main January 2015

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22 participants
20 discussions

O.T. Problems with USB sticks
by Chris Walker 11 Feb '15

11 Feb '15

I have a few USB sticks which I use in my car to allow me to listen to things like iPlayer downloads. But only one of the three is recognised by the car now. I've reformatted them under both linux and Windows 8.1 on my wife's laptop but the problem persists. The thing that the two 'failing' discs have in common is that I have also in the past used them on my tv to record stuff. The tv reformats them to NTFS whereas the car expects them to be FAT32. Are there are utilities I can use to see what might be different between the various sticks? For info, one of the 'failing' discs is of the same type as that which *is* recognised in the car whereas the other disc is an almost new 32GB stick from Maplins. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Laptop GPU
by Mark Rogers 02 Feb '15

02 Feb '15

I'm in the market for a new laptop, primarily because I'm fed up with my existing one using loads of CPU doing things the GPU should be doing (compiz being the main culprit). The existing laptop has an AMD graphics chipset which is apparently well supported but reality is less kind... My usage as far as graphics is concerned is nothing special; I'd like the laptop to be able to run VirtualBox comfortably and handle several (outbound) remote desktop sessions so having memory and CPU available matters more than GPU, as long as the latter can do everything expected of a "modern" distro (Ubuntu 14.10 currently). I don't turn on extra graphics effects but don't want to have to turn off the basis either. My instinct is to look at Intel GPUs as they seem to work well with FOSS drivers. I don't have a strong position on proprietary drivers but my experience is that if I want to still be using the laptop in 5 years time then relying on AMD to keep supporting it is unwise. But it's a long time since I looked at graphics chipsets so any comments welcomed. I'm undecided whether to get a cheap laptop (~£200) or go for a better one (say £400) but I'll take some convincing to go beyond that. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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USB device detected but not mounted
by Chris Green 31 Jan '15

31 Jan '15

I have a new Lumix TZ60 camera, when I plug it into my xubuntu 14.10 laptop I see (in dmesg) :- [22802.981555] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pci [22803.076937] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=04da, idProduct=2372 [22803.076944] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [22803.076948] usb 1-1.2: Product: DMC-TZ60 [22803.076952] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Panasonic [22803.076955] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 0000000000000000001X1314210434 [22803.077932] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 5 [22803.108684] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage Is there anything I can do to get it to do better? -- Chris Green

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[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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ssh configuration, I have multiple usernames on one host
by Chris Green 23 Jan '15

23 Jan '15

My hosting provider (TsoHost) provides ssh access for each domain hosted. The ssh login is of the following format:- <site>@shell.gridhost.co.uk The <site> is the first 8 characters of the domain name. What I would like to do in my ssh_config file is something like:- Host site1 site2 site3 site4 HostName shell.gridhost.co.uk User %h However this doesn't work of course becase the %h doesn't work in the User field. Can anyone see any easy way of doing this except to simply repeat the whole block for each domain, as in:- Host site1 HostName shell.gridhost.co.uk User site1 -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree ALUG
by samwise 18 Jan '15

18 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 ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back tomorrow, 18th January, at 20:00: The Mulberry Tree 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 225776 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA WWW: https://www.facebook.com/MULBERRYHOSPITALITY The Mulberry Tree, previously known as The Milestone Beer House, is a grade 2 listed building in the centre of Ipswich. It is located at the intersection between Woodbridge Road and the A1156, across the road from the old Odeon cinema and not far from the Regent Theatre. It re-opened on Thursday March 29th 2012 after a major refurbishment, under its original name of The Mulberry House and has already begun to regain a good reputation for its selection of beers and ales. It has a sizeable car park to the rear of the building. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. I'll be arriving late, before 21:30, but hopefully there will be other regulars there to look out for. Cheers, Peter. -- I am aiming to run the London Marathon 2015 in aid of the PSP Association. All sponsorship gratefully received. :) http://www.bagshot-row.org/marathonformum ----- 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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Re: [ALUG] Ubuntu 14.04 LTS get clean
by Richard McLellan 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

The apt-get autoremove worked. The other commands were not removing data in the correct place, wherever that was. Thanks for the help. Richard

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Comparitive security of different encryption schemes
by Chris Green 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

