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Re: [ALUG] Visio alternative?
by Rob Grant 17 Oct '08

17 Oct '08

main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > Send main mailing list submissions to > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > You can reach the person managing the list at > main-owner(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of main digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Visio alternative? (Yvonne Everett) > 2. Re: Visio alternative? (Srdjan Todorovic) > 3. Re: Visio alternative? (David Reynolds) > 4. Re: Visio alternative? (Wayne Stallwood) > 5. Re: Visio alternative? (Jan T. Kim) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:34:21 +0100 > From: "Yvonne Everett" <ye103910(a)googlemail.com> > Subject: [ALUG] Visio alternative? > To: ALUG <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> > Message-ID: > <25b8c930810160734nc7f9e72qf9c722b5ff66d2a0(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Hi > > Does anyone know of a good alternative to Visio? I have some network > diagrams I need to draw up but have had enough of the windoze > applications.... > > Thanks > > You might like to try www.best4c.com . It lets you draw cobweb diagrams for networks, UML, general concept maps and the like via your browser. You can then make the diagrams available online so that others can view them or copy a version to develop further. The interface is very smoothly done and results look good. I've been searching for something like this to use for collaborative curriculum development with colleagues at UEA, also for personal brainstorming/concept-mapping. I only came accross Best4c ia couple of days ago and it is the closest I've found so far- except that when I created an account and tried it out none of the diagrams I created would save, which is kind of a show stopper. Still good enough for me to try again soon though, could have been some latency in new account setup maybe. For a desktop app there is Cmaptools from http://cmap.ihmc.us/ that I have used on and off for a while. Rather resource hungry and insists on putting big things into windows profile space which causes problems with our odd UEA setup. Pretty intuitive and flexible though when not eating CPU. Seems crazy that when I want to chuck out ideas and play around linking and rearranging them paper is still hard to beat. Surely there is a better app somewhere? Rob -- Rob Grant Lecturer in Economics School of Development Studies University of East Anglia r.grant(a)uea.ac.uk +44(0)1603 592324

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Visio alternative?
by Yvonne Everett 17 Oct '08

17 Oct '08

Hi Does anyone know of a good alternative to Visio? I have some network diagrams I need to draw up but have had enough of the windoze applications.... Thanks -- Yvonne Everett Email: ye103910(a)googlemail.com Mobile: +44 (0)7881 727213

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Basic mail functionality with attachments
by Mark Rogers 15 Oct '08

15 Oct '08

I'm sure I should be able to solve this one easily with help from Google but I've drawn a blank so far. I have a basic box installed with Ubuntu-server (8.04), pretty much a default install. I want to send a couple of files from that box as attachments by email. I'm looking for the minimum necessary to do this. I don't really see the need for a mail server (it just needs to do a DNS lookup for an MX record then SMTP direct to that). I have so far installed mutt but that's unable to send without something extra being installed. -- 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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EeePc900
by Barry Chater 14 Oct '08

14 Oct '08

Hi just bought a Eeepc 900 from Morrisons for £199, I like it but am amazed to find no firewall installed,and as yet cannot find a way to install one. Still using the original linux OS. has any of you Eeepc owners managed to get a firewall installed? second question, Is it possible to fit an ide hard drive from a laptop into a desktop pc as a second drive, Thanks Barry

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Correctly configuring hostnames
by Mark Rogers 14 Oct '08

14 Oct '08

I'm sure this is trivial but all the info I've found online has been too vague to help me sort it. If I want a Linux box (Ubuntu/Debian) to have the FQDN of mybox.example.com, where do I set it? I understand that /etc/hostname should contain the "mybox" bit, but where does example.com go? I would expect the following queries and responses hostname -d Should give "example.com", gives "" (empty string) hostname -s Should give "mybox", and does hostname --fqdn Should give "mybox.example.com", gives "mybox" I even managed to get "hostname -s" to return "mybox.example.com" earlier, although I can't now reproduce it. NB: I do know that after changing /etc/hostname I need to run hostname -F /etc/hostname -- 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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RAM issues - Help!
by Steven Rose 13 Oct '08

