- main - earth.li

gdi and raw printing
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

OK, still struggling with this stuff, and yes, I have googled it to death with mixed success. How does raw printing work exactly? Do you get to send an ascii character stream directly to the printer, and how does the printer know what to do with it? Are there any decent references anywhere? All I am looking to do is send a few characters and line feeds, and don't care about fonts or formatting of any sophisticated sort. One would think it should be possible using lpr, but if anyone has actually done this, it might save a lot of time and experimentation. This is just printing characters, its not real document printing, layout, all that stuff. Peter

5 6

touch screen packages
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

Don't really like all-in-ones - you get more flexibility with separates, that's my feeling anyway. My friend down the road is stuck, for instance, with a perfectly decent 24 inch apple screen, which has some kind of werid obsolete computer welded to it, and he is going to end up replacing the lot at vast expense, when were they separates, £300 would give him a screamingly fast (by comparison) replacement....An exaggeration, but not much of one. They are convenient, yes. But for us, it will definitely be separates. Peter

1 0

Reasonable good-quality touch-screen
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

Hi Folks, Apologies for cross-posting b A project I'm involved with -- setting up an educational display at a local museum, with (modest) Royal Society funding: see http://www.prickwillow-engine-museum.co.uk involves installing a wall-mounted screen for animated display under touch-screen control. The cost needs to be reasonable (euphemism for "as cheap as poss, subject to acceptable quality"). One of us has poked around a bit, and found: [A]"The MSI Wind top AE1900 is the most expensive at £465 ex VAT but has a 19" screen and Windows XP home. Availability is uncertain and it has no wall mount." [PCworld review at http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/61134/review/wind_top_ae1900.html ] [B]"The Asus ET1602 is 15" widescreen and £355 ex VAT including Windows XP home and is wall mountable though it requires a difficult to source adapter." [PCpro review at http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/desktops/256873/asus-eee-top-et1602 ] [C]"TheShuttle X50 is 15" widescreen and is available "bare bones", no memory, hard drive, or software. It does have the dual core version of the Atom processor, the others are single core, and does have the industry standard VESA wall mount fixings. With 1GB ram and 160GB hard drive, no operating system it's £379 ex VAT. With Windows XP home it's £415 ex VAT." [PCworld review at http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/55884/review/x50_aio.html ] There is willingness to use Linux (and some of us know our Linux)! One issue is that a 15" screen is probably too small for wall mounted display to (e.g.) visiting school groups, so there's interest in the larger screen. Reviews of [A] and [B] are critical of display quality ("the ropey screen" for [B]) and no great enthusiasm overall for any of the three. If we do go Linux (which I'd like) there'll be an issue of adequate touch-screen drivers for the hardware we actually get. I see that X11 now has quite an array of touch-screen modules, so it possibly might work "out of the box". The reviews (and the home pages) for the three above don't seem to mention what cards/screens they have, so I haven't been able to identify these to the point of being able to cross-check with X11. So I'd be most obliged is anyone who has experience of any of the above could comment or advise, in the context of our intended use. Also, advice on Linux-based solutions to the general question of touch-screen boxes with wall-mountable screens, preferably larger than 15-inch, and broadly in the price range £350-450 (we prefer the lower end ... ) would be most welcome. The guy who poked around wrote: "I would favour the Shuttle X50, we will want a secure wall mount." With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 25-Nov-09 Time: 20:25:11 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

2 1

touch screen packages
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

I have no experience. Not yet at least. But was proposing to use on a similar project an Iiyama PLT1930SR/19 for £385 from ebuyer - 19 inch monitor. And put it together with Acer Aspire Revo R3600 Desktop PC, Atom 230 1.6GHz, 160GB HDD, 1 GB RAM, HDMI, nVidia GeForce 9400 ION, WIFI, Linux Which is on sale at ebuyer for 150. Or use some other atom based sff machine, but this one is so cheap. I was thinking of getting one of those compact flash to ide adaptors, then using the debian variant that is firefox only, so its basically debian with the only thing on it a browser. I guess you could do it yourself, but this is prepackaged. There is also browsermode linux. There seem to be a couple of these around. We are a little way away from doing it, I first have to do a demo not on a touch screen, then get funds committed if they still like it.... Peter

