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SYLEHAM KIT MEETING... OR Walsham-le-Willows
by James Freer 01 Oct '07

01 Oct '07

Message: 8 Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:15:08 +0100 From: samwise <samwise(a)bagshot-row.org> Subject: Re: [ALUG] Syleham Kit Meeting To: "ALUG - mailing list" <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <c9ae1fc80709280915l5e34d695nf5be5a4fe119f8d8(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi, At the last Ipswich meet, James repeated his request for a kit meet, though he's less keen on travelling to Syleham. Is there any interest in a kit meet in the near future? James was suggesting that if only the Suffolk-dwellers would like one, then we could perhaps host one of our own somewhere in the Ipswich area. I'm less keen on that, as last time I went, I enjoyed meeting the wider members of ALUG I don't normally get the chance to see in person. Plus, I think with car sharing that petrol costs etc. shouldn't be a major factor (I'd be happy to drive 3 or 4 people). So, is there any interest in a kit meet some time soon? If so, would you prefer Syleham, or a more local venue? Peter. Hi Folks I met Peter in Tesco just as i was clearing the last of my junk from my old garage there. His first paragraph wasn't quite what i said. I've driven across to Ipswich to meet folk but i get back rather late... i currently look after my old mother and she gets rather confused these days and the returning late is a bit of an issue. I'd be delighted if some folk wanted a meeting at Syleham as it's only about 10 miles for me. I get the impression that folk aren't keen to travel due to the cost... and then there is the cost of the Syleham venue to meet. What i did say was that social meetings are great but i'm keen on learning as much as i can on Linux which is only possible at a venue where we have tables etc and can lay out all our 'kit'. The impression i've got is folk don't want to travel to Syleham and would rather have a meeting in their area i.e. Ipswich or Norwich. However, Syleham is central for all perhaps and that's why it was chosen in the past. A FREE VENUE - is a possibility i.e. where i live in Walsham-le-Willows. We have an Annexe/summer house beyond the garage 10ft x 30ft which is my 'office'.[No comments on proper units of measurement please... the EU have now decided that the UK doesn't have to go metric by 2012!]. Plenty of room now that i've got shot of the junk. I don't use wireless but have broadband with an 8 port ethernet hub and shortly homeplug. This week two of the sliding windows are having new sills but after that... i've got two large dining tables in there - plenty of room for 10-12 folk (or 2/3 car loads). I don't know how long kit-meetings have been in the past but we could make a day/morning/afternoon of it - as long as folk want. Not sure that i could promise a meal for that many but certainly tea/coffee. A pub is just up the road if wanted. Ample parking two doors down in the village car park (free). If well planned - a kit meeting should be worthwhile with all folk going away having got answers to what they wanted to know! I've got two spare machines for experimenting with... james

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LinuXmas Celebrations
by samwise 29 Sep '07

29 Sep '07

Hi, That time of year is rapidly approaching, and the pre-booking season is upon us. Does anyone fancy doing something with the LUG for Christmas? We could have a grand get-everyone-together-somewhere bash, and toast the health of ALUG. That might take some organising, and whether it's a central location or in Ipswich / Norwich, a good proportion of people might have to travel and arrange lifts home (if it's a boozy celebration). Alternatively, we could keep the divide going and just have separate events (if on separate nights, that gives some the opportunity to attend both!). Scale-wise, I was thinking of just going for a meal and maybe a drink or too after - tho I'm open to suggestions. If you want to spend the day bowling, paintballing or karting, I'm sure we can arrange something! So, then. Who's up for it? Would you prefer a whole regional thing, or smaller county events? Plus any ideas on what you'd like to do ... Peter. P.S. Do I have to move this thread to the ALUG Social mailing list, bearing in mind there's a lot ppl not currently on there atm (which is why I raised it here first)?

