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10369 discussions

tail and awk
by Barry Samuels 17 Nov '10

17 Nov '10

I'm running Debian Squeeze/Testing and have this in my /etc/rc.local: tail -f /var/log/syslog | awk '/kernel: sdb: sdb1/ {system("/bin/sleep 10; /sbin/hdparm -Y /dev/sdb")}' & Whenever I insert a hard drive caddy I want the disc to be put into sleep mode until it's required. The drive is used only once every 24 hours to backup and the drive is changed each day. However it doesn't work. If I remove a drive caddy and then replace it the relevant lines appear in syslog but the drive keeps spinning. If I stop the current tail/awk processes, remove and replace the caddy then run /etc/rc.local from the command line it does work and the drive stops spinning. I have now run out of expertise. Any suggestions please? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Re: [ALUG] Mostly OT: Kindle 3G
by mark fernandes (IFR) 17 Nov '10

17 Nov '10

Mark, I've made some comments about the Kindle browser on my blog (http://www.codingscience.blogspot.com/) I have successfully used it to access my work e-mail (Outlook Web Access) whilst on my travels. It is a bit like going back to Black and White TV (God that ages me!) but still quite usable (but roll on colour e-paper). My biggest problem is viewing scientific papers (usually only avail as PDFs) in 3 columns which is e-reader unfriendly. If anybody knows of a tool to reformat these to single column reliably, 'I'll be over the moon' as it is a bit of a deal-breaker for some of my colleagues. I say reliable - I tried tools like calibre and stanza (and a google code project whose name escapes me - I said I'm getting old) and get weird effects (Which I'm beginning to believe is down to quirks of PDF format when having multiple columns with diagrams and images (:-() rather than the programs). Anyway, back to original question - Browser is usable but I wouldn't use it as the 'weapon of choice'. Or put it another way don't try and use a hammer to put in a screw... :-) Hope that this helps, Mark

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 13 Nov '10

13 Nov '10

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back next week, Monday 15th November, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://www.pjmcgintys.co.uk/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. We're usually to be found in the lowest section of the bar, near the library entrance to the pub. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Hopefully, see some of you there! Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Reliable friendly hosting companies
by Mark Rogers 09 Nov '10

09 Nov '10

We currently use MemSet for most of our hosting requirements. We run Ubuntu virtual servers and have very few problems caused either by us or Memset. However, Memset don't provide out-of-hours emergency support except with fully managed servers (£40/month overhead, on a virtual server which might only be costing £10/month itself). This has occasionally caused problems in the past, with an upgrade taking place late on a Friday evening leaving the server inaccessible until after 9am Monday. It means we can't risk a major update out-of-hours in case of problems, but equally don't want to schedule downtime in office hours either. We prefer to run multiple virtual servers rather than having one "big" one - spreading the load but more importantly meaning that one outage it less likely to hit all customers or all services at the same time (much easier to manage!). At £40/mo for multiple servers this means paying around £3-4k just to be able to contact emergency support typically once per year when we have a problem that requires it. So, what are the current suggestions for hosts that other people can recommend with 24/7 support availability for those rare disasters? I know this type of thread crops up fairly often but recommendations change and I haven't seen the specific issue of out-of-hours support cropping up. Other than this I have no reason to wish to move away from Memset, but we have reached the stage of migrating several sites to new virtual servers and that can either be at Memset or elsewhere, so I need to consider the alternatives. -- 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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Tools for laying out images and text on web pages - suggestions wanted
by Chris G 06 Nov '10

06 Nov '10

Are there any good tools/utilities for easily laying out pictures and text on a web page? I want an easy way to put some images and text on a page with text beside pictures and/or more than one picture across the page. I know that HTML is fundamentally not really designed to do such a thing (because it creates content rather than layout) but in the real world it's a rather fundamental thing to want to do. While CSS is 'the right answer' it doesn't really fill the bill because I want to layout 'this particular bit of text I have written' in a specific position relative to 'this particular image'. I'm not after a generic two column or three column layout into which I can drop my text and images, I'm after saying "put this text top left next to this image top right then this text across the page, then this image on the left with this text to the right of it ....." etc. I guess the WYSIWYG way of doing it would be draggable boxes with configurable constraints such that you could say "this one must be next to this one". (... and yes I know WYSIWYG doesn't really fit the web because of different sized screens etc. but this is mostly for me to use so it doesn't have to work for everyone's screen and browser) Any suggestions? -- Chris Green

