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10372 discussions

Various FTAGH items (or even just FTAH)
by Chris G 04 Sep '07

04 Sep '07

My clear out of my old 'electronics' room continues and I'm still finding bits of superannuated hardware. Are any of the following of any use to anyone here:- ISA bus cards Modem (definitely not a Winmodem), boxed, manual Parallel/Serial/IDE/Floppy I/O card, boxed, manual Network card (original NE2000 I think) PCI bus cards USB 2.0 Interface, boxed, manual Modem (no info with it) 24x CD drive, IDE interface All could be posted or brought along to the next meet. -- Chris Green

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FTGH: Various computer bits
by Jonathan McDowell 03 Sep '07

03 Sep '07

I'm having a clearout and as a result have a fair few random bits and pieces of computer stuff that need new homes. I thought I'd mention it here before I let Freecycle loose on the list, which is at: http://the.earth.li/~noodles/clearout.html In particular I have too many SCSI cables and too many power cables. Surely they must be of use to someone rather than me having to throw them out? J. -- No thanks, I'm already having one. This .sig brought to you by the letter E and the number 28 Product of the Republic of HuggieTag

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Any alternatives to htmlhelp.com?
by Chris G 03 Sep '07

03 Sep '07

The WDG site at htmlhelp.com appears to be down at the moment, can anyone recommend any similar sites which document the basics of HTML, CSS etc. on line? Or are the htmlhelp.com pages available from anywhere else? -- Chris Green

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/ unexpectedly remounted as read only
by Wayne Stallwood 29 Aug '07

29 Aug '07

One of our servers did a strange thing today. Suddenly at about half 11 this morning it remounted / as read only, I have seen filesystems do this on boot when fsck was unable to repair something automatically but this happened with an uptime of 80 days. Nothing useful was written to the logs (presumably because they are on the same mount point and hence also read only) Seeing as it was in a ro state anyway I ran fsck on the ext3 filesystem and it came back with a large number (100's) of errors, some of which needed manual confirmation before they could be fixed. However / being ro had made a mess of some of the processes that machine runs so I gave it a reboot and everything came back as expected and with an empty lost+found. I ran smartctl on all 4 disks of the Raid 5 array and no errors have been logged and disks look healthy. The mdadm shows all 4 disks as being in normal mode and the array as being healthy. I am going to run extended offline smart tests of the disks over the weekend when the machine is less busy, but in the meantime can somebody confirm that damaged filesystems remounting themselves as ro is normal behaviour and if so what detects and schedules this ? Also any ideas as to what (apart from faulty RAM which again I am going to have to wait until the weekend to test) might have caused such widespread corruption in the first place ?

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Re: [ALUG] Open University and software
by Bev Nicolson 29 Aug '07

29 Aug '07

It was the way OU said this on their web site that concerned me, Wayne. There is, as you suggest, always the possibility that the software will 'just work' but I felt it wise to check. Another thing. Linux friendly *external* DVD players? Any recommendations? Or can you plug and play with most? Thanks again. Bev. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Wayne Stallwood" <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> > To: ALUG <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Open University and software > Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 01:53:01 +0100 > > > On Tue, 2007-08-28 at 18:22 +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote: > > I'm hoping to do some studying with the OU but looking at their > > web site it basically says that they can't support Linux. I > > thought I'd ask whether folk on this list have had any problems > > with software incompatibility (which is for Windows but can, they > > say, be used on Macs) and Ubuntu. Thanks. > > > > Bev. > > Not supported can often just mean "not tested on" if their site works on > both Windows and Mac (and therefore presumably more than one browser) > then there is a very good chance it will work on firefox on ubuntu. > > If software resources are made available for your your course outside > the scope of the website then it may be that only Windows and Mac > binaries are made available. Then your choice is to either experiment > with Wine by following the recent thread on the main list or install > Windows in a virtual machine (the virtual machine can be operated for > free but you will need a Windows licence) and this being an option I > would strongly recommend that you attend the next iplug meet as samwise > is performing a demonstration. > > If the site just wont play in firefox on linux then a last resort may be > http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page, but that resource is > intended more for site development than actually using a browser in > anger. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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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Open University and software
by Bev Nicolson 28 Aug '07

28 Aug '07

I'm hoping to do some studying with the OU but looking at their web site it basically says that they can't support Linux. I thought I'd ask whether folk on this list have had any problems with software incompatibility (which is for Windows but can, they say, be used on Macs) and Ubuntu. Thanks. Bev. -- _______________________________________________ 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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WINE
by Yvonne Everett 28 Aug '07

