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Bash commands
by Bev Nicolson 29 May '08

29 May '08

Still on the nursery slopes as far as bash commands I'm afraid but have, once again, realised how very useful they can be. How do you learn what to type in in any given situation, though? (I'm asking generally, not for any specific problem I have now.) Bev. (Ubuntu user.) -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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Export emails
by chestep 28 May '08

28 May '08

Hello Alug I made enquiries to the list some time ago about exporting emails from Firefox to a folder on a separate drive. I received several replies after which I downloaded an add-on and could export emails successfully. One responder was James (don't know any other details) who said he exported regularly from Firefox; I'm wondering if he (or anyone else) could comment on how well the Folder & Subfolder Structure copies, or the method they use. I find I often have to make separate folder on the target drive, then copy the emails into this, then it works well. Thanks

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Program to do pretty graphs of monthly network transfers
by Srdjan Todorovic 27 May '08

27 May '08

Hi all, I'm looking for suggestions for software that will draw some pretty graphs of the number of bytes transferred over an interface over the past day, week and month. MRTG (for eg.) only seems to do network speed monitoring. I'm looking into RRDTool, but I'm not sure yet if this is what I want. A very very quick look at ntop and iptraf suggests that it's for measuring transfer speeds, and not what I want. Basically I want something that's persistent across reboots and power-offs. Something that will tell me that in the past minute, I transferred 1MB, past 10mins: 10MB, past day: 12MB, past week: 1Gb, past month: 8GB. You get the point. Could be a command line tool, or ncurses interface. Nice pretty graphs would be a bonus (graphical toolkit on X11 or web-based solution). Has to run on Linux, and be at the very least, free as in beer. Anyone got any recommendations? Many thanks, Srdjan

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duff switch?
by mbm 27 May '08

27 May '08

This not strictly a Linux/OSS question (unless the fact that the router in question is running openwrt counts), but I ask because there are bound to be network experts here and I'm going crazy. I have an Asus WL500G wireless router connected to my DSL router. This lets me partition my network into two in a classic screened subnet architecture. Thusly: outside | [DSL]---------DMZ hosts------- | | | [ASUS] | | inside (both wired and wireless) DMZ net is 192.168.1.0, inside net is 192.168.10.0 As I said, the Asus is running x-wrt (a flavour of openwrt with a nice web interface on top). The Asus has 4 lan ports, 1 wan port and the wifi interface. I have the following situation: 1. No problem with wifi. Any and all wifi devices I configure can connect, they can see all relevant hosts (including my dnsmasq DNNS/DHCP server) and can reach the 'net. So all hunkydory. 2. No problem with any /single/ wired lan connection in any of the lan ports (i.e all is good to go as in the wifi connection). So again, all hunkydory (and it doesn't matter which lan port I use.) 3. But - as soon as I connect any second wired device to the Asus, I get connection failures (ICMP errors "Destination Host Unreachable"). Oddly, if I leave a device connected running a ping I get most traffic dropped (of the order of 90%) but intermittently I get connection responses. 4. Now the bit that really confuses me. If I now connect an external switch to any port on the Asus and then connect any new wired device through that switch, it all works fine. So - have I just got a duff switch in the Asus (and if so, why the hell does it work when I connect another switch)? Or should I be looking for something else? Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a Microsoft free zone. Please do not send me Microsoft Word Documents. For some reasons, see: www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Any recommendations for a PCI Wifi card?
by Adam Reid 27 May '08

27 May '08

Greetings all. :) I'm currently engaged in building my new PC, but have hit a rather annoying hurdle when it comes to finding a linux-friendly PCI wifi card ... mostly due to the constant and unadvertised chipset changes they love to pull. Can anyone suggest a good current card - bonus points if it's in stock at ebuyer - that will work reliably and with minimal bloodshed? Many pre-emptive thanks, ~Adam

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Re: [ALUG] Kubuntu 7.04 updates make firefox crash
by James Freer 27 May '08