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Does anyone else's Alt key do this - multiplier entry - can it be turned off?
by Chris G 05 Nov '10

05 Nov '10

While recently playing around with my keyboard and looking at ways to enter special characters I discovered that the Alt key (that's the one on the left, i.e. *not* the AltGr key) doesn't act as a modifier like the AltGr key but, in some cases, acts as a multiplier for the next character. I.e. if I enter Alt+<digit> the prompt changes to (arg: <digit>) and entering further Alt+<digit> keys adds to the value after arg:. Then on entering the next character it is repeated arg times. This is (for me anyway) a totally useless facility, I'd much rather the Alt key acts as a shift key (like the AltGr key) and gives special characters. I have some documentation that gives the standard/default characters generated by Alt and AltGr as follows (intermediate mail systems willing):- Unshifted Shifted Unshifted Shifted Key Alt AltGr Alt AltGr Key Alt AltGr Alt AltGr ` à | ¬ 1 ± ¹ ¡ ¡ A á æ Á Æ 2 ² ² ¢ S ó ß Ó § 3 ³ ³ £ £ D ä ð Ä Ð 4 ´ ¤ ¼ F æ Æ ª 5 µ ½ ¥ G ç Ç 6 ¶ ¾ Þ H è È 7 · ¦ J ê Ê 8 ¸ ª K ë Ë 9 ¹ ¨ ± L ì Ì 0 ° © ° ; » º - ß ¿ ' § À = ½ « # £ þ Q ñ Ñ \ Ü ü ¦ W ÷ × Z ú « Ú < E å Å X ø » Ø > R ò ¶ Ò ® C ã ¢ Ã © T ô Ô V ö Ö Y ù Ù ¥ B â Â U õ Õ N î n Î N I é É M í µ Í º O ï ø Ï Ø , ¬ ¼ × P ð þ Ð Þ . ® · ¾ ÷ [ Û û / ¯ ¿ ] Ý ý In all my terminal windows the above AltGr combinations work but none of the Alt ones do, I'd like the Alt ones as well. I could then type things like ¢ (cents) and ® (registered) without too much hassle. (The above ways of typing accented characters aren't so much use as they're not easy to remember and I use a Compose key to do them) -- Chris Green

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Why are these disks subtly different? Does it matter?
by Chris G 05 Nov '10

05 Nov '10

I have just added a second WD 1Tb disk to my desktop system for backups and such. It *looks* like the one that the system started with but it has some subtle differences and I wonder whether these are significant in any way. Firstly fdisk reports slightly different geometry:- Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xf24a2de7 Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 81 heads, 63 sectors/track, 382818 cylinders Units = cylinders of 5103 * 512 = 2612736 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x4e451e03 Secondly (and the one I have *slightly* more concern about) blkid reports as follows:- /dev/sdc1: UUID="c4ae6fbe-18b3-4af9-aed8-a442e0fb6893" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" /dev/sdb1: UUID="6976542f-0471-411e-8c0d-97492c3f49b5" TYPE="ext3" What does that SEC_TYPE="ext2" mean? I used mkfs.ext3 to create the file system on the disk with no explicit option. Presumably the other disk (/dev/sdb1) was partitioned and formatted when I installed xubuntu. -- Chris Green

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Where is this pseudo-wifi network coming from?
by Chris G 05 Nov '10

05 Nov '10

Our Dell Vostro V13 laptop keeps telling us that there's a WiFi network called dcuc160 which it successfully connects to, unfortunately it doesn't actually work. This network appears wherever we are, even in Belgium on our boat and at home where there aren't any neighbours in wireless range so I don't think it's any sort of real network. How can we get rid of it as it's a right pain. I've searched for dcuc160 on Google and got just one hit for "Duelund Coherent Audio CAST inductors homepage", not relevant! -- Chris Green

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eSata disk on Linux, are they normally hot-pluggable?
by Chris G 05 Nov '10