28 Aug '07

Hello Does anyone have a particular good reference guide/notes perhaps on how to get WINE running? I've tried this before to allow me to use MS Money through Linux but have had several problems. So now I have a completely clean install of Kubuntu 7.04 and am ready to try WINE again for MS Money. Any suggestions before I make a start would be much appreciated. Rgds -- Yvonne Everett Email: ye103910(a)googlemail.com

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X between Xorg and X11R6
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 28 Aug '07

28 Aug '07

Hi Folks, A new question! (All this up-to-date Linux stuff is finding the gaps in my obsolete knowledge ...). I'm currently trying (rather, wanting to try) running X apps remotely on one of my machines, with Gentoo running off the Live CD on the new laptop. So: A = new laptop, latest Gentoo off live CD X is Xorg B = old laptop, Red Hat 9 from 2003. X is X11R6 Normally, when I want remote X apps to display locally, I enter xhost + locally, and get "connection is allowed from any host". And it then works. On A, I again enter "xhost +" and still get "connection is allowed from any host". So far so good, it would seem. However, A has no telnet client, and rlogin won't work, soI have to use ssh to log in from A to B. This seems to work: I log in, I can tour directories, etc. B knows where I'm coming from: B:$ who am i ted ..... (192.168.1.8) which is fine. But it hasn't attributed an X DISPLAY: echo $DISPLAY returns null. So on B I set export DISPLAY=192.168.1.8:0.0 which is what I'd normally do. But now, when logged in to B, I issue xterm There is a delay, and then the message xterm Xt error: Can't open display: 192.168.1.8:0.0 Does this have something to do with Xorg doing things differently from X11R6? The process I went through above would have worked between any of my X11R6 machines. Or might it have somthing to do with my logging in using ssh rather than telnet (Machine B is set up to be friendly to anything on my LAN 192.168.1.*). Any suggestions appreciated! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 27-Aug-07 Time: 18:00:54 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Backing Vista into a corner
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 27 Aug '07

27 Aug '07

Hi Again, with repeat apologies! The laptop on which I propose to install Linux has Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed. There is one hard drive: 120GB. Partition info according to Vista is: Vista (C:) 91.2GB free, 104GB total System (S:) 1.41GB free, 1.46GB total Gentoo finds the HD at /dev/sda, and fdisk gives: /dev/sda1 Start=1 End=702 Blocks=5,632,000 ID=27 Type=Unknown /dev/sda2 Start=702 End=893 Blocks=1,536,000 ID=7 Type=HP/NTFS /dev/sda3 Start=893 End=14894 Blocks=110,050,304 ID=7 Type=HP/NTFS Presumably (matching on partition size) /dev/sda2 is the 1.4GB "System" partition which Vista identified (dunno what that's for, though; but at least it's a known filesystem type). And of course /dev/sda3 is the Big One, which Vista has all to itself. And Vista does not see /dev/sda1 at all. This may be something to do with machine boot-up, BIOS config, diagnostics, or the like. Anyway, my real question is to do with backing Vista into a much smaller corner of /dev/sda3. Perhaps I'll be benign and let it have as much as 40GB to run around in, maybe less, however. So this means resizing the /dev/sda3 partition, and adding new partiitions in the space released. There shouldn't be problems with the latter, once the former has been done. But this is the first time I've been anywhere near an NTFS filesystem. While I've done this often enough for DOS/VFAT systems, I don't really know what sort of animal NTFS is, and how kindly it would take to being "downsized". Still less do I know what tool I should use for the resizing, what dangers to watch out for (I don't really want to zap Vista, since it sould come in handy sometime), nor whether the Linux bootloader )e.g. GRuB) will work smoothly with this setup. Also, will the fact that the partitions do not begin and end on cylinder boundaries (see above fdisk info) matter? So I'd welcome experienced advice about these and any related issues that need taking care of when installing Linux alongside Vista. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 26-Aug-07 Time: 20:51:22 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Ubuntu vs Gentoo [vs etc.]?
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 27 Aug '07

