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Re: [ALUG] upgrading from 6.06 LTS to 8.04 LTS
by Bev Nicolson 24 Apr '08

24 Apr '08

<<Oh yes, and is there anything important I need to do, that I have forgotten, before upgrading?>> > > Backup ? Yes, that might be a good idea! Thanks. Bev. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Wayne Stallwood" <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> > To: ALUG <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> > Subject: Re: [ALUG] upgrading from 6.06 LTS to 8.04 LTS > Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:46:08 +0100 > > > On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 16:53 +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote: > > I've done what the Ubuntu website says and gone to system > admin > > > update manager and installed the last batch of updates but it > > doesn't mention anything about the new version when I click on > > 'upgrade' again. Am I a) being a bit impatient or b) is there > > another (simple!) way round this? Oh yes, and is there anything > > important I need to do, that I have forgotten, before upgrading? > > Backup ? > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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! > -- _______________________________________________ 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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Router conundrum
by Chris G 24 Apr '08

24 Apr '08

iIn the past several weeks I have upgraded our home ADSL (which is also our small business internet access) to make it more robust. We have two telephone lines so I got ADSL enabled on the second one so now if one goes down we can still connect. (OK, I know if someone takes the wires out between us and the exchange we probably lose both but there are limits to what's worth doing). The second ADSL is a BT business connection and a free BT Business Hub router comes with it, actually a 2Wire 2700HGV. When it came it installed without fuss and worked, I made its IP address 192.168.1.254 with our original ADSL router as 192.168.1.1. I "shared" access by setting up Maxine's computer to use 192.168.1.254 as its default route and mine to use 192.168.1.1. So far so good, it worked fine, but of course I'd have to manually change things if either ADSL connection went down. So, my next improvement was to get a new Draytek Vigor 2820n router for the not-BT ADSL. I mainly got this for the better (or at least easier to configure) firewall but it offers sharing facilities for two WAN connections and this is where the fun starts. WAN1 on the 2820n is the ADSL connection (EntaNet), WAN2 is an ordinary ethernet connection which can be connected to another router/modem. So I removed the 2Wire router from the 192.168.1.x subnet and plugged it into the WAN2 port of the 2820n. I have set the WAN2 'subnet' to be 192.168.13.x and the 2Wire router is 192.168.13.254. After a few hiccoughs I have got it working but the 2Wire router is causing some issues. For some reason the 2wire router sets itself up so you can access it as http://gateway.2wire.net/ rather than just its IP address (or a name you put in /etc/hosts) on the local LAN. This initially caused some fun and games when I tried to access it but after a while it asked if I wanted to set 192.168.1.x (or maybe 192.168.13.x) as a DMZ and all was well. However I now have another issue caused by this http://gateway.2wire.net/ thing. I want to be able to set up the routers remotely, rather than opening their browser interface to the outside world I'm creating an ssh tunnel to my home machine and port forwarding the router IP. E.g. for the 28820n I do:- ssh -L 50080:192.168.1.1:80 home.isbd.net and it works perfectly, Firefox at work connects to localhost:50080 and sees the 2820n web interface. Similarly I can connect to our DECT SIP phone set up web pages and configure that. The problem is that if I do:- ssh -L 50080:192.168.13.254:80 home.isbd.net and try connecting to localhost:50080 it gets a page not found error because it's trying to connect to http://gateway.2wire.net/xslt?PAGE=HURL00 Can anyone suggest a way around this problem? (Sorry for the long winded explanation) -- Chris Green

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'selectors' for rsyslog, where are they documented?
by Chris G 23 Apr '08

23 Apr '08

I'm trying to log messages from my router, it can send messages to syslog. However I can't find anywhere any documentation on what 'selectors' should look like in /etc/rsyslog.conf, let alone how I would select messages from my router. Can anyone point me at anything useful please. -- Chris Green

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Blue tooth
by Barrys linux mail 23 Apr '08