27 May '08

2008/5/24 Tim Green <timothy.j.green(a)gmail.com>: > On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 10:51 PM, James Freer <jessejazza(a)googlemail.com> wrote: >> All updates i follow the recommended System~>Administration~>Update manager >> The update database for apt-get, synaptic and aptitude are separate. >> Update with just apt-get update only does that database - the >> irritating update icon is from Update Manager (and continues to >> display until update manager is used, although could be disabled). >> Kubuntu has had quite a few problems i seem to recall with Adept. If i >> was using kubuntu i'd install synaptic (a different world to suse's >> Yast). > > Weird - one my Gnome Ubuntu system for at least the last 18 months the > Update Manager icon stayed in sync with manual usage of "apt-get > update && apt-get upgrade". While apt-get is running, the icon turns > grey, and when the upgrade is complete, it goes away. > > Tim. I checked with an update this morning - using ubuntu 7.10 [still waiting for my shipit 8.04! but doesn't matter as they still seem to be quite busy sorting out bugs!]. "apt-get update" seems to update apt-get, the update icon went grey and remained grey while i did some other work, i rebooted and the orange icon returns with the same new package to be updated. It seems update manager needs to run with all package managers exited. There may be a preferences somewhere that we have set differently. This was the same on 7.04 and 6.10 that i tried. james

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Hardware Issues (Display / X11 and Mouse)
by Jan T. Kim 26 May '08

26 May '08

Hi All, I've got two issues mainly concerning hardware: (1) I've recently bought an Asus W202S display (1680x1050) and connected that to my laptop (Asus X51, ATI Radeon Xpress 200M graphics, running the closed-source ATI X server). Things basically work, but it takes some sort of "warm-up time" before the picture stably settles in -- initially, areas with a checkerboard raster (e.g. scroll bars of xterm and other Athena GUI applications, also the default meshwork pattern shown by X11 upon startup) are quite blurred. I can fix this by adjusting the "Phase" setting in the display's on-screen menu system, but the phase will drift, resulting in gradual build-up of blur, and it stabilises only after 20 minutes or so. I wonder whether there might be some Modeline hack or similar to generate a video signal that the display can lock on to reliably, regardless of some drift. In text (console) mode the display doesn't work ideally either, the display "sees" 1024 x 768 while the laptop's display shows 1280 x 800 (and presumably also sends that through the external monitor interface), so some amount of stuff is cut away from the margins. I've tried everything with the on-screen menus of the display (there isn't very much), to no avail -- so is there anything on the Linux side of this that I could try? (2) On a completely different topic, I have an optical mouse which seems to have a sensor problem, the mouse pointer is jumping and dancing wildly, with some trend (towards the lower left, I think). Some mice I had used to do something similar when slightly lifted from the surface. Is there any more or less known fix for such malfunctions? Best regards & thanks in advance for any comments, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | email: jtk(a)cmp.uea.ac.uk | | WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*

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Kubuntu 7.04 updates make firefox crash
by Srdjan Todorovic 24 May '08

24 May '08

Hi, Got this annoying issue. If I do any kind of updates on this Kubuntu 7.04 box, using Adept Manager, and then start firefox, it crashes with a segfault. The dump isn't very informative, the only reference seems to be something to do with a syscall AFAIR. I put a bugreport on launchpad ages ago about it but it has been closed [in part due to my stupidness]. Essentially the advice was "reboot computer after an update". This seems silly and very Windows-y. Firefox segfaults even on updates that would have nothing to do with any component firefox uses or depends on. Firefox crashes invariably after any adept update. Have not tried using plain apt-get on command line. This machine ran memtest for 15 hours, no problems. CPU model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 4300 @ 1.80GHz RAM: 2GB lspci: 00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 Host Bridge 00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 Host Bridge 00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 Host Bridge 00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 Host Bridge 00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 Host Bridge 00:00.5 PIC: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 I/O APIC Interrupt Controller 00:00.6 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 Security Device 00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 Host Bridge 00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge 00:02.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller 00:03.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller 00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A SATA 2-Port Controller (rev 80) 00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 07) 00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a0) 00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a0) 00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a0) 00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a0) 00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86) 00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A PCI to ISA Bridge 00:11.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8251 Ultra VLINK Controller 00:13.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A Host Bridge 00:13.1 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A PCI to PCI Bridge 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7600 GT] (rev a1) 04:05.0 Ethernet controller: ADMtek NC100 Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 (rev 11) 04:07.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169SC Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10) 80:01.0 Audio device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA High Definition Audio Controller (rev 10) Linux ubuntu 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP Tue Feb 12 05:41:34 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux Any suggestions? Thanks, -Srdjan

