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su with user ID (not name)
by Mark Rogers 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

I'm trying to delete a load of files owned by previously existing users. In other words I then need to "su [username] -c 'rm -r [dirname]' where [username] matches the owner of the files. (I don't have root access to the server but do have the ability to su to any of the users I need to delete files for.) If I use "ls -l" I see the user names truncated to 8 chars, so I'm using "ls -ln" to see the numeric user ID of the files instead. However su doesn't work with numeric UID values. So either I need to find a way to get the fullname of the owner (I know stat will do this but I have a lot these to do and I can't see a good way to just get a list), or find a way to map the UID to a name for su, or some other workaround I haven't thought of. Suggestions? -- 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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Characters on screen wrong using SSH
by Barry Samuels 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

When I use SSH to log in to a remote machine and use something like Aptitude or MC on the remote machine some of the characters on the screen e.g IBM box characters appear as something else which makes the screen difficult to read. Is there a way to cure this? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Cambridge and East Anglia Python Users Group
by Richard Lewis 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

Dear ALUG, The Cambridge and East Anglian Python Users group will hold its fourth "first Tuesday" social meeting on Tuesday 5th February at the Carlton Arms (Carlton Way, Cambridge, CB4 2BY). People intend to arrive from around 20:00 and I will be going from Norwich by train if anyone would like to join me. Please feel free to contact me on- or off-list regarding this if you like. Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis - UEA, MUS PG http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Backup servers (r)synchronised between sites
by Mark Rogers 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

I have two sites that are Internet connected via standard ADSL, and that want to have a simple backup server in each site that uses the other site to store an off-site redundant copy of the data. I plan a Linux server at each site, each with a small o/s drive and two pairs of large SATA drives using software RAID (one pair for each site). That combination should give a good idea of the budget available for this.... Forget hot-swap SCSI drives on hardware raid cards etc! I can easily see how I could rsync the first raid array on site A ("A:md0") across to B:md0, and B:md1 to A:md1. Where I need advice is picking the best backup approach for the users at each site to use to populate their respective backup storage in the first place. (Most of the users will of-course be using Windows, and should be treated as untrained monkeys for the sake of this project.) Given the bandwidth limited ADSL link between the two sites (but with high off-peak limits) I need a backup method which does not cause rsync to needlessly send unchanged data. If I used something like Cobian Backup to create incremental backups, although the disk space usage would be relatively small the periodic full backups will cause rsync to send full backups across the link even though 90% of the content of those backups will already have been synchronised previously. I've seen solutions that use hardlinks between identical files to provide rolling backups on Linux, but I need to support Windows. Any suggestions? -- 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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PDA to use with Linux?
by Jan T. Kim 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

Dear All, my Palm Tungsten is getting increasingly short of breath (battery life) and so I think of getting a successor. I'd like a handheld of some sort that * uses flash memory (i.e. permanent storage that survives battery outages) * interoperates with Linux (the Palm can be backed up and restored using pilot-xfer, but I've not found anything useful to work with the data in the *.pdb ("Palm Database") files) * is small (the Zaurus SL-C palmtops seem interesting to me in many ways, but I think they're just a bit too bulky for shirt pockets, and also, they're quite expensive) * provides a decent choice of software for contacts, diary keeping, and (ideally) an advanced "To Do" tool that understands dependency graphs and integrates with the diary Any recommendations / experiences / comments? Please let me know. Best regards, 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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TV adapter
by Barry Samuels 29 Jan '08

