March 2005 - main

Reminder - Kit Meet - Sunday 20th March 2pm - 6pm @ UEA
by Kirsten Naylor 14 Mar '05

14 Mar '05

Hi all! This is to remind everyone that there will be a meeting at UEA (Constable Terrace Room A) on Sunday 20th March, starting at 2pm and carrying on until about 6pm, after which there is a possibility of some of us wandering off for a few pints together. As Eli said in her announcement post, bring software, laptops, pcs, monitors, pdas, peripherals, cables, bits and pieces. (However there is no obligation to bring anything!) Bring multi-way adaptors, too, so we can plug everything in. There'll be plenty of space to set things up, and if anyone has a problem they'd like help solving or has a bit of kit they'd like to show off, there'd be plenty of interest all round. Information about finding the venue and where to park is at http://www.uea.ac.uk/how_to_find.html Hope to see everyone there who came to the City Gate on Thursday, and plenty more besides! /Kirsten

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Thursday Social Meeting Report Thingummy, sortof.
by Brett Parker 14 Mar '05

14 Mar '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi all, Just a quick thankyou to all that turned up to the social meet in the city gate on thursday last week, it was good to see you all, and I hope to see you all again at future events. As usual a very varied set of topics was covered, not least of all the sausages from the market, Jonathan's funky new toy, Java stuff (sorry Peter, I didn't mean to go off on one on how much I hate that language, again ;), Beer, and the shifting away from the now beer devoid city gate to the reindeer for the next social meeting. So, next month we will be holding the social meeting on Thursday, 14th April, in the Reindeer (which reminds me, I should get something done about making a directions page to that), if you don't know where the Reindeer is, but do know where the City Gate is, then it's very easy to find... Stand outside the City Gate facing the road, turn your head to the right slightly, it's the pub just over there, with the sign outside that says "The Reindeer". It's an Elgoods pub, and has very nice beer on all of the time, including ~ 4 or 5 guests. Again, thank you all for turning up, I hope that you all enjoyed the evening, and that we'll see you all again. I expect that we'll see some of you at UEA on Sunday, 20th March, or this coming Sunday, if you prefer. Thanks, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCNfijEh8oWxevnjQRAty+AJ0YeCGJ8hgWJWpVtRalVL0HMU65QgCgx6WO RF+nsvX+NI73K7Xt7EBpuDE= =csCm -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Unable to edit meta info
by Wayne Stallwood 13 Mar '05

13 Mar '05

Since getting my Mp3 player downstairs (which relies heavily on the ID3 tags for it's indexing) it has become apparent that some of the Meta info on files in my collection heeds a serious overhaul. However whole sections of my collection seem to have ID3 tags that I am unable to edit for some reason. A right click in Konqueror to access the Meta Info tab allows me to view the existing tag fields and type in new contents, but silently fails to write the results back. Using Amarok to edit the tags causes the following error "TagLib claims this file is not writable" I have checked and double checked the permissions and can in fact from Amarok delete files happily (even one of the files I am having the problems with) So it's not a read only permissions thing. Is there a way I don't know about to write protect the ID3 tags ? and if so how do I unset it ? The files in my collection have been ripped over a variety of platforms and using different encoders, the ones lacking meta info were probably ripped on Windows using some plug in for Winamp or something like that. It's only a couple of groups of files in my collection that have this problem (but that means about 1000 files) but the fact that they are in groups suggests that they were all ripped using the same (now forgotten) method. Once I have fixed this all I need to to is recompile Amarok to enable Musicbrainz and I can get all my files nicely indexed.

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Linux Media Server
by Wayne Stallwood 12 Mar '05

12 Mar '05

I am looking for a (preferably open source) UPnP media server. I have found TwonkyVision (http://www.twonkyvision.de/UPnP/) which does what I want (serve mp3 files to a wireless media appliance) and there is even a free (but not open) version that has just enough functionality to get me by. But I would far prefer to use an Open Source alternative (if one exists) Anyone out there played with this stuff before ? Also in the installation instructions for TwonkyVision it says "Make sure that you have a multicast route set for the server by issuing a "route add -net 224.0.0.0 netmask 240.0.0.0 dev eth0"." Not knowing much about multicast I thought I would pass this through the ALUG sanity filter. Is there a specific subnet reserved for multicast traffic that I must use (as defined in the above route statement) ? What happens if my local subnet is different ?

