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KDE 4.14 instead of Plasma
by Chris Walker 11 Jun '16

11 Jun '16

I have just installed a beta of Mageia 6. In the description online it says that KDE 4.14 can be installed - https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_6_Release_Notes#KDE in the traditional manner but I can't see how I might select it and I don't like Plasma. I selected KDE out of the three choices - KDE, Gnome or XFCE - when I installed Mageia and I fully expected to see the usual KDE desktop. But I don't. What do I have to do to make it work please? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 9th June
by Viperfang 06 Jun '16

06 Jun '16

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 9th June at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- 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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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 3rd June.
by Viperfang 31 May '16

31 May '16

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Removing print jobs
by Bev Nicolson 14 May '16

14 May '16

So lprm should work, shouldn't it? It has done before so when I'd asked my printer to get going on a document a few days ago and realised I'd built up a print queue, I tried it again. Not this time, so I got it printed out (eventually) several times and it wouldn't stop. Ideas? (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.) Bev.

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What will linux do?
by Chris Walker 13 May '16

13 May '16

I have been given a new(ish) PC. It's an i7 with 16GB of RAM. It currently has Windows 10 on a 128 GB SSD and has a couple of 1TB hard drives configured under Windows as RAID1 - they show up in the BIOS as RAID. My intention is to remove the SSD and replace it with a 512GB SSD so that I can have Mageia 5 on it as well (that's the distro I have run for some time and I'm familiar with it). My question concerns the Windows RAID. Does anybody have any idea what linux will make of it? If it helps, I've pulled the drive out and hooked it to my current machine via a USB adapter and it appears that it's a regular NTFS drive. But should there be any extra partitions or files on it to denote that it's part of a RAID array? I also intend to have my /home partition on a separate 1TB drive. The installation on this machine has Windows 10 on a 500GB hard drive with Mageia on a 1TB drive. I'm thinking that I might just bung that drive in to the new machine and at some point remove the extra partitions from it leaving just the /home on there. Once I've installed Mageia on the new SSD, is it as simple as amending the fstab file to point to that 1TB drive? Or should I do something different altogether? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Re: [ALUG] Question about backgrounds on pdf
by Peter Berrie 13 May '16

13 May '16

>There doesn't appear to be any useful Export options in >Okular so can't you print it again to a PDF? Yes, that is possible. The problem is that what you see in print preview is the lightened image, but what you get when you print to file is the original again. I don't know how to get the version that Okular displays to print to file. Maybe I am missing something obvious or doing something wrong. Or maybe the only thing to do is to copy and paste page by page into Open Office, and then export as PDF. It will be a bit tedious but it may be the only way.

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Question about backgrounds on pdf
by Peter Berrie 12 May '16

12 May '16

Someone I support has a pdf with a too dark background and is having trouble reading it. By using the controls in Okular I can make it black font on white background, and its perfect, easy to read and straightforward. However, I can't figure out how to either export a copy with the changes, or make the same changes in some other package. To make the changes I used the accessibility options in Okular's configure control, and did convert to black and white, then threshold about 75% and contrast 100%. Okular remembers to apply this on my machine when the file is opened, but how to make the changes to the file itself so that other readers show the same thing? Any suggestions? Peter

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 12th May
by Viperfang 09 May '16

09 May '16

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 12th May at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- 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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An old problem - how to manage permissions with web servers
by Chris Green 07 May '16

07 May '16

I'm always hitting this problem in one way or another and I've never really come up with a good solution. I have lots of personal information (not secret, just that it's mostly only useful to me) which I keep in a Wiki. To make my life easy I run apache2 as user 'chris' (me) on the servers where I have the wiki. This allows me to edit pages directly and do all the maintenance etc. without the rigmarole of becoming root and/or becoming www-data. However this then causes problems with other stuff that runs under the web server as they assume that it's going to run (in Ubuntu anyway) as www-data. My current hassle is with Owncloud which installs with www-data owning the data directory and I have to manually change the ownership to allow it to write. There are also other similar conflicts. Isn't there a way to tell the installation system that I want my browser to run as a specified user rather than the default (and really annoying!) www-data? I suppose I could bodge /etc/passwd so that chris and www-data are the same but it is rather a bodge, I'd like a better solution. -- Chris Green

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What permissions will apt use when installing? Will umask affect it?
by Chris Green 06 May '16

06 May '16

I want to be able to install a web app with a umask of 0002 rather than the default 0022. I have worked out how to get the www-data user to have a umask of 0002 when used by apache but I'm not sure how to *install* the app with the required permissions. It's being installed and kept up to date by using the standard apt in Ubuntu (it's on a PPA). Does anyone know if it's possible to tell apt to use a different umask? I.e. if I set the umask when installing will I get the effect that I want or does an application installed by apt set its permissions by configuration somewhere? -- Chris Green

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Ubuntu updates
by Bev Nicolson 06 May '16

06 May '16

On 12.04LTS but get security updates almost every day and I guess on the one hand that could be encouraging, on the other, I do start to wonder why they don't all arrive at once. (I know now. It's how it connects to the internet.) Is there any way of asking Update Manager to show them every fortnight instead? I can’t see that option. Ta. I'm on a limited broadband band deal during peak hours so saving them up would be useful if possible. Bev.

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Wanted: Non-realtime but automatic file synchronisation
by Chris Green 06 May '16

06 May '16

I have a number of large[ish] directory trees that I would like to keep synchronised across various systems. There are basically three systems involved: desktop, laptop and a remote server. They all run Linux (xubuntu and ubuntu). I don't need real-time synchronisation like that provided by btsync, syncthing or pulse. The directory trees are really too big for this sort of thing anyway. On the other hand I don't want a manual system like Unison which anyway seems beset by problems with different versions at each end. All I want (all?) is a way to keep the directories in sync when changes occur at either end. Since the changes will be mostly generated by me it will be very rare for changes to occur in two places at the same time. If they do then I'm quite happy for the system to require manual intervention. I just want the general case to be automatic. Updating once an hour or so would be quite satisfactory. I can do much of it using rsync with the --update option run first one way and then the other, this does nearly everything I want but there is one gotcha - files deleted will re-appear. File deletions will not be frequent but they will occur occasionally. Adding a --delete option to rsync doesn't necessarily help, it could also mean that new files added get deleted. It all depends on the relative timing of additions and deletions and the copying each way. Nearly all the 'directory synchronisation' tools I can find are one-way and do very little more than one can do easily oneself using rsync. Has anyone come across anything that might do something like I want? -- Chris Green

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Starting a web server on demand - sensible, easy?
by Chris Green 06 May '16

06 May '16

I want to run a Javascript/PHP application on my laptop which will at times be unable to get to the internet. Thus I need to run a web server of some sort on it to serve the PHP side of things. If the laptop is at home on the home LAN I want to be able to run the same Javascript/PHP application on my desktop machine so I can use the bigger screen etc. This will work fine of course with the web server on the laptop, as long as the web server is running. What's the neatest/easiest way to fire up the web server on demand? I don't really want to run it all the time. Ideally also I'd prefer not to run Apache as it's total overkill for what I'm doing. I tried PHP's built-in web server ("php -S localhost:80") and it works fine for me, the home LAN can't be accessed from outside so security should be OK. I suppose the modern equivalent of inetd would do what I want but I'm a bit worried about how easy it might be (or not). -- Chris Green

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 6th May.
by Viperfang 03 May '16

03 May '16

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Desktop PC spec for virtualisation and transcoding
by Mark Rogers 14 Apr '16

14 Apr '16

I'm looking to replace my home desktop PC (Ubuntu) with something a bit better. Budget around £4-500. It mainly runs a couple of virtual machines (VirtualBox) and acts as a media PC with Plex (which means video files get transcoded on the fly, which includes some 3D HD titles). Both of these are areas that the current PC struggles with sometimes (A8-6410 CPU with 12GB RAM and SSD). To be fair it copes with everything now as long as I don't try to do both at once but if I watch a 3D title I have to shut down all the VMs, and any more than a couple of VMs at the same time will push it. I got a good deal on a 500GB Crucial SSD so that's prompted me into building a new box around it and the forthcoming Ubuntu LTS. I found some desktops based around an i7 and 16GB which is the direction I'm heading in at the moment but I'm open to suggestion. I assume the graphics capability is of some importance for transcoding, is Intel on-board enough? (I won't be playing games.) I'm happy to build for myself although for a modest premium would buy pre-built (no need for Windows though!). -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Ghostery and Adf.ly
by Chris Walker 13 Apr '16