29 Jan '08

I would like to get a Hauppauge WinTV Nova T 500 adapter which I understand works with Linux. That's the easy part. It would be very inconvenient to install it in my desktop because it would require a connection to a TV aerial socket and I don't have one near my desktop. My idea would be to assemble another computer using some spare parts that I have together with some parts that I would have to re-aquire. I say 're-aquire' because I would have had all the necessary parts if I hadn't given away a lot of them (CPUs, hard drives, RAM) to a local computer recycling charity a few months ago. Why is it that one does not have a use for these parts until they've gone? I'm assuming that if I assemble the said computer with the TV adapter in it (putting it near a TV aerial socket) and can connect wirelessly to my desktop then I could access the TV adapter from my desktop using something like MythTV. Would such a thing be possible? I would be looking at a minimal install of Linux on the new box with all the processing done on my desktop. This would assume that I could connect the two boxes using nothing more than a wireless adapter in each i.e. no router. My desktop has an on- board wireless adapter and I have two spare PCI adapters one of which I could use in the new box. Is it possible to get two wireless adapters to communicate in this way? Would that be fast enough to cope with the data from the TV adapter? What sort of specification for the new machine would be required? I have a Gigabyte GA-7ZXE mainboard which takes a Socket A Athlon (which I would have to aquire) and it takes PC-133 SDRam (which I would also have to aquire). What's the minimum RAM I would need? I would also need to aquire an IDE hard drive. What's the minimum size I could get away with? I wouldn't normally want to use a screen or keyboard after the machine has been setup - would that cause problems when booting? What else haven't I thought of? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Cube cases ???
by James Freer 26 Jan '08

26 Jan '08

Be grateful if someone could comment from their experience of building PC's. I've been thinking about building one of these. I used to like the slim desktop as they were a convenient size - until i noticed the more recent ones have low profile pci card slots which i'm not so keen on. The cube case takes a standard power supply and standard pci cards - so i've had a look at a few. Looking at ebuyer i noticed this cheaper one and the comments a purchaser has made - a lot of ????? and yet 4 stars. For the price it seems a fair enough case... I couldn't make out what he was getting at... perhaps i'm just thick... if it's bad i've seen far worse!!!! comments please? http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135583 also #135581, 135582 slight variations it would appear in the comments is the following link http://forum.coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=171184 james

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Broken Gnome/Metacity account - how to fix?
by Martyn Drake 25 Jan '08

25 Jan '08

Hello, Having ham-fisted my way through trying to fix a knackered user account on RHEL 5 that is using Gnome/Metacity (i.e. the RedHat desktop), I can't seem to copy a set of healthy files across - the WM still moans about missing files and the what not. Is there a utility that I could run to re-generate a set of default working files so that the user can at least re-do their old settings manually? I confess ignorance to Gnome/Metacity, but then again, I'm not one for using Linux on the desktop these days, so I'm a bit out of practice.. Regards, Martyn

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Extracting from mbox files
by Mark Rogers 25 Jan '08

25 Jan '08

I need to extract some emails from a 600MB .mbox file, which is >99% spam. Its a dspam quarantine box that's gone unpruned and now has some emails I need to remove from the quarantine, and the whole mbox file can be deleted afterwards. Any suggestions? This is on a server to which I have SSH root access, so pretty much any non-GUI tools are open to me. I have tools that will handle it in principle, just not now its that size (eg the dpsam web UI tools would be OK if I could just remove everything older than the last couple of weeks first). So an mbox pruning tool would be fine too. -- 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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Monitoring HTTP redirects from Firefox
by Mark Rogers 24 Jan '08

24 Jan '08

Does anyone know of a way from within Firefox that I can capture a sequence of redirects and work out what's happening? I can use wget and see a sequence of 301/302 redirects that way, but I need to do this within a session so I really need to follow it in Firefox. Or Opera/IE I suppose (all on Ubuntu 8.04). Something obscure is happening on one of my sites when I follow an HTTPS link which is causing it to redirect back to HTTP, which is probably something to do with something in the session that I'm not getting chance to investigate. Therefore the ability not just to capture the sequence but also to step through it would be helpful. -- 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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Scanners - 'manual scan'?
by James Freer 21 Jan '08

21 Jan '08

http://www.ebuyer.com/search/?strSearch=&bolShowAll=true&intStoreID=7&intCa… I'd be very grateful if someone could advise if any of these HP scanners are what i'd call manual scan. I've had an HP PSC500 which allows me to darken or lighten the scan. I wanted to replace this PSC500 as she's large and costs 2 pairs of ink cartridges per year. I bought a Canon Canoscan LIDE 90 last year to find that it only did 'auto scan' and for some things i tested it on it wasn't that good. There was a fault with it so i could return it thankfully. Looking at the specs i can't see if any are a 'manual scan' - be grateful for help. It may be they are all auto scan these days, which is fine for photos but not so good for scanning b/w drawings i've found. james

