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xsession-errors again...help
by Peter Alcibiades 03 Jul '09

03 Jul '09

OK, this time I decided to have at it root and branch, so did locate to find every pidgin or beagle file there was. I had already removed pidgin using synaptic, but there were a few left over documentation files and some libraries. Then did rm on the lot of them. It makes no difference! I am still getting the errors. Are we at a point where the only thing that will work is a clean reinstall? Surely this cannot be? Is there any way to find out what it is that is looking for the pidgin files? As in Cannot index Thunderbird contacts because a System.ArgumentNullException was thrown: Argument cannot be null. Parameter name: path Could not read Pidgin buddy list file: Could not find a part of the path "/home/peter/.purple/blist.xml". Well, it is not surprising it cannot find part of the path, because I have deleted the whole folder. But what is it that is looking for it if there is neither pidgin nor beagle installed? Thunderbird is equally mysterious. Maybe the thing to do is get rid of Iceweasel? Could it be that? I have also gone through and eliminated beagle in the same way. Does not seem to make any difference. Peter

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xsession-errors again...help!
by Peter Alcibiades 28 Jun '09

28 Jun '09

My xsession-errors file is filling up with a constant stream of messages like this: Cannot index Thunderbird contacts because a Beagle.Util.InvalidMorkDatabaseException was thrown: This file is missing a valid mork header Could not read Pidgin buddy list file: Document element did not appear. file:///home/peter/.purple/blist.xml Line 1, position 1. And yet I have neither Thunderbird nor Pidgin installed. Nor the Debian equivalent, icedove. How to stop this stuff? In desperation I tried installing them and then doing completely remove. Is this something to do with Mozilla, that Firefox aka Iceweasel demands that you have this other stuff installed and configured with addresses? Why? Is the solution maybe to just get rid of Firefox and go to Konqueror - which I have done for one other person, on account of the impossibility of printing properly? Or any other suggestions? Al

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Identica/Twitter
by steveydoteu 21 Jun '09

21 Jun '09

I am looking for means of posting to both at the same time. For example if I post on Twitter, it also reposts to Identica. I know that Identica offers this feature, but as of yet I have not found a means of doing so via Twitter. Any suggestions? Linux or Windows.

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http://identi.ca/group/alug
by steveydoteu 21 Jun '09

21 Jun '09

http://identi.ca/group/alug That is all. Just thought it wise to share with the list.

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A KDE 4 mystery
by Barry Samuels 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

I have just upgraded my laptop running Debian Testing/Squeeze. This caused KDE 3.5 to be replaced with KDE 4. I have set up 6 workspaces under KDE 4 and if I log out or shutdown and reboot then go back into KDE there is only one workspace shown. If I do the same again I go back to 6 workspaces - ad infinitum. Why should the number of workspaces alternate like that? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Handheld technological frontiers
by Richard Bensley 18 Jun '09

18 Jun '09

Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone! Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone! Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone! Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone! Check it out, copy and paste on the iPhone!

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Program to tail and highlight
by Jon Dye 18 Jun '09

18 Jun '09

Hi all, I'm currently tailing some log files so I can watch what's going on with a particular process. What I'd really like to do is to highlight particular matches in the file, preferably with different colours. Does anyone know of any command line applications that could do something like this? Thanks, JD

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DNS
by Mark Rogers 16 Jun '09

16 Jun '09

I've always shied away from running DNS for "real" customers, as it's such a critical part of the infrastructure and is easily managed by the domain registrar (usually 123-Reg). However, after a second DNS outage in 2 yrs at 123-Reg (which should be near impossible, as DNS is the one thing it is easy to make redundant) I've reached the point (again!) of considering running my own. I've always found configuring Bind to be, er, a bit of a bind, so are there any simpler options out there or should I just bite the bullet and install bind? What is the typical system overhead of running DNS - should I add it to my web/mail servers or should it be separate? It makes sense to use our (separate) web and mail servers, if only because if both of those are down then it doesn't really matter than DNS is down too! Requirements are to be able to handle domains and subdomains (ideally multi-level subdomains although we don't have that at the moment so I won't miss it), and wildcards, with A,CNAME and MX records. So pretty basic stuff. -- 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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Re: [ALUG] Gentoo kernel installation hangs while removing something under /var
by Jim Rippon 15 Jun '09