13 Apr '16

I keep getting tabs opening up in Chrome with a URL of Adf.ly but can't find it in the list of extensions. So I thought that if I search my machine for that string I might be able to find it and delete as I am irritated by the constant appearance. A search revealed that a Ghostery database file contained that string. So if I want to stop Adf.ly being presented to me every time I run Chrome, should I simply delete appropriate section from the Ghostery database? Or is there a better way? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 14th April
by Viperfang 11 Apr '16

11 Apr '16

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 14th April at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- 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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Free disk array
by Huge 05 Apr '16

05 Apr '16

I have a Sun StorEdge Multipack disk array which I neither want nor need and cannot be arsed to eBay. It's like this one; http://everythingsolaris.org/reviews/hardware/ssm/frameset.html Mine is the 6 disk one. It has some disks in it but (i) they're likely very small (under 500Gb) & (ii) I don't know what's on them and CBA to find out, so I'll likely remove those. If anyone wants this, they're welcome, otherwise it's going in the skip. No, I will not ship it. It's very heavy. I can deliver it near Diss at more-or-less any time, or near Norwich the next time I'm there. Regards, Hugh. -- Today is Setting Orange, the 22nd day of Discord in the YOLD 3182 I don't have an attitude problem. If you have a problem with my attitude, that's your problem.

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Re: [ALUG] 2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 1st April.
by Chris Walker 02 Apr '16

02 Apr '16

On Tue, 29 Mar 2016 03:00:42 +0100 Viperfang <viperfang(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, > more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk Notice that this domain name has expired! -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Re: [ALUG] Ubuntu update screen woes
by Christopher Dawkins 01 Apr '16

01 Apr '16

Nvidia! That's the problem. Not that it's a lot better with other graphics chips, except when you are lucky. You only need the correct graphics driver, which you can download from the Nvidia site. Much easier said than done - it has taken me days of googling in the past. But twice recently I have been gobsmacked by KDE. Install KDE5, and a pop-up box recognises the situation and offers to find and install for you the correct driver. And that works perfectly. You can probably then deinstall KDE and go back to Xubuntu. -- Christopher Dawkins Archivist, Felsted School http://archives.felsted.org Garnetts Corner, Jollyboys Lane North, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DU cchd(a)pjcd.org 07816 821659 01371 821076

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Ubuntu update screen woes
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 01 Apr '16

01 Apr '16

I've just updated a machine to XUbuntu 14.04 (LTS) from the last LTS release. I've had numerous problems, but something I'm making no progress with is a problem with the display. Text and window borders etc seem to display OK, but standard file manager icons don't. Some graphics look a bit odd - e.g. Tweakubuntu splash screen which I recall as green and dark grey, comes out washed out, very faint grey and barely readable. Some lines of text that should be highlighted, seem to be almost anti-highlighted - thin faint green foreground text with no highlight line (whereas on another machine, there should be background highlight). In synaptic and log file viewer, the text in the top right pane of the display, that is the pane that displays packages that you are choosing to install or uninstall, is cunningly displayed in white on white, i.e. completely invisible. Sometimes by scrolling the mouse wheel or resizing the window, I can get the text to appear. I know that synaptic is working because if I use ssh -X to connect to this machine from another, and run synaptec remotely using x windows forwarding, then synaptic appears and works correctly. This confirms to me that it's a display issue, but I'm at a bit of a loss on how to tackle it. File managers: they show the file names, but some of the file or folder icons appear, some don't. Moving the mouse around makes some appear, and some disappear. The machine has an old nvidea card, and uses the nouveau display driver. I've tried reinstalling this. There's no obvious (to me) display problems shown in dmesg. I will be trawling through the log files to have a look, (but log-file-viewer doesn't show log text either). Any ideas how to go about fixing this? Where are display config settings to tweak. How can I reinstall/fix? There is an xorg.conf file but removing this makes no difference. Any help/advice gratefully received! Steve

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 1st April.
by Viperfang 29 Mar '16

29 Mar '16

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

get_iplayer help
by Chris Walker 24 Mar '16

24 Mar '16

Perhaps somebody can point me in the right direction here as I'm failing to achieve what I want. On Radio 4 is a new series by Hal Cruttenden called simply Hal. But if I say get_iplayer --type=radio "Hal" I end up with several Asian programmes along with Hancock's Half Hour and so on. Also listed though is Hal - Career, BBC Radio 4 so my question is, how can I differentiate between those unwanted programmes and the one sole programme I do want? My first thought was that I could simply put a space in the name but then I don't get Hal Cruttenden, just the Asian programmes. I then tried to add stuff like "--fields comedy" but that didn't find anything so I'm stuck! I assume other people have overcome similar problems so how did they solve it? Any help appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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How to debug a bit of javascript?
by Chris Green 23 Mar '16

23 Mar '16

I am using a thing called editablegrid which is mostly javascript. I've got it working pretty well displaying my data in an editable grid but there's a couple of niggles that are driving me mad. One is that the setting for the number of lines to be displayed in the grid doesn't work. I can set the number of lines in the code but I can't select it with the displayed selector. The HTML has:- <label for="pagecontrol">Rows per page: </label> <select id="pagesize" name="pagesize"> <option value="5">5</option> <option value="10">10</option> <option value="15">15</option> <option value="20">20</option> <option value="25">25</option> <option value="30">30</option> <option value="40">40</option> <option value="50">50</option> </select> Which displays the numbers one can select OK. Then, in the javascript is the following:- $("#pagesize").val(pageSize).change(function() { editableGrid.setPageSize($("#pagesize").val()); }); In the demo it works perfectly, in my copy it doesn't work at all. One can select a value but nothing changes. How can I debug this? There are no errors in the Browser Console (firefox) nor in the apache log. It's as if the hooks are not being set but other hook functions in the initialisation are working OK. Can I set a break point or something on the select and see what gets called? -- Chris Green

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DNS go bye-bye
by Bill Hill 18 Mar '16

18 Mar '16

This is the third time I've been unable to log out; the problem: $ cat /etc/resolv.conf # Generated by NetworkManager $ Any ideas why? (NB, this is a really complex setup consisting of an archaic item of technology termed a "network cable" and a very non-standard configuration of a "fixed IP address".) Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy action. $ sudo apt-get purge network-manager

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Customising a Pi image
by Mark Rogers 17 Mar '16

17 Mar '16

This is really just a sanity check! Background: The current standard Pi Rasbian image is 3.8GB in size. If I write that to (say) an 8GB card it'll only give me access to that 3.8Gb until I resize the partition (for which Raspbian includes scripts). Assume I *don't* do that resize. I set things up the way I want on the Pi, and I then want to create a new image of the SD card to restore to another card (possibly a different size). "dd" will get me an 8GB image by default (since it's an 8GB card) but am I correct that I can safely limit the image to the exact size of the original Rasbian image? The objective here is that (a) writing a 3.8GB image to a new card is much faster than writing an 8GB image, and (b) that it will safely write to any 4GB/8GB/16GB/etc card (where an 8GB image might not fit on a different model of 8GB card). The third benefit (c) of a smaller image is less of a concern as I can compress it anyway and unused space should pretty much disappear that way. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Automatically selecting the best wifi adapter
by Mark Rogers 17 Mar '16

17 Mar '16

The new Pi 3 has built in Wifi, great! But it'll never be as good as a USB adapter with proper antenna, although it might often be sufficient. Out of the box, if I connect it to wifi using the onboard adapter and then add a second USB adapter is connects the second one in tandem (ie both connect to the same network and get distinct IP addresses via DHCP). This is a waste of DHCP allocation resources and (correct me if I'm wrong) could cause routing issues? What I'd like is to have the Pi use the built in adapter if that's the only one present but switch to the added adapter if one is present (and working[1]), switching back to the on-board one otherwise. None of this is Pi-specific of-course, the same would apply to any laptop with built in adapter where an additional dongle might be used periodically. However my Googling has so far only thrown up more permanent solutions, and not automatic switching between them. [1] Ideally it would fail over to the onboard adapter if the USB one wasn't reliable, but I'd settle for it always using USB if present, and onboard otherwise. I'm guessing I should be able to detect the arrival/departure of wlan1 and use it to enable/disable wlan0? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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DNS Provider
by Karl Foley 14 Mar '16

14 Mar '16

I have a simple .co.uk domain that I currently have with Daily Internet that is due for renewal shortly. This domain is just for home use and just hosts a single A record pointing to my home server, a few TXT records for SPF and DKIM, MX records and a few CNAMEs for my Google Apps account along with a few other CNAMEs for some simple locally hosted sites, and a redirect to a Blogger site. I'm quite happy to renew with Daily, though they, like Free Parking before them seem to have pushed their prices up quite a bit. So I would be prepared to transfer. Does the list have any recommendation for DNS providers please? ATB, Karl.

