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Syleham Kit Meeting
by James Freer 28 Sep '07

28 Sep '07

Hi Folks If you recall our chat on IRC a while back about a Kit Meeting. The suggestion was that i should post some ideas. I've managed to get Ubunutu on my spare machine with no problems - gulp. I've got a Compaq P3 500mb and it seems to run ver 6.10 fine so far. Someone was going to throw it out so i gave it a 'good home'. I was wondering if folk would be interested in a meeting shortly... or series of meets. I've now got loads of questions on linux and on computing in general. While it's fine to chat on IRC i thought it would be nice to get folk together. Topics for a meeting from my point of view: * installing software and using wine [i've Ubuntu Hacks and Ubuntu Linux Bible by Von Hacks but it's still hard going] * pros/cons of different distros [I've chosen Ubuntu as there seemed to be more available for it but would like to see other distros that folk use] * compiling programs from source * computer architecture [modern m'boards for Linux... what's not needed for Linux i.e SATA etc] * using linux for websites to enhance security * internet connection via power sockets [can't remeber what these are called!] As a result of this post and responses we can get a meeting organised covering all needs and interests! james

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road
by samwise 28 Sep '07

28 Sep '07

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 again next week (Monday 17th September) at 20:00: The Milestone Beer House 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 252425 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA The Milestone pub is in the centre of Ipswich, near the now-defunct Odeon cinema and not far from The Regent Theatre. There is more information on the venue, including car parking info, on the ALUG wiki: http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard to find the pack, look for those huddled around a laptop! Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. This month's meeting includes a comprehensive overview of virtual machines - what they are, what they aren't and what are the options for available for use on a typical desktop system. 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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Fedora 7, not 100% stable, video drivers?
by Chris G 28 Sep '07

28 Sep '07

Well I'm getting on quite well with my Fedora 7 system. I now have Vmware Workstation 6.01 installed on it. There were problems with Vmware 6 on Fedora 7 but these seem to have been resolved by 6.01. As this is one of the reasons I moved to Fedora from Slackware (simple, no hassle, installation of Vmware) this is a big plus for me. It's also been very easy to get apache up and running, and printers, as regards ease of use, instllation, etc. Fedora 7 has been excellent. However!!! .... It's not 100% stable. I originally thought the problem was with the Gnome desktop so I have reverted to my FVWM window manager and, although that seems to have reduced the frequency of crashes it died in much the same way just now using FVWM. The display simply freezes, no diagnostics, no drama, nothing. Keyboard no longer works, cursor is frozen, can't switch to alternate console or anything. The kernel is still running because I can ping the system from my garage system but no services are running, i.e. I can't ssh into the system to shut it down or anything. The only way out is to hit the reset button. Subjectively it feels like the crash/hang occurs when there's a lot of graphic activity, for example the last crash occurred just as CUPS redrew the whole browser window after installing a printer. Other crashes also seem to be at graphically intensive times and the Gnome desktop does work the graphics harder than fvwm so that might explain why it dies more often using Gnome. There's absolutely nothing in /var/log/messages, there isn't a syslog. The video hardware is Nvidia and Fedora 7 isn't using the same Nvidia drivers that Slackware did. With Slackware I had to compile/install the Nvidia driver myself (downloaded from Nvidia) but the Fedora installation recognised the card and has drivers, the xorg.conf file says:- Section "Device" Identifier "Videocard0" Driver "nv" EndSection Does anyone know if there are any stability problems with the "nv" driver? Would I be better off getting the latest Nvidia supplied one? I'll do some Google searching on this front but any comments would be welcome. -- Chris Green

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pc for sale
by Richard Bensley 28 Sep '07

28 Sep '07

PC for sale: -Core2Duo E6000 4MB -2GB RAM (2x Corsair Twin XMS Pro) -Geforce 7950GT 512MB -2 x 200GB SATAII Maxtor -Samsung DVD-RW+/- SATA -Asus P5B Deluxe Motherboard -Creative Audigy 2 PCI sound card -Hauppage PVR 150 MCE -All inside a MASSIVE Chieftec towercase, plenty of room for expansion, ALL 7 fan bays filled with quiet silverstone fans. (http://www.chieftec.com/ba-02b-b-b.html) -580w Taga modular PSU She's lean, she's mean, previously used for Video and 3D, but the internal drives never saw much use other than OS and software. (NOTE: no monitor, mouse, or keyboard) £450 ono excluding delivery, I am 20 miles outside of Norwich down the A146 in Loddon if you want to pick it up. work phone: 01502 716622 +2371 mobile: 07884112398 Cheers Richard

