- main - earth.li

OT: GPU fans
by Mark Rogers 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

The fan on the cheap PCI-X graphics card in my Linux box is failing. It's a little (40mm I think) fan mounted into the heatsink. Does anyone know if these can be replaced? It may only be a cheap card but it still seems silly having to pay for a new card just because the fan is dying! Or is there any way to rejuvenate a fan? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

10 16

Recommendations: Linux Small Form Factor PC
by samwise 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

Hi, I'm considering building a small form factor PC to live under and output through my HD TV, primarily for running SDL games initially and I expect I'll stick some form of 64-bit Debian on it. I'm thinking a Mini-ITX size would be about right - something that will fit comfortably under the TV, but doesn't need to be too small. I'd like to stick in a pretty big hard drive (> 1 TB) and probably 4GB RAM at least. Graphics wise, I've had issues getting the official Nvidia binary drivers in the repositories working with Debian, but given it's intended use that's probably not reason enough to switch to ATI (binaries direct from Nvidia do work, albeit need manually updating every so often). I'd like it to support 802.11g wi-fi and preferably bluetooth internally (might require the use of a combo wifi/bluetooth internal card), and as many USB connectors on the front as I can get away with (4, 6?). Support for media cards etc. would be a nice bonus too. I've done some reading around but most hardware reviews don't generally cover linux compatibility, so just wondered whether anyone might have recommendations either for suitable PCs or suppliers I could be investigating. Cheers, Peter.

1 0

Samba share permissions
by Maz Walker 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

I meant to send this to the list but sent it to mark by mistake, sorry! Been lurking for a while so I guess this is hello! > Is there a better way for me to be connecting to the Linux-based server so > that I can access the same files that the Windows users are using through a > mounted share? Yes, the way we do it at work is like this [sharename] force group sambafiles force user sambafiles path = /where/it/is create mask = 0660 directory mask = 0770 writable = yes write list = @users You need to create a user and group called sambafiles that must not be used for anything else, you can control read and write to this share by using groups, all the files will be owned sambafiles:sambafiles which means all users in the allowed groups can read and write. maz

2 2

server startup
by Peter Alcibiades 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

Thanks to Mick for offline help. Meanwhile, can I ask for help on something which is so simple no-one seems to write about it? I have installed minimal debian, and then added the requisite stuff for nfs and cherokee and SSH. I'm fine with configuring both of them through the command line, and then in the cherokee case login in and using a web browser. Vi or emacs it will never be, but nano is fine. The command line in general is fine. Its just I never set up a server before. The thing I do not know how to do, is have the installation start up with nfs and cherokee at power-on. And I don't understand what the relationship is between the server function and user accounts. So, when I did the minimal install of Debian, I did one user and set up the root password, and also set up a separate home partition without knowing if this is right or wrong. Was that right? The result is two partitions, one about 10G for / and the other with the rest. Presumably the nfs area will be in the rest. But how do I tell it that? When the server starts, I think this is done by putting entries in init.d, yes? When it starts, does it start with a user login? Or is it running with no users logged in? It will be without screen or keyboard, so I am assuming I do SSH to the IP address. And then login as root? Or as the user? Oh dear, this is so basic. Once its done, it will be fine. I can write little scripts and use awk and manage the system from the command line with no problems, so once I know what to do it will be OK, but at the moment am rather peering into the mist. Peter

