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10372 discussions

"business as usual"
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 01 Nov '07

01 Nov '07

Hi Folks, Interesting read: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/01/microsoft.comment Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Nov-07 Time: 13:21:13 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Apache fell over
by Matthew 01 Nov '07

01 Nov '07

I'm running Apache 2.2.3 on Debian Etch. It generally runs happily and I haven't seen any issues since I upgraded the hosting several months ago, but at the weekend it died and I can't work out why. I have two things I was hoping people might be able to help with. /var/log/apache2/error.log includes: [Sun Oct 21 06:26:54 2007] [warn] child process 11300 still did not exit, sending a SIGTERM [Sun Oct 21 06:26:56 2007] [warn] child process 11300 still did not exit, sending a SIGTERM [Sun Oct 21 06:26:58 2007] [warn] child process 11300 still did not exit, sending a SIGTERM [Sun Oct 21 06:27:00 2007] [error] child process 11300 still did not exit, sending a SIGKILL [Sun Oct 21 06:27:01 2007] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down The last row before that was from a week before, and shouldn't be part of the same incident. 6am is definitely not a peak time for this box. I couldn't find anything in any other logs that seemed relevant. Anyone got any idea what that was, or where I can look for more detail? Secondly, I really ought to have some mechanism to check on Apache (and MySQL) periodically and make sure they're running, either restarting them or alerting me (although I can be difficult to get hold of). What do people recommend for this? Is it as simple as having cron run a script to start the daemon if it's not already on the stored PID, or are there issues I should be wary of? Thanks, Matthew

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Cambridge and East Anglian Python Users Group
by Richard Lewis 31 Oct '07

31 Oct '07

Hello ALUG, We held our first meeting of CamPUG last night and we have created a Google Group to help us collaborate. Please feel free to join: http://groups.google.com/group/campug 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 | +-------------------------------------------------------+

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Email from cron scripts
by Mark Rogers 31 Oct '07

31 Oct '07

I have the following in my crontab: */5 * * * * /path/to/script.sh | mail -es "mail subject" me(a)example.com What "script.sh" does is check whether the mail server is running correctly. If it is, then it sends a message to stdout and exits. If it is not, then it sends a different message to stdout, then restarts the mail server, then exits. If the mail server is OK, the output to stdout is captured and emailed via cron correctly. If the mail server is not OK, it is successfully restarted but the mail does not get sent. In fact, the script never exits: $ps ax [..snip..] 28907 ? S 0:00 /USR/SBIN/CRON 28908 ? Ss 0:00 /bin/sh -c /path/to/script.sh | mail -es "mail subject" me(a)example.com 28912 ? S 0:00 mail -es mail subject me(a)example.com 28941 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/sendmail -i -FCronDaemon -oem root [..snip..] Clearly "mail" or "sendmail" (in my case the Postfix version) doesn't like the mail server being restarted under its feet like this. How can I get around this? I'd like to capture all the output from script.sh (including the output from the mail server restart) if I can. If it's relevant, in this case restarting the mail server means stopping (in this order) postfix, clamav and dspam, then starting them again in reverse order. The problem I'm having is dspam dies sometimes (once every couple of days) and the script is intended to work around this until I fix it. -- 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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Can one have different versions of the same plugin in Firefox?
by Chris G 30 Oct '07

30 Oct '07

Is it possible somehow to install more than one version of the same plugin in Firefox? I need a very specific old[ish] version of the Java plugin to run an Oracle applet, can I install this version *and* the latest version? N.B. the applet *doesn't* work with the latest version of the Java plugin, it looks for jpi-version=1.4.2_16 specifically before it will even try and start. OK, this is stupid but I can't do anything about it. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] MS Office Publisher equivalent
by Stephen Dickinson Finance Assistant 30 Oct '07