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Asus EEE PC Stock
by Martin Collins 20 Jan '08

20 Jan '08

Hi, Anyone managed to find stock on-line of the 4GB babies?? Clove tech (www.clove.co.uk) site doesn't say whether they have stock or not and the site is throwing up all sorts of errors. When you finally get to the checkout my little padlock has a red-line through it indicating it's not secure, so I'm staying well clear! Rgds, Martin

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Default sort order for KDE applications
by Chris G 19 Jan '08

19 Jan '08

Is there any way to set the default sort order for files/directories in KDE applications? I don't run KDE but I'm using some KDE programs (digikam in particular) and I'd like to know if it's possible to change the sort order of directories in pearticular. I'm not talking about within digikam, I'm talking about a general configuration parameter for all applications, there may not be such a thing of course but I was just hoping. -- Chris Green

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Web interface to apt-get upgrade
by Mark Rogers 19 Jan '08

19 Jan '08

Are there any web interfaces to "apt-get upgrade", or any other ways I can keep a system up to date simply but not automatically? The target is Linux based servers provided for clients which need to be kept up to date (eg because they'll be web facing) where they need a simple interface to allow them to apply updates which is no more complex that Windows Update. Otherwise I'll be under pressure to install the applications under Windows instead, something I'm keen to avoid! If none exist it doesn't sound too hard to implement other than ensuring it is secure (a minor detail!). I believe I can use the sudoers file to allow the apache user to run 'apt-get upgrade' as root without allowing it to do anything else? -- 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] Web interface to apt-get upgrade|ubuntu upgrades! testing?
by Bev Nicolson 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

Firefox has certainly been upgraded through the updates although we have yet to reach version 2. Bev. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Wayne Stallwood" <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> > To: ALUG <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Web interface to apt-get upgrade|ubuntu upgrades! testing? > Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:04:05 +0000 > > > > On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 11:44 +0000, James Freer wrote: > > > The question i would raise is "how much" testing do they do - > > i'd say not enough. They seem to put themselves under a lot of > > pressure to provide a new version every 6 months - why not just > > each year and thoroughly test. From what i have understood the > > upgrade is for security only. But then as i've noticed with 6.04 > > Firefox wasn't upgraded. > > > To be honest most migration problems will be relating to either out of > package meddling (strange configs, hand installed software conflicting > with registered packages, packages from third party resources etc) or > specific to some particular hardware (in itself hard to test against due > to the diversity of the x86 platform) Firefox in 6.06 was upgraded from > 5.10 I am sure. > > 1 yearly upgrades would mean that people would spend a lot of time > running out of date packages due to ubuntu's policy of not incrementing > software versions generally for ongoing updates to an existing > installation. This is I feel important as it provides a degree of > predictability in that if you say you are on Ubuntu 6.06 I can > reasonably safely make the assumption of kernel version x and gnome > version y etc. The LTS versions are an alternative of 6 monthly updates > at the cost of running older software..you takes your choice. > > Also...and this IMO is key. > > If you update yearly then really the software versions you are going to > want to include aren't going to be even released until the last half of > the existing Ubuntu versions lifetime..so what do you do for the first 6 > months given that some of the software versions you plan to include > don't even exist ? You can't test properly unless you are running the > shipping versions of the included packages. > > in answer you your individual points > > a] not something I have ever seen..sorry. Sounds like the Bios on both > machines was reporting 2 floppies as I cannot understand otherwise how > this would happen, did they have zip drives or something else that may > have been miss identified ? > > b] 6.06 surely ? In what way did the update get confused ? tbh a general > problem here would be all over the net considering the number of people > with machines still on LTS (me included) > > c] There always are problems on the forums with a new version I can't > remember if 7.04 was any worse or better than previous or latter > versions, I ran it for 6 months+ so it couldn't have been all bad, in > fact I remember updating to 7.04 a little bit earlier before official > release than I usually do..again hardware diversity and people only > posting when there is a problem and not when it works just fine distort > results. A place used by and large as a support forum isn't a great > place to gauge software quality because how do you know how many people > aren't having problems ? > > d] Never heard of this or experienced any synaptic problems with any of > the 5 or 6 7.10 systems I have used..again it would be interesting to > see linkage or specifics. > > e] This I want to see..a ps2 keyboard that provides a USB interface ? > Sounds hardly standard to me in fact I am not even sure how this would > work. Have you submitted a bug or asked for help in the forums as if > this keyboard is reasonably common I would expect a lot of interest. > > It sounds like I am defending Ubuntu rather aggressively here..it is not > my intention to suggest that Ubuntu is the best option always. If > another distro works out better for you or you prefer a 1 year release > schedule then the beauty of linux is that you are free to try it. Maybe > Debian's release strategy would be a better fit for you as you can make > a choice as to how "bleeding edge" you want your system and then have > rolling upgrades rather than a fixed "new distro" cycle. > > Kind Regards > Wayne > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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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Re: [ALUG] Modem permissions problem
by Dave Cooper 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