13 Oct '08

I'd really appreciate any help on this matter, not really being all that knowledgeable in the hardware at hand. I am running a Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H (rev 1.0) motherboard with the latest BIOS, F6 I believe. The proc is AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+. The operating system at present being Ubuntu 8.04.1, fully updated and so forth. (http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassVal…) The manual clearly states that the four DIMM slots run at a voltage of 1.8, this is also very clear in the CMOS settings. However, I have purchased a set of Corsair DDR2 800MHz XMS2 DHX, 2x2gb (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142433) before realizing my potential issue. In the extended specifications it mentions something regarding 2.1 volts as it also does on the side of the heat-sinks. They are both currently in this particular machine and seem to be working fine, my concerns arise when running a memtest via GRUB. I have altered nothing in the BIOS merely replaced the old RAM and attempted to boot, which works fine, the memtest is stating something along the lines of 5-5-5-18, which I presume is related to the latency, however the RAM is branded as being 4-4-4-12, I am blissfully unaware as to whether it is running at the correct speed, or indeed voltage to work fully. Another point would be the system only displaying itself as having 3.2gigs rather than four, although this I presume could be normal as I am under 32bit userland. If my hardware will allow, of course, I wish to run this memory at its full capabilities. Any aid in this will be a great help. Cheers, Steve

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Removing a disk drive, will it confuse things?
by Chris G 12 Oct '08

12 Oct '08

I want to remove one of the disk drives from my 'main' system (running Fedora 8). The drives on that system are currently:- /dev/VolGroup01/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1 LABEL=/boot1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0 /dev/VolGroup01/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0 # # # Additions to see Fedora 7 partitions # /dev/sdb1 /f7boot ext3 defaults 0 0 /dev/VGa2/LVa2 /a2 ext3 defaults 0 0 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /f7 ext3 defaults 0 0 The disk I want to remove is /dev/sda which is (mostly) that /f7 mount point /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 (and also some of the swap). The two drives I'm leaving are currently /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc. I can see if all is well in terms of the contents of the drives by simply removing the two lines from /etc/fstab and rebooting, that will check that there's nothing needed for the system to run on /dev/sda. However will the resulting changed names of the underlying physical drives that (I presume) will occur when I remove /dev/sda cause any problems? I.e. will it stop the system booting/running? If so would it just be a matter of booting off a CD and going into single user mode to sort things out or is it messier than that? -- Chris Green

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copy and paste facilities
by Barrys linux mail 10 Oct '08

10 Oct '08

Hi I dont seem to be able to copy and paste text from firefox3 into Open office word as i can with windows. installed a clipboard program called glipper but still cannot copy and paste.I really need something with a graphical interface as i am not too good using commands etc. has anybody got any ideas on a program that will do this copy and paste for me? Barry

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To install "stright-through" via CUPS??
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 10 Oct '08

10 Oct '08

Hi Folks, Confession: I've never had much luck with CUPS (as opposed to the old lpd system which I could get dancing to any tune)! Anyway: My printer is a PostScript-endowed HP 1300. I only ever produce PostScript files for printing. Therefore, I just want to be able to send the PostScript stream straight-through to the printer, i.e. not using any drivers. But when I try to set this up on CUPS (Gnome interface) it insists on going through the Maunfacturer/Driver routine. I've tried "Generic PostScript", and also "Apple Laserwriter II", installing PostScript drivers from the foomatic list. But the result is that, when I do 'lpr filename.ps', the printer starts printing reams of sheets with a single line of garbage on each. Don't ask me why! There's a complication, in that here I'm running Linux in VirtualBox on Vista, so there may be interference from Vista; but if I could get "straight-through" set up I think I should be OK. So, Question: How to set up straight-thorough in CUPS? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Oct-08 Time: 15:30:38 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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VNC Repeater
by Mark Rogers 10 Oct '08