23 Apr '08

Hi Has anyone successfully used a usb bluetooth dongle with Ubuntu 7.10. I can get it to pair with my mobile phone on the laptop, but when i try to send a photo from phone to laptop, the phone does not detect the laptop.Made both phone and laptop visible but still no connection. I must be doing something wrong but what? Not to clued up with blue tooth! All suggestions gratefully received. Barry

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Problem rebooting debian server after power down
by Jenny Hopkins 23 Apr '08

23 Apr '08

Hullo there List, I powered down a debian etch server yesterday, for the first time in several months. When powered back up, it is mounting the hard drive read only for some reason, with no hostname. The kernel is 2.6.18-5-amd64, if I boot into older kernels I get the same problem. I've run fsck several times and found no errors. I remounted the drive rw and started trying to manually start services. I tried setting the hostname thusly: jenny@(none):~$ sudo /etc/init.d/hostname.sh start /etc/init.d/hostname.sh: line 19: /lib/init/vars.sh: No such file or directory jenny@(none):~$ Looking in /lib/init, there are no files, only an empty rw directory, but on my other system there are a bunch of startup files. I see the package initscripts is supposed to provide these files, -dpkg says v. 2.86.ds1-38 installed. I went to remove and reinstall it but got such a scary warning i haven't dared yet. Has anyone any idea what on earth is going on? Thanks, any pointers appreciated. Jenny

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Further report on MSI Titan 700 NAS and USB drive
by Chris G 23 Apr '08

23 Apr '08

It's all done now. :-) I formatted the external USB drive as ext3 last night, it worked without a hitch. I have mounted the USB drive on the system in the garage and have exported it using NFS and mounted it on my desktop Fedora system. I changed my overnight backup script in /etc/cron.daily to write across the network to the USB drive on the MSI system and that ran flawlessly apart from one base directory I had forgotten to create. That works *much* better than trying to backup direct to the Freecom NAS drive (that is now the USB drive on the MSI system). Since the Freecom NAS only offered FAT32 lots of things failed to backup to it properly and I had to jump through hoops with rsync to get it to work at all. rdiff-backup just didn't want to know. -- Chris Green

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Can one force apt-get to download rather than use CD?
by Chris G 23 Apr '08

23 Apr '08

I'm finding my way slowly with Ubuntu Server, now I have a minor problem with apt-get. It wants me to put the Ubuntu Server CD into the machine which, since it's in the garage, is a bit of a pain. Can I force it *not* to use the CD but to always got to the internet to download packages I want to install? If so, how? -- Chris Green

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MSI Titan 700 via based system
by Chris G 22 Apr '08

22 Apr '08

Well the MSI Titan system I was talking about arrived yesterday, it's certainly very compact, but with all the 'bits' you could want. I have installed Ubuntu Server 7.10 on it, it installed without a hitch, not a single problem except that I somehow mis-typed my password during installation and couldn't log in when the system booted. Oops! However running 'rescue system' from the CD allowed me to run as root and modify the password file. It runs from a little 60 watt external power supply which is just luke warm after being on overnight so around 20 watts or so consumption seems about right. It's not incredibly quiet, the fan is quite noticeable with it sat on my desk, that's not an issue for me as it's going to be in the garage but it might be for some people. I've got an external disk drive sat on top of it at the moment so it may be a bit warmer than it should, the fan is CPU controlled. I've already got the external USB drive working with it, I haven't dared try and re-format it yet though (any answers on that front?). All in all I'm very pleased with it, exactly what I want at not too bad a price. -- Chris Green

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Lenovo Thinkcentre A61e USFF
by Tim Green 22 Apr '08

22 Apr '08

After Wayne's recommendation I bought one of those Lenovo Thinkcentre A61e USFF thingies. He's not kidding about expansion options - no PCI slots! I think there is a mico-PCI slot free next to the (laptop) memory slot, so WiFi is possible. On the back there are 3 audio ports, 4 USB, 1 Ethernet, one VGA and the DC power socket. That low price of £195.73 + VAT (=£229.98) also includes a sturdy keyboard, a very lightweight optical mouse, and an XP licence, but no CDs and no monitor. The concept is not far off a MacMini, but about three times larger, and black. I'll be installing Hardly Heroin when it's released at the end of the week, and I'll let you know how it goes. Regards, Tim Green.