This should start a good arg...., sorry, discussion going! :-) I currently store various bits of sensitive information in files encrypted using my editor's (my editor is vile) 'crypt' option. This uses the system's crypt() function to encrypt/decrypt the files. The big advantage is simplicity, I simply do:- vi -k <password> file and the file is automatically decrypted and encrypted for me. There are some weaknesses though, crypt() isn't very secure (but see below, it's not *that* bad) and the password floats around in RAM and the environment. So I have been looking for improvements but I want to keep a simple interface. So what I have found so far (including the existing scheme) are as follows:- Existing Scheme =============== The vile editor using the -k command line option. The password is possibly visible to someone who has access to my machine while I'm using it but that's a fairly unlikely scenario. In addition the non-alphanumeric characters I have in my passwords mess up the dispay somewhat. The crypt() encryption isn't very secure *but* it's actually not easy to brute force. I tried encryption breaking tools like unixcrypt-breaker and they only work if the 'statistics' files have stuff quite similar to what you're decrypting. Since the files I have encrypted are fairly random (very few actual words in there) the encryption breaking generally produces rubbish. The only case where it came up with one approximate hit was where I had put a password string repeatedly in the statistics files which was also on the file to decrypt (thinks, vary my passwords more!). Use an encfs file system ======================== This is fairly simple, I already use it for some other storage, it wouldn't be too difficult to write a wrapper script for my editor to simplify usage. It uses the AES cipher, 192 or 256 bits. There are some reports that it needs updating to be really secure in the modern environment but it's probably 'good enough'. Use 'pass' with a GnuPG key =========================== The 'pass' program is effectively a wrapper script that makes it easy to use a GPG key for encrypting files. I've played with it a bit and (once I'd worked out how to generate my GPG key) it was pretty simple to use and provides me with the sort of interface I want. This thus gives a choice of key types and sizes. The object of the exercise (encrypted files) is to keep important, confidential things safe but easy to access. In particular I have electronic banking details and such in one file, that's probably the most sensitive one. Ease of access is important, as is portability, I need to use this on more than one computer. A USB stick is *not* the answer for me, I'll lose the stick! The big advantage of the 'existing scheme' is simple portability as it's just part of the editor I use everywhere. It's to protect against people finding out my passwords etc., the computers with the files on are reasonably secure (as in unlikely to be stolen). I guess the most likely thing to happen is someone getting access to the files so the most important thing is to be sure that the encryption is difficult to break. So - what to choose? I think my feeling is that the choice is between 'do nothing' (vi plus crypt()) and 'pass' with a GnuPG key. What does the team think? -- Chris Green

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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS get clean
by Richard McLellan 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

Hello folks. I am very much lost with all the programs taken out of this version. I last used a version 10.xx with lots of programs. However, I am unable to clear a folder which is low on space. I forget where the folder is but it's where the updates are stored. The popup box tells me to use sudo apt-get clean but this does nothing when I use the terminal. How can I get this resolved? Thanks. Richard

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One fine Thursday
by Anthony Anson 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

Was the Norwich meeting last week or will it be tomorrow? Nothing seen in Announcements. -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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Slow SSH connection
by Richard Lewis 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

Hello ALUG, I've noticed recently that all my SSH logins take some time (around 5-10 seconds). I found that I can configure sshd with the option: UseDNS no to fix this. However, that's not quite satisfactory. For one thing, I can only do that on hosts where I manage the sshd. And for another, it doesn't explain why connecting to *all* the servers I normally do became slow at the same time. So I've been looking for anything on my local computer that's making them slow but so far haven't been able to find anything. From the verbose output I can see that ssh waits after: debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent debug2: service_accept: ssh-userauth debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received debug2: key: /home/mas01rl/.ssh/id_rsa (0x7fc503a76690), debug2: key: /home/mas01rl/.ssh/id_dsa ((nil)), debug2: key: /home/mas01rl/.ssh/id_ecdsa ((nil)), debug2: key: /home/mas01rl/.ssh/id_ed25519 ((nil)), and then continues from: debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug3: start over, passed a different list publickey,password debug3: preferred publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,keyboard-interactive,password after a pause of 5-10 seconds. I noticed some discussion about the GSSAPI key exchange and how that can cause delays if you don't have Kerberos credentials. So I tried disabling it, but that didn't make any difference; and there weren't any relevant Kerberos error messages in the output anyway. (Also notice from the above output that I also tried changing the order of authentication methods to make GSSAPI come after publickey.) Any suggestions what else could be wrong? Or is it really that all the servers need to have 'UseDNS no'? And if so, what has changed about them all to make this necessary? Or could it be something to do with my network set up? Thanks, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis j: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li @: lewisrichard http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Using clamav (or other) to detect web application exploits
by Mark Rogers 14 Jan '15

14 Jan '15

Are there any clamav definition repositories that detect things like PHP shell scripts etc that might be uploaded as part of an exploit of something like Joomla? Or are there other tools that scan the filesystem looking for signs of an exploit? My google attempts have drawn a blank; there's plenty of external tools for trying to find an exploitable hole, but I'm talking about something to run internally to find evidence that a hole has been exploited, which isn't the same thing. A definition file for clamav seems the most obvious approach but I'm open to suggestions. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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DVD drive not recognised?
by Bev Nicolson 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

