any more. Last place I worked spent £60K on a box to do the same. Mine would have cost $5! Been spitting feathers ever since.</RANT> ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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Unmounting of Root Filesystem
by Dan Hatton 24 Oct '05

24 Oct '05

Lately (last week or so,) when I boot my machine (Debian Testing,) after either a poweroff (via shutdown -h) or reboot (via shutdown -r,) it consistently complains that the root filesystem was not cleanly unmounted, and insists on fscking that filesystem. After the reboot forced by fsck, the machine starts up just fine. Browsing the init scripts in /etc/rc0.d/ and /etc/rc6.d/, I can't find any sign of anything attempting to unmount the root filesystem. Does anyone have any ideas where this should be happening, please? -- Thanks, Dan Hatton <http://www.bib.hatton.btinternet.co.uk/dan/>

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Wiki Blocked
by Dave Briggs 24 Oct '05

24 Oct '05

Any reason why I am getting http://www.alug.org.uk/blocked.htm when I am looking at the wikified bits of the ALUG website? -- Dave Briggs linux(a)davebriggs.net | http://davebriggs.net | http://palimpsest.org.uk

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Help! PostgreSQL corrupt system tables
by Mark Rogers 24 Oct '05

24 Oct '05

One of my customers has a corrupt postgreSQL system database. The error he's getting is: template1=# select * from pg_database; ERROR: invalid page header in block 1 of relation "pg_database" This happens at any point where postgres is trying to access the database catalog, not for invididual db access but (for example) trying to create / drop any databases. I can't help him as I know nearly nothing about Postgres (although its about time I learnt). -- Mark Rogers More Solutions Ltd

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Kernel 2.6, pcmcia SmartMedia and MTD
by Barry Samuels 24 Oct '05

24 Oct '05

My Thinkpad laptop used to run kernel 2.4 and my PCMCIA Adapter for SmartMedia worked. I have since had to change to kernel 2.6 to get the Thinkpad built-in Wireless networking to work. Now the PCMCIA SmartMedia adapter doesn't work. I've tried everything I could understand on the Web to get this working with no result. I think that I've enabled the appropriate settings in the kernel but I've no way of knowing for sure. Can anyone tell me what I have to do to get this to work? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 24 Oct '05

24 Oct '05

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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Re: [ALUG] Kitmeets was: Re: Anyone got some old 500MB-2GB hard drives they no longer need
by sfr 23 Oct '05

23 Oct '05

Chris Green wrote: > For me one of the main reasons is simply that it's a long way, I live > in Newbourne, near Felixstowe, which is a fair old way from Norwich. > I do also have other things to do like ride horses which, at this time > of the year, is a week-ends only activity. Chris, could you fix a meet in SE Suffolk (after winter, unless it included Horses)? Possibly at Adastral? Eli (ex-Martlemite)

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Science in schools
by Karamoon 23 Oct '05

23 Oct '05

The following makes very interesting reading, especially when one considers the governments plans for more faith schools in the UK: http://www.venganza.org/ Matthew __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

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UNISCRIBE
by Douglas Rosher 22 Oct '05

22 Oct '05

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Kit-meet tomorrow
by Karamoon 22 Oct '05

22 Oct '05

I'm going to be at the kit meeting tomorrow. I'll bring a switch, some patch cables, some biscuits and my G4 Powerbook. I will also bring an old Toshiba T2130CS laptop. It doesn't have a cdrom drive so if anyuone has some floppy-based OS's, please bring them! In particular, does anyone have a 32-bit version of Menuet???? >From what has been posted so far it seems there'll be about 6 people in attendence... -Matthew ps. Any chance of net access at the meeting tomorrow? __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

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Sorry about the swearing...
by Anthony Anson 20 Oct '05

20 Oct '05

Before you pass on to the next item, the Linux issue appears shortly... I've just put a box together (AMD 900, nine hundred and mumble mumble MB RAM). IDE Channel 1: HD0 (master) and CD/DVD-RW (slave), cable detect IDE Channel 2: HD1 and Zip100 - both slave - not cable-detect. UW SCSI card and 2 × UW SCSI HDs ATI Rage 128 AGP card Internal hardware modem, PCI (can't unforget which one) In addition to the onboard USB ports there is a twin-port USB PCI card and a four port USB hub (camera cable and scanner), the four port hub attached to an onboard port - I'm suspicious of all these, but they've been working OK until today - that is, for a bit less than a week. The OS in the HD0 caddy is (was?) Win 2000 Pro SP1, and noticing I hadn't done so, I fed it SP4. So it fell over, and after five or six minutes trying to boot, I get the BSOD. Recurring. So, I thought - feed it the Win 2000 CD and try a repair, or if it comes to it, a reformat and reinstall... It loads files, then falls over. Recurring. So, I thought, it's set to load from CD first so I can run Knoppix - I'll format C: with Knoppix and reload Win 2000. Oh yeah? Knoppix begins well enough, just as usual. It gets to 'Starting X11.....' and the screen goes dark and the pretty text winks on, then it goes dark again, then it winks again, and again, but only to four or five places - not recurring... We finish with: Retrying with Server Xfree86(vesa) . Retrying with Server Xfree86(fbdev) Error: No suitable X-Server found on your card. And the CD drive was dead so I had to power off, switch on again, remove CD and shut down again. Has anyone got any suggestions? Is there anything in the configuration which I might have got wrong? I need Win 2000 for beta-testing Zetnet's mail and news handling program. I'd also like the computer to work, as the one I'm on (PIII-450) I've built for a friend whose PI-90 is rather sick. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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Re: [ALUG] 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by sfr 18 Oct '05

18 Oct '05

David Reynolds wrote: > Those?! I think you'll find it was me who fixed it (sure I was told > what to do, but I was still the one who did all the work :P ) And beautifully done, too. The light has stayed on even when landing after roadhumps. and then James Taylor wrote: >Pah! You would have been useless without my superb back-seat directions... heh :) -- sfr

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[ALUG Announce] Conference: Open Source Choices and Resources for Schools
by MJ Ray 18 Oct '05

18 Oct '05

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Small reminder: ALUG meet at UEA on Sunday. See www.alug.org.uk Now a message that MK LUG asked us to pass on: Note that "services need to be clearly relevant to education." -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Open Source in Schools Event From: David Willington <david.willington(a)ntlworld.com> Dear All I've been asked by Hemel Hempstead School to help organise a conference putting together schools with an interest in Open Source software with businesses and individuals that can offer support and advice. I'm based in Sheffield where I've just organised one for schools up here. I called the event OSCARS (Open Source Choices and Resources for Schools) and it came about as a result of this year's FLOSSIE (Free, Libre and Open Source Software in Education) conference in Bolton where the view was that everyone there already know about FLOSS and what was needed was a conference to inform people who don't know about FLOSS. The reason for Hemel Hempstead is that I know the new Head there and she said that Sheffield was too far to come. This is the second OSCARS. I learned a few lessons from the first one. Firstly I'm going to try to keep a clear focus on education - the school's getting the schools together, and I'm approaching the Linux community. I'm keen to avoid a room full of Open Source converts, which is what happened at FLOSSIE. I'm planning to get about 10 businesses offering a range of solutions that are directly relevant to education and which are open source based, and ask the school to guarantee at least 25 schools. One of the companies that came to the first one was (as far as I can tell) offering Open Source on the back of a proprietary package. There's nothing wrong with this, but I'm eager to point out to schools that Open Source can come without ties. In other words, an exclusively Open Source event, although companies and businesses working with proprietary software are welcome along so long as they're demonstrating their open source options. From the businesses' point of view, experience in schools is good, but I don't think it's essential. However services need to be clearly relevant to education. If anyone would be interested in being involved I'd be delighted to hear from you. The proposed date is Fri 27 Jan 2006 and the venue is Hemel Hempstead School, Heath Lane, Hemel Hempstead. Thanks David Willington ----- 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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Re: 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by sfr 18 Oct '05

18 Oct '05

Steve Engledow wrote... >Attendees (in alphabetical order because I'm nice like that): >Adam, Becca, Dan (I think), Dave, Eli, Francis, James, Jan, Kaz, Mike, >Noodles, Simon, Steve and a couple of late entries - Matthew and Suzi. It was a very lively meet :) Thanks to those who fixed up the trikelight - I took the Chariot onto the road on the way home, and going downhill we achieved >22mph! Could have been even faster, but a roundabout got in the way. sfr

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Framebuffer on Nvidia cards
by Wayne Stallwood 18 Oct '05

18 Oct '05

Is there anyway to get a framebuffer running on nvidia cards when using the Nvidia closed drivers ? I am sure my SuSE box used to run rivafb as this used to generate loads of warnings about the world ending whenever I tried to build new Nvidia drivers. Ubuntu however seems really reluctant to let me have a framebuffer device..presumably for the same reason as the Matrox equipped machine at work is running one by default.

