- main - earth.li

A new appp!
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 02 Aug '11

02 Aug '11

First, my apologies for cross-posting (which I know will affect some of you), but this is one of those news gems which deserves the widest publicity. I just received my ISP Zen's latest News letter. One item therein is: Powerpoint politics There's a new political party in Switzerland and its sole aim is to have PowerPoint outlawed. The Anti-PowerPoint Party says banning the application would allow people to get back to doing some real work. In the party's blog, it claims that so many government institutions use PowerPoint that about 11 per cent of more than 4.1 million employees have to waste time on presentations on a regular basis. The ban might happen. Citizens can force a referendum on any subject in Switzerland. All it takes is 100,000 voters to sign a petition demanding one. URLs in the Zen article: [techeye.net: "Switzerland demands Powerpoint's death"]: http://zen-mail.co.uk/IJT-HCUP-3BFWEB-6SFFZ-0/c.aspx Sample quote: "Looking at the problem Europe wide, SAP thinks that Powerpoint costs the 110 billion Euros which is coincidentally how much the Greek debt bail-out will cost." [techeye.net: US Army declares war on Powerpoint"]: http://zen-mail.co.uk/IJT-HCUP-3BFWEB-6SFG0-0/c.aspx Sample quote: "Sam Nuxoll, a platoon leader in Iraq, seems to have shaken the Pentagon with a quote that said he was spending most of the war making Powerpoint slides. Instead of spending his time dodging bullets, he was making bullet points." ===================================== And I shall add one of my own favourite APP diatribes (much inspired by Edward Tufte, one of the great experts in the presentation of information, and a pioneer in formulating the principles of good presentation): http://services.exeter.ac.uk/cmit/media/audio/ Microsoft-Powerpoint-And-The-Decline-Of-Civilisation-BBCR4-2004-10-18.mp3 (equivalently: http://tinyurl.com/42al9e9 ) [BBC Radio 4, 18 October 2004. Duration 14 minutes. Which was a delightful surprise to me that day, with R4 casually on in the background] See also the Wikipedia article on Tufte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_tufte There's a good (bullet-pointed???) summary of his views on PowerPoint in Section 2.2 "Criticism of PowerPoint". Best wishes to all! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Aug-11 Time: 11:37:35 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

10 16

Missing files
by James Bensley 30 Jul '11

30 Jul '11

So I made a boo boo today... Like a fool I pulled my NTFS external USB drive out of my Ubuntu 10.04 laptop a second too early. I was moving some files from the laptop to the drive and just as the bar was reaching complete I pulled the USB cable out. It was a load of files and folders I had looped and "right clicked > cut". I would have thought that say the last file of the selection wouldn't be there because I interrupted the cut process right at the end but no, all the files aren't on the external drive and because it was a cut not a copy they are gone from my laptop. Anyone know how I can scan my external drive for the presumably unclosed files and "close them" or something data recovery-esq like that? -- James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/

2 1

Re: [ALUG] Why is the time correct on my virtual machine?
by Mark Rogers 29 Jul '11

29 Jul '11

On 28 July 2011 17:39, Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk <mailto:tony.anson@girolle.co.uk>> wrote: Is there any possibility of a crosslink with the two virtual machines? Both running in Virtual Box, mayhap? They are both inside vbox, yes. However, I installed ntpd on the second virtual machine and checked its time against the time server, and it was different, albeit only a few seconds. So coincidence is looking more likely? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

2 1

Why is the time correct on my virtual machine?
by Mark Rogers 28 Jul '11

28 Jul '11

I have a server (running Ubuntu 10.04/Zentyal + VirtualBox). It's time is about 5 mins out (it doesn't seem to have any time sync built in). Hosted on it are two virtual machines, both with accurate times. One has (in root's crontab): */10 * * * * /usr/sbin/ntpdate -s uk.pool.ntp.org .. so that explains that one being correct. However the other one does not, and I can't see anything that would be keeping it in sync. I've looked in root's crontab, as well as all of /etc/cron*. There's no ntpd script in /etc/init.d. It's running Ubuntu 11.04 (server). How would this one be staying correct? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

Pinging Server's 127.*.*.* subnet
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 25 Jul '11

25 Jul '11

Hi all, I was trying to add a extra IP address to my server's localhost because I wanted to run a apache virtual host on a separate IP address. I used sudo ip addr add 127.0.0.5/32 dev lo and then I could ping 127.0.0.5 successfully. When I'd finished, I ran sudo ip addr del 127.0.0.5/32 dev lo which didn't return any error messages. I than ran ping 127.0.0.5 and still got responses. I ran sudo ip addr del 127.0.0.5/32 dev lo again and it told me that it could not do it "RTNETLINK answers: Cannot assign requested address" It may be that the ip addr add has nothing to do with it, but on this machine, my server, I can ping any address I've tried in the 127.*.*.* range and get a response. Is this normal, or have I messed something up? If so, what have I messed up? Is there anything I can run that show's what's providing these ports? It's an Ubuntu machine, running dnsmasq, apache. Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS Any ideas? Or am I being thick??? Steve