30 Oct '07

Hi Rich, Thanks for that it will be really useful. I'm going to download Scribus and play with it awhile before I show it to the people who will be expected to use it. I'll also talk them through the process of changing files into pdfs and see how that goes, hopefully they don't have too many things that need converting, I think they work on a more ad hoc basis. When (and unfortunately it will be a 'when') I run into the kind of problem that just makes no sense, I'll be asking for your expert advice again! Thanks Steve Stephen Dickinson This email (including any attachments) is intended only for the recipient(s) named above. It may contain confidential or privileged information and should not be read, copied or otherwise used by any other person unless express permission is given. If you are not a named recipient, please contact the sender and delete the email from your system. It is the recipient's responsibility to ensure that appropriate measures are in place to check for software viruses.

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SSH connections dying
by Mark Rogers 29 Oct '07

29 Oct '07

For a while I've been having a problem with some SSH connections to remote servers (OpenSSH client from Gnome terminal on Ubuntu desktop to OpenSSH server on remote server). Connection is fine, but at some point during data transfer the connection will die. It's always (as far as I can tell) during transfer of date from server to client, eg I'll do "ls" and get half a directory listing, then nothing. The connection doesn't close (it becomes unresponsive and I have to kill the terminal). Until now this has been annoying but not a show stopper; it happens fairly rarely. However, this weekend I'm at a LAN event talking to the server over a shared 3G connection (my PC -> IPCop -> Windows laptop with 3G modem and Windows Connection Sharing*) and the same symptoms are occurring, just far more frequently. All of which I think might give a clue as to what's wrong, but I can't work it out. Any clues? [*] 3G Modem comes with Windows software, this is the only way we could think to do this! -- 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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How to tell what extensions are installed without running Firefox?
by Chris G 29 Oct '07

29 Oct '07

This may seem to be a silly question, but...... I want to remember the name of an addon/extension I have installed on my home Firefox. I have ssh access to my home system. So, how can I tell what extensions are installed, I can't see any obvious clues in the $HOME/.mozilla/default hierarchy. It's not a sensible answer to run Firefox remotely, it'll take all morning to even start up across the internet connection from here to home. -- Chris Green

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Books for library...
by Ruth Bygrave 25 Oct '07

25 Oct '07

Micromania (good jokey book about the early beginnings of home computing; brings back the full horrors of membrane keyboards, the original Adventure game, and the earliest user-hostile computers before Linux was even a gleam in Linus Torvald's eye) XSLT for dummies (spent hours hitting head on XSLT, failed. Yet another thing Adrian says is a good & useful language I couldn't learn) Osborne Complete Reference to Unix (1000s of pages, most of which no use to me) Discover Linux (Steve Oualline, almost certainly out of date) Danny Goodman's book on Javascript (vast; failed to learn it even with Dashcode to make it approachable) Unix Hints & Hacks (can't remember who wrote this) Beginning XSLT (Jeni Tennison, recent) Am keeping the Fish Book (bash) and my Applescript books as those are what I've written most in. If anyone wants those books for the library, yelp. I may even come back to them if I feel brave... Am not looking forward to lugging them to the meeting as some of them are 1000s of pages. Regards, Ruth

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Books for library
by Ruth Bygrave 25 Oct '07

25 Oct '07

XSLT For Dummies (not for this dummy. Boyfriend says XSLT is just what I want, and I find it abstruse and impossible) Discover Linux by Steve Oualline The Complete Unix (incl Linux, Solaris, HP-UX) Unix Hints and Hacks (Que; haven't used this much) Beginning XSLT by Jeni Tennison (Good, but failed to learn XSLT from it, quite long) Micromania by Dave Langford (very short and jokey about 8-bit computers and hackers; will make you laugh if you remember those days; I do, just). Javascript, by Danny Goodman (absolutely enormous; failed to learn Javascript even with Dashcode to make it easy). These things can go in the ALUG library, and if I feel brave in a few years' time I'll prise open one of the covers... If anyone wants this doubtful heap, they can come over and pick it up, as I don't drive. I'm keeping the Applescript books (tight integration with Mac apps, and easy words) and the Fish Book (bash is good for really simple things), and determined not to go near anything that will scare me for a while. Ruth (...Linux drove me mad. Twice...) Bygrave PS. Historical accident: both times I decided to prod Linux and/or find out more about Darwin (OS X distro) were just before I fell into a deep depression. I need to keep the under-the-hood bits under the hood for a while.