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Server to server backups
by Mark Rogers 24 May '08

24 May '08

If I have two (virtual) servers online (ie out in the real world, not on my LAN or behind ADSL connections) and I want one to be used to backup the other, what method would anyone suggest? I'm thinking of data backups rather than disk images. I'd like (a) to have rolling backups so I can roll back to before any specific **** up, (b) to have a sensible way to backup MySQL databases I can't think of any other specific requirements. Bandwidth between the two servers isn't a major issue but not something I want to ignore completely. Similarly disk space isn't a problem, but wasting it by having multiple copies of unchanged files would still be a bit silly. On the other hand, both servers will have public IPs and therefore I need to consider the security implications of opening up the live server so that the backup server can access it, and (to a lesser extent) vice versa. -- 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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Cheap server machine spotted
by Chris G 23 May '08

23 May '08

If anyone is looking for a cheap server machine to stick in a cupboard somewhere the HP ProLiant ML115 is being offered at knock down prices at the moment for some reason. The cheapest I could find with a quick search is:- http://www.kikatek.com/product_info.php?products_id=40254&source=froogle £105 for a machine with 1Gb memory, 160Gb hard disk, gigabit ethernet and space for expansion seems pretty good to me. -- Chris Green

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cheap desktops - with ubuntu?
by James Freer 22 May '08

22 May '08

As my desktop video card seems to be 'ill' - i thought i'd take a look at current prices of desktops. Looking on ebuyer i was surprised how cheap they were - #144828. For just a plain desktop i was wondering if they were worth considering? http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144979 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144828 Alternatively [as i have a couple of cases] what would folk recommend for a ubuntu motherboard & cpu -- after all there are 000's. thanks james

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[Somewhat OT] a Google question
by Chris G 21 May '08

21 May '08

Has anyone else been annoyed/frustrated by Google asking "Did you mean: " and then, whether you like it or not, searching for what it thinks you meant rather than what you actually typed? I'm sure it didn't used to do this, it quite reasonably asked the "Did you mean: " but then actually searched for what you entered. -- Chris Green

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Do I need anti-virus & spyware with Xubuntu desktop?
by paul 21 May '08

21 May '08

Hi all I'm using Xubuntu as a desktop for web surfing and emails etc. I'm connected to the Net with a wired router (with hardware firewall) and using FireStarter software firewall. Should I be using anti-virus & spyware for Linux as well? The comp is dual booting machine with XP Pro with AVG and Zonealarm. It's a P4 2GHz 512mb RAM with onboard graphics so could handle some realtime monitoring without harming performance. Cheers Paul --------------------------------- Sent from Yahoo! Mail. A Smarter Email.

