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IFTTT and FOSS alternatives
by Mark Rogers 21 Jul '15

21 Jul '15

Background: A couple of times I've had my garage freezer defrost. I'm pretty sure it's not failed, just that the door isn't properly shut, so I want to find a simple way to monitor it. I already have some basic wireless energy monitors and I figure a reduction in average usage (eg it failed) or an increase (door open) would be a good place to start. I've not done anything like this before and I'm thinking about building it around a Pi. But for the "if the energy drops below X or goes above Y for a period of Z then send me an email/text message/other alert" bit I figure I should use something standard. IFTTT came to mind (never used it, been aware of it for years). Or, if I care about my data, a FOSS alternative (Huginn and Bip.io came up from a Google search). Anyone here had any experience of anything like this to make a recommendation? This is intended to be the start of an adventure where I start playing with all sorts of potential triggers and actions so to be honest I'm not so fussed about a specific solution as I am in finding a gateway into something to play with. IoT is something I'd like to experiment with in general, but due to lack of time I really need to be able to get something useful up and running pretty easily that I can then extend when time permits. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Adobe Flash alternatives
by Bev Nicolson 18 Jul '15

18 Jul '15

And getting them working in Firefox, specifically. Given that version 18 of Flash is unlikely to be heading to to an update manager near me any time soon (or indeed anytime at all) and Firefox has restricted it, I'd be quite keen to swop. I've got gnash and lightspark installed now, but how do I get Firefox to recognise them. Bev.

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 9th July
by Viperfang 06 Jul '15

06 Jul '15

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 9th July at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- 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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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 3rd July.
by Viperfang 30 Jun '15

30 Jun '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Reliable PCIE USB3 cards
by Mark Rogers 25 Jun '15

25 Jun '15

I've bought a number of USB3 cards in the past which usually work for a while but never for long. Maybe a reboot will bring them back to life, maybe it won't! Any recommendations for a good USB3 card for Linux (Ubuntu)? It'll be mainly used for accessing external USB drives, which may be connected 24/7. Chipset recommendations are useful, but I'm learning that either the card matters as much as teh chipset or not all chipsets are what they claim to be. Ideally I want 4 external ports, but 2 would suffice most of the time. (Everything that I connect to it will be powered so minimal USB power required, although I assume I'll still need to supply additional power to the card?) Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Unable to install grub to server
by Jenny Hopkins 19 Jun '15

19 Jun '15

Hi all, I'd be grateful for some help getting my server booting again. It's running debian jessie, with software RAID and LVM, running xen (or was). Yesterday one of the disks failed, so I ordered another, and, when it arrived today, removed the dead one from the array, put the new disk in, and.....landed at the grub rescue prompt. So I booted up into a rescue disk, assembled the RAID, mounted the root on /mnt, and did a chroot. Running install-grub on the disk (/dev/sdb) gave me this error: warning: your core.img is unusually large. It won't fit in the embedding area. error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for RAID and LVM install. So I looked at the partition table. I have two partitions, /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb2. The latter is nearly 1TB, and is the root. Both are of type 'linux raid autodetect'. /dev/sdb1 started at 63, so I deleted this partition, created a new one as type linux raid autodetect, and it was automatically assigned the start of 2048. Then I ran grub install again, calling the raid and ext2 and lvm modules, but now I keep getting the error grub-install: error: unknown filesystem I'm not entirely sure what I'm actually doing here....been searching for help for hours. I found one page that suggested grub2 gets confused by a single disk in an array. Here's the current partition table: Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/sdb1 2048 996029 993982 485.4M fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdb2 * 996030 1915060454 1914064425 912.7G fd Linux raid autodetect /boot is part of the root on /dev/sdb2 rather than a separate lvm one. I'm not entirely sure how it even managed to boot before, but I only had the /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb2 in a raid array, so there must have been a subtle difference in /dev/sda that had allowed grub to install to it. Maybe grub was installed before I created the RAID array - I originally only had one disk in there? Anyway, any suggestions very welcome. The trouble with a xen server being that all my eggs are in one proverbial basket. Jenny

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Re: [ALUG] Reliable PCIE USB3 cards
by Mark Rogers 18 Jun '15

18 Jun '15

On 18 June 2015 at 15:31, Bobby Moss <bobbyjmoss(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Wouldn't it make more sense to hang fire until USB3.1 PCIe cards appear? To be honest I know nothing about USB3.1. Any idea when cards might appear? Even so I'd probably only use the release of USB3.1 as an opportunity to get a decent USB3 card cheap and wait for USB3.1 cards to come down in price (and get any bugs fixed!). In the meantime, though, I have drives I need access to now, and I'm currently having to either shuffle them between the available USB3 front ports I have or drop to USB2. So an interim solution is still worthwhile to me. I will keep an eye out for USB3.1 though. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Detecting ethernet cabling issues
by Mark Rogers 17 Jun '15

17 Jun '15

Are there any tools that would help detect/locate cabling issues? I suspect I have a dodgy connection on a length of cable that runs outside my house between my (Ubuntu) desktop and my (OpenWrt) router. There's a gigabit switch between the two although I could probably reroute cables enough to bypass that if necessary. My old desktop has been generally slow for a while, and now that I've replaced it with a new PC, with a fresh install to a new SSD, it's (very disappointingly) no better. Given that most of what I use it for uses the network in some way I'm thinking that's my next place to look. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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external HDD
by Anthony Anson 16 Jun '15

16 Jun '15

Just bought a portable hard drive enclosure and USB2 connection cable. The cable has two large USB connectors at one end - the second of which has a much shorter and skinnier cable; and a mini connector at the enclosure end. My not-very-portable storage of similar type, but big, has only one USB connector per end of its cable. I infer from this that the only one of the connectors at the pooter end should be (need be?) plugged in? The 500 GB HDD in the enclosure is SATA, as is the 160 GB one in the notebook. (because I had thought of installing things on the big one and puting it in the notebook...) Anyway, I can't poke it into life. I get the rude message: /Unable to mount location/ and underneath that: /Can't mount file./ Where is the fault? Hardware? Me? (I had meant to bring it along to the Norwich meet last night, but ) -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 15 Jun '15

15 Jun '15

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 today, 15th June, at 20:00: The Mulberry Tree 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 225776 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA WWW: https://www.facebook.com/MULBERRYHOSPITALITY The Mulberry Tree, previously known as The Milestone Beer House, is a grade 2 listed building in the centre of Ipswich. It is located at the intersection between Woodbridge Road and the A1156, across the road from the old Odeon cinema and not far from the Regent Theatre. It re-opened on Thursday March 29th 2012 after a major refurbishment, under its original name of The Mulberry House and has already begun to regain a good reputation for its selection of beers and ales. It has a sizeable car park to the rear of the building. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. I'll be there, but I may be a tad late ... Cheers, Peter. -- I ran the London Marathon 2015 in aid of the PSP Association. All sponsorship gratefully received. :) http://www.bagshot-row.org/marathonformum ----- 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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