- main - earth.li

11 Sep '25

I'm using Betterbird, which for the most part is pretty good. There is a puzzle though. I have drafts folders for all the other email addresses except one. I've tried restoring the folder and looked into the settings at copies and folders but there’s no way to copy the draft folder to where it should be. Is it possible to edit the location to achieve this or that fraught with risk? All drafts for this one address get saved in the local folders. Bev (Linux Mint 21.2.) (sending this again as the first one was inadvertently not in plain text format.)

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Flatpak program not shown in main menu
by Bev 08 Sep '25

08 Sep '25

I thought I'd try switching to the Flatpak version of Evolution, rather than the one that comes in Synaptic and assumed it would go smoothly. Ha. The problem is, as my subject heading says, that it doesn't show up in any menus and I can't pin it the panel. Is there any way of solving this? Bev (Linux Mint 21.2.)

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Ted Harding
by Jonathan McDowell 29 Apr '25

29 Apr '25

I was delighted to see our very own Ted Harding mentioned in LWN's interview with Owen Le Blanc (creator of the first Linux distribution, MCC Interim Linux): https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1017846/738cd9cf2defd37f/ That caused me to go and see when we'd last seen him on-list - looks like it was back in 2019. Further digging revealed that he passed away in October 2020: https://edwardharding.muchloved.com/ A great loss. J. -- Web [ Know Thy User. ] site: https:// [ ] Made by www.earth.li/~noodles/ [ ] HuggieTag 0.0.24

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Recurring error message after updates to Linux Mint
by Phil Wade 27 Feb '25

27 Feb '25

Second attempt - hopefully in plain text :-( wonder whether anyone else has ever had this? The following text is displayed as an error message after downloading and installing updates to Linux Mint XFCE - every time. "W: Target Packages (main/binary-amd64/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target Packages (main/binary-i386/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target Packages (main/binary-all/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en_GB) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target DEP-11 (main/dep11/Components-amd64.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target DEP-11 (main/dep11/Components-all.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target CNF (main/cnf/Commands-amd64) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target CNF (main/cnf/Commands-all) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1" If OK is clicked it just goes away, but I'm at an age where any perceived error on my part is worrying 🙁 Thanks, Phil Wade

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imap login slow
by Bev Nicolson 05 Feb '25

05 Feb '25

Hallo? Is this thing still on? Let's see. I use Betterbird and recently it's started to be slower at logging into my email accounts with imap. Not glacially slow, but not as nippy as it was. I have googled but I'd quite like some plain English advice about what I could try to speed it up a notch. Bev. P.S. And while I'm here, I have two Alug accounts. How do I ditch one of them?

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Re: imap loogin slow
by Peter 31 Jan '25

31 Jan '25

>Just wondering something. On Windows* (at least this was the case >decades ago) if you uninstalled then reinstalled a misbehaving program >all the settings stayed in place. Does the same work with an email >client on Linux? And is that even worth trying, more to the point? I think it does retain all settings. At least on Debian and claws mail. I seem to remember having to do a complete system reinstall, and just kept my home folder untouched, and everything worked fine on restart. I don't recall any more whether I had to point claws to the files again, don't think so. You can make completely safe by backing up the settings and mail files, and I would. Then if they do get overwritten during the resinstall you just copy them back. I have done this on Debian with claws when making a laptop in sync with a desktop. Just installed claws, then overwrote the new files it had created with the corresponding desktop ones, and all the files and settings were there just as on the desktop. Safest to back up first, why risk it. Is it worth doing? Don't know. I would be inclined first to try with another email client and see if it happens with that. I really like claws, its light and fast and it will handle many thousands of emails locally with no problem. At least that would tell you whether its the client or something common to both of them. Though I can't really imagine what that would be! Peter

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Re: imap login slow
by Phil Ashby 26 Jan '25

26 Jan '25

On 26/01/2025 12:00, Bev Nicolson <lumos(a)gmx.co.uk> wrote > > Hallo? Is this thing still on? Let's see. I use Betterbird and recently > it's started to be slower at logging into my email accounts with imap. > Not glacially slow, but not as nippy as it was. I have googled but I'd > quite like some plain English advice about what I could try to speed it > up a notch. > In addition to Chris' suggestion of a huge mail folder, it might be network connection time - sometimes my Thunderbird takes a while to resolve the server address (particularly if I've just opened the laptop and WiFi needs to connect first), once connected it's snappy to operate. > Bev. > > P.S. And while I'm here, I have two Alug accounts. How do I ditch one > of them? You can manage your membership here: https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman3/postorius/lists/ Pick a list (eg main), use the Subscription / Unsubscription bit :) Phil.