05 Nov '10

I have an external eSata disk drive that I want to use on my desktop machine occasionally. I have powered it up and connected it and absolutely nothing seems to happen. I've done a bit of Google'ing and there doesn't seem to be a very consistent result, I've found everyting from "doesn't work at all" to "works perfectly, just pops up when plugged in". I've searched for it specifically with Ubuntu 10.04 as that's what I'm using. Has anyone here had success (or otherwise) with hot-plugging eSata disks? I have had the disk working on another system but I can't remember whether that was hot-plugged or present at power up. I will try rebooting the dekstop with the eSata powered and connected to see if it works then but I really want to be able to hot-plug it. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] weird problems
by Peter Alcibiades 05 Nov '10

05 Nov '10

Ha! Weird problem, undid the machine to take a look at the innards, and noticed a slight rattling sound. Odd, but get distracted and take a look a the hard drive. This has a yellow sticker on it bearing the legend Drive 1, and someone has written in marker across it Windows 7. Interesting. Think about this for a while. This is after all a new custom built machine. Then move the machine around to see where the rattle might be coming from. It seems to come from the fan, which is a stock Intel fan and heat sink. Odder and odder. Waggle it a bit, and it comes up easily on one side! In short, three of the four securing pins are not secured into the main board, so presumably the fit of the heat sink is, well, dodgy. Oh dear. This might be the solution. In the meantime my friend lost his sense of humour and trashed all the previous partitions, well, hard to blame him. So here we go again.... Peter

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weird problems
by Peter Alcibiades 04 Nov '10

04 Nov '10

How about this? Friend with a windows 7 installation. He tells me he was using skype and suddenly the system crashed after which Norton had vanished and several pictures went missing. System restore done by his current helper tried twice and failed to work. I told him to buy a new oem copy of windows (his last being of dubious provenance), have his helper partition the machine into two NTFS partitions and some free space for Linux, and reinstall. He did this, but was unable to reinstall, not sure why, so brought the machine over. I reinstalled Windows with no problem, and then proceeded to Debian. Well, there was a message about the fstab not being right because of an error involving the partition id. I didn't understand this, but proceeded. All goes well, we install grub, we reboot, and the windows install is nowhere to be found in the bootloader. After a long story, I put in PCLinux instead, and this goes in and works fine, grub picks up the windows install, we can boot from either linux or from windows, no problem. He goes home, sends me a couple emails showing windows at least works. I get this message: Email from Windows, printer driver, sound, flash player, microsoft security, Admin account for Windows, and it's all still working! This morning, sad message from another computer, he is down again. It will boot neither Linux nor Windows. Do you think this might be hardware? I wonder about trying memory diagnostics or hard drive verification program? I can restore the boot sector in windows, I can also take him to lilo, but will it last any better than the others? Or if not that, any other suggestions? Peter

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Search and replace(insert) - can anyone help?
by Govind Chandra 03 Nov '10

03 Nov '10

Hi Barry, I made a slightly bigger test file from your input for testing. ===================================================================== <table class="socialheader" width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="85%" align="left" nowrap>The Three Sisters, Glen Coe</td> </tr> </table> <table class="sociheader" width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="85%" align="left" nowrap>This cannot be used</td> </tr> </table> <table class="socialheader" width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="85%" align="left" nowrap>This is different each time</td> </tr> </table> <table class="socialhear" width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="85%" align="left" nowrap>This is not usable</td> </tr> </table> ========================================================================= I think the perl script below (or some modification thereof) will do what you want. ===================================================== #! /usr/bin/perl use strict; open(INFILE, "<$ARGV[0]"); my $social_flag = 0; while(<INFILE>) { my $line=$_; chomp($line); if($line=~m/\<table class\=\"socialheader\"/) { $social_flag = 1; print("$line\n"); next; } if($line=~m/align\=\"left\"/ and $line=~m/width\=\"85\%\"/ and $line=~m/nowrap/ ) { if($social_flag) { print("$line\n"); print("One new line here\n"); print("Another new line here\n"); $social_flag = 0; } else { print("$line\n"); } } else { print("$line\n"); } } close(INFILE); ============================================================== Hope this helps. Govind > Subject: [ALUG] Search and replace(insert) - can anyone help? > To: Alug <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> > Message-ID: <1288625418.1815.0@dataman1> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > <table class="socialheader" width="100%" border="0"> > > <tr> > <td width="85%" align="left" nowrap>The Three Sisters, Glen Coe</td> > </tr> > > </table> > > I have over 2500 pages with the above HTML in ( the "Three Sisters, Glen > Coe" bit is different in every file) and I want to add two lines so: > > <table class="socialheader" width="100%" border="0"> > > <tr> > <td width="85%" align="left" nowrap>The Three Sisters, Glen Coe</td> > <One new line here> > <Another new line here> > </tr> > > </table> > > The pair of lines to be inserted is identical in each case but the only > unique identifier is the "class=socialheader". > > Is there any way I can do it with a script? > > -- > Barry Samuels > http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk > The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Kerberos
by Richard Lewis 02 Nov '10

