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Government wasting money on IT
by Dave Briggs 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

Read a pretty shocking article on government waste of money on IT in the Guardian this morning. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1082416,00.html Essentially, for those who can't be faffed to click the link, the government wanted to unify the Magistrates Courts across the country with one system. The tender which won was for £146 million. It has now risen to over £400 million, and the system still does not work. This is the latest cock up, following distasters with the passport office and the CSA, amongst others. The Public Accounts Committee report [ http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmpubacc/434/434… ] states that this is the biggest waste of public money yet. What do we think about this, and how could things be done properly? Would the use of open source software improve matters? Why can't they recruit willing and able software engineers and do the job in house? From what I have hear from various sources, there are a lot of good IT people out of work at the moment. Surely they couldn't do any worse?! Dave

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More zaurus fun...
by BenEBoy 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

I finally gotten round to trying to get my zaurus to connect properly with linux (i.e. without me having to manually set the IP address) and have hit a problem. Using the instructions someone here sent me a while back I set up hotplug to grep the output of 'ifconfig' for 'usb0' when module usbnet is loaded. The usb network isn't created until I hit 'sync' on the cradle, so of course when hotplug runs when I put the PDA in the cradle usb0 doesn't exist so nothing happens. Any ideas anyone (using knoppix BTW with a 2.4.21 kernel)? I'm playing with a daemon that (I assume) will poll for the existance of the USB network every so often and set it up if it finds one, but I don't really want another daemon taking up memory cheers, BenE

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Re: [ALUG] Names and topics
by Jenny Hopkins 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

>........ I sometimes wonder how many of these mail boxes are >going to /dev/null and why we see many people join the list but never post? >are they there? do they really exist? I'm here! The list is probably in reality only half the size as most people register both from work and at home..I do anyway. I don't mind if there are talks or not at meetings. But I work full time and have two young children, and weekends are usually quite precious, that's why I don't show up, rather than lack of enthusiasm or preference for a particular style of meeting. As for the name ... I vote for leaving it as Anglian Linux Users group, for the reasons stated by John about 3,657 mails ago on this subject and Kirsten only 65 ago ;-) Jenny

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whie box linux
by Vasko Tomanov 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

Do someone have some info about: http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/index.html some feedback ? Cheers Vasko

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Problem compiling from source
by Graham Trott 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

Guru question: On a couple of occasions when compiling a source package I've had errors such as that below. The common factor appears to be the "error: `__ASSERT_FUNCTION' undeclared". Have I got something set up wrong in my system? -- GT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- make all-am make[1]: Entering directory `/home/graham/Documents/dvgrab-1.2' source='avi.cc' object='avi.o' libtool=no \ depfile='.deps/avi.Po' tmpdepfile='.deps/avi.TPo' \ depmode=gcc3 /bin/sh ./depcomp \ g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I. -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -Wno-deprecated -O2 -Wall -D_REENTRANT -c -o avi.o `test -f 'avi.cc' || echo './'`avi.cc avi.cc: In member function `virtual void AVIFile::Init(int, int, int)': avi.cc:285: error: `assert' undeclared (first use this function) avi.cc:285: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in.) avi.cc: In member function `virtual int AVIFile::GetDVFrameInfo(off_t&, int&, int)': avi.cc:388: error: `__ASSERT_FUNCTION' undeclared (first use this function) avi.cc: In member function `virtual void AVI1File::Init(int, int, int)': avi.cc:951: error: `assert' undeclared (first use this function) avi.cc: In member function `virtual void AVI2File::Init(int, int, int)': avi.cc:1240: error: `assert' undeclared (first use this function) make[1]: *** [avi.o] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/graham/Documents/dvgrab-1.2' make: *** [all] Error 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Announce digest, Vol 2 #26 - 2 msgs
by announce-request＠lists.alug.org.uk 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

Send Announce mailing list submissions to announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announce-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk You can reach the person managing the list at announce-admin(a)lists.alug.org.uk When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announce digest..." --------------.--------------------------------------------.------------ alug-announce | Newsletter of the Anglian Linux User Group | Weekly(ish) --------------'--------------------------------------------'------------ ** Please send articles for this letter to announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk ** *** Please send replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk, not announce... *** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Today's Topics: 1. Web site updates, North and South edges of ALUG (MJ Ray) 2. GnuPG small vulnerability (MJ Ray) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 11:19:42 +0000 From: MJ Ray <mjr(a)dsl.pipex.com> To: announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Organization: Very poor Subject: [Alug Announce]Web site updates, North and South edges of ALUG Details of the King's Lynn and Debian-UK meetings have been added to the web site. A 2004 meetings index page has been created. The site design has changed a little, which hopefully will reduce the number of layout problems. Thanks to Stuart Hammond for suggesting some of the changes on IRC last night and helping to test them. The page at http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/ has changed to be a more useful geographic guide to our area. The side bar link list of other LUGs has been replaced with links to the new pages in /venues/ too. The front page and "join ALUG now" page have been heavily edited. North and South Edges I've not created a page for North Norfolk, because I don't have any links to put on the page, nor any clear idea of what town to link it to. Can someone from North Norfolk tell me, please? For Colchester, I don't even know whether there are still any ALUGgers there. Can you please make yourselves known to me or the main list, please? Can anyone remember how to contact the university there? For Ipswich, I've made a page, but there is no meeting planned and the last one was quite a while ago. I've put a link to the "how to make ALUG meet" page. Please can Ipswich people interested in meeting there make themselves known to the main list? Three come to mind immediately, so there should be enough people out of the 300 who will get this message... -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ --__--__-- Message: 2 Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 16:48:19 +0000 From: MJ Ray <mjr(a)dsl.pipex.com> To: announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Organization: Very poor Subject: [Alug Announce]GnuPG small vulnerability Probably it won't affect any ALUGgers, but ElGamal sign+encrypt keys in GnuPG (ones with G in the --list-keys output) have been found to be insecure. See http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-announce/2003q4/000276.html for more information. For more information about GnuPG and signed or encrypted email, ask at a meeting. --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announce mailing list Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce End of Announce Digest

