October 2016 - main

Is there such a thing as an ethernet switch with WiFi?
by Chris Green 31 Oct '16

31 Oct '16

This isn't really specifically a Linux question but I'm sure the ALUG team should be able to come up with an answer. I want a box which is an ethernet switch/hub (ideally an 8-port though five might be just enough) and also provides WiFi. I.e. a switch with both wired and wifi connections. It doesn't have to have any other intelligence, it doesn't need to be a router or anything. This is to hang onto the ethernet port of an outdoor WiFi access point which is running in WISP Client mode (a TP-Link TL-WA7210). The TL-WA7210 provides DHCP and DNS (via the WiFi hotspot it's connected to) so all I want is a box to provide multiple wired and wifi connections to the LAN side of the TL-WA7210. Is there such a beast? Is there a specific name for it? -- Chris Green

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iplayer issues
by Chris Walker 31 Oct '16

31 Oct '16

I recently built myself an HP ProLiant server. It's running Ubuntu server and I have most things working except the get_iplayer PVR option. I can run get_iplayer as the user as I have a script on the box which runs and can set the output correctly and transcode it into the required formats (radio and tv). So everything *appears* to run ok. But when I add the pvr option, I don't get the required downloads. Just in case it was something I'd done on the server, I tried creating a pvr list on this machine with just one radio programme, but again, when I run the pvr command, I don't get any downloads, only the statement that it's 'Running PVR Searches:'. Has anybody any idea where I'm going wrong please as I've spent many hours on this now and I'm getting nowhere despite looking through several pages of FAQ on the get_iplayer forums. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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SETI etc
by Mark Rogers 27 Oct '16

27 Oct '16

I have a virtual server at a hosting provider that I've cancelled, but it's got a few weeks left of what's currently been paid so rather than just leave it switched off I wondered about using it for something like SETI or similar. I really don't have time to configure and play with something; it really wants to be as close to "apt-get install seti" and walk away as I can get. It's also worth bearing in mind that this isn't a high power VM and I don't want to do anything that will upset the hosting provider by overstressing it. Suggestions? Or should I just leave it to fester? 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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Server permissions
by Chris Walker 25 Oct '16

25 Oct '16

Having bought an HP ProLiant server, I have finally managed to install Ubuntu Server on it and configure all the shares on it to replicate my old Edimax NAS. The problem comes when I try to run get_iplayer. What I used to do was run get_iplayer on this machine but save the files to the Edimax in a Media_Share folder. That same folder exists on the Ubuntu box, but although I can write to it from here, get_iplayer on ubuntu can't write to it. My intention is to have get_iplayer run every few hours but I'm guessing that it will still run as the main user on the box and therefore will still have problems writing to the share. Plainly I'd like a solution to this. My initial thought was to add the user to the same group as the one that owns the share but is this the best way to do it or is there another way? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Making sense of ps
by Mark Rogers 24 Oct '16

24 Oct '16

I'm trying to monitor the memory usage of kweb running on a Pi. I have always found ps confusing with its multiple UNIX/BSD/GNU personalities. This is what I started with: $ps -F -C kweb UID PID PPID C SZ RSS PSR STIME TTY TIME CMD pi 936 756 1 67783 111088 1 09:53 ? 00:02:47 kweb -KFJHEP I find that the SZ/RSS values increase over time then drop, presumably due to some garbage collection (I'm really just guessing!). However the %age of memory used by kweb according to "top" keeps increasing, and is closer to the values I get from: $ps uax |grep -E '(kweb|USER)' USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND pi 936 1.1 11.7 271380 111304 ? Sl 09:53 2:47 kweb -KFJHEP What figures should I care about if I'm trying to track down a possible memory leak, and how do i coax them out of ps (or another tool)? Bonus question: What's the best way to get the values I'm interested in as a comma separated string (I'm trying to build a CSV file I can investigate in LibreOffice). A simple search & replace for spaces to commas doesn't work because spaces occur within some fields (and especially if I try to include other fields like start or running times). 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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Ubuntu has trashed the RAID
by Chris Walker 18 Oct '16

18 Oct '16

I've installed Ubuntu server on to a recently purchased HP ProLiant server. I did it first without my 2 1TB drives in it as I wanted to make sure that everything worked. It did and I could ssh into it from here. I then installed the 2 1TB drives which came from my old NAS machine and tried again. When the HP booted, it failed to see the SSD on to which I'd installed Ubuntu and as my skills aren't sufficiently good to rescue the system, and as I'd not done anything special to Ubuntu, I re-installed it. But Ubuntu has written the swap partition, not to the SSD but to one of the RAID drives which I'm not impressed by. I still have all the data on another disc so I'm not worried too much about that, I'm more concerned with how I move the swap partition to the SSD. Any suggestions on how I might go about that? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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[green.blackhousekeeping@gmail.com: Re: [alug social] Hello from new subscriber]
by Steve Engledow 17 Oct '16

