main March 2010

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38 participants
48 discussions

Hi, Geeks!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 22 Mar '10

22 Mar '10

It's been a nice sunny day, and all that; and I've been out enjoying it; and got back to find myself wondering where the word "geek" comes from (dunno why). So on to Wikipedia. Excerpt: "Formerly, the term referred to a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken, bat, snake or bugs." Well, yeah, "bugs" connects. But I hadn't been aware that my very first OS, CP/M, might stand for "Chicken Post/Mortem". Just a thought. And it's still nice and sunny out there, chicks. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 21-Mar-10 Time: 17:23:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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NumLock at startup
by Chris Walker 22 Mar '10

22 Mar '10

As per my other mail, I'm trying to make Mandriva switch off the NumLock LED at switch on. I've got it switched off in the BIOS but when I get to the login screen, Mandriva has already put it back on. I've got it switched off in the control panel but that doesn't affect startup. Any pointers as to where I should look for this? So far all my searches tell me how to switch things on, not how to stop the wretched thing coming on. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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flv video issue
by Bev Nicolson 21 Mar '10

21 Mar '10

The problem is this. Whenever I try viewing a .flv video, Firefox crashes. I have, for another issue a while ago, reinstalled flash and that hasn't made any difference to this particular problem. Any ideas? Bev.

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help with xinput
by Chris Walker 21 Mar '10

21 Mar '10

Hello, Due to health issues, I am trying to use an Evoluent Vertical Mouse with Mandriva linux. http://www.evoluent.com/vm3.html I'm using KDE as my desktop and have been unsuccessful in mapping the buttons. If you look at the picture in the above URL, you can see that the mouse has 3 buttons and a scroll wheel on the right side. It also has another button on the left side, shown in 'Familiar Grip' as button 5. I'm trying to map what is shown as button 2 as a double-click. I can do it under Windows 7 providing I use some extra software as the mouse isn't supported past XP but despite using xinput under Mandriva like this - xinput set-button-map 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 3 9 10 11 12 13, it isn't working as a double click. I also need to map button 5 as a refresh for use in web browsers. I haven't tried that yet as I didn't want Firefox to confuse the issue. I want double-click to work within the desktop. Has anybody done anything similar to this and can point me in the right direction as I'm getting nowhere fast. I also have a special keyboard and want to switch off NumLock at startup as Mandriva is switching that back on but I'll put in another mail for this. TIA. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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port forwarding wierdness
by mick 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

OK - I know this isn't strictly a linux problem (though it may be) but someone here may be able to help, I have an odd problem with port forwarding through a linksys WRT120N router. My network looks like this: outside - Cisco ADSL - DMZ - Linksys - inside The DMZ net is 192.168.1.0/24 inside is 192.168.10.0/24 The DMZ has two debian ARM boxes on it, inside has several different debian/ubuntu boxes, but crucially has my dnsmasq DNS server on 192.168.10.50. That server lists all my local machines. The linksys has NAT turned on. It also allows port forwarding of both TCP and UDP on port 53 from the outside (i.e. the DMZ) to 192.168.10.50. Now the wierd bit. DNS lookups from the DMZ to the inner server through the linksys only work once every 4-5 minutes. So if I fire up nslookup or use dig to resolve any of my internally named servers I can do it immediately, but then get "connection timed out; no servers could be reached" for the next 4 or five minutes whereafter I can again resolve a host. Can someone please suggest what may be going on? Anyone else using a WRT120N? I can't find anything on the obvious forums. (And yes I know I could move the DNS server to the DMZ......) 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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We're not evil??
by Martin Collins 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

Anybody use magnatune for streaming through rhythmbox? See this link: http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2010/03/new-business-model-for-magnatune… This would make magnatune more like spotify. Does this mean free listening is coming to an end? Personally I'm a bit cheesed off with it, as I don't listen enough to make a subscription worthwhile, nor do I have internet access 365 days a year so I wouldn't get what I was paying for. However, I did buy 3 or 4 albums from them a year. Forcing a business model on me, although not evil, certainly isn't angelic! Martin

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the problem with lp was the usb parallel converter
by Peter Alcibiades 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

Turns out that the problem with using lp must have been the adaptor. Its a parallel printer, and it was being connected through one of those parallel to usb adaptors. With a parallel cable, and redefined as /dev/lp0, it works. The original method of cat > /dev also works on this definition. No idea why, though. I have used those usb adaptors successfully in the past and if it were possible to hit it using cat >/dev, it seems puzzling that lp could not drive it. Should have thought of trying this earlier, but of course, SFF machines now often don't have parallel interfaces. I also now do lprm on starting up the program to clear the queue, just in case. Regards Peter

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Skype problem
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 19 Mar '10

19 Mar '10

Hi Folks, Maybe some of you can elucidate a Skype puzzle. I have Skype on Win XP (v. 4.0.0.216) and on Linux (v. 2.0). I usually use the Win XP version because it works better. As of yesterday, I had the same Skype name and password on both. I hadn't used Skype for a couple of months, but yesterday evening started it up in Win XP and entered the password. It hung for several minutes, then came up with a message that it had failed to connect. I repeated this several times (thinking maybe Skype was clogged, or something). Same result. And the same result with the Linux version ("P2P connection failed"). Repeatedly. So I wondered if their might be a password problem, therefore logged in to www.skype.com using it, and got in OK. Nevertheless I decided to reset the password anyway. I was sent a password token to log in to the secure site for doing this, and set about re-entering the old password. Got a message "Password too easy to guess" (also required numbers + letters, which it hadn't done before). So I chose a different password. After that, I had no problems using the Win XP Skype with the new password, but when I tried Linux Skype with the new password it still failed to connect. Re-tested again this morning: Win XP Skype works, Linux Skype does not. One remaining issue might be that the Linux Skype version (2.0) may now be too old to be acceptable to Skype, though that would be surprising. I'm aware that Skype can go real flaky at times (though not very often, in my experience), but the above strikes me as puzzling. Any comments and suggestions welcome. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 18-Mar-10 Time: 10:45:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Another HTML question, again about unwanted space
by Chris G 18 Mar '10

18 Mar '10

I seem to suffer from this all the time, too much space between headers and the things underneath them. ... and I've simplified it down to the following:- I have the following HTML:- <p> Paragraph1 </p> <p> Paragraph2 </p> In the CSS I have:- p { background: blue; padding-bottom: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0; } (The background: blue; is just to prove it's being acted on) ... and there's still a great wide white space between the two paragraphs. How can I get rid of it? -- Chris Green

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Ubuntu 9.10 graphics issue
by Mark Rogers 17 Mar '10

17 Mar '10

See screenshot: http://www.more-solutions.co.uk/files/12032010325.JPG I have tried two identical PCs in case the problem is system or video memory. Initially I had the monitor through a KVM, which gave me a lower resolution but usable screen, although with square blocks on the screen where it wasn't updating properly. (I tried to open a terminal window and just got a white box which I could move around but could see nothing in the box.) It was when I bypassed the KVM and rebooted that it identified the screen and gave me a decent resolution login screen followed by the linked screenshot after login. Chipset is Intel 82810E DC-133 (CGC) according to /var/log/messages Suggestions? I'm hoping the screenshot will tell someone exactly what is wrong, but I can't google a screenshot and can't work out how to describe it in words! -- 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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