main November 2010

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33 participants
34 discussions

Annual ALUG Ipswich Xmas Meal - 20/12/10 (probably)
by samwise 04 Dec '10

04 Dec '10

Hey, all. It's that festive time of year again. We talked about this at the last Ipswich meet and there was a groundswell of approval for another Christmas meal again this year. I'll nominally start by proposing 20:00 on the the same date as the usual Ipswich ALUG meet (20th Dec), but please drop me a line if you'd like to attend but think that would be an awkward date for you as I'm sure we can re-arrange it, when I have a list of who's coming. Everyone is welcome - no need to be a LUG regular. Please mail me off-list, if you'd like to join in. When I have a list of ppl who'll be there, we can settle on where we want to go and finalise the date. Cheers, Peter.

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A git question now I have the basics mostly fathomed out
by Chris G 29 Nov '10

29 Nov '10

So, we have a git repository set up on a web server machine 'out there' somewhere. I make my local copy of the repository on my computer and do some editing etc. Then 'git commit' commits the changes to my local repository and a 'git push' sends the changes back to the remote repository. However I don't see how the files get to 'go live' on the remote web server, my 'git push' has simply put them back into the repository on that system. Presumably someone/somewhere has to extract the files from the git repository on the remote into the working directories from which the web server displays them. Is there a specific git command for doing this or would one use the standard 'git clone' to do it, or what? -- Chris Green

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Very strange "No such file or directory" messages - help!!!
by Chris G 29 Nov '10

29 Nov '10

I have a symbolic link from my home directory to another home directory:- chris$ cd chris$ ls -l total 988 ... ... drwxr-xr-x 3 chris chris 4096 2010-11-20 14:33 dte lrwxrwxrwx 1 chris chris 10 2010-11-22 18:58 isbd -> /home/isbd ... ... and, as expected, if I "cd isbd" I arrive at /home/isbd and can see its contents with an ls. However referring to "/home/chris/isbd" sometimes produces a "No such file or directory" error (but not always, as I have just discovered). I'm stumped. What started the problem was running rsync to backup the contents of /home/chris/isbd:- chris$ rsync /home/chris/isdb cheddar.halon.org.uk:backups/isbd rsync: link_stat "/home/chris/isdb" failed: No such file or directory (2) rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1060) [sender=3.0.7] chris$ ls /home/chris/isdb ls: cannot access /home/chris/isdb: No such file or directory chris$ cd /home/chris/isdb bash: cd: /home/chris/isdb: No such file or directory It appears to be something to do with whether I have been in /home/chris/isbd but also seems to be time dependent. It's as if bash 'remembers' where /home/chris/isdb is for a while but then forgets unless I do a "cd isbd" from my home directory. The target (/home/isbd) is simply another part of the same disk that /home/chris is on, nothing special. Another example sequence:- chris$ cd /home/chris/isdb bash: cd: /home/chris/isdb: No such file or directory chris$ cd chris$ cd isbd /home/chris/isbd chris$ cd / chris$ cd /home/chris/isdb bash: cd: /home/chris/isdb: No such file or directory chris$ cd chris$ cd isbd /home/chris/isbd I've never had this problem before with a symbolic link to a directory, what on earth is going on? -- Chris Green

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Mobile phone software
by Bev Nicolson 27 Nov '10

27 Nov '10

I have a fairly basic Alcatel OT S319 phone. There is no hope of expanding the memory so I would like to find some software to help me transfer the text to my PC. What should I look for? I have found a list of possibilities but I've no idea which would be the most Linux compatible. Thanks. Bev.

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A question about git
by Chris G 25 Nov '10

25 Nov '10

I'm just starting to get down to the details of using git to co-operatively manage the contents of a web site remotely. I've managed all the basic set-up etc. such that I can connect to the site and get files etc. but I'm a little unclear about how things are supposed to go back to the remote/live site. So, I have used 'git clone' to get the files from the remote system and I have done some changes to the files. I then 'git commit -a' to commit my changes in my local repository, so far so good and it's what I'm (sort of) used to from previous experience of source code control. However what do I do next to actually get the changes back to the remote site? Or, what does the 'manager' who controls the code, do to get my changes integrated into the code on the remote site? Does 'git push' send my changes back to the site - it's not totally clear from the man page if this is what it does. The man page says "git-push - Update remote refs along with associated objects" which is a bit opaque. I *think* the following does copy the committed changes to the remote but I'd like to be sure:- chris$ git push --all --dry-run To chrisgreen@donttravelempty.com:/var/www/vhosts/donttravelempty.co.uk/subdomains/test/httpdocs 0474601..d6eb8a0 master -> master -- Chris Green

