May 2006 - main - earth.li

Fwd: First ALUG competition of 2006
by sfr 05 Jun '06

05 Jun '06

I posted this on alug-social, but it seems unfair to exclude all those who subscribe to main but not to social. ----------- first email - While we're waiting for the announcement of J's next serious and on-topic contest of brains and programming skill, we shall offer you some light entertainment. And the tease is that I'm not telling you what the competition is, yet. Just a little clue: it's a Caption Competition. ------------- and then - First ALUG competition of 2006 - Part II The photo which awaits your inventive and witty caption is at http://sfr.itshall.be/stuff/tuff.jpg ------------- next will come a voting system... when Brett finishes it... -- sfr

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Ooops! Another Debian Etch cods up
by Barry Samuels 01 Jun '06

01 Jun '06

I recently upgraded my Debian Testing/Etch system and today I tried to write to a DVD using K3b. The error I got was: System ----------------------- K3b Version: 0.12.15 KDE Version: 3.5.2 QT Version: 3.3.6 Kernel: 2.4.27 Devices ----------------------- ASUS DRW-1608P2S 1.37 (/dev/sr0, /dev/sg1) at /cdrom [CD-R; CD-RW; CD-ROM; DVD-ROM; DVD-RAM; DVD-R; DVD-RW; DVD-R DL; DVD+R; DVD+RW; DVD+R DL] [DVD-ROM; DVD-R Sequential; DVD-R Dual Layer Sequential; DVD-R Dual Layer Jump; DVD-RAM; DVD-RW Restricted Overwrite; DVD-RW Sequential; DVD+RW; DVD+R; DVD+R Double Layer; CD-ROM; CD-R; CD-RW] [SAO; TAO; RAW; SAO/R96P; SAO/R96R; RAW/R16; RAW/R96P; RAW/R96R; Restricted Overwrite; Layer Jump] Used versions ----------------------- growisofs: 6.1 growisofs ----------------------- Executing 'builtin_dd if=/mnt/storage/makedvd/newdvd.iso of=/dev/sr0 obs=32k seek=0' :-( write failed: Invalid argument growisofs command: ----------------------- /usr/bin/growisofs -Z /dev/sr0=/mnt/storage/makedvd/newdvd.iso -use-the-force-luke=notray -use-the-force-luke=tty -use-the-force-luke=dummy -dvd-compat -speed=4 -overburn -use-the-force-luke=bufsize:32m Is it me or is it them? Any suggestions for putting this right would be welcome. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Auto-switching desktop/workspace
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 30 May '06

30 May '06

Hi Folks, To set the scene: On the machine I usually work at I have KDE, with several "desktops" (KDE-speak) or "workspaces" (Gnome-speak). Say I have Mozilla or Firefox running in one of these. Now I ask the browser to access a web page. This seems to be taking its time, so I switch to another desktop and do something else while I'm waiting. Then the browser times out. So up pops a window with the message that it has timed out. BUT:-- I find that in so doing it has automatically switched me from the other desktop I was working on while waiting, back to the desktop where the browser is being displayed. SO:-- some software at least knows how to automatically switch between desktops. THEREFORE:-- I would like to know too! I can find uses for this phenomenon -- e.g. if I am running a program in one desktop which from time to time draws graphs in a window on another desktop. When it draws a new graph, I would like it to automatically switch to the desktop with the graph. So what's the secret to auto-switching of desktops? And is it at all specific to the "Desktop Environment" (e.g. KDE)? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 28-May-06 Time: 00:59:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 29 May '06

29 May '06

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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Fonts in OO 2.0
by Peter 28 May '06

28 May '06

Seem to be always asking for help with obscure things that drive one nuts! I had OO v1.5 installed on Mandriva. Got the rpms and installed 2.0 in the usual way (rpm -Uvh). Everything is fine. Except that Times New Roman, which would of course be the default font that all the documents are saved in, doesn't print properly. Displays perfectly. Prints however in some sort of default computerish font, the same whether you select bold, italic and whatever size. When I go into drakfont, there seem to be two copies of TNR. But its obscure to me what exactly I will be deleting if I try the delete option - it seems to be offering to delete a lot of fonts from a lot of places all at once, when presumably if to delete anything, its just one of the TNRs probably from one place. When I do spadmin, I hardly see any of the fonts. But others that are not shown print fine. It also still works just fine in OO 1.5 if I go back into that. Aarrrgh! What would you all do next? Peter

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Slow HW Clock
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 28 May '06

