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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 09 Sep '07

09 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 "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 13th September. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. People will be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. Topics for discussion will no doubt be as varied as ever. The Reindeer has a reasonable selection of beer as well as decent coffee (with biscuits, if you're lucky). Directions to the Reindeer can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/reindeer.html Pictures of some of the regulars, and irregulars, and, well, just some pictures of people that might or might not turn up are available from: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2007-05-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2006-02-ALUG/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for - the most recent images are from the meet a few months back. We now have an area reserved for us, so should be easier to find. As you enter through the main door you'll see a small set of steps ahead of you - the area just up those steps and to the left is where we'll be. J. -- 101 things you can't have too much of : 49 - Bandwidth. ----- 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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Simple (I hope) HTML/CSS question
by Chris G 08 Sep '07

08 Sep '07

I want to use an image as a background, OK, fairly easy I think, I put the following into my CSS style file:- body { background: white url(sky.jpg) no-repeat; } I only want the image once at the top of the page, hence the "no-repeat". However, big problem, is there any way to tell my browser to fit the image to the width of the browser page rather than the other way around? It's easy enough if I'm displaying an image using the HTML IMG operator as I can set the "width=100%" and the image is scaled to fit across the browser's window but I can't see any easy way to do this when the image is set as a background. I can sort of understand that this might not be possible but it would be really nice if it was possible by some means as I want to use the image as a backdrop for all my page headings. If I can't do it using CSS "background" how can I get two images (or an image and a heading) to be put one on top of the other? -- Chris Green

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Sage alternatives for linux
by Jenny Hopkins 04 Sep '07

04 Sep '07

Hullo there, I'm looking for an accounting system that will run with the backend and the front on linux. Something like Sage, which takes care of accounting and payroll, also customers, jobs and invoices. Sage requires windows running on the workstation, however. I've looked at gnucash but it's scary and unfriendly, with the customer and invoicing side not being what is needed. I'm after a system that can have multiple front-end users and a database backend in postgresql or mysql. Hard cash may change paws, it doesn't have to be free. I did start writing one with a web front end, - the customer and invoicing part is okay but the more I do accounts the more I realise this is a mad, stupid thing to be doing. Thanks Jenny

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Anyone have a use for DAT tapes?
by Chris G 04 Sep '07

04 Sep '07

Further to my clearout, I have about 30 DAT tapes, some still wrapped, some used (but not heavily). They're mostly DDS2 data tapes. Any use to anyone? -- Chris Green

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Various FTAGH items (or even just FTAH)
by Chris G 04 Sep '07

04 Sep '07

My clear out of my old 'electronics' room continues and I'm still finding bits of superannuated hardware. Are any of the following of any use to anyone here:- ISA bus cards Modem (definitely not a Winmodem), boxed, manual Parallel/Serial/IDE/Floppy I/O card, boxed, manual Network card (original NE2000 I think) PCI bus cards USB 2.0 Interface, boxed, manual Modem (no info with it) 24x CD drive, IDE interface All could be posted or brought along to the next meet. -- Chris Green

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FTGH: Various computer bits
by Jonathan McDowell 03 Sep '07

03 Sep '07

I'm having a clearout and as a result have a fair few random bits and pieces of computer stuff that need new homes. I thought I'd mention it here before I let Freecycle loose on the list, which is at: http://the.earth.li/~noodles/clearout.html In particular I have too many SCSI cables and too many power cables. Surely they must be of use to someone rather than me having to throw them out? J. -- No thanks, I'm already having one. This .sig brought to you by the letter E and the number 28 Product of the Republic of HuggieTag

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Any alternatives to htmlhelp.com?
by Chris G 03 Sep '07

03 Sep '07

The WDG site at htmlhelp.com appears to be down at the moment, can anyone recommend any similar sites which document the basics of HTML, CSS etc. on line? Or are the htmlhelp.com pages available from anywhere else? -- Chris Green

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/ unexpectedly remounted as read only
by Wayne Stallwood 29 Aug '07

29 Aug '07

One of our servers did a strange thing today. Suddenly at about half 11 this morning it remounted / as read only, I have seen filesystems do this on boot when fsck was unable to repair something automatically but this happened with an uptime of 80 days. Nothing useful was written to the logs (presumably because they are on the same mount point and hence also read only) Seeing as it was in a ro state anyway I ran fsck on the ext3 filesystem and it came back with a large number (100's) of errors, some of which needed manual confirmation before they could be fixed. However / being ro had made a mess of some of the processes that machine runs so I gave it a reboot and everything came back as expected and with an empty lost+found. I ran smartctl on all 4 disks of the Raid 5 array and no errors have been logged and disks look healthy. The mdadm shows all 4 disks as being in normal mode and the array as being healthy. I am going to run extended offline smart tests of the disks over the weekend when the machine is less busy, but in the meantime can somebody confirm that damaged filesystems remounting themselves as ro is normal behaviour and if so what detects and schedules this ? Also any ideas as to what (apart from faulty RAM which again I am going to have to wait until the weekend to test) might have caused such widespread corruption in the first place ?

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Re: [ALUG] Open University and software
by Bev Nicolson 29 Aug '07

29 Aug '07

It was the way OU said this on their web site that concerned me, Wayne. There is, as you suggest, always the possibility that the software will 'just work' but I felt it wise to check. Another thing. Linux friendly *external* DVD players? Any recommendations? Or can you plug and play with most? Thanks again. Bev. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Wayne Stallwood" <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> > To: ALUG <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Open University and software > Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 01:53:01 +0100 > > > On Tue, 2007-08-28 at 18:22 +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote: > > I'm hoping to do some studying with the OU but looking at their > > web site it basically says that they can't support Linux. I > > thought I'd ask whether folk on this list have had any problems > > with software incompatibility (which is for Windows but can, they > > say, be used on Macs) and Ubuntu. Thanks. > > > > Bev. > > Not supported can often just mean "not tested on" if their site works on > both Windows and Mac (and therefore presumably more than one browser) > then there is a very good chance it will work on firefox on ubuntu. > > If software resources are made available for your your course outside > the scope of the website then it may be that only Windows and Mac > binaries are made available. Then your choice is to either experiment > with Wine by following the recent thread on the main list or install > Windows in a virtual machine (the virtual machine can be operated for > free but you will need a Windows licence) and this being an option I > would strongly recommend that you attend the next iplug meet as samwise > is performing a demonstration. > > If the site just wont play in firefox on linux then a last resort may be > http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page, but that resource is > intended more for site development than actually using a browser in > anger. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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! > -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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Open University and software
by Bev Nicolson 28 Aug '07

28 Aug '07

I'm hoping to do some studying with the OU but looking at their web site it basically says that they can't support Linux. I thought I'd ask whether folk on this list have had any problems with software incompatibility (which is for Windows but can, they say, be used on Macs) and Ubuntu. Thanks. Bev. -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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