November 2005 - main

Anyone got some old 500MB-2GB hard drives they no longer require?
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 08 Nov '05

08 Nov '05

I'm in the process of building a small Debian GNU/Linux based cluster using old machines. It's something I always been interested in doing. I've already got the boxes, some motherboard/cpus with Pentium chips on them, and the NICs. The only thing missing are the hard disks. Has anyone got one or more they no longer need? I've managed to build the cluster for free so far, and hope to finish it in the same manner. I'd prefer sizes between 500MB and 2GB. So, if you can help, please email me. Perhaps you could bring something along to the kit meeting at UEA on Sunday? -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com "All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day." - The Joker in Alan Moore's The Killing Joke

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Re: Re: installing Debian
by Robert Grant (DEV) 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

Thanks Ted, Adam, Wayne and Tony for useful thoughts Ted, my blood ran cold when I read your warning about BIOS settings on the hd. Fortunately I remember going into BIOS since installing the new unformatted drive to make sure the CD was set as boot device- then running Partition Magic just to check the drive was functional as I want to leave feedback on ebay for the thing. I also booted Knoppix which is about all I can use with no hard drive at all, so thankfully the BIOS seems intact. Knoppix froze on me after about five minutes though, so maybe even this needs an hd to be present. I do seem to recall the XP installer mentioning a small area of disk as something like 'unused' or 'unformatted', only about 2-300 meg I think, when I installed it over the factory W98. Maybe this was where 98 had 'squirted' its recovery/hibernation info. I quite agree that this kind of behaviour, plus the absurdity of making recovery data available only on a device which will be dead if it is needed, is a pretty poor show. With a totally new hd any hidden diagnostic or system specific tools are lost now. I do plan one day to have a go with the "ThinkPad Configuration Tools for Linux" tpctl package that can give you such things as on-screen volume display, power management, trackpoint configuration etc. Details at http://tpctl.sourceforge.net/ if anyone is interested. Tony, though the windows labels for all your bits C:, F: etc. are not much use in linux for the reasons given, you should still be able to mount these as you please using device paths like /dev/hda1 etc. Apologies if this is blindingly obvious but I was pleased when I realised it! I had a FAT32 partition automounting rw as /exchange and an NTFS one as /xp where 'My Documents' was. The fact that NTFS write support in linux seems to be less than fully reliable is one reason why I didn't want to set up my XP partition with the Sarge d-i by the way, even if that option were offered. In fact I am thinking of putting 'My Documents' entirely on FAT32 when I reinstall so that everything is easily accessible from both OSs, unless there are compelling performance or reliability reasons not so to do. For example it would be nice to be able to access my mp3 library from both linux and XP. I reckon something like this will do hda1 8G NTFS XP C: or /bloat hda2 8G ext3 Sarge or Ubuntu / hda3 23G FAT32 'My Documents'E: or /xp hda4 20G ext3 /home hda5 1G swap (machine has 256M RAM) Best wishes, Rob Rob Grant Tutor in Economics School of Development Studies University of East Anglia NR4 7TJ +44(0)1603592324 r.grant(a)uea.ac.uk

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Re: installing Debian
by Peter 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

> installing Debian is like being greased, and wrestling with an eel. This is completely mad. I have installed Debian and derivatives of Debian many times (on a little Dell that I bought for £50, specifically for the purpose of playing with distributions, and on a couple of other boxes, one a 200mhz MMX, one a home assembled Shuttle). Debian Pure (now another name) installed over the net or from a Debian DVD with no problems. Debian Sarge, from a magazine cover DVD booted and installed with no problems. Mepis installed with no problems. Ubuntu installed with no problems (though using it, the old version I tried a year ago, was a different matter). Knoppix has an install option - it just went in and worked. I have had some problems installing things. I couldn't get Dragonfly to work at all. I had problems with one of the BSDs, or at least, problems figuring out how to get to a proper desktop. I've had temporary difficulties with Slackware, largely owing to the lack of a 'go back' option at various critical points. I had trouble with Mandrake 10.x on some machines. The first issue of elive wouldn't work properly. I never could get Woody to work. So, its not that I can do everything perfectly and easily, and I'm not at all expert in this stuff, but recent Debians are SIMPLY NOT A PROBLEM. Peter