28 May '06

Hi Folks, I've discovered that the hardware clock on one of my machines is running about 2/3 slow: loses about 20min in each hour. For the time being, I'm writing the system time to it every so often, and the system time is updated hourly by NTP. But the principal irritation of it is that the system clock is set from the HW clock on bootup, so I have to make provision to over-ride that. I don't know of any important system functions that directly consult the HW clock rather than the system clock. Do you? Also -- and here I'd really welcome good ideas -- does anyone have any suggestions for why this might be happening, and/or for what to so about it? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 27-May-06 Time: 13:34:41 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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How do you keep all your files in sync on multiple platforms?
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 28 May '06

28 May '06

Like me, I expect several of you have multiple PCs, each with their own different OS installed. I'm investigating how to setup automatic synching between them. What I would ideally like is something that runs in the background and syncs (via peer-to-peer) the files automatically between Linux, OSX and Windows. I've found unison under a GPL license that supports all platforms, but it's only for merging two sources. I've found groove.net, but that's Windows only. Foldershare.com supports Mac and Windows, but not Linux and I don't like the idea of storing my own files externally. What I've done in the past is just have separate file stores on each machine and then sync them up to a master internal FTP server, but this sucks and is not time efficient when the same file ends up on more than one machine as I need to manually check for the most recent version. So, how do the rest of you handle synching your files on multiple platforms? -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com/ "Oh, Great Spirit, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference." - Native American Indian

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Relative speeds of ways of doing 'X over the internet'?
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 28 May '06

28 May '06

Does anyone have any ideas about, or is there a web site that will tell me about, the relative speeds of different ways of running X applications across the internet? I'm specifically interested in runnning jpilot (a Palm Dekstop replacement that runs on Linux) remotely through my ADSL connection. The only way I have run it to date is tunnelling X through an ssh connection. This works OK in the sense that it's full functional but it's not really fast enough for normal use. It's just a way of getting at the data if I really need to. What I'm after is knowing if there are better and/or more optimised ways of connecting so that this would become a usable utility when accessed remotely. In terms of bandwidth use jpilot is sort of 'middling', it is much, much more usable than running Firefox via the ssh tunnel for example but not as quick as running an rxvt terminal. (An rxvt terminal actually runs quite quickly but there's little point as it only offers the same function as an ordinary ssh session which is quicker and easier) So, can anyone offer any ideas please. -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

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Real-time Audio Processing and Streaming
by Richard Lewis 26 May '06

26 May '06

Hello ALUG, I'm doing some work with one of the post-grads on a Web-based audio mixer for live sound sources. The user will see each of the, say, half-dozen sound sources arranged on the screen and as he moves his cursor (or "joystick") towards one, it becomes predominant in the mix. Each of the sound sources will play either a continuous stream from a live microphone or continuous loops of interesting cached sounds. My basic plan is to have this sort of "joystick" metaphor on the client side which responds to mouse gestures by sending lots of small HTTP requests representing Open Sound Control commands using AJAX to a PHP (or possibly the dreaded Perl) script on the server side which, in turn, forwards the OSC commands to the mixer software. The output audio stream from the mixer should then be MP3 encoded and streamed back to the client to play in his embedded media player. I have a clear view of how I will implement everything up to and including the server side PHP (or Perl). After that I'm not so sure. There are two aspects that I'd appreciate anyone's wisdom on. First is the mixing software. The reason why I've mentioned OSC is because my colleague is an experienced Max/MSP user and would like to use either that or PureData to handle the mixing. However, I'm worried about how well this will scale up when multiple users are connected. Will I have to run one instance of Max (or pd) for each client connection? Should I perhaps consider a more UNIXy tool like ecasound or something? Second is the streaming software. I'm a bit surer about this: I've looked at Icecast and it seems to do MP3 encoding. I reckon it can probably handle multiple client sessions as long as each connection has its own distinguishable source audio stream which I suppose depends on how I choose to implement the mixer. Has anyone had any experience with it? Is it very resource intensive? Any thoughts or experiences would be very welcome! Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Would anyone care to Samba?
by Barry Samuels 25 May '06

25 May '06

I have an IBM ThinkPad R51 less than a year old which came with Windows XP although I have Debian installed on it which is what I mostly use. However there is one Windows application, MapInfo, which I use occasionally and for which I have never found a Linux substitute. I had the laptop set up to connect to my normal Linux (Debian Testing) desktop machine via Samba and was able to use it. Then two things happend. 1. I moved the mount point of the partition on the Linux machine to which the laptop, running Windows, connected. I changed the paths in smbd.conf and did think to restart Samba. 2. I also upgraded Debian Testing on my non-laptop machine. Now the laptop won't even recognise that the Debian machine is there although it is connected to the network and I can ping the Debian machine. My first thought was to look in the logs on the Debian machine for errors but there are no errors! Where do I go from here to find which machine is the cause of the problem? I assume it must be the Debian desktop because that's the only one that's changed. Both smbd and nmbd are running on the desktop. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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