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Running code on startup
by Mark Rogers 11 Mar '16

11 Mar '16

Simple question: Is there anywhere I can dump a script file that will cause it to get run on startup? System is Debian (actually Raspbian although it could apply to other Debian derivatives). On this occasion it has a GUI but I'm looking for something that would work in a GUI-less environment. Caveats: What I want to do is just copy a file there (eg dropping files onto the SD card of a Pi). I'm trying to keep things simple so ideally I don't want to edit any files, which means appending to rc.local is out, for example. I tried creating /etc/cron.d/mystuff with @reboot root /root/mystuff.sh .. which works fine on reboot but doesn't run from any other startup, so not what I need. I'm thinking about creating a script for /etc/rc.d and also creating all the symlinks manually that would otherwise be created by update-rc.d, but that's messy. It seems odd that there isn't a /etc/rc.local.d directory (or similar) which automatically runs all scripts present at the end of rc.local, but unless I'm missing something there isn't any such approach. (Background: I want a simple way to configure a Pi (or similar) by writing the latest Raspbian image to a disk then extracting a tar file of my changes over the top. I want to supplement existing files rather than replace any that could obviously change between Raspbian versions.) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Satnav updates
by James Freer 07 Mar '16

07 Mar '16

Just wondering what folk use. One can use the Garmin/Express updates on windows but I was thinking of a way in Linux. I gather one can use a VM but then also have a windows version after Vista in order to do so. The only way I have found is to use maps from Openstreetmap.nl and copy to a mini SD card. Seems ok but not as good as Garmin/Express - is there a better way using linux. james

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APC UPS and Ubuntu
by Mark Rogers 07 Mar '16

07 Mar '16

I had a couple of power cuts yesterday so today I have installed an APC UPS. Connecting the USB cable to my Ubuntu PC has given me a battery icon showing status so everything "just works" without messing around installing nut or anything similar, which is what I was expecting to do. However: I have two PCs being protected by the same UPS, the second being a Win10 box. I was expecting to use something like nut to share the status between the two boxes so both will shut down on low battery. Given that "it just works" so far, I'd like to supplement the existing config rather than replace it. Anyone here done something similar or know where I should start? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 10th March
by Viperfang 07 Mar '16

07 Mar '16

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 10th March at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

Software for the blind.
by Nev Young 04 Mar '16

04 Mar '16

Our erstwhile companion Mr Anson is currently wired to machines that go ping in the cardio ward of the local hospital and has asked if I could put the following to the knowledgeable folk of ALUG. Could any body comment on the availability of a good Linux speech-operated program to suit a totally unsighted person. Thanks Nev on behalf of Tony.

3 2

How to timeout a process after inactivity?
by Chris Green 04 Mar '16

04 Mar '16

I want to close an editor window (it's vile a vi clone, but something that works for vim would work with vile) after some minutes of inactivity. It's a security thing, I have a nice wrapper script that allows me to 'transparently' open and edit files encrypted using GPG but I want it to automatically close the editor window after a few minutes of inactivity. Currently I use the following in the wrapper script just before starting the editor:- # # # time ourselves out after five minutes by typing ZZ in the window # (sleep 300; xdotool type --window $WINDOWID ZZ >/tmp/log 2>&1) & This works OK but has some problems:- It doesn't work when used via SSH because xdotool is using X and there's no WINDOWID. It will *always* send a ZZ to the window five minutes after being started, even if I've exited from the editor. Can anyone suggest a better way of doing this? Ideally it should detect activity in the editor and only shut it down (or kill it) if there is no activity. -- Chris Green

1 0

List down?
by mick 04 Mar '16

04 Mar '16

Hi Guys This is a simple test email to the list. It appears to be down as there has been no traffic since 14 February - and I at least have sent mail. Unfortunately, my mail to the list was about mail problems my end (!) so I'm not /entirely/ sure the problem is not just mine..... Mick (As promised, this is the other email from an address which is not registered to the list in the hope that it will get bounced to a moderator who may notice a problem. -- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

2 1

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 4th March.
by Viperfang 01 Mar '16

01 Mar '16

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

List down?
by mick 24 Feb '16

24 Feb '16

Hi Guys This is a simple test email to the list. It appears to be down as there has been no traffic since 14 February - and I at least have sent mail. Unfortunately, my mail to the list was about mail problems my end (!) so I'm not /entirely/ sure the problem is not just mine..... Mick (I'll send another email from an address which is not registered to the list in the hope that that will get bounced to a moderator who may notice a problem. -- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

How to test a mouse (well, a laptop Trackpoint device)
by Chris Green 20 Feb '16

20 Feb '16

I have a Lenovo T430 and the Trackpoint is playing up. It has both a Trackpoint (nipple plus three buttons) and a Trackpad (pad plus two buttons). It has started producing very odd symptoms when I use the Trackpoint, the pointer can be moved all over the screen but it's functionally stuck in one window. For example if it was in a terminal window the pointer stays as a text cursor and won't do any actions elsewhere on the desktop. This doesn't happen immediately but after not very long, usually just a minute or so, select text and paste seems to be what provokes it most but sometimes it just goes screwy all by itself. When this happens the Trackpad is the same, so I'm stuck unless I switch to a console to reboot or, if I can, restarting the Window Manager sorts things out. The Trackpoint *seems* to be acting oddly in Windows as well (dual boot to Windows 7) so it would be good if I could run some sort of basic diagnostic to see if the Trackpoint is working right but I can't find anything to do this. Can anyone suggest a way to test if the Trackpoint hardware is working right? (There is a good reason for wanting the Trackpoint to work, the middle button is very handy) -- Chris Green

1 0

More impressed by my OKI MC342 now
by Chris Green 19 Feb '16

19 Feb '16

Well having fixed the scanner software installation with my OKI MC342 I like it even more. The scanner utilities are really neat! When you select 'Start scan' in the panel applet you are offered a straightforward scan or save as PDF or save to folder. Each of these can be configured from the applet to specify destination directory, scanner options, etc. In addition you can add new scan types so you can, for example, add a 'Scan to Tiff' if you want. By default the basic scan squirts the scan into the Gimp, scan to PDF saves the PDF and then fires up the default PDF viewer, etc. It's nearly all written in Python too so if one really wanted to change things radically it wouldn't be too difficult. All in all I'm very pleased with it now, I was fairly happy before I got the scanning to work from Linux, now it's well nigh ideal. It is rather big but the price from eBuyer (£171 inc shipping) seems pretty reasonable for an all singing, all dancing, all-in-one printer, copier, scanner, fax machine. It prints duplex (of course) and has an ADF for the scanner and fax which also does duplex. -- Chris Green

1 0

How to diagnose startup script not running?
by Chris Green 19 Feb '16

19 Feb '16

I have worked out why the 'scan from computer' utilities don't work with my new OKI printer. They expect a device /dev/okiscand which should be created when '/etc/init.d/okiscand start' runs. If I run '/etc/init.d/okiscand start' manually as root then everything is fine, I can scan from the computer. However I can't work out why it's not working correctly at startup. There's nothing in the logs at all and it always works fine when run manually. I *suspect* now I look a bit harder that the oki installation is for an old V5 setup using the /etc/rcN.d directories. There is a link from (for example) /etc/rc5.d/S03okiscand to the script in init.d but there's nothing in /etc/init that refers to it. What do I need to do to get upstart to start it? (Don't tell me I should use systemd, a step too far!) -- Chris Green

