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[ALUG Announce] Coach and Horses is now permanent venue for 2nd Thursday meetings.
by Adam Bower 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hi all, Last night we had a decent turnout of 9 people, lots of regulars and a couple of new faces. The Coach & Horses turns out to be an excellent venue, serving decent food, free wifi, very good beer (including takeouts!), plenty of seating and a good atmosphere. So this will remain the venue for all future Alug 2nd Thursday pub meets until time we see fit for a change. http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Augmenting sound on DVD video-rip
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 09 Sep '09

09 Sep '09

Greetings all. I have copied an amateur VHS video onto a DVD (using a Tape/DVD machine with cross-copying capability). I have copied the DVD to a ".iso" file (ndf filesystem, I think) using cat /dev/dvd > titlename.iso, and I dare say I can store the various compoment files in a directory using dvdbackup. No problem in duplicating the DVD using growisofs from the ".iso" file. This works well. However, the sound-track is too quiet (it was filmed from the back of a lecture-theatre during a talk), and it would be good to augment the sound volume (the DVD has to be played at maximum sound level on the player, and even then is often too faint). I have little experience of manipulating video stuff, and would welcome guidance on how to proceed! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Sep-09 Time: 19:15:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Over-clever keyboard detection in Gentoo
by Dan Hatton 09 Sep '09

09 Sep '09

Dear All, I usually operate my Gentoo netbook with one of two USB keyboards plugged in - a Microsoft Comfort Curve keyboard or an Apple Pro Keyboard. Usually, the computer responds to either of these, and its built-in keyboard, as if they were PC-style keyboards, i.e. shift-2 gives ", shift-' gives @. I quite like it this way. Occasionally (usually while the Apple keyboard is plugged in, although I've seen it once while the Microsoft keyboard was plugged in), however, the computer switches to responding to both the USB keyboard and its built-in keyboard as if they were Apple-style keyboards, i.e. shift-2 is @, shift-' is ". There's nothing wrong with this in itself, but unfortunately it coincides with the computer becoming very to respond to keypresses, and frequently mistaking a single keypress for a large number of multiple presses of the same key. It also coincides with the second light from the left (of six) in xkbvleds coming on, which suggests that the behaviour is switchable. Any ideas how to switch it, please? -- Thanks, Dan

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[ALUG Announce] Changed Venue! Alug Norwich 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 10th September 2009
by Adam Bower 09 Sep '09

09 Sep '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Dear ALUG, Note that we have a new venue for the pub meet this month! This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 10th September 2009 at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ ). This is a new venue for Alug but has been chosen as it offers food, a good selection of real beer and reasonably good connections for travel and parking. There should be people there from 8pm, I will try and bring a Tux to aid people in recognising us. Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Re: [ALUG] Bittorrent / Sky / ThePirateBay
by mick 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

On Tue, 8 Sep 2009 09:44:24 +0100 Alex Scotton <alex.scotton(a)gmail.com> allegedly wrote: > >>and if so does anyone know of a good encrypted proxy?.. > > > > Try Tor, though some operators (myself included I may add) actually > > block torrents in their exit policies. Too bandwidth hungry. > > been checking out the website, looks very good.. however few > questions, I assume you have volunteered to be a "relay" so this just > sets up a few ssh tunnels between you and the target and bounces your > connection around a little etc... its routed through encrypted > "relays" to the target and then "encrypted" back through? does this > not create a tad of latency, especially on torrents if some relays are > allowing it and some aren't. See http://www.torproject.org/overview.html.en for details of how tor works. It is not really a set of ssh tunnels. Tor's great strength is that no-one can link your source address to the destination you are interested in (well, no-one without the capability of observing all possible tor nodes - which excludes even most nation states). Yes, tor is slow, but how fast do you need to be for file transfer? And of course, the more tor relays there are, the faster the network gets. See also http://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en for how to configure your tor client as a relay. But beware, the impact on your own bandwidth can be huge. I choose to run a tor exit node (a relay which also permits exit) on a VPS. Despite some judicious throttling I still consume 3 to 3.5 Gig of traffic per day. My VPS contract allows 150 Gig per month so I kep an eye on usage. I found that running a relay on my ADSL line was totally impractical. You can, of course, just use tor as a client, but that way you are not giving anything back to the community. And as I said, the more tor relays there are, the faster and more "secure" the network becomes. When I want to use tor myself, I just set up an SSH tunnel to my relay and join the network from there. Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Partition imaging and restoring
by Mark Rogers 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