3 4

Network delay issue
by Stuart Bailey 22 Jul '11

22 Jul '11

I have a mid sized network, around 80 users. Most of these users are using windows clients, with a few macs. There are 3 Linux servers, 2 for file services (samba and netatalk), and one as domain controller (Samba) and email (cyrus / postfix). There is also a windows server used for Sage. We have recently started to notice periodic delays in network traffic. I am not aware of any changes to the network at the time when this problem started - it has been fine for 18 months or so. This has been noticed as follows: 1. remote ssh into Linux server - typing gets momentarily delayed, for about 5-10 seconds, then resumes. This occurs randomly, but typically every minute or so. 2. Remote desktop (to a windows client), freezes, and occasionally drops out. 3. File access to samba shares sometimes takes a very long time, or times out. Then a retry works almost instantly. 4. There is also a DOS (runs in XP command window) based database, whose files reside on a samba share. When scrolling through records, this occasionally freezes, then resumes. The delay periods are all fairly consistent - ie, they affect the above for roughly the same periods. I have monitored tcpdump from the Linux server whilst accessing the database, and can see server responses from samba to the DOS client, immediately before a delay occurs. I am certain the servers are not responsible, since it affects services on different machines, and can see samba packets from the server at the right time. Also, I've monitored the broadband traffic, and can see nothing unusual. The network has gigabit connections from the servers to 3 stacked switches. Fibre between buildings - although the problem affects all buildings. Clients are typically on 100M connections. the windows clients are all running NOD32 AV. RKhunter and chkrootkit are run on the servers overnight, and show nothing. I'm not sure what else to look for. I've monitored the servers with wireshark, and they look normal. Any ideas would be welcome, please. Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Managing Director) Linux Specialist & Software Developer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Phone: (0845) 658 3563 Direct: +44 (0) 1953 878162 Fax: +44 (0) 1603 858583 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.linusoft.co.uk __________ Information from ESET Mail Security, version of virus signature database 6308 (20110719) __________ The message was checked by ESET Mail Security. http://www.eset.com

4 3

SSH keys
by Mark Rogers 21 Jul '11

21 Jul '11

I have a remote server that I want to allow SSH access to but only to certain people, and I don't trust passwords, so keys are the way to go. However, all I know about setting up keys is based on the user creating a public/private key pair, and the server adding that user's public key to it's trusted keys to allow access. Ideally what I want to do is the other way around, in that I want to generate the key pairs on the server and copy the relevant key to the clients so that they all share the same key (there won't be many users and I just want to give them a key rather than have them create keys themselves). What is the "correct" way to do this, or am I doing something horribly wrong? I figure that I can set up the key pair myself as usual, but then copy the private key from my PC to anyone else who needs access, but I'm not sure if that's the right approach. (I'm quite OK with the idea of creating different keys for different users, adding them to the server, then issuing the keys to the users, so I can revoke access from any given user quite easily if I need to; I just don't want the users having to do the key creation bit.) If it's relevant, most of the users other than me will be connecting via Windows (PuTTY), and will need to be able to tunnel through the SSH connection for various apps. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

2 1

CSS/HTML question - how to vary a CSS value easily?
by Chris G 20 Jul '11

20 Jul '11

I have done a Google search for 'dynamic CSS' and I can see large scale ways of doing what I want to do but I was wondering if anyone has a simple way of doing it. What I want is a way to insert a variable amount of vertical space between blocks of HTML. The particular case I'm interested in is where I have a <UL> below either a <P>...</P> or below a heading <Hx>. The problem is that the HTML is generated by a Wiki so one doesn't have *direct* access to the generated code and the text above a list is *always* a paragraph, it's not possible to turn it off. The existing CSS setting margins for paragraphs and headings works right for 99% of cases but when you have lists under heading *and* lists under paragraphs it's very difficult to get things right using just the CSS. So, a quick (and dirty?!) approach to fixing the few places where the spacing is too small or too large would be to have the ability to insert an empty block/paragraph where one could set the height/margins easily. A quick, single case, bodge is something like:- <DIV id=unvert><P></P></DIV> With CSS for div#unvert setting appropriate size/margins. However what I'd *really* like to do would be to enable setting of the margins or height of the paragraph from the code somehow, that would allow one to insert more/less space as required rather than needing lots of different CSS ids, one for each different spacing. Any ideas, or completely different approaches, or am I missing something entirely? -- Chris Green

5 10

Surprised at different 'rm -f' operation when root or not root work?
by Chris G 20 Jul '11

20 Jul '11

I have just discovered that 'rm -f' (also 'rm -fr') only overrides permissions when run as root. I.e. if I have a file I own that is read only I *can't* delete it if I am the user that owns the file, even using 'rm -f', however if I sudo to root privileges then 'rm -f' will remove the file even if there is no write permission. Strangely the man pages on my system don't seem to document this difference between root and non-root use of rm. For the -f option it just says:- `-f' `--force' Ignore nonexistent files and never prompt the user. Ignore any previous `--interactive' (`-i') option. Which seems to be the non-root case, i.e. it *doesn't* remove a file where you don't have write permission even with '-f'. So where is the 'do it regardless of permissions' action which happens when root uses 'rm -f' documented? Finally, the thing that caused the problem, how do I guarantee that an 'rm -fr' run by a user will be able to delete everything in the specified directory tree? Do I have to do a 'chmod -R +w' first? -- Chris Green

2 8

Scripting question - how to get *relative* directory within a bash script?
by Chris G 19 Jul '11

19 Jul '11

I need to find what the relative directory (relative to $HOME that is) within a bash script and, at the moment, I can only see rather messy ways of doing it. To go into more detail I want a way to generate a string of the form ~/subdir1/subdir2 when a script is run from ~/subdir1/subdir2. The best I can come up with at the moment is to get the full path to the current directory using pwd and then to remove $HOME from that string using sed, e.g.:- fullpath=`pwd` relpath=`echo $fullpath | sed s#$HOME#~#` Actually that's not quite as nasty a I thought, but it still feels like there should be a neater way. (I haven't tried it so there may well be issues with quoting etc. but you can see the idea) Any ideas? -- Chris Green

2 2