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Re: [ALUG] MythTV - recording TV
by James Elsey 20 May '08

20 May '08

Hi James, 2008/5/20 James Elsey <james.elsey(a)serengeti-systems.com>: > Has anyone setup MythTV to record TV shows? I've been using Myth for the past 4 or 5 years with version of Linux and a few different cards. I've used the Nova-T cards for recording from freeview. They were good because they output into an MPEG2 stream directly (using hardware encoding) and therefore I could use a less powerful PC for my TV box. Myth also pulls the program guide from them directly so you don't even need a 'net connection but if you don't do that it will use XMLTV to pull listings from RadioTimes. Is it possible to not record the advert breaks, or even to record multiple simultaneous channels? I'm currently using a Hauppauge PVR-150 to record from my cable box (s-video) to MPEG2 (using hardware encoding) and I've previously used a normal TV card with the software encoding. I've used Mini-ITX boards with hardware based MPEG2 decoding to get even lower CPU usage but none of that is necessary. How much am I likely to pay for a freeview TV card? If you have good freeview signal I'd recommend getting a Nova-T card (maybe one of the dual encoder versions so you can record two channels at once. The Myth wiki and the dvb linuxtv.org website are the best sources of information on compatible cards. Ah, one slight problem, I don't particulary get a good signal in my area, sometimes its ok, but for it to work I'd need to hook it up to a larger area that my TV uses, is that possible? In general, my PCs seem to suffer most from the database load (although I am using low power machines) and the commercial detection has varied in quality over the years. I suspect it's best at US TV :-) What sort of size would a 1 hour TV show take on disc? I'm guessing this could in turn be run thru a converter to reduce the filesize? Thanks

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Re: [ALUG] MythTV - recording TV
by Mark Ridley 20 May '08

20 May '08

On Tue, 20 May, 2008 11:20 am, James Elsey wrote: > Has anyone setup MythTV to record TV shows? > > I've been experimenting with MythTV for a few weeks with various media > formats, but I'm quite intrigued to see how TV recording works. > > Most of the tutorials I've found are based on US TV, apart from myth, are > there any other apps that are good for recording from TV / Freeview? > > If anyone has this setup, can you let me know what TV card/apps are best? I have a Myth setup, originally I used Fedora and installed by hand, but recently tried MythBuntu, wow! I didn't really have to do anything but wait for it to install, it detected my hardware and configured it automatically. As for channels, I answered all the questions from the installer, and it just worked. I have two cards, I use a Nova-T PCI for terrestrial TV, and a Nova-S for satellite, although I have not set this one up yet. As a side note, the MythGames plugin works a treat with sdlmame, and I have an X-Arcade dual joystick, which makes 42" Defender heavenly! :) Cheers. -Mark ----------------------------------------------------------- This message may contain confidential and/or privileged information. This information is intended to be read only by the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, you are on notice that any review, disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete or destroy any copy of this message.

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Re: [ALUG] [ubuntu] /home backups
by James Freer 20 May '08

20 May '08

Keith Zak provides me with rabbit and hare in quantity - wouldn't fit in a hot dog. james 2008/5/20 <keith.jamieson(a)bt.com>: > James > > ahhh ... nice doggy ... ARGHHHHHHH > > And you cant outrun these ! > > ... fills the hot dog buns nicely though ;) > > > > Keith > > > > > > ________________________________ > > From: James Freer [mailto:jessejazza@googlemail.com] > Sent: Mon 19/05/2008 11:04 PM > To: Keith > Subject: Re: [ALUG] [ubuntu] /home backups > > > > 2008/5/19 <keith.jamieson(a)bt.com>: >>>2008/5/19 Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk>: >>>> On Mon, 2008-05-19 at 16:34 +0100, James Elsey wrote: >>>> >>>> BTW anyone now thinking of breaking into my shed to get a 500GB drive >>>> full of music and videos and all my email...I have to warn you I have >>>> guard cats ! >>> >>>I better pop round with my Greyhound and Lurcher! >>>"Guard cats" may last a second. >> >> lol ... lion, tiger ? Cheater ;) >> >> I was after one of these, it keeps the door-to-door sellers away ! >> >> Keith >> > > Zak also provides some keep! > http://s93.photobucket.com/albums/l59/jessejazza/suzie/?action=view&current… > http://s93.photobucket.com/albums/l59/jessejazza/suzie/?action=view&current… > > james > > >

