- main - earth.li

YDL newbie
by phil 05 Jul '04

05 Jul '04

Just saying hello. I'm mainly an OSX user, but I've managed to get one of an old world powermac 9600 running with Yellowdog on it. 'Twas an experience, what with the Anaconda happily installing onto a second hard drive attached to a PCI scsi card - but not booting from it, until it was attached to the second SCSI bus on the motherboard. And the video card doesn't seem to be supported. And neither is the processor upgrade card. Little steps... I'm also attempting to build a mail server at work (my first experience of intel iron - damn those things run hot) using SuSe 8.2. And failing so far.

1 0

Two Questions
by John Seago 05 Jul '04

05 Jul '04

1. Was the EASF gathering a useful/informative/interesting experience, I was tempted, however having gone out early with Alison to my daughters house I got back at lunch time to read my email with a visit already planned for the afternoon. 2. Partitions, I have used, up to now, a boot, root, usr, var, home and archive partitions, (the latter mounted with both the main and the spare/extra installations. I am now considering rearranging my hard disks and having used a partition consisting of only /root and seen no disadvantage, (other than fsck takes longer), can see no real reason for the multi partition installation. Would the Group like to persuade me otherwise? Or at least discuss this perennial favourite -- John Seago Linux User #219566 (http://counter.li.org)

3 2

Re: [ALUG] BT Voyager 2000 Wireless ADSL
by Tim Green 05 Jul '04

05 Jul '04

On Sat, Jul 03, 2004 at 01:04:52PM +0100, Nick Daniels wrote: > Has anybody had any success in configuring a BT Voyager 2000 Wireless > ADSL 113.16 using Suse 9.0 or 9.1 How little success are you having? My Netgear access point uses a web interface, but the country / frequency selection only worked in IE. The rest of the interface was fine in Mozilla. Hope we can help :-) Tim.

1 0

BT Voyager 2000 Wireless ADSL
by Nick Daniels 05 Jul '04

05 Jul '04

Hi Has anybody had any success in configuring a BT Voyager 2000 Wireless ADSL 113.16 using Suse 9.0 or 9.1 Regards Nick Daniels

1 0

ALUG and the Empty Lands
by John Seago 05 Jul '04

05 Jul '04

ALUG seems, from the map published in 'Linux Format', to be bounded by Peterborough, Northants, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire (East), North London, and Southend-on-Sea LUG's, Cambridge LUG perhaps should be regarded as an Enclave within, but not part of ALUG. This leaves a huge chunk between the main activity centres of Norwich, North Suffolk and West Suffolk, (Syleham and Elmswell), and the occasional meetings in Ely and Kings Lynn, a seemingly 'Empty Land' devoid of LUG's or support for those who may have an interest in GNU/Linux. I seem to remember that there was a member in Ipswich trying top promote meetings/activities, but that still would seem to leave the areas around Colchester and Chelmsford without the benefit of our, or indeed their own LUG. Perhaps with the reawakened interest in activities at LUG meetings, we should also be looking to offer support to the Southern, 'unlugged' area of the East of England. (East Anglia being, if I recall correctly, comprised of Norfolk, Suffolk and parts of, or most of, Cambridgeshire). 'Linux Format' in the July issue sought to encourage more use of their LUG page/s, perhaps there is an opportunity here to 'evangelise' in Essex. there being no formal structure to ALUG, I am prepared to try my hand at promoting some activity in that area, however I do not travel far or well, so before I commit myself to an essay into print I would like to know if there are members on the Southern fringe willing to act as 'missionaries' to Essex, either to expand ALUG or to set up ELUG. -- John Seago Linux User #219566 (http://counter.li.org)

3 2

Re: [ALUG] Software patents
by Tim Green 04 Jul '04

04 Jul '04

On Fri, Jul 02, 2004 at 03:45:24PM +0100, Nick Daniels wrote: > I thought somebody maybe interested in this:- > "On May 18th, by a thin majority, the European Council of Ministers voted in > favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software > patents out of Europe. [snip] > http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/02/1318220.shtml?tid=155&tid=185&tid=99 Can anyone explain this? There are too many "outs". The tone of the article suggests this event is a good thing if you do not like software parents. Tim.