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Laptop without Operating System
by Nick Daniels 28 Sep '07

28 Sep '07

Hi I am looking for a cheap new laptop without O/S (£300-400) just for my Ham Radio I have found Novatech, does anyone know of, or have used any other company please? Kind Regards -Nick Daniels

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Syleham Kit Meeting
by James Freer 28 Sep '07

28 Sep '07

Hi Folks If you recall our chat on IRC a while back about a Kit Meeting. The suggestion was that i should post some ideas. I've managed to get Ubunutu on my spare machine with no problems - gulp. I've got a Compaq P3 500mb and it seems to run ver 6.10 fine so far. Someone was going to throw it out so i gave it a 'good home'. I was wondering if folk would be interested in a meeting shortly... or series of meets. I've now got loads of questions on linux and on computing in general. While it's fine to chat on IRC i thought it would be nice to get folk together. Topics for a meeting from my point of view: * installing software and using wine [i've Ubuntu Hacks and Ubuntu Linux Bible by Von Hacks but it's still hard going] * pros/cons of different distros [I've chosen Ubuntu as there seemed to be more available for it but would like to see other distros that folk use] * compiling programs from source * computer architecture [modern m'boards for Linux... what's not needed for Linux i.e SATA etc] * using linux for websites to enhance security * internet connection via power sockets [can't remeber what these are called!] As a result of this post and responses we can get a meeting organised covering all needs and interests! james

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road
by samwise 28 Sep '07

28 Sep '07

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 again next week (Monday 17th September) 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 includes a comprehensive overview of virtual machines - what they are, what they aren't and what are the options for available for use on a typical desktop system. 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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Fedora 7, not 100% stable, video drivers?
by Chris G 28 Sep '07

28 Sep '07

Well I'm getting on quite well with my Fedora 7 system. I now have Vmware Workstation 6.01 installed on it. There were problems with Vmware 6 on Fedora 7 but these seem to have been resolved by 6.01. As this is one of the reasons I moved to Fedora from Slackware (simple, no hassle, installation of Vmware) this is a big plus for me. It's also been very easy to get apache up and running, and printers, as regards ease of use, instllation, etc. Fedora 7 has been excellent. However!!! .... It's not 100% stable. I originally thought the problem was with the Gnome desktop so I have reverted to my FVWM window manager and, although that seems to have reduced the frequency of crashes it died in much the same way just now using FVWM. The display simply freezes, no diagnostics, no drama, nothing. Keyboard no longer works, cursor is frozen, can't switch to alternate console or anything. The kernel is still running because I can ping the system from my garage system but no services are running, i.e. I can't ssh into the system to shut it down or anything. The only way out is to hit the reset button. Subjectively it feels like the crash/hang occurs when there's a lot of graphic activity, for example the last crash occurred just as CUPS redrew the whole browser window after installing a printer. Other crashes also seem to be at graphically intensive times and the Gnome desktop does work the graphics harder than fvwm so that might explain why it dies more often using Gnome. There's absolutely nothing in /var/log/messages, there isn't a syslog. The video hardware is Nvidia and Fedora 7 isn't using the same Nvidia drivers that Slackware did. With Slackware I had to compile/install the Nvidia driver myself (downloaded from Nvidia) but the Fedora installation recognised the card and has drivers, the xorg.conf file says:- Section "Device" Identifier "Videocard0" Driver "nv" EndSection Does anyone know if there are any stability problems with the "nv" driver? Would I be better off getting the latest Nvidia supplied one? I'll do some Google searching on this front but any comments would be welcome. -- Chris Green

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pc for sale
by Richard Bensley 28 Sep '07

28 Sep '07

PC for sale: -Core2Duo E6000 4MB -2GB RAM (2x Corsair Twin XMS Pro) -Geforce 7950GT 512MB -2 x 200GB SATAII Maxtor -Samsung DVD-RW+/- SATA -Asus P5B Deluxe Motherboard -Creative Audigy 2 PCI sound card -Hauppage PVR 150 MCE -All inside a MASSIVE Chieftec towercase, plenty of room for expansion, ALL 7 fan bays filled with quiet silverstone fans. (http://www.chieftec.com/ba-02b-b-b.html) -580w Taga modular PSU She's lean, she's mean, previously used for Video and 3D, but the internal drives never saw much use other than OS and software. (NOTE: no monitor, mouse, or keyboard) £450 ono excluding delivery, I am 20 miles outside of Norwich down the A146 in Loddon if you want to pick it up. work phone: 01502 716622 +2371 mobile: 07884112398 Cheers Richard

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Truncating text files at non-ascii
by Mark Rogers 27 Sep '07