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MythTV - recording TV
by James Elsey 20 May '08

20 May '08

Has anyone setup MythTV to record TV shows? I've been experimenting with MythTV for a few weeks with various media formats, but I'm quite intrigued to see how TV recording works. Most of the tutorials I've found are based on US TV, apart from myth, are there any other apps that are good for recording from TV / Freeview? If anyone has this setup, can you let me know what TV card/apps are best? Regards James Elsey Junior Developer Serengeti Systems Limited Serengeti House Kersey Maltings Kersey, Ipswich IP7 6DP Company registered in England & Wales Registration No: 3578108 T: 01473 825 002 D: 01473 825 013 M: 07841 343 879 Skype: james.elsey1 E: James.Elsey(a)serengeti-systems.com URL: www.serengeti-systems.com <http://www.serengeti-systems.com/>

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Re: [ALUG] [ubuntu] /home backups
by James Elsey 19 May '08

19 May '08

>>Depends on your back-up frequency, I find once a month serves me fine >>and once you've set the partitions up, that's it. > - buy a USB drive (50 quid will get you 350-500G) and backup >>Actually a very good point and an option I'd been seriously considering >>(not only for back-ups). The price of HD storage is silly these days so >>back up to optical media is a bit illogical. I have always been concerned of hard disks malfunctioning (too many bad experiences in my early days. And if the PC catches fire, then that other logical drive really isn't much of a good backup :P > to that.(Hell, if you are really skint and live close enough > to Long Stratton to pick it up I'll /give/ you an 80Gig USB drive) > >>There you go James, one can't say fairer than that!! :o) I'd be very grateful! :D > - use rsync to backup to a remote system (I backup hourly to > a separate networked system) > > Mick >>Yes, looked at rsync, nice utility but hourly would probably be to >>frequent for me. Daily would be good. Keith ________________________________ IMPORTANT NOTICE: This e-mail, and each of any attachments transmitted with it, is confidential, is the property of Kewill Systems plc ("Kewill"), and is intended solely for the information of the individual/entity to whom this e-mail is addressed. It may also be privileged or protected by other legal rules. If you have received it by mistake, please notify the author immediately by replying to this e-mail and then destroy/delete this e-mail and all attachments (if any). If you are not the intended recipient you must not use, disclose, distribute, copy, print, or rely on this e-mail. In accordance with Kewill's internal policy e-mails sent and/or received may be monitored. Whilst Kewill takes reasonable precautions (including use of anti-virus software) it accepts no responsibility for any loss or damage should this e-mail contain any virus, or similar destructive or mischievous code. C Kewill Systems plc 2007. Kewill Systems plc (1037515) - registered in England at Bramley House, The Guildway, Old Portsmouth Road, Artington, Guildford, GU3 1LR.

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[ubuntu] /home backups
by James Elsey 19 May '08

19 May '08

Hi Can anyone suggest a good backup procedure whereby I can backup all my photos/mp3s/videos etc under /home? I could back them up to a separate drive, but I only have old hard disks (10gbs) and don't really trust them. I'd like to backup onto DVD but my /home is around 80gb Are there any good compression tools that can compress image files for backup? I'm on ubuntu 8.04 Thanks James Elsey

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Firefox / Ubuntu Greyscale Weirdness
by Martin Collins 16 May '08

16 May '08

Hi, is anyone experiencing the same weird greyscale issue as I am? I don't know if it's Firefox 3.0b5 or Ubuntu 8.04 or Gnome 2.22.1 or Xorg or even my Nvidia drivers that are responsible, but whilst using Firefox it will momentarily (few seconds) lock-up and the Firefox window will turn greyscale (similar to when you click on System -> Quit). It is just the Firefox window because you can bring other still coloured windows to the front and then back again and Firefox is still greyscale? The greyscale will revert back to colour after two or three seconds, will unlock and will then be usable again. It's not a big problem but particularly weird and something I have never experienced before. I am starting to think that this might be a "feature"? I have googled around a bit and can find nothing much - I think I'm alone on this one!! Thanks all. Rgds, Martin

