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Putting a SATA drive in standby
by Barry Samuels 12 Jul '09

12 Jul '09

I have, in the last few days, changed my 2 x 250 GB IDE drives for 2 x 1 TB SATA drives. One drive is used once a day to mirror the other. Previously I used hdparm to spin down the mirror drive after a short period of inactivity and I've tried to do the same with one of the new drives but I suspect it isn't working. If I issue the command 'sg_start --stop /dev/sdb' I hear a click from the computer as if the drive is being switched off but can't detect any difference in noise. That could be because the drive is ultra quiet but if I then try to mount a partition on the drive it mounts instantly. With the previous drives if I did that there would be a significant pause whilst the drive was spinning up to running speed. Does the fact that there is no pause of any sort when mounting the drive mean that it hasn't stopped? I've also tried 'sdparm --command=stop /dev/sdb' with the same results. If I issue the command sdparm --command=ready /dev/sdb then it comes back with 'ready'. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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How things have changed
by Steve Fosdick 10 Jul '09

10 Jul '09

I've just bought a couple of new bits of hardware and was very pleasantly surprised how things have changed for the better. I got a wireless trackerball and a UPS both with USB connections. I plugged the trackerball receiver in, pressed the connect button and it started working. That wasn't a great surprise but obviously nice. I plugged the UPS in and, before I had a chance to check that it had been detected and then look for software for it an icon appeared telling me the UPS was fully charged and also reporting on the batteries in the wireless trackerball. For simplicity this beats having to install software from an accompanying CD in order to get the same features. It seems when manufacturers adopt standard protocols or are more open about the protocols and interfaces they do use the pace of development increases dramatically. Steve.

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Deleting from a Google Groups archive
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 09 Jul '09

09 Jul '09

Hi FOlks, If anyone out there is running a Google Groups mailing list, I'd be grateful for advice about the following question, which I can't seem to find the answer to myself! I have just set up a Google Group for use as a mailing list by a small group of volunteers working on a local-history project. I have not gone "live" with it yet All seems to be working, in my tests. However, this means that my test messages have gone into the archive. I would like to delete these before going "live". But I have not managed to locate any means of doing this, despite being the owner and manager! Any advice? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Jul-09 Time: 09:57:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Linux-based information screens
by Mark Rogers 09 Jul '09

09 Jul '09

This is one of those things that Google would probably give me the answer if I could think of the right question. I want to create an information screen, similar to the kind of things you see in railway stations etc, maybe showing a live TV feed in one area, some headlines coming from an RSS feed, a slideshow of images in another area, etc. Ideally I'd like something that runs from live-CD, with configuration on a USB stick, so that restarting the PC just restarts the system without risking any corruption. Any suggestions, whether to what I should use or at least what I should search for? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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using scponly shell
by samwise 06 Jul '09

06 Jul '09

Hi, Hopefully, not too off-topic but I'm having trouble setting up a user account on a FreeBSD server (an OS I'm not greatly comfortably with yet), to use the scponly [http://www.sublimation.org/scponly/wiki/] shell. I basically want to allow the account SFTP access, but not have an interactive login shell - so scponly looks like what I'm after. I've set the user's login shell to be /usr/ports/shells/scponly and also added the shell to /etc/shells. When I try to SFTP into the server with the user, though, I'm getting the "Received message too long 1416128883" error. Googling hasn't really helped much. Anyone got any suggestions? TIA, Peter.

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 9th July 2009
by David Reynolds 06 Jul '09

06 Jul '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Dear ALUG, The monthly second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 9th July 2009 at The Reindeer (10 Dereham Road, Norwich, NR2 4AY; tel. 01603 762223). It's very near the junction of Dereham Road and the Norwich inner ring road (Grapes Hill) and serves a selection of real ales, nice pub food (if you fancy going early to eat) and coffee. There are generally people there from 20:00 onwards and we tend to sit to the left of the main entrance. We look forward to seeing you there. Cheers, David -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk ----- 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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HTML code for YoTRube sequence
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 04 Jul '09

04 Jul '09

Hi Folks, I am no expert whatever on HTML (at best I can do the basic basics), so if there's a solution to the following query please spell it out! I'm trying to concoct a web-page which would play, in sequence and without user intervention, a series of movies from YouTube. As an example to work on, take the following three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8_-McoAriI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g247CEZ9p70 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJQM5xBaRXI The idea is to give a URL where there is a top-level page, in which there is a link such that, if the user clicks on it, the above are automatically played in sequence and, when they are completed, it returns to the top level. I don't know if this is even possible without some embedding of durations, since once a YouTube link is opened there is (as far as I can tell) no indication of completion, so it stays there until the user does something else. With durations, it may be possible for the HTML to step to the next YouTube URL after that time has elapsed (though I've no idea how to program that). Any suggestions very gratefully received! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 04-Jul-09 Time: 23:11:53 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] xsession-errors again...help
by Peter Alcibiades 04 Jul '09

04 Jul '09

OK, now mono is gone. Thanks for that suggestion. Also we are no longer endlessly looking for pidgin and beagle bits. Restarted, and those particular errors seem to have gone, but are now succeeded by the following...! I googled them, and some of them seem to be associated with kmail. Then I have some nphelix errors, that is another thing that you have to go to endless lengths to kill but it won't stay dead. Is it normal to have xsession errors? Or if your system is set up right, should there basically be none? Peter ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) Removing DOMNodeRemoved listener ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x3c00003 (Evince Doc) Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed. ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) ** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1) ** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2) kbuildsycoca running... Launched ok, pid = 3954 ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:996:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave QLayout::addChildLayout: layout already has a parent WeaverThreadLogger: thread (ID: 1) suspended.

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Re: [ALUG] xsession-errors again...help
by Peter Alcibiades 03 Jul '09

03 Jul '09

Wayne, yes, I do turn out to have gnome do. Or had, since now it is completely removed. So I'll try this for a couple days. Thanks, this is the easiest first step. Then if this doesn't work, or doesn't fully work, I will follow up with Phil's suggestions first on removing mono, and then on monitoring file access, which should get to the bottom of it. Many thanks for that too. I do have mono installed, so that could be the next thing to go... Peter

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xsession-errors again...help
by Peter Alcibiades 03 Jul '09

03 Jul '09

OK, this time I decided to have at it root and branch, so did locate to find every pidgin or beagle file there was. I had already removed pidgin using synaptic, but there were a few left over documentation files and some libraries. Then did rm on the lot of them. It makes no difference! I am still getting the errors. Are we at a point where the only thing that will work is a clean reinstall? Surely this cannot be? Is there any way to find out what it is that is looking for the pidgin files? As in Cannot index Thunderbird contacts because a System.ArgumentNullException was thrown: Argument cannot be null. Parameter name: path Could not read Pidgin buddy list file: Could not find a part of the path "/home/peter/.purple/blist.xml". Well, it is not surprising it cannot find part of the path, because I have deleted the whole folder. But what is it that is looking for it if there is neither pidgin nor beagle installed? Thunderbird is equally mysterious. Maybe the thing to do is get rid of Iceweasel? Could it be that? I have also gone through and eliminated beagle in the same way. Does not seem to make any difference. Peter

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