27 Aug '07

Hi Folks, Apologies to any who receive cross-postings! I'm poised to install Linux on a newly acquired laptop. I've tried out the latest Ubuntu amd Gentoo live CDs, and both work nicely. (Indeed, with their common GNOME interface, there's isn't superificially much difference between them). However, I've formed a slightly happier impression of Gentoo (for reasons which I can't quite put my finger on -- its more of a "comfort" impression; also, the Gentoo live CD seems to have more stuff to try out than the Ubuntu one does). I'd be grateful for any guidance from folks who have experiance of both, as to which may be the better one for long-term use. I'm also planning to give PCLinuxOS a whirl, and maybe also Zenwalk, if anyone has comments. Also feel free to advocate anything else! Essential are good support for Intel 945GM Integrated Graphics Controller (works with i810 driver), Synaptics touchpad with USB mouse as alternative (I hate touchpads, but this machine has no external PS/2 port ... ). With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 26-Aug-07 Time: 20:27:47 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Why does mozilla/firefox/netscape make this so difficult?
by Chris G 25 Aug '07

25 Aug '07

Why are web browsers (well, Netscape and its descendents) so different from all other programs? All I want to do is run Firefox on another system on my (three machine) network and it's very difficult! My 'main' machine runs Slackware Linux and is in the house in my office, it's on all the time so I can advertise the occasional web page etc. It's the machine that appears on the web (at least as web pages) as home.isbd.net. I have set up another machine in the garage using tatty old hardware so when I want to get some information (thread sizes for bolts, spare parts for tools, wall plug sizes, etc.) I can do it there rather than having to go back into the house requiring cleanness etc. As I want access to the same home directory when I'm out there I have used NFS to export my home and when I log in on the garage system I have all the same files that I have on my office system. Everything works fine *except* Firefox (well everything I've tried so far that is). Firefox won't start on the garage system because it sees the office system's Firefox lock file and says that Firefox is running already and I can't have another one. I can think of various ways around this issue (separate profile, don't use NFS but copy some files across, etc.) but really why should I have to? Just about every other program would run up a second instance without any bother at all, why does Firefox do different? Netscape was the same, it's "ancestral"! :-) Other programs that create a lock file like this or a file with the PID in it are server type programs where it makes sense (like mySql), there having only one copy makes sense and I could use it from both my garage and office systems at the same time without hassle. With firefox though it's just a nuisance and I can't really come up with a neat solution. To describe the problem more completely:- I have /home/chris is the *same* file system on both office and garage computers, it's a local file system on the office computer and an NFS export to the garage computer. I have a few files that are different for the garage computer kept in /home/chris/.garage, these are such things as my window manager configuration because the garage computer has a lower resolution display than the office computer. I want office and garage computer firefox to share their installation and configuration so that bookmarks and other things are the same. I just want to run firefox in the garage, but I can't! Possible solutions seem to be:- Run firefox in the garage with a separate profile, but I'm not sure if this works completely and it means that I have to choose a profile every time I start firefox. It also means that bookmarks etc. are *not* shared so I have to do something about that. Shut down firefox on the office system every time I leave it, not really a sensible approach, I'll forget! I can't think of any other ways to do it! Oh, yes, there is another approach. Have an independent /home/chris on the garage system and have symbolic links from there to all the important directories in /home/chris on the office system. Thus firefox has a local (and thus independent) configuration/installation and I can just link bookmarks.html to the office system one to get the same bookmarks. This also has the advantage that the garage system will be more able to work without the office system being there. It's probably the approach I will take though I'm not quite sure how to keep the symbolic links up to date. -- Chris Green

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Ipswich ALUG meeting tonight
by samwise 24 Aug '07

24 Aug '07

Just a last minute reminder about tonight's ALUG meeting ... Wayne, if you need anything else from me (stuff installed on PC, if you need it etc.), let me know! Peter.

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LDAP Address Book
by Ben Francis 24 Aug '07

24 Aug '07

Hi ALUG, Does anyone use LDAP for their address book? I use IMAP for email and iCalendar/WebDAV for calendars so I can store them on a server and access them with multiple clients. I want to do the same with my address book. I think the main problem is choosing a schema because different mail clients use different address book schemas. I currently have an address book in Thunderbird and an address book in my OS X Address Book which syncs with my phone. I want to combine the two but annoyingly, Thunderbird doesn't appear to import vCard address books and the CSV import is painful. I'm also looking for a piece of web based address book software which can use LDAP as a back end, any recommendations? So far I've found Turba (http://www.horde.org/turba/), but Horde is a little bloated. I was hoping the Bongo Project (http://www.bongo-project.org) would support LDAP as a back end, but it doesn't yet. Thank ye Ben -- Ben Francis http://tola.me.uk

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Windows crashes Skype!
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 20 Aug '07