02 Nov '10

Hi ALUG, I've just tried to add a new user to a Debian unstable system I manage on a virtual server but have run up against some sort of authentication problem. As normal, I used adduser: $ sudo adduser interface Adding user `interface' ... Adding new group `interface' (1002) ... Adding new user `interface' (1002) with group `interface' ... Creating home directory `/home/interface' ... Copying files from `/etc/skel' ... But then it said this: Current Kerberos password: passwd: User not known to the underlying authentication module passwd: password unchanged Try again? [y/N] n Hitting n continued like this: Changing the user information for interface Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default Full Name []: Interface2011 Room Number []: Work Phone []: Home Phone []: Other []: Is the information correct? [Y/n] y It seems I can't set a password for this user now: $ sudo su interface $ passwd Current Kerberos password: passwd: User not known to the underlying authentication module passwd: password unchanged I've heard of Kerberos and it all sounds great, but as far as I know, I don't "use it" (if that's the right expression) on this system. And I'd prefer just to use an ordinary UNIX password, because I just want it to work. I tried commenting out a line in /etc/pam.d/common-password: #password requisite pam_krb5.so minimum_uid=1000 password [success=1 default=ignore] pam_unix.so obscure use_authtok try_first_pass sha512 But I'm not whether: a) this has been effective; or b) would solve the problem anyway. Any ideas how to make it not try and use Kerberos? Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Is there any way to 'ssh and cd'?
by Chris G 01 Nov '10

01 Nov '10

I'd like to set up some logins to various places around my LAN which not only ssh to the relevant place but also do a cd to a specific directory. Can anyone suggest a way to do this? By default if you give a command to ssh at the end of the line then it executes that command and then closes the connection - it only keeps the connection open if there is no command at the end. In addition doing a cd is even a bit more difficult because it's no use at all to execute it in a sub-shell. -- Chris Green

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Search and replace(insert) - can anyone help?
by Barry Samuels 01 Nov '10

01 Nov '10

<table class="socialheader" width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="85%" align="left" nowrap>The Three Sisters, Glen Coe</td> </tr> </table> I have over 2500 pages with the above HTML in ( the "Three Sisters, Glen Coe" bit is different in every file) and I want to add two lines so: <table class="socialheader" width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="85%" align="left" nowrap>The Three Sisters, Glen Coe</td> <One new line here> <Another new line here> </tr> </table> The pair of lines to be inserted is identical in each case but the only unique identifier is the "class=socialheader". Is there any way I can do it with a script? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Re: [ALUG] Thunderguts 2.# in Usenet mode
by Anthony Anson 31 Oct '10

31 Oct '10

nev young wrote: > On 30/10/10 22:55, Anthony Anson wrote: >> >> <MI5> Is deleting Mike Corley an option? </MI5> >> > When I used TB2 I trained my hand to press "k" on any thread started by > Mr C or anything cross-posted to more than 2 gropes. I'll play - that's a keystroke which I missed somewhere along the line (along with Alt+F9...) for which I also have you to thank innit. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

1 0

Thunderguts 2.# in Usenet mode
by Anthony Anson 30 Oct '10

30 Oct '10

Can anyone explain why, when I download headers there will be (say) 5 unread in a group, but on accessing it, a couple will disappear without trace? It happens most times the server is accessed. They haven't been eaten by the killfile - indeed, on most gruppen I don't have any filters. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

2 1

TV & Computer display screen
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 29 Oct '10