1 0

Replacing duplicate files with hard links
by Mark Rogers 25 Nov '09

25 Nov '09

Does anyone make use of any tools which can search for duplicate files and (assuming they're on the same filesystem) replace the duplicates with hard links to the first copy of the file? There seem to be a few scripts around but since it'll be messing with my files I'd rather go by recommendation if I can. (The plan is to free up some space on a server which has lots of duplicate images.) Also, any "gotchas" that should put me off trying this would be appreciated. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

3 3

Any ADSL experts here?
by Mark Rogers 25 Nov '09

25 Nov '09

Sorry, another OT post on an ADSL subject - if anyone has some suggestions of decent technical ADSL lists or forums please let me know. One of our customers migrated from one ISP to another, from a reasonable speed (3-4Mbps we think, it as never an issue so they never made a note of what it was), which immediately on migration dropped down to silly figures - their BT speedtest results hover between 100kpbs and 200kbps and their most recent result was 40kbps! Despite numerous faults to BT via the ISP, little has changed to date (the migration was in May!); apparently they changed the linecard yesterday and it seems to have been that the change to the linecard is what has given the end user the record low speed of 40kbps. The IP profile for the line is 7150Kbps, and their sync speed is over 7Mbps, and their upload speed is around 800kpbs. (Bandwidth figures for the connection tie in with this data, so it's not as if there's some underlying data transfer that's tying up the connection somehow.) We've changed the end user kit and filters (although bear in mind the original kit was working fine pre-migration) to no avail. Speed tests using different accounts (eg test accounts at the ISP, or bt_test@startup_domain, etc) all give similar results. I need to find someone who has seen something similar and has some sensible suggestions as to what to try next. (Is the fault likely at BT or the ISP?) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

3 4

Re: [ALUG] using windows printer drivers
by Peter Alcibiades 25 Nov '09

25 Nov '09

Sorry, should have said what printer. It is a Star SP300 dot matrix parallel interface. I made a silly mistake - the 500 has linux drivers, but the 300 does not. Partly I don't want to be out £40, but also at this point there is an intellectual challenge involved! I think it might be possible to print directly to it in 'raw' mode - there are hints about this on the net. ls > dev/lp0 and there is something about setting up the printer as make = raw, with model as raw queue, after which you are supposed to be able to print to it with lpr -P queuefile If I can figure out how to get some characters, any characters, sent over to it to print, then I can certainly find a way to format the string so they come out right. I do have windows drivers, and can experiment with them if I can figure out what experiment to do.... Peter

4 3

USB device, detected OK but nothing appears, what next?
by Chris G 25 Nov '09

25 Nov '09

I have a new memory card reader which 'does all the right things' when you plug it in but nothing appears on my desktop. An older, very similar, device works OK and the memory card appears as a drive on my desktop. How does one diagnose this sort of problem? When I plug in the reader (and card) that doesn't work I see the following in syslog:- Nov 24 21:49:16 chris kernel: [34956.231212] hub 2-1:1.0: USB hub found Nov 24 21:49:16 chris kernel: [34956.231361] hub 2-1:1.0: 3 ports detected Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.508106] usb 2-1.1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8 Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.600669] usb 2-1.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.600753] hub 2-1.1:1.0: USB hub found Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.600887] hub 2-1.1:1.0: 3 ports detected Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34956.881611] usb 2-1.1.1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9 Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34957.031679] usb 2-1.1.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34957.031947] scsi7 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34957.032114] usb-storage: device found at 9 Nov 24 21:49:17 chris kernel: [34957.032116] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning Nov 24 21:49:22 chris kernel: [34962.033925] usb-storage: device scan complete Nov 24 21:49:22 chris kernel: [34962.043387] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic Ultra HS-SD/MMC 1.82 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 Nov 24 21:49:22 chris kernel: [34962.058283] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk Nov 24 21:49:22 chris kernel: [34962.058361] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0 So what's wrong? -- Chris Green

3 3

Christmas Meal
by Ian 24 Nov '09

24 Nov '09

You can put me down for food on the 10th.