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RE: [ALUG] Framebuffer on Nvidia cards
by Keith Watson 18 Oct '05

18 Oct '05

> From: Wayne Stallwood Sent: 18 October 2005 00:00 > > Is there anyway to get a framebuffer running on nvidia cards > when using the Nvidia closed drivers ? > > I am sure my SuSE box used to run rivafb as this used to > generate loads of warnings about the world ending whenever I > tried to build new Nvidia drivers. > Ubuntu however seems really reluctant to let me have a > framebuffer device..presumably for the same reason as the > Matrox equipped machine at work is running one by default. As you're running Ubuntu, any clues in the xorg log file (/var/log/Xorg.0.log)? I know SFA about frambuffers but have been struggling with a dual head set up for the Ubuntu install on my work laptop (which has an Nvidia video chipset) over the past couple of weeks. The Xorg log file has been very useful in finding out what was going on. Regards, Keith ____________ COMMERCE, n. - A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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Samba passwords
by Stuart Bailey 17 Oct '05

17 Oct '05

I have a client who is using FC3 on a server to share up network drives to Win XP Pro computers in their office. I have given each user their own username and password for mapping these drives, but now they want the ability to change the passwords themselves. Are the any good tools for doing this - or do I need to write something. I'm thinking on the lines of a PHP or CGI script (they have Apache running on the server). Many thanks, Stuart. -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) Linux Specialist (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ----------------------------------------

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Cry for help - negotiating dialup link with vodafone GPRS via GSM modem
by Guy Eastwood 17 Oct '05

17 Oct '05

Trying to connect to vodafone GPRS with Siemens MC35 GSM Modem. The SIM and Modem both work with nowsms under windows and they do get handshaking things under Linux but the connection never completes establishment. It seems that the Vodafone server never sends any kind of ack to the IPCP request, log pasted below. Anyone have any wisdom on this? In UK, voda APN is set to wap.vodafone.co.uk (which works in nowsms), everything SEEMS sane in the settings but only stupidity happens. BTW, NowSMS is a bit of windoze s/ware for doing this kind of thing but by doing a bit of RTFM I expected to be able to achieve this and more n Linux without paying for some proprietary stuff, plus we run Debian machines at work and don't want to have to bung a 'doze box into the rack with all the associated 'concerns' that creates! uname is: Linux guy 2.6.12 #1 SMP Thu Oct 13 16:45:51 BST 2005 i686 GNU/Linux log said: SYSLOG PPPD connect output: Oct 14 14:11:36 guy pppd[12794]: Serial connection established. Oct 14 14:11:36 guy pppd[12794]: using channel 40 Oct 14 14:11:36 guy pppd[12794]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 14 14:11:36 guy pppd[12794]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyS0 Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0x32a24cf1> <pcomp> <accomp>] Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: rcvd [LCP ConfNak id=0x1 <asyncmap 0xa0000>] Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x2 <asyncmap 0xa0000> <magic 0x32a24cf1> <pcomp> <accomp>] Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x2 <asyncmap 0xa0000> <magic 0x32a24cf1> <pcomp> <accomp>] Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x3 <asyncmap 0xa0000> <pcomp> <accomp> <magic 0x9b2bf908> <auth chap MD5>] Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: sent [LCP ConfAck id=0x3 <asyncmap 0xa0000> <pcomp> <accomp> <magic 0x9b2bf908> <auth chap MD5>] Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: rcvd [CHAP Challenge id=0x1 <02868b09f850081a7d28153a9010b0693306daa7>, name = ""] Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: sent [CHAP Response id=0x1 <4c7362d517196aac19c2c9cc9a26428c>, name = "wap"] Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: rcvd [CHAP Success id=0x1 ""] Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: CHAP authentication succeeded Oct 14 14:11:37 guy pppd[12794]: sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 <addr 0.0.0.0>] Oct 14 14:11:38 guy pppd[12794]: rcvd [LCP TermReq id=0x3] Oct 14 14:11:38 guy pppd[12794]: LCP terminated by peer Oct 14 14:11:38 guy pppd[12794]: sent [LCP TermAck id=0x3] Oct 14 14:11:41 guy pppd[12794]: rcvd [LCP TermReq id=0x3] Oct 14 14:11:41 guy pppd[12794]: sent [LCP TermAck id=0x3] Oct 14 14:11:41 guy pppd[12794]: Connection terminated.

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Re: [ALUG] Quoted-Printable and MIME (Was: [ALUG] Sorry about the swearing...)
by Ten 17 Oct '05

17 Oct '05

On Monday 17 October 2005 11:16, MJ Ray wrote: > Ten <runlevelten(a)gmail.com> > > > > On Friday 14 October 2005 20:09, MJ Ray wrote: > > > Ten's mail client (KMail) is using quoted-printable for > > > plain text emails, which seems broken. > > What, just the idea of using quoted-printable? > Using Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions for non-extended parts > of emails does seem a broken idea to me. I realise that some people > advocate using MIME for everything, because it's there, > but the amount of MIMEd email nasties means that my bulk email client runs > plain-text-only until I tell it otherwise. Not so much because it's there with me, but since beginning to use kmail (ie since it became acceptable) I've become much more guilty of this. That said, the indignant revulsion I reserve for HTML mails leads me to understand this viewpoint perfectly. > > If so, KMail has been using qp in signed messages, and IIRC the PGP/MIME > > spec has the use of quoted-printable or base64 in such signed messages as > > a required/must. > Ah, yes, that rules out 8-bit. However, RFC 3156 says: "all data > signed according to this protocol MUST be constrained to 7 bits" > ...which means, if you're not sending 8-bit, you don't need to qp it. > KMail seems to be qp-ing everything regardless. It's not as bad as > gmail, which base64s everything regardless for some users! Eugh! > Hope that explains it, Yes, thanks. As probably mentioned, on examining the mail to work out the cause for this behaviour (and to give ground to my evangelical faith in the One True Desktop Suite, of course :-) ), I'm pretty much certain that the 'thinking' behind kmail doing that was that there were trailing spaces and stuff in the email. Now, whilst I'm not really au fait with the minutiae of pgp/mime, it seems that when sending the data via 7bit which had those trailing spaces _when it was signed_, encoding it as quoted-printable is a fair thing to do if you don't want your signature borken at the other end. So teh issues would seem to be (1) me not cleaning up my spaces post-edit, and (2) trailing spaces getting signed. Like I said, I don't pretend to be an expert on this, but that's my inference of what's going on there.. CMIIW :) Also as a matter of interest, thank you for drawing my attention to rfc 3156, as the last one I read on the matter was 2015! Probably before the turn of the century, literally ( which should give you a rough idea of how au fait I aren't! ). -- Ten PS: Those who know about a certain proprietary software I worked on in late 2001 will pour scorn on my standards-compliancy naffness, but I should point out that I worked on the horrid flash-based update UI, not any of the manly stuff.

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 17 Oct '05

17 Oct '05

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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KDM Display Manager
by David Noble 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

Hi I have somehow managed to disable my KDM display manager. Would any of you know the best way to go about getting it back to working order. I can't remember how I managed to disable it, but for the moment, I am forced to use the XDM manager. I run SuSE 9.3, which was working well up until yesterday. Thank you very much- any support would be much appreciated, David Noble, Norwich

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HDD
by Bob Dove 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

Hi Folks, Read somewhere that IDE drives should be mounted as HD 0 and HD 1 on same IDE cable, IDE 0 as master and HD 1 as slave. Some mother boards and some IDE cables require correct IDE cable connector to be used, i. e., top connector is slave, that lower in the cable as master. Later MB probably not so fussy but jumpers have to set. I have just had a battle setting up box two with an IDE drive due to confused jumper pin settings. Particular drive reads from right to left! Be nice if drive manufactures used a common jumper setting! Secondary IDE connector use for CD/DVD/Zips. The most used of the optical drives set as master, 'tother as slave. It seems that using a magnetic and optical drive on same IDE connector slows things down somewhat. This is of course Windoze lore, but assume motherboard/IDE et al works same in 'IX. Cheers. -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.5 - Release Date: 26/12/2004

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Zaurus SL-3100 or 3000
by Barry Samuels 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

Does anyone have a Zaurus SL-3100? I'm thinking of getting one particularly for running some Linux in-car navigation software with verbal instructions. I know this Zaurus has a built-in speaker but would like to know from someone who may have experience of it whether it can produce a respectable volume. Thanks. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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firebird-super-server primary key help
by Owen Synge 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Well I am a little anoyed as I wanted to write a basic fit for my needs app basded on firebird as I remember a previous employer used interbase a lot but I am stuck making primary keys get values automatically. knowing we have some experts on this list please help Owen $isql-fb Use CONNECT or CREATE DATABASE to specify a database SQL> CREATE DATABASE '/tmp/dvb4.fdb'; SQL> CREATE TABLE TABLEA ( CON> TABLEAPK BIGINT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY , CON> TABLEANAME varchar(20) CON> ); SQL> COMMIT; SQL> CREATE GENERATOR GENPKTABLEA; SQL> COMMIT; SQL> CREATE TRIGGER BEFOREINSERTTABLEA for TABLEA CON> ACTIVE BEFORE INSERT position 0 CON> AS CON> BEGIN CON> IF(NEW.TABLEAPK IS NULL) THEN CON> NEW.TABLEAPK = GEN_ID(GENPKTABLEA, 1); Statement failed, SQLCODE = -104 Dynamic SQL Error -SQL error code = -104 -Unexpected end of command SQL> END CON>

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Setting up a closed IRC channel
by Keith Watson 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Can any IRC experts out there give me some pointers on setting up a closed IRC channel for the developers within my company? Background is that we (i.e. the developers employed by Kewill in the UK) have over the last couple of days attended a piss-u^H^H^H^H^H^H^H conference organised by the IT director. We were talking about ways we can keep in touch. General consensus was that e-mail and Windows IM weren't very good tools for this if we wanted to open up discussions to everybody and that a closed IRC channel might work well. Do I need to set up an in-house server or are there servers out there we can make use of? Regards, Keith ____________ The material thing before you, that is IT. - Huang-po

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Oldest Noodles unearthed in China
by Keith Watson 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

<quote> "The remains of the world's oldest noodles have been unearthed in China." </quote> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4335160.stm Is there something you're not telling us, Noodles? :o), Keith ____________ QUOTATION, n. - The act of repeating erroneously the words of another, also, the words erroneously repeated. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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Re: 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Steve Engledow 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is *tonight*, 13th October. And a muchly good meeting it was too! In total, 13 (14 if you count Tux) people attended so it's lucky we opted to sit in a different place to the usual where there happened to be more seats. There was also the added bonus of easy access to the pool table :) As is to be expected, the topics of conversation were many and various and, with thirteen of us, sometimes confusing ;) OK, so I can't remember any specific snippets of conversation to post here so I'll let someone else do that. The highlight of the night though, was the tense and highly competitive testing of wills and intellect between myself, Kaz, James, and Dave known to mere mortals as... Frustration. The winner being me :D All in all, a good time was had by all, Eli's bike lights were attached, Mike's resin coated USB flash device amused, and Tux got coated in cigarette ash and beer. Attendees (in alphabetical order because I'm nice like that): Adam, Becca, Dan (I think), Dave, Eli, Francis, James, Jan, Kaz, Mike, Noodles, Simon, Steve Until the next one, Steve -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDT39NCEbZc9Re45oRAuvBAKDMmuaEnv50l5OR/MfiEXNPY164ewCdFy3T LaqMniJt7TYDh4MnYVDsBZw= =0S++ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [ALUG] Sorry about the swearing...
by Adrian Kiddle 13 Oct '05

13 Oct '05

Hi, I'm not expert with linux but I've put a few boxes together. I think the problem may be the 2 slaves on IDE Channel 2. I think each IDE channel needs to have one master. Good luck. Adrian Kiddle ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony Anson" <tony.anson(a)zetnet.co.uk> To: <Main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 10:01 PM Subject: [ALUG] Sorry about the swearing... > Before you pass on to the next item, the Linux issue appears shortly... > > I've just put a box together (AMD 900, nine hundred and mumble mumble MB RAM). > > IDE Channel 1: HD0 (master) and CD/DVD-RW (slave), cable detect > IDE Channel 2: HD1 and Zip100 - both slave - not cable-detect.