Ah, Windows, Windows, Windows, how I love thee. There definitely seems to be a certain type of user who, given a few weeks with a Windows installation (no matter what AV software is installed) will end up with a compromised machine. So I'm looking for a way to roll-back to a clean install. What I'm thinking is to have two partitions on the disk - the Windows one and an EXT2/3 partition containing an image of the clean Windows install. All I need then is: (a) a way to create the image (Linux has several of these but recommendations welcome) (b) a way for a "normal user" (with some support) to restore the image I started by thinking simple; have a dual-boot config with a basic Linux install selectable from a Grub menu (labelled "System Restore" or similar), which when booted simply runs the restore command automatically (which might just be dd). To create/update the image I'd use a LiveCD. But then I thought that this has probably all been done before and there's probably a standard solution out there? The key point is that it needs to be end-user friendly when it comes to restoring the image. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Pub meet pub suggestion
by Montmorency 07 Sep '09

07 Sep '09

>We need to have a bit of discussion over where the 2nd Thursday Norwich >pub meet is going to be held this month. The Coach and Horses on Thorpe Road! http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ Points: a) Very good beer that they brew in the premises. b) They do food c) The location is very convenient for the railway station, for getting home. Busses and taxis are to be found there as well as trains. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?oe=utf-8&client=firefox- a&ie=UTF8&q=Coach+Horses +Norwich&fb=1&split=1&gl=uk&cid=0,0,4671222259257925321&ei=djqkSpe9NdG6j Ae-wvi2Dg&ll=52.627098,1.311128&spn=0.008075,0.01929&z=16&iwloc=A d) There is some parking in front of the pub. And side-street parking in the area. e) It's not crowded on weekdays, it's a large place with lots of tables so getting one for Alug shouldn't be a problem. f) The pub has wireless. katmeat montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Bittorrent / Sky / ThePirateBay
by Alex Scotton 07 Sep '09

07 Sep '09

Hello guys, I've been humming and harring for days now, over what's been going on with The Pirate Bay tracker.... Basically, I download from nowhere else other than thepiratebay, hastening to delete all other trackers from torrents before starting downloads; however over the last few days I've noticed a rapid decline in my download speeds, and noticed differences between the number of seeders published on thepiratebay site and what I actually get in bittorrent... So after about 30 seconds of investigation today realised that bittorrent was registering tracker.thepiratebay.org as "offline(timed out)"; assuming the worst I headed over to suprbay.org only to find out that the tracker was indeed up and running fine, so i decided to ping/traceroute tracker.thepiratebay.org and have found that it is possible for me to resolve the IP linked to the hostname but not in fact get there: traceroute to tracker.thepiratebay.org (192.121.86.7), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 myrouter.home (192.168.0.1) 1.224 ms 1.632 ms 2.040 ms 2 cr0.eacos.uk.easynet.net (87.87.253.19) 62.079 ms 62.576 ms 63.556 ms 3 * * * 4 * * * 5 * * * ........ So assuming that Sky had done the dirty deed; I switched to OpenDNS and unfortunetly the same story there as I guessed there would be, because all they provide me with is resolutions and the direction for the IP linked to the hostname, right? they are as they say a Domain Name Server... so if Sky don't want me going somewhere, then I ain't getting there, even if I use OpenDNS. So would I be able to get around this using a proxy? and if so does anyone know of a good encrypted proxy?.. so i can say a big F**k you to Sky... (I am by the way calling them tomorrow to ask them why I can't connect to it) Gathering all the info possible would help for my lovely telephone call with a bright and bubbly Sky rep tomorrow; So if any of you other poor poor peeps use Sky, can you ping/traceroute tracker.thepiratebay.org for me, and in fact even if you aren't with sky give it a try for me, and let me know your findings.. ya never know maybe it isn't sky but instead a higher power up the line. Thanks in advance Alex Scotton