1 0

Re: [ALUG] using windows printer drivers
by Peter Alcibiades 24 Nov '09

24 Nov '09

Thanks for a most helpful reply. Meanwhile I have looked into the Linuxant wrapper, which also seems confined to network drivers, and have found the potentially useful ddiwrapper, which seems a possible if problematic solution. The only posting on experience so far reports getting it to install, and apparently using the driver, but failing to obtain any output at the printer. Peter

2 1

using windows printer drivers
by Peter Alcibiades 24 Nov '09

24 Nov '09

I don't really understand, well don't understand at all, how ndiswrapper works. Is it possible to use it to wrap a windows printer driver? I have a POS printer which I'd like to use in Linux, but just find out that it has no Linux drivers. it does have something called a JavaPOS driver from back in 2002, which seems fairly horrendous to get to work. Is there any way of using the XP one with ndiswrapper or anything else? Peter

2 1

CUPS problem with default font/size, can't change it.
by Chris G 24 Nov '09

24 Nov '09

I have an HP1320 printer connected to my 'server' machine which runs Ubuntu 9.10. The CUPS version is 1.4.1. The printer works fine for 'formatted' output from such things as Firefox, Open Office, PDF files, etc. However I can't get it to print text files in a sensible format, when I do something like:- ls -al | lpr I get a printout in a a rather odd typeface and much too big, it looks something like 5 characters per inch. It makes not difference if I set the default options using lpoptions, nothing seems to change the size of the text. It's also the same whether I print locally (i.e. from the command line on the server machine) or remotely from other machines on the network. If I do the same thing to my other printer (an HP7310 inkjet which has its own network interface) then I get exactly what I hope/expect, i.e. the printout is at 10cpi in something that looks like Courier. That of course doesn't go via the server machine, CUPS on the client machine sends direct to the printer. Aaaahhhh, the problem is with CUPS 1.4.1. The HP7310 wasn't installed as a printer in CUPS on the server machine (didn't really need it) but I have just done so and printing from the command line on *that* machine to the HP7310 produces the same wrong/too big output. So, it's CUPS 1.4.1 that gets the command line defaults wrong. Any ideas how to fix this anyone? -- Chris Green

1 0

Mac To Ubuntu Switcher
by Simon Royal 23 Nov '09

23 Nov '09

Hi. I'm an experienced computer user, repairer, upgrader etc. I switched from Windows to Mac about 10 years ago and am now thinking of switching to Ubuntu. I have used Ubuntu since about version 5 and the newer versions - especially 9.10 have really impressed me, with just how easy to use and how intuitive it has become. Being a Mac user puts you in the minority of computer users anyway and things are never as straight forward as Windows. I preferred older Macs so am used to hacks, mods and tweaks to get the best out of it. Mac OSX is built around a Unix base so has more in common with Ubuntu than Windows, but it is still a very GUI orientated OS, with only a few things needed so do in Terminal or Open Firmware. Is there any advice or stories people would like to share with a Mac to Ubuntu switcher? I've been running the latest Live version on my wifes Windows machine and testing out my peripherals and everything seems to be ok. As I have a mixed OS household I tended to buy hardware that would work on both Mac and Windows and format drives/flash drives to NTFS or FAT32 anyway, so this gives me a bit of a head start in moving over. I have an old 40GB iPod which I have found out I can use in Ubuntu as long as I change it from a Mac formatted one to a Windows formatted one, so that is good news. I have an old Epson Stylus Photo 1200 which I can't find any reference to but suppose it would require CUPS or Gutenprint to work possibly. I've read that RaLink RT2500 chipset based PCMCIA cards and USB wireless dongles tend to work out of the box with Ubuntu so that takes one less thing as I have an Asus WL-117G USB wireless dongle. I'm getting there. It has always been a side passion of mine and now I want it as a main machine, so need to check as much as I can prior to wiping and installing. Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ Use Hotmail to send and receive mail from your different email accounts http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/186394592/direct/01/

