February 2010 - main

Encrypted PDF with odd password
by Dan Hatton 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

Dear All, I have an encrypted PDF file that I can open just fine in Adobe Reader under Windows. But I'd really prefer to read it in Xpdf (or any open source tool). Unfortunately, Xpdf needs the password supplied on the command line, and the password contains characters that are special to the shell. (Actually, I don't think I need to be coy about this. It contains a percent sign, an ampersand, and a pound sign.) I've tried escaping the special characters with backslashes, enclosing the password in various types of quotes, and putting the password in an environment variable, but all of these result in "Incorrect password" errors and failure to open the document. Any ideas, please? -- Thanks, Dan

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 19 Apr '10

19 Apr '10

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 this Monday 15th February, 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. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Nothing particular planned this month, though I'm sure we'll end up covering broadband speeds again, if only briefly, now that Infinity is being rolled out (nowhere near us, I hasten to add). I may have a whinge about nvidia graphics drivers, as well. Remember to call (mail me in advance for my mobile no.) or email me, if you're arriving later and want to ensure I don't wander off, which might happen if the turn-out hits rock-bottom ... 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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MySQL BETWEEN
by James Bensley 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

SELECT blah, blah, blah FROM tblBlah WHERE date_entered BETWEEN '01/01/2010' AND '20/01/2010' This will select records from my table who's date_entered field is from 01/01/2010 and 19/01/2010. This is because the BETWEEN command seems to go UP TO the day specified but not inclusive. So I thought I would just add +1 on to the data submitted from the PHP search page which works just great except for when you put 31 in as the day of the month, (so say we search from 01/01/2010 to 31/01/2010) it makes it into 32 and the querie returns 0 rows. However if I add an IF statement to not increment the day value by 1 if "31" is given as the last day in the query, we then only get results for 01/01/2010 to 30/01/2010. How can I combat this or is there a "proper" way of doing this as mine almost defiantly isn't going to be the best method? -- Regards, James ;) Jonathan Swift - "May you live every day of your life." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jonathan_swift.html

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Xubuntu vs Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 02 Mar '10

02 Mar '10

HiI am a big fan of Ubuntu. It got me really interested in Linux and gave me the push to leave Mac and Windows behind. I had Ubuntu 9.10 running on a Samsung A10 1.1Ghz Duron and loved it, then the laptop died. I then was given an IBM ThinkPad 600 and after running a few ' lightweight' distros have been quite impressed with Xubuntu 9.10 on it.A few people said not to both with Xubuntu, some even said it was more RAM intensive than Ubuntu. So I am beginning to wonder whether my ThinkPad would run better with Ubuntu rather than Xubuntu.I tried Xubuntu with LXDE window manager and didn't like it and didn't find it very fast. I like the Xfce as it is very close to Gnome. Is it more than just RAM that would pose a problem with Ubuntu as opposed to Xubuntu.I know a bit more RAM would help whatever distro I use, but 160MB seems to handle the basics under Xubuntu, but would it be enough for Ubuntu - even though there are reports Xubuntu is more RAM heavy than Ubuntu.According to the specs Ubuntu only requires a 300Mhz and Xubuntu requires 333Mhz, but I have Xubuntu running on a 300Mhz just fine.Ultimately my question is, would Ubuntu run better than Xubuntu? I am trying to squeeze every ounce of power out of this beast.Regards Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

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Text insertion point - do others find it irritating?
by Chris G 01 Mar '10

01 Mar '10

I am *forever* getting text inserted at the wrong place because it's inserted at the mouse cursor rather than the text cursor. This happens particularly in web textareas but the problem is common to most/all GUI applications I think. (I just tried in OpenOffice and it's the same there). Surely by default one would expect text to be inserted at the *text* cursor, not where you've moved the mouse cursor to which is often out of the way to avoid it obscuring what you're typing. My editor (xvile) manages to do it right, it's a GUI application but text inserts where I'm typing. Is there a setting somewhere to say "insert text at the text cursor"? -- Chris Green

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Xubuntu... Or Something Else On TP600
by Simon Royal 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