MJ Ray wrote: > Dave Cooper <dave(a)accuramatic.co.uk> wrote: > >> As su, chmod 777 /dev/ttyS0 fixes it, but only until it happens >> again. ttyS0 appears to be owned by root. It seems to me maybe it >> should be owned something/someone else to fix this permissions >> problem but I don't have a clue who. Can anyone put me right on this >> please? >> > > Look at what group ttyS0 belongs to. Try ls -l /dev/ttyS0 > The group name will probably be just after the "root". Then, add your > user(s) to that group with the command > usermod -a -G whatevergroupnameitsaid username > > Yes! That works! Thanks Paul, thanks MJ (hope your head's still above water in the soggy south-west?). Just one supplementary question? How does that usermod -a -G whatevergroupnameitsaid username work? Why doesn't it need to include any mention of ttyS0?? thanks, Dave > or if that doesn't work, edit /etc/group to add the username to the > end of the line starting with whatevergroupnameitsaid. > > Alternatively, change the permissions on /dev/ttyS0 forever. These > days, that's often done by udev, so grep -r /etc/udev/rules ttyS > to try to find where the MODE is set. > > Hope one of those works for you, >

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road
by samwise 17 Jan '08

17 Jan '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 21st January) 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. This month's meeting is the 1st anniversary of the Ipswich ALUG meets since we re-started them last year! Well, the first meeting last year, wasn't widely publicised as I tried to gauge some interest, but it was technically a meet with an agenda, notes and everything! Anyway, this month will be a time for reflection and the bringing up of the amusing anecdotes of where it didn't quite go according to plan over the year (PeteT starting his GIMP tutorial without having any pictures to work with, Joe angering both Tracy and the RSPB in one fowl swoop etc.). If anyone has any feedback or suggestions for our group over the coming year, this'll be a good time to bring them up. Oh, and we've added Unreal Tournament and more playable ScummVM games to the list for anyone who wants to be anti-social. Might even get Doom3 or UT2004 up and running by then, too. 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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Modem permissions problem
by Dave Cooper 17 Jan '08

17 Jan '08

Hi. I'm trying to set up a class 2.0 US Robotics modem to handle faxes. I'm using efax-gtk on Mandriva Free 2008. The modem connects ok, but periodically I get the error: 'efax-0.9a: 19.30.27 Error: can't open serial port /dev/ttyS0: Permission denied efax-0.9a: 19.30.32 finished - unrecoverable error' As su, chmod 777 /dev/ttyS0 fixes it, but only until it happens again. ttyS0 appears to be owned by root. It seems to me maybe it should be owned something/someone else to fix this permissions problem but I don't have a clue who. Can anyone put me right on this please? Dave Cooper