2 1

More about monitors
by Chris G 22 Nov '09

22 Nov '09

Well after asking here (and a couple of other places) I decided to buy an LG W2453TX monitor. It seemed a reasonable price with the resolution I wanted and the inputs I wanted. However it isn't as good as I expected and I'm returning it, hopefully under DSR so I won't lose much money. The problem I have with it is the inconsistency of brightness/contrast/colour across the screen. I may be extra critical because I have 'tall' (i.e. 60 line) terminal windows on the screen running mutt etc. but for me the inconsistency is *very* noticeable. E.g. my mutt screen has cyan[ish] status bars at the top and bottom and they are quite different colours on the W2453TX. Playing with the angle of view varies the difference between top and bottom but you can never get it the same. In addition the text at the bottom of the screen is very 'spindly' compared to the top. My old screen (a Dell 2001FP) is *miles* better, the status bars are near enough identical (well I can't see any difference) and the text looks the same everywhere. Since this (minor) debacle I have done a bit more research into LCD monitors and their technology and have discovered that there are two or three fundamentally different types. I've discovered some useful sites with information about this:- http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/ http://www.flatpanelshd.com/ The types are:- TN - most cheap and fast displays are TN, good for gaming but colour rendition and viewing angle poor. PVA and MVA - sort of middle of the road, not as fast as TN but better accuracy. IPS - best for accuracy, but expensive. It turns out that the Dell 2001FP I have is an IPS screen so I have been spoilt as regards accuracy. Current 24" screens using this technology are *expensive*, like £500 and upwards! I'm trying to find a PVA (or maybe MVA) screen which isn't too expensive but at the moment I'm not having much success. I guess much of the problem is that the main pressure nowadays is towards response speed and TN screens win on that front. The trouble is that they are rubbish for viewing angle which is a much maligned figure as far as I can tell. The W2453TX has a figure of 170 degrees for viewing angle which is a total joke, any angle much more than 45 degrees off centre produces all sorts of odd effects. The 2001FP on the other hand one can look at from any angle and the colours are unchanged. -- Chris Green

2 7

Re: [ALUG] Christmas Meal
by Sam Tuke 21 Nov '09

21 Nov '09

I'll have the lot please (three courses). Need we pay in advance? Sam. > I'm in for the full-on, three course jobbie. > > I think it'd be best if everybody emails with what they want. Then, a > few days beforehand, I'll count them up and phone the Coach and > Horses with the numbers. > > katsmeat

1 0

Christmas Meal
by Montmorency 20 Nov '09

20 Nov '09

I'm in for the full-on, three course jobbie. I think it'd be best if everybody emails with what they want. Then, a few days beforehand, I'll count them up and phone the Coach and Horses with the numbers. katsmeat Montmorency montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

1 0

ALUG Christmas Meal 10th December
by Richard 20 Nov '09

20 Nov '09

Evening all, 10th December is the last ALUG meeting for 2009, and of course time for our Christmas Meal! We have a table booked as always under the name of Morton for December 10th. You can find a Christmas menu here: http://imgur.com/bcvVP.jpg They are serving their normal dishes throughout the evening also. If we can finalise numbers, orders and a time as soon as possible that would be great :) Richard

3 2

antec 900 II
by Peter Alcibiades 20 Nov '09

20 Nov '09

Well, just to let you know after my query, this arrived and its amazing. Heavy, very solid construction, fans all over the place, and its quiet. Its not silent, but the sound is unobtrusive enough that you can have it on a desktop and its not at all irritating, just moderate frequency rushing of air. None of that high pitched whirring. There are nice easy racks of bays for the drives, directly cooled by fans. The blue neon lights, well, you have to be 15 to appreciate that stuff, but OK. I was really pleased, and so was the user. The top fan, huge, is as predicted, quite quiet but is moving a lot of air. It was proably overkill for this installation with a moderate graphics card and only one hd, but it is probably the last case you will ever need to buy. We also called Novatech support because a router we had got was defective. Its a wait to get them, but when you do, they are quick, good tempered, and know what they are talking about. And not in Bangalore! Al

1 0

PCMCIA Wireless Card Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

Hi. I am still getting to grips with Ubuntu. I have just picked up a laptop to further my knowledge and hopefully switch from Mac to Linux completely. Does anyone know which wireless laptop cards (PCMCIA) work with Ubuntu 9.10 out of the box with WPA encryption? Regards Simon Royal --- Catch me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype: Simon-Royal _________________________________________________________________ View your other email accounts from your Hotmail inbox. Add them now. http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/186394592/direct/01/

1 0

Can one reduce text size in the sidebar in Firefox?
by Chris G 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

Further to using the Sidebar Bookmarks in Firefox, is it possible to reduce the text size? I mean of course reduce the text size in the sidebar without changing the default text size for displayed pages. -- Chris Green

1 0

debian problem with usb printer and scanner
by Peter Alcibiades 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