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2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 10th November. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. We'll be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. Topics for discussion will no doubt be as varied as ever. The Reindeer has a reasonable selection of beer as well as decent coffee (with biscuits, if you're lucky). Directions to the Reindeer can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/reindeer.html Pictures of some of the regulars, and irregulars, and, well, just some pictures of people that might or might not turn up are available from: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for. We're /normally/ just to the left of the main entrance, though last time we ended up at the far end of the pub beside the pool table. J. -- 101 things you can't have too much of : 41 - Tea.

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Using mailsync with ssh
by Chris Green 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

Having looked into this I have come to the following conclusion. Mailsync only works 'with ssh' to a remote IMAP server, I'm pretty sure it can't access an ordinary mbox (or other) hierarchy on a remote machine by using ssh. I *think* the example in the examples documentation is just that, accessing a remote mh mailbox system which happens to have an IMAP server using the mh hierarchy. If anyone can point me to some documentation and/or help suggesting otherwise then I'd be very pleased to know about it. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Dual Head on Nvidia
by Wayne Stallwood 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

I am just about to order a second 17" TFT to match my existing one, I noticed where I was doing some DVD Authoring last week that I need more screen estate. I would like to stay with Nvidia cards if at all possible, partly because I need good hardware 3D on at least one screen and partly because I know where I can grab a really good dualhead Nvidia card really cheap. Not having done this before I would like to know how it all works before I commit to the extra screen. How for example do the virtual desktops interact with dual head, Do I used the desktop pager in the normal way and choose which display has which desktop ? How does the framebuffer work, does this only work on the first screen ? Has anyone used VMware on a dual head setup, what happens if you set a VM to fullscreen ? Does it go fullscreen on one of the monitors and do you have any choice about which screen that is ? When I was googling about I saw loads of references to xinerama and twinview and other sites that just said to add the second display to the xconfig file. What method should I use to get the behaviour(s) above ?

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Tiff images on a Sharp SL-C3100
by Barry Samuels 06 Nov '05

06 Nov '05

I have just bought an SL-C3100 and one of the things I'd like to use it for is viewing images, from my camera, in the field. The images are 12MB Tiff files and most of the Zaurus software can't cope with Tiff so I'd like to shrink and convert to Jpeg. I've put an Arm binary of ImageMagick 'convert' onto the Zaurus and have installed the libtiff package but if I try to use 'convert' I get a message 'Libtiff is not available'. Can anyone suggest what might cause this? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Re: MFD
by Ten 06 Nov '05

06 Nov '05

Hi there folks. I'm in the process of looking at budget MFDs (the all-in-one printer/scanner/tea-strainer deelies for anyone not familiar with the acronym) for myself and the better half and wondered whether anyone here had positive/negative experiences to share. "Compatibility" with your usual GNU/Linux suspects is a must in terms of both systems and utilities - are there serious gotchas anyone here knows about? Considerations are: 1. Low cost 2. Print/scan/copy at reasonable quality 3. PictBridge and/or Bluetooth for computerless use with digital cameras. Groovy gravy would be: 1. Bluetooth for use with phones etc., but I don't personally need computerless printing, so it's less of a consideration). 2. Ability to handle 35mm film (truly unnecessary) I'd appreciate ideas/gotchas. Cheers, -- Ten

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How to remove empty maildir mailboxes?
by Chris Green 06 Nov '05

06 Nov '05

This is (distantly) related to my previous question, they're both results of my migration from mbox to maildir. I'm doing that so I can rsync my mail folder hierarchy from the system where I actually read my mail to my home system without losing old mails. So, I want to write a utility that can run as a cron job and, maybe, on demand, that will saerch down my mail hierarchy for empty maildir mailboxes and delete them. This involves finding any directory that has empty cur, tmp, and new subdirectories and deleting it. I can see all sorts of horribly clumsy ways of doing it but not any really neat way. Any quick solutions anyone? Amazingly a Google search turned up nothing useful at all, surely there must be a need for a utility like this. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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