Hi. I have been running Puppy Linux on my ThinkPad 600 for a few days. It is the best distro I have tried on it in terms of speed, but it is a little limited. The software repositories are small and getting sound to work is a pain. It is a 300Mhz ThinkPad 600 and at present it only has 160MB of RAM. When I first got it, I wanted to run some kind of *buntu distro. I know Ubuntu probably will never run on it, so I was looking around at lighter versions. I ran Crunchbang for a little while, but even that struggled. Would adding another 128MB of RAM make a lot of difference or is it more of the processor speed that is making this machine slow? The hard drive in it is a 4200RPM drive, would upping it to 5400 or 7200RPM drive make any difference? It did in an Apple PowerBook I had about a year ago. Would Xubuntu run comfortable on a 300Mhz with 288MB of RAM? What would your advice be. What do you lot recommend. I don't have any money to buy a new laptop so I need to get as much out of this as I can. Regards Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Tell us your greatest, weirdest and funniest Hotmail stories http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

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Apache configuration test on Ubuntu
by Mark Rogers 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

In recent Ubuntu versions (no idea if this is inherited from Debian or not), the apache user is set in /etc/apache2/envvars, which is processed when Apache is [re]started via /etc/init.d/apache2 [re]start. However, running apache outside that script will then cause errors. So for example, apache2 -t .. which should test the configuration without restarting, instead generates errors "bad user name" errors because the environment variable relied upon in apache2.conf is not being set. So, is there a "correct" way to test the configuration? (The solution I always end up with is editing apache2.conf to set User/Group to www-data directly.) As an aside, is there any way to make logrotate not kill Apache if there's an error in the apache configuration file? -- 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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Xubuntu... On 300Mhz... Not Bad
by Simon Royal 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

Hi Well, yet another day and a different distro. This poor little ThinkPad is being put under a lot of work, I have tried about 8 distros on this thing. I was running Puppy Linux and while it was nice and fast, it was a bit basic. I tried Fluxbuntu last night and after getting past the dodgy screen res, I just didn't get on with it. It might be Ubuntu based but it is still quite ropey. So I downloaded the Xubuntu 9.10 alternative installer - as the standard Xubuntu disc wouldn't install - and started the install last night. It took about 90 minutes which was ok. I must say I am quite impressed. It gives the ease of use of Ubuntu and all the software packages it comes with and are available for it. I know a couple of people said not to install it because it would run quite badly, but it isn't too bad. Booting is a little slow - although quicker than I thought it would be and there isn't too much lag navigating around the system. I only use this machine for surfing and writing, so nothing too intense. With only 160MB of RAM it isn't going to do anything too processor intensive, but with a little more in it could be quite a capable machine under Xubuntu. I have just installed Google Chrome browser and it is whizzing along surfing pages. Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

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CSS question, paragraph margins/padding etc.
by Chris G 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

I have some generated HTML which is as follows:- <div class=level1> <p> This is the playground </p> <p><a class="folder" href="#folded_1"> Test</a></p> <div class="folded hidden" id="folded_1">This is the text that is hidden or shown</div> <p><a class="folder" href="#folded_2"> Test1</a></p> <div class="folded hidden" id="folded_2">This is some more hidden text</div> <p><a class="folder" href="#folded_3"> Test2</a></p> <div class="folded hidden" id="folded_3">And this is still more</div></div> <span id="folded_reveal" style="display:none;"></span> <span id="folded_hide" style="display:none;"></span> I want to pack the "Test", "Test1" and "Test2" closer together vertically and I'm having little success. I was expecting that setting the following would do it:- .folder { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0; font-weight: bolder; border-width: thin; border-color: blue; background-color: cyan; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 9px; background: url(closed.gif) no-repeat right center; } The font-weight CSS is having its effect, changing it does change the font weight, but the colours (e.g. the background colour) have no effect at all, and nor do the margin/padding/border settings. What am I doing wrong? Is there some 'outer' CSS that has priority over these settings? If so how can I override it? -- Chris Green

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Network Monitoring Tools
by John Herd 25 Feb '10

25 Feb '10

Dear all, I've got some linux experience and thus far have managed to get a credible helpdesk/auditing setup with GLPI and OCS-NG. I like both of these as tools because they're pretty light on admin and very recoverable should a problem occur. Now I'm looking for a good network monitoring tool that would enable me to graph bandwidth use on switches, disk use on servers etc. I've got a mix of Windows servers and a pile of Cisco kit. There's a profusion of network monitoring tools out there, so I'm after advice on what kind of setups folks in ALUG have experience of, and actually like, rather than a best of breed run down. I should add that the "some linux experience" extends to Ubuntu server and a reasonable knowledge of apt-get, so go carefully with me here. :-) Regards John Herd

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