Does this sound familiar at all? On a squeeze installation, there is a usb scanner. Works just fine. But for unclear reasons every now and then, it may be because someone plugs in another computer to the usb hub to print, not quite sure, when xsane starts up it gives the usual message about not being able to start the scanner. I fix this by brute force, I start up a demo copy of vuescan, after which all is well again. But I have no idea why this should work. However, on another machine running Lenny, this did not work. Vuescan could now not find the scanner. Also (this is an MFP) I was unable to get the printer to work. I had downloaded the drivers (its a Brother) and installed them using gdebi. So, I tackled the scanner problem first. sane-find-scanner found it, and scanimage -L also found it. Attempting to scan from the command line did not. Running short of time, this was a friends machine, I took the brute force approach again and installed Mandriva 2010. Got the drivers, installed them, and bingo, everything works fine. Must say, this was wonderfully easy, all the bookmarks and the toolbar configuration came up intact. Could not have been easier. Mandriva will be easier for him to run, at least, until we want to upgrade it. But, what on earth could be going on? Peter

3 3

Firefox bookmarks in sidebar annoyance, any way around it?
by Chris G 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

I've been using a bookmarks 'server' for a long time (sitebar) but I've just realised it's actually rather pointless now I don't want to access my Firefox bookmarks from anywhere else except my home system. So I'll use the built-in bookmarks, so far so good. I liked the sitebar ability to put bookmarks in the sidebar so, after a bit of mucking around found how to put Firefox's bookmarks in the sidebar (well, not much mucking around, it's in the View menu). BUT there's one big drawback, for me anyway, if you click on a 'bad' (as in no such page) bookmark in the sidebar then the error is displayed in the sidebar rather than in the main Firefox display area and I can't find any way to get the bookmarks back in the sidebar except by pulling the View menu down again. Is there any way to avoid this 'infelicity'? In fact is there any way to force Firefox to *always* show the bookmarks in the sidebar, or at least to default to doing so? -- Chris Green

2 2

OT: ADSL configuration
by Mark Rogers 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

I have just spent the afternoon trying to get my head around this one and failed. A customer has been set up with a new ADSL account with the following IP addresses: 88.x.a.116/30 (routed IP range) 88.x.b.170 (static IP). I need to configure the router to everything to a firewall that'll route traffic accordingly. I can't even work out from this configuration how many usable external IP addresses this will give them? (I can get the router connected with the static IP in a normal configuration without problem.) PS: God bless my Ubuntu Live CD, the tools you have to manage without on Windows! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

2 5

Re: [ALUG] a weird network configuration, does this make any sense at all?
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 17 Nov '09

17 Nov '09

runlevel ten wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 11:22 AM, <steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk > <mailto:steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk>> wrote: > > > On the other hand, the adage "If it aint broke, don't fix it" is > often relevant! > :-) > Steve > > > The trouble is, there are many people in this world who use that > phrase to mean "It is broke, but let's not fix it until it stops > working, hopefully it will be someone else's problem by then.". > I don't think I've come across that usage. As far as I'm concerned, if it's working it aint broke, and if it is not working it's broke and required fixing. Simples! Steve

7 7

Re: [ALUG] Burn, mount DVD and then eject fails?
by Srdjan Todorovic 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

Augh! Sorry - accidentally sent this to Wayne only. Sending to the list now. Srdjan 2009/11/16 Srdjan Todorovic <todorovic.s(a)googlemail.com>: > 2009/11/16 Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk>: >> Srdjan Todorovic wrote: >>> >>> Initial searching suggests and issue with HAL. I've found that it >>> seems k3b is still running and can be seen to have /dev/hda still open >>> using lsof. Killing the process causes it to not appear in the lsof >>> output, but still cannot eject. So it may even be a bug with K3b. >>> >> >> Do you have the "verify written data" option checked in k3b's burning window >> ? > > No, I've not had that working for a long time, so I usually resort to > creating an md5 sum file of the files, then burn the disk, then verify > once mounted. > >> For some time now that hasn't worked for me and leaves k3b holding onto the >> burnt disc. Although it visibly errors on the verify which you don't >> mention. > > K3b does not report any errors. > I can burn the disk, and press eject button on the drive itself, and > it will open. I can put the disk in, mount it, read the files, > unmount, but then never eject as my normal user. > > If I just use a disk without having burnt anything that day, then I > can eject as my normal user without problems. > So it suggests it's somehow related to k3b's interaction with the rest > of the machine. > > At some point I'll do a test to see if exiting KDE and logging back in > clears the issue. > > Thanks > Srdjan >

2 1