27 Sep '07

Does anyone have a suggestion for a quick way to process several hundred files, truncating them where ascii text ends and binary data begins? I'm in the process of recovering data from a corrupt drive, and I've recovered loads of would-be Thunderbird mailboxes (ie mbox files). However, since there is no good way to determine the end of an mbox file from its raw data (that I know of anyway!) what I have is loads of 10M files which start "From - " and end 10MB afterwards. So a 10k mailbox is 10k text and 990k rubbish that was next on the drive, which typically is binary data. So I need to scan the files, find where the ascii stops and the binary begins, and truncate them at that point. (Ideally it will be clever enough to allow a few binary chars through in case of any binary chars in the emails, for example unencoded pound signs etc. But something far more basic would be a good start!) I'm guessing that awk ought to be able to do it, something along the lines of reading line by line, and if the line has more than (say) 5% non-ascii data in it then stop, otherwise print that line and continue. I'm just not sure how to go from pseudo-code to real code (nor whether that was the best place to start anyway). Mark Rogers

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Another bash question - aliases in shell scripts
by Chris G 27 Sep '07

27 Sep '07

How do you get aliases to work in bash shell scripts? At the moment the only way I can get an alias that I have defined in my .bashrc file to work in a script is to explicitly source .bashrc in the shell script. Is this the only way it can be done? The korn shell can do 'alias -x fred=bert' which means that fred will work as an alias for bert in scripts called from a command line ksh where the alias is in effect. Is there no way that bash can export aliases so they work in scripts? A quick Google search suggests that bash really can't export its aliases, which is a pity. Does anyone know otherwise? -- Chris Green

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How to make bash 'forget' a path to an executable
by Chris G 27 Sep '07

27 Sep '07

If you move/change a shell script how to make bash forget about the old location? E.g. I had a wrapper for ctags in /home/chris/bin which was called ctags. I discovered that I only needed the wrapper for Solaris and not for Linux so I moved my ctags from /home/chris/bin to /home/chris/bin/solaris which isn't on my path when I'm on a Linux system. After moving it when I try running 'ctags' I get the error:- bash: /home/chris/bin/ctags: No such file or directory i.e. bash has remembered the path to ctags to save time, how do I tell it to start afresh? (There is a ctags on the PATH at /usr/bin/ctags) In C-shell it's rehash but (not surprisingly) that doesn't work in bash. -- Chris Green

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The fonts dialogue in Firefox, what does that line mean?
by Chris G 27 Sep '07

27 Sep '07

When you go to the font selection dialogue in Firefox:- Edit - Preferences - Content - Fonts & Colours/Advanced There's a horizontal line in the list of fonts you get to select when you click on the Serif, Sans-serif or Monospace selection bar. Does anyone know what this horizontal line indicates? I originally thought the ones below the line might be the monospace fonts but that's obviously not right on inspection. Is it possibly that the ones below the line are bit-map fonts? It would actually make selecting a font much easier if there was some sort of indication against each font to tell you whether it's a monospace or proportional font. Some are obvious but not all. Also, a final question, there are fonts one can select called 'monospace', 'serif' and 'sans-serif'. Presumably if you use these then what you get is the system default which is defined somewhere in the build/distribution, there aren't actual font files with these names. Have I got this right? -- Chris Green

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Kubuntu probs
by elc＠freeola.net 25 Sep '07

25 Sep '07

I am using Kubuntu 7.04 - Feisty fawn and a broadband connection. When I have booted up, the OS is NOT automatically online via broadband. I need to go to system settings / network settings and enter administrative mode. I then need to disable eth1 and thus leave me with eth0, - which gives me broadband access. However, I cannot apply this setting – Apply – is greyed out. Thus when I reboot I need to repeat this sequence. How can I apply this setting permanently please. elc

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CPU speed control
by Simon Jude 25 Sep '07

25 Sep '07

Hi, I've got a Sony VAIO that I like to run Ubuntu on. When I run it off the mains the CPU stays pegged at 1.995GHz and the CPU fan sounds like a hoover. When running on the battery the CPU stays at a nice 786MHz (or whatever) and the fan is nice and quiet. Is there a way to switch the CPU speed to the lower speed when it is running on mains to protect my hearing?! I've tried cpufreq-set etc without luck, although I may not have used them properly! Any tips would be appreciated! Thanks Simon