1 1

claws-mail POP3S failure with Dovecot
by mick 19 Feb '16

19 Feb '16

OK guys this is now driving me crazy. For some yaers now I have run my own mail service using postfix and dovecot on debian. My preferred email client is claws but I use K9 when out and about on my android (cyanogenmod) devices. For purely historic reasons I use IMAPS on all portable devices so that I leave mail on the server until I sit at my desk where claws is configured to use both IMAPS and POP3S. I do this so that mail is actually downloaded from my server over POP3S and stored locally (where it is backed up to two separate external systems. I also use IMAPS on claws so that I have access to the "sent" folders for my email boxes (in case I send from a mobile device). I can then simply move sent mail to tjhe mailbox of my choice locally where it matches the incoming mail. So far so hunky dory for some long time. Yesterday I upgraded my mailserver from Debian 7.9 to 8.3. As expected, everything went fine and all seemed well - until I fired up claws. Claws successfully connects to IMAPS and to my submission port (587) but it fails to connect to POP3S with the error: * Account 'mbm(a)rlogin.net': Connecting to POP3 server: smtp.rlogin.net:995... *** SSL handshake failed Sure enough, the mail.log shows entries like: Feb 19 12:27:59 pipe dovecot: pop3-login: Disconnected (no auth attempts in 0 secs): user=<>, rip=178.238.155.43, lip=213.138.100.26, TLS handshaking: SSL_accept() failed: error:14076102:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_CLIENT_HELLO:unsupported protocol, session=<Bu4YnR4swgCy7psr> No athentication takes place because I insist on TLS (on both client and server ends) before I allow credentials to be passed. Here's the bonkers bit. The X509 certificate I use on the server is self generated and is identical for SMTP, POP3S and IMAPS. Using openssl client ("openssl s_client -connect smtp.rlogin.net:pop3s" and "openssl s_client -connect smtp.rlogin.net:imaps3") to test the connections returns identical (successful) results. I see: New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 Server public key is 2048 bit Secure Renegotiation IS supported Compression: NONE Expansion: NONE SSL-Session: Protocol : TLSv1.2 Cipher : ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 blah, blah, etc. Nothing has changed client side and the fact that K9 and claws can successfully send/receive indicates server side is OK too. I have been over the dovecot configuration probably a dozen times now and can see nothing wrong (though dovecot's configuration files are a nightmare). Doveconf -n shows a perfectly acceptable setup. So my suspicion is that claws cannot handle the elliptic curve cipher offered by the server in its new configuration for POP3S (but why for IMAPS?????) (Debian 8.3 shows "OpenSSL 1.0.1k 8 Jan 2015" whereas 7.9 shows "OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013") I really don't want to have to change from claws on the desktop (I'm not a tbird fan) so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Meanwhile I'll keep on searching (there's nothing on the claws buglist) Mick (I suppose I could just stick to IMAP - I know POP is an old protocol, but I like the way I work, and this is just bugging me.....) (Or I could try Cyrus...) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

TV Progs
by Chris Walker 18 Feb '16

18 Feb '16

With the move of BBC3 to online I can plainly use get_iplayer to grab any files from there should I be so desperate. The problem I have is with another stream where the only option is to watch it as it's broadcast as my tv won't record it as "It's not a digital broadcast". The programme is Auto Mundial on Motors TV which is now only receivable on Ch240 on terrestrial or some satellite streams , none of which I have. Has anybody managed to circumvent this restriction? Or does anybody have any suggestions about which forum to frequent to gain further info? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

1 0

Mint blues!
by Michael Goddard 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

Using Mint 17.3; it has suddenly started supplying a folder and a separate file when d/l an article when I just want the file. Something this newbie has got wrong or not perhaps? Any guidance much appreciated. Michael Goddard <emmjee(a)mypostoffice.co.uk>

2 2

Does anyone here use wxGlade, or even any other Python GUI generator?
by Chris Green 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

I've recently been banging away at my 'grid view of a database' requirement. I've actually got a Python program that does basically what I want (modified some code I found on the Web) and I could develop from there. However it would be much easier if I could use something to do the spade work of designing the layout etc. so to that end I've been trying wxGlade. I'm beginning to understand how it's supposed to work but seem to keep hitting bugs and 'infelicities' that stop it working. For example I now have a saved wxGlade app that is totally unresponsive when reloaded into wxGlade. Is this normal, i.e. is wxGlade this bad? I tried the Windows version (in a VirtualBox guest) and that actually seems somewhat better in that I don't keep hitting a situation where wxGlade doesn't respond. Should I persevere with wxGlade or are there better GUI designers out there? .... or should I just go back to writing native Python with wxPython? -- Chris Green

1 0

Certificates from LetsEncrypt - looks good to me!
by Chris Green 10 Feb '16

10 Feb '16

I just decided I ought to use https for accessing my Owncloud calendar and contacts so needed to configure a certificate for my isbd.uk host (it's a Gandi virtual server). My Google search for Ubuntu https showed LetsEncrypt as the second hit so I took a look, seemed sensible so I followed the instructions at:- https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-apache-with-… Absolutely brilliant, not only did it generate a certificate for me, it did all the Apache configuration too so https://isbd.uk worked after I'd run the commands given on the above web page. -- Chris Green

2 1

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 11th February
by Viperfang 08 Feb '16

08 Feb '16

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 11th February at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

How to find logging apps that aren't to do with computer logging?
by Chris Green 06 Feb '16

06 Feb '16

I'm looking for programs that might help with maintaining a log, as in a ship's log or a log of maintenance activity on a vehicle. It's well nigh impossible to use the word log in the search because one is immediately swamped by hits relating to computer logging, e.g. things which write to syslog. The word journal isn't much better because it too has computer related meanings which swamp any useful output and, anyway, journal isn't quite the right word for what I'm looking for. So does anyone have any bright ideas either for what to search for or programs that I might find useful. -- Chris Green

4 15

DAAPD (music streaming) alternatives
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 03 Feb '16

03 Feb '16

Hi Y'all! I have a server which used to run Firefly (mp-daapd), which is/was a clone(ish) of Apple Airplay. After updating the server, Firefly started misbehaving, so I uninstalled it, and was going to re-install it, but found no installation packages. Being flaky, and as I knew it was an unmaintained project, I decided to install forked-daap instead. Eventually, after a few glitches were fixed, I managed to get this running OK. One thing I don't like about it is it relies on AVAHI, which basically sits there advertising what services are available on my server. I don't particularly like this, and I'm quite capable of typing the IP address and port number into any DAAP clients I use. Anyway, this got me thinking: are there any other better, possibly more open source and/or more modern equivalents or replacements for daap? I think I looked once at DNLA or something like that but got hopelessly confused. Any advice or comments? The use-case I have in mind is for the server to be able to stream songs on demand primarily to android phones, but possibly to a couple of raspberry pis. The Pis are currently set up with MPD (Music Player Daemon) which is working quite well. As an aside, I once found a webpage that explained how to set up some machines with (I think) MPD so that playing between them was synched, as it is on a Sonos device, so you could have all the machines playing the same tune at the same time, in different rooms. Anyone got any idea how to do this? My google fu has deserted me and I can't find it again. I once tried enabling http streaming from my server and getting the pis to play that but it flooded my network and brought it to it's knees, so that's not really a way to go! TIA Steve

2 3

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 5th February.
by Viperfang 02 Feb '16

02 Feb '16

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

FTP servers with remote admin tools
by Mark Rogers 01 Feb '16

01 Feb '16

I need to set up an FTP server on a virtual server keeping overheads to a minimum. What I'd like is some kind of GUI to administer it (add new users etc) which runs on my desktop and does the admin remotely, so that when not in use it has zero overhead (compared with having to install a web server and database to manage it, for example). Not fussed as to which FTP server at this point. (It strikes me that a tool that was able to manage text based config files over SSH for FTP servers but also other services would be quite useful, does such a thing exist?) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

6 16

Firewall log entry
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 26 Jan '16