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Bittorrent / Sky / ThePirateBay
by Alex Scotton 07 Sep '09

07 Sep '09

---------- Forwarded message ---------- (didn't CC the list haha...again) From: Alex Scotton <alex.scotton(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 12:51 AM Subject: Re: [ALUG] Bittorrent / Sky / ThePirateBay To: Srdjan Todorovic <todorovic.s(a)googlemail.com> > Others on IRC are reporting similar. Can resolve the host but can't get > to it. Wow.. had spaced on the Alug IRC, has been a few years since I've been on there.. and with IRC on my phone aswell no less, what a fool ha ha ha... Are these peeps on Sky also, or does it vary? there's a lot of people experiencing the same from all over the world according to the Suprbay forums.. bring on Blackout Europe and the end of our free speech, aye?.. Will let you know what Sky has to say on the matter, I shall be informing them that I wish to download "legitimate" un-copyrighted data from there and that i shall be canceling the direct debit etc.. and forfeiting the contract as a result of this action... as I am paying for the "Internet" (open and free as it is) not some corporate fool's idea of the Internet.

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Thursday pub meet
by Richard 06 Sep '09

06 Sep '09

How about Take 5 in tombland? Equal distance from bus and train station, it's a busier area at night than the reindeer, next to inner-city bus stops, taxi rank, and a cash machine. They do great food, plenty of Ale (YAY!). St. Andrews car park is very nearby. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=take+5,+tombl… Cheers Richard -- Richard Bensley - 07540878285

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Re: [ALUG] Google Phone (T-Mobile/HTC G1)
by Alex Scotton 06 Sep '09

06 Sep '09

Doh! Well trust T-Mobile, aye?.. it's pretty iritating, so there's no flash support in cupcake either?.. hmm I know (what I assume is version 2) the g2 has flash 10 support so it must be coming.. Just going to have either play the waiting game, or flash it with JesusFreke's copy, then begs the question do you trust a guy who calls himself jesusfreke haha On 17 Aug 2009, 1:43 PM, "samwise" <samwise(a)bagshot-row.org> wrote: Hi, Alex. I have a Vodafone HTC Magic Android phone. Fortunately, for me, it came with Cupcake (Android OS 1.5) by default, so I haven't had any of the problems you describe. Although I'm pretty sure I don't have Flash support - that's supposed to be on the way, but it's not in Cupcake out of the box. October was the last date, I remember reading ... I haven't hacked it much - I've installed some apps that weren't in the Android market but, so far, I haven't seen any real need to root it, tbh. Android is pretty flexible anyway, and does most things out of the box or with apps from the market place so I haven't felt a need to put Debian (or Ubuntu) on it. Peter. 2009/8/17 Alex Scotton <alex.scotton(a)gmail.com>: > Hi guys, > > I'm a relative new comer to the world of linux, I use Ubuntu when I > can, however ha... > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! > _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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Thursday pub meet
by Adam Bower 05 Sep '09

05 Sep '09

Hi all, We need to have a bit of discussion over where the 2nd Thursday Norwich pub meet is going to be held this month. We need a venue with good beer, plenty of seating, good accessibility for people using bus/train and nearby car parking. As I've not got any idea over city pubs does anyone else have any suggestions? or shall we just start by doing some investigative research in person starting over the next few days ;) Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li

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Re: [ALUG] Google Phone (T-Mobile/HTC G1)
by Alex Scotton 04 Sep '09

04 Sep '09

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Alex Scotton<alex.scotton(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> For the following reason: >> >> <head><style>body{font-family: >> Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;background-color: >> #ffffff;color: black;}p{margin:0px}</style></head><body >> id="compText">Helena >> Oakey wrote<br><<<<br><o:p></o:p> > > Fair enough, just going to have to wait until I get back to a PC to > email you guys then ha ha, how useless :-( > > Whilst I am emailing though, I posed a question a while back that I am > now about to search my emails for; it was regarding my Monitor and it > not "sleeping" correctly, and it was answered with something along the > lines of "DPMS 0 0 15", but after a quick google last night when I > suddenly remembered the words DPMS (at 3am in bed) haha, no such joy.. > Sent this to Ted by accident ha ha... i'm such a fool sometimes haha... Found the answer in my emails, gotta love archiving all the ALUG conversations hehe... the answer lies in "xset DPMS" but if i want these settings to persist past a restart of X, I need to set them in Xorg.conf, right?