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Terminal window fonts
by Chris G 25 Sep '07

25 Sep '07

Does anyone know where gnome-terminal gets its fonts from? I'd like to use the same font in rxvt if I can but I can't work out what to call it. -- Chris Green

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The photos on Google Earth/Maps
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

Hi Folks, This is for people who have been using Google Maps (or equivalently Google Earth, since they seem to use exactly the same sattelite imagery): http://maps.google.com http://earth.google.com It's some weeks since I last had a look around using Google Maps, and I did it again last night (with both Earth and Maps). It seems to me that the terrain images used have degraded. 1: They seem to be fuzzier, and with less vivid colour, at the larger zoom levels 2: I'm sure they are older than they used to be. In particular, the aerial view of my own house used to show a car I owned a few years back parked at the front, from which (and from other vehicles in the neighbourhood) I inferred that the image dated from around 2002 (certainly not before 2001). And the back garden was much as it was when I moved in in 2001: green throughout, with grass and bushes. Last night, however, there were no bushes in the back garden and at the rear was a large brown, presumably cultivated, area. Now the people before the people before me had a vegetable garden there, which tallies with the image, but the people before me did not (having turned the whole garden over to lawn and shrubs), so that puts the date of the photo over 10 years old. Although the displayed images state "Copyright 2007", this clearly has nothing to do with the date of the photography. I'd be a bit miffed if Google had decided to degrade the quality and especially the timeliness of their images! I fairly regularly use it as a resouce for getting an overview of an area, and until now I've relied on the imagery being not more than a few years old. If, as now seems to be the case, it may be over (even well over) 10 years, then the relevance to recent conditions is seriously diminished! Comments from Google Earthers/Mapsters welcome! Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 23-Sep-07 Time: 11:48:20 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Fedora 7 does dual boot with Slackware
by Chris G 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

Now I have the Fedora 7 installation working rather better I thought I'd see if I can still boot Slackware - I can! It was no effort at all to get the Fedora installation to add Slackware to the boot menu, I just pointed it at the root partition on the drive where Slackware is installed (/boot is in the root partition) and that was it, it just worked! I'm impressed. Now I can go and 'tune up' my Fedora 7 installation secure in the knowledge that if I screw it up really properly I can come back here to Slackware and sort things out (and do some real work too). -- Chris Green

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Fedora 7 network problem resolved
by Chris G 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

I finally found what the problem was. I remembered an odd problem I had had a while ago when trying to connect into my home Linux system from a Fedora system at work (this was several months ago, in April or even a bit before I think). It took me ages to find the problem that time, I eventually spotted lots of errors in my Speedtouch router's error log saying things like:- FIREWALL fast tcp seqnr check (1 of 2): Protocol: TCP Src ip: 192.168.1.1 Src port: 22 Dst ip: 193.128.168.194 Dst port: 51097 I just found that my new Fedora 7 installation at home couldn't connect to the configuration web server on the Speedtouch router. ... and in the error log I see just the same errors being reported by the router. So I have disabled this particular firewall check and now it all works! Hurrah! (I had lost my previous disabling of this firewall check when I reset the router a few weeks ago) I'm still not sure whether this is an error in Fedora or an error in the router. -- Chris Green

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Still stuck with Fedora networking
by Chris G 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

Well I've managed to persuade my Fedora system that it has a fixed network address but it *still* won't talk to the outside world. The symptoms are exactly the same as they were before:- I can 'host xxx.yyy.zzz' and I get the right IP address back for whatever I've asked for. I can't ssh, ftp or anything to anywhere outside my local subnet. All other systems on the subnet *can* talk various protocols to the outside world. The Fedora system can talk various protocols to other systems on the same subnet. So can anyone offer any insight, I'm at the swearing at it stage! -- Chris Green

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Fedora - it seems to be a networking issue
by Chris G 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