26 Jan '16

Hi y'all! I'm confuzzled. I have repeated entries in my syslog in log file viewer. Jan 26 08:31:42 MYSERV kernel: [25624.013276] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=BIG_MAC SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=28 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 PROTO=2 Jan 26 08:31:42 MYSERV kernel: [25624.013768] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=BIG_MAC SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 PROTO=2 Jan 26 08:33:48 MYSERV kernel: [25750.017039] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=BIG_MAC SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=28 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 PROTO=2 Jan 26 08:33:48 MYSERV kernel: [25750.017562] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=BIG_MAC SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 PROTO=2 Where MYSERV is the name of my server, and BIG_MAC is what appears to be a mac address but longer than I am used to . always the same number, =01:00:5e:00:00:01:a0:21:b7:43:91:37:08:00 As far as I can see, 192.168.1.1 is connecting to a broadcast address, to see if anyone's there. Thing is, 192.168.1.1 IS NOT an address that I'm aware I'm using; my subnet is 192.168.0.*. If I open 192.168.1.1 in a webbrowser, it opens a trivial webpage I have set up as an adblock-replacement page. The thing is, this web page normally serves on 127.0.0.1 On the server, if I ping 192.168.1.1 it responds in about the same amount of time as 192.168.0.1 I suspect that 192.168.1.1. is my own server bound somehow to another ip address. I doubt that this is something from outside getting in to my network. Can anyone help me find out what it is, where it is, and how to stop it? Cheers Steve

2 2

Thunderbird
by Anthony Anson 21 Jan '16

21 Jan '16

Updated Mint last week and since then, Thunferguts has refused to write copies of e-mails into the 'Sent' folder. Could there be a connection? -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

2 3

Anyone have experience of OKI printers under Linux?
by Chris Green 21 Jan '16

21 Jan '16

I'm thinking of replacing my HP printers (a mono laser and a multi-function inkjet) with a single multi-function colour laser printer. The current front runner is an OKI MC342DN. Does anyone have any experience of using OKI printers under Linux? There are Linux PPD drivers for the MC342DN but that's about as much as I can find out. -- Chris Green

1 1

Good option for occasional printing
by Steve Engledow 21 Jan '16

21 Jan '16

Printing has long been the bane of my (and I'm sure most people's) existence and several years back, I swore I would never buy another printer. However, I have a new job now which is based from my home and I no longer have the convenience of the office printer for the occasional (a couple of times a month) return label or plane ticket. What I'm looking for is something that will solve my needs for a reasonable price. The last time I bought a printer, it cost me £30 and included some ink that ran out after around 15 pages of black and white. Replacement ink cost me around £45. I've got two short words for that. Does anyone have any recommendations? I'll only need B&W, A4, and have no need for high resolution print. Cheers, Steve

9 10

Slightly OT for the list: - GPG bad signature
by mick 20 Jan '16

20 Jan '16

Hi Guys Steve tells me that he had a problem with my last email to the list (Re: Rural Broadband). He got a bad signature from GPG. In a follow up exchange off list Steve said: "Here's what gpg says: --- $ gpg -v --verify signature.asc msg gpg: armor header: Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) gpg: Signature made Tue 19 Jan 2016 14:04:01 GMT using RSA key ID 5BADD312 gpg: using PGP trust model gpg: BAD signature from "Mick Morgan (Mick's new 4096 bit key) <mick(a)rlogin.net>" [unknown] gpg: textmode signature, digest algorithm SHA256, key algorithm rsa4096 --" Ive been using this key since the middle of 2012. I have also been using claws (with PGP/MIME enabled) as my MUA for ages. There seem to be a couple of reasons why GPG should complain. The most obvious is that the email has been changed after signature. Paranoia aside, this can easily happen if the MUA (at either end?) changes the mail by wrapping at a particular line length. Another possible reason is that my signature key length (4096 bits) is too long for the recipient's system to handle correctly. But as I say, I have been using the current key for nearly four years now, so my question is, has anyone else seen this problem with my signature? And does anyone know what may be going on here? Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

5 10

Rural Broadband
by Laurie Brown 20 Jan '16

20 Jan '16

Hi folks, I know this question has been asked here before, but it was ages ago, and things change quickly. I have a client who is 1.8 miles form the nearest exchange, who is getting appalling line speeds. She's been with Eclipse for years, and like me, has found their support getting steadily worse. Recently, it took then 45 hours to respond to a support call from me which I regard as utterly unacceptable. I'm looking for another supplier for my rural clients as well as myself (I can get fibre). This particular client has speeds of Down: 1.8 and Up: 0.3. As she runs an office from home, this is clearly unacceptable. The line has become steadily worse over the last couple of years, and she has received absolutely nothing but obfuscation and requests for more money from both BT and Eclipse. She's tried Bonded DSL, but was told that it didn't work because she uses VOIP. No, they won't retract that. She has a spare line, equally slow, effectively unused now. So, my question is, do any of you out there have any recommendations for getting the best rural broadband? Suppliers, methods, etc.? She does need static IP if at all possible. It can be worked around, but that's not ideal. Cheers, Laurie. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie(a)brownowl.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------

5 6

Does anyone here use Gambas?
by Chris Green 20 Jan '16

20 Jan '16

As per the subject, I'm wondering whether Gambas would be a useful tool for me. In particular for creating GUI data entry programs for sqlite3. -- Chris Green

3 3

iPlayer improvements
by Chris Walker 18 Jan '16

18 Jan '16

I know that some here use get_iplayer to grab BBC files. Perhaps those people would like to know that the BBC are experimenting with 320k aac downloads. To make use of them you need a 'dev' version of get_iplayer available from the git resource. There are only a few files available so far apparently but nonetheless, if you want to experiment, feel free. If you want to know some of the background to compression etc, you might like to listen to this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tvgp1 -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Printing
by Christopher Dawkins 15 Jan '16

15 Jan '16

> 1. Good option for occasional printing (Steve Engledow) I have an LJ6M that is nearly twenty years old and still working, although it occasionally mangles the paper. However, I now mostly use an HP OfficeJet Pro 8620, which did cost £130. But (with an extra eight pounds or so on the PrinterShare app) it prints documents wirelessly from my Android as well as via CUPS (I hate CUPs, by the way) from all my Linux/FreeBSD machines, it's a colour photocopier, it sheet feeds and it duplexes, and the cost per print seems fine once you get onto the big cartridges. Whatever, the ability to print email attachments from a the comfort of a phone is worth a lot to me! Colour photographs need expensive paper, however: the colour laser I had before this did colour photos well on normal paper. -- Christopher Dawkins Garnetts Corner, Jollyboys Lane North, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DU cchd(a)pjcd.org 07816 821659 01371 821076

1 0

No space for Audacity
by Chris Walker 13 Jan '16

13 Jan '16

I'm having a problem with my system and I can't see where the solution is despite looking online. Audacity said that the disc was short of space and just sat there doing nothing. So I killed the task and looked at the space with 'df'. It shows that /dev/sdb5 has zero space left. Here's the relevant output from df :- Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 3.0G 0 3.0G 0% /dev tmpfs 3.0G 1.4M 3.0G 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 3.0G 940K 3.0G 1% /run /dev/sdb5 7.6G 7.2G 0 100% / /dev/sdb7 7.6G 5.6G 1.7G 78% /usr tmpfs 3.0G 0 3.0G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs 3.0G 88K 3.0G 1% /tmp /dev/sdb8 849G 202G 647G 24% /home tmpfs 597M 12K 597M 1% /run/user/1000 So where has the 7.6 gigs worth of space gone on sdb5 or am I looking in the wrong place ? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

5 10

Laptops
by Michael Goddard 07 Jan '16

07 Jan '16

I'm considering purchasing a laptop (say 15.6" screen + Intel i7 CPU type) and I would be grateful to anybody for any comment on recommended brand, model, and potential supplier suitable for use with Mint. Here's wishing all ALUG-gers a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year! -- Michael Goddard <emmjee(a)mypostoffice.co.uk>

7 9

PUA Win 32 files?
by Bev Nicolson 04 Jan '16

04 Jan '16

So I ran ClamAV a while back and as usual it identified four Win.32 files from usr/lib/momo/4.0mscorlib.dll as potentially dodgy. (Same files as this questioner had: http://askubuntu.com/questions/583729/clamav-pua-win32-packer-privateexepro… ) My questions are 1) Are they dangerous? Opinion seems divided on this. 2) If I deleted them anyway, just in case, would I do my system any harm? Bev.

