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Broadband dilemma
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 09 Oct '05

09 Oct '05

Hi Folks, I'd welcome comments on the following situation. According to the Sphinx, my exchange is due to be BB enabled on 12 October -- a mere 4 days off!!!! It's a BT exchange (Brandon Creek), a BT phone line, and I'm a BT customer for the telephone service (and, currently, also for dialup acess). The only external signs of activity I've seen so far, passing by the other day, is that the radio dish on top of the pole, which used to face South towards Littleport, now faces North. So maybe something really is happening! More to the point, between me and it is some 5km of overhead cable, as things stand at the moment (they sometimes fall down, literally ... ). BT's website tells me, this morning: "Check availability - results For Telephone Number 01353676*** on Exchange BRANDON CREEK Our initial test on your line indicates that you may be able to get Broadband from BT with speeds up to 1Mb, which is up to 20 times faster than dial-up. At the moment, your telephone line is unable to support our 2Mb speed broadband package. Also, due to the length of your line, an engineer visit may be required to set up your broadband service. Your local BT telephone exchange is unable to support broadband at the moment, but it will by 12th October 2005. If you decide to place an order, a further test will be performed to confirm if your line is suitable for the speed of service you wish to order. Order Broadband from BT online and get a FREE modem saving you a £25 charge which applies if you order by phone." This raises a number of issues, in the context of the fact that, a priori, I'm not that keen to order broadband from BT anyway, for various reasons (one of which is their attitude to non-Windows users -- their basic service, for example, is apparently not even Mac-compatible!). 1. "you may be able to get Broadband from BT with speeds up to 1Mb," 2. "Also, due to the length of your line, an engineer visit may be required to set up your broadband service." 3. "If you decide to place an order, a further test will be performed to confirm if your line is suitable for the speed of service you wish to order." All of this tends to point to the possibility that it might not work without engineer intervention (if at all ... ). So the dilemma is: If I order broadband from a non-BT ISP, where would their engineer stand, being non-BT, in the event of difficulties arising from the BT part of the system (the setup in the exchange, the length and quality of the overhead cable, the final line from the pole to my house, etc. The latter, for instance, had to be renewed by a BT engineer a while ago because its covering had perished, letting the rain in to the cable. Who knows what the cable's like further back along the line ... )? Would a non-BT engineer be able to fix problems that a BT engineer could fix (which might involve fiddling with exchange setups)? If there could be snags on that front, then maybe going for non-BT might be a bad idea, though on other grounds it would be a good idea! (I'm particularly tempted by comments on some of the ISPs that have come up recently on ALUG). Another issue is the "modem/router" that BT would supply (free according to the above, though that's not an important factor). I wonder how a non-BT modem/router would work in this case. I happen to have in hand at the moment a Peak CAS4047 "High Speed 1 WAN 4LAN Broadband Router" (quoting from the box), which claims to be RJ45-connectable to a Cable/DSL modem, so this should in principle be OK provided there's a modem for it to connect to. But I wonder about the BT "modem/router". I've tested the Peak's browser accessibility (point Firefox to "http://192.168.1.254" and you can have a nice little chat with it, apparently allowing all sorts of things to be set up including routing to the internal fixed IPs of your LAN, while getting a dynamic IP for itself from the ISP, not to mention various firewalling options). So it looks good. But it would be plugging into the BT modem. Any likely problems? NB that BT assert on their website that their "modem/router" requires Windows compatibility. I'm not going to waste my time trying to find out from BT Customer Support whether that's really true, or whether you can just switch it on, plug in any DSL-compatible router, wait for it to get its IP address, and then simply carry on, independently of not using Windows. So I think the dilemma can be summed up: Would I, as a Linux user, be buggered if I got a BT installation? Would I be buggered anyway if I got another ISP to provide the service? Comments welcome! (Please remember that I'm totally new to this area of going on-line, so I'm not familiar with the bits and pieces). Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 08-Oct-05 Time: 13:34:23 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Problem with the Library
by Wayne Stallwood 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

I am moving the library to it's new home but I am having a few problems talking to mysql. mysql --host=localhost --user=opendb --password=thepassword Works, I can then see a database called aluglib and run queries on the tables etc. In my opendb config.php I have // Database configuration $CONFIG_VARS['db_server.host'] = 'localhost'; //OpenDb database host $CONFIG_VARS['db_server.dbname'] = 'aluglib';//OpenDb database name $CONFIG_VARS['db_server.username'] = 'opendb'; //OpenDb database user name $CONFIG_VARS['db_server.passwd'] = 'thepassword'; //OpenDb password But when I try and login to the Library I get the following error Access denied for user: 'opendb@localhost' (Using password: YES) Not being very experienced with these things, can anyone give me some pointers to what I am doing wrong. To move the library I simply dumped the old database and then imported that into the new one with mysql blah blah databasename < dump.sql. the rest of the site was just coped over using scp. Then I just changed the config in config.php and checked permissions. I thought that should be it ?

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Re-theme
by Bob Dove 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

Hi Folks, Looked at the new 'home-page' in IE6 on (SORRY) Windoze. Looks good to me - please keep it simple, no flash, java or activex - you know, the stuff that makes you site look wonderful and opens doors to all sorts of danger! Firefox is set up to crush all that sort of stuff on my machine - and on many other I would assume! Cheers, BD.