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MS Office Publisher equivalent
by Stephen Dickinson Finance Assistant 25 Oct '07

25 Oct '07

Hi everyone, I'm new to this list and have been enjoying reading it for the past week or so, everyone seems frighteningly clever so far though! I was just wondering if anyone could recommend a good open source equivalent of MS Publisher? I'm trying to persuade an office to move their two windows based PCs to Linux and have covered all the software so far except Publisher. Any suggestions would be gratefully received. Thanks Steve Stephen Dickinson This email (including any attachments) is intended only for the recipient(s) named above. It may contain confidential or privileged information and should not be read, copied or otherwise used by any other person unless express permission is given. If you are not a named recipient, please contact the sender and delete the email from your system. It is the recipient's responsibility to ensure that appropriate measures are in place to check for software viruses.

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How to set font size in a java applet (in Firefox)?
by Chris G 24 Oct '07

24 Oct '07

Does anyone know how the font size is set in java applets? I run an Oracle forms java applet in Firefox at work and something has changed the font size so that it's too large. Column headings overlap each other and text in boxes is a total mess. It certainly *used* to work and I can't think of anything I have changed that would affect it but obviously something has. Changing the font sizes in Firefox's 'Preferences' has no effect at all. -- Chris Green

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OpenDocument Foundation ODF da Vinci plugin ended
by samwise 23 Oct '07

23 Oct '07

Hi, For the open source activists on the list. We had a bit of a discussion on the use of ODF vs. MSOOXML in a corporate environment at the last Ipswich meet (more specifically, my ability to invoke a flame fest on the topic at work, without trying). I'm rather glad I didn't get too deeply involved in the debate - because I'm convinced now I'd've probably been on the losing side. ;) I'm not sure how widely it's been picked up, but I noticed yesterday that the OpenDocument Foundation's site [http://opendocument.foundation.googlepages.com/] has had a small note quietly appended. 'Note: All work on ODF da Vinci has ended. Without OASIS approval of our five generic eXtensions, known as the iX enhancements, we can not effectively convert existing Microsoft documents, applications and processes to ODF. The loss of fidelity and feature — business process specific information is too great. We are however able to make full, high fidelity "round trip" conversions to the W3C's CDF — meeting critical market requirements. If at some point in the future, the OASIS ODF TC does approve both our ODF iX enhancements, and, our "Universal Interoperability Framework Proposal", we will configure da Vinci to support both CDF and ODF iX.' Given this was the only MS Office plugin that was claimed would eventually provide a 100% perfect 'round trip' conversion fidelity, this sounds like a blow for ODF interoperability with MS Office and I think we're going to have to continue along in the era of document conversions mostly working, except for those tricky bits (i.e. anything involving tables or diagrams!). It's a shame - I'm big on promoting open standards but if the Massachusetts result didn't spell the end to ODF's challenge to MS Office, practically I think this might ... Peter.

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Using VPN to provide static IP
by Mark Rogers 22 Oct '07

22 Oct '07

I have an application which needs to authenticate via an online server, and it must use a static IP to do it. I need to do it via a mobile connecting through a 3G connection, so static IP is out. The only way I can see to do this is to create a VPN (eg using OpenVPN) and connect the laptop to that, then make the connection through that. Since I'm not entirely sure how to do this, before I waste time trying it, can anyone give me a sanity check that this is the right approach? The only thing that worries me to start with is that I'm going into the VPN and out again; normally when I use a VPN it's to connect to a network, not use it as a gateway. -- 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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First Cambridge and East Anglia Python Meeting
by Richard Lewis 22 Oct '07