2 2

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 1st January.
by Viperfang 29 Dec '15

29 Dec '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Terminal emulator with customizable menus - is there one?
by Chris Green 12 Dec '15

12 Dec '15

I currently use xfce4-terminal in xfce, I find the menu bar quite handy. What would be nice is a way to add custom entries to the menu-bar and/or pull-down menus. Is there a terminal emulator out there with customizable menus? -- Chris Green

1 0

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 10th December
by Viperfang 09 Dec '15

09 Dec '15

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 10th December at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

PC slow to boot prt 2
by Bev Nicolson 06 Dec '15

06 Dec '15

I asked about my slow to boot (and sometimes slow to shut down) pc a while back now and have htop installed. I should have asked this then but which bit of the info it gives me do I need to give you lot in order to diagnose the problem? Bev.

3 9

Minimal mail sending
by Mark Rogers 05 Dec '15

05 Dec '15

What's the simplest (least config, lowest footprint) way to give a Linux box the capability to send email? Eg: if I have a Pi running a few cron jobs and I want it to be able to email me any issues, that kind of thing. Or a web server that might need to send forgotten password reminders but little else. It'll never need to receive email or provide mail services to others. I've used ssmtp in the past but recently found something better, but for the life of me can't remember what it was! But as it's a common requirement I'd like to know what other people do. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

9 12

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 4th December.
by Viperfang 02 Dec '15

02 Dec '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

New Server recomendations
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 25 Nov '15

25 Nov '15

Hi folks. I'm going to have to replace an ancient Pentium (2?) with 2gb ram that's run as a file server with software raid (twin disks), media server, print server, web server. None of these are high use and the web server is only internal. Anyone got any recommendations for a low-ish power, small-ish form factor machine that will run linux that I could use? Existing machine is running Ubuntu, and I'd probably continue with that, or Lubuntu, or possibly debian. Also is there any easy way to migrate from the existing machine to the new one? Presumably I can't simply move the disks from the old machine to the new one? (This bit's a bit off topic- sorry) Also probably got to get sprog a Windows machine. It's a long time since I've delved into the wacky world of windows. Schoolwork and games like train simulator and minecraft would probably be it. Can't decide for sure, but probably a laptop. Any good deals or recommendations? TIA Steve

5 5

MP3 detected but not opened
by Bev Nicolson 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

Now, given my last few questions I may regret asking this but here goes anyway. I've got an MP3 player. (Philips GoGear, if that's any help.) It used to be opened automatically when I plugged it into my computer but it doesn't now, though it is recognised. (14.04LTS.) It's just a problem with this device. (A bit of me is wondering if it's like the sound problem I had briefly. All I had to do was find Sound in a menu and un-mute.) Bev.

1 0

Font config ?
by Bev Nicolson 20 Nov '15

20 Nov '15

When everyone's exhausted the mice jokes (pesky meeces) can you apply your minds to this. I have googled and see it's a common problem but didn't understand the solution. While I was upgrading to 14.04, a message came up to say 'font config out of memory lines 14, 23 and 32.' It now says this when I switch the computer off. So, what does it mean and how do I fix it? Bev.

2 2

Mouse trouble
by Bev Nicolson 20 Nov '15

20 Nov '15

Not sure what's up with my mouse. I asked someone in a reputable computer shop recently about the fact that my mouse exhibits odd behaviour. It'll crash if I have two browsers open and playing a video, for example. He suggested upgrading to Ubuntu 14.04LTS. Which I have done and it's worse. Switching off and on again is the only thing that works. New mouse? Bev

4 5

Simple CCTV app
by Mark Rogers 18 Nov '15

18 Nov '15

I have a couple of Wifi IP cameras that I'd like to record output from. I can either capture an image or (I think) an RTSP stream. I just want to store them somewhere I can refer back to them in future if needed. Ideally making efficient use of storage. Any suggestions? At the moment I have ZoneMinder installed but it's quite big and heavy, I frequently find it isn't running (eg after a system update) and it stores all the images as JPEGs rather than as a movie, where I would have thought that the latter would be rather more efficient. It crossed my mind I could probably script something that captured images at a regular frame rate and then turned batches of them into videos later, but there's probably a way to avoid reinventing the wheel. Note: The camera is constantly seeing motion (it's view is through a tree apart from anything else) so motion detection isn't much use unless it can be quite intelligent. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

3 6

Case insensitive scripting
by Chris Walker 15 Nov '15

15 Nov '15

Hopefully somebody can point out my error with a script. This is it =================== #! /bin/bash # Script to extract thumbnails from .ts files for use on a Humax machine set -e # set -x # shopt -s nocasematch for FILE in *.ts do bname=$(basename "$FILE") dir=$(dirname "$FILE") # extension="${bname##*.}" filenamewoext="${bname%.*}" imagefile="${dir}/""${filenamewoext}.png" ffmpeg -i "$FILE" -vframes 1 -ss 00:01:00 -f image2 "$imagefile" done =================== My problem is that I can sometimes have .ts files and others .TS files so how do I persuade bash to search for both case types? As you can see, I've tried setting 'nocasematch' but it's commented out as that doesn't seem to work for me. Searching online produced the 'tr' command but how do I apply that, if indeed it is the correct solution? Any help appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

3 5

Has anyone used or know anything about FibreWiFi Limited?
by Chris Green 15 Nov '15

15 Nov '15

While searching around recently for good broadband deals I came across FibreWiFi Limited. They offer direct WiFi (as in microwave based) internet connections. The prices seem quite reasonable, see:- http://www.fibrewifi.com It looks like we should be covered looking at their coverage map. So I'm very interested. Does anyone know anything about them? -- Chris Green

1 0

Mount issues
by Chris Walker 07 Nov '15

07 Nov '15

Hello, Can somebody point me in the right direction please? I'm trying to mount another linux box and although it mounts, I can't write to it which is my desired aim. The box in question is a Humax Freeview machine and I can telnet into it and run commands from the command line and having installed ntfs-3g on it, I can now delete files from an attached usb drive using the screen menu on the device. The files are iPlayer programs which I download here, on my Magiea 5 machine. Before I installed ntfs-3g, the contents of the fstab on the Humaxc looked like this :- /dev/sda1 on /media/drive1 type ntfs (ro,uid=0,gid=0,fmask=0177,dmask=077,nls=utf8,errors=continue,mft_zone_multiplier=1) Afterwards, and after a reboot, it now looks like this :- /dev/sda1 on /media/usb-drive1 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other) As I said, it mounts here but all the files are owned by root and of course I can't copy new files to the USB drive. I can FTP files to the box using humxftp as the user and a password of 0000 so my question is, what should I have in the fstab file on my machine to allow me to read from and write to the usb drive on the Humax? In case you're curious, the relevant line from my fstab is currently this :- //Hummy/media /home/chris/Humax_Fox_HDR/ cifs nosetuids,uid=0,gid=0,credentials=/etc/samba/auth.hummy.humaxftp,sec=ntlm,_netdev 0 0 and the credentials file has two entries for user and password as in the FTP command. Any help appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

2 4

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 6th November.
by Viperfang 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Cross platform (desktop) event driven comms application development
by Mark Rogers 14 Oct '15

14 Oct '15

I have an application where some software talks via TCP/IP to some hardware but there are issues with the communication. I need to quickly knock together a desktop application (initially running on Windows unfortunately but that's temporary so cross platform is important) that will run on the PC and to start with simply pass the messages back and forth whilst logging them, but will then need to start manipulating the messages as they pass through. So instead of <software> <-> <hardware> I'll have <software> <-> <my app> <-> <hardware> In effect I'm putting together a (legitimate!) man in the middle "attack". What tools would anyone here use? Node.js comes to mind (i have no experience of it). Probably Python with a suitable socket library (again, no experience...). The result needs to be fairly reliable (so will need to sensibly handle dropped connections, and not leak memory or lock up after a few hours/days). Obviously that depends on me doing things right but some tools make that easier than others... My app doesn't need a GUI; a hand edited text file to provide configuration will suffice. But the ability to add one if it becomes useful would be handy. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

