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

13 Nov '09

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

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UltraEdit for Linux
by Mark Rogers 12 Nov '09

12 Nov '09

Just a heads-up for anyone who might be interested: a native Linux version of UltraEdit has been released: http://www.ultraedit.com/Newsletters/nov09-uex/index.html It's chargeable ($40 introductory, $70 full price) and I've not tried it yet (I'm half-way through an Ubuntu 9.04->9.10 upgrade, so now probably isn't the time to install it!) but I know there's been interest in a UE-like editor on Linux expressed here before (as much by me as anyone). I know the majority won't be interested on price/freedom grounds. Personally I've not found anything as good on Linux as FOSS (primarily stuff like column editing). (Since the software is commercial I should point out that I am not affiliated with UE in any way.) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Recommendations wanted for new 24" monitor
by Chris G 12 Nov '09

12 Nov '09

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

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

12 Nov '09

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

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

12 Nov '09

Does anyone here use any GUI tools for updating a Wordpress blog? Cross-platform ideally, as I want to get others using the same tools who haven't yet discovered the joys of a Windows-free desktop. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Moving To Linux
by Simon Royal 12 Nov '09

12 Nov '09

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

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

11 Nov '09

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

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

10 Nov '09

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

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

10 Nov '09

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

1 0

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

10 Nov '09

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

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

10 Nov '09

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

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Face Recognition
by Mark Rogers 09 Nov '09

09 Nov '09

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

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

08 Nov '09

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

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Help with YouTube videos
by Chris Walker 07 Nov '09

07 Nov '09

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

3 2

touch screens
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Nov '09

07 Nov '09

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

1 0

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

07 Nov '09

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

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Some advice needed
by Alistair Macgregor 06 Nov '09

06 Nov '09

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

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

06 Nov '09

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

3 4

touch screens
by Peter Alcibiades 05 Nov '09

05 Nov '09

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

4 4

open office calc problem
by Jenny Hopkins 05 Nov '09

05 Nov '09

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

3 2

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

05 Nov '09

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

1 1

FSCONS
by Sam Tuke 05 Nov '09

05 Nov '09

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

1 0

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

04 Nov '09

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

3 6

Network Manager job
by Christopher Dawkins 04 Nov '09

04 Nov '09

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

1 0

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

03 Nov '09

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

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