20 Aug '07

Hi Folks, I was amused (though also sad) to read of the reasons why Skype went off the air for two days at the end of last week. I quote from their explanation: On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users' computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update. The high number of restarts affected Skype's network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact. Normally Skype's peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly. Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days. Since Skype typically has upward of 5 million users online at a time, one cam imagine the effect if they all rebooted within an hour or so! But what a lovely DOS mechanism! (Not for nothing, methinks, was M$'s first operating system called MS-DOS -- though the DOS boot was then on the other foot). 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: 20-Aug-07 Time: 22:31:31 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Skype, RH9, tribulations; alsa-oss?
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 20 Aug '07

20 Aug '07

Hi Folks, Sorry if you experience cross-posting, but I seem to be on a needle-in-a-haystack hunt here. I'm running Red Hat 9 (2003 vintage), 2.4 kernel, on a Compaq Armada 1750 laptop whose sound card is "ESS 1869 Audioline" (though it works OK with 1868 or 11688 drivers). I want to use Skype. Owing to the age of the system, I'm limited to earlier versions of Skype (library compatibility), and these use OSS sound rather than ALSA. Skype works up to successful calling (the "bell" rings at either end, but when the call is accepted all you can hear at the calling end is a repeated clicking (about once/sec) and at the receiving end in a similar rhythm a noise more like someone hitting wood with a hammer in the distance. At the same time, at the calling end, repeated messages come up: GETOSPACE: Device or resource busy GETOSPACE: Device or resource busy GETOSPACE: Device or resource busy ... Extensive web-searching has thrown up various facts. a) The ESS 1869 is bad news Skype-wise anyway; b) The above situation is a well-known issue with the earlier versions of Skype (the most recent versions have ALSA support, but demand more recent libs than I have). c) Some people have reported sucess with deceitful work-rounds, including: -- skype_dsp_hijacker which intercepts Skype's calls to the sound devices and keeps things in order. However, this has not worked for me. Either I get the same as the above, or "Problem with sound device" in Skype plus error message "/dev/dsp-1: No such device" to the comsoles -- alsa-oss which installs a library and uses a wrapper to convert Skype's OSS format into Alsa format. I haven't tried alsa-oss because, seach as I may, I cannot find a download for it (in any version). Even the link on the Alsa Project http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page draws a blank: it cannot change into the directory for alsa-oss! All other links I've found on the Web are dead. I'd be most gratefull is anyone who's travelled along this road and has successfully arrived could help me out! The ideal would be a compilable source package. And if anyone has found a working alternative solution to the abve probelm, I'd be most interested to hear about this too. With thanks, and best wishes, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-Aug-07 Time: 22:31:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Linux can't connect to the Internet
by CDW (Linux) 19 Aug '07

19 Aug '07

Due to some finger trouble on my part, I lost the Mandrake 10.2 system on my second hard drive which is on my dual-boot machine. The other OS is XP and that's where I'm writing this. Over some weeks prior to my hosing of Mandrake, the Internet side of Linux had been getting distinctly unreliable. I'd say that at least 50% of the time it wouldn't work. Other days I'd boot into it and it would work fine. All the time it would say that the network was up but it wouldn't talk to the router (all static IP addresses as they are under Windows). Having lost Mandrake 10.2, I thought I'd give a later version a go. The install all went well with no problems except that it wouldn't bring up the network to search for updates. I gave up with Mandrake at that point and decided I'd take a look at ubuntu so grabbed a copy of that. I was impressed that it found all the Windows hardware and allowed me to enter an IP address from the GUI prior to install. But it still wouldn't talk to the ADSL router. At this point you might imagine that I had a faulty network card but with no changes, other than to the OS, the network is running fine. I watched the light on the back of the LAN card and as XP was rebooting, the green LED illuminated. At no time does it do so in Linux. It's back with Mandrake Spring by the way now as I couldn't persuade Ubuntu to write a sensible boot loder config and at least Mandrake did that, or should that be Mandriva now? Any ideas as to what I should have a try at now? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .-----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |_______________________________________________|

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USB Obesity!
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 18 Aug '07

