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A KDE 4 mystery
by Barry Samuels 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

I have just upgraded my laptop running Debian Testing/Squeeze. This caused KDE 3.5 to be replaced with KDE 4. I have set up 6 workspaces under KDE 4 and if I log out or shutdown and reboot then go back into KDE there is only one workspace shown. If I do the same again I go back to 6 workspaces - ad infinitum. Why should the number of workspaces alternate like that? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Handheld technological frontiers
by Richard Bensley 19 Jun '09

19 Jun '09

Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone! Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone! Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone! Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone! Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone!

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Program to tail and highlight
by Jon Dye 18 Jun '09

18 Jun '09

Hi all, I'm currently tailing some log files so I can watch what's going on with a particular process. What I'd really like to do is to highlight particular matches in the file, preferably with different colours. Does anyone know of any command line applications that could do something like this? Thanks, JD

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DNS
by Mark Rogers 16 Jun '09

16 Jun '09

I've always shied away from running DNS for "real" customers, as it's such a critical part of the infrastructure and is easily managed by the domain registrar (usually 123-Reg). However, after a second DNS outage in 2 yrs at 123-Reg (which should be near impossible, as DNS is the one thing it is easy to make redundant) I've reached the point (again!) of considering running my own. I've always found configuring Bind to be, er, a bit of a bind, so are there any simpler options out there or should I just bite the bullet and install bind? What is the typical system overhead of running DNS - should I add it to my web/mail servers or should it be separate? It makes sense to use our (separate) web and mail servers, if only because if both of those are down then it doesn't really matter than DNS is down too! Requirements are to be able to handle domains and subdomains (ideally multi-level subdomains although we don't have that at the moment so I won't miss it), and wildcards, with A,CNAME and MX records. So pretty basic stuff. -- 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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Re: [ALUG] Gentoo kernel installation hangs while removing something under /var
by Jim Rippon 15 Jun '09

15 Jun '09

----- "Dan Hatton" <vi5u0-alug(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > > what size was the partition you had mounted? > > IIRC, 12GB, so not _that_ small. > That sounds like plenty - there may indeed be something else wrong. Were you using the stages from the CD or downloading them, and had you chrooted when you installed the kernel? > > I'm tempted to make /var/tmp/portage a symlink to something in the > root filesystem, then. Is there any reason that would be enormously > stupid? > I have never tried - if you haven't come across it already, gentoo-wiki.com is an excellent resource for particular system setups and packages - although I don't know whether this case would be on there. There is an article I came across with a quick search for using tmpfs (swapping RAM disk) for portage here http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Speeding_up_emerge_with_tmpfs It may be easier to configure portage to use a different location to extract/build packages - see man make.conf for details of how you can redirect this, or have a look through the portage section of the online docs http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=3 Jim

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 15 Jun '09

15 Jun '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 ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back tonight (Monday 15th June) at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Sorry for the late reminder - I've been camping all weekend with no access to internet. Topics for discussion is wide open - nothing major planned this month. We can potentially discuss eBooks and see an in-development Android title tho. Remember to call or email me, if you're arriving later and want to ensure I don't wander off, which I have a tendency to do if the turn-out hits rock-bottom ... Hope to see you there, Peter. ----- 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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Linux Journal cut-price subscription offer
by MJ Ray 15 Jun '09

15 Jun '09

Message-ID: <eba6d2300906120329s2fd9be4ga5abe51e865ff5f9(a)mail.gmail.com> From: Alan Pope <alan(a)popey.com> ----- Forwarded message from noreply(a)linuxjournal.com ----- Subject: Exclusive savings for our International readers Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:52:40 -0700 (PDT) Are you tired of the rising costs of just about everything? So are we! For a limited time all international subscriptions to the print edition of Linux Journal will be reduced to the low price of $49.50 for 1 year (a savings of over 30% off the regular price) AND upgraded to include a free digital subscription. As a special bonus you will also receive Linux Journal's System Administration Special Issue free of charge. Act now, https://secure.linuxjournal.com/subs/rb/tn26462?promo=M96INTL Hope that helps, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ (Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237

