November 2003 - main

Has anybody got SuSE 9.0
by Wayne Stallwood 23 Dec '03

23 Dec '03

If so can they zip me across some cd's (for a fair fee) I need to see if the problem with installing 8.2 on Nehemiah based MiniITX boards has been resolved in 9. For those that may be thinking about installing SuSE (or is it SUSE now, I'm confused) on a MiniITX board, there is an issue with the Nehemiah chip, cpuid says it is a i686 compat, but it does not support the cmpxchg8b opcode, gcc assumes that anything above i486 can handle cmpxchg8b. End result is that suse 8.2's kernel (compiled for i586) will not run. Gahhhhhh I blame gcc as the IA32 documentation states that you should check before doing conditional moves,and that cmov implementation in the processor is optional. If anybody has a set they can copy for me (or lend if they don't have a burner) then it will be most appreciated. After a mail discussion between a few ALUG'ers (including myself) and a representative from SuSE (SUSE) it was confirmed that this was allowed (and even possibly encouraged) by SuSE within User groups (they even sent me some 8.2 media which I have sent to some ALUGers.) Failing that, if anyone has installed SuSE 9.0 on a Via M10000 without resorting to the install on another machine, recompile kernel and swap drive dance required with 8.2, can you let me know. Regards Wayne

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Asking Open Source hackers to develop for dollars?
by Keith Watson 22 Dec '03

22 Dec '03

So is this total sacrilege? or is that an over-reaction? Personally I can see anything wrong with this, what do you think? <http://www.open-mag.com/1125339824.shtml> Keith

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Norwich evening meet: Thursday 13th November
by Syd Hancock 15 Dec '03

15 Dec '03

Norwich evening meeting on thursday 13th November at 8pm at the Forum bar. All welcome - put faces to names, gossip, exchange tips, have flame wars, whatever gets you through the night. See you there Syd Other Norwich dates for your diary: Thursday 11th December 8pm at the Forum Sunday 25rd January 2pm at the Billy Bluelight Meetings pages on the ALUG site will be updated soon.

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cordless mouse
by Syd Hancock 07 Dec '03

07 Dec '03

I'm thinking of getting a cordless mouse for the laptop. Has anyone here used one? From pictures, they seem to have a receiver at the laptop end, plugged into a usb port. Does this need to be line of site from the mouse? Also, is a purely h/w device or does it need drivers? TIA Syd

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A6 meeting notices
by MJ Ray 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

Last I was at the forum in Norwich, people seemed to like the small meeting notices, so I've turned them into templates, plugged them into a script and produced ones for the other venues: http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/cards.ps.php?loc=NCH for Norwich http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/cards.ps.php?loc=MID for Syleham It's fairly easy to add other venues as details appear, or update the above. Please get them out into shops, windows, noticeboards, etc. -- 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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Fedora - what's in a name?
by Ben Francis 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

It seems RedHat didn't do their research very well when choosing a name for their new project. Is this going to cause any serious problems? http://www.fedora.info/fedora.shtml Building their brand could be quite difficult when it happens to be someone elses... -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto://tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only

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Re: [ALUG] Names and topics
by Edenyard 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

MJR wrote: > > I want the lurkers to speak up. We have 250 addresses getting copies > of this. Even if we assume that all the meeting venues get different > people (definitely untrue IMO), that means we only see about three > dozen of them to talk with. How do we get the other seven-eighths > involved? > Alright, then! I didn't think I had anything useful to add to this thread, but because MJR wrote the above and I have a lot of respect for what he writes, I'll attempt to add in my tuppence. Why don't 'the others' get involved? I can only share my experiences. I run a Linux system, from which I have learnt a lot but I've only scratched the surface, as things go, and I still need lots of help. One area in which I really do need help just now is in getting a good video card. I posted a message about this and, when I saw all those digests waiting to be read earlier today, I felt sure that the answer to my question would be in there. But no! Nothing! What? Does nobody else on this list use a video card? Or have I not used the correct incantation to get a response? So how come no-one had ANYTHING to say on this subject? Now this isn't, by any means, the first time I've had this experience on this list. Maybe I'm not alone (I'll assume that I'm not singled out for this treatment), so if others have had this experience with ALUG (or any LUG, really), then maybe it's not so surprising that lots of would-be members don't participate as much as would be desired. Right - I suppose you'll want to excommunicate me after that contribution.... Cheers, Gerald.

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Re: Jamming the network
by Christopher Dawkins 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

>> And to ask you who else has come across the danger to corporate >> networks posed by the convenience of auto-crossover ports. > I had this at a middle school I do work for, One little darling student > did exactly this. <snip> > It is annoying that such a thing can happen, but to be honest it's no > worse than in the old days of a missing t-piece or a cable fault, > bringing down a whole coax lan. True, those were the days. But the Base-T system has been so comparatively rock-solid reliable and proof against all the problems we used to have that it has been a shock to find that it is so easily compromised. And the problem has only arisen with the more recent equipment! > You should be using spanning tree protocol (sometimes called spamming > tree protocol when it breaks) which should allow these kind of redundant > links that you are creating. Indeed redundant links should be/are a good > thing. Yes, redundant links are, I am building up a number, and I have looked at STP. The main reason I haven't used it is that I prefer the idea of subnets, routed, RIP and routers instead: routers based on multi-port FreeBSD boxes. I don't see how STP (or subnets) cure this switch-jamming problem, except that the more intelligent the device the more capable it is of preventing the jam from spreading back onto the network spine. However, we have some quite large (multi-building) branches containing hundreds of outlets that are all within the same easily-jammed area. Luckily I don't yet have a large number of auto MDI/MDIX switches and am hoping to obtain more older models, which are immune to this problem because normal users don't possess crossover leads. -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-822698, mobile 07816 821659 cchd(a)felsted.essex.sch.uk

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Enticement, was: Names and topics
by MJ Ray 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

On 2003-11-29 11:45:57 +0000 Chris Walker <linux(a)wymondham.demon.co.uk> wrote: > I'm already committed to other meetings on Thursdays so that's why > this > lurker doesn't attend them. I think we've been trying hard to scatter the days. Ely (might be trains there from Wymondham if you like beer) and K.Lynn have been on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so far. Sunday afternoon meetings are being planned further ahead to give people more notice (thanks to Syd and John). Is there something more we can do to make it more attractive? ("No" is fine as an honest answer IMO.) -- 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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Kmail & spam
by Nick Daniels 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

Hi All the spam I receive is addressed to xyzy(a)freeserve.co.uk not as above I have configured Kmail pop filters to- If to contains xyzy-delete on server but it takes no notice. I basically do not want to download it -Is it me being stupid? Regards Nick

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