22 Oct '07

Dear ALUG, Following a very successful Python Conference UK[1] in September, a small group of us are attempted to set up a regional Python users group for East Anglia and Cambridge[2]. We have arranged to hold our first meeting on the evening of Tuesday 30th October at the Carlton Arms[3] (CB4 2BY). People intend to arrive from 19:00 onwards. I'll post any further details if they become available, otherwise feel free to contact me (on- or off-list) regarding this. Cheers, Richard [1] http://www.pyconuk.org/ [2] http://www.pyconuk.org/community/Cambridge_and_East_of_England [3] http://www.thecarltonarms.co.uk/ -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 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 | +-------------------------------------------------------+

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Free Stuff
by David Reynolds 22 Oct '07

22 Oct '07

Hi, Been tidying up our spare room / office today and found a couple of bits that we don't need any more that are free to anyone who can come pick them up - Small 4 port hub thing - has 4 ethernet ports and one BNC port. I think it's only 10MB and has an American power supply with it, so would need an adaptor or replacement power supply http://david.reynoldsfamily.org.uk/stuff/hub.jpg - Micro ATX emachines case with DVD drive / CD Drive / Floppy Drive / Power supply - Please note this has no motherboard in it http://david.reynoldsfamily.org.uk/stuff/case.jpg Cheers, Dave -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Gnome terminal, can't display Help
by Chris G 20 Oct '07

20 Oct '07

In Fedora 7 when I click on 'Help' in the gnome-terminal menu I now get a message saying:- There was an error displaying help: There was an error launching the default action command associated with this location. It used to work so what have I screwed up? FWIW I wanted Help because the URL launching action isn't working either, I suspect this could well be the same or similar issue. It's a pity there isn't an ordinary man page for gnome-terminal, less likely to get lost. -- Chris Green

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HTML question - how to create a sequence of varying indents
by Chris G 19 Oct '07

19 Oct '07

I want to lay a list of items out as follows:- item1 item2 item3 item4 item5 Wnat's the simplest way of doing this in HTML? I'm doing it in a CGI script (i.e. the CGI will be writing the text) so the simpler the better really. -- Chris Green

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Mixer/sound driver volume levels and distortion
by Neil Sedger 19 Oct '07

19 Oct '07

Hi all, I have onboard AC97 sound, according to kmix my system automatically set itself up with the 'VIA 8237' driver, which is probably right. I have a good old analog connection to an amplifier. If I set master and PCM to 100% the volume is at a good level but is very distorted. If I move both down 'a bit' then the distortion goes away but it's all a bit unscientific as to how much that 'bit' is. If I leave PCM at 100% and move Master about it gets quieter but is always distorted. In Windows on the same hardware, setting all mixers to 100% seems to output a good, loud, non distorted sound, I'd guess at the 'line level' that my amp is expecting. Is there a setting somewhere in the (ALSA) driver to set the maximum output to 'line level' so I can set kmix at 100% and get good volume and no distortion? There is an 'External amplifier' switch in kmix but it appears to have no effect. I've had a good root around on Google and the answer appears to be 'turn the mixer volumes down a bit' - e.g.: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/TroubleShooting#Sound_can_be_heard_but_it… There must be something more accurate? If the Windows drivers have some built-in setting can it be replicated? Cheers Neil

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Viewing XML files
by Mark Rogers 19 Oct '07

19 Oct '07

I have some relatively large* XML files (about 3MB) which I need to work with (view certainly, edit would be nice). They're not formatted - there are no line breaks in the files - which means most of the editors I've tried to open them with have struggled, and FireFox took about half an hour to open one of them. What are good (preferably GUI) tools for this kind of thing? I'm on Ubuntu some Gnome-biased is great, but to be honest anything that does the job is great enough. The application which creates them can comfortably handle a valid reformatted file, so if the lack of formatting is lost on a save that's not an issue. I don't really want to have to preprocess the files to tidy them before opening, though, as the files change frequently. [*] Personally I find it hard to believe that 3MB is "large" in today's world, but I guess it is quite a long line if you're expecting line breaks. -- 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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Any good tools for generating HTML tables out there?
by Chris G 18 Oct '07