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Re: [ALUG] Gentoo kernel installation hangs while removing something under /var
by Jim Rippon 12 Jun '09

12 Jun '09

Dan, Sounds like your var partition had filled up perhaps - what size was the partition you had mounted? Don't know your experience with Gentoo, but it extracts package sources under /var/tmp/portage/$(package_name) and compiles them therein so you need to have a fair amount of space in /var in order to extract/build larger packages (openoffice, firefox, kernel etc). Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Hatton" <vi5u0-alug(a)yahoo.co.uk> To: "Anglia Linux Users' Group" <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Sent: Friday, 12 June, 2009 13:04:47 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: [ALUG] Gentoo kernel installation hangs while removing something under /var Dear All, Any idea what might be going on in the following, please? I'm installing Gentoo from the latest (20090606, IIRC) installation CD, on a new machine. I followed the handbook as far as attempting to install a kernel with emerge tuxonice-sources (I also tried the more standard emerge gentoo-sources, with the same symptoms). The emerge process (or rather, a process started by it) hangs just after applying patches to the kernel. top reveals that almost all the CPU is being taken up by an attempt to rm something under $(chroot)/var. the exact pathname of the "something" scrolled off-screen before I could catch it, but it looked like it was probably a directory full of patches. When I killed the rm process, emerge carried on nicely, and put a kernel source tree where I'd expect it, in $(chroot)/usr/src. That kernel configured OK, and at least started to compile OK before I had to leave it to go do my day job. So what's the problem, apart from that it's kind of inelegant for an install process to hang and need special measures by the user? If this sort of thing happens on other packages too, the stuff that should have been rm'd and hasn't will pretty quickly fill the small partition I've mounted as $(chroot)/var. Possible explanations welcome. -- Thanks, Dan _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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Gentoo kernel installation hangs while removing something under /var
by Dan Hatton 12 Jun '09

12 Jun '09

Dear All, Any idea what might be going on in the following, please? I'm installing Gentoo from the latest (20090606, IIRC) installation CD, on a new machine. I followed the handbook as far as attempting to install a kernel with emerge tuxonice-sources (I also tried the more standard emerge gentoo-sources, with the same symptoms). The emerge process (or rather, a process started by it) hangs just after applying patches to the kernel. top reveals that almost all the CPU is being taken up by an attempt to rm something under $(chroot)/var. the exact pathname of the "something" scrolled off-screen before I could catch it, but it looked like it was probably a directory full of patches. When I killed the rm process, emerge carried on nicely, and put a kernel source tree where I'd expect it, in $(chroot)/usr/src. That kernel configured OK, and at least started to compile OK before I had to leave it to go do my day job. So what's the problem, apart from that it's kind of inelegant for an install process to hang and need special measures by the user? If this sort of thing happens on other packages too, the stuff that should have been rm'd and hasn't will pretty quickly fill the small partition I've mounted as $(chroot)/var. Possible explanations welcome. -- Thanks, Dan

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Long UTF-8 message in Subject!!!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 12 Jun '09

12 Jun '09

Greetings, Folks! This morning I received a message from the local Police via the Cambs "ECops" mailing list (which I subscribe to -- it's a sort of community bulletin board for local policing matters). The message itself was in effect empty -- just the statutory "footers" that appear in every such message. The subject-line (as displayed on my mailer) just said: =?UTF-8?B?RS1Db3BzIC0gVGl0bGUgLSBBY3Qgbm93IGFuZCBhdm9pZCBhICdjYX But then I opened up the full headers. Lo and behold, there was a massive Subject: therein! It would seem that the sender had typed the entire message into the subject-line! However, not only does it claim to be UTF-8, but is also somehow encoded. I can't make it out. So your puzzle for the weekend is to find out what it says! It's unsuitable (lines too long, and some already broken anyway) to paste into the body of this message, so I'm attacheing it as a plain-text file (but exactly as it came up on my screen) subject.txt Any takers? Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 12-Jun-09 Time: 09:57:13 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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