15 Jun '09

----- "Dan Hatton" <vi5u0-alug(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > > what size was the partition you had mounted? > > IIRC, 12GB, so not _that_ small. > That sounds like plenty - there may indeed be something else wrong. Were you using the stages from the CD or downloading them, and had you chrooted when you installed the kernel? > > I'm tempted to make /var/tmp/portage a symlink to something in the > root filesystem, then. Is there any reason that would be enormously > stupid? > I have never tried - if you haven't come across it already, gentoo-wiki.com is an excellent resource for particular system setups and packages - although I don't know whether this case would be on there. There is an article I came across with a quick search for using tmpfs (swapping RAM disk) for portage here http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Speeding_up_emerge_with_tmpfs It may be easier to configure portage to use a different location to extract/build packages - see man make.conf for details of how you can redirect this, or have a look through the portage section of the online docs http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=3 Jim

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 15 Jun '09

15 Jun '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 ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back tonight (Monday 15th June) at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Sorry for the late reminder - I've been camping all weekend with no access to internet. Topics for discussion is wide open - nothing major planned this month. We can potentially discuss eBooks and see an in-development Android title tho. Remember to call or email me, if you're arriving later and want to ensure I don't wander off, which I have a tendency to do if the turn-out hits rock-bottom ... Hope to see you there, Peter. ----- 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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Linux Journal cut-price subscription offer
by MJ Ray 14 Jun '09

14 Jun '09

Message-ID: <eba6d2300906120329s2fd9be4ga5abe51e865ff5f9(a)mail.gmail.com> From: Alan Pope <alan(a)popey.com> ----- Forwarded message from noreply(a)linuxjournal.com ----- Subject: Exclusive savings for our International readers Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:52:40 -0700 (PDT) Are you tired of the rising costs of just about everything? So are we! For a limited time all international subscriptions to the print edition of Linux Journal will be reduced to the low price of $49.50 for 1 year (a savings of over 30% off the regular price) AND upgraded to include a free digital subscription. As a special bonus you will also receive Linux Journal's System Administration Special Issue free of charge. Act now, https://secure.linuxjournal.com/subs/rb/tn26462?promo=M96INTL Hope that helps, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ (Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237

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Re: [ALUG] Gentoo kernel installation hangs while removing something under /var
by Jim Rippon 12 Jun '09

12 Jun '09

Dan, Sounds like your var partition had filled up perhaps - what size was the partition you had mounted? Don't know your experience with Gentoo, but it extracts package sources under /var/tmp/portage/$(package_name) and compiles them therein so you need to have a fair amount of space in /var in order to extract/build larger packages (openoffice, firefox, kernel etc). Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Hatton" <vi5u0-alug(a)yahoo.co.uk> To: "Anglia Linux Users' Group" <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Sent: Friday, 12 June, 2009 13:04:47 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: [ALUG] Gentoo kernel installation hangs while removing something under /var Dear All, Any idea what might be going on in the following, please? I'm installing Gentoo from the latest (20090606, IIRC) installation CD, on a new machine. I followed the handbook as far as attempting to install a kernel with emerge tuxonice-sources (I also tried the more standard emerge gentoo-sources, with the same symptoms). The emerge process (or rather, a process started by it) hangs just after applying patches to the kernel. top reveals that almost all the CPU is being taken up by an attempt to rm something under $(chroot)/var. the exact pathname of the "something" scrolled off-screen before I could catch it, but it looked like it was probably a directory full of patches. When I killed the rm process, emerge carried on nicely, and put a kernel source tree where I'd expect it, in $(chroot)/usr/src. That kernel configured OK, and at least started to compile OK before I had to leave it to go do my day job. So what's the problem, apart from that it's kind of inelegant for an install process to hang and need special measures by the user? If this sort of thing happens on other packages too, the stuff that should have been rm'd and hasn't will pretty quickly fill the small partition I've mounted as $(chroot)/var. Possible explanations welcome. -- Thanks, Dan _______________________________________________ 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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Gentoo kernel installation hangs while removing something under /var
by Dan Hatton 12 Jun '09