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Why do these pipes report as empty files to 'file'?
by Chris G 02 Sep '09

02 Sep '09

Using NFS it sets up what would *seem* to be some pipes in /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs, however some of these seem to have rather odd characteristics and they confuse rdiff-backup so it reports errors due to files apparently changing while it runs. The specific files in question are these:- chris$ ls -l /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs/clnt* /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs/clnt6: total 0 -r-------- 1 root root 0 2009-08-25 21:42 info /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs/clnt7: total 0 -r-------- 1 root root 0 2009-08-25 21:42 info /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs/clnt8: total 0 -r-------- 1 root root 0 2009-08-25 21:42 info Now note that these are reported as normal (but empty) files by 'ls'. Similarly 'file' reports them the same:- chris$ file /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs/clnt?/* /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs/clnt6/info: empty /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs/clnt7/info: empty /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs/clnt8/info: empty But they're not really empty, presumably because they're pipes or fifos or something:- root@chris:/var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs# cat /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs/clnt6/info RPC server: garage.local service: nfs (100003) version 3 address: 192.168.1.88 protocol: tcp port: 0 root@chris:/var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs/nfs# This is presumably what's confusing rdiff-backup because they *seem* to be empty ordinary files but they aren't. Is this normal for pipes/fifos or is there something special about these? -- Chris Green

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Wireless card
by Chris & Barry 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

Hi Anyone want a pcmcia-11 wireless card dont need it any more it worked ok with Ubuntu 6.10 it is a Edimax turbo EW-7108Pcg No charge, With Windows and linux driver disks Barry

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iTunes alternatives?
by James Elsey 28 Aug '09

28 Aug '09

What are you guys using for media players? Since getting an iPod, I've become fond of how iTunes manages music collections, and I haven't been able to find a good Linux alternative. Exaile comes close, but I'm still missing the following iTunes had a lovely way of storing compilation albums separately, so your main "list" of artists wasn't cluttered up by those on compilation CDs. Exaile/Amarok seem to list everything by artist > album, and when you have several compilations, this list becomes difficult to manage Audio books, iTunes has a nice way of storing those "out of the way", can't see anything in amarok to do this.. There's some other features I can't find good implementations of, but these are my two pet-hates at the moment. I haven't heard of any iTunes Linux versions on the horizon, and I don't think running under WINE would be ideal Any suggestions? James Elsey

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Re: [ALUG] Any experience of the "Fit PC 2" here?
by Alex Scotton 28 Aug '09

28 Aug '09

*(Sorry if this reposted; I keep getting mails about postponed posting because of "suspicious headers")* Putting all your eggs in one basket, aye? I want to do this too, currently running a media server, wow server, ftp server on my windows box (hides head in shame ha ha) and with 4 other pcs in the house all from time to time using bittorrent (especially me hehe).. would love to set up a buntu box as a server providing dns, possibly a few domain services (i.e. possibly storing user info etc.. people in the house log onto the server not their local account...) and in so doing provide an intranet possible of handling the bittorrent web ui, enabling peeps to upload their torrent file to the server and then leaving that to download the file and place it on a public drive when it's finished downloading.. would love to have a service that detects network load and adjusts bittorrent's bandwith allocation as appropriate... Would also love an app to sense new computers on the network and ask my permission for it's access etc.. Let me know how your venture goes chris Alex Scotton

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Anybody had experience of this?
by Chris Walker 27 Aug '09

27 Aug '09

http://maemo.nokia.com/ I've been tempted to trade in my old Nokia phone for a Nokia N97 but have been put off by the reviews - and the £500 price tag. I've thought about an Android phone and an iPhone but today I read about the Nokia N900. It has a Linux OS but having downloaded an SDK for the N97 and installed it on my Windows machine, am I likely to have problems trying write something for a Linux OS on a phone? I have to confess that my programming experience is limited to BBC Basic on a model B back in the 80's and now that I'm about to retire I thought I'd buy myself a new phone and do something useful with it. So 2 questions really. One is about the thoughts of the people here around Maemo. It's been used before on other devices but is the fact that it's based on Linux that important and is it any good? Second question concerns programming. Has anybody done any programming for a Linux phone, other than tweaking? I wouldn't be pestering you for advice so don't be afraid to answer ;-) Just in case you're wondering what sort of thing I'd be programming (more accurately trying to program), it would be a beer database. Just the sort of thing to show off at one of the monthly meets in a pub :-)