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It takes two to tango...
by Bob Dove 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

Hi Guys, How about some sitting in the sun and relaxing, it's getting a tiny bit tiresome to watch this quarrel. BD

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Logout for Firefox?
by MJ Ray 07 Oct '05

07 Oct '05

Does anyone know how I can make Mozilla Firefox log out of an HTTP-authenticated web site? I thought there was a menu option or extension to forget the auth details, but I can't find it now. On my own sites, I always give the option of an "forbidden forever" page (aka a Babyshambles page), but the government site I'm accessing doesn't have one. I'll restart the browser this time, but it's irritating, isn't it? Thanks for any info, -- MJ Ray (slef), Lynn, England, retposxto cxe http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

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FW: [ALUG] Alug Website
by Keith Watson 07 Oct '05

07 Oct '05

> From: Luke Dodd Sent: 07 October 2005 12:51 > > Looks OK, works in opera Mozilla and (shudder) ie ok. The > links need to be fixed, I had a problem with my css link > lists a while ago, I can't remember the fix right now but > could get it later. Although it looks completely wrong for > the alug website I could change this > <http://ccgi.doddfamily.plus.com/index_new.php> little > layout I made to look right. For other good css layouts and > ideas this > <http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/index.html> is a > good site. > > Probably all useless, but I i felt bored so decided to post. > > Luke > :o) Regards, Keith ____________ Strive not for perfect actions in a perfect world, - but for appropriate actions in an imperfect world

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RE: [ALUG] Alug Website
by Keith Watson 07 Oct '05

07 Oct '05

> From: Brett Parker Sent: 07 October 2005 09:33 > MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: > > Brett Parker <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> ... > > Questions: > > - do any of the CSS validator warnings cause anyone problems? > > I've not tested it in IE (not having a copy of IE to hand) so > there's a possibility it's completly broken there... A quick smoke test with IE seems to work ok. Like what I've seen so far. :o) Regards, Keith ____________ CONSOLATION, n. - The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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Alug Website
by Brett Parker 07 Oct '05

07 Oct '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 This afternoon Steve handed me a bundled of HTML goodness for the website, I've just finished hacking together something (temporary) to give you a feel for what it looks like, currently this is all done "on the fly", so if anything is updated on the alug site, it should automagically happen to this 'rethemed' version. URL: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/alug/retheme/ I *think* that it's mostly working, any obvious gotchas, tell me. Cheers, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDRa/IEh8oWxevnjQRAudsAKCtTcoTmjSBeuD/jQz1mFC3lwBqRwCgu8UW xPmqvBiGwQK4IXxFVTEYr7A= =x1pP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [ALUG] Web site - new editing method
by Dave Briggs 06 Oct '05

06 Oct '05

Quoting MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop>: > What should go on the site? At the moment, there's three sections > (background, meetings and venues) and some pages and subsites, > some of which need updating, moving or culling. I guess the thing is to consider who will be using the site, which will be people new to the group and existing members. So there needs to be intro stuff about the systems ALUG covers, info about the group and how things work, maybe some sort of member directory, for the newbies. Then for both newbies and existing members there can be the pages about the local groups and meetings, maybe with more details of past meetings so people can know what to expect and stuff? Then, mainly for the existing members there could be pages about specific projects that people are working on together, say. > I don't like the suggestion that the whole site be a wiki. Agreed. > > ALUG has a problem that when people get busy, they often get > too busy to hand over tasks. If all webmasters of the current > site die, it would just sit there, going out-of-date. If all > webmasters of a wiki die, it usually gets exploited and trashed. Which might be an argument for having a system in place where as many ALUGers as possible have access to editing pages, whilst not having a wiki free-for-all situation. That way, there is always someone to pick things up in the event of things falling behind on a page. > By the way, the Shropshire LUG site suggested as a nice design > also has double navigation, error messages and "search-engine > unfriendly" URLs - all things which don't happen much with > xhtml files and they can be mirrored more easily, although we > don't have mirrors just now. It's also a little cheeky not to > link back to LUG.org.uk IMO. Yes, a fairly nice style, though. Yeah, I should have specified, it was from a style point of view that I suggested it, rather than it being a classic piece of website coding! Could the library be integrated into a new site, too? -- Dave Briggs linux(a)davebriggs.net | http://davebriggs.net | http://palimpsest.org.uk

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Re: [ALUG] Web site - new editing method
by David Reynolds 06 Oct '05

06 Oct '05

Hi, This has become quite a convoluted thread (or threads) of which the gist to me seems to be that many Aluggers are unhappy with the state of the website and their inability to edit it. I'm not sure how long the current site has been about, being a *fairly* new Alugger, but as Brett said in a previous email, the design is beginning to look a bit dated. Surely this thread is an ideal time to raise the subject of perhaps redesigning the site and trying to find a new way forward for the future web presence of Alug. Another thing that should be discussed is who is going to take responsibility for the site. As far as I can tell many people would be interested in having a hand in the website, keeping it up to date, adding content, etc but no one has even been offered the chance. Surely by using some kind of CMS it will allow more people to contribute and keep the site up to date without having to rely on one person to patch the site. Just my 2¢ Cheers Dave -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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