12 Jun '09

Dear All, Any idea what might be going on in the following, please? I'm installing Gentoo from the latest (20090606, IIRC) installation CD, on a new machine. I followed the handbook as far as attempting to install a kernel with emerge tuxonice-sources (I also tried the more standard emerge gentoo-sources, with the same symptoms). The emerge process (or rather, a process started by it) hangs just after applying patches to the kernel. top reveals that almost all the CPU is being taken up by an attempt to rm something under $(chroot)/var. the exact pathname of the "something" scrolled off-screen before I could catch it, but it looked like it was probably a directory full of patches. When I killed the rm process, emerge carried on nicely, and put a kernel source tree where I'd expect it, in $(chroot)/usr/src. That kernel configured OK, and at least started to compile OK before I had to leave it to go do my day job. So what's the problem, apart from that it's kind of inelegant for an install process to hang and need special measures by the user? If this sort of thing happens on other packages too, the stuff that should have been rm'd and hasn't will pretty quickly fill the small partition I've mounted as $(chroot)/var. Possible explanations welcome. -- Thanks, Dan

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Long UTF-8 message in Subject!!!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 12 Jun '09

12 Jun '09

Greetings, Folks! This morning I received a message from the local Police via the Cambs "ECops" mailing list (which I subscribe to -- it's a sort of community bulletin board for local policing matters). The message itself was in effect empty -- just the statutory "footers" that appear in every such message. The subject-line (as displayed on my mailer) just said: =?UTF-8?B?RS1Db3BzIC0gVGl0bGUgLSBBY3Qgbm93IGFuZCBhdm9pZCBhICdjYX But then I opened up the full headers. Lo and behold, there was a massive Subject: therein! It would seem that the sender had typed the entire message into the subject-line! However, not only does it claim to be UTF-8, but is also somehow encoded. I can't make it out. So your puzzle for the weekend is to find out what it says! It's unsuitable (lines too long, and some already broken anyway) to paste into the body of this message, so I'm attacheing it as a plain-text file (but exactly as it came up on my screen) subject.txt Any takers? Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 12-Jun-09 Time: 09:57:13 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] AV manipulation
by Mark Rogers 11 Jun '09

11 Jun '09

nev young wrote: > I use Avidemux and find it will do just about anything. > Re-sync is a bit more complex than just <- and -> as you have to enter > a signed number for the millisec time shift. Does that make it a case of trial & error (shift the audio a bit, play the new video, shift the audio a bit more, etc)? > It's fairly fast, on my PC using the copy mode with a time shift will > do a 1hr divx file in about 40 seconds. To be honest I don't really care if it takes a couple of hours to do the actual conversion (although I'd expect something quick, like you suggest). It's the trial & error bit that's the bit I'm trying to make simple; the problem is I don't know how many millisec I need to shift the audio, I just know that it's wrong at the moment! -- 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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AV manipulation
by Mark Rogers 09 Jun '09

09 Jun '09

I have two AV tasks I need to perform, which are otherwise unrelated... 1. I have some video for which the sound is out of sync. The video files use an XviD codec (not sure what sound codec). I'm looking for a tool to allow me to correct them. Ideally I want something I can just use left/right arrow keys to jog the sound a small amount ahead or behind the video until it's correct, then hit save to create a new file. It all ought to be pretty quick (no recompression needed, just re-synchronising). Any suggestions? 2. I want to take some audio files and slow them down (quite a lot) without changing their pitch. I'm trying to learn to play the guitar and I can't play fast enough to play alongside anything yet unless I can slow it right down! My desktop is Ubuntu 9.04 if that's relevant. -- 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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Printing suddenly changed to monochrome only
by Barry Samuels 07 Jun '09

07 Jun '09

I have recently changed over to CUPS in my Debian system although I don't think that caused the problem. I have an HP Colour LaserJet 4500 which will happily print a test page from the printer menu which includes colour so no problem there. However in the CUPS setup the only options I get are 'Grayscale' or 'Inverted Grayscale'. The driver selected is 'HP Color LaserJet 4500 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.3 (en)' and the printer will print only in monochrome. Any ideas? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Eee and root
by Anthony Anson 07 Jun '09

07 Jun '09

To install a program I presume I have to be root. I can't remember ever giving the Eee a root password, nor for that matter, ever being asked for one. I want to put a link to Thunderbird on the 'Internet' page, but I can't drag the icon (kicking and screaming, or not), nor can I copy and paste the icon. Unfortunately, I've filed the book of destructions 'somewhere safe'... HELLLLLP! -- Tony

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Globbed search for filenames in website
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 07 Jun '09

