main November 2008

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38 participants
42 discussions

xsession errors file absolutely huge!
by Peter Alcibiades 14 Nov '08

14 Nov '08

There is probably a simple explanation of this bizarre event. I got a popup message in Gnome saying that /home was out of space. It is a 200G partition, and there is not a whole lot on it, so this was puzzling. I did (after a few false starts) find . -size +10G and was astonished to be told there was just one, xsession-errors. OK, tried it with 20G.....same. Well in the end xsession-errors turned out to be 150G. Scratched my head for some minutes and then decided, why not, so I did rm. It went with no fuss. Then did du, and /home was now about 50G which seemed about right. This seemed weird enough that help was needed. Now unable to start kmail. Logged off, now unable to log back in! It wasn't the WM, since it would not work with any of them. Rebooted, and now it invoked fschk on hda6, which is where /home is, and finally after about a minute or two, it fixed something that was orphaned. And now it has loaded OpenBox and kmail perfectly fine. All the files seem to be where they should be. I am just praying that it will launch Gnome, and still more, that the files will be there when it does. What can it be? Anyone seen this before? This is Debian Lenny. By the way, sorry to have missed the Reindeer tonight, I am still not quite well enough. Next time. Peter

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Re: [ALUG] Low powered PC - I've ordered some bits
by Chris G 13 Nov '08

13 Nov '08

Re: my question yesterday about low power PC suppliers I hunted around on Google for a while and found an article on the (venerable) "Tom's Hardware" site about building a low power, but capable, system. They built a 4Gb, Intel core 2 duo system that consumed only around 30 watts when running. I've ordered bits for a similar system, it uses a FoxConn motherboard with Intel G31 chipset. My parts cost for a 4Gb system with 7400 processor (the most expensive bit, 7300 was out of stock) and a 500Gb hard disk was about £250. Compared with Mini-ITX systems and/or Intel Atom based systems this seems good value to me and gives me lots more processor power and room for expansion (i.e. adding hard disks). When the bits come and I've built it I will report its actual power consumption. -- Chris Green

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Linux sound analysis software?
by Srdjan Todorovic 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

Hello folks! I'm looking for some sound analysis software for Linux. I wish to be able to pass it a PCM wav or an MP3 and have it generate some statistics and preferably some graphs. In particular, I'm looking for amplitude/frequency graphs and harmonic analysers. I've just emeged sweep, and will play with that. I also intend to check out Audacity. http://liarliar.sourceforge.net/ is not really what I'm looking for. A google search gives me http://www.cmis.csiro.au/maaate/ (from 2002) but I can't list the contents of that directory. I had a look at sox, but that doesn't do what I want. I will keep looking, but was hoping that some kind soul would throw me some pointers. Having the ability to tag sound sample files or tag certain events (ie. tag a specific PCM sample or selection of samples) would certainly be a bonus. If nothing exists, I could be tempted to have a stab at making a similar program from scratch. Or would consider using libraries/classes in a custom app. Any thoughts, ideas or flames? Thanks, Srdjan

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An PC suppliers who quote approximate power consumption?
by Chris G 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

Does anyone know of a PC supplier (or component supplier) who quote the actual power comsumption of their PCs? I'm looking for a moderate powered PC to run 24 hours and thus want reasonable power consumption but I want a bog standard PC not a mini ITX (or Shuttle) system as they seem expensive for not much gain. To my surprise my new Asus P5Q-VM motherboard system with 8GB of memory and 500Gb hard drive only consumes around 60 watts. That suggests that it should be possible to get a lower specification system down below 50 watts or so which would be quite acceptable. -- Chris Green

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Eeepc 900
by Barry Chater 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

Hi Has anyone put Ubuntu 8.04 on a Eeepc 900. If so any major problems. Barry

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How to diagnose this crash on exit from X?
by Chris G 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

I have just installed xubuntu 8.10 on new hardware. It is based on a an Asus P5Q-VM motherboard (all Intel, including graphics) has 8Gb of memory and a quad code processor. It all installed OK without any problems and ran OK. However since I set the graphics resolution to 1600x1200 (the display's default) it crashes *totally* on exiting from X. It's a total, hard, crash - CTRL/ALT/Fn won't switch to a text console, I can't ssh into the system (which I can before it has crashed) and I can't ping the system. There is one other symptom, when I try and switch to a text mode console (using CTRL/ALT/Fn) even when the system is running OK I get a message from my monitor saying "this mode isn't supported" which seems a little odd on a monitor capable of 1600x1200 at more than 60Hz. The monitor is a Dell 2001FP and I'm using the DVI-D input. Does anyone have any ideas how to diagnose this problem? I have hunted around the files in /var/log but I can't see anything that looks significant there. The xorg.conf file is totally uncustomised:- Section "Device" Identifier "Configured Video Device" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Configured Monitor" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Monitor "Configured Monitor" Device "Configured Video Device" EndSection -- Chris Green

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Ripping HD-DVD disks to XVID
by Mark Rogers 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

I have recently bought some HD-DVD disks as they're getting very cheap now that HD-DVD has been killed off in favour of Blu-Ray. I have an HD capable TV with an XVID capable DVD player built into it. And I have an HD-DVD reader (& DVD writer) to plug into my PC. At the moment I haven't connected it up because it's SATA based and I've run out of SATA connectors so some juggling is going to be required (or I can stick it into a Windows PC). So, before I go too far, does anyone have any hints as to how I can rip HD-DVD content and convert it into XVID to burn back to a DVD? I want to basically get a full DVD in MPEG4 format from an HD-DVD. Will I even be able to read the HD-DVD in Linux? (My desktop is Ubuntu 8.10.) I don't have any other HD-DVD player so buying the disks was a bit of a gamble really :-) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

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 "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back next week (Monday 17th November) at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard to find the pack, look for those huddled around a laptop! This month, we promised to provide a beginner's tutorial to a standards-based VoIP (i.e SIP) alternative to popular proprietary applications like Skype. Following the discussion last month, we'll aim to demonstrate how to get an easy client installed under Windows and Linux, and explain how they can interoperate, as well as being able to break out to the PSTN network. The intention is to show attendees how the Skype feature-set can be replicated using standards-based and open software. We'll aim for a practical demo, but are happy to delve into the real techy stuff, if you have questions - at least one of our members works with VoIP full-time. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Hope to see you there, Peter. ----- 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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How to deal with MS .docx files?
by Chris G 10 Nov '08

10 Nov '08

Is there any Linux application that will handle MS Word .docx files successfully? A .dox file is a compressed archive of .xml files but unpacking it doesn't really produce anything very usable. -- Chris Green

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Sat Nav and Linux
by mbm 09 Nov '08

09 Nov '08

I am considering buying a satnav and would welcome some advice. I've never used one and I'm assuming any setup software, map updates etc will need a Windows PC. I don't have such a thing and want to avoid buying a satnav which I can't then fully use/update/configure or whatever for lack of windows availability. Any suggestions? Or am I worrying unnecessarily? Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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