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2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 13 Oct '05

13 Oct '05

The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is *tonight*, 13th October. Apologies for the lack of notice - it's been on the website for a while now, but I forgot to send the reminder mail at the start of the week. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. We'll 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. 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/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for. We're /normally/ just to the left of the main entrance. J. -- /-\ | 101 things you can't have too much |@/ Debian GNU/Linux Developer | of : 30 - Comfy sofas. \- | _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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Re: [ALUG] Setting up listserve
by Peter 12 Oct '05

12 Oct '05

Well, riseup.net is wonderful and reminds me of my youth - but the residents of my village are middleaged at best, and only interesting in discussing how to manage their Staithe and moorings better. Radical social change is far, yes, maybe too far, from their minds. Don't laugh, its coming towards you too, every day! Wrote to Black Cat, thanks for the suggestion. Regards Peter

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Re: Rethemeing Engine...
by John Seago 12 Oct '05

12 Oct '05

Way back when I worked in the printing industry, (when we set metal type by hand), there was a considered opinion that the coastline of Eastern England was in itself a visual image that was instantly recognisable. Why not therefore, try using the section of the Map of the UK now coloured yellow on the ALUG page, fading away the inland edges and superimposing a Tux on top? I would suggest using the present Tux on the left hand side of the page and extending the Eastern England area to encompass him/her. -- John Seago GNU/Linux User #219566 http://counter.li.org/ AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/ HTML mail rejected

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Setting up listserve
by Peter 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

Question: for our village, I would like to set up a mailing list, so I don't have to keep sending out paper minutes and action items for a local group I'm being made responsible for. Any suggestions on who to get service from, what to use and so on? It will be small membership and low traffic. Regards Peter Berrie

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RE: [ALUG] Rethemeing Engine...
by Keith Watson 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

> From: James Taylor Sent: 10 October 2005 12:55 > Keith Watson wrote: > >>From: Matt Parker Sent: 10 October 2005 11:02 On Monday 10 October > >>2005 09:28, Adam Bower wrote: > >>>Does anyone on the list have any ideas about what really pushes "East Anglia" graphically? > >> > >>Tux in the Sutton Hoo helmet? > > > >Tux in a chariot doing a Boudicca impression? > > > I still like the (slefs?) suggestion of a tux riding a gnu > with a lance in the style of anglia tv... but a) our graphics > sk1ll5s suck and b) none of us could exactly place who the > man was - we thought he was hereward the wake, only i doubt > that because herewards castle was in Bourne and there arn't > any of his symbols anywhere near there... I suspect it may be based on this <http://www.milesfaster.co.uk/gallery/parliament-square/richard-the-lion heart.htm> but the definitive answer is <http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=g82tj74eg7sdk?method=4&d sid=2222&dekey=Anglia+knight&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc01a&linktext=Ang lia%20knight> Regards, Keith ____________ Sometimes the highest form of action is inaction. - Jerry Brown

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Rethemeing Engine...
by Brett Parker 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi all, Right - I've improved my rethemeing script a bit, and now it can cope with different themes (sortof), so, if anyone has got a shiny new theme, then throw it at me and I'll drop it on the site. Basic requirements for a theme this end: * HTML template using the following as place holders for things: +  - should be fairly self explainatory +  - guess what goes here! * A CSS style sheet * A spare 5 minutes for me to check the theme, plonk it in to a directory, and quickly test it Current 'themes' can now be viewed at: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/alug/retheme-engine/ Basically they're all currently based off of (Stilvoid|Steve)'s origional redesign. The one that's still named 'stilvoid' is the closest to his origional theme that he pasted on to IRC, with some *very* minor modifications. If anyone has any further suggestions, comments, useful information etc please feel free to either contact me directly or via the list. Thanks, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDR9gJEh8oWxevnjQRAkvpAJ45kQH67DAfb0gx//s2U7o8syDiUACePl79 9pzxHxYzX0dVRZ0igjpdAqA= =ME2A -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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ISND issues and Penguins
by tom potts 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

I left a company two years ago and they had fitted me with an ISDN connection. The ISDN connection still works - I think BT have forgotten about it..... As for the Anglia Knight - whats wrong with emphasising the fact that the penguin is the beast of burden/ferrari here and have the knight riding Tux - all in the best possible taste of course! ___________________________________________________________ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com

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Re: [ALUG] Rethemeing Engine...
by John Seago 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

On Tuesday 11 October 2005 12:00, James Taylor <james.taylor(a)stealthnet.net> wrote: > none of us could exactly place who the man was - we thought he was > hereward the wake, only i doubt that because herewards castle was in > Bourne and there arn't any of his symbols anywhere near there... Anglia TV, (when it was Anglia TV) used to give out a postcard sized photo of him with an explanation on the reverse. As far as I can remember he started out as a trophy for some kind of Falconry contest, presented by the King of the Netherlands. Went through various hands and misfortunes and ended up as the Station ID and in the foyer of Anglia TV. I wonder where he is now, as there was an awful lot of silver in him? -- John Seago GNU/Linux User #219566 http://counter.li.org/ AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/ HTML mail rejected

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Re: Broadband dilemma
by Peter 10 Oct '05

10 Oct '05

I ordered BT Broadband with a Game Router a couple of years ago for a friend - he had ISDN, so ordering from anyone but BT involved ISDN cancellation charges, and going with BT got him a free router. It went in on time and has worked just fine ever since. The BT Game Router, at least, works with Linux, its accessible in the usual way from a web browser. I was a bit surprised to discover that it came configured with the firewall off and no password or user name or configuration guide in the documentation. Maybe that is somewhat understandable in a Game Router. However, calling support got these quite easily. The main reason for buying from a reseller rather than direct must be price. If you look at the pricing from Tiscali, say, as compared to BT Retail, there's around £100 a year in it and no difference in service. They really need to get the fat out of Retail. We ourselves bought Tiscali, threw out the usb modem, bought a Hayes one port modem/router from Ebuyer, and hooked that up to our ethernet hub. I had to call Hayes support to get it configured right, but they were wonderfully helpful and very well informed. Tiscali, or the router, seems to lose the IP address every three or four months - which rebooting the router fixes. We are not very demanding users, but it works fine. My neighbour, who is a more demanding user, also has Tiscali, also provided his own router, and is quite satisfied. Regards, Peter

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RE: [ALUG] The Anglia Knight, was: Rethemeing Engine...
by Keith Watson 10 Oct '05

10 Oct '05

> From: MJ Ray Sent: 10 October 2005 14:47 ... > Unfortunately, the real knight is too skinny to be replaced > with a fat penguin without looking seriously strange, at Perhaps something based on Henry VIII would be better source material? Regards, Keith ____________ Mistakes are the portals of discovery. - James Joyce

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RE: [ALUG] Rethemeing Engine...
by Keith Watson 10 Oct '05

10 Oct '05

> From: Matt Parker Sent: 10 October 2005 11:02 > On Monday 10 October 2005 09:28, Adam Bower wrote: > > Does anyone on the list have any ideas about what really > pushes "East Anglia" graphically? > > Tux in the Sutton Hoo helmet? Tux in a chariot doing a Boudicca impression? Regards, Keith ____________ 'Remain steadfast...and one day you will build something that endures; - something worthy of your potential.' - - Epictetus

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Linux PC
by Dave Briggs 10 Oct '05

10 Oct '05

Right, well, I've been meddling on the fringes of Open Source and linux for too long: using free software on Windows wherever I can, having a dual boot PC a couple of years back, messing around with live CDs since. But now I guess it is time to go for it, and as I 'need' to get a new desktop PC soon, I am going to make it a Linux only machine. Brave of me, huh? Anyhow, what options are there? Buy a windows PC and install Linux over the top? Buy a linux ready PC? Or buy the bits and do it myself? I do want to make this a linux only box, with all the bits in it those known to work well with the penguin. Any thoughts? -- Dave Briggs linux(a)davebriggs.net | http://davebriggs.net | http://palimpsest.org.uk

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RE: [ALUG] Rethemeing Engine...
by Keith Watson 10 Oct '05

10 Oct '05

> From: MJ Ray Sent: 10 October 2005 00:57 > Brett Parker <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> > > > Also, from IRC earlier, maybe it's time we actually got us a pretty > > logo, so any logo developers out there that want to take a > stab at it, > > please do. [...] > > For my entry in the retheme competition, I'm struggling to > find a suitable picture that conveys "Anglia" or ALUG's sense > of place in the world too. My current ideas are the Norwich > skyline (visible at http://mjr.towers.org.uk/comp/alugtalk/ > just now), Ely cathedral, Orwell bridge, or Lynn's custom > house. UEA Nelson Court (kit meeting venue) is showing on > Brett's rethemer. If you have an idea or - even better - a > suitable base image, please email me or mention it on > irc.alug.org.uk #alug tomorrow 8pm. > I always liked slef's idea of tux in armour riding on a Gnu (sinilar to the old Anglia TV logo). Started fiddling around with this some time back but my GIMP skills are not up to it. Got some reference images somewhere is anyone else want's a go. Regards, Keith ____________ I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. - These three are your greatest treasures. - Lao-Tzu

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 10 Oct '05

10 Oct '05

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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Broadband dilemma
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 09 Oct '05

