main February 2015

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23 participants
18 discussions

Wanted - decent interface for viewing pictures
by Chris Green 09 Feb '15

09 Feb '15

For the umpteenth time when we recently looked at some pictures I decided the 'media centre' way of looking at them is truly awful! I have my digitised photographs arranged the way I want them in a hierarchy of years/months/days with descriptions in (most of) the folder names. So when I view them I want to be able to use the hierarchy to navigate easily. We have a WD TV Live media player which is quite well thought of in reviews but it makes viewing pictures a real chore for a number of reasons:- It's slow by design because of the way it fades from one image to the next, thus you're never quite sure if you really have clicked on the '>' button or not. It hides the hierarchy above the current directory so you have to navigate by memory basically, or go too far up and then down again. No image manipulation at all, you can't zoom in for example. There's no way to jump to the next folder/directory in sequence, i.e. if I have just looked at 1973/04/07 I want an easy way to go to 1973/04/08 but I can't. The other 'media' software have seen (we have another make of media player where my wife stays during the week, also built-in TV apps) is no better as far as I can see. So, what I suspect I want is an easy way to use the program(s) I use on my Linux desktop (or laptop) directly on the TV screen. I could dedicate a system to the TV but this entails either leaving it on permanently or waiting for it to boot every time one uses it. A Raspberry Pi is a possibility, leaving it on is then not an issue but there are downsides like will it be fast enough and it needs a keyboard and mouse. Another fundamental problem is that whoever is managing showing the pictures needs to be close enough to the TV screen to read text and that's likely to be too close for comfortable viewing and/or sociability. So on to my final idea, use a laptop with the TV as a remote display. The viewing software runs on the laptop and the person running it can use the laptop keyboard and touchpad/mouse to control things. The only issue is handling the dual display, has anyone got any advice on this front, e.g. ways to have different views on two different displays, etc. -- Chris Green

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File manager with preview
by Mark Rogers 08 Feb '15

08 Feb '15

Somewhat prompted by Chris's picture viewing enquiry but sufficiently different to warrant a separate thread. I'm looking for a file manager for viewing directories in my PC, which as a decent preview feature. Ie typically I'd like to see a directory tree in a left pane, the file list in a middle pane, and a preview of the currently selected file in the right pane. Of particular interest is having the preview work on as many different file types as possible. Images obviously, but also PDF, .odt/.doc[x] etc. Background: It's for my wife (a bookkeeper). She has directories of files which are receipts in various formats (scanned images, PDFs, emails, etc) and for the purposes of entering them into an accounts package she often just needs a cursory glance at the file content to get at the date, value, and a general idea of what it was for. At the moment she's spending more time opening and closing documents than she is doing anything else. -- 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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DHCP failure after BIOS clock reset
by Mark Rogers 08 Feb '15

08 Feb '15

I have a little (headless) ARM box running Debian with a built in clock module, but whose battery had died. On replacement the box failed to get an IP address via DHCP. On investigation it appears that because the clock was "wrong" it couldn't perform DHCP queries ("Unable to setup timer"). I think "wrong" doesn't just mean inaccurate (it was claiming to be in 1928) but corrupt (hwclock reported corrupt registers). The clock would get reset by a time server as soon as it got online, but without valid clock it couldn't get online to get the valid clock... Anyone know any more about this or able to point to a general workaround for next time this happens? All I have found (after the event) is here: http://www.solid-run.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=525 .. which confirms what I thought but doesn't really offer a solution (logging in to set the clock on a remote headless unit isn't particularly convenient!) 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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Linux Mint 16 & Lenovo T520 Track Pad
by Paul Grenyer 07 Feb '15

07 Feb '15

Hi All I've a Lenovo T520 with Linux Mint 16 installed. It's been working perfectly until a few weeks ago when the track pad stopped working once I log in. After googling I've found a few people with the same problem but the solutions are a bit hit and miss and it never stays fixed after a reboot. Can anyone help, please? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer Have you got your ticket for NorDevCon yet: http://nordevcon.com Have you thought what Naked Element could do for you? http://nakedelement.co.uk/ It's time to get technical: http://norfolkdevelopers.com

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OT- Contract to manage RHEL VMs
by mick 06 Feb '15

06 Feb '15

Please forgive the OT nature of this request - or shout at me if you like. :-) An old friend of mine who works in IT procurement has just asked me if I could recommend a local company capable of bidding for a managed service covering some 250 RHEL VMs spread across about 50 physical hosts in various locations. The contract is to cover: packaging, deployment, acceptance testing, and production of services on Linux VMs; 1st line support and triage for all Linux VMs; 2nd line Linux VM software engineering support; patch control and management of Linux VMs deployed across the network. The systems are all RHEL and use NAGIOS, Puppet and a Ticket System called OTRS. He has given me a 20 page extract of the Procurement Requirements document which gives full details of what they have and what they are after. I know that there are subscribers to this list who work for companies capable of doing this but rather than spam the list unnecessarily, if anyone is interested please contact me off-list and I will forward the details. Thanks in advance. Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 6th February.
by Viperfang 03 Feb '15

03 Feb '15

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

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Samba configuration question/problem
by Chris Green 02 Feb '15

02 Feb '15

I hate Samba :-), I rarely use it and I can never get it to work without hours of swearing at it. I want to connect a camera by WiFi and it needs a Windows/NETBIOS type share to connect to so, much against my inclination, I have installed Samba. The basics work, smbclient can see the printer stuff that Samba installs by default but I can't get a file share to work. My smb.conf file is as follows, basically the default with the [homes] section uncommented (this is actually the output from 'testparm'):- [global] workgroup = IBMPEERS server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu) server role = standalone server map to guest = Bad User obey pam restrictions = Yes pam password change = Yes passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . unix password sync = Yes syslog = 0 log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m max log size = 1000 dns proxy = No usershare allow guests = Yes panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d idmap config * : backend = tdb [homes] comment = Home Directories read only = No create mask = 0644 browseable = No [printers] comment = All Printers path = /var/spool/samba create mask = 0700 printable = Yes print ok = Yes browseable = No [print$] comment = Printer Drivers path = /var/lib/samba/printers However smbclient doesn't show me anything but the printer stuff:- chris$ smbclient -L x201 Enter chris's password: Domain=[IBMPEERS] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 4.1.6-Ubuntu] Sharename Type Comment --------- ---- ------- IPC$ IPC IPC Service (x201 server (Samba, Ubuntu)) print$ Disk Printer Drivers LJ1320 Printer HP Laserjet 1320 Photosmart Printer HP Photosmart Prem C410 series Domain=[IBMPEERS] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 4.1.6-Ubuntu] Server Comment --------- ------- VIGOR Vigor Samba Server X201 x201 server (Samba, Ubuntu) Workgroup Master --------- ------- IBMPEERS X201 WORKGROUP BEN-PC If I try to connect to a share I get:- chris$ smbclient //x201/printers Enter chris's password: Domain=[IBMPEERS] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 4.1.6-Ubuntu] tree connect failed: NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED So what to I need to do to get it to work? -- Chris Green

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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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main February 2015