Well I think I can see what's wrong with my Fedora 7 installation but I can't see how to fix it. The routing/DNS/gateway is somehow awry. The symptoms are as follows:- I *can* browse the internet with Firefox so I do have a working connection to the outside world (it's a Speedtouch router which is working for everyone else too). From the Fedora system it loks as if the *only* protocol that works to the outside world is HTTP, any attempt to ssh or whatever just hangs. This is probably why yum is failing I guess. I *can* ssh from the Fedora system to other systems on the local subnet, this is how I'm sending this mail, ssh from Fedora to the garage system and then ssh from there to my hosting provider where I read my mail. DNS does work, I can do 'host newred.gradwell.net' and get the right answer (newred.gradwell.net is my hosting provider), but I can't ssh direct to newred.gradwell.net. /sbin/route returns:- Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 169.254.0.0 * 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 default dsldevice.lan 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 Which looks OK (but why does Fedora give my router the silly name 'dsldevice.lan', had me confused for a while). So what's wrong? It's not some horrible IPV6/IPV4 thing is it? -- Chris Green

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Help wanted with Fedora installation
by Chris G 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

Well I have Fedora 7 installed but it has not gone quite to plan. I rearranged all the partitions of my old Slackware installation so that everything was on one disk (/dev/sda) and I removed all the partitions from /dev/sdb. I then ran the Fedora installation telling it to use /dev/sdb. That went pretty smoothly and I have managed to mount the old Slackware partitions in Fedora so I can see everything. However I have a couple of problems:- The Fedora system doesn't seem to be able to update/install new software using yum (or the GUI installer). When run it just hangs at the start where it is trying to get a list of packages. Fedora uses grub to start up, Slackware used Lilo. Fedora boots from /dev/sdb. Is there any way I can get grub to dual boot Fedora and Slackware? All the Slackware stuff is still there in its /boot on /dev/sda and I can see the Lilo configuration file. What is needed in grub to tell it to boot from an installation on a different drive? I'm sending this E-Mail from my 'garage' computer, what a good idea that was! :-) -- Chris Green

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Will Fedora 7 play happily with another version on Linux?
by Chris G 23 Sep '07

23 Sep '07

As I said recently I'm thinking of installing Fedora 7, will it "play nicely" with my existing Slackware installation? Has anyone else here got two versions of Linux dual-booting on the same hardware? There's lots of space to spare, the filesystem where Slackware is installed is only 9% used so that could easily be split to make space for Fedora. /home is a separate filesystem and can presumably be left as is for both Fedora and Slackware to use. Any problems likely? Will Fedora offer to squash the Slackware root filesystem and make space for itself there? -- Chris Green

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Using k3b to write an ISO image
by Chris G 23 Sep '07

23 Sep '07

I have just been trying to use k3B to write an ISO image and I really, really can't understand how to do it. E.g. I click on "Tools - Burn DVD ISO Image" and it immediately starts writing, I'm not given the chance to specify what ISO I want to write or anything like that. How do I simply tell it to burn an ISO image of a file I specify? -- Chris Green

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Another k3b problem
by Chris G 22 Sep '07

22 Sep '07

I'm just trying to write some data using k3b now. When I do a 'du -sk *' in my /home direcotry I see:- 49179124 ben 1280276 chris 4 ftp 301972 isbd 16 lost+found 1601772 maxine 474064 zelma However if I drop /home/chris into k3b to be written it says there is 4Gb of data, so why the discrepancy? -- Chris Green

1 0

Linux Astronomy software
by mephi 21 Sep '07

21 Sep '07

A while ago someone posted here asking for Linux software that performed a function similar to a windows package, and as it was one I'd heard of, I think it was either k3CCDTools or Registax. If it was k3CCDTools, then I've just started to use the qastrocam software, which I think does a very similar job. If it was Registax, did you ever find anything? Matt

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Re: [ALUG] Anyone here running Fedora 7?
by Richard Bensley 19 Sep '07

19 Sep '07

>Here in the film industry, 64-bitness is helping with rendering >performance and also on the desktop where artists need to use vast >chunks of memory for their 3D and even 2D packages. I recently moved over to Red Hat for Softimage. 64bit Softimage is a no go for me, the support and stability under Linux is useless, and it's just about bearable under vista 64bit! As you say for rendering, having debian 64bit dual boot on my core2duo box with mental ray works a treat! I have seen Maya used on 64bit boxes, with a quadro or two and like 8GB of ram, anything to keep that crap from crashing ;) Of course the Autodesk IFFS suites and the like are all 64bit, but I would rather buy a house. Martyn, what 64bit 2D packages are you using?!? The closest thing I have to anything like that is a 64bit zbrush binary in windows :S Rich

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