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Tools to clean "empty space" on disks
by Mark Rogers 22 Apr '08

22 Apr '08

Are there any tools around that can clean empty space on disks? I'm not too worried about doing this for secure deletion purposes, I just want to get a good result from a compressed image of the disk. NB: I tend to use: dd if=/dev/hdb | gzip > hdb.dd.gz .. but there's probably a much better way to do this. Usually it's an NTFS disk but in this particular case it is ext3. -- 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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Firefox toolbars - help!
by Chris G 21 Apr '08

21 Apr '08

I've been playing with Firefox themes and have been customising the toolbars. A while ago I added a new toolbar, basically as a separator for the theme I was using but now I need it no more. So, how do you *remove* a toolbar you've added? You can turn view off for the toolbar but I couldn't make that 'stick', every time I restarted Firefox the toolbar was visible again and I had to turn view off again. So I clicked on "Restore Default Set" in the toolbar customisation window. That got rid of my added toolbar permanently which is something, but now I have loads of icons in the Navigation Toolbar that I don't want. It says "You can add or remove items by dragging to or from the toolbars", no I can't! I can add items by dragging them too the toolbar but I can't remove them by dragging them from the toolbar. How on earth does one remove items? -- Chris Green

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[Fwd: Re: [ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road]
by Dave Crisp 20 Apr '08

20 Apr '08

It looks like I'm actually going to be at this one. I'm scared..... On Wed, 2008-04-16 at 11:49 +0100, Tracy Dickerson wrote: > Hello, Guys and Gals, > > Rick and I will try and be there this month. Sorry for our absence, I > hope all is well. > > Tracy x > > On 15/04/2008, samwise <samwise(a)bagshot-row.org> wrote: > > 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 next > > week (Monday 21 April 2008) at 20:00: > > > > > > The Milestone Beer House > > 5 Woodbridge Road > > IPSWICH > > IP4 2EA > > > > Tel: 01473 252425 > > Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA > > > > The Milestone pub is in the centre of Ipswich, near the now-defunct > > Odeon cinema and not far from The Regent Theatre. > > > > There is more information on the venue, including car parking info, on > > the ALUG wiki: > > > > http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings > > > > All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Hopefully, it > > shouldn't be too hard to find the pack, look for those huddled around > > a laptop! > > > > Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. > > > > > > 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 > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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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Free to a Good home
by Wayne Stallwood 19 Apr '08

19 Apr '08

Alphaserver 800 5/333, in a rack case, 512MB of RAM, 3 4.2GB hotplug disks with a carrier for a 4th, DAT drive (untested), CD ROM. I have OpenVMS installation media (it's up to the buyer to obtain a free hobbyist licence) it had BSD on it I think but one of the disks has failed. The remaining two disks go through block test diags fine however. As a system it probably still has ebay value, I just can't be bothered to deal with listing it, packing it for postage etc Also Last call for my original media server, headless 833Mhz PIII with 128MB RAM, no disks installed, small form factor case. You need to be able to do a serial console installation or attach a pci gfx card and usb ports to do a local console one. Also HP PA-RISC machine, series 9000 model C110. I took this from Noodles before he moved on behalf of another ALUG member who then didn't want it after all. I know nothing about it other that it boots and it is now officially in my way. All of the above need to be collected either as a whole or in part, however you might be able to convince me to attend a meet with some/all in my car boot :)

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What I've decided to buy as a low power system
by Chris G 19 Apr '08

19 Apr '08

I've found this MSI Titan 700 system:- http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=21448 I've not actually bought it from CCL because they're out of stock at the moment, I bought it from Lambdatek (slightly cheaper too). Low power VIA processor, all ready put together for me, Gigabit LAN, what more could I want? Hardly any more expensive than a NAS and much more capable. -- Chris Green