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Extracting a zip file
by Bev Nicolson 08 Sep '24

08 Sep '24

I may have asked this before but can someone patiently explain how to extract a zip file? It's a font I've downloaded and it's just stuck there on the desktop and neither use not ornamant at the moment. Terminal or GUI options. TIA. Bev

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Problems with epubs
by Peter 10 Jul '24

10 Jul '24

Since upgrading to Debian Bookworm epub reading doesn't work. Well, the only reader that works is fbreader, and that insists on putting a hyphen after every word! I have tried everything recommended on the net to fix this hyphenation addition, and they none of them have worked. But at least fbreader loads and opens the files. Otherwise, I have tried foliate, which fails with this: KMS: DRM_IOCTL_MODE_CREATE_DUMB failed: Permission denied Failed to create GBM buffer of size 960x593: Permission denied I don't understand either what this means or what to do about it. Bookworm, seems like its opening the epub file but displays nothing. Tried going to dark mode, doesn't help. Tried changing fonts, also doesn't help. Calibre, which imports, but its reader will not open the file. I have tried converting, epub to epub, but it doesn't help. Sigil opens the files and displays them properly (with no added hyphens!). But its not a reader, of course. I installed epub-tools, makes no difference. I know the files are OK, partly because both fbreader and sigil display them (though fbreader with added hyphens!), partly because they have opened in the past with no problems, partly because they open with no problems in a kobo e-reader. They may be old version epubs since many of them are classics from gutenberg. But a lot are from the kobo store, and none of them display either. Another funny thing is that bookworm can be selected from 'open with', and loads but fails to display, but I can't find it anywhere by searching for it, and when entered as a command from the terminal it says no such command. I installed it using gdebi, ass I did foliate, and in both cases all dependencies were met. There was also a strange thing, pcmanfm, which I usually use, would open the kobo e-reader, and then start to not recognise it as a usb drive and crash. Don't know if this is connected, don't really see how it could be, since the files that are failing to open are on the desktop machine and are failing when the kobo is not plugged in. I fixed this by using a different file manager, xfe, which works fine. Actually xfe is a very nice file manager at least as good as pcmanfm. I have an nvidia graphics card and am uising the nvidia driver, could that possibly have anything to do with it? Can't see how. Pdfs are displaying fine, graphics don't seem to have any problems. Its just epubs as far as I can tell. Any ideas? Peter

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Re: VPN options
by Mark Rogers 09 Jul '24

09 Jul '24

On Thu, 13 Jun 2024 at 11:08, BD <dzidek23(a)gmail.com> wrote: > An example that I have seen working was a ZTNA configuration with Fortinet hardware and SDN for network separation. That sort of thing will be out of my budget! > I suspect the same thing could be achieved using pfSense and network management (with > a nice GUI to control it). Quick search on the Internet for "pfSense zero trust" returned a > few interesting sites. Additionally pfSense can serve as a VPN concentrator too. I spent a bit of time looking into this. The biggest issue for me is that it's FreeBSD and most of our stuff is hosted at DigitalOcean, and they no longer offer FreeBSD as an option. I can of-course look elsewhere, but DO combine the bandwidth of all your services and we're nowhere close to using it all, so putting a VPN which could potentially be fairly heavy traffic somewhere it can use that bandwidth makes sense if I can. I spent ages playing with Wireguard - there are some useful tools for building the config ([1], [2]) but I never got a configuration which worked properly with my phone over mobile data (or my laptop using mobile data over a hotspot) and as that's one of the main things I needed to achieve I ended up walking away from my attempts (in part because I managed to get the old SSL-based VPN working over those connections by turning off "FastSSL". I'd like to get this working at some point but a day and half of experimenting and getting nowhere useful was as much (more if I'm honest) as I could afford to allocate to it. [1] https://www.wireguardconfig.com/ - Configuration builder [2] https://github.com/mvpsnet/wireguard4vps - PHP-based manager -- 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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