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Going back to VPNs - when I have one set up what does it do for me?
by Chris Green 25 Mar '14

25 Mar '14

I keep thinking that a VPN might be what I need, but then when I look at VPN documentation etc. I wonder whether it is what I need. So, if I set up an OpenVPN server on my home desktop machine (which stays turned on all the time) and set up access for me as a client from my laptop, what does it mean that I could do that I can't do already? Or, maybe more to the point, what does it make it easier to do? (Note that my home desktop is visible at a fixed IP address from the outside world and I can open up any additional ports through the firewall if necessary.) -- Chris Green

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Strange 'bandwidth strangulation' when using ssh on DFDS public WiFi
by Chris Green 24 Mar '14

24 Mar '14

When this first happened to me I thought it was just a one off oddity but yesterday when I returned on the ferry from France I saw *exactly* the same symptoms on two entirely different systems. It's hardly a big issue either just an inconvenience but I'd love to know why it happens. On the DFDS ferries there is free WiFi available, no hassle, no login required, just an open SSID called DFDS-Pax. My laptop (running Ubuntu 13.10) and my tablet (Android 4.x) both connect to it quite happily. It's reasonably usable as well, hardly lightning fast, but fine for browsing web pages etc. However if I try and connect (from either tablet or laptop) using ssh it starts off OK but after some hundreds of characters it just slows down and stops never to pass another character. If I open another ssh session from the same device the same thing happens, i.e. it gets another few hundred characters through. It's not very consistent, sometimes it doesn't even manage to complete the ssh handshake sequence, but most times it gets to a command prompt and allows me a couple of commands before going to sleep. Anything that generates a lot of traffic (like starting up mutt) always hangs before it gets anywhere but a couple of 'ls' commands will sometimes work. So what might be going on? It's not like ssh protocol is blocked completely so it's not that the port(s) are blocked, it's almost as if there's someone watching and, when they can't see what's being transferred, they stop the data. Any ideas anyone? I suppose I could try a different port for ssh but as it's not specific port blocking I don't think this will fix it. ... and as I said, it's not very important, I don't often want to read my E-Mail while crossing the channel! :-) I'm just curious. -- Chris Green

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Running PHP programs
by Chris Walker 23 Mar '14

23 Mar '14

I want to run Geneotree (http://www.geneotree.com/) so I downloaded it and extracted the files from the zip. I'm not familiar with PHP stuff so I put them in /home/chris/geneotree. There are lots of php files and a few folders but how do I run the thing? There's a config.php file which contains these lines :- ============= <?php /******* PLEASE DON'T MODIFY THE FOLLOWING LINE - NE PAS MODIFIER LA LIGNE CI-DESSOUS SVP ********/ $INSTALLATION_OK = FALSE; /*************************************************************************************************/ /****************************** BEGIN INITIALIZATION CONNECTION PARAMETERS ***********************/ $sql_host = 'localhost'; $sql_base = 'geneotree'; $sql_user = 'root'; $sql_pass = ''; /******************************* END INITIALIZATION CONNECTION PARAMETERS ************************/ ?> ============ Do I need to modify any of them to run it? I'm told that there is documentation on sourceforge but I can't see anything that would help me. I've tried putting htpp://localhost/geneotree in a browser but it fails which is not unexpected. So at this point, I'm stuck and any help would be appreciated.

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Why isn't rc.local getting run? (some sort of runlevel oddity?)
by Chris Green 20 Mar '14

20 Mar '14

I am having trouble getting things in /etc/rc.local to run. As I understand it this *should* be the standard way to make local additions to be run at startup. This is on an Ubuntu 13.10 system runnning on a Beaglebone Black so is maybe a little out of the ordinary. As I understand it /etc/init.d/rc.local gets run by the system startup process and, if there's anything to be run in /etc/rc.local that will be run. This doesn't appear to be happening. If I run '/etc/init.d/rc.local start' manually then the contents of /etc/rc.local get run and there are no errors. So it would seem that for some reason /etc/init.d/rc.local isn't getting run at system startup. The system runlevel is 2. I'm sure that /etc/rc.local should be run at every run level so I don't see how this could affect it. So, what's wrong, or misconfigured? -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 18 Mar '14

18 Mar '14

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 today, 17th March, at 20:00: The Mulberry Tree 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 225776 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA WWW: https://www.facebook.com/MULBERRYHOSPITALITY The Mulberry Tree, previously known as The Milestone Beer House, is a grade 2 listed building in the centre of Ipswich. It is located at the intersection between Woodbridge Road and the A1156, across the road from the old Odeon cinema and not far from the Regent Theatre. It re-opened on Thursday March 29th 2012 after a major refurbishment, under its original name of The Mulberry House and has already begun to regain a good reputation for its selection of beers and ales. It has a sizeable car park to the rear of the building. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Cheers, Peter. -- I have put together a work team to take on the Swimathon 2014 Team 5 km challenge in aid of Sport Relief. All sponsors gratefully received. :) http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/samwise ----- 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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HP laser printer
by Anthony Anson 16 Mar '14