Re: [ALUG] fstab question
by Peter Berrie 08 Oct '15

08 Oct '15

Many thanks to both. I stared at that line over and over again without seeing it! Peter

1 0

How to add a file to a mercurial repository and then push?
by Chris Green 07 Oct '15

07 Oct '15

I have a small mercurial project, local and also on bitbucket. I want to add a .zip of the whole thing and push it to the repository but I can't get it to push. I've created the zip, added it, committed it. So locally all is well:- chris$ hg manifest License.text README.md action.php plugin.info.txt rst.zip syntax.php chris$ However it won't push it:- chris$ hg push pushing to /home/chris/dev/dokuwiki/plugins/rst searching for changes no changes found chris$ So how do I get rst.zip added to the remote repository, it's definitely not there, it's at:- https://bitbucket.org/chrisisbd/dokuwiki-plugin-rst -- Chris Green

1 0

SVN server move
by Mark Rogers 05 Oct '15

05 Oct '15

Another "if only I could work out what to Google for..." question: I had an SVN server on old hardware, which I duplicated to new hardware and updated DNS. Then, from site (the only location any changes get made to the code) I performed a commit. However it turns out that the client had the old server IP in its hosts file (and wasn't using DNS) and was therefore committing to the old server not the new one. This has now been fixed. So what do I need to do from the client to re-send its committed changes to the new server? I believe there was actually only a single commit made if that helps. (The old server is now offline.) Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th October
by Viperfang 05 Oct '15

05 Oct '15

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 8th October at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

Android sound recorder woe
by Bev Nicolson 05 Oct '15

05 Oct '15

4.2 Jellybean and I can’t record any sound on my phone. The app (one that came with the phone) looks as though it works but all I get from the speaker is white noise which is a shame as there have been some fabulously noisy birds tweeting away recently (pre migration, I assume.) I have tried switching it off and on again. Any ideas? A google doesn't seem to bring up any useful advice. Bev.

2 1

File[system] encryption - what to use?
by Chris Green 04 Oct '15

04 Oct '15

I currently use two different file encryption methods, I'm wondering whether to simplify my life (slightly) by just using one. However I'm wondering if there is anything better out there, both as regards usability and effectiveness. I use encfs for one directory tree of files which I only access occasionally, I have to re-remember the command line way to decrypt them for use but it doesn't usually take long. :-) There are some security problems with encfs but for *file* encryption what else is there? For some files containing passwords I use vi[le]'s encryption which is known to be weak but it's very handy. I have a trivial script that wraps up the command sequence such that all I have to do is:- nnnn <name of encrypted file> ... and I get prompted for the password, then vi[le] opens the file and I can read it (and edit if if needed). I did try some encryption breaking software on the password files and it did a pretty bad job, it needs some 'clues' as in words that are present in the file to decrypt and, as the files don't contain many words as such, guessing these would be difficult. Are there any alternatives? File system encryption doesn't really help as the machine in question is turned on all the time with the desktop open so it would spend its whole time with the file system decrypted. It's not a laptop so it doesn't have a big risk of being stolen or lost. -- Chris Green

2 3

What is wrong with this line in fstab?
by Peter Berrie 04 Oct '15

04 Oct '15

When I run fsck I get a message saying it failed to parse line 12 of fstab. Here is line 12: UUID=[as obtained from blkid] /home ext3 noatime defaults 0 2 It has noatime because its an SSD. Its wrapped the line of course, in the text editor its all on one line. What is wrong with it? Peter

3 2

Disk errors causing system to lock
by Mark Rogers 01 Oct '15

01 Oct '15

This is something I've noticed before and I figured it was time I understood what was going on. If I try to access bad sectors on a failing disk my entire PC will often lock up at any point requiring disk access, even off good disks. Why is this? Eg: I am using ddrescue to recover data from a failing disk (so that disk isn't mounted and isn't in use in any way other than for data recovery). When it tries to read a bad sector, ddrescue will understandably get stuck for several seconds [1]. However, in another terminal window (or other application), whilst the bad sector is being attempted, anything which requires disk access (eg trivial operations like "ls" or command completion using tab) will hang until the timeout on the bad disk read. Why is this? I assume it's some kind of locking taking place but I don't understand why reading (eg) /dev/sdb should lock any operations on /dev/sda etc. And ref: [1]: What determines the time that it takes for an attempt to read a bad sector to time out? This is on an Ubuntu 14.04.1 desktop, although I've seen it elsewhere. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 2nd October.
by Viperfang 29 Sep '15

29 Sep '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Some questions in and around wifi management
by Chris Green 22 Sep '15

22 Sep '15

I have been spending a lot of time recently trying to get WiFi connections to work reliably. I'm learning, but mostly learning that I don't often know what I'm doing! :-) Firstly I don't think Network Manager is always particularly helpful, for example I'm using WiFi tethering at the moment but also want to turn it off sometimes and see if any local hotspots are available. There seems no way to make Network Manager re-scan, it obstinately continues to show my tethering WiFi when I *know* it's turned off. This rather reduces my confidence in other signals it shows. I have played with using wpa_gui which seems to be more able to do what I want but I don't really understand how it interacts (or not) with Network Manager. Could I uninstall Network Manager and use wpa_gui exclusively? (However then I don't have a way to configure a hard-wired ethernet connection if there is one) E.g. does the 'Connect' button in wpa_gui do all that's necessary or would I have to do the DHCP client, routing, etc., in adddition? Are there any good tutorials about this sort of stuff, or even books? I don't want anything *too* basic, I can get our domestic WiFi working fine without a problem, in that sort of situation Network Manager does a pretty good job. It's when things get a bit more difficult with weaker signals (and sometimes *lots* of them) that I need some help. Oh, and another problem I'm having. I have a Raspberry Pi with an external USB WiFi (long wire with a WiFi with aerial on the end of it) and I'm using some direct manipulation of wpa_supplicant (i.e. built a custom configuration with details found on the 'net) to get it to connect to a WiFi hotspot that uses EAP-SIM authentication. This also involves reading a key from a USB SIM card reader. Much to my surprise I actually got this to work, however my attempts to automate it at system power-up have not worked at all well. I can repeatedly get it to work manually, i.e. by entering commands but I suspect some of the commands fire off background processes and thus automating it is harder than just doing the same thing from rc.local. I have done quite a lot of stuff with rc.local in the past and also with cron jobs and I think I know most of the normal wrinkles. There's just something more going on here, particularly with the wpa_supplicant stuff. Any/all help would be very welcome. -- Chris Green

1 0

Shorewall messages
by Chris Walker 19 Sep '15

19 Sep '15

Hello, If I run dmesg, it scrolls away with loads of this type of message :- [ 9958.682112] Shorewall:net-fw:DROP:IN=enp6s0 OUT= MAC=40:61:86:05:f9:31:00:24:a5:bd:b4:dc:08:00 SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=192.168.1.11 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=53299 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=43075 DPT=80 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 In an effort to fix this, I've looked at the installed packages and I see that not only do I have shorewall installed, but also shorewall6. Should I have both? I've looked online at this page to start with - http://www.shorewall.net/manpages6/shorewall6-zones.html - but I can't see which bits of the system are causing the error and hence which bits I should change. So, what can I do to suppress these messages as they're filling up the disc? Any help appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