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Truncating text files at non-ascii
by Mark Rogers 27 Sep '07

27 Sep '07

Does anyone have a suggestion for a quick way to process several hundred files, truncating them where ascii text ends and binary data begins? I'm in the process of recovering data from a corrupt drive, and I've recovered loads of would-be Thunderbird mailboxes (ie mbox files). However, since there is no good way to determine the end of an mbox file from its raw data (that I know of anyway!) what I have is loads of 10M files which start "From - " and end 10MB afterwards. So a 10k mailbox is 10k text and 990k rubbish that was next on the drive, which typically is binary data. So I need to scan the files, find where the ascii stops and the binary begins, and truncate them at that point. (Ideally it will be clever enough to allow a few binary chars through in case of any binary chars in the emails, for example unencoded pound signs etc. But something far more basic would be a good start!) I'm guessing that awk ought to be able to do it, something along the lines of reading line by line, and if the line has more than (say) 5% non-ascii data in it then stop, otherwise print that line and continue. I'm just not sure how to go from pseudo-code to real code (nor whether that was the best place to start anyway). Mark Rogers

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Another bash question - aliases in shell scripts
by Chris G 27 Sep '07

27 Sep '07

How do you get aliases to work in bash shell scripts? At the moment the only way I can get an alias that I have defined in my .bashrc file to work in a script is to explicitly source .bashrc in the shell script. Is this the only way it can be done? The korn shell can do 'alias -x fred=bert' which means that fred will work as an alias for bert in scripts called from a command line ksh where the alias is in effect. Is there no way that bash can export aliases so they work in scripts? A quick Google search suggests that bash really can't export its aliases, which is a pity. Does anyone know otherwise? -- Chris Green

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How to make bash 'forget' a path to an executable
by Chris G 27 Sep '07

27 Sep '07

If you move/change a shell script how to make bash forget about the old location? E.g. I had a wrapper for ctags in /home/chris/bin which was called ctags. I discovered that I only needed the wrapper for Solaris and not for Linux so I moved my ctags from /home/chris/bin to /home/chris/bin/solaris which isn't on my path when I'm on a Linux system. After moving it when I try running 'ctags' I get the error:- bash: /home/chris/bin/ctags: No such file or directory i.e. bash has remembered the path to ctags to save time, how do I tell it to start afresh? (There is a ctags on the PATH at /usr/bin/ctags) In C-shell it's rehash but (not surprisingly) that doesn't work in bash. -- Chris Green

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The fonts dialogue in Firefox, what does that line mean?
by Chris G 27 Sep '07

27 Sep '07

When you go to the font selection dialogue in Firefox:- Edit - Preferences - Content - Fonts & Colours/Advanced There's a horizontal line in the list of fonts you get to select when you click on the Serif, Sans-serif or Monospace selection bar. Does anyone know what this horizontal line indicates? I originally thought the ones below the line might be the monospace fonts but that's obviously not right on inspection. Is it possibly that the ones below the line are bit-map fonts? It would actually make selecting a font much easier if there was some sort of indication against each font to tell you whether it's a monospace or proportional font. Some are obvious but not all. Also, a final question, there are fonts one can select called 'monospace', 'serif' and 'sans-serif'. Presumably if you use these then what you get is the system default which is defined somewhere in the build/distribution, there aren't actual font files with these names. Have I got this right? -- Chris Green

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Kubuntu probs
by elc＠freeola.net 26 Sep '07

26 Sep '07

I am using Kubuntu 7.04 - Feisty fawn and a broadband connection. When I have booted up, the OS is NOT automatically online via broadband. I need to go to system settings / network settings and enter administrative mode. I then need to disable eth1 and thus leave me with eth0, - which gives me broadband access. However, I cannot apply this setting – Apply – is greyed out. Thus when I reboot I need to repeat this sequence. How can I apply this setting permanently please. elc

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CPU speed control
by Simon Jude 25 Sep '07

25 Sep '07

Hi, I've got a Sony VAIO that I like to run Ubuntu on. When I run it off the mains the CPU stays pegged at 1.995GHz and the CPU fan sounds like a hoover. When running on the battery the CPU stays at a nice 786MHz (or whatever) and the fan is nice and quiet. Is there a way to switch the CPU speed to the lower speed when it is running on mains to protect my hearing?! I've tried cpufreq-set etc without luck, although I may not have used them properly! Any tips would be appreciated! Thanks Simon

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