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Launch xterm with smaller font than specified in .Xresources
by Dan 24 Nov '10

24 Nov '10

Dear All, On my system, fonts are served up by XFS. The font I usually use in xterms is set in my .Xresources file as follows XTerm*VT100.Font: -Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--20-200-75-75-C-100-ISO10646-1 XTerm.Font: -Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--20-200-75-75-C-100-ISO10646-1 XTerm*Font: -Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--20-200-75-75-C-100-ISO10646-1 However, for one particular task, I want to launch an xterm with a much smaller font. The command xterm -fn fixed Gets me part way there, but I want an even smaller font than that. Any ideas, please? -- Thanks, Dan

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Back With Linux
by TheMactivist 24 Nov '10

24 Nov '10

Hi I flit in and out of this group when I pick up Linux again. Ive been a Mac user for the past ten years, Windows user before that and the last few years developed an interest in Linux. About a year ago I left Mac and went full on Linux with older ThinkPads. I then went back to Mac and am now triple booting between OS9, OSX and Ubuntu on an old Mac laptop. It was a struggle getting them all to work nicely together but I am back with Linux and writing this in it now. TM -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OS9/OSX 10.4/Ubuntu 10.10 - iBook G3 running OSX 10.4 - Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro.

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What would cause this lack of decision about a host on the LAN?
by Chris G 23 Nov '10

23 Nov '10

What might cause this somewhat confusing response to a 'host' command? root@mws:~# host oldchris oldchris.zbmc.eu has address 192.168.1.140 Host oldchris.zbmc.eu not found: 3(NXDOMAIN) -- Chris Green

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why won't xterm start?
by Chris Walker 23 Nov '10

23 Nov '10

Having given up on the idea of installing a Nokia SDK on my base machine, I thought I'd try creating a Ubuntu system in VirtualBox. I did that using an iso of 10.10 - Maverick Meerkat. But partway through the install, it's meant to fire up an xterm offering me a choice of installs, but it fails. I can start xterm simply by issuing the command but the script fails every time. I've googled this and others have had similar problems when they've upgraded from 10.4 to 10.10. I haven't. I've gone straight in with a vanilla 10.10 build. I've tried various tweaks and hacks but the script still fails. For info, this is what I'm trying to run - http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Maemo_5_SDK_installation_for_beginners It does the scratchbox install ok. It's when I get as far as the SDK install it fails. The ./maemo-sdk-install_5.0.sh script displays an agreement and I page down using the space bar. It then asks me to press the Enter key. At that point, it's supposed to open up a terminal window to enable me to choose an option. It falls over with an error - unable to open xterm. Any ideas? As I'm playing with VirtualBox, I did grab a copy of Ubuntu 9.04 and that ran through the whole thing so I do have an almost working copy of the setup so it's something peculiar to 10.10. The 'almost' working bit refers me not being able to see the host machine from the guest OS but I'll persevere with that. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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hexdump formatting
by Mark Rogers 23 Nov '10

23 Nov '10

Has anyone here got any experience of hexdump output formatting? If I use hexdump -C I get: $hexdump -C -n32 /usr/bin/lsof 00000000 7f 45 4c 46 01 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.ELF............| 00000010 02 00 03 00 01 00 00 00 60 97 04 08 34 00 00 00 |........`...4...| 00000020 What I want to do is extend the number of bytes per line to 32, but as there isn't a format for it that means using the horribly complicated -e option. I have got as far as: $ hexdump -n 32 -e '"%04.4_ao: " 16/1 "%02X " " " 16/1 "%02X " " " "xx" "\n"' /usr/bin/lsof 0000: 7F 45 4C 46 01 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 03 00 01 00 00 00 60 97 04 08 34 00 00 00 xx .. but haven't worked out how to insert the ascii values in place of "xx". -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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