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OU software compatibility
by Bev Nicolson 16 May '08

16 May '08

I'm about to start another OU course and have been sent a CD ROM which has some course info on it. I know some of you have studied with the OU before so I wondered if you knew what software they use for the video clips? I tried asking computing support but 'they don't support Linux...' <sigh.> (The plan was to find out then ask you lot about it.) Thanks. Bev. -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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Applet or dock app for birthdays/anniversaries wanted
by Chris G 15 May '08

15 May '08

I'm looking for a minimalist application that will display a list of upcoming events (e.g. birthdays, anniversaries, todos) in as compact a fashion as possible so I can park it permanently on my dekstop. I have found a couple of rather old applications that do something like what I'm after but one (wmbday) is a dock application (and I don't have a dock). The other (cstermin) is OK'ish but it's written in perl which is not my preferred language if I want to modify it. Here are some screenshots of the two of them to show the sort of thing I'm after:- http://buzzinhornetz.ath.cx/wmbday/screenshot.php http://cstermin.sourceforge.net/ Can anyone suggest anything more recent which can do the above sort of thing and/or some sort of development framework or libraries that would make writing such a thing easy? Ideally I'd like the data to be in iCalendar format but that's not vital really. -- Chris Green

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cron problem, probably something to do with quoting, how to diagnose?
by Chris G 14 May '08

14 May '08

I have a couple of backups that run overnight which use rdiff-backup to send files to a remote system. The crontab (as shown by 'crontab -l') entry is as follows:- 25 03 * * * rdiff-backup --remote-schema 'ssh -C %s /home/isbd/bin/rdiff-backup --server' isbd(a)shell.gradwell.net::. /rdiffBackup/gradwell If I run the rdiff-backup from the command line (copy and paste the above excluding the '25 03 * * * ' then it runs perfectly without errors. However the cron job is failing and sending me the following mail:- /bin/sh: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `'' /bin/sh: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file So what's going wrong? It's almost as if the line is too long for cron but it's not *that* long. I have checked thoroughly that it really *is* one line. How can I diagnose what's going wrong? Other entries in the same crontab are working OK. -- Chris Green

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Silly regular expressions!
by Mark Rogers 14 May '08

14 May '08

I have some legacy code which uses "[[:punct:]]+" in a regular expression replace (using PHP's ereg_replace) to remove all punctuation chars. Eg: ereg_replace('[[:punct:]]+', 'test1-2,3.4:5', '') returns 'test12345' What I want to do is remove all punctuation except "-", ie to get the result "test1-2345". I can't currently think of a regex that will do it, other than [^\.,:]+ where I list all punctuation except - between the square brackets, but that would be a nightmare to create and maintain. Is there a way to invert [:punct:] somehow so that [^-[:inverted-punct:]]+ would work? -- 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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Alsa Gain levels
by Wayne Stallwood 13 May '08

13 May '08

Is it just me or is ALSA a little bit pessimistic about maximum gain levels for inputs and outputs. Of a sample of 3 machines (old desktop with a SB Audigy, New desktop with Intel HDA and my Fuji laptop) none of them seem capable of getting the volume out of their speakers that they were capable of in Windows. Also I am having trouble getting any of them to work with a selection of passive (and in one case a USB) microphone at anything like the input gain I need to use them with things such as skype. Is there any way to tweak the input/output gain of my soundcard beyond the limits of the mixer sliders in alsamixer ? My USB Mic is a particular problem as I can just about live with the maximum output volume. But the USB mic is part of a USB camera and with the gain at maximum I can just about be heard with everything set to max if I speak directly into the mic/camera but with it mounted where it needs to be on top of my screen I am barely audible unless I shout. Not that I think it is device specific as it seems to affect even the analogue microphone inputs but my webcam/mic combo is ID 0c45:62c0 Microdia

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