29 Oct '10

Hi Folks, Once again picking the brains of the hardware-savvy amongst you! A friend of mine has asked me about what to get for a flat-screen which can double as TV and computer display screen. The size would need to be big enough to serve as a comfortable YV (so, I guess, at least 19/21 inch, probably larger). The intention is to plug the TV aerial into the back and use it as the TV, or plug the computer in and use it as the display. One computer is a not-too-recent laptop (no details held), but not very old. Dunno whether it has an S-video socket. Two other computers are rather old desktops dating back some 10 years (and with a Win of the vintage of Win 98 as OS, though I'm not certain of the exact version). Almost certainly no S-video, probably only standard monitor socket on video card. I'm clueless[*] about this sort of hardware question, so I'm asking for advice/comments! I guess the real question is whether a standard monitor socket can be connnectied to a TV (for suitable choice of TV); with associated question of whether large screen size may not work well with the computer. With thanks, Ted. [*] Not completely -- I have succeeded in connecting a recentish laptop to a TV using an adaptor cable from Maplin's, with S-video (1 connector) plus audio (2 connectors plus adptor to stero plug-in for computer's line-out socket) at the computer end, and a SCART plug at the other end for the TV. But this may be irrelevant for the present question! -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 28-Oct-10 Time: 19:22:59 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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postgresql client question
by Jenny Hopkins 28 Oct '10

28 Oct '10

Hullo all, I've written a shell script that sends a line of insert sql to a postgresql database - or it's supposed to. If the script is run on the same host as the database, there is no problem. However, I want the sql to be sent and inserted from a client running ubuntu, to a debian server, without having to install the entire postgres package on the former. I read about postgresql-client-common being the tool for the job, duly installed it, but when it ran the sql "psql -h hostname -U username dbname < filename" it grumbled "Error: You must install at least one postgresql-client-<version> package". After googling some, I then tried sticking a default cluster in /etc/postgresql-common/user_clusters on the ubuntu client: "jenny jenny 8.3 CWMain dbname" but it seems to be looking at itself, rather than the host specified on the sql line: "Error: /etc/postgresql-common/user_clusters line 24: version 8.3 does not exist" The postgres version on the server is 8.3. Is there a different approach I can take - I feel I'm missing something incredibly obvious? I've always had postgresql installed on clients in the past and haven't come across this. Many thanks, Jenny

1 1

ALUG library
by Wayne Stallwood 25 Oct '10

25 Oct '10

I am still looking to rid myself of having to store the ALUG library. The fact is that since being librarian (2003ish) we have lent exactly no books. Most of it is now horribly out of date...a long time ago I abandoned the magazines. There are a few newish titles I have added and a recent donation of "linux in a nutshell" from O'Reily. The online catalogue is offline due to the hosting it was on being broken. I have backups but it was pretty crufty anyway. More donations can be sought..but to get more out of O'Reily they were wanting us to do online and open access reviews and comments about the donated titles. I no longer have the time or the enthusiasm to do this. I see two potential futures. Somebody takes it over and tries to resurrect it by getting a book review section up on the wiki and therefore hopefully attracts more relevant donations..clears out the crud and tries to resolve the logistical issues of free book lending to remote members. or we disband it.... If this was decided then I would post a catalogue and members could claim anything they wanted to keep for themselves. After a time I would take whatever is left and donate to a charity shop or similar. Please can you respond and let me know your ideas...I don't want to go giving it away without approval from those that helped build the collection or if anyone sees a potential future for it. At the same time however it has long been a burden for me to store and I need the space in my study back...currently it consists of about 3 stackable boxes full of books. Many Thanks Wayne

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Re: [ALUG] free or cheap web hosting
by Peter Alcibiades 24 Oct '10

24 Oct '10

Thanks, guys. Turns out on investigation that 1and1 has a much cheaper basic package than I realized, at around 2.50 a month for the entry level one, but he seems most impressed with the daily.co.uk package. The year in advance is a pretty decent deal. Thanks. Peter

