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Evil Computers
by Tracy Dickerson 17 May '06

17 May '06

Hey guys and gals, Thank you for all your helpful posts and for welcoming me so nicely. I know have a pc at home (a friend of mine gave me his old one). I have a new problem for you to think about (if you would like to) The network card worked fine to install Fedora Core 5 on top of Windows 98 from the internet. When Windows had been wiped and Fedora was installed, I managed (with a little trouble) to connect to the internet and get all my e-mails etc (lovely 206 of them *sigh*) Then the next morning after switching on, the network card seemed to be found but would not connect to the outside world. Nothing had changed and I can't work out why this has happened. I have deleted all the network settings and rebooted, this didn't help, so I took out the network card and re-seated it. Again nothing happened. The only thing I can think of that I have not tested is the network cable that runs into my housemates router. This also hasn't changed or moved and we checked the router. He is getting a connection. Puzzled now. Any suggestions before I buy a new network card and start again? Tracy x _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Bletchley Park
by Richard Lewis 17 May '06

17 May '06

Hello ALUG, Just before we all left last night, I remembered that a little while ago on IRC mention had been made of a possible trip to Bletchley Park. Now that the weather has taken a turn for the better, I wonder if anyone still thinks this may be fun? There's a fairly informative website at: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ They do group weekend visits between 10:30 and 17:00 for 8.00 GBP per head for 20+ people and allow (possibly require) booking. Maps and various route planning info: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/visit/findus.rhtm For those of us in Norwich, the train journey is not all that good: AFAICT you need to go through London (Liverpool St -> Euston) and it takes about 3:30 hours. By road it will probably take about 3 hours (A11, through Thetford, Cambridge, A428 through Bedford to Milton Keynes). Any thoughts? Cheers, Richard -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Re: [linux-users] Segfaults with Firefox-1.0
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 17 May '06

17 May '06

On 17-May-06 David Johnson wrote: > On Wednesday 17 May 2006 13:53, Ted Harding wrote: >> >> If anyone else would like to try this and report >> results, I'd be obliged. >> > > I'm seeing the same issue with my Firefox (v1.0.8), > but Konqueror has no problems with it. > > Accessing it with popup blocking disabled seems to fix it, > so I guess it's a bug in Firefox's popup blocking... > > Regards, > David. Thanks, Dave (Gilbert) for confirming that firefox can be flaky, and David (Johnson) for the above. Yes, you were right! Disabling pop-up blocking solves the problem. The reason http://www.shop.bt.com bombs right out is that you get one of those smarmy "special offers and competitions" popups while the top page is still loading. You're not meant to miss it! (Which leads me to wonder: can a website send a popup which might force a popup blocker to segfault? Good way to get you to turn off the blocker ... ). Thanks, and all best wishes, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 17-May-06 Time: 14:21:46 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Segfaults with Firefox-1.0
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 17 May '06

17 May '06

Hi Folks, I've been noticing a tendency for my Firefox-1.0 to segfault when accessing certain sites. It may not be Firefox of course, but a possible (e.g.) RAM weakness or something else hardware related. The message to the terminal is always run-mozilla.sh: line 451: 2894 Segmentation fault "$prog" ${1+"$@"} which is a line in the startup-script. One site which seems to trigger it every time is http://www.shop.bt.com If anyone else would like to try this and report results, I'd be obliged. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 17-May-06 Time: 13:53:05 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Encryption
by Richard Brooklyn 17 May '06

17 May '06

The other day, I got myself a new laptop, all is well and good with it running Ubuntu Dapper. I saw a article in Linux Format about encrypting the hard drive. I did follow it closely, but was unable to make it work. This was probably due to me trying to encrypt / instead of something like /home so I gave up. But I do wish to try again. I've just downloaded OpenSUSE 10.1, which gives the option to encrypt during the installation. It [the OpenSUSE install] seems to work pretty well, especially if you're just a single user, you can set a nice long password for /home, and it will ask for the passphrase during start-up, which I was very happy with. But it's got me wondering. Exactly how secure is this? Let's say I can use either OpenSUSE 10.1 or Ubuntu Dapper .. Say someone steals my laptop. Is it possible they will ever get hold of my data (ie. decrypt it)? Should I be encrypting more than just /home? (I was thinking about /tmp -- but I don't want to keep entering in loads of passphrases on every boot). Is it possible to encrypt / at all? That would be very handy, then it's just one passphrase, and I know that everything is secure, but I know I can expect a performance hit with this (which is not important). Cheers, Richard.