2 1

X authentication issue/question
by Chris G 10 Mar '10

10 Mar '10

I have a headless 'server' system which runs Ubuntu Server. Nearly all of the time I do maintenance, updates, etc. on the command line so it's just a matter of 'ssh server ....' to do what I need to do. However, occasionally, it's nice to use a GUI application to do something. Until now these have always needed root on the server system and the following sequence works OK:- chris$ ssh -X server chris@server:~$ sudo -s [sudo] password for chris: root@server:~# <run GUI program> The trouble is that when I try to do the same for a non-root user on the server system I get:- chris$ ssh -X server chris@server:~$ sudo -s root@server:~# su www-data www-data@server$ sqlitebrowser X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication. sqlitebrowser: cannot connect to X server localhost:12.0 I have xhost allowing the following:- chris$ xhost access control enabled, only authorized clients can connect NIS:www-data@server NIS:root@server SI:localuser:chris SI:localuser:gdm SI:localuser:root So why can root GUI programs display on my screen while non-root GUI programs can't? I've tried 'xhost +' to allow anyone to connect but I still get the same error. $DISPLAY is correctly carried through the various logins, I've checked that. Also www-data is the same UID on both systems though I don't really see why that would be relevant. OK, I *could* run sqlitebrowser as root (I have tried and it works OK) but I then end up with lots of files having wrong permissions, it would be much nicer if I could run it as www-data. -- Chris Green

1 1

Any sqlite (ot other SQL database) experts here - how to copy a table?
by Chris G 10 Mar '10

10 Mar '10

It sounds like it should be easy but I can't see any reasonable way of doing it. How do you make a copy of a table in an sqlite3 database? I can copy the database, that's trivial, but I want to duplicate a *table* within a database and that seems distinctly un-trivial. Any ideas/suggestions anyone? -- Chris Green

3 4

Recommend a DNS Provider?
by Greg Thomas 09 Mar '10

09 Mar '10

For a number of years, I've been happy with my hosting provider, 1&1. I've only really got two complaints; a) Lack of IPv6 support. Hopefully that will come in time, and b) They only support 10 sub domains for each DNS domain you have with them. It's the second that looks like it may begin to bite soon. Can anyone recommend a reliable DNS provider that will allow me an order of magnitude more subdomains (*) if I move my DNS to them? TIA, Greg (*) OK, so 20 would probably be enough for the forseeable future, but then I thought we;'d never get near 10 ...

4 4

Moving mailboxes
by Chris Walker 08 Mar '10

08 Mar '10

Ive just bought myself a new machine and am wanting to move the mailboxes from this one to the new one. This one runs Mandriva 2010.1 and the new one runs the 64 bit version of it. I use both Sylpheed and Thunderbird on here so need to know how best to do it. Both machines dual boot and I've sort of managed it for Sylpheed under Windows XP and completely for Thunderbird on XP. Half the messages are missing on Sylpheed though and none of the accounts have transferred. I chose Sylpheed for XP as it started life on *nix and to date it's been much more reliable than Pegasus which is what I used before. But I want to avoid the same problem under Linux that I've just encountered under XP -> 7. Any help appreciated.

5 5

[ALUG Announce] Norwich Thursday Pub Meet, March 11th (this Thursday)
by Jonathan McDowell 08 Mar '10

08 Mar '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 ----- This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 11th March 2010 at The Coach and Horses: 82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ There will be people there from 8pm (possibly earlier). If you are unsure you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or via IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. J. - who plans to make an appearance this month. -- Most people are descended from apes. Redheads are descended from cats. ----- 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

Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley Park: 19-20 June 2010
by samwise 08 Mar '10

08 Mar '10

Hi, I don't know if this floats anyone else's boat but just an FYI - there's an event coming up in June at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. More info here: http://www.tnmoc.org/36/section.aspx/131 First confirmed speaker is Sophie (nee Roger) Wilson, co-designer of the BBC micro and developer of the RISC/ARM processor. I heard Prof. Steven Furber give a good talk last year about the development of the RISC processor so I'm hoping this should be as entertaining. I reckon this one looks quite interesting and more all-round than the usual gaming-type events I've been to so if anyone was considering a trip to Bletchley Park this year (a good place to visit, at any time), it might be worth coinciding it with this event. If you can't get that far but have an interest in old computers, the Centre for Computing History is based in Suffolk and at some point this year, I have intentions of arranging a gathering off-list. If anyone wants in on that, drop me a mail. Peter. Full Disclosure: I know at least one of the guys who's involved on the periphery with the organising of this event, but he's involved more with organising other exhibits like the working Acorn setups e.g. there should be a BBC Domesday Project running; that sort of thing.

1 0