1 0

free or cheap web hosting
by Peter Alcibiades 23 Oct '10

23 Oct '10

A penniless artist asked me to suggest free or cheap web hosting. Obviously he will not have a lot of traffic, and what he wants to do is put up his pictures for view, but not particularly high res. So it does not have to have a lot of space. I don't know whether own domain is important or not. Might be nice. Any suggestions? I had thought of 1and1, which seems to do a basic package for around £120 a year including domain. But if there is anything anyone would recommend thats cheaper and still decent, the pennies would help. Peter

4 3

Netbook Dual Boot Distro-Hopping Grub/MBR Recovery Solution
by S 21 Oct '10

21 Oct '10

Hi I have a non-standard Netbook HP 2133 which for now anyway I want to be able to Dual Boot XP MCE and a Linux Distro. The Mini has a VIA Chip and none of the distros have yet fully got to grips with maximising the Graphics though I read that Ubuntu is getting closer to seamlessly building in a new open-source driver from Via (don't drivers end up in the kernel though?). Bottom line is I hop distros to try to find one that has mastered the trick of all forms of video and flash so that I can finally dump the Windows. In doing so I recently installed Jolicloud in place of Linux Mint. I made a mistake in thinking I could just delete the mint & related swap partition and get "Error 15". I know I can sort it by hooking up an external DVD and doing full reinstalls of Windows and Jolicloud or whatever and maybe next time I'll do the Express install of Jolicloud which I think uses Wubi making uninstallation easy (it says) Whilst I'd like to learn to avoid these messes in the first place, I'd like to know how to fix them much more quickly too. I read on Lifehacker of Wintoflash and thought that would speed re-installations of Windows (maybe it doesn't like MCE version of XP) or maybe the cross disk installation process caught out the software (as it didn't ask me to swap disks) but it doesn't get to an installation/repair type screen, though it will start windows from a grub like menu but doesn't fix boot on restart. I've also tried super grub disk on systemrescuecd-x86-1.6.2 and can access and fully use either of the OSs on the hard disk fine. Having the usb stick in to do this each time is of course daft. GRUB/MBR and Xorg seem to be two that really I need to get to grips with but i've yet to build confidence or even familiarity in digging around much in Linux - kinda just want it to work. Lots (& lots!) of info online but are there some golden rules / infallible-simple-quick sources to go to prevent & sort my problems. Is there a master tool kit on a usb stick. I'll try and get along to one of the meetings sometime. Er, I think that's quite enough Steve >

1 0

multi function photo printer advice please
by mick 21 Oct '10

21 Oct '10

My HP Photosmart (C5280) has finally irritated me enough to want to get rid of it. It currently refuses to print at all using "recycled" cartridges (always tricky with HP printers in my experience) and is now also flaky with HP branded cartridges. I am also thoroughly pissed off with the cost of Vivera ink and the fact that I have to replace the entire colour (or photo) cartridge when just one colour is depleted. So I have been researching Epson MFPs which have 6 seperate ink cartidges. My needs are classic home user: - scanning 1200/2400 - photocopying - monochrome and colour printing up to A4 - photo printing up to A4 - ideally printing direct from assorted flash memory sticks (I have both sony and SD cards). The Epson photo PX 650 looks as if it would fit the bill, but it does not appear in the linux openprinting database. There is a driver quoted for it which appears to require the installation of the lsb packages but I'm not sure how well supported this might be. Does anyone here have any experience of this printer? And if not, what other epson (or non HP printer which meets the above requirements) can people recommend? The main reason for using HP in the past is the fact that they are pretty good at supporting linux through HPLIP. Shame about the extortionate running costs. Mick (Anyone want a C5280 which /might/ be fixable) --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Android Readers
by Martin Collins 21 Oct '10

21 Oct '10

Hi, has anyone any experience of some of these new Android E-Readers? I was looking for something to read pdfs, things like Full Circle Magazine (http://fullcirclemagazine.org/downloads/), Linux Format pdfs and some programming manuals I've got - all Linuxy Languages of course. However, these are mostly 7" in size and although probably ok for text, I'm a bit unsure whether they would be big enough for fixed format pdfs? Anyone used one yet. Next do a 10" one but it's a bit pricey (£180) - http://www.next.co.uk/shopping/electric/carryover/10/13 I'd feel better with that one but for that price I could buy a cheap Netbook - maybe that would be the best option. Any opinions greatly received before I splash my cash. Rgds, Martin

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1997

main