17 Oct '16

Did anyone else get this bizarre bit of spam? Love it :) (Sent from my Arch linux machine - I don't run Ubuntu ;) ----- Forwarded message from Hung Sing Choy Li Fut Lady虎爪 <green.blackhousekeeping(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:58:26 +0100 From: Hung Sing Choy Li Fut Lady虎爪 <green.blackhousekeeping(a)gmail.com> To: Steve Engledow <steve(a)offend.me.uk> Subject: Re: [alug social] Hello from new subscriber You are misnamed. You call yourself a Linux user group, but you should call it an Ubuntu User Group, since Ubuntu users are clearly all you are prepared to accept. They're certainly the only people you're prepared to offer help to, even if you could help them convert to Ubuntu from my experience. Once a Fedora user, condemned forever, apparently. Oh and the problem turned out to be with my hardware, not my OS. If you had been able to get over laughing at me for being so utterly stupid as to use Fedora, you might have been able to help me work that out. Can't say the attitude I've experienced has made me want to convert to Ubuntu. If that is what Ubuntu users are like, you can keep your supposedly superior Linux system. On 13 Oct 2016 12:05, "Steve Engledow" <steve(a)offend.me.uk> wrote: > Hi Ian, > > Don't worry, we'll be conspicuous enough ;) > > Steve > > On 10/10, Ian Henderson wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I'm Ian. > > > > I've just braved the new world (for me) of Linux (Ubuntu), having been > > a long-time user both personally and professionally of Windows. Kind > > of scary and exciting to find myself a complete newbie with an OS > > again. But Microsoft's push updates and the critical role that my > > laptop has for me means I need to make the change or risk periods with > > no computer. > > > > I understand that you meet every 2nd Thursday in the Coach & Horses > > pub - and am assuming that means this Thursday (13th) at 8pm? If so, > > I'd like to go along so would ask you to "make yourselves > > conspicuous"(!) if you would, please. :) > > > > I'm happy to exchange home tel no with someone if you think that wise. > > > > Take care, all, > > Ian > > (C) Copyright 2016 by Ian Henderson. All rights reserved. > > Do not pass on my email address without my prior written consent (if > > emailing multiple recipients at the same time, use the BCC field in > > place of the To field). > > > _______________________________________________ > > The Alug Social mailing list > > To post: Social(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > To change your subscription options, visit:- > > https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/social > > > _______________________________________________ > The Alug Social mailing list > To post: Social(a)lists.alug.org.uk > To change your subscription options, visit:- > https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/social > ----- End forwarded message -----

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Re: [ALUG] Recovering a NAS
by Chris Walker 14 Oct '16

14 Oct '16

On Thu, 29 Sep 2016 16:58:07 +0100 mick <mbm(a)rlogin.net> wrote: > On Tue, 27 Sep 2016 14:52:28 +0100 > Chris Walker <alug_cdw(a)the-walker-household.co.uk> allegedly wrote: > > [ some snips ] > > > > 2009 is a long time ago. Time to upgrade. :-) > > > > I didn't realise it was so long ago until I started looking for the > > receipt. It's stored as a scanned image on the NAS ;-) > > But of course you have a backup copy... :-) Isn't that what RAID is for? So, as you might well assume from the previous line, no I don't have another copy as I've always trusted RAID to deliver everything for me. I'm beginning to see the error of my ways though. > I'd agree with Steve. If you wish to continue to use a separate NAS, > then build a PC to hold the disks and copy the data to new disks. I've > had success with both debian and ubuntu in both raid 1 and 5. My > current NAS uses 4 * 2 TB disks in a raid 5 array (backed up to a 6 TB > USB disk) built using ubuntu server 16.04. (Incidentally, if you > haven't already seen it, the "Wintel Guy" has a useful site at > http://wintelguy.com/raidcalc.pl giving all sorts of useful info about > raid configurations.) Thanks. I'll take a look at that site. I'm tending to move to the 'build a PC for NAS' idea. I've looked at small(ish) cases and now need to start looking for suitable motherboards and power supplies. > > Noel Galer suggested that I look on ebay for a replacement Edimax > > NAS box. Been there, done that, but all the t-shirts were sold out. > > You don't want an old T shirt anyway. I've already got plenty :-) > > I think the drives hold something like 850GB of files of all sorts. > Given that, I'd go for 2 * 2 TB disks in raid 1. Ok. Assuming that's the route I take, and adopt your maxim of backing that up to a large USB disc, can I automate that? I don't mind copying stuff to a NAS but then don't want to have to go to the trouble of copying stuff to a USB disc as well. The reason I want it to be automatic is that I know things will be overlooked if they're not. P.S. I remembered to copy this to the list as well this time! -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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diff of binary files with helper program
by Mark Rogers 07 Oct '16

07 Oct '16

I need to perform diff against DBF (dBase database) files. dvview does a decent job of turning them into text files, but I don't want to have to convert all the files to text just to perform a diff. So I want a way to do something like: diff --helper=dbview file1.dbf file2.dbf .. or diff $(dbview file1.dbf) $(dbview file2.dbf) .. so that the files get converted to text on the fly. (Neither of those are remotely valid but hopely they get the idea across.) Is there a good way to do this? One objective is to do this using streams if possible, so that if file1.dbf and file2.dbf are very large there isn't any need to intermediate storage of files, but that isn't a huge problem if that's the only solution. -- 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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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 7th October.
by Viperfang 04 Oct '16

04 Oct '16

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

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