2 1

RE: [ALUG] dpkg-dist error on installing postgresql
by Jenny Hopkins 04 Jul '04

04 Jul '04

Keith wrote: > Sounds like apt thinks that postgresql is already installed > at the latest release. You could try; > > 1) doing and uninstall followed by an installl (but I'm a bit > wary of that as uninstall can also clobber other packes you don't want > uninstalled) > > 2) try reconfiguring the package with dpkg --configure > [package name] - check the syntax of that via the man page > > 3) I think there's an apt-get option that will force a > re-install of an existing package, again check the apt-get man page. > > Keith > ____________ > Yes, the full story is that I had postgresql v7.2 installed, and when I upgraded to testing from stable postgresql attempted to upgrade to v7.4. Halfway through the upgrade it failed becuase it couldn't upgrade the data from 7.2 to the latest format. I apt-get removed postgresql and ripped out the existing data directory. Now it keeps giving this error when i try to install, as in your option (1). I get the same error with option (2). Re. option (3) - I've just done and apt-get clean, an apt-get check and tried using the f to force option, but with the same error. Any option (4) suggestions? :-)) I shudder to think what would have happened if this was my live box and not the playpen. Thanks, Jen ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________

4 3

Re: Suse 9.1 disappointment
by Robert Frusher 03 Jul '04

03 Jul '04

OK. I understand that all components are relatively the same, but was surprised in the boot time. I did turn off the DHCP detection, but it still seemed to be taking much longer to boot. Does anyone know how big the Suse kernel is? I know the slack 10.0 one I am presently using is around 1.17MB which I reckon is pretty slim. I am thinking that the 2.6 kernel with Suse is overloaded... along with their X. For instance my Aitpek tablet worked on Suse, but I would have to recompile stuff to get it going on Slack. I tried Suse at my Brother in laws uni last year, and thought exactly the same thing... very sluggish... that was an AMD 2100 or something of that calibre. Do SUSe compile KDE for 686 or lower? optimisations... I have 256MB of memory which is fine for Slack, even with Apache,mysql,cups,alsa being run at boot, this adds about 2 secs of boot time for me... Rob

2 1

Meetings, Talks, Demonstrations and Kit
by Brett Parker 03 Jul '04

03 Jul '04

Right, here goes nothing... We've never really had a good result as far as talks/demonstrations run, there's either generally not the turnout, or the interest in the talks, or enough spare time in the world. What I'd like to see, sometime, (and this goes doubly for the lurkers on the list) is some suggestions for talks, what you want to learn about, etc. It'd be good to see more of the hundreds of subscribers to the list turn up to meetings, if only to say hello. Is the problem that the meetings are on the wrong days? or in the wrong places? I'm sure there are many of us willing to travel to other places if there's a meeting held there. Basically, I think what I'm trying to say is this: * We can't do talks without topics * We can't do talks without people interested in the talk (i.e. turning up to said talks) * ALUG is a community, we have no real "leadership", the decisions to do things are made by the members. So, maybe it's time to find out what people want out of the group? Do we want a full from scratch to desktop linux install demonstration? If so, which distribution? Certainly we have quite a few debian developers in the group, maybe we should go right through an install from the beginning to having X running, with KDE/Gnome/XFCE4? Do we want a demonstration on reuse of old kit for small servers, samba, LDAP, HTTP, FTP, etc? How about someone talking on how to give talks, maybe that'd be useful? Maybe demonstrations of what other Free operating systems can do? Do people want to know about specific topics, like 3d, DVB, graphics, DTP, Office applications? Without a starting point we'll never get any talks written. Do we actually want talks, or a quick guide on the website for how things work? should we be using the ALUG wiki more? should there be more technical documentation/recommendations available from the site? Maybe we should start with a set of subjects, perhaps as part of the ALUG wiki, and go from there? Thoughts, suggestions, and anything else to the list. :) Thanks, -- Brett Parker

6 7

Software patents
by Nick Daniels 03 Jul '04

03 Jul '04

I thought somebody maybe interested in this:- "On May 18th, by a thin majority, the European Council of Ministers voted in favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents out of Europe. According to an FFII press release, the Dutch Parliament yesterday voted to change its Minister's vote, which was in favor, to an abstension. This is an unprecidented move and a great coup for those fighting against software patents, never before has a country reversed a vote in this manner. While this is not sufficient to reverse the decision of the Council of Ministers, it does pave the way for other countries, many of which were pressured into an affirmative vote, to do the same. Now is the time for citizens of the EU to put pressure on their national governments to follow the Dutch lead. " http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/02/1318220.shtml?tid=155&tid=185&tid=99 Regards Nick Daniels

1 0