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First report on WD MyBook II box - and a question
by Chris G 25 Aug '09

25 Aug '09

Well I have my WD MyBook World Edition II now and "it just works"! :-) To expand a little, I plugged in the power, connected the ethernet lead and turned on. Using 'arp' I discovered its IP address and then was able immediately to connect to its web configuration pages. I have enabled ssh and nfs and am now able to log in to the WD box's command line (seems a pretty standard Linux system) and can mount nfs shares from the box. What more could one want? (Well, a little, see below.... ) Now the question, I use dnsmasq on my desktop system (well that's where it is at present) to provide local DNS on our little network. It's set up so that DHCP clients can be accessed with just their host name or with the domain suffixes. E.g. I can access 'maxine' or 'maxine.isbd.net', or C475IP or C475IP.isbd.net. However the WD box registers with dnsmasq as 'garage.local' rather than just 'garage' (which is the host name I have given it). Can anyone suggest why this might be and/or how I can fix it? -- Chris Green

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Tonidoplug
by mark fernandes (IFR) 25 Aug '09

25 Aug '09

With respect to small low powered linux servers - I did come across this beastie courtesy of LXer Linux News: "TonidoPlug is a tiny, low power, low cost home server based on 1.2 GHz Sheeva processor that allows you to access your applications, files, photos, music and media from anywhere (Powered by Tonido). TonidoPlug comes pre-installed with powerful Tonido Applications - Photos, Jukebox, Webshare, Workspace, Thots, Explorer, Torrent and Search - all running on top of embedded Ubuntu Jaunty Linux OS. Additionally, TonidoPlug can be extended by installing new applications from Tonido App store." It has a 512 Mb flash drive, Ethernet port and a USB port for additional storage for a $100. Website says currently shipping only to US :-( but shipping to other countries will open shortly (whatever that means). http://www.tonidoplug.com/tonido_plug.html http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Productivity-Sauce-Dmitri-s-op… Hope that this is helpful, Mark

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Re: [ALUG] A low powered backup solution probably/possibly.
by James Elsey 25 Aug '09

25 Aug '09

If it were me I would certainly take the price into consideration, as it all depends on what you are backing up. If you are running a small business from home, or have documents that you can't lose then this would be a viable option. If its just personal files/photos/media, would it not be best to buy a spindle of CDs and come up with some rotation system for backup? It would have its benefits. 1. cheaper 2. less can go wrong 3. probably less prone to weathering (does the garage get extremely hot during the summer? 4. less enticing to any thieves 5. doesn't cost anything to run! Maybe I'm too naïve, but I'd favour CD/DVD media as backup over a server! J -----Original Message----- From: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Chris G Sent: 24 August 2009 13:39 To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] A low powered backup solution probably/possibly. On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:36:36AM +0100, Chris G wrote: > On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:34:17AM +0100, Chris G wrote: > > Synaptic, Qnap and IcyBox all offer NAS servers which handle NFS as > > Oops, that's Synology not Synaptic. > A little further research on Google (especially the reviews and comparisons found at www.smallnetbuilder.com) has led me to the Western Digital My Book World Edition II. Price for a 2Tb version of this is about £215, it has ssh access built in, no hacking needed, power consumption is 16 watts when active, 5 watts when idle. The performance is not quite as good as the top of the range Synology and Qnap ones but it's *way* cheaper. £215 for a low powered Linux box with 2Tb of storage seems excellent value to me. So I'm off to buy one and will report back when I've played with it a little (if anyone is interested). -- Chris Green _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4362 (20090824) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4362 (20090824) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com

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A low powered backup solution probably/possibly.
by Chris G 24 Aug '09

