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change of email address
by Phil Thane 03 Oct '22

03 Oct '22

Hi (admin) folks, After years of maintaining my own website and email for work I'm finally admitting I'm retired and retiring my site. phil(a)pthane.co.uk will stop working next month so please update my membership details (or tell me how). The reply to address: philthane(a)gmax.co.uk will be my address from now on. Thanks. -- Phil Thane

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BIOS / EUFI
by Phil Thane 21 Sep '22

21 Sep '22

Hi folks, Still having fun with my 'new' PC. I mentioned before I thought the BIOS CMOS chip wasn't remembering stuff. Replaced the battery and it appears it does. But not everything. Two problems; a As previously remarked it won't retain choice of boot disk (SATA 0) and throws an error, 'no bootable media' unless I hit f9 to choose a disk, then it boots Grub properly. Even more weird the BIOS date changes, and Mint uses that that to set system time. It jumps forward sometimes by about three days. Most things work OK but emails are rejected as the date is implausible. can't reset it from Mint, have to reboot to BIOS and set there. Not every time though, seems random. -- Phil Thane Email: philthane(a)gmx.co.uk Tweet: @pthane Web: https://pthane.weebly.com

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erratic mouse
by Bev Nicolson 21 Sep '22

21 Sep '22

Erratic mouse behaviour is, I understand, usually a graphics card issue. How do I determine that? Symptoms: neither mouse (wired) or the mouse pad (Dell latitude e5530 - so not in the first flush) behave entirely as they should. I can try clicking on a link or icon and it won't recognise that I have done so till say the third click. It will highlight whole paragraphs of text if I click on a space to add a letter and delete them without my pressing the backspace key. But not always. Mint 19.1 all updates. Bev. P.S. The usb slot for the wired mouse is not as snug as it could be. Is that a factor?

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FLAC CD Ripper?
by Steve Mynott 21 Sep '22

21 Sep '22

Can anyone recommend a native Linux FLAC ripper which auto tags music with basic info like band and song name? Maybe something which resembles EAC since I've used EAC under Wine in the past which used a Free CD metadata library, but I'm not sure if the library is available any more? (note for admin there is a queued duplicate of this email which is HTML. Please ignore) -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> rsa3072/629FBB91565E591955B5876A79CEFAA4450EBD50

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Server email with minimal overhead
by Mark Rogers 20 Sep '22

20 Sep '22

I always seem to struggle with this most simple of configuration tasks! Starting from a clean install of (say) Ubuntu/Debian, and with a set of SMTP server credentials in your hand, what's the best/simplest way to get email set up so that emails from cron jobs get sent, and so that there's a minimal "mail" client at the commandline? I don't want the overheads of postfix + MySQL that things like mailutils bring in. (Or maybe I should accept those overheads?) The broader objective is that I can set the recipient address for email to root or other users, and the sender address from which emails get sent by default. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: Server email with minimal overhead
by Phil Ashby 20 Sep '22

20 Sep '22

On 15/09/2022 12:00, Mark Rogers <mark(a)more-solutions.co.uk> wrote: > > I always seem to struggle with this most simple of configuration tasks! > > Starting from a clean install of (say) Ubuntu/Debian, and with a set > of SMTP server credentials in your hand, what's the best/simplest way > to get email set up so that emails from cron jobs get sent, and so > that there's a minimal "mail" client at the commandline? > > I don't want the overheads of postfix + MySQL that things like > mailutils bring in. (Or maybe I should accept those overheads?) > > The broader objective is that I can set the recipient address for > email to root or other users, and the sender address from which emails > get sent by default. I would opt for msmtp-mta (standard package) which fakes sendmail: https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/msmtp-mta No daemons, queues, special accounts or other malarky, just an API that other programs know how to operate and a protocol engine that can talk SMTP to your real mail system. P.

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FLAC CD Ripper?
by Steve Mynott 17 Sep '22

17 Sep '22

Can anyone recommend a native Linux FLAC ripper which auto tags music with basic info like band and song name? Maybe something which resembles EAC since I've used EAC under Wine in the past which used a Free CD metadata library, but I'm not sure if the library is available any more? -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> rsa3072/629FBB91565E591955B5876A79CEFAA4450EBD50

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cmos jumper?
by Phil Thane 30 Aug '22

