September 2014 - main

[ALUG Announce] Norwich Raspberry Pi User and Developer Group's third meetup
by Steve Pearce 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Greetings ALUG. I'm writing to let you know that we'll be holding the third Norwich Raspberry Pi User and Developer Group meeting next Saturday, 9th March 2013. We'll be meeting at a new venue: The Soup Lab, 5 St. Benedict’s View, Grapes Hill, Norwich, NR2 4HH. See the website norwichrpi.org for more details about the group, and see thesouplab.co.uk for venue info. Hope to see you there. stevepdp ----- 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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.deb vs .rpm (or apt-get vs yum)
by Mark Rogers 03 Oct '14

03 Oct '14

It's been many years since I last used a .rpm based distribution in anger, but the experience lead me to dislike them compared with .deb based distros. In particular I had a number of occasions where an installation issue lead me to a system that I could not fix, where that has never happened to me yet in all my years with .deb-based systems (Debian and Ubuntu). Sure I've had conflicts and problems, but I've always been able to get pas them. Am I right to trust .deb more than .rpm? Should I give (eg) Fedora another chance? Incidentally I also found package management faster with .deb (eg apt-get update vs yum update, apt-get install vs yum install). Stable beats speed but .deb seemed to give me both. Mark -- 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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Command line database editor (for sqlite3)
by Chris Green 01 Oct '14

01 Oct '14

Is there such a thing? Of course I know and use the sqlite3 command line utility but that's just a way of running SQL from the command line. What I want is some sort of wrapper/utility that reads the data from the database, presents it to me in some sort of reasonably editable format and then, when I've changed something writes it back. I'd be happy enough with a simple browse facility plus some sort of way of changing individual fields. So "dbedit xyz.db table1" just presents me with the data in some sort of reasonable, scrollable column layout. Then some sort of command says "change column 10, row 4 to 'ABCDE'". -- Chris Green

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OT Domain name hosts
by Bev Nicolson 01 Oct '14

01 Oct '14

A bit off topic perhaps but I thought I'd ask you lot. Domain name hosting. Ted might be puzzled by this since I recommended 1&1 a while ago now. They haven't been a bother but it looks like I should think about transferring things for various reasons. Who out there is cheap and reliable? How do you find out exactly how much any one package will cost per year? I'm just talking about a domain name and related email address. Bev.

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Linux (Debian) boot problem
by Barry Samuels 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

I want to move my wife's operating system to another computer so that should involve a simple 'move the hard drive' operation shouldn't it? Wrong! I've not come across anything like this before. The drive boots happily in my wife's computer but if I move it to either of two other computers it starts to boot and then stops with various errors. mount: mounting /dev/root on /root failed: No such file of directory the same with sys and proc. Then there is a Busybox line and I end up in a shell prompt: '(initramfs) but the line before that says: /bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off and nothing appears when I type on the keyboard so I'm stuck. This is using Squeeze with a standard Debian linux-image package, 2.6.32-5-686, which includes an initrd image. My wife's current computer uses an Athlon XP CPU and the one I'm trying to move to uses a Core 2 Duo both of which are covered by the linux-image. Any ideas would be very welcome. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Sort of design/philosphy/way to do it sort of question about remotely gathering data and putting in a database
by Chris Green 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

I have a Beaglebone Black which gathers various bits of data on our boat in France. At present these comprise some temperatures and battery voltages and currents but there might be other things added. I want to store these in a sqlite database on my desktop machine here at home. The mechanics of doing this are easy enough, I store the data in a file named for the date and time on the Beaglebone Black and at intervals my desktop machine mounts the directory where these files are saved (using sshfs), reads the data, inserts it into the database and then deletes the file. This means that if the connection fails for a while then nothing is lost, it's probably not by any means perfect but it's good enough, my life doesn't depend on the data! :-) At the moment the receiving end just assumes there are ten values sent and that they are in a specific order. E.g. there's a file there at the moment whose name is "2014-09-29_15:05.od" and whose contents are:- '2014-09-29 15:05', 22.125, 22.75, 13.6285714286, 13.8876923077, 34.36875, 0.253125, 14.85, 8.803125, 8 I'm not really happy with this because it means that any changes I do have to be 'synchronised' at the two ends to keep their knowledge of which value is which in step. Is there a standard way of labelling values in this sort of situation? Should I send a file something like:- DateTime, '2014-09-29 15:05' InsideTemperature, 22.125 OutsideTemperature, 22.75 LeisureVolts, 13.6285714286 StarterVolts, 13.8876923077 LeisureAmps1, 34.36875 etc. Then the first column of this data is the database field name and the second column is the data. If a field name doesn't exist then the receiving program/script will create a new column. This rather depends on there always being a DateTime field so maybe the receiving script could reject files with no DateTime value. Does this seem a reasonable way to do it or are there better ways, or should I just stay with the existing set-up where the order is significant? -- Chris Green

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 3rd October.
by Viperfang 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Bash flaw - uh oh
by Bev Nicolson 29 Sep '14

29 Sep '14

What should we do? Here it's just me and my computer to worry about for example and I have a firewall and a virus checker installed. Is that enough? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29361794 Bev

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Phone backups
by Chris Walker 28 Sep '14

28 Sep '14

Hello, I have a Jolla phone which runs linux. Unfortunately the speaker has stopped working which rather renders it useless as a phone so it has to go back to Finland for repair. Jolla have suggested I take a backup as they will reset it and wipe it. But their backup doesn't backup everything so can I copy everything off it perhaps from this machine? I easily ssh into the phone as a user and then switch to 'devel-su' mode but I don't appear to be able to ssh into it as root. I've tried to run scp from within the phone (using ssh) to a NAS drive but I can't make it connect. At this stage I'd rather not install loads of extra software on the phone just to do the backup so any ideas about copying everything off the phone before it goes back would be appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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device only (or caldav) calendar on android
by mick 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

Hi Guys I have just bought a new mobile (dual sim Moto G) to replace both my main 'phone and a backup. I am /not/ a huge fan of Google, but since I hate apple even more, the android device offers me the best functionality for the least inavsion of privacy (within limits). Before even transferring my personal data I locked the damned thing down to try to prevent as much google synchronisation as I could (but still, stupidly, managed to let the bloody thing send my contacts because I mssed one of the buried sync settings). That aside, I now really want to move my calendar data to the new device. Previous devices (from HTC, Sony and Samsung) have allowed me to set up a local, "device only" calendar. This new one won't and insists that I link in a google account before I can add /any/ data at all. So I'm looking for an alternative app. What I'd really like is a CalDav style application which allows local only storage on the 'phone, but will later allow me to sync to my own server (when I finally get around to setting up owncloud). Any and all advice (short of "throw the 'phone away") gratefully accepted. Most of the calaenadrs on the google play site appear to be little more than alternative skins to the underlying android calendar. Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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