24 Aug '09

After all my recent maundering about there being no low powered systems suitable for backup servers I did a bit of lateral thinking and looked at NAS servers again (I had looked a couple of years ago). They have got a lot cheaper now and there seem to be two or three which offer what I'm after (specifically Linux/NFS support). Synaptic, Qnap and IcyBox all offer NAS servers which handle NFS as well as SMB shares. Synaptic and Qnap go beyond that and offer SSH access to the server, a web server, PHP/mySql and python even! It may be that the IcyBox servers do as well but I haven't investigated in detail. Power consumption is pretty low, the Synaptic DS209 for example, with two 750Gb disks claims 25 watts when active, 10 watts when idle. Prices are in the £100 to £200 range without disk drive, adding a big SATA disk will only be £70 or so. I think there will be one replacing my garage linux box quite soon and I can use the garage system as my general purpose test bed. -- Chris Green

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Any experience of the "Fit PC 2" here?
by Chris G 23 Aug '09

23 Aug '09

Does anyone here have any experience of the Fit PC 2 ? They are getting almost reasonably priced now - CPC have the Linux one for £285 (plus VAT) which for a really tiny and low powered machine isn't at all bad. Power consumption is 5 watts, it has 1Gb of memory and a 160Gb hard disk and Gigabit ethernet. It would thus seem to be quite a good basis for various Linux based "boxes on the network". It comes with Ubuntu 8.04 installed. -- Chris Green

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Maintaining music libraries in various formats
by Jon Dye 20 Aug '09

20 Aug '09

Hi all, I currently have my music collection as a bunch of mp3s, oggs or flacs on a fileserver on my home network. That's fine for me using linux to play them back but we have several devices (including Windows machines and iPods) at home that don't support either ogg or flac. I also don't really want to copy the files as flac to my mps player (my mobile phone) as they take up a lot of space so I currently transcode them to ogg or mps. Ultimately I'd like to keep everything as flac as I have lots of space so I will be gradually re-ripping stuff to flac. Because file space is cheap I had a crazy idea to keep a directory of originals on the network and then to run a periodic script to build a directory of mps3 or oggs from the originals. This would save time transcoding and would support the various devices on the network better. Has anyone heard of a scheme like this or knows of any software designed to do this. Ideally the update script would: 1. Create/Update the corresponding mp3/ogg file whenever a file in the originals directory changes (i.e. I rip a new CD) 2. Update the metadata in the originals directory whenever the metadata in a mp3/ogg directory changes. 3. Support all file formats in the originals directory (as I won't have only flacs there at the start). I suppose hard linking mp3s/oggs where relevant is therefore a good option here. I had an idea to somehow use SCons to "build" the mp3s/oggs from the flac files but that only supports requirements 1. The other option was to write a custom python (or similar) script to do it. My question is, does anyone have any suggestions for existing tools that do something similar or for ideas of how to implement what I want. JD

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Iceweasel plugin selection
by Richard Lewis 19 Aug '09

19 Aug '09

Hi ALUG, So I'm trying to get a WAV file to play in an HTML document in Iceweasel. I have an <object> with an <embed> inside it: <object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab" type="audio/wav" width="1" height="1" class="griller" id="griller"> <param name="AUTOPLAY" value="False" /> <param name="src" value="AK_2049_AR_12318-1.wav" /> <embed width="1" height="1" type="audio/wav" qtsrc="AK_2049_AR_12318-1.wav" src="AK_2049_AR_12318-1.wav" AUTOPLAY="False" name="griller" enablejavascript="true" /> </object> This works on Safari with the Quicktime plugin, but not on Iceweasel. I'm guessing the problem may be with the plugins Iceweasel is using. In Edit | Preferences | Applications, I can select the plugin to use for "WAV audio", but the options are only "Use Movie Player (default)", "Use Windows Media Player Plug-in (in Iceweasel)", or "Use other..." (which browses for an executable). about:plugins tells me that I have the VLC plugin installed and that it knows how to handle content of MIME type "audio/wav" or with ".wav" suffixes. I also have the mplayer plugin installed which (AIUI) pretends to be WMP and also knows how to play .wav files. Why does VLC not appear in my list of available plugins in the Preferences | Applications dialog? Is this true for others? Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +-------------------------------------------------------+ |Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.| |http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html | +-------------------------------------------------------+

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