18 Aug '07

Hi Folks, I suspect I've done somthing foolish (OK, maybe several things). Yesterday, browsing round Tesco, I spotted 1GB USB sticks on sale for £9.97. Looked like a bargain, so I bought one. OK, maybe a gamble, but at low stakes. Branded "TESCO / TECHNIKA", "Manufactured in Taiwan for Tesco Stores Ltd."; the info on the front of the pack is in English, on the back in Polish, Czeck, Hungarian and Slovak. After I got home, I gave it a whirl by plugging it in, mounting /dev/sda1 (which is where my USB sticks go) onto /flash (my mount point for this kind of thing), made a directory /Ted on it, and squirted about 300MB at it from one of my "junkbox" directories (which also has a few sub-directories of junk), using cp -a 00_junk /flash/Ted (Maybe "-a" was a mistake). Lots of messages up on the console about not being able to set permissions (OK, expected, since it wouldn't be a Linux file system). Then, after a bit a lot of messages "bad FAT"! Also, at the same time, lots of complaints about multibyte names (which I don't have). A couple of messages about Interrupt from USB. Hmmm. Multi bite, bad fat ... Obesity??? Finally it was done. I could read from whatever had gone in immediately under /flash/Ted, and the sub-directories were there, but if I changed into one of these I couldn't read anything in there. Clearly a bit of a mess. So I deceided to delete everything and think again. Deleting top-level stuff OK, but the sub-directories wouldn't play. Finally decided to start from scratch. Started fdisk on it, blew away all the partitions, planted a new Linux one (type 83), and tried to mkfs an ext2 filesystem on it. Got message that the kernel couldn't make head nor tail of it, and would continue using its stored FAT (previous version) untile the next reboot. Well the previous FAT was no good by now, so I re-booted. Well, you've guessed it -- the thing is now totally useless. Can't do a thing with it! It won't mount on /dev/sda1 of course, since there's no filesystem. So, to come to the point: 1. I'd be interested in any suggestions and expertise about how to set up a Linus partition on a zapped/blank [which?] USB drive. This would presumably involve addressing some /dev/usb*** just as one would for /dev/hda, say, if doing the like for a standard HDD. No big deal if you can't be bothered -- it was only a tenner, so I'll just have to fine myself 4 pints of beer. 2. Also interested in any suggestions about whether I should have bought it in the first place (with implications about possibly ever buying another one). With thanks, and happy weekend to all. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 18-Aug-07 Time: 08:41:43 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Linutops et al
by Matthew Holland 17 Aug '07

17 Aug '07

Laurie wrote: > I wish there were something out there of a similar size with space for a > 2.5" HDD... While trying to read up on Linutops I found this RegHardware article on alternatives: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/11/30/diskless_linux_web_pcs/ Of particular interest to me is this one, although depending on your app you may need something more powerful: http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjr/index.html Matthew

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Coin Selector supported by Linux
by Ben Francis 17 Aug '07

17 Aug '07

Hi all, Does anyone know of a "coin selector" or "coin acceptor" with a USB interface which is supported by free Linux drivers? I'm talking about the mechanisms on coin slot machines which send signals to an embedded computer when coins are inserted. I've had a quote for a product which includes an EMP 800 coin selector (http://www.custom.it/ing/money/03-01.htm) and I've managed to get hold of a data sheet for it so I can write my own driver, but I'm wondering if there is a similar product which already has support under Linux. Apologies for cross posting, but I feel I may need to cast the net quite wide for this unusual question :P Many Thanks Ben -- Ben Francis http://krellian.com

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Re: [ALUG] Linutops (was Coin Selector supported by Linux)
by Wayne Stallwood 17 Aug '07

17 Aug '07

On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 22:51 +0100, Ben Francis wrote: > I could use a different thin client computer I suppose... Hmm I have looked at Linutops before (as a plaything/x terminal for downstairs) but really they don't stack that well for price performance compared to a machine built from one of the fanless MiniITX boards unless you really need a machine quite that small. I dunno how the Georde compares to a via chip, but you get many more options for interfacing on mini-ITX and you should be able to easily put together a board, psu, case, memory and flash storage for less than the price of the Linutop. You also get the advantage of expandable ram and other niceties then. You could match the size as well but only by going for nano or pico ITX both of which will push you over the price of the linutop with diminishing extras in terms of interfacing. Also I don't like the way Linutop are using what is obviously xubuntu for their "Plug and Surf key" without appearing to credit Ubuntu anywhere on the website.