10 Oct '08

If I have two Windows users, one needing to use VNC to view the desktop of another through various firewalls etc, what can I set up on a publically accessible (Linux) box to allow them to connect? Assume very little technical knowledge at each Windows end so I need to do something as simple as possible for them. The outbound connection from the vncserver end (the desktop that needs to be "seen" by the other end) will probably need to use some common port like 80 to get through the firewall, which will be fun as all my Internet servers have web servers on them, but I'll fall off that bridge when I come to it. The viewer end is marginally more technically capable (ie they'll follow instructions more carefully) than the server end. -- 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] VNC Repeater
by Mark Rogers 09 Oct '08

09 Oct '08

Phil Ashby wrote: > What I suggested does use an outbound at each end - one pushes the port > forward (-L) one pulls (-R)... :) > Oops, misunderstood because of your references to port-forwarding. I'll investigate further, thanks. [Phil's email was sent off-list but given its content I've assumed that was an error hence the on-list reply. All of Phil's reply is above.] -- 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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Session saving not working - or am I confused?
by Chris G 09 Oct '08

09 Oct '08

I can't get Gnome to save sessions, at least I can't get it to do what I'm expecting it to do. Running Ubuntu 8.10 beta. I go to System - Preferences - Sessions and select the Options tab. There I'm presented with a selection box for "Automatically remember running applications when logging out" and a button which says "Remember Currently Running Application". Whichever I use *nothing* appears to be saved, i.e. if I log out leaving some terminals running they don't reappear when I log back in again. Am I misunderstanding what this is supposed to do or is it just totally broken? Google searches seem to suggest that it is supposed to do what I'm expecting but there don't seem to be any reports of it not working, even less of some sort of fix for it. -- Chris Green

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Shell script query
by Stuart Bailey 09 Oct '08

09 Oct '08

I'm trying to run a process that outputs to screen and file using tee. I allo want to capture the pid of the first process (not tee) into a file. I'm using the following command line - the pid I want is that of xterm. xterm -title "Test Terminal" -e 'bin/process | tee logfile' & echo $$ > /tmp/process.pid But I'm getting the pid of tee. How can I change the command line to get the pid of xterm? Many thanks Stuart -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Owner) Linux Specialist (0845) 6583563 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ---------------------------------------- -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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New system, almost perfect but some X/Video questions
by Chris G 08 Oct '08

08 Oct '08

So I ordered my new system (in bits) from Lambdatek over the weekend and it all arrived on Tuesday which, considering it came in four batches via four different carriers is pretty good. It's an Asus P5Q-VM motherboard, Intel quad core processor and 8Gb of memory with all other bits 'generic'. Ubuntu 8.10 beta installed without any problem at all, which is a good start. However..... I sort of knew the Intel G45 graphics was probably a bit risky being so new, and I was right. To get it to run without X crashing I have to add 'Option "NoAccel"' to the device section of xorg.conf. It's a know problem and there is a fix out there which will appear in the Intel X drivers in due course. I don't really need the acceleration at the moment so I can wait. However there is another minor problem, I can't get as high a display resolution as I want, the maximum I'm offered is 1152x864 and I normally run 1600x1200. The display is actually capable of more than that I think. Currently I'm running the new (Ubuntu 8.10) system on the VGA input of my monitor and the old (Fedora 8) system on the DVI-D input of the monitor. I did try swapping them round but the the Ubuntu 8.10 system just failed to start video at all, I had to ssh into it to shut it down. It looks as if the display/screen detection in the Intel X drivers is completely broken. The display is a Dell 2001Fp and is detected without any problems by the Fedora 8 system. How can I tell the Ubuntu systems X configuration all about my display without too much hassle? Is there any utility which will interrogate the display and spew out xorg.conf configuration parameters? -- Chris Green

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Linux Job
by Tracy Dickerson 08 Oct '08

08 Oct '08

Hello, I have just been sent this link as it might be of interest to people here. http://eadt.jobs24.co.uk/doc.html?_a=view&ctx=list&id=247400 Hope it is of help to someone. Tx

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 9th Oct
by Richard Lewis 07 Oct '08

07 Oct '08

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 * Thursday 9th October * at The Reindeer (10 Dereham Road, Norwich, NR2 4AY). It's very near the junction of Dereham Road and the Norwich inner ring road (Grapes Hill) and serves a selection of real ales, bar snacks, and hot drinks. Things normally start around 20:00 (though sometimes people are there earlier). New comers and old goers welcome! Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis 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 | +-------------------------------------------------------+ ----- 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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Any ODBC experts here (connecting Access to mySql)
by Chris G 05 Oct '08

