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DVD drive not recognised?
by Bev Nicolson 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

I'm attempting to burn an MP3 onto a DVD but there are a few problems not least of which that I'm a novice at this. I'm using DVD-R. My DVD drive doesn't appear to be recognised by either Brasero or XfBurn. It's told me one of them is full but I've clearly not done things properly as it won't play in my CD player. I need help. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Bev

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VPN, are there tutorials for the uninitiated anywhere?
by Chris Green 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

I'm thinking about using a VPN for remote access to my desktop machine when out and about. The obvious choice (?) is to run an OpenVpn server on my desktop machine and clients on my laptop or whatever when I'm away. I won't want to get access from 'foreign' machines on which I don't have the ability to install stuff. I've wandered around the OpenVpn website and can follow (I think!) all the technical stuff about how to install it etc. and how to run clients. What I don't understand and nowhere seems to tell me is what it actually does for me as a user. I mean there I am away from home somewhere and I've connected to the server using the OpenVpn client - then what? I don't think I get a home machine desktop as such, so what do I get? If I want to access my address book or configure my router what do I do? -- Chris Green

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Looking for a Linux distribution to run wholly in RAM
by Chris Green 09 Jan '15

09 Jan '15

I am building a backup server machine and I'm trying to minimise its power requirements. Originally I was going to give it two disk drives, one small one for the OS and a big one for the backups. There's space for more drives as/when the backups run out of space. I then though that maybe I could put the OS on a USB stick to save the power consumption of the small OS drive. Not going to be fast but saves a significant amount of power. Then I thought even further and, as the system I'm thinking of using for this has 8Gb or RAM installed why not run the OS from the RAM? I don't need/want a GUI, this is going to be a headless machine running just a basic installation plus rsync and a few utilities. Access will be by SSH. So, what distributions are there that would be easy to do this with? Requirements are basically:- Must have a non-GUI installation option that fits in a few Gb. Preferably designed to work like this so installation is simple and can be kept up to date without doing wierd things. Ideally Debian based as I'm familiar with it, but it's not vital. What I'm looking for is something that boots off a USB stick but doesn't use the USB stick once up and running, at least not for frequent writes. Loading programs off the USB is OK I guess. -- Chris Green

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Wanted - simple way to shrink pictures for web
by Chris Green 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

I have a wiki/blog (Dokuwiki) that displays selected pictures from my main pictures store. My pictures are stored in a <YEAR>/<MONTH>/<DAY> hierarchy and I have a script that searches for references to a specific date in the wiki and, if/when found, it copies the .jpg files to the appropriate place in the wiki. This is OK with the wiki software running on my desktop machine (though the image size does make the images rather slow to load) but now I want to run the wiki on a hosting service and the size of the images is taking up too much disk space. Is there any simple, automated way I can shrink the pictures? I don't want to have to specify a size for every one of them, I just want to shrink them to a 'reasonable' size. I can fairly easily add a command (or two) to my script that does the copy, e.g. an ImageMagick 'convert' but how to set the amount of shrinkage? -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th January
by Viperfang 05 Jan '15

05 Jan '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, 8th January 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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Problems with Linux Mint 17.1
by Chris Walker 05 Jan '15

05 Jan '15

Hopefully somebody can help me with this one. One of sons has given the other son a Shuttle PC. He installed a couple of discs, set up LVM to make them appear as one and installed Linux Mint 17.1. All good so far. He couldn't do all the updates as his broadband wasn't quick enough so I offered to do those as number 2 son is staying with me for a few days. Next I thought I'd install all the usual stuff as he's going to be using the machine to feed content to his tv. That's where the fun begins. VLC went on fine. But If I run get_iplayer (latest version 2.91) it doesn't convert the files to mp3 as my own does. I can't find ffmpeg anywhere so after googling, I found a site that told me to add a repo. Tried doing that but get an error about aptsources which can't find a distribution template for LinuxMint/rebecca. I then tried the solution posted here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=183099 to add a couple of lines to /etc/apt/sources but I'm still getting the same error. I'm now going round in circles trying to fix various errors so thought it best to ask those who have greater knowledge than I. Hence, here I am! -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Mir - Wayland
by James Freer 04 Jan '15

04 Jan '15

I gather that Debian is going to go down the Wayland route. Ubuntu is following Mir which I gather has given problems to Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Kubuntu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_%28software%29 I am just wondering what will happen to the Debian derivative family - seems a break up is likely in 2015-2016. Be interested to hear from those in development what the future possibly holds. james

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'bouncing' USB ethernet connection - why?
by Chris Green 02 Jan '15

02 Jan '15

I am trying to use a USB-ethernet adapter to give me a second ethernet connection to an xubuntu 14.04 system. It's detected OK and drivers are loaded but Network Manager goes into a loop repeatedly saying the connection has been established and then saying it's disconnected. It cycles once very few seconds, say 10 seconds or so. It's set up with a static IP on a different subnet from the 'proper' ethernet. Does anyone have any idea what might be wrong? -- Chris Green

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 2nd January.
by Viperfang 30 Dec '14

30 Dec '14

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

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Network drawing tools - any [good] Linux ones?
by Chris Green 15 Dec '14

15 Dec '14

Are there any Linux network drawing tools? I don't really want a full-blown Network Management solution like OpenNMS or Nagios, I just want an easy way to map my home network that doesn't require me to do it all manually. -- Chris Green

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