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How to talk to something configured for a different subnet?
by Chris G 18 Apr '08

18 Apr '08

What's the easiest way to 'talk' (i.e. connect) to a device that's set up for a different subnet from the one that your local subnet is using? This is a common recurring problem in two situations:- You have a subnet that's *not* 192.168.1.x and you want to use a router (or whatever) that comes with its default address set to 192.168.1.1. You have set a router (or something) to a different subnet for some reason and want to 'get it back'. I have done it a few times by editing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to the new subnet and then rebooting, doing what I need to do and then changing ifcfg-eth0 and rebooting again but this seems a little laborious. Is there an easier way? Could I just run ifconfig from the command line to do what I did above, but rather more quickly and easily? Are there any other ways to do this? -- Chris Green

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PHP+MySql bod required
by Steve 17 Apr '08

17 Apr '08

Arternoon list, My boss' other company is looking for a PHP and MySql guru to take over and maintain a number of systems. The website is at http://www.thefeedbackcompany.com/ If anyone's interested, let me know and I'll pass details on. Cheers, Steve

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Low[ish] power PC building
by Chris G 16 Apr '08

16 Apr '08

I'm coming to the conclusion that the most sensible approach for my 'garage server' will be to build it myself. A Mini-ITX system would be ideal but the prices are still silly compared with boring old ATX and ATX related systems. In addition I have an ATX case that I can use. Size isn't an issue, I have two huge garages. Noise isn't an issue, I don't sleep in the garage or watch TV there. :-) So it would seem that a motherboard with an AMD BE series processor would give me a start for a low power system. Is there any way to decide how power hungry motherboards are? I'm open to alternative recommendations for the processor but Googling about suggests that an AMD BE-2400 or something like it is probably the best low-power/price compromise, so I'm looking for an AM2 motherboard with video and ethernet on board with low power consumption. -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road
by samwise 16 Apr '08

16 Apr '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 ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back next week (Monday 21 April 2008) at 20:00: The Milestone Beer House 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 252425 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA The Milestone pub is in the centre of Ipswich, near the now-defunct Odeon cinema and not far from The Regent Theatre. There is more information on the venue, including car parking info, on the ALUG wiki: http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard to find the pack, look for those huddled around a laptop! Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. 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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Hello
by John Herd 14 Apr '08

14 Apr '08

Hello Alug... I didn't think that there was a Linux users group in Suffolk until I stumbled across your web page. Hopefully the group is alive and well. I see that you have meetings at the Milestone Beer House - when is your next meet? I'm guessing the 21st from your web page. Anyway I could ramble on forever about what I use Linux for but it boils down to this: my missus uses Ubuntu Gutsy because she it does what she wants it to do (and the BBC finally got a beta out the door for iPlayer). I use Linux because it's easier to work with (haha, but seriously it's getting easier to work with) although I hanker after games. I randomly nuke my machine and put a new distro on there, run virtual machines and then remember I didn't back up all my data to that spare disk under my feet. Favourite distro: Ubuntu. Least favourite: Gentoo, although friends of mine swear by it I swear at it. If there's anyone out there - please give me a shout back. John.

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gnome-terminal not starting - how to diagnose?
by Chris G 13 Apr '08

13 Apr '08

I suddenly have a problem on my fedora 8 system at home, running gnome-terminal doesn't work, it just hangs. This started happening after I rebooted the system when trying to diagnose something else. I have an fvwm configuration that automatically starts up about six gnome-terminals on different pages. It now doesn't start up all of the gnome-terminals, only two or three appear (it's not even consistent) and I can't start up any more gnome-terminals, if I enter "gnome-terminal" on the command line it just hangs, no message or anything. Some other gnome applications seem to be affected too, I can't start gnome-panel for example. Other terminal applications work fine, e.g. xterm and others. Any ideas what may be wrong anyone? ... and/or how can I can diagnose it? -- Chris Green