09 Oct '05

Hi Folks, I'd welcome comments on the following situation. According to the Sphinx, my exchange is due to be BB enabled on 12 October -- a mere 4 days off!!!! It's a BT exchange (Brandon Creek), a BT phone line, and I'm a BT customer for the telephone service (and, currently, also for dialup acess). The only external signs of activity I've seen so far, passing by the other day, is that the radio dish on top of the pole, which used to face South towards Littleport, now faces North. So maybe something really is happening! More to the point, between me and it is some 5km of overhead cable, as things stand at the moment (they sometimes fall down, literally ... ). BT's website tells me, this morning: "Check availability - results For Telephone Number 01353676*** on Exchange BRANDON CREEK Our initial test on your line indicates that you may be able to get Broadband from BT with speeds up to 1Mb, which is up to 20 times faster than dial-up. At the moment, your telephone line is unable to support our 2Mb speed broadband package. Also, due to the length of your line, an engineer visit may be required to set up your broadband service. Your local BT telephone exchange is unable to support broadband at the moment, but it will by 12th October 2005. If you decide to place an order, a further test will be performed to confirm if your line is suitable for the speed of service you wish to order. Order Broadband from BT online and get a FREE modem saving you a £25 charge which applies if you order by phone." This raises a number of issues, in the context of the fact that, a priori, I'm not that keen to order broadband from BT anyway, for various reasons (one of which is their attitude to non-Windows users -- their basic service, for example, is apparently not even Mac-compatible!). 1. "you may be able to get Broadband from BT with speeds up to 1Mb," 2. "Also, due to the length of your line, an engineer visit may be required to set up your broadband service." 3. "If you decide to place an order, a further test will be performed to confirm if your line is suitable for the speed of service you wish to order." All of this tends to point to the possibility that it might not work without engineer intervention (if at all ... ). So the dilemma is: If I order broadband from a non-BT ISP, where would their engineer stand, being non-BT, in the event of difficulties arising from the BT part of the system (the setup in the exchange, the length and quality of the overhead cable, the final line from the pole to my house, etc. The latter, for instance, had to be renewed by a BT engineer a while ago because its covering had perished, letting the rain in to the cable. Who knows what the cable's like further back along the line ... )? Would a non-BT engineer be able to fix problems that a BT engineer could fix (which might involve fiddling with exchange setups)? If there could be snags on that front, then maybe going for non-BT might be a bad idea, though on other grounds it would be a good idea! (I'm particularly tempted by comments on some of the ISPs that have come up recently on ALUG). Another issue is the "modem/router" that BT would supply (free according to the above, though that's not an important factor). I wonder how a non-BT modem/router would work in this case. I happen to have in hand at the moment a Peak CAS4047 "High Speed 1 WAN 4LAN Broadband Router" (quoting from the box), which claims to be RJ45-connectable to a Cable/DSL modem, so this should in principle be OK provided there's a modem for it to connect to. But I wonder about the BT "modem/router". I've tested the Peak's browser accessibility (point Firefox to "http://192.168.1.254" and you can have a nice little chat with it, apparently allowing all sorts of things to be set up including routing to the internal fixed IPs of your LAN, while getting a dynamic IP for itself from the ISP, not to mention various firewalling options). So it looks good. But it would be plugging into the BT modem. Any likely problems? NB that BT assert on their website that their "modem/router" requires Windows compatibility. I'm not going to waste my time trying to find out from BT Customer Support whether that's really true, or whether you can just switch it on, plug in any DSL-compatible router, wait for it to get its IP address, and then simply carry on, independently of not using Windows. So I think the dilemma can be summed up: Would I, as a Linux user, be buggered if I got a BT installation? Would I be buggered anyway if I got another ISP to provide the service? Comments welcome! (Please remember that I'm totally new to this area of going on-line, so I'm not familiar with the bits and pieces). 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: 08-Oct-05 Time: 13:34:23 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Problem with the Library
by Wayne Stallwood 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

I am moving the library to it's new home but I am having a few problems talking to mysql. mysql --host=localhost --user=opendb --password=thepassword Works, I can then see a database called aluglib and run queries on the tables etc. In my opendb config.php I have // Database configuration $CONFIG_VARS['db_server.host'] = 'localhost'; //OpenDb database host $CONFIG_VARS['db_server.dbname'] = 'aluglib';//OpenDb database name $CONFIG_VARS['db_server.username'] = 'opendb'; //OpenDb database user name $CONFIG_VARS['db_server.passwd'] = 'thepassword'; //OpenDb password But when I try and login to the Library I get the following error Access denied for user: 'opendb@localhost' (Using password: YES) Not being very experienced with these things, can anyone give me some pointers to what I am doing wrong. To move the library I simply dumped the old database and then imported that into the new one with mysql blah blah databasename < dump.sql. the rest of the site was just coped over using scp. Then I just changed the config in config.php and checked permissions. I thought that should be it ?

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Re-theme
by Bob Dove 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

Hi Folks, Looked at the new 'home-page' in IE6 on (SORRY) Windoze. Looks good to me - please keep it simple, no flash, java or activex - you know, the stuff that makes you site look wonderful and opens doors to all sorts of danger! Firefox is set up to crush all that sort of stuff on my machine - and on many other I would assume! Cheers, BD.

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It takes two to tango...
by Bob Dove 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

Hi Guys, How about some sitting in the sun and relaxing, it's getting a tiny bit tiresome to watch this quarrel. BD

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Logout for Firefox?
by MJ Ray 07 Oct '05

07 Oct '05

Does anyone know how I can make Mozilla Firefox log out of an HTTP-authenticated web site? I thought there was a menu option or extension to forget the auth details, but I can't find it now. On my own sites, I always give the option of an "forbidden forever" page (aka a Babyshambles page), but the government site I'm accessing doesn't have one. I'll restart the browser this time, but it's irritating, isn't it? Thanks for any info, -- MJ Ray (slef), Lynn, England, retposxto cxe http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

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FW: [ALUG] Alug Website
by Keith Watson 07 Oct '05

07 Oct '05

> From: Luke Dodd Sent: 07 October 2005 12:51 > > Looks OK, works in opera Mozilla and (shudder) ie ok. The > links need to be fixed, I had a problem with my css link > lists a while ago, I can't remember the fix right now but > could get it later. Although it looks completely wrong for > the alug website I could change this > <http://ccgi.doddfamily.plus.com/index_new.php> little > layout I made to look right. For other good css layouts and > ideas this > <http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/index.html> is a > good site. > > Probably all useless, but I i felt bored so decided to post. > > Luke > :o) Regards, Keith ____________ Strive not for perfect actions in a perfect world, - but for appropriate actions in an imperfect world

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RE: [ALUG] Alug Website
by Keith Watson 07 Oct '05

07 Oct '05

> From: Brett Parker Sent: 07 October 2005 09:33 > MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: > > Brett Parker <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> ... > > Questions: > > - do any of the CSS validator warnings cause anyone problems? > > I've not tested it in IE (not having a copy of IE to hand) so > there's a possibility it's completly broken there... A quick smoke test with IE seems to work ok. Like what I've seen so far. :o) Regards, Keith ____________ CONSOLATION, n. - The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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Alug Website
by Brett Parker 07 Oct '05

07 Oct '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 This afternoon Steve handed me a bundled of HTML goodness for the website, I've just finished hacking together something (temporary) to give you a feel for what it looks like, currently this is all done "on the fly", so if anything is updated on the alug site, it should automagically happen to this 'rethemed' version. URL: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/alug/retheme/ I *think* that it's mostly working, any obvious gotchas, tell me. Cheers, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDRa/IEh8oWxevnjQRAudsAKCtTcoTmjSBeuD/jQz1mFC3lwBqRwCgu8UW xPmqvBiGwQK4IXxFVTEYr7A= =x1pP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [ALUG] Web site - new editing method
by Dave Briggs 06 Oct '05

06 Oct '05

Quoting MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop>: > What should go on the site? At the moment, there's three sections > (background, meetings and venues) and some pages and subsites, > some of which need updating, moving or culling. I guess the thing is to consider who will be using the site, which will be people new to the group and existing members. So there needs to be intro stuff about the systems ALUG covers, info about the group and how things work, maybe some sort of member directory, for the newbies. Then for both newbies and existing members there can be the pages about the local groups and meetings, maybe with more details of past meetings so people can know what to expect and stuff? Then, mainly for the existing members there could be pages about specific projects that people are working on together, say. > I don't like the suggestion that the whole site be a wiki. Agreed. > > ALUG has a problem that when people get busy, they often get > too busy to hand over tasks. If all webmasters of the current > site die, it would just sit there, going out-of-date. If all > webmasters of a wiki die, it usually gets exploited and trashed. Which might be an argument for having a system in place where as many ALUGers as possible have access to editing pages, whilst not having a wiki free-for-all situation. That way, there is always someone to pick things up in the event of things falling behind on a page. > By the way, the Shropshire LUG site suggested as a nice design > also has double navigation, error messages and "search-engine > unfriendly" URLs - all things which don't happen much with > xhtml files and they can be mirrored more easily, although we > don't have mirrors just now. It's also a little cheeky not to > link back to LUG.org.uk IMO. Yes, a fairly nice style, though. Yeah, I should have specified, it was from a style point of view that I suggested it, rather than it being a classic piece of website coding! Could the library be integrated into a new site, too? -- Dave Briggs linux(a)davebriggs.net | http://davebriggs.net | http://palimpsest.org.uk

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Re: [ALUG] Web site - new editing method
by David Reynolds 06 Oct '05

06 Oct '05

Hi, This has become quite a convoluted thread (or threads) of which the gist to me seems to be that many Aluggers are unhappy with the state of the website and their inability to edit it. I'm not sure how long the current site has been about, being a *fairly* new Alugger, but as Brett said in a previous email, the design is beginning to look a bit dated. Surely this thread is an ideal time to raise the subject of perhaps redesigning the site and trying to find a new way forward for the future web presence of Alug. Another thing that should be discussed is who is going to take responsibility for the site. As far as I can tell many people would be interested in having a hand in the website, keeping it up to date, adding content, etc but no one has even been offered the chance. Surely by using some kind of CMS it will allow more people to contribute and keep the site up to date without having to rely on one person to patch the site. Just my 2¢ Cheers Dave -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Web site - new editing method
by MJ Ray 06 Oct '05