3 3

mailman/apache2.4/cgi-bin issues
by Jenny Hopkins 09 Sep '15

09 Sep '15

Hullo, I'm struggling to get mailman up and running again after changing a virtual server to a new platform, upgrading to debian jessie in the process. I've made the permissions on the new platform for /usr/lib/cgi-bin/mailman identical: (e.g.):-rwxr-sr-x 1 root list 10K Apr 6 16:45 admin I've altered /etc/group to match the old server like this: list:x:38:lurker lurker:x:109:list,www-data /etc/mailman/apache.conf contains these lines: ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/mailman/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/mailman/ Alias /pipermail/ /var/lib/mailman/archives/public/ Alias /images/mailman/ /usr/share/images/mailman/ <Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin/mailman/> AllowOverride None Options ExecCGI AddHandler cgi-script .cgi Require all granted </Directory> <Directory /var/lib/mailman/archives/public/> Options FollowSymlinks AllowOverride None Require all granted </Directory> <Directory /usr/share/images/mailman/> AllowOverride None Require all granted </Directory> My first issue is that all site links point to {server}/cgi-bin/mailman/{file}, which gives a "You don't have permission to access /cgi-bin/mailman/create on this server." warning, but if I manually change that to {server}/mailman/{file}, it works. The second issue is that although the link to the archives displays the messages fine, the overview mailman doesn't seem to think I have any existing lists, although /var/lib/mailman is fully synced from the old server. I can't seem to find any file that holds this information. (There is a third that in when I click on one of the mailing list titles, the actual message can't be found, but that's probably moving on to lurker issues). Any ideas welcome! Thanks, Jenny

2 4

LVM /home partition not mounting at boot
by Richard Lewis 08 Sep '15

08 Sep '15

Hello ALUG, For a couple of weeks now I've been getting this problem on my Debian "unstable" laptop. I use LVM for the partitions on my HDD and I'm finding that, maybe three out of four boots, the partition where /home is mounted doesn't get activated. It uses systemd for booting. The boot sequence continues as normal (AFACT) until after [ OK ] Mounted /boot Then it waits for a bit, then I see: [****] A start job is running for dev-mapper-slab/x2dhome.device (42s / 1min 30s) Then after the alloted time, it drops me into "emergency mode". I enter the root password and I can then get the logical volume for /home to mount: # vgchange -ay slab i.e. I set the slab volume group as active and all its logical volumes become active. I can also see from here that, while the other two logical volumes in my volume group are both LV status available (these are /dev/slab/root, where / is mounted, and /dev/slab/swap_1 which is where swap is), the /dev/slab/home logical volume is: LV status NOT available After I issue the vgchange command, I see the kernel message: EXT4-fs (dm-2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) I can then exit "emergency mode" and booting proceeds to the login prompt. From then onwards everything is normal. I've been looking for possible solutions to this and I've tried: * adding lvmwait=/dev/mapper/slab-home to the kernel boot options. This didn't make any difference. * checking the auto_activation_volume_list. At the moment it's undefined, which apparently means that any (all?) volumes can be auto-activated which sounds fine. Any ideas what's going on here? I've been using this LVM set up since the laptop was new (so for 2.5 years) and I've not had this problem before. I tend to keep my packages fairly up-to-date by upgrading every week or so. I guess it's possible some recent upgrade has changed something, but I can't think what. And if it was something that affected lots of people, you'd expect the Web to have some evidence of that, and for there to be some fix on the way. I'm also slightly concerned by the intermittent nature of this (about three in four boots) that it could be a hardware fault. Any thoughts? Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis j: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li @: lewisrichard http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1 1

[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 10th September
by Viperfang 07 Sep '15

07 Sep '15

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 10th September at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

Coding a script
by Chris Walker 07 Sep '15

07 Sep '15

Hello, Can anybody help me please with some coding of a script? I regularly download mp3 files using get_iplayer which I then play in my Humax set top box. I find the Humax will display an image for the file if the image is embedded within the mp3 file. So I wrote a script to go through a folder and add the relevant image file. Here's my script :- for FILE in *.mp3 do bname=$(basename "$FILE") extension="${bname##*.}" filenamewoext="${bname%.*}" imagefile="${filenamewoext}.png" echo adding cover image ... eyeD3 --add-image $imagefile:FRONT_COVER:Picture "$FILE" echo Stripping any version 1 tags id3v2 --delete-v1 "$FILE" # Now for a tidy up and delete the original image file # search and add image img=$(id3v2 -l "$FILE" | grep -i "APIC") if $img =""; then echo "Adding the image failed" exit 1 else rm -f $imagefile fi done The problem comes in the tidy up section. I don't want to delete the image file if adding it has failed but even though I'm getting an error "mp3image.sh: line 47: APIC: command not found", the image is still being deleted. I've tried various ways of writing this code and all have failed. Writing code is far from my strong point so would appreciate some pointers as to where I'm going wrong particularly since if I type out the img=.. command in a console, it seems to work and produces a line like this :- APIC (Attached picture): (Picture)[, 3]: image/png, 58900 bytes so adding the image did work. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

3 3

Anyone know how to change user on Raspberry Pi GUI login?
by Chris Green 06 Sep '15

06 Sep '15

As per the subject. I have a Raspberry Pi with the latest raspbian installed. I've told it to run the GUI at boot. I want to change the user that it boots into, i.e. I don't want it to boot into the default user 'pi'. How does one do this? Google searching brought up all sorts of things about changing the pi login but not what I wanted to do. -- Chris Green

2 1

hosts.deny
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 05 Sep '15

05 Sep '15

Hi y’all! Could someone enlighten me about hosts.allow & hosts.deny please? I was reading up on linux networking, and it said I should consider the contents of these files. So networking aside, I've read up a bit and am a lot confused. As far as I can find, 1) if there's an match in hosts.allow an address is allowed to contact the machine. 2) if no match in 1), then if there's a match in hosts.deny, then the address is not allowed to contact the machine 3) if no match in 1 or 2, then the address is allowed to contact the machine. Is this right so far? If so, what's typically in hosts.deny? I ask because I've obviously edited this in the past - I have a vague recollection of doing it because I couldn't get anything working and I just stripped it all out - I know - a very very bad idea. All I've got in there is: ALL: ALL: ::1 As far as I can figure out, the first line, ALL: would do nothing. ALL: ::1 I think would block all IPV6 addresses from contacting. Is my interpretation of the above right? What's typically in the hosts.deny for a server? If it's set up to block by default, then what should I enable? Is it sufficient to use netstat to work out what's listening for a conversation and just allow these things if I think they should be allowed. If so what's the correct use of netstat to find out? If I have things running as cron jobs rather than as a daemon to check things, do I have to specifically allow these to contact the outside world, or is hosts.allow/deny just for daemons? Lastly, does this work like a firewall? As I have firewall already set up, is it a good idea to spend time on hosts.allow/deny as well? Any advice appreciated muchly! Steve

3 4

Linux laptops
by samwise 04 Sep '15

04 Sep '15

So my main HP Pavilion laptop recently died ... it looks pretty permanent. It had a fairly good run, so I'm going to have to start looking for a replacement. Just wondered if anyone had any interesting thoughts or suggestions. I'm looking for a main PC. Sort of interested in shared tablet things like the Lenovo Yoga 3, though I'm not sure if it's a mite small. I see there has been some success getting Debian running on it. Peter. -- I ran the London Marathon 2015 in aid of the PSP Association. All sponsorship gratefully received. :) http://www.bagshot-row.org/marathonformum

4 3

Cambridge Beer?
by Brett Parker 03 Sep '15

03 Sep '15

This probably more belongs on alug-social, but as we've not had a post on there in, like, totally forever... Anyone around the Cambridge area fancy a beer or 3 tomorrow? I recommend the Haymakers, but am happy to be convinced of the merits of other pubs... Cheers! -- Brett Parker

3 3

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 4th September.
by Viperfang 03 Sep '15

03 Sep '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Disc Errors
by Chris Walker 02 Sep '15

02 Sep '15

Hello, I have 3 SATA discs on my machine. One has Windows on it, another has Mageia 5 and the third is designated as Disc_Swap_Space to allow me to swap files between Windows and Mageia. It's formatted to NTFS. I prefer that to allowing Windows to write to any linux drives. But even though the swap drive functions perfectly under Windows, Mageia won't mount it. It complains 'non-zero exit status 14' and say that the file system is unclean. But I've run all the checks under Windows and that thinks it is clean. So how can I persuade Mageia to use it again? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

2 3

update-alternatives --config java
by Paul Grenyer 02 Sep '15

02 Sep '15

Hi All I've installed Java 8 on my Linux Mint machine here: /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0_60 and I want to be able to switch between it and currently installed Java version with: sudo update-alternatives --config java However, I can't find how to add Java 8 to one of the update alternatives options. Can someone help me out, please? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer Have you thought what Naked Element could do for you? http://nakedelement.co.uk/ It's time to get technical: http://norfolkdevelopers.com

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