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Fun with kernel 2.6.0-test9
by MJ Ray 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

After frothing lightly about the kernel-centricity, here's an email about the kernel. Please point out any errors. I started to upgrade my first machine to kernel 2.6.0-test9 at the Sunday's ALUG meeting, as some of may have seen. I didn't actually complete the upgrade there. As with all good projects, I ignored it resolutely for two days and took another look at it on Wednesday. It seems there are some things which can catch out the unwary when you upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6, but it feels a lot faster, so it's probably worth doing if you have a machine with fairly simple hardware. I hear there are still IDE bugs, so maybe you should wait for 2.6.0 proper. Nevertheless, off I went. First off, there's some changes in the device handling. Some time ago, devfs was introduced into the kernel. It offers a /dev which only contains the devices you actually have, rather than having you waste disk on a directory full of mostly unused special files. It seems that time has not been kind to devfs, as it upset kernel developers with a relative lack of maintenance, alleged design flaws and continuing its own incompatible naming scheme. devfs is still there in 2.6 at the moment, but is marked as "obsolete". Before you rush to disable it, note that part of its intended replacement, udev, is on version 0.06. I'm using a distribution which makes devfs fairly essential, so I've left it enabled for now. udev looks like a nice idea. It uses a really important new filesystem in 2.6, the sysfs. This is a virtual filesystem, like devfs and procfs, which exposes "kernel objects" as files. A "kernel object" seems to be a device or driver that is loaded into the kernel. When something is added to sysfs, the kernel calls hotplug (possibly familiar to USB device users) and udev acts on the hotplug event to create an entry in /dev. So far, not much difference. What is different about udev is that it accesses the sysfs object and calls a helper to tell it what to call the entry in /dev. That helper, called "namedev", can identify devices by their serial numbers, so even if you plug your USB printer into a different socket, it can still appear as /dev/lp0 without reconfiguring. Alternatively, it can assign a particular port to a particular device, so *that* USB socket is always your /dev/input/mouse0, even if you change the mouse plugged into it. Of course, this is controlled by text files for now. Will GUI user tools appear soon? More details in the slides and paper linked from http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1029 Secondly, ModUtils has been replaced by ModuleInitTools. Outwardly, there aren't too many changes, as you can still use commands like "modprobe", but it says that a lot of tidying up of the interface between kernel and tools has happened. modules.conf is dead, long live modprobe.conf -- it's a simpler configuration file which can usually be generated from modules.conf by the supplier tool (called "generate-modprobe.conf"). It couldn't handle the trick my scanner does to ask the kernel to rescan the SCSI bus for it on first use of /dev/scanner, but apparently that should be done by udev now. (Yes, that means I'm prodding the scanner by hand until I have switched over to udev...) An improvement which may interest some is the better ACPI support. Sleep, suspend to disk and suspend to swap are claimed to be supported, although I've not yet really tested this. The kernel can do an ACPI power off, which 2.4 never did on this machine. Also, ALSA replaces OSS/Free as the preferred sound system. Yippee! If you haven't been using the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, then you're probably going to get access to all the features of your soundcard for the first time. I had been using the OSS/Free which was installed by the distribution. I didn't even know that the sound card can do half the tricks it can. It sounds much nicer now and debian users won't have to fiddle around as much to make it compile. One final note. On the second machine I upgraded, the compile failed with the error that it couldn't find stdarg.h, which is a header that comes with GCC. It seems that the kernel Makefile uses options to GCC that the GCC manuals say not to use. A quick (and slightly dubious) edit of the Makefile to replace "-iwithprefix include" with "-I/full/path/to/GCC/header/include" made it work. I'm not sure what is different between the two machines, as they supposedly have the same distribution with the same GCC version. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

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Re[4]: [ALUG] Cheap web hosting ?
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)zetnet.co.uk> wrote: > And posted his reply to the list. Ah! I've just realised I posted a 'reply to sender' whereas I meant to post to the list. Bother! I really must try and post this to the list!!! > BTW, your [2]: is falling foul of my spamtrap, and I've tried to make an > exception of the subject line with Re:, without Re: and just the > subject, and I've tinkered with the filter five times, reprocessed the > packet five times and it's eaten it five times. Poor thing must be hungry. I've never fallen foul of a spam trap before - how exciting. What ever would it do with Re[4]. Incidentally it's my mailer that does that not me - honest. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Cheap web hosting ?
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

I have a co.uk domain name which is detagged and now due for renewal. I understand from Nominet that I have to have the domain hosted before I can renew it and that if I renew via full member of Nominet it will cost me far less than the standard Nominet charge. All I want is a holding page as I don't intend to actively use the domain at present. Can anyone in the know suggest a web hosting provider who would handle this inexpensively? Regards Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Toy
by Anthony Anson 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Snarfed from The Shed: Here, if any Penguinistas want to waste a bit of time, have a look at xplanet. 's really rather shiny. It's turned the background piccy on my screen into a picture of The Whirled, upadted every few minutes, with day and night rotating around it as it does, and the piccies are real ones, and every few hours it grabs a new piccy of what the clouds are doing and overlays it ... you can lose hours playing with it. Coo. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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