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RE: [ALUG] Linux Media Server
by Karl Foley 11 Mar '05

11 Mar '05

> Anyone out there played with this stuff before ? No, not really. The only opensource media stuff I have played with was VideoLan for multicasting DVD video over a wireless network. http://www.videolan.org/ > Also in the installation instructions for TwonkyVision it says > "Make sure that you have a multicast route set for the server by issuing a > "route add -net 224.0.0.0 netmask 240.0.0.0 dev eth0"." > > Not knowing much about multicast I thought I would pass this through the > ALUG > sanity filter. Is there a specific subnet reserved for multicast traffic > that > I must use (as defined in the above route statement) ? What happens if my > local subnet is different ? It's not a subnet, it's a whole new class off addresses. You've probably heard of class A, B and C ip addresses right? Multicast uses class D addresses. Multicast addresses range from 224.0.0.0 right up to 239.255.255.255. Think of each multicast address as a channel on which servers can send info that can be received by clients tuned to the same channel/multicast address. It differs from broadcast in that broadcast goes to all hosts (if allowed by the routers) whereas multicast only goes to "tuned in" hosts. Clients tell their routers they're interested using a protocol called IGMP (Internet Group Messaging Protocol). Network stuff uses it to communicate with all the time. Now it's common to see streaming media using it. The BBC are even transmitting on it experimentally. http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/streams.html

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Its enough to make you become a t e r r o r i st!
by tom potts 11 Mar '05

11 Mar '05

http://www.theregister.com/2005/03/11/ms_specialist_schools_deal/ whatever happened to democracy and the rule of law? Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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ALUG Social Meeting, 10th March @ the City Gate, Norwich
by Brett Parker 10 Mar '05

10 Mar '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, As is customary for the second thursday of the month, there will be an ALUG social meeting held in the City Gate, Norwich this Thursday evening (Thursday 10th March, 2005). We start at 8pm, and generally will natter about anything and everything... Top on my list this week is the nightmares I'm having with my laptop... For those of you that haven't attended the social in the City Gate, the basic way this works is: people turn up, people talk to each other, people exchange knowledge, feelings, and general chatter. We all leave the pub thinking "that was nice". Directions to the city gate can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/citygate.html I hope to see some of you there. Thanks, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCLH2dEh8oWxevnjQRAlkLAKCZCYd6TZCYHw8u4H9+Xu81vazDegCfYYM1 2vFkd08HHMCnOLOWCVAV+2Y= =5el7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Giant swap file
by Jenny Hopkins 10 Mar '05

10 Mar '05

Hi List, I appear to have turned my 120G backup server into a giant swap file. I typed mkswap -v1 /dev/hda (may have been hda1) instead of /dev/hda5. I've been battling for a day and am not much further down the line. I'm currently booted into knoppix. I'm trying: root@0[sda5]# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1/ -t ext3 mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1, or too many mounted file systems root@0[sda5]# dumpe2fs -h /dev/hda1 dumpe2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004) dumpe2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda1 Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock. cfdisk reports my partitions as they should be with the filesystem as linux. Is there any hope? Thanks. Jenny

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net-snmp, snmp, confused about libraries
by Chris Green 08 Mar '05

08 Mar '05

I have a utility which says it requires net-snmp, OK, that's a normal sort of statement. However the ./configure script actually asks for 'lsnmp', i.e. it's looking for linsnmp.so when it builds. I have installed lib-snmp but it doesn't provide a libsnmp.so and there really doesn't seem to be such a thing as just an snmp library. Can anyone throw any light on this confusion? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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epia via motherboards & frame buffer
by J Taylor 08 Mar '05

08 Mar '05

Ok, I've got several of these boards and have installed a couple of different linux's on each one, but can't seem to get frame buffer to work under any distribution, which is a pain because they all seem to install that by default, and it is something that I would like to have installed. Has anyone else had problems with these? I can currently boot fine by saying things like linux video=vga16:off at lilo and know i can disable it in otherways, so my question isnt how to disable it, its how to make it work. I get really garbled screens once the frame buffering module kicks in. I have a M class mboard with Nemiah 1gig proccies.. suggestions / proposals / jokes or insults welcome...

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