October 2006 - main

[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 09 Oct '06

09 Oct '06

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 12th October. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. People will be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. I will unfortunately not be present this month. 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/2006-02-ALUG/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ 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 sometimes we've ended up at the far end of the pub beside the pool table, as there are comfy seats at that end. J. -- "'And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days.' from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10" -- about:mozilla ----- 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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SATA CD/DVD has solved most of my installation problems
by cl＠isbd.net 09 Oct '06

09 Oct '06

Well, just to report success, the SATA CD/DVD drive I bought in the hope that it would overcome my installation problems on my Abit AB9 Pro motherboard has done just that. I can now successfully install any current relase of Linux (well at least the ones I have tried so far, Ubuntu, Suse, Mandriva and Slackware). It needs a reasonably up to date kernel to work but not the latest, latest, latest version. You have to turn on AHCI in the BIOS (for some distributions, Suse seems to manage without this somehow) and, of course, connect the SATA CD drive to the main (Intel chipset) SATA interface which the hard drives use as well. You also can't then boot from "SATA CD" you have to boot from the actual CD drive detected by the BIOS, presumably a consequence of turning AHCI on. >From there on it's plain sailing, installations run with the nowadays expected smoothness. Strangely I found that the sata.i kernel (2.4.33) in Slackware didn't work but the 2.6.xx alternatives were fine. Other distributions I tried were all 2.6.xx kernels I think, you don't get a choice. I guess only the newer kernels have the Intel SATA chipset support. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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how to buy a SATA power adapter cheaply?
by cl＠isbd.net 09 Oct '06

09 Oct '06

I need a SATA power adapter, one of those things to connect a standard (Molex) 4-pin power connector to a SATA drive. They're about a quid each or less (best I've found is 68 pence for a two-way one) but carriage charges make that irrelevant. Does anyone have any suggestions as to where I could get one at a reasonable price in the Ipswich area and/or a company that sells them that will stick one in a jiffy bag and send by Royal Mail for a pound or so? -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Help with grub
by cl＠isbd.net 09 Oct '06

09 Oct '06

I have what would appear to be a very simple grub question but I can't find the answer in the grub info or the grub-install info. How do I remove a partition/OS from grub? -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Gnome "calendar" is incorrect!
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 08 Oct '06

08 Oct '06

Hi folks, A distraction from this weekend's ADSL woes. Specifically: The "calendar"/"clock" application in the Gnome panel is incorrect for the year 1752 (and therefore for all preceding years). It is described as the "Clock Applet", and its Help only describes its time functions. However, when you left-click on it a calendar comes up, which is what I'm referring to. This is not described anywhere that I can find. Nor can I locate what program is executed for the "Clock Applet". Any thoughts? [trivial question of course...] Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 08-Oct-06 Time: 15:58:22 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Wierd routing/DNS problem
by cl＠isbd.net 06 Oct '06

06 Oct '06

I'm playing with a Suse 10.2 installation on my new hardware. It's all basically working locally but routing/DNS is broken. I can traceroute to anywhere, I can ping anywhere but I can't actually communicate with anywhere - i.e. I can't connect Firefox to any web sites and I can't ssh to anywhere. So what's set up wrong? /etc/resolv.conf has the right things in it (same as my other system anyway) and the default gateway is the same as my other system. I'm stumped. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Re: [ALUG] Re: Re: Re: TCP Problem *NOT* routing (was: Wierd routing/DNS problem)
by Nick Daniels 06 Oct '06

06 Oct '06

Hi Bit of topic, but I installed, the latest Kororaa yesterday and it has (a version) Kernel 2.6.18, always used the previous edition, when i had problems with "odd hardware",....." 2.6.18 CK patchset based kernel, KDE 3.5.4, Gnome 2.14, updated installer" Regards - Nick Daniels

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Ubuntu 6.10 server beta works!
by cl＠isbd.net 05 Oct '06

05 Oct '06

The saga of my Abit AB9 Pro motherboard continues. The Ubuntu 6.10 server beta installation CD recognises the CD drive on the JMicron SATA/PATA interface - hurrah! However it didn't initially recognise the hard disks on the Intel ICH8R SATA interface, turning on AHCI in the BIOS fixed this though. (Strangely the Suse installation recognised the hard disks without AHCI turned on). So now I'm installing Ubuntu 6.10 beta, I'll probably upgrade to the proper 6.10 when it arrives but the beta will allow me to play for a while at least. A couple of questions:- Is there any peformance penalty using the AHCI BIOS? Why doesn't Ubuntu Desktop 6.10 beta work in the same system? -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Someone interested in some PHP/mySQL work in the next few months?
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 04 Oct '06

04 Oct '06

Hi, I run my own small software/web development company and we may have the need in the next couple of months to sub-contract / out-source some PHP/mySQL work. Please can interested people email me off-list at work(a)ashleyhowes.com. Please indicate in your email whether you have professional indemnity insurance, whether you use a particular development methodology / approach, and your approx. rates. -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com/ "May your spirit be renewed in earth's solitary places." - Native American Indian Blessing

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Suse 10.1 has installed but ....
by cl＠isbd.net 04 Oct '06

04 Oct '06

Well I'm back from my rather busy week-end (totally away from computers) and, after a few more clicks, the Suse 10.1 installation on my new hardware has completed. However it does have on little oddity, when booted/rebooted it doesn't show anything on the display. It is working though as I assumed there was a login prompt and was able to login 'blind' as root and shut the system down. All the dmesg stuff appears it's just after that the display goes. If I boot in Suse's "safe mode" the normal login: prompt appears and, in addition, I can log in and run startx to get X windows up. So, it's all working pretty well really except for the default console mode. Does anyone have any ideas how to remedy that? -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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