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64 bit operating systems
by Nick Daniels 16 May '06

16 May '06

Hi Many thanks for all the advice: I downloaded Suse 10.1x64 this weekend and it runs perfectly, and detect all my hardware, however, I am determined to get Kubuntu/ Ubuntu running as well The problem with the Xsever not starting in Ubuntu 64 bit appears forums, with the answer "change the driver from "nv" to "vesa" in xorg.conf" How can I edit xorg.conf from the command line? Kind regard- Nick Daniels

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NHS to use Linux
by Stuart Bailey 16 May '06

16 May '06

Thought this might be of some interest... http://www.novell.com/offices/emea/uk/news/press/2006/newsletter_nhs.html -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Owner) Linux Specialist (0845) 6583563 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ----------------------------------------

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 15 May '06

15 May '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Heeeelp! My display system is rather messed up.
by Barry Samuels 14 May '06

14 May '06

First an apology. This message may appear twice because I forgot to set my identity in the mailer so the first one may not make it. I'm running Debian Testing (Etch). I've been waiting 6 months to do an update because K3b was missing from the distribution for about that time and it has just reappeared. So I did the update and then discovered that my mga drivers from Matrox no longer work. I see that other people had the same problem. There is an MGA driver package listed but it depends on the xserver-xorg-core package which isn't in the distribution (this is getting ridiculous). Matrox don't (yet?) provide a driver for xorg 6.9 but after a search I found that someone had modified the latest Matrox driver to suit 6.9 which I have now installed. There is still something seriously wrong with the display system however and I don't know if it's an xorg thing or something else. I don't think it's the new MGA driver because I get console problems even if I don't run X. If I run 'joe', the editor, from a standard console (No X) I find I cannot get out using Ctrl-C, it's just ignored, but I can exit with Ctrl-K-X. However I then have to type 'reset' to get the console to behave properly. Whilst in the editor I often can't scroll down to see the end of the file. I cannot start X as a user but I can as root. If I start X as root and then exit I have to do the 'reset' thing again. I can start KDM as root and then log in as a user but if I logout, back to KDM, I'm stuck because Ctrl-Alt-Fn doesn't work either. All I can do is reboot. Is this likely to be an xorg problem and where do I look to solve it? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Heeeelp! my display is rather messed up.
by Barry Samuels 14 May '06

14 May '06

I'm running Debian Testing (Etch). I've been waiting 6 months to do an update because K3b was missing from the distribution for about that time and it has just reappeared. So I did the update and then discovered that my mga drivers from Matrox no longer work. I see that other people had the same problem. There is an MGA driver package listed but it depends on the xserver-xorg-core package which isn't in the distribution (this is getting ridiculous). Matrox don't (yet?) provide a driver for xorg 6.9 but after a search I found that someone had modified the latest Matrox driver to suit 6.9 which I have now installed. There is still something seriously wrong with the display system however and I don't know if it's an xorg thing or something else. I don't think it's the new MGA driver because I get console problems even if I don't run X. If I run 'joe', the editor, from a standard console (No X) I find I cannot get out using Ctrl-C, it's just ignored, but I can exit with Ctrl-K-X. However I then have to type 'reset' to get the console to behave properly. Whilst in the editor I often can't scroll down to see the end of the file. I cannot start X as a user but I can as root. If I start X as root and then exit I have to do the 'reset' thing again. I can start KDM as root and then log in as a user but if I logout, back to KDM, I'm stuck because Ctrl-Alt-Fn doesn't work either. All I can do is reboot. Is this likely to be an xorg problem and where do I look to solve it? Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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