05 Oct '08

I managed something similar to this once before but now I can't make it work again. I want to export some Access database tables to mySql. I am trying to use ODBC. It's all installed and set up in my Windows machine (Vmware). In the "ODBC Data Source Administrator" the connection I have set up to the mySql database tests OK. However when I try to Export from my Access database I get a pop up box saying:- [MySQL][ODBC 3.51 Driver]User cancelled A Google search for this error doesn't reveal much of help. I've tried turning on the logging for the ODBC connection and I'm none the wiser really. What I can't really understand is that when I do the export it doesn't allow me to select the database to export to, how can it do an export of a table without knowing the database name? If I click on the Database pull-down in the export configuration it says "Loading database list not implemented for SQLDriverConnect()". Any ideas anyone? -- Chris Green

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linux alternative to file shredder
by Barrys linux mail 04 Oct '08

04 Oct '08

Hi. As I am in the process of moving completely from xp to Ubuntu Linux I wondered if there is a Linux alternative for my windows file shredder software ( which will overwrite files several times to make them unrecoverable). as I have been stumped on replacing this program which I value greatly as a security item. Thanks Barry

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What I actually bought
by Chris G 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

Well after faffing around for 24hrs or so I've ordered a system in bits from Lambdatek. I decided to go for an Intel G45 based system which might be a little bit "too new" for safety but what the heck. It's an Asus P5Q-VM motherboard, core 2 quad processor, 8Gb RAM, 500Gb disk drive, £473 (incuding a few more bits I haven't listed). I *nearly* ordered from efficientpc.co.uk but in the end the above system just about beat them to it. -- Chris Green

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Where to buy basic system unit for Linux? (Chris G)
by Peter Alcibiades 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

I used to use Komplett, who were brilliant, but how about Novatech as an alternative? Peter

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Where to buy basic system unit for Linux?
by Chris G 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

Does anyone have recommendations for buying a reasonable base unit (i.e. no screen/keyboard/mouse/etc.) I think I'd prefer an 'all Intel' system as that's any easy way to be (fairly) sure it will all work in Linux (though I'm willing to listen to alternatives). I want something like - desktop/tower system, intel core two quad processor, 4Gb RAM (with space for more), 500Gb or thereabouts hard disk. My last system was a 'select the bits yourself' custom build from Komplett but they no longer exist. A company like them would be good. -- Chris Green

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Linux PVR boxes
by Mark Rogers 01 Oct '08

01 Oct '08

Does anyone have any knowledge/experience of commercially available Linux PVRs, such as http://www.darkbox.co.uk http://www.dreambox.org.uk A customer asked me about them as his "Linux guru" (a title I really don't live up to!) and I'd not heard of either of them. -- 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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Installing NX on a headless remote server
by Mark Rogers 30 Sep '08

30 Sep '08

Is there any reason why I should not be able to install NX (www.nomachine.com) on a remote server (to which I have root access)? If I try to install using dpkg and "apt-get -f install" to resolve dependencies I'm getting connection errors which I am pretty sure relate to there being no X server installed. What would be the minimum I need to do to get X installed so that this would work (assuming my guess is correct)? What I am trying to do is reach the point where I can connect to a box in a remote office and use (eg) Firefox on the box to view locally hosted web pages, although once I have remote access to a "desktop" there are other ways I could (ab)use that. -- 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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non-empty DVD shows up empty.
by Torben Stones 29 Sep '08

29 Sep '08

I've got some pictures that I backed up to a DVD earlier this year. But now when I put it my computer to recover some of them it shows up as an empty DVD+R. I can see from the surface that it has been written to, but the computer just isn't seeing it. Is there any programs that I can use to try and recover what is on the disk? Any help would be greatfully recived. Thanks Torben -- You've got a lot of choices in your life. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.

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books on perl
by robert johnson 28 Sep '08

28 Sep '08

I was wondering whether there was any books on Perl programming, more importantly making games using Perl.Thanks Robert

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