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Synergy & Java
by James Taylor 17 Jan '08

17 Jan '08

Hey all, Has anyone here had any problems with Synergy and Java applications - My "server" is a Vista machine, and the clients are various, including XP and a knoppix box. If I open up a Java program on the "server", and give it focus (i.e. Netbeans or Eclipse) then the roll-over to other screens stops happening - I have to give focus to another app (thunderbird or firefox suffice) that then allows the rollover to occur. Has anyone else had anything like this happen to them? JT

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iPods & Linux
by Greg Thomas 17 Jan '08

17 Jan '08

My birthday present has arrived; an iPod Nano. I've a whole load of Music ripped from CDs over the years in various formats. What I'd like to do is rip them to a lossless codec now that disk space is so cheap. If I stuck to Windows, the choice would be easy; simply use iTunes, rip to ALAC, and sync with my iPod. What would the denizens of ALUG recommend to use with Linux? Ideally, I'd like a tool that would treat my lossless source library (FLAC?) as a master, and then re-encode that more can fit on to my iPod. Lets face it, I'm no audiophile, and probably can't tell the difference between a native CD and whatever the default codec/bitrate is for WIndows Media Player. Thoughts welcome, Greg [With apologies if this came up recently. I'm sure I've seen stuff on this before, but couldn't see anything in the archives]

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rsync & sudo
by Mark Rogers 17 Jan '08

17 Jan '08

Consider: rsync -avz user@host:/var/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql Assuming the files I want to transfer are owned by mysql (both locally and remotely), and are not world-readable, how do I achieve this? I can use sudo at the local end: sudo rsync -avz user@host:/var/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql .. to give me the necessary write access to /var/lib/locally, but how do I give rsync read access to the files at the remote host? The mysql user does not have login rights and therefore does not have a password, so I can't just use mysql@host, and there is no root user at the remote host either; if I wanted read access at that end I'd use sudo to get it. Local end is Ubuntu, remote host is FC4, 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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My mind is going .. ethernet rubber hood thingies
by Martyn Drake 16 Jan '08

16 Jan '08

Can somebody please remind me what the official name is for those little rubber hood things that cover the connector of an RJ45 ethernet cable is called? Regards, Martyn -- Phone : +44 (0)7866 450 752 Skype : mbdrake

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Re: [ALUG] Router
by John Seago 15 Jan '08

15 Jan '08

Thank you so much to all who replied to my message 'Router'. I am grateful for all the help freely offered. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail - against microsoft attachments /\

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Router
by John Seago 15 Jan '08

15 Jan '08

I am connected to the internet via a Netgear DG834 Router, which has four outlets. Up until now I have been the only user. (thus I have never had any need to even consider the matter of more than a single user). My wife's god-daughter is due to vist shortly with her laptop, can I just plug her lap-top into one of the three vacant outlets and assign her the next number in the 192.168.0.X series? Do I need to turn the router off to plug in an extra outlet? As she is using Microsoft I presume there will be some kind of 'Wizard' that will take us through the necessary steps. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail - against microsoft attachments /\

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Re: [ALUG] Router
by samwise 15 Jan '08

15 Jan '08

On 15/01/2008, John Seago <seago.john(a)googlemail.com> wrote: > I am connected to the internet via a Netgear DG834 Router, which has four > outlets. Up until now I have been the only user. (thus I have never had any > need to even consider the matter of more than a single user). My wife's > god-daughter is due to vist shortly with her laptop, can I just plug her > lap-top into one of the three vacant outlets and assign her the next number > in the 192.168.0.X series? Do I need to turn the router off to plug in an > extra outlet? > > As she is using Microsoft I presume there will be some kind of 'Wizard' that > will take us through the necessary steps. If you're running a DHCP server on the router (most do, out of the box) and the laptop is configured to ask for an IP by DHCP (most Windows installations are, out of the box), you should just be able to plug in the network cable and boot the laptop - it'll auto-configure everything when it notices the network is connected. Of course, if you're network is configured differently, you may need to do more work ... Peter.

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