30 Aug '22

Hi, After years of upgrading and tinkering with my old desktop, I bought a 'new' one. 'New' as in assembled cheaply by my local computer shop from less than state of the art bits for £300. The machine came with a smallish SSD so I've fitted the 1TB HDD from my old PC alongside. Installed Mint on the SSD and linked my Nextcloud directory on the HDD onto my desktop. On the whole it works fine except the boot routine. On boot I get something like 'Unable to find operating system'. If I tap f9 during boot I get a table of boot options and choosing SATA 0 (ie the SSD) makes it boot as expected. But obviously it's annoying. f10 (I think) takes me into BIOS settings and it appears I can set boot order something I've done on various machines for donkey's years but on this one it doesn't stay in memory, on the next boot it once again cannot find the OS. Also, I noticed the date/time settings keep going wrong. Usual cause of this is either corrupted CMOS settings or more likely a faulty mainboard battery. Either could also be preventing BIOS storing settings. So off with the cover and look for the CMOS jumper. Can't find it. Can't find a decent hi res image of the board online and the instructions on the board manual tell you to move the jumper from pins 1 + 2 to 2+3 (which I knew) but not where it is. Near the battery is a 2 pin header with no label (could be a fan?) and a bit further away a multipin header but I can't make out what that's for, possibly USB? neither has any connectors or jumpers on. So, next step, I removed the battery and tested it. 3.12V which is fine. Left out for a few minutes which should reset BIOS but it didn't cure the problem. I've spent ages searching for info on this specific board with no luck. Can anyone help? Details: Mainboard MS-7778 VER 1.0 On boot I get an HP logo so I suspect the shop recycled it from an HP machine. -- Phil

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Re: How to Change Group
by Phil Ashby 14 Jul '22

14 Jul '22

On 13/07/2022 12:00, steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk wrote: > > Hi All > > Due to some historical ineptitude, I have ended up with this situation. > > On my Server, I have UserA, with User ID 1001, and Group ID 1001. > > On my main laptop, I have > > User A UID 1001 GID 1002 > User B UID 1002 GID 1001 > > I've just discovered this. Now, when I open files on a NFS share, > they're shown on my laptop as owned by User A, Group User B, despite the > server thinking they're both User A. > > On my laptop, I need to change the group IDs round in the /etc/group > file so they're consistent with the user IDs. I also need to change any > files legitimately owned by User A or User B to have the "correct" group ID. > > User A is my main laptop user. I have got another - User C I can login as. > > I suspect, what I'll have to do is > > Login as User C > > #something like... > > #change files gid 1001 to gid 4444 > sudo find {magic to find Gid 1001} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod > :4444 "the file" > > #change files gid 1002 to gid 1001 > sudo find {magic to find Gid 1002} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod > :1001 "the file" > > #change files gid 4444 to gid 1002 > sudo find {magic to find Gid 4444} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod > :1002 "the file" > > Then I'll need to change the GID numbers somehow in the Group file. The > simplest way I can think of is just edit the file, save it, then > immediately reboot. > > Before I do this, can anyone see any GOTCHA!s? > > Any suggestions or advice please? Hi Steve, I've had to do similar a few times (also ineptitude in the past, and adding different people to different machines, while having an NFS store in the middle). Gotchas: - everything will be weird until the users log off/on again. - you should re-mount the NFS to drop caches (or restart machine). - files on the server need processing too if there are any from userB Process: - as suggested, go via a non-affected user C, do the sudo/su dance as appropriate for your setup. - use 'vigr' (and 'vigr -s') to update the group files so that you have the IDs allocated as desired (using vigr tell the kernel to re-cache) - unless you know there are files outside user home folders (unlikely), do not attempt a find/chgrp, simply apply a recursive change to the home folder # cd ~userA # chgrp -R userA . # cd ~userB # chgrp -R userB . - safest to restart the machine, and check all is as you expect :) - if you want to try a find/chgrp.. here's the magic I know: # find / -mount -group <gname> -print0 |xargs -0 chgrp <newgname> > from the root, without crossing mount points (you might omit this if you're sure the NFS mount isn't there!), find files with the specified group name or number, spit 'em out with \0 separators to avoid pain with white space in file names. Pipe to xargs which expects \0 separators, then runs chgrp to the required group name in large (efficient) blocks. Cheers, P.

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How to Change Group
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 13 Jul '22

13 Jul '22

Hi All Due to some historical ineptitude, I have ended up with this situation. On my Server, I have UserA, with User ID 1001, and Group ID 1001. On my main laptop, I have User A UID 1001 GID 1002 User B UID 1002 GID 1001 I've just discovered this. Now, when I open files on a NFS share, they're shown on my laptop as owned by User A, Group User B, despite the server thinking they're both User A. On my laptop, I need to change the group IDs round in the /etc/group file so they're consistent with the user IDs. I also need to change any files legitimately owned by User A or User B to have the "correct" group ID. User A is my main laptop user. I have got another - User C I can login as. I suspect, what I'll have to do is Login as User C #something like... #change files gid 1001 to gid 4444 sudo find {magic to find Gid 1001} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod :4444 "the file" #change files gid 1002 to gid 1001 sudo find {magic to find Gid 1002} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod :1001 "the file" #change files gid 4444 to gid 1002 sudo find {magic to find Gid 4444} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod :1002 "the file" Then I'll need to change the GID numbers somehow in the Group file. The simplest way I can think of is just edit the file, save it, then immediately reboot. Before I do this, can anyone see any GOTCHA!s? Any suggestions or advice please? Thanks in advance. Steve

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