February 2008 - main

Touchpad question
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 06 Feb '08

06 Feb '08

Hi folks, I'm running Debian Etch on a laptop which has a touchpad where the right-hand edge does that "scroll-wheel" thingy. The problem is that, as I type, the ball of my right thumb tends to stroke that edge, often causing chaos in applications where the text-entry point can be moved around using the mouse (i.e. if that happens, suddenly I'm typing at the point where the mouse pointer happens to be lying around on the screen). It seems to be very sensitive. I'd like to turn it off, but don't know how. Any suggestions? And, by the way, as things are at present Debian is running in a VirtualBox which is running on Vista (a situation I intend to put right in due course); so the above problem may require a solution in Vista rather than in Debian. Thanks for any thoughts, and best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 05-Feb-08 Time: 15:01:12 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Debian books
by James Freer 06 Feb '08

06 Feb '08

Knowing that quite a number of you are Debian users i was wondering which of these books you'd recommend [or others!!]... i'm interested in a book that'll give system info rather than a manual on how to use OpenOffice on Debian as it were! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Debian-System-Concepts-Techniques/dp/1593270690/ref… http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Debian-Linux-Bill-McCarty/dp/1565927052/re… thanks james __________________________________________________________ Sent from Yahoo! Mail - a smarter inbox http://uk.mail.yahoo.com

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hosts.allow syntax
by Jenny Hopkins 05 Feb '08

05 Feb '08

Hullo there, I've got ("have taken over") a hosts.allow file as below: ftp: ALL cvspserver: ALL svn: ALL sshd: ALL telnet: ALL ALL: <domain-we-allow>.co.uk ALL: LOCAL I don't understand why if the ALL keyword is called in the first half, aliases are then described in the second. Surely ALL means just that? What I want is for the cvspserver to be ALL and the others to be restricted to LOCAL and <domain-we-allow>.co.uk. No matter what I try with wildcard *, UNKNOWN, etc, the hosts.allow will only allow anonymous cvs log in with adding ALL:ALL at the bottom, which I don't want to do obviously. Sorry to not rtfm; I have done but it sort of went in one ear and out of the other leaving a puffy pink cloud in the middle. Thanks, Jenny

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Debian books
by James Freer 05 Feb '08

05 Feb '08

Knowing that quite a number of you are Debian users i was wondering which of these books you'd recommend [or others!!]... i'm interested in a book that'll give system info rather than a manual on how to use OpenOffice on Debian as it were! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Debian-System-Concepts-Techniques/dp/1593270690/ref… http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Debian-Linux-Bill-McCarty/dp/1565927052/re… james

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Fwd: Anyone a BIOS/EEPROM burner please?
by Mark Rogers 04 Feb '08

04 Feb '08

One of my local LUG members has the following request, anyone here able to help? ------------ Good evening, As I failed to realize that today is "nothing works" day, I upgraded a Tyan Tiger MPX mainboard from BIOS 4.03 to 4.06 At least, that's what it said it did. Instead, it bricked the machine. I've taken the BIOS chip out, it's a 4mbit part by SST, 32pin square (9pin/7pin) 3.8mm PQFP. If anyone has the tools to write to it, please let me know. Regards, Tony V. P.S. Feel free to send this mail on. I realize that the person doing this will want to be compensated for their time. -- 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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su with user ID (not name)
by Mark Rogers 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

I'm trying to delete a load of files owned by previously existing users. In other words I then need to "su [username] -c 'rm -r [dirname]' where [username] matches the owner of the files. (I don't have root access to the server but do have the ability to su to any of the users I need to delete files for.) If I use "ls -l" I see the user names truncated to 8 chars, so I'm using "ls -ln" to see the numeric user ID of the files instead. However su doesn't work with numeric UID values. So either I need to find a way to get the fullname of the owner (I know stat will do this but I have a lot these to do and I can't see a good way to just get a list), or find a way to map the UID to a name for su, or some other workaround I haven't thought of. Suggestions? -- 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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Characters on screen wrong using SSH
by Barry Samuels 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

When I use SSH to log in to a remote machine and use something like Aptitude or MC on the remote machine some of the characters on the screen e.g IBM box characters appear as something else which makes the screen difficult to read. Is there a way to cure this? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Cambridge and East Anglia Python Users Group
by Richard Lewis 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

Dear ALUG, The Cambridge and East Anglian Python Users group will hold its fourth "first Tuesday" social meeting on Tuesday 5th February at the Carlton Arms (Carlton Way, Cambridge, CB4 2BY). People intend to arrive from around 20:00 and I will be going from Norwich by train if anyone would like to join me. Please feel free to contact me on- or off-list regarding this if you like. Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis - UEA, MUS PG http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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