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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

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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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FAX with Linux
by James Freer 19 Sep '07

19 Sep '07

Hi Mark I read your post with interest - i'd also like to know the best way of faxing with Linux. Winfax i don't think is your best choice. I also have tried winfax and it is quite a complicated app with telephone answering m/c etc. Difficult to incorporate with Wine i would have thought - but i'm only a newbie to Linux. For several years i've used an excellent small programme called FaxNow - printer driver sending any doc from any application (simple but effective). I got it on a pc mag CD. Receiving is the problem as one has to switch the line manually to receive. So i used eFax to receive [free for 20 faxes a month] and this last year Faxtastic [free but needs to receive at least one fax per quarter to keep account open]. I always got better quality faxes than a fax machine and no costs. These were .tif files. I noticed you mentioned pdfs - the ones i've looked at were tiff but pdf you probably pay for. Reading faxes is the problem - what they are read with must be able to read MULTIPLE PAGES. Most viewers are able to read a single sheet e.g. PhotoImpact, XnView. I used the efax messenger for a while just to view - they make their money on sending. I did find a multiple page viewer http://www.tiffsuite.theimageanvil.co.uk/ No one else mentioned this. I can't see how converting files is going to allow for multiple pages. I found the Tiff Viewer basic but reliable - useful for looking through received faxes. Alternatively, when i started using FireFox found a tiff viewer as an addon to FireFox - www.alternatiff.com [this is excellent]. This was in windoze so as far as Linux goes... hopefully someone may know? a] Use alternatiff in Linux (it says only for windows but i've imported my windows themes into Linux Firefox so could work) and use Gfax or Faxnow (through wine) to send. If alternatiff won't work i'm sure the Tiff viewer would as it is a basic .exe app. b] Ubuntufax.com on VmWare - this is quite NEW i haven't investigated this yet but if it sends a pdf to your email problems solved. Ideal solution! b] Simple solution - pay £10-£20 per month for the variety of paid services. I will be keeping windows on a machine for some time so will probably just continue until a Linux solution comes along and i've stopped using windows. I knew an IT consultant a few years back who recommended not using WinFax as he'd had known a lot of problems with it - you're welcome to a copy of FaxNow and the Tiff viewer if they'll run in Wine. I'm not as knowledgeable as some on the IT side but i don't think the answer is converting files or using WinFax. james

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Anyone here running Fedora 7?
by Chris G 19 Sep '07

19 Sep '07

I'm thinking of moving from Slackware to Fedora for my next upgrade. There are a number of reasons for this:- I have Fedora on my desktop at work and have found it quite good (and easy) to work with, an additional advantage of course is having the same distribution in both places. It's more compatible with Vmware, Vmware can be installed on Slackware as a host but it's a bit of a fiddle. While Fedora isn't 'supported' by Vmware, RedHat is supported and Fedora is similar enough to RedHat for Vmware to install simply. I'm thinking of going to a 64-Bit OS and there isn't a 64-bit version of Slackware. Can anyone envisage any bit 'gotchas' if I do this? Are there any major pitfalls when moving from 32-bit to 64-bit? -- Chris Green

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A question about 'relative' and 'absolute' in HTML/CSS
by Chris G 18 Sep '07

18 Sep '07

The question is basically - what do they actually mean? I have just been playing with setting some font sizes to various 'relative' sizes and the results don't seem to make sense to me. OK, I *think* I know what the 'absolute' sizes mean. If I set a size to "1cm" (yes, I know the quotes aren't necessary in the CSS) I get something that is 1cm high and if I set it to "1in" I get text one inch high. However I'm not at all clear how the system knows how big my display is, if I connect a smaller display to the same output then the text will be smaller even though I have changed nothing. Is the correct absolute size dependent on me having set up my display correctly at some point? Anyway, on to the bit I understand less well, what do relative sizes mean? For font-size we have:- * em (ems, the height of the element's font) * ex (x-height, the height of the letter "x") * px (pixels, relative to the canvas resolution) So what is meant by "the height of the element's font"? It can't be an absolute value (in cm or in) because that would mean the result would be absolute. I can see that there could be a relation between everything and, say, the default BODY text size so that if you change the BODY text size everything else changes in proportion but where does that BODY text size come from? Is it what I set in my browser as the font size? If that is right I sort of follow, everything is relative to the default font size set in the browser. Sizes set in em or ex are then relative to that size. However that leaves pixels, what on earth does "pixels, relative to the canvas resolution" mean? Does it mean a size related to the screen size, but how does one interpret 'pixels' in this context? If I say the font size is to be 16 pixels what does that really mean? If it really means 16 pixels of my screen then surely it's an absolute size. Certainly none of the relative sizes are relative to the browser window size which in many ways would make most sense. If they *were* relative to the window size a web page would (if it used relative sizes) just scale as you grow and shrink the window. As it is, even with relative sizes for things, when you grow and shrink the window the text stays the same size and is re-laid out to fit. Whatever, there's surely a web site somewhere that explains all this, can someone point me at it please. http://www.htmlhelp.com/ is an excellent site for the details of writing HTML and CSS but doesn't really explain the sizing (not for me anyway). -- Chris Green