07 Jun '09

Greetings! I'm looking for a way to find out what files for a particular wild-card form exist at a certain directory depth on a website. For example: www.some.web.page/*/*.png for all PNG files 1 below the top level. The results to be listed (stored in a file) along the lines of what you would get from ls */*.png if you were at the top level on the server. A browser won't do it (won't accept wild-cards). I've looked at wget, but this doesn't seem to have a simple listing option (except under ftp mode, which the remote site won't respond to). Any suggestions? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 07-Jun-09 Time: 08:41:32 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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fcron or anacron
by Peter Alcibiades 04 Jun '09

04 Jun '09

Have you ever used either of these? I want to use fcron to run a command every 20 or 30 hours of machine uptime, but cannot figure out exactly where to put the command or how to get it there. Peter

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Re: [ALUG] MySQL Joins
by Jim Rippon 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

Mark, >What I have so far is: >SELECT tbl1.email AS email1, tbl2.email AS email2 >SELECT IF(tbl1.email IS NOT NULL, tbl1.email, tbl2.email) as email >FROM tbl1 LEFT JOIN tbl2 USING (email) > >.. which will get me all the addresses from tbl1, with the matching >address from tbl2 in email2 or NULL if there is no match. > >What I want is to also get all the addresses in tbl2, with NULL against >email1 where there is no match. That is what I thought an OUTER join did >but it seems I'm wrong. An OUTER join can be a LEFT or RIGHT join like this: SELECT tbl1.email AS email1, tbl2.email AS email2 FROM tbl1 LEFT OUTER JOIN email2 USING (email); will show you all the records from the left table (in this case tbl1) and NULL for any records that didn't appear in the right table (tbl2). Perhaps what you want is a union query: SELECT DISTINCT email FROM tbl1 UNION SELECT DISTINCT email FROM tbl2 ORDER BY email; This should give you one result for each distinct entry between the two tables, if I understand it correctly. Worked for my (admittedly very small) test db. Hope this helps, Jim

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MySQL Joins
by Mark Rogers 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

I'm not even sure if this is possible, but I have two tables containing email addresses, some of which are common to both tables. Is there a way I can extract a merged set of addresses from both tables in one go? What I have so far is: SELECT tbl1.email AS email1, tbl2.email AS email2 SELECT IF(tbl1.email IS NOT NULL, tbl1.email, tbl2.email) as email FROM tbl1 LEFT JOIN tbl2 USING (email) .. which will get me all the addresses from tbl1, with the matching address from tbl2 in email2 or NULL if there is no match. What I want is to also get all the addresses in tbl2, with NULL against email1 where there is no match. That is what I thought an OUTER join did but it seems I'm wrong. (Once I have a set of results containing 2 fields, where every address in each table appears, I can easily merge the two fields using an IF.) -- 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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Re: [ALUG] main Digest, Vol 48, Issue 2
by Ben Bewick 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

> Hi ALUG, > > I have in my possession a number of github.com stickers [0] featuring > the github mascot the octocat [0]. If anyone would like one, I'll > bring them along to the pub meet next week or I can possibly mail them > if people aren't coming to the meeting and *really* want one ;) > > Cheers, > > Dave Hi Dave, Yes please, I will be at the ALUG. Thanks! Ben / Viperfang

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 11th June 2009
by David Reynolds 02 Jun '09

02 Jun '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, The monthly second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 11th June 2009 at The Reindeer (10 Dereham Road, Norwich, NR2 4AY; tel. 01603 762223). It's very near the junction of Dereham Road and the Norwich inner ring road (Grapes Hill) and serves a selection of real ales, nice pub food (if you fancy going early to eat) and coffee. There are generally people there from 20:00 onwards and we tend to sit to the left of the main entrance. We look forward to seeing you there. Cheers, David -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk ----- 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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Github stickers / Swag
by David Reynolds 02 Jun '09

02 Jun '09

Hi ALUG, I have in my possession a number of github.com stickers [0] featuring the github mascot the octocat [0]. If anyone would like one, I'll bring them along to the pub meet next week or I can possibly mail them if people aren't coming to the meeting and *really* want one ;) Cheers, Dave 0 - http://david.reynoldsfamily.org.uk/blog/octocat.jpg 1 - http://github.com/mojombo/github-media/blob/510a0a44cf602c62cd1657894bc69b9… -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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