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road
by samwise 15 Aug '07

15 Aug '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 scheduled again for next week (Monday 16th April) 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! This month's meeting comprises a tutorial by Wayne (aka DrJeep) on video editing, DVD creation etc. using free software. We also need to discuss next month's tutorial and find a suitable volunteer. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Hope to see you there, Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Mesages From Netgear Router
by Nick Daniels 15 Aug '07

15 Aug '07

Hi I have had Netgear DG834g for about two years now. I installed Etch on Mon, and since then I have been receiving email such as TCP Packet - Source:209.112.135.123,50394 Destination: xxxx DOS, never had these before. If I start torrent I am getting 20+ per minute, upon turning on this morning there was three timed at 01:00 etc although router was off. BTW Many thanks for help with line speed problem a while back, I ended up asking Plusnet for MAC, line suddenly went from 900k to 4Mb and dropouts ceased almost immediately. Kind Regards - Nick Daniels

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Digital cameras
by Peter Alcibiades 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

This is the advice a friend of mine gives. His cameras cost thousands and he is a prize winning photographer. I am not a photographer, so have no idea of the merits of his advice, but take an interest in it because of a general interest in technology and because I have someone else to buy for. Here is a summary. 1) OS does not matter unless you are using RAW. Otherwise you are using a card reader, and any OS will manage jpeg. If you are shooting in RAW the program to read it in is very important, and not all programmes come for all OSs. There is something about Macs and Canons - the best RAW software seems to come only for windows. 2) More megapixels are not better, in fact they are probably worse in compact cameras, because noise rises as the pixel size gets smaller. You will see this particularly in low light conditions. 3) There are two reasons why SLRs are better, and a lot better, than anything else, if quality is what matters. One is size of sensor. They have big sensors, less noise. The other is that they do not use power to deliver the view through the viewfinder. This means more rapid operation, less power consumption. The difference between the alleged semi-pro small sensor cameras and true SLRs is huge, and way out of proportion to the difference either in cost or size. I think his view is, though he doesn't say this explicitly, that the 'semi pro' ones which look like SLRs but are not, is like lipstick on a pig. The only thing to use, if you are serious about picture quality, is an SLR. The difference, he says, is huge. 4) When considering SLRs, worry about dust. Every time you do a lens change, dust will be attracted to the sensor. Cleaning up the dust in photoshop or equivalent will be inredibly time consuming. He uses these special brushes,very expensive, to get the dust off the sensor. There are different ways of getting the dust off automatically now with different makes. Worry about dust. Worry about how you are going to manage, how much its going to cost, whether you have to return for maintenance to get it done. Think hard about whether you actually need to change lenses, and if not, get the kind of lens that is flexible enough to leave in place forever. If you're a pro you can't avoid changing lenses. As an amateur, plan so you don't have to. 5) More optical zoom is not better. It is impossible to make 12 x optical zoom lenses that are as good at any given zoom as a non-zooming lens. So anything more than 4 or 5 x zoom means compromising quality at all zoom levels. 5) Image stabilisation is fine, but beware of processing that increases sharpness. What you want is a stabilised image, with as little processing as possible. If any sharpening is going to be done, do it yourself on the PC. Otherwise you risk ending up with a pre-processed image where further processing will just degrade quality. 6) He has cameras that cost 5k plus. Nevertheless, the ones that he is surprised to find give him excellent shots and surprisingly good quality are the 200 pound or so compacts with moderate MP and Zoom count. He particularly mentions a Fuji whose model number I have forgotten. It had quite a high MP count. I can find out if you want. 7) Some of these, particularly the more expensive ones, have all kinds of manual controls. He has been surprised to find that they don't appeal to him at all, though in SLRs he is very manual control oriented. He actually prefers simple point and click in compacts, and doesn't quite know why the ones which allow him the freedom he has with his expensive SLRs always seem to get left at home. I found these conversations interesting because they are so different from anything you read in reviews. As a consequence I bought for my nearest and dearest a then high end 3 x zoom 4MP camera, a couple of large compact flash cards, and a reader. It has worked brilliantly. Its easy to use, the quality is excellent, the zoom is about right, its purse or jacket pocket size, and it goes everywhere. Its certainly not what I had in mind before I asked him. Peter

7 13

Respawning a script
by Richard Lewis 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

Hi ALUG, I have a Python script which seg faults occasionally. Its running on a server so I don't pay it much attention and the seg faults don't matter particularly. But I would like it to be running most of the time. Does anyone know of a way of making it automatically start again after it has crashed? I guess its kind of like respawning but I don't think I want init to be in control of it. I guess I could write another script which keeps an eye on the first script's pid and restarts the script when the pid disappears. But before I do, I was wondering if there's a more automatic or more elegant way of doing it? Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

2 2

Are there any Python and/or mail experts here?
by Chris G 