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Can I use OSS as well as Alsa?
by Barry Samuels 18 Sep '07

18 Sep '07

Debian 'Testing' Kernel 2.6.22.6 Alsa 1.3.3 I have a USB record turntable that works without problems under OSS but won't work with Alsa (which I'm now using). Can I set up OSS and Alsa so that I can switch between them and, if so, how would I do it? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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UK Suse Linux User Group Announcement
by Julie Grant 17 Sep '07

17 Sep '07

Dear Sir or Madam, We are pleased to announce the creation of The UK SUSE Linux User Group (UK SLUG) the UK forum for Users of SUSE® Linux. The User Group will be formally launched at the next UK Groupware User Group conference on Thursday 25th October at the Burlington Hotel, Birmingham. The group has been formed on the basis of providing an opportunity for users of SUSE® Linux to network on a national basis and share other information with other users and UK Vendors. Initially, the group will run alongside the well established Groupware User Group events that take place quarterly, at locations across the UK including Novell UK offices in Bracknell, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh etc. The UK SLUG web site is already released and can be found at http://www.ukslug.org.uk . You will find the latest SUSE news, our forthcoming events, links to items of interest for the SUSE user community, polls, snippets and a wealth of information for any SUSE user or administrator. The site is regularly updated and will grow in content over the coming months. We believe the UK SUSE® community can organise and host successful events, that the SUSE® product and its many add-ons and complementary products are a vital and integral part of so many of our organisations and that we are passionate about the need for a platform to share our successes and our frustrations and collectively bring greater clarity for all SUSE® users. Please take a look at our website for details regarding the launch announcement and how you can register as a member either as a corporate organisation, vendor or individual. Web: www.ukslug.org.uk . Email: info(a)ukslug.org.uk Address: UK SLUG, 7 Manor Buildings, North Perrott, Crewkerne, Somerset. TA18 7ST. Tel: 01460-271055 Julie Grant, UK SLUG Registered Address : 7 Manor Buildings, North Perrott, Crewkerne, Somerset, TA18 7ST Registered England & Wales - 3981322 CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION This e-mail and any files attached with it are confidential and for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient(s) you are prohibited from using, copying or distributing this or any information contained in it and should immediately notify the sender and delete the message from your system. Internet communications are not secure and Blueloop Limited is not responsible for unauthorised use by third parties nor for alteration or corruption in transmission. Furthermore, while Blueloop Limited have taken reasonable precautions to minimise the risk of software viruses, it cannot accept liability for any damage which you may suffer as a result of such viruses, and we therefore recommend you carry out your own virus checks on receipt of any e-mail.

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(no subject)
by jim snyder 17 Sep '07

17 Sep '07

Hi there, I'm a Certified Linux System Administrator & I've just joined. If you have ever used linuxgym.com or done LPI exams could you please email me your opinions of linuxgym & LPI exams to jim.snyder(a)linuxmail.org Cheers :) Tel.: +447914011154 = -- Powered by Outblaze

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HP Photosmart R507 not being assigned usb device number
by Jenny Hopkins 17 Sep '07

17 Sep '07

Hullo there, I'm trying to use gphoto2 on a debian linux box. The camera in question is an HP Photosmart R507, which is detected when usb is plugged, but no device is being assigned in /proc/bus/usb. Any ideas as to why welcome. It works on another debian box okay, and I can see the new device appearing. Thanks, Jenny

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Logik IR100
by Wayne Stallwood 15 Sep '07

15 Sep '07

There has been a bit of discussion regarding these Tabletop Internet radios at Alug Meets and on IRC (mostly as Currys are selling them at £40 at the moment which is quite a bargain) Noodles talked me into buying one at the last ALUG social (it didn't take a lot of effort) For those that don't know the IR100 is a mains powered standalone radio (there is also another version that is designed to plug into a Hifi) that links up via wireless and can stream internet radio stations or play mp3's located on a SMB share. Initially I was quite disappointed to discover that they fall over if scanning shared folders with more than 5000 tracks in them (I have more like 25,000). However gmediaserver v0.12.0 appears to work perfectly with them and also gives you the advantage of faster track access/navigation at the expense of some of the search functionality offered when you use SMB share access. The device is not on the gmediaserver compatibility list (I have just sent them a compatibility report so hopefully it will be soon) so I thought it would be worth mentioning that it works here

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Handling Winfax FXM files in Linux
by Mark Rogers 12 Sep '07

