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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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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Are there any good iptable routing configuration utilities out there?
by Chris G 30 Oct '09

30 Oct '09

I've been Googling around for a while and can't find any good utilities (command line or GUI, don't mind too much) for configuring iptables routing. Part of the trouble is that 'iptables configuration' mostly means firewall set up and I don't want/need to do that as it's in my ADSL router. What I want is to configure routing tables in a Linux 'server' box on my network. It *may* be that some of the firewall utilities will do what I want but it's difficult to penetrate the mass of information about firewall set up. I think Smoothwall can probably do what I want but is possibly overkill. Quagga maybe too but it is definitely overkill, I don't have complex requirements, just slightly non-standard ones. There are sites like http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html which tell you how to do some of what I want but they're very old and I wonder if they're still the right way to do things. They're mostly four or five years old and the kernel and routing have probably moved on somewhat since then. They don't really handle failover either. -- Chris Green

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Youtube stops buffering
by Barry Samuels 30 Oct '09

30 Oct '09

Debian Testing with kernel 2.6.26 Flah version 10.0.32.18 My wife uses Iceweasel to access youtube and she discovered that recently when she tries to play something it starts to buffer the stream but after a very short while the buffering stops. When the play indicator reaches the end of the buffer mark it stops and won't play any more. She also uses BBC iPlayer but that doesn't give any problems. Can anyone nudge me in the right direction in trying to diagnose this? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Routing/port forwarding question
by Chris G 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

If I set up a 'router' box which does connection sharing with something like the following in its routing:- ip route add default scop global \ nexthop via 192.168.0.2 dev eth0 weight1 \ nexthop via 192.168.0.3 dev eth0 weight1 (two ADSL modems/routers on 192.168.0/24 with approximately equal speed) Then how do I deal with SSL, incoming SMTP and similar which require that, once started, the 'session' continues to use the same interface? Is there a routing syntax that allows one to specify a port number which would override the above for specific port numbers? -- Chris Green

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USB error messages in syslog - what do they mean?
by Chris G 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

I have just tried connecting my 2Wire 2700HGV router to my ubuntu 9.04 linux system using USB. This produces the following in syslog:- Oct 26 23:12:34 chris kernel: [230365.857016] usb 6-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3 Oct 26 23:12:34 chris kernel: [230366.039734] usb 6-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.219736] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.468009] rndis_host 6-2:1.0: RNDIS_MSG_QUERY(0x00010202) failed, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.708062] rndis_host 6-2:1.0: RNDIS_MSG_QUERY(0x01010101) failed, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.708067] rndis_host 6-2:1.0: rndis get ethaddr, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.709680] rndis_host: probe of 6-2:1.0 failed with error -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.709713] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_host Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.968010] rndis_wlan 6-2:1.0: RNDIS init failed, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.968036] rndis_wlan: probe of 6-2:1.0 failed with error -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.968064] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_wlan Is this an error (as in a bug in the Linux code) or is it just that the USB code in Linux doesn't know how to talk to the router? -- Chris Green

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