main December 2000

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27 participants
39 discussions

De-Lurking - An Introduction
by Steven Fosdick 15 Dec '00

15 Dec '00

Hi all, I discovered the Anglian Linux users group shortly before the last meeting back in August but unfortunately other commitments prevented me from coming along. I've been lurking on the list since then and have been meaning to get round to writing a short introduction ever since - finally I have. I first became interested in computers when I saw a Sinclair ZX80 which the maths teacher at secondary school used to demonstrate some simple number theory. Shortly after that I received a ZX81 as a present and on that I learnt Sinclair BASIC and then Z80 machine code (without the benefit of an assembler). From there I moved on to a BBC Micro and learned its variety of BASIC, 6502 assembler, BCPL and Pascal. I now work for BT at Adastral Park, their advanced technology centre at Martlesham and it is there that I was first introduced to Unix when I was given a tape of HP-UX 6.2 and asked to "install it on one of our machines and see what it could do." At the time the PC was becoming popular and it was probably just before Windows 3 was released. I was immediately impressed with Unix (HP-UX) - it seemed to be a proper operating system with real virtual memory, powerful utilities, and a proper scripting language and, if you wanted a GUI, there was the X window system to go on top. I have continued to work with HP-UX and more latterly with Solaris too both as a SysAdmin and as a Developer using C, a little C++, Perl, Unix shell script and PL/SQL (Oracle), HTML and Javascript. I've also done a little development on the PC running Windows (and DOS even) using Visual Basic, Visual C++, C and Assembler. During the same time I witnessed the Internet take off in a big way, remembering when we persuaded one of the gurus on site to set us up with e-mail using uucp over a 19200 serial link back to their server which had 64k capacity to the rest of the net, getting a news feed and finding that just about everything got discussed there without censorship, the emergence of the WWW with early versions of mosaic, and up to the present where everyone can't wait to set up a web site and people at home have almost as much bandwidth each as we started with for 2500 people. I was first introduced to Linux by a contractor at Martlesham who had it running on his Laptop. I had already met some of the GNU tools and if the Linux kernel was to the same quality I knew that Linux as a system would be good. I was very impressed with Linux but sadly, although Linux was small and efficient, the hardware of the day was no match for the X window system and I went back to using the commercial unices on bigger hardware. Since then PC hardware has improved dramatically and more recently I found that Linux had become the focus of most Free software development for Unix like systems and that increasing numbers of people were running it at home. We had just received a talk at work from Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (and author of emacs, and gcc IIRC) and he recommended the Debian distribution so I tried installing it. For someone who already knows about disk partitions etc. and has installed Unix before it presented no difficulty and I now have it running on my PC here at home where I've used it for capturing and editing video and audio as well as e-mail, surfing the net, writing minutes etc. Whilst Windows in it's various flavours still has much more software available than Linux, and that may never change, it nevertheless seems an exciting time for Linux as more generally useful software becomes available (rather than just developer tools) and makes it more useful to your average joe. So back to the user group, I hope that I will be able to help some of you out and at the same time receive help and broaden my knowledge in areas of Linux I have not yet explored. Unfortunately the IRC meets are at a time that I usually can't make but if I get the chance I'll drop in and if not I hope to see some of you at the next physical meeting. Steve Fosdick.

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Getting rid of a Linux boot loader
by Ashley T. Howes 14 Dec '00

14 Dec '00

Some time ago I installed the Storm Linux distribution (it's based on top of Debian). However during installation, it overwrote my master boot record with its own loader (brings up an vga graphic choice between linux and windows with Storm branding). Since then I have removed Storm Linux, formatted the hd, but the loader remains. I was wondering how to get rid of the boot loader, or in some way overwrite it with another? Any hints are appreciated. Ashley Dr. Ashley T. Howes PhD Web Developer Email: ashley(a)blueskyresearch.net Web: http://www.ashleyhowes.com "They think they've beaten us. We smile and say, welcome to the Next Level"

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["crazy" <chris@gimmel.com>] job feedback - help appreciated
by MJ Ray 13 Dec '00

13 Dec '00

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Re: [Alug] The end of an era...
by David Freeman 13 Dec '00

13 Dec '00

--- Laurie Brown <laurie(a)brownowl.com> wrote: > David Freeman wrote: <snip> > > > > D > > IDL seem to be a special case, and are emphatically not BT. They are, > and I'm not being big-headed here, cherry-picking the best. If you're > up > for it, and are a good IT professional with relevant Internet > experience, with good breadth (not just depth), then I'd be happy to > put > you forward. IDL are very actively encouraging personal referrals, > knowing, I suppose, that we won't risk putting knob-heads forward. > They > seem happier with people of a certain age (I'm 44), and are sceptical > of > whizz-kids. Both the people I know who work for IDL were headhunted from inside BT. and both are holding GURU status in alot of areas of IP/programming/unix etc... Unfortunatly like you said they take the mature end of things I'm not in the best situation (age 18) Maybe one day :o) Good luck Thanks D > Cheers, Laurie. > -- > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Laurie Brown > laurie(a)brownowl.com > PGP key at http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371 > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > _______________________________________________ > alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list > Email: alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk > http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug > See the website for instructions on digest or unsub! __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/