16 Mar '14

Connected new HP laser printer (Laserjet Professional P1100w) and Mint found it, knew what it was, installed it, and that was all. Turn it on and lights flash and then settle to a single continuous one, but I can't make it print: it just sits there sullenly. I clicked on 'troubleshoot' and this is the result: ______________________________________________________________________ # hplip.conf. Generated from hplip.conf.in by configure. [hplip] version=3.12.6 [dirs] home=/usr/share/hplip run=/var/run ppd=/usr/share/ppd/hplip/HP ppdbase=/usr/share/ppd/hplip doc=/usr/share/doc/hplip-doc/HTML icon=no cupsbackend=/usr/lib/cups/backend cupsfilter=/usr/lib/cups/filter drv=/usr/share/cups/drv # Following values are determined at configure time and cannot be changed. [configure] network-build=yes libusb01-build=no pp-build=yes gui-build=yes scanner-build=yes fax-build=yes dbus-build=yes cups11-build=no doc-build=yes shadow-build=no hpijs-install=yes foomatic-drv-install=yes foomatic-ppd-install=yes foomatic-rip-hplip-install=no hpcups-install=yes cups-drv-install=yes cups-ppd-install=no internal-tag=3.12.6 restricted-build=no ui-toolkit=qt4 qt3=no qt4=yes policy-kit=yes hpijs-only-build=no lite-build=no udev-acl-rules=yes udev_sysfs_rules=no hpcups-only-build=no hpijs-only-build=no ______________________________________________________________________ Anyone any idea what I'm doing wrong from this? (Or not doing...) -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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wireless broadband in Norfolk
by mick 14 Mar '14

14 Mar '14

All I know that some people on this list have poor (or even very poor) broadband connectivity. I have just discovered http://www.thinkingwisp.co.uk This company purports to offer wifi broadband over large parts of the county. Their offering looks expensive to me, but then I'm fortunate in having good connectivity at home. However, if you currently have problems then this /might/ be of interest. Note - I have no connection to this company, nor any commercial interest. (Nor do I know if the service is any good....) Mick (Does anyone on the list use this?) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Norwich meeting?
by Anthony Anson 14 Mar '14

14 Mar '14

I presume there *will* be a Coach and Horses meeting this coming Thursday? -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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main@lists.alug.org.uk problem with grub
by Ben Whyall 13 Mar '14

13 Mar '14

Hi I have a problem I rebooted my desktop and its coming up with the following gave up waiting for root device alert /dev/disk/by-uuid-15e0064a.... does not exist. Dropping to shell. Now my /boot is on a raid partition /root and the others are on lvm2 When I look in the lvm in the shell it suggests that the lvm is inactive. I have tried using a live disk to rebuild grub but I must be missing the correct command fu. Anyone got any suggestions Ben

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SSH Wizardry needed
by Steve Engledow 13 Mar '14

13 Mar '14

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Hi folks, I'm in need of some wizardry. I have a machine at home that's connected to the telly so that the wife can use it for Skype (just bought a *really* nice HD webcam) and browsing etc (and I can use it for Steam ;) What I need is for it to ssh to my server when it boots and open a port there to its local sshd so that I can ssh into it whenever I need. I'm on an ISP that will change my IP address every now and then and I don't want to muck about with dyndns etc. so this is my preferred solution. I know how to do the ssh bit: ssh -R 2222:localhost:22 server What I don't know is how to make it do that when it boots - obviously when the wifi gets around to connecting - and to make it resilient to drop outs, i.e. reconnect if the connection is lost. Any ideas? Cheers, Steve -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJTIZ0zAAoJEL/3HArzwYbRO0sP/0mLMg8Btmy9TLevSppXGu+/ E/vfabP/p7iaembSOOXR4NkKiyvoUb6YHk8a7Az2sL4MxNY3VWz1H/lLDhlbPbsR YI2SECYnSmDnxdWa8sk4TfYfhnnkRAZF3nXz2EiQt72M0Jqnz/5cL/bVKqBjDsJ9 te5H4O0kX3/6S2Sl7DMXsBPGbxGD6nheXqJNB4UDQBVxgxc6bPVqOFOmAMbJHovF dDugXdEsDZp5D5gDcExozMELhWE8mhVmSP7QXrV1a4tWHTlRrTfu8eFGNCSawDhB e9tgFPoJ/Rrg4hxsY8hT7LozzzQ3K+E1QEbt1avfrqkv3VGmfVTOpFwMVoNuSRtl zgozPZb+hcYJPiWRwtY5qqcpqFSrevv47sq9f2a4Q9NYR2dwnSNnAStNcdxaRexi T4yZa/rYp7FmPJwRV/zjLudrX8g+W61BxhvQxqnIbulcuyYDLY4EkjIbbYnnFOey JHCvWZxQau4SRZsuQA4iYkI8ptHBocRgGyPu2pFFIzFiBmtsZguRAynaQspr+/Vj D2j3ZY1bHdZhHpcPDu6kSqI7wXk1n2PJUn16uLRsFVWf3ISafVzqWDh0LB0hc0Pm eqOypcYxYAJwpkMAdA9m/L6LsBSglYEoR8i5LkzO/8L5h9fIMYZmzugAlSnIHSz/ 9dLInArjhKVHDmckWuUF =n5Fx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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