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Getting FTP to work through a NAT router - or not
by Chris G 11 Apr '08

11 Apr '08

I have just changed my ADSL router from the Speedtouch 716WL that I have been using for a year or two back to a Zyxel 660H that I had used for a while. The reason is that I no longer need the VOIP ports on the Speedtouch and its firewall is difficult to configure, Web configuration is limited and CLI configuration is arcane! The Zyxel 660H has all the facilities I need now and the Web configuration of the firewall is comprehensive enough for my needs. After a bit of head scratching I have got just about everything working as I want, all the machines on the LAN can see the outside world 'transparently' and some bits of the outside world can see into the LAN as follows:- Any IP address can get to my apache server on port 80 A (very) limited number of IP addresses can connect to my ssh server on port 22 One outside address can get to the router's web configuration which I have moved from the default port 80 to 50080. Very useful for fixing things from work! However I can't get FTP into my NAS to work at all, all I get is a stony silence. I appreciate that there are several oddities about getting FTP to work and it *may* be that it just isn't possible with this router but it would be nice if I could get it to work. What I have done so far is:- Ports 20 and 21 are forwarded from "any outside IP" to the NAS which has the FTP server on it. The firewall allows ports 20 and 21 through. I have disabled the FTP access to the router completely (i.e. as I understand it I have turned the router's FTP server off, it's for Firmware updates etc.) No joy at all. Looking at the router's logs all I see when I try and connect is an incoming packet from the outside system which gets to the NAS and that's it. However I'm not really sure that the logging is showing me everything. By default the FTP clients are using passive mode so, as I see it, everything should be started from the client end. Any ideas anyone as to what I might try next? Even someone saying "it isn't possible" would save me some time! -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Getting FTP to work through a NAT router - or not
by cl＠isbd.net 10 Apr '08

10 Apr '08

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 02:28:13PM +0100, Dennis Dryden wrote: > Only thing i can think of is that the NAS ftp is broken or not liking > your client. I take it you can connect to the NAS in the same way on > your local network? > Yes, I can ftp to the NAS without problems from within the LAN. -- Chris Green

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John Atkinson RIP (Ancient John)
by John Woodard 08 Apr '08

08 Apr '08

I have some sad news. Those of you who have attended the Syleham Kit Meets might like to know that Ancient John has passed away aged 84. He was the old fellow who always brought his wife's home made biscuits to the meetings and always seemed to be the first one to turn up. A Linux stalwart, he used it to do good things for his deaf/blind grandchildren giving them the ability to read and write. His widow Evelyn told me that he suffered a severe stroke which impaired him totally so he chose to refuse hospital treatment to prolong his sad state. He had his wishes granted so was able to pass away with dignity in his own home with his family around him. She told me he died very happy and asked me to pass this on to all of the Aluggers who have helped him in the past. BJ

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 10th April
by Richard Lewis 08 Apr '08

08 Apr '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 10th April * 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. I intend to be there from about 20:00. Others may be there earlier. We should have a table reserved at the back of the pub just to the left of the bar. We look forward to seeing you there. Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +-------------------------------------------------------+ |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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[OT?] Finding a spamming virus
by Mark Rogers 07 Apr '08

07 Apr '08

One of our customers has managed to install a virus (Windows, of-course) which is sending spam. My job is to try to track it down. Virus scans haven't found the problem. Although they have MS Exchange on-site, I am sure that the virus will not be sending through it (unless the virus is on the exchange box itself), so in theory it should be fairly easy to find out which PC is initiating lots of outbound SMTP connections. That's why I don't think this is OT - I reckon my best tools for the job will be Linux ones? Either way any suggestions welcomed, particularly ones I can work on via a VPN connection rather than going to site. NB: I've played with programs like Ethereal/Wireshark in the past, and I'm sure that's what I should be looking at, but I've always found myself looking at too much information and unable to see the wood for the trees. So pointers to tutorials gratefully received! -- 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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