I'm attempting to burn an MP3 onto a DVD but there are a few problems not least of which that I'm a novice at this. I'm using DVD-R. My DVD drive doesn't appear to be recognised by either Brasero or XfBurn. It's told me one of them is full but I've clearly not done things properly as it won't play in my CD player. I need help. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Bev

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VPN, are there tutorials for the uninitiated anywhere?
by Chris Green 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

I'm thinking about using a VPN for remote access to my desktop machine when out and about. The obvious choice (?) is to run an OpenVpn server on my desktop machine and clients on my laptop or whatever when I'm away. I won't want to get access from 'foreign' machines on which I don't have the ability to install stuff. I've wandered around the OpenVpn website and can follow (I think!) all the technical stuff about how to install it etc. and how to run clients. What I don't understand and nowhere seems to tell me is what it actually does for me as a user. I mean there I am away from home somewhere and I've connected to the server using the OpenVpn client - then what? I don't think I get a home machine desktop as such, so what do I get? If I want to access my address book or configure my router what do I do? -- Chris Green

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Looking for a Linux distribution to run wholly in RAM
by Chris Green 09 Jan '15

09 Jan '15

I am building a backup server machine and I'm trying to minimise its power requirements. Originally I was going to give it two disk drives, one small one for the OS and a big one for the backups. There's space for more drives as/when the backups run out of space. I then though that maybe I could put the OS on a USB stick to save the power consumption of the small OS drive. Not going to be fast but saves a significant amount of power. Then I thought even further and, as the system I'm thinking of using for this has 8Gb or RAM installed why not run the OS from the RAM? I don't need/want a GUI, this is going to be a headless machine running just a basic installation plus rsync and a few utilities. Access will be by SSH. So, what distributions are there that would be easy to do this with? Requirements are basically:- Must have a non-GUI installation option that fits in a few Gb. Preferably designed to work like this so installation is simple and can be kept up to date without doing wierd things. Ideally Debian based as I'm familiar with it, but it's not vital. What I'm looking for is something that boots off a USB stick but doesn't use the USB stick once up and running, at least not for frequent writes. Loading programs off the USB is OK I guess. -- Chris Green

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Wanted - simple way to shrink pictures for web
by Chris Green 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

I have a wiki/blog (Dokuwiki) that displays selected pictures from my main pictures store. My pictures are stored in a <YEAR>/<MONTH>/<DAY> hierarchy and I have a script that searches for references to a specific date in the wiki and, if/when found, it copies the .jpg files to the appropriate place in the wiki. This is OK with the wiki software running on my desktop machine (though the image size does make the images rather slow to load) but now I want to run the wiki on a hosting service and the size of the images is taking up too much disk space. Is there any simple, automated way I can shrink the pictures? I don't want to have to specify a size for every one of them, I just want to shrink them to a 'reasonable' size. I can fairly easily add a command (or two) to my script that does the copy, e.g. an ImageMagick 'convert' but how to set the amount of shrinkage? -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th January
by Viperfang 05 Jan '15

05 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 ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 8th January at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- 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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Problems with Linux Mint 17.1
by Chris Walker 05 Jan '15

05 Jan '15

Hopefully somebody can help me with this one. One of sons has given the other son a Shuttle PC. He installed a couple of discs, set up LVM to make them appear as one and installed Linux Mint 17.1. All good so far. He couldn't do all the updates as his broadband wasn't quick enough so I offered to do those as number 2 son is staying with me for a few days. Next I thought I'd install all the usual stuff as he's going to be using the machine to feed content to his tv. That's where the fun begins. VLC went on fine. But If I run get_iplayer (latest version 2.91) it doesn't convert the files to mp3 as my own does. I can't find ffmpeg anywhere so after googling, I found a site that told me to add a repo. Tried doing that but get an error about aptsources which can't find a distribution template for LinuxMint/rebecca. I then tried the solution posted here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=183099 to add a couple of lines to /etc/apt/sources but I'm still getting the same error. I'm now going round in circles trying to fix various errors so thought it best to ask those who have greater knowledge than I. Hence, here I am! -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Mir - Wayland
by James Freer 04 Jan '15

04 Jan '15

I gather that Debian is going to go down the Wayland route. Ubuntu is following Mir which I gather has given problems to Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Kubuntu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_%28software%29 I am just wondering what will happen to the Debian derivative family - seems a break up is likely in 2015-2016. Be interested to hear from those in development what the future possibly holds. james

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'bouncing' USB ethernet connection - why?
by Chris Green 02 Jan '15

02 Jan '15

I am trying to use a USB-ethernet adapter to give me a second ethernet connection to an xubuntu 14.04 system. It's detected OK and drivers are loaded but Network Manager goes into a loop repeatedly saying the connection has been established and then saying it's disconnected. It cycles once very few seconds, say 10 seconds or so. It's set up with a static IP on a different subnet from the 'proper' ethernet. Does anyone have any idea what might be wrong? -- Chris Green

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