12 Sep '07

Anybody had the "pleasure" of handling Winfax FXM files on Linux? I've just moved from desktop Windows to desktop Linux, with VMWare for incompatible Windows apps, but because I get faxes arrive as email (and the email client is running in Linux) it would be much better to find somethuing to view them in Linux than have to somehow transfer them to the VM for viewing. -- Mark Rogers

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Gnome question (or actually an "I don't want Gnome" question)
by Chris G 12 Sep '07

12 Sep '07

I have just started back at work, the place I left a few months ago where I have a two day a week contract starting today. I have got a Fedora based machine as my desktop machine again (Hoorah!) but I haven't got my old customised setup back so I've got to redo it from scratch. The first problem is - how do I turn off the Gnome desktop from being automatically started? Is there a setup option somewhere that selects what window manager I want? I have created a .xinitrc file which starts fvwm2 (the window manager I want) but it hasn't done anything. I suspect what I need to change is buried in the gdm/xdm startup somewhere. -- Chris Green

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cron script causing system to run at 100% cpu usage
by Jenny Hopkins 12 Sep '07

12 Sep '07

Hullo there, There's a script in /etc/cron.daily (on debian-etch server) called 'find', which is starting at around 8.30 am, using 100% cpu power, then kind of sticking there for hours (I just had to manually kill the processes it seems to start, like locate and updatedb and sort). Below is the script, and updatedb.conf. Has anyone any idea why this should be unable to run properly, and would it be a Bad Awful thing to just have it not run? Thanks, Jenny jenny@xios:~$ sudo more /etc/cron.daily/find #! /bin/sh # # cron script to update the `locatedb' database. # # Written by Ian A. Murdock <imurdock(a)debian.org> and # Kevin Dalley <kevin(a)aimnet.com> LOCALUSER="nobody" export LOCALUSER if [ -f /etc/updatedb.conf ]; then . /etc/updatedb.conf fi if getent passwd $LOCALUSER > /dev/null ; then cd / && nice -n ${NICE:-10} updatedb 2>/dev/null else echo "User $LOCALUSER does not exist." exit 1 fi jenny@xios:~$ sudo more /etc/updatedb.conf # This file sets environment variables which are used by updatedb # Global options for invocations of find(1) FINDOPTIONS='-ignore_readdir_race' export FINDOPTIONS # filesystems which are pruned from updatedb database PRUNEFS="NFS nfs nfs4 afs binfmt_misc proc smbfs autofs iso9660 ncpfs coda devpts ftpfs devfs mfs shfs sysfs cifs lustre_lite tmpfs usbfs udf" export PRUNEFS # paths which are pruned from updatedb database PRUNEPATHS="/tmp /usr/tmp /var/tmp /afs /amd /alex /var/spool /sfs /media" export PRUNEPATHS # netpaths which are added NETPATHS="" export NETPATHS # run find as this user LOCALUSER="nobody" export LOCALUSER # cron.daily/find: run at this priority -- higher number means lower priority # (this is relative to the default which cron sets, which is usually +5) NICE=10 export NICE

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adjusting row height in OO
by Peter Alcibiades 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

I've an OO spreadsheet of a reasonable size. It has about four or five sheets, one of which has about 10,000 lines, and it has an array formula to go through and total the categories of this 10k line sheet into an array 6 x 400 cells. Lets say, they could be a 10k list of events, of 400 types, occurring at one of 6 dates. When opening, it takes forever to do something it calls 'adjusting row height'. I can't figure out what it can be doing, since all row heights are default values. Looking on the OO discussion groups, someone has posted this query but got no answer. It makes no difference if its in xls format or odt. Any ideas? Yes, I know one should probably not do this sort of thing in a spreadsheet, and maybe I'll rewrite it in a better vehicle, but the advantage was, done in a spreadsheet its available to any intelligent secretary. Or that was my theory, which was a bit dented when trying to explain how in array formulas multiplication becomes logical and.... It seems simple, but it turned out to be quite hard for them to get their heads around. But its still more accessible than a 'real programme'. Peter

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Re: [ALUG] Clamav issues
by David Reynolds 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

On 11 Sep 2007, at 10:13 am, Brett Parker wrote: > Can we have an ls -lad /path/to/directory/holding/socket, drwxrwxrwx 2 clamav clamav 4096 2007-09-10 17:14 /var/run/clamav/ I may have set these myself when I was fiddling the other day. > preferably the > backend of the clam log when it's restarted (maybe in daemon.log or > mail.log), Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 -> +++ Started at Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 -> clamd daemon 0.90.1 (OS: linux-gnu, ARCH: i386, CPU: i486) Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 -> Log file size limit disabled. Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 -> Reading databases from /var/lib/clamav > the default permissions of the socket... Er, no idea > Err, I think that'd be enough debug info to start with :) > > (Otherwise we're just on speculation!) > > Oh, one other question, does it still start it's networking side up? > i.e. can you connect to the daemon over TCP/IP? Again, no idea. Thanks, Dave -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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