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Moving on
by Andrew Savory 12 Dec '00

12 Dec '00

Hi, As you may already know, as from tomorrow I will no longer be working for UEA. Whilst my account will work for a little while yet, can you please update your address books to use my new address - a.savory(a)btinternet.com Thanks, Andrew. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- A.Savory not at uea.ac.uk : All views are my own - who else would want them? -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: [Alug] The end of an era...
by David Freeman 12 Dec '00

12 Dec '00

Not easily from outside. Depending on what you want submit your CV on bt.com and they will pick it up when they want you. A bit of a pain really. Not sure if this applies to IDL or not. Thanks D --- Joe Frost <joe_frost(a)omnis-software.com> wrote: > > I've taken a job as a senior technical consultant with a company > called > > Internet Designers Ltd., one of BT's BrightStar incubations. The > job is > > fantastic, and gives me the chance to carry on with my Linux work, > > alongside the experience built up after 27 years in the IT world. I > > start at Adastral Park, Martlesham on Monday 18 December. Gawd help > me! > > Stonking salary, share options, paid holidays (YES!), no managers, > > working in a technocracy, and so on, I simply couldn't refuse it... > Is there a way to keep an eye on jobs that are available at Adastral > Park? > > Joe > > > _______________________________________________ > alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list > Email: alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk > http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug > See the website for instructions on digest or unsub! __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/

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Re: [Alug] The end of an era...
by David Freeman 12 Dec '00

12 Dec '00

Congratulations, Lucky sod. I have a few friends which work for IDL, it seams a good place to be and pays well. Good luck (you should be based about 100yrds from me!!) D --- Laurie Brown <laurie(a)brownowl.com> wrote: <snip> > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/

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Re: [Alug] IRC meeting reminders
by MJ Ray 12 Dec '00

12 Dec '00

Paul Tansom <paul(a)whaletales.co.uk> writes: > I can't comment on VA as I don't work for or with them, Smoothwall > is an independant project. As for *new* LUGs, the Smoothwall > project is not involved with any attempt to setup new LUGs, it is a > GPL dialup router/firewall project. Again, a separate issue if > anyone involved with Smoothwall is involved with LUGs new or old. > Personally I consider myself involved with UK LUGs - again a > separate issue to Smoothwall, although had that is how I became > aware of it at its inception! Would some of the Smoothwall project team like to visit the ALUG-IRC meeting a week on Monday to present it, answer a few questions, clear the air and show the project in a good light? So that would be 18 Dec 2000 at 2000 +0000, I think. (Yeah, I'm just itching to use the IRC question bot) -- MJR

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music - network - linux
by d.casal 11 Dec '00

11 Dec '00

Neil Newman wrote: >for what it's worth, I run redhat 6.2 on my wearable >(http://wearables.essex.ac.uk/), I'd be really interested in seeing specs for your wearable. I've been looking at MIThrill and a variant of Xybernaut's...how much did you have to scale RD 6.2 to fit? MJR wrote: >Read the hardware HOWTO and www.alsa-project.org to find out if your >sound card is well-supported. support for the soundblaster range is definitely documented, and debian lists seem to think that as long as it's only SB16 to SBLive! it should be ok, thanks for the pointer. >Debian's own installation howto isn't bad, but remember there >are lots of people around UEA to lend a hand if you hit problems. Read the how-to, made the first wave of disks, tried them both on the NT box and the ancient thinkpad I'm trying to turn into wearable goo, so far so good. Now though, I can't really afford the download time for debian full over 56k (30 more like) dialup. A.Savory mentioned that Brett might be able to help with passing a CD of it to us...would that be possible at all? Would anybody else have the time if Brett can't? Anyway, thank you both for your help, off to read more Debian lit. cheers, david casal

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Re: [Alug] Getting rid of a Linux boot loader
by cepi x 10 Dec '00

10 Dec '00

lilo -u /dev/hda or in my SCSI system sda or whatever letter u got......it worked for me a fiew times cheers CEPi --- Brett Parker <b.parker(a)uea.ac.uk> wrote: > On Sun, Dec 10, 2000 at 09:06:07AM +0000, Ashley T. > Howes wrote: > > Some time ago I installed the Storm Linux > distribution (it's based on top of > > Debian). However during installation, it > overwrote my master boot record > > with its own loader (brings up an vga graphic > choice between linux and > > windows with Storm branding). Since then I have > removed Storm Linux, > > formatted the hd, but the loader remains. > > > > I was wondering how to get rid of the boot loader, > or in some way overwrite > > it with another? > > > > right, if you've got DOS you can use: > fdisk /mbr > > which will kill the MBR. > > Not sure how you'd do it in nux, have never (yet) > needed to. > > Hope that helps, > > Brett > > > _______________________________________________ > alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list > Email: alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk > http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug > See the website for instructions on digest or unsub! __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/

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