18 Oct '07

I'm using reStructuredText extensively for writing notes etc. that I can use both as written and by generating HTML from the .rst files so they can be viewed in a browser. However the table generation syntax in reStructuredText is a bit clumsy, 'simple tables' are OK but don't have row spans and I really want row spans, 'grid tables' can do anything but take a huge amount of effort to type. So, I'm after some simple way of generating HTML tables, preferably from some sort of text 'source' file that is itself reasonably readable. Has anyone here got any suggestions for anything like this? -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] usb printer not recognised
by J.R. Seago 18 Oct '07

18 Oct '07

On Thursday 18 October 2007 "Jenny Hopkins" <hopkins.jenny(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I've stuck an HP LaserJet 1018 onto a debian stable box. Printer only > has usb connection. However, hp-probe says there are no devices > found, and lsusb agrees with this. I occasionally have a similar problem with Slackware, (It happened again only yesterday), the computer does'nt 'see' the printer, I think it is that the USB plugs are'nt a very good fit. I usually have to unplug, re-plug, (and wiggle), and then reinstall, (sometimes up to five or six times before the computer 'sees' the printer and it succesfuly re-installs. -- J.R. Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail - against microsoft attachments /\

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How to mount a CIFS file system as a user?
by Chris G 18 Oct '07

18 Oct '07

I want a simple way to mount a CIFS file system that I can run as a user. There seems to be considerable confusion between the mount man page and the mount.cifs man page as to what can be done and what can't be done. According to the mount man page I can add a line to /etc/fstab as follows (or something like, the syntax may well be wrong) :- //192.168.1.10/C /home/chris/xp cifs noauto,user 0 0 The 'user' option is supposed to allow a user to mount the file system. However if I say "mount /home/chris/xp" I get:- mount error 1 = Operation not permitted Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g.man mount.cifs) Referring to the mount.cifs(8) manual page as requested is not very enlightening! Running "mount /home/chris/xp" as root works (I have to admit I only just tried) so the entry in /etc/fstab must be about right. -- Chris Green

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usb printer not recognised
by Jenny Hopkins 18 Oct '07

18 Oct '07

Hullo there, I've stuck an HP LaserJet 1018 onto a debian stable box. Printer only has usb connection. However, hp-probe says there are no devices found, and lsusb agrees with this. Other usb devices work on this computer, and the printer works on a different (ubuntu) computer. The cups web interface detected a new printer, saying it was on "hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_1018?serial=KP110YP". Printing a test page just gives the syslog error "knossos kernel: usb 1-2: usbfs: USBDEVFS_CONTROL failed cmd hpiod rqt 161 rq 1 len 1 ret -110 Oct 17 11:36:10 knossos hpiod: invalid Device::DeviceStatus: Connection timed out hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_1018?serial=KP110YP io/hpiod/device.cpp 818 Oct 17 11:36:10 knossos hpiod: unable to read Device::GetDeviceStatus: Connection timed out hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_1018?serial=KP110YP io/hpiod/device.cpp 1081" Have I missed out some modules to install, perchance? I've done an inordinate amount of googling on the various errors and found very little of help, and am stumped. Thanks, Jenny

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Webcam, what software?
by Chris G 17 Oct '07

17 Oct '07

This seems very stupid but I can't really work out what Linux software can do useful things with a Webcam. The obvious thing to want to do is to show what the webcam is seeing on the web. I have apache 2.2 running. Also, any good voip type applications that have both Linux and Windows versions anc can use a webcam for video phonecalls? Skype doesn't have video on Linux. -- Chris Green

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