06 Oct '05

As mentioned yesterday, I wrote a browser-based editor for the "static" pages on the ALUG site. You can now access this by following the instructions on http://www.alug.org.uk/background/submissions.html Does anyone have time to knock up a smarter way to link it from all pages than visiting each file by hand (sed? perl?)? Help updating the site gleefully received. Email me about any editor bugs you find and I'll deal with them ASAP. Thanks, -- MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 06 Oct '05

06 Oct '05

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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[ALUG Announce] LOCAL: Norwich, Sun 23 Oct 2005, ALUG
by MJ Ray 06 Oct '05

06 Oct '05

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 @ Nelson Court B Common Room, UEA, Norwich Weekend meeting: Sunday 23rd October 2005 Plan for the meeting We will meet up from 2pm onwards; we have the room until 6pm. The meeting is open to anyone interested in GNU/Linux or any Free/Open Source software. This meeting is particularly suitable if you want to bring along kit for hands-on help with installing, configuring or using linux distributions or applications or if you have something interesting that you'd like other people to see. It's also an opportunity to bring along old kit that's looking for a new home. There will probably be coffee and cake available; feel free to bring along a donation. Assuming the college bar is open we'll head there around 6ish. If you would like to get some help at the meeting, it is a good idea to mention it on [3]the main ALUG mailing list beforehand, although it is by no means a requirement. Please note we won't have internet access available. How to get there For directions, please see [4]the UEA venue information page. There are offers of carshares from the west and south. Please ask on the mailing list if interested. People at the meeting If you will be coming to this meeting, please try to say so on the mailing list, so we can have some idea of how many people may be there. Someone needs to bring biscuits - or home-made cakes - of course :-) Equipment Important disclaimer: Equipment is brought at your own risk. We strongly suggest that you tag or label your kit. No known thefts have occurred at our meetings, but there is ample scope for going home with the wrong cables, etc. Be sure to bring all appropriate power cables etc. An extra extension lead will also be a good idea. Discussion For information about this meeting or venue, please [5]use the mailing list. References 1. http://www.alug.org.uk/ 2. http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/ 3. http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main 4. http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/uea.html 5. http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main ----- 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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Re: NTLworld broadband & contract???
by Christopher Dawkins 05 Oct '05

05 Oct '05

>> Is there anyone with an NTL cable-connected wireless router? > NTLworld broadband & contract??? (Christopher Dawkins) > Re: NTLworld broadband & contract??? (Laurie Brown) > Re: NTLworld broadband & contract??? (Duncan Sample) > Re: NTLworld broadband & contract??? (Ben Whyte) > > If you get something like the Netgear WGT624 .... You really are marvellous, you lot. I had a problem on Sunday last week, I posted a query and got a bunch of helpful and accurate replies. We order the suggested router and it arrives at the same time as I do (Tuesday 4th). First thing I do is follow the instructions that came with the router, and it doesn't work. Next I follow another route through the instructions that came with the router, and it doesn't work. So, finally, I follow the ALUG instructions, and it works perfectly. Within hours there are four machines happily connected, and there'll soon be a fifth. A few hours later, NTL replies to the [same] question posed ten days ago - and, actually, with a remarkably helpful reply. Or one that would have been remarkably helpful if ALUG hadn't sorted it out within hours. Many thanks. -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-821076, mobile 07816 821659 cchd(a)felsted.essex.sch.uk

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Kitmeet @ UEA, 23 October
by sfr 05 Oct '05

05 Oct '05

Sunday 23 October Nelson Court B Common Room 14:00 - 18:00 Pub afterwards Bring:- working kit, need-to-get-working kit, and kit you'd like to transfer to another home software coffee makers, tea-things, and snacks friends, relations, and gerbils. There'll be a cake-stall, but feel free to donate. Nelson Court is the building near the LCR and main car park, i.e. not the location of the last UEA meet, but the one before. FAO Sionide: it appears to have been booked as a meeting for an incipient student-union-soc, so get inaugurating :) sfr

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Re: [ALUG] WiKi Status Enquiry
by Dave Briggs 05 Oct '05

05 Oct '05

Ben Francis wrote: > I'd recommend MediaWiki[1] which is the wiki behind wikipedia. I'm > currently using three of them, two of which are for internal use only > and soon to install a fourth. I don't know if it features password > protection for *reading* the wiki on a public web server though, I've > just been using http auth. Mediawiki works very well, though it is a large system and it might be a case of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I doubt the ALUG wiki would have enough pages to justify using a system on that scale, really! Having extra user names and passwords is always a pain in the neck but sadly the growth of spamming makes it a necessary evil. Also, I doubt that many ALUGers will be doing much updating on a regular basis, so it won't put upon too many people. Passwords and the like *are* against the spirit of a wiki, but it is probably less annoying for a user to use one than to have to browse a spam-clogged site. -- Dave Briggs linux(a)davebriggs.net | http://davebriggs.net | http://palimpsest.org.uk

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RE: [ALUG] WiKi Status Enquiry
by Keith Watson 05 Oct '05

05 Oct '05

> From: Adam Bower Sent: 05 October 2005 09:19 > > On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 11:47:39PM +0100, Alan Pope wrote: > > > > We have had edits to our (HantsLUG) wiki from the USA and Sweden > > recently. The people who made those edits made valuable > contributions > > to the site, but they're not on the mailing list. > > I figure a 2 (or is this 3?) tier-system of having approved > users with username/password who can do what they want. Then > having "approved" > users who have made (for example) 3 edits in the past that > have been approved by a moderator (have a moderation feed via > rss?) and work out who they are by cookies or hostname etc. > Then have "unapproved" users who are welcome to edit the wiki > but have to give an email address when editing, these edits > will then be approved via the moderators using rss (if they > so wish, the exact mechanism could be via a webpage and email > too) then if the moderators recognise the email address, > person, valid contribution etc. then they can whitelist > further edits from this user? > > You are then avoiding having to have any passwords (which are > a pain to > remember) but just using an email address to authenticate the > user, which in this situation is *more* than good enough. If > a user then "turned rogue" you just remove their email > address from the list of users able to make edits. sounds like it could work, like the idea of avoiding passwords via a whitlist of email addresses. How much work is involved in the implementation? Regards, Keith ____________ CORSAIR, n. - A politician of the seas. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

1 0

WiKi Status Enquiry
by Keith Watson 05 Oct '05

05 Oct '05

What's the current status of the ALUG wiki WRT making changes? Regards, Keith ____________ Knowledge is learning something every day. - Wisdom is letting go of something every day. - Zen Saying

8 19

Is anyone successfully using ATI...
by Ten 04 Oct '05

04 Oct '05

Is any ALUGger successfully using ATI radeon cards with real 3d acceleration these days? I recall it being a fruitless exercise in the past, but now isn't the past and I wonder if anyone's having any real success with this now. Buying a graphics card on an almost Dickensian budget, whilst wanting it to be an actual upgrade, I'm considering a low-end Radeon 9600 for 35 quid (after missing out on an nvidia Geforce 6600 for 50). I'm not convinced of the card's brilliance, but I'm more wondering whether Radeons in general are usable + good yet - it would widen the breadth of choice a little :) On the leisure side, I'd like to still be able to play a few good fps titles (which I can already do on a much cheaper card, just not in as meaningful a way as I'd like :D ) and will be buying doom 3 soon. My personal exp. has led me to think of nvidia as the only grown-up option. Am I wrong yet? -- There are 10 types of people in this world -those who understand binary, and those who don't.

8 11

DVD Authoring
by Wayne Stallwood 02 Oct '05

02 Oct '05

Anyone here have much experience with dvd-author and/or dvd-slideshow I am having a few problems with both (at the moment I am driving them from qdvdauthor, but the same issues seem to be present even if I do it from the command line) I am trying to add background music (in the form of an mp3 file) to the VMGM menu (main menu) I am trying to (or at least qdvdauthor is trying to) do the following mplex -f 8 -o "menu.mpg" "menu.m2v" "song1.mp3" Where the m2v file is a MPEG2 stream of my menu background, the mpg file is the output that goes into DVD author and song1.mp3 is the music I want. At this point I get ERROR:[mplex] File song1.mp3 unrecogniseable! mp3 file is a straight 192kbs file that seems happy enough in any player I chuck it through. dvd-slideshow I am running the command dvd-slideshow -o show -f list.txt -n Photos list.txt is a test file with entries as follows imgp1364.jpg:5:: imgp1365.jpg:5:: and so on.... When I run this I get the following in the output messages [mpeg2enc] Could not read YUV4MPEG2 header: stream requires unsupported features! Any help offered would be greatly appreciated. Wayne

2 5

Navigation in 3d spaces
by Peter Onion 02 Oct '05

02 Oct '05

Has anyone got any good links to information or examples on how to let a user navigate through a 3d space using mouse and keyboard ? Examples of openGL code would be even better :-) Peter

4 6

wiki fun'n'games
by Paul 02 Oct '05

02 Oct '05

Got a small problem dropped in my lap.. Need to import a whole bunch of html pages in to a wiki environment. I've installed kwiki and got it up and running with minimal effort, and now kinda stuck on the most efficient method to import the data. Does anyone have some simple suggestions ? Regards, Paul. -- From the Klingon book of C: Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.

3 4

DVD Authoring (one more question)
by Wayne Stallwood 01 Oct '05

01 Oct '05

To save me burning a coaster, do you know if traditional DVD players mind having files or folders sitting outside the usual VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. Will they just ignore the contents ? I am creating a handout DVD for a vintage car rally I attended a while ago and as well as having a some video footage and DVD photo slideshow I thought it's would be nice to provide a folder on the DVD with the high res master shots for those that want to print them or something.

1 0

Printers
by Bob Dove 29 Sep '05

29 Sep '05

Hi all, Thanks for the riposte to my Walls End thing. Lon Dun, not sure the Gaels ever came further south than Watford Gap - which is why Lon Dunners don't (normally) wear kilts! I think that they expended their energies beating up the Picts and stayed in the hills chasing Haggis.! Printers for Linux, my Epson R300 prints from OOo OK, I haven't tried scanning with Linux yet as er, I have to use Windoze for my PhotoShop installation. Next time I have to scan, I'll see what happens and let you know - if your query isn't answered afore then. Cheers, BD.

4 4

Eye candy
by Wayne Stallwood 29 Sep '05

29 Sep '05

I have just discovered 3ddesktop in the Ubuntu apt repositories. It gives a wholesome 3D experience to virtual desktop switching that is not unlike (or in fact if you enable the right options in the config files, exactly like) the fast user switch in OSX Only those with functional hardware 3D need bother to check it out, but I'd just thought I'd share. As well as being a bit of eye candy it actually serves a useful purpose to me. Often I forget which virtual desktop I left one of the many apps I tend to have open and so end up switching through all of them. I know there is a setting somewhere to allow the taskbar in gnome to show all open apps. but with so many open it gets too cluttered. It's hard to describe but with this you get a pretty good idea of what's on all (4 in my case) desktops because they are like panes of glass in that you can see the contents from behind.

7 17

Alug Library
by Wayne Stallwood 28 Sep '05

28 Sep '05

We have had a few days downtime due to Plusnet changing CGI servers and me not having time to move the site over to the new one. However it is now back up. The URL has changed to http://ccgi.digimatic.plus.com/opendb/ I tried to edit the Library booklist on the Alug site to reflect this but I get an error. Warning: fopen(./pages/archive/LibraryBooklist): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/alug/web/contrib/lib/db_filesystem.php on line 104 Has there been a change (I didn't pay attention to) due to the Wiki spam we were getting. On a related note I am still looking for a more suitable place for online library to live as Plusnet's CGI and MySQL servers aren't that great...I was talking to somebody off list who was going to sort something out for me, including I think some form of ssh access but I think we both got distracted by real work...sorry I can't remember who that was.

2 1

All in one printers/scanners/copiers/faxes
by Adam Bower 27 Sep '05

27 Sep '05

Hi all, ISTR that we covered this recently but I can't find it in the archives. Anyhow, I'm looking for a printer/copier/scanner/fax machine that works with Linux (well, the printer/scanner bit) but there are so many devices and so many that don't work with Linux that I am banging my head against the brick wall. Does anyone know of a good one? (oh, I guess I have up to 150 quid to spend). Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem

5 6

Gnome, thin theme, and firefox
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 26 Sep '05

26 Sep '05

Hi Folks, Can any of you suggest a solution to the following irritation? I'm running Red Hat 9 on a somewhat low-powered laptop, using Gnome. I have changed the Gnome "theme" to "Simple" ("Thin appearance, hign performance") and it does indeed make a noticeable difference to performance. (Thanks, by the way, to a suggestion made many moons ago by Dave Gilbert which I came across while doing some housekeeping of old email). However, it has had one irritating side-effect. I normally use Firefox as browser now, since it is much lighter and snappier than the Mozilla which came with the distribution. But, when I click on "Bookmarks" and the list of bookmarks drops down (black text on grey background), as I track the mouse down the list the bookmark the mouse is over at any moment is "higlighted" (ironic quotes) by being made completely blank (just a white rectangle, no visible text). This was not the case before, using the default Red Hat Gnome theme ("Bluecurve"), where the highlighting simply set a lighter grey background and the text remained visible. Nor does it occur now if I use Mozilla instead of Firefox, since the highlighting sets a blue background instead of the unhighlighted grey, and the black text remains visible. Of course the Mozilla is the one that came with the Red Hat distribution, so may have been customised, while the Firefox is one I installed myself; so there may be some explanation there. I can't find anything in Firefox "Edit -> Preferences" which deals with this issue. Though this does not render Firefox unusuable (you just have to remember to read the text before the mouse comes to it) it does make it more awkward, and is certainly irritating! Any suggestions? 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: 26-Sep-05 Time: 09:23:26 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

1 1

NTLworld broadband & contract???
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 26 Sep '05

26 Sep '05

Hi Folks, A query which some of you may be able to resolve! A friend of mine, whose phone is already on an NTL line, has just had a cable modem installed by NTL for broadband via an NTL cable. The leaves them with the NTL CD awaiting insertion into their computer to initiate the setup and establish the broadband connection. So far so good. However, this comes with a contract (I don't have the full wording avaiable) on the lines of "By using the software you agree to ... " -- all sorts of things, including assigning to NTL (as "IAP") and "its suppliers Motive Communications Inc." the right to obtain information from their computer and make changes to settings on their computer; and furthermore to waive all possible claims against NTL, Motive, *AND*MICROSOFT*, and anyone else that NTL sees fit, relating to practically anything that one might normally expect to be able to claim for, The contract also grants NTL/Motive the right to "send information to your computer" and "upload changes", and enters into a commitment to "accept upgrades". For the most part the scope of these things is completely unspecified and the contract, as worded, seems to be an agreement to leave an open door to NTL and their buddies to extract any kind of information and use it for any kind of purpose, as well as arbitrarily interfering with the computer itself. In couple of places there is explicit mention of "changing internet related software", in particular a thing called "The Motive Client Foundation", and of the user supplying "information such as name (etc.)" [note "etc."]. While one might shrug ones shoulders and say "Well, in practice, all they're doing is ensuring they will be able to keep a decent service running", the broadness of the wording -- while in principle allows the providers to do what they like in the way of extracting information from the computer and using it any way they like -- is disquieting. Does anyone have comments on this? By the way, my friend also has a Linux installation so theoretically could use this instead of the Win98 which the CD is provided for ans which they normally use. Is this likely to prove workable? Presumably the software on the CD encapsulates settings and configurations whose details would need to be known before a Linux box could be set up "by hand" to do the job. And, in any case, it may be that if the "IAP" detects a "non-compliant" system then their servers may simply decline to cooperate. It all seems a bit of a black hole, and I don't myself know enough about what goes on here to give any advice (other than having the same impression that the contract "gives too much away"). Either or both of accounts of reassuring experiences/horror stories will be welcome! 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: 25-Sep-05 Time: 14:30:45 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

3 2

NTLworld broadband & contract???
by Christopher Dawkins 26 Sep '05

26 Sep '05

> From: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> > > A friend of mine, whose phone is already on an NTL line, has just had a > cable modem installed by NTL for broadband via an NTL cable. The leaves > them with the NTL CD awaiting insertion into their computer to initiate > the setup and establish the broadband connection. So far so good. Amazing coincidence. I am facing the problem that my daughter has just moved in with four others to student lodgings in a house with a freshly installed NTL cable modem, which is working well to the single XP machine that has been plugged into it and configured by NTL's CD. I spent a frustrating afternoon trying to connect other machines, including my daughter's FreeBSD box, to it. Having now googled, I am sure I failed because the modem is tied to the MAC address of the first machine to connect. It would presumably be in theory possible to set up ICS on the single working machine for the others to use - better from my POV to set up NAT on the FreeBSD box for the same purpose, with a wireless card to share the connection - but the physical constraints (lodgers not allowed to drill holes and my daughter's room being one floor above the hallway where the connection is) mean the only viable solution will be to upgrade the cable modem to a wireless router. But NTL's website doesn't mention wireless routers. Is there anyone with an NTL cable-connected wireless router? If I buy a wireless router independently, is it easy to connect it to the cable modem in place of the current XP machine? Any recommendations on a suitable wireless device? Can I persuade the cable modem to accept the router's MAC address? Will the router, which presumably expects an ADSL input, be readily configurable to the cable modem's ethernet connection? And what are the chances of me managing this operation by telephone from a hundred miles away? Very many thanks to Paul for his comments and links too: > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/register.html > http://www.chetnet.co.uk/articles/index.php?page=index_v2&id=60&c=14 > Regards, Paul. I have been browsing around them and related links. There are good "manual registration" instructions there, but these are four years old and I think I will still have the MAC address problem. Many assume the cable modem is handing out 192.168.x.y addresses, but the working machine had an address 81.106.210.x/24. I did connect our BSD machine to it though a switch, configured it to an adjacent address and was then upset to find it couldn't ping the XP machine. Or the "defalt gateway". I now realise that the XP machine probably had a default firewall, bother it! And the router was probably not accepting the BSD machine's MAC address. Bother it! Concerning Ted's contract reservations, isn't this sort of thing standard practice? The last time I read the small print on an airline ticket (flights can be very boring) I got the impression that they were under no obligation to fly me anywhere anytime. And NTL are welcome to inspect my BSD boxen as much as they like, they need both a wheel and a root password to get in. -- Christopher Dawkins, Garnetts Corner, Braintree Road, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DS 01371-821076, mobile 07816 821659 cchd(a)felsted.essex.sch.uk

5 5

Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 26 Sep '05

26 Sep '05

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

text manipulation
by Peter 25 Sep '05

25 Sep '05

Hello everyone. How do you scan a text file in the following way? It will have multiple occurrences of a label in sucessive records. For instance: ****newrecord**** *TTTT lorum ipsem *TTTT feugiat, ullamcorper *RRRR suscipit dolor..... *RRRR fuerat inscipior *SSS nunquam alebit ****endofrecord**** This is how it actually is - the labels are all in caps preceded by *, the start and end of the records are indicated as shown, and each line consists of a field label followed by field content. I am trying to make this into a csv file for import into another database, but am having problems because the number of identical field labels varies from record to record. The starting database appears to have allowed the user to create any number of identically labelled fields. So the number of fields in a record varies from 30 to 50, and there can be 5 -10 duplicate field labels in any record. It is several thousand records in size. The problem is to go through the file, and remove only the second and subsequent occurences of a label, putting the content from the second and subsequent records in the record with the first instance. So in the above example, you apply the process and end up with *TTTT lorum ipsem feugiat, ullamcorper *RRRR suscipit dolor fuerat inscipior *SSS nunquam alebit Once the file is like this, it will be simple to go through and change the carriage returns into tabs, and then do the import. I realise that uniq will find duplicates, and that tr will do replaces, and that you can probably pipe one into the other...or use GAWK? But can't seem to figure out how exactly to make them all do exactly this. My main problem is how to just delete the second and subsequent duplicate labels, instead of either all occurrences of the label, or the whole record with the duplicate label. Any ideas? Regards & thanks in advance to anyone patient enough to help. Peter Berrie

2 1

Help - CM120 C-Media USB Card Reader
by Tim Green 25 Sep '05

25 Sep '05

Hello, I bought an interestingly cheap USB memory card reader last week. It works fine in Windows but I'd rather having it working in Linux. The card reader is based on the C-Media CM120 chip. I say based on - there is only the one chip on the little circuit board. If you think you can help, you can read the output of "lsusb -v" in my journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/spodlife/90240.html I am running Debian Sarge with kernel v2.6.8, and looking ahead to the more recent kernels there is still no official support. Any ideas? Cheers, Tim.

2 2

When df & du disagree (wildly)...
by James Green 25 Sep '05

25 Sep '05

Hi all, Spot the bleedin' obvious: jmkg@s1c1:/home$ sudo du -csh 64G . 64G total jmkg@s1c1:/home$ sudo df -h /home Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda7 124G 105G 13G 89% /home Tiny wincey little bit of a disagreement going on there. Server is a MySQL box, I've had to keep removing binary logs due to disk space issues and lately this has been a pain. A quick look for other areas of disk usage on this partition showed the discrepency. Any particular ideas on what may be the cause? Only reference on Google was circa 1999 when deleting open files caused this to be demonstrated. df does update when I delete stuff today... Cheers, James

2 1

Autumn ALUG Kit Meet at UEA
by Elisabeth 25 Sep '05

25 Sep '05

There is a note in my phone which says there should be a kit meet at UEA on 23 October, as mooted at the last monthly Moot. If there are no better suggestions or major objections from the assembled masses, I'll book a room next week. Are we going for the record for coffee makers again? And, of course, there will be Cake. And a prize for the most strange, complex, or amusing piece of working kit. And possibly an award for the person who fixes (or breaks) the most things during the afternoon :) e

9 11

Foreign parts
by Bob Dove 24 Sep '05

24 Sep '05

Hi Folks, Greetings from Colonia Claudius. I know that the Wallsend = World's End is a funny - the 'real' World's End is in Chelsea, part of Londinium! I know you all know too that Wallsend is where Hadrian's wall ended! We all learnt at school that Hadrian built the wall to keep the Scots out, the truth of the matter is that there were probably as many gates through the wall as there were watch towers on it. To come through the gate (to trade) you had to pay a tax on your sale goods. Customs and Excise - good idea eh? Julius Caesar 'Veni, Vedi, Veci'? Nah, Veni and Vedi perhaps but he went home with the 'flu! Claudius' army came and found of course already Romanised Celtic tribes and Roman trading posts so the battles were probably not as extensive as the post Roman propaganda would have us believe!!! Alas, the Romans didn't have Linux... Cheers, Bob Dove.

3 2

vnc through a firewall
by Peter 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

Does anyone know how to do this? I have a friend in another part of England who regularly wants help with how to do things in OO. So, most of the time I start up OO myself and work in parallel with him and talk him through it. But, he's not very sophisticated and often has trouble following, or even describing very accurately what he is seeing. Today was what led me to think we need another way, when for some mysterious reason printing a journal article he has written, in the approved format of 2 pages per sheet in landscape form, ran into problems. So I find myself saying, you see that icon with the little hand over the printer.... Very time consuming. I have set him up on broadband using a router, so there is a hardware firewall at his end, and of course, NAT. I have put Suse 9.2 in for him, so there is a software firewall as well. I would like to be able, securely, to run VNC and actually demonstrate what he has to do. If we didn't have the firewalls....it would be easy! But with the router, he doesn't have a public IP address - exactly why I made him get one, of course. Oh dear. I am not terribly sophisticated in this stuff, so if anyone can give a simple step by step account, would be very grateful. Regards Peter

3 2

so-long and thanks for all the fish
by Stan Fraser 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

I am moving away to the North East (Wallsend) and hope there is an active LUG in the area. Thanks to ALUG I'm now able to understand some of the questions posted, never mind the answers! Best Regards to Everyone Stan

3 2

DVD Authoring
by Wayne Stallwood 21 Sep '05

21 Sep '05

I am looking for a tool chain (or preferably a single application) that can author a DVD from DV cam footage. Specifically- I have video footage on two DV Cams (both have firewire interfaces) that I need to edit into a single video stream. Additionally I may need to edit/substitute the audio track. I am looking for a graphical video editor here because there are sections of the footage I need to remove and cut about. I have a series of Digital camera stills that I would like to compile into a video slide show (possibly with a narrative audio track) I want to create a DVD menu for the above allowing access to either the video or the Slide show. With the option to have the menu skinned with a theme of my choosing Pie in the sky here but, If possible I would like to be able to mess with video effects, I would love to have access to a sepia style effect complete with film scratches/noise. I have a standard Firewire interface on my machine. I am not sure but I guess that any firewire interface is suitable for capturing from a Digital Video camera, do the camera's need some sort of driver or is there a universal capture driver ? If capturing from firewire is a problem then I can dub the video to DVD using a standalone DVD recorder (that has a firewire interface) and then extract the video from the recorded DVD's. Has anyone done this sort of thing on Linux ?

3 8

Success Story - Gphoto2 1 : Windows Nil
by Steve Fosdick 21 Sep '05

21 Sep '05

It's nice to be able to report a success, particularly in what can otherwise be a weak-spot to GNU/Linux, that of interfacing to hardware which is supplied only with Windows (or occasionaly Mac) drivers. Having bought a nice new digital camera, my first attempt at getting pictures off it was on Linux. It took about 30 seconds to install gphoto2 and about a further 30 seconds or so to fetch all the pictures from the camera. Next I was round a friend's and tried to fetch the pictures from the camera to a Windows PC to view them on the screen. After putting in the software disc from the manufacturer the PC spent a good ten minutes running InstallShield for what seemed like an infinite series of related components eventually coming to a halt when one of the instances of InstallShield seemed to reach some kind of deadlock. After a reboot and a second attempt things were no better - in fact it was more than InstallShield that had to be killed with Task Manager. The windows new hardware wizard did detect the camera once and offered a choice of application. After picking the one from the manufacter and finding, not to any great suprise, that it didn't work there wasn't any obvious way of getting back to that choice despite not having clicked the "remember my choice" checkbox. Unplugging the camera and plugging in again, cycling the power on the camera and another reboot of the PC all failed to get back to that dialog. So, after a frustrating half hour in front of the windows PC I took the camera home, fetched the photos with gphoto2 and in less than a minute I'd e-mailed them back to my friend. Steve.

3 3

Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 19 Sep '05

19 Sep '05

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

TV Card
by Wayne Stallwood 18 Sep '05

18 Sep '05

Can anyone recommend a DVB (freeview) card that works in Linux ? Does such a thing exist ? Also what is the state of Top up TV support on PC based Freeview receivers, is it possible or is Top up TV restricted to set top boxes.

5 6

[ALUG Announce]USERLAND : OPENMUTE FLOSS WORKSHOPS & ARTIST TALK 22-23 SEPTEMBER 2005
by Anthony Iles 17 Sep '05

17 Sep '05

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hi there, I found your group online and thought you might be interested in this event happening in Norwich next week. Regards Anthony --- OPENMUTE TOUR ANNOUNCE USERLAND : FREE LIBRE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE WORKING FOR YOU! OpenMute is an online collaborative software tool initiative, and the latest in a cadre of projects by Mute Magazine. OpenMute provides 'free as in beer' web space, tools and services to the non-profit and creative sectors. The OpenMute tour is a varied set of two-day workshops with an aim to familiarise audiences, practitioners and interested parties with the current concepts and practices of Free Open Source Software (or FOSS) as well as practical hands-on help building a website or creating a community project using the OpenMute toolset. The workshops are geared towards teaching people 'you' how to use the OpenMute FOSS software for your cultural or community needs, and these workshops are geared towards a novice to intermediate user of these systems Price : £20 / £10 concessions Date : September 22rd-23rd September Duration : Two Days Times : 10-4pm artist's talk after first day of workshop 4.30pm. Venue : Norwich Arts Centre, St. Benedict's Street, Norwich, NR2 4PG Booking : 01603 660352 All workshop participants please register for your free floss web site http://openmute.org ***22nd SEPTEMBER 4.30PM ARTIST TALK BY HEATH BUNTING OF IRRATIONAL.ORG AND THE CUBE CINEMA*** ALL WELCOME / NO ADMISSION CHARGE Biography. Heath Bunting emerged from the 80's committed to building open/ democratic communication systems and social contexts. He came from the street up, passing through and often revisiting graphity, performance, intervention, pirate radio, fax/ mail art and BBS systems to become an active participant in the explosion of the internet. He has produced many internet projects, some highly recognised and has helped form a strong context for the practice of net.art. Recently, he has moved into the field of genetics proclaiming it to be the next "new media", and is also developing work in the area of physical network performance. 22/09/05 4.30-5.30pm Norwich Arts Centre, St. Benedict's Street, Norwich, NR2 4PG --- END ----- 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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Diversity is a killer
by Wayne Stallwood 17 Sep '05

17 Sep '05

Does anybody else remember MS advertising campaigns of old that suggested that the diversity in the Unix and Linux operating systems from different vendors caused interoperability woes and increased the chances of you deploying the wrong solution. I've been googling away but I can't find any linkage. Anyway if this report is to believed http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050910-5298.html It looks like there is going to be no less than 7 different flavours of Windows Vista (longhorn to those that haven't been keeping up) with not only different versions for home and business but different levels within those versions. As someone who provides support to both business and private customers I can see this being a nightmare. To be honest it is hard enough remembering and explaining the differences between XP Pro and XP Home. But in the future I'll have to remember the differences between Professional Edition, Small Business Edition and Enterprise edition for my business customers and Starter, Home basic and Home Premium Edition for my private clients. God forbid that anybody try to use the Business versions in the home or vice versa because it looks like unless they fork out for the Ultimate edition not one of the above has a full feature set. Why can't it be the Apple way where there is a Server version and a Workstation version. Or better still Linux where any version can potentially be Server,Workstation Home or Business depending on what packages you have installed. There must be a way of MS getting their licensing model to work without resorting to so many versions of what essentially is the same product.

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Re: main digest, Vol 3 #668 - 11 msgs
by Jenny Hopkins 15 Sep '05

15 Sep '05

Jan: <snip> > The main reason I suggest Black Cat Networks is that I am very happy > with their service (more so than any other ISP I have used) and so are > other Aluggers who use them and Jonathan (who owns/works for/runs Black > Cat) is in the pub every month for the 2nd Thursday Norwich Alug pub > meet. > > [1] http://www.blackcatnetworks.co.uk/ This sounds attractive to me, I would be quite inclined to go locally with a company that is known to be "Linux aware". It seems to me that the ADSL service they offer might be a bit more than what I was looking for -- e.g. I don't think I need a static IP; my main use of the connection would be shuttling files back and forth between home and work (via scp / rsync etc.), installing Debian packages, and occasional general surfing / email checking etc. But then again, a nicely working connection to the rest of the Internet may well be worth the additional costs (mainly the setup fee)... </snip> Hi Jan, I've got a bt line here, and when exchange was upgraded to adsl I splashed out and got firstly my dsl from blackcatnetworks and secondly a Netgear DG834G router. Any extra money I spent has been worth it time and time again as I have had a reliable broadband connection for a year now, and have had to make no support phone calls. Jenny

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General advice on broadband / WLAN wanted
by Jan T. Kim 14 Sep '05

14 Sep '05

Dear ALUG folks, I have moved from Germany to Norwich a couple of months ago and now I consider getting a broadband Internet connection for use with Linux (evidently on this list, I guess...). Looking at the offers by BT and NTL, I have not been quite able to determine what hardware is provided with the packages offered. For example, the most basic package from BT is advertised as "Not Mac compatible", but I've not been able to figure out what causes this incompatibility. Certainly, some of you on this list have a broadband connection? I'd be interested if you could share your experience and tell me how you managed (or failed) to use a broadband package. I'm most interested in the basic ones -- having Internet access at work (UEA), I don't need huge download capacity, web space or other add-on features. The computer(s) to be connected are laptops (running Debian), if that makes any difference. As a next step, I'd also look into getting wireless, so I'd be interested in comments on that too. Thanks in advance and best regards, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | *NEW* email: jtk(a)cmp.uea.ac.uk | | *NEW* WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*

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Simply setting serial port parameters
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 14 Sep '05

14 Sep '05

Hi Folks, Advice on an ancient ritual please ... Suppose I want to set the serial port parameters of /dev/ttyS0, e.g. Speed = 4800 baud, 7 data bits, Space parity, 1 stop bit aka "4800 7S1". I don't seem to find a Linux utility wich will do this simply. I've been doing it by starting up minicom, going into its "config" mode via "^A-Z", doing each of these bitty things separately, and then quitting. However, this is manifestly overkill! (Not to say clumsy, time-consuming, and not suited for incorporation in a script). Of course, once done once, one can save the resulting config to a minirc.* file and then run 'minicom minirc.whatever', which does the business but still leaves minicom running so it has to be killed (since it's stealing data from the serial port), and there's no option I can see to minicom which tells it to "run setup and quit". What I'm really after is a simple utility on the lines of serialpars -s 4800 -b 7 -p S -s 1 /dev/ttyS0 to set up "4800 7S1", but I can't find such a thing. (setserial doesn't seem to do this -- while it's in principle possible to set the baud rate in a roundabout way, I don't see any provision for data bits, parity, stop bits.) Any ideas? Thanks, best wishes, and good morning! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 14-Sep-05 Time: 10:26:27 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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USB -> Serial adapter
by Barry Samuels 12 Sep '05

12 Sep '05

I have just discovered that my shiny new Thinkpad R51 doesn't have a serial port !!!!! I want to be able to connect my GPS which requires a 9-pin serial connector. I see that there are USB to Serial cable adapters available including an IBM one for £50.00 (No thank you). There are many available on ebay for £3 upwards (including postage) so can anyone tell me if these things are likely to require any special software to make them work. The reason I ask is that they all specify Windows or Mac compatibility - no mention of Linux of course. Any information gratefully recieved. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 12 Sep '05

12 Sep '05

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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Switch Mode
by Bob Dove 11 Sep '05

11 Sep '05

Hi Folks, Switch Mode - mmmm? In days gone by I worked on a switch mode device for studio flash. The idea was to run studio flash equipment from car battery - 12v DC to 230v AC at a fairly high amperage. The switch mode converter cost more than the studio flash which in itself was expensive! It was almost as large too! I have no recollection of anyone doing this in reverse - far too expensive. However, in the flash market I have specified many an external power supply (transformer pack) to run DC 6v, 9v and 12v devices from 230/240v AC. Currently most of these come from China and cost (according to quantity of course) pence! You can now buy relatively inexpensive switch mode devices - I presume largely to obviate miles of extended cable when you want to strim the back end of your garden (you should be so lucky)! Cheers, BD.

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SiI Raid Card
by David Noble 10 Sep '05

10 Sep '05

Hi I've recently installed a Silicon Image ATA 133 card, and a new Seagate 120 gig hard drive (configured as slave, plugged into the primary channel of the ATA card)- it seems to work fine under Windows, but now when starting up Linux (SuSE 9.1), I get a Kernel Panic when doing something like mounting /root or something(/dev/hdb3). My other hard drives (an 80 gig containing the Linux partitions, and a 60 gig containing the Windows partitions) are connected to the Realtek ATA chip on my motherboard, and they get past the loading stage no probs. HELP!!! what can I do? Are my videos, multitrack audio and everything else hopelessly lost?!?! Please help Dave

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Power & Heat in Laptops
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 10 Sep '05

10 Sep '05

Hi Folks, An off-topic question, but you hardware experts may help! On some laptops, the external mains supply passes through an external transformer and it is the reduced voltage which is plugged in to the laptop. On others, the mains lead is plugged directly into the laptop, and the voltage reduction is done internally. In the former case, heat generated in the reduction is dissipated externally, while in the latter it has to escape from the interior of the laptop. So, other things being equal, one would expect the latter kind to run hotter than the former. This certainly seems to correspond to my experience. I have had 4 (ancient) laptops, 3 still working. One of these has the mains plugged in directly, the others all have an external transformer. I have never had heating concerns with the ones which have external transformers, while the "internal" one does run pretty warm, and periodically exhibits screen-flashing/breakup (especially when running "graphics heavy", as in X with lots of re-draw). Since this can often be cured by switching to a console and pressing a tiny button, which blanks the screen, for a few seconds, and also seems more prevalent in warm weather,I wonder if this is associated with overheating of the graphics chip. (There is an internal fan, which cuts in occasionally, but it seems to be a sleepy bugger and doesn't often wake up ... ) Any comments welcome, and will be read with interest! 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: 09-Sep-05 Time: 08:17:31 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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KDE Konqueror Problem
by Ben Whyte 09 Sep '05

09 Sep '05

Hi I have an interesting problem that I wondered if people could help with. I am running Debian testing and kde and konqueror has developed an odd problem, when you open it up to do file management, it will display the contents of a directory, but if you click on a directory it says it doesn't no what to do and what would you like to open the file using. So I have had a look at the file associations and it doesn't have any applications in the file associations. If I add a simple konqueror it recursively opens konqueror windows but shows no files in these windows. Any and all suggestions welcome. Ben Whyte

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Problem: Emacs + ssh X forwarding = BadWindow
by MJ Ray 09 Sep '05

09 Sep '05

Today I was using Emacs and used File->"New Frame on Display..." to put an emacs frame (a window) onto localhost:10 which was forwarded off over ssh to another display. Oddly, with this machine combination that I've not tried before, keyboard input wasn't recognised by Emacs and while using the mouse to try to see what the problem was, the connection was lost with some BadWindow message displayed on the original Emacs frame's minibuffer (vanished before I could copy it). I'm using Emacs 21.3, OpenSSH 4.0p1 and x.org 6.8.1 - has anyone seen similar problems or know what causes them? (By the way, if you've never used "New Frame on Display..." or its predecessors to create collaborative editing sessions, you've been missing out on a useful tool. Give it a go!) Thanks in advance for any clue, -- MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

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FTGH: Epson Stylus 480
by Jonathan McDowell 08 Sep '05

08 Sep '05

1 (one) Epson Stylus 480 colour inkjet printer. About 5 years old, but extremely rarely used (hence getting rid of it in a spree of clearing out junk). Didn't work that well under Linux when I bought it, but I believe it's supported ok these days. Parallel port interface. Boxed. I even seem to have a manual. Free To Good Home. Must collect from Norwich (off Drayton Road). J. -- "Why 'maybe' for everything?" "I'm using fluffy logic." [ Black Cat Networks ] [ 0845 PAYG dialup ] [ ADSL from £20+VAT/month ] [ http://www.blackcatnetworks.co.uk/ ]

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autoconf problem
by Chris Green 06 Sep '05

06 Sep '05

I'm trying to configure a utility using autoconf, when I run ./configure I get all the usual checking sort of stuff, then at the end:- checking for XShapeCombineMask in -lXext... no checking for jpeg_destroy_compress in -ljpeg... no not updating unwritable cache ./config.cache creating ./config.status sed: can't read confdefs.h: No such file or directory creating autoconf/Makefile.defines sed: can't read ./autoconf/Makefile.defines.in: No such file or directory creating autoconf/Makefile.common sed: can't read ./autoconf/Makefile.common.in: No such file or directory creating autoconf/Makefile.common.lib sed: can't read ./autoconf/Makefile.common.lib.in: No such file or directory creating Makefile sed: can't read ./Makefile.in: No such file or directory creating config.h cat: ./autoconf/config.h.in: No such file or directory config.h is unchanged ... but all those errors are nonsense, there is a writable ./config.cache (created earlier by autoconf) and the autoconf directory does exist and has those files in it. What am I missing? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 05 Sep '05

05 Sep '05

The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 8th September. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. We'll 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. 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/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for. We're /normally/ just to the left of the main entrance. J. -- /-\ | 101 things you can't have too much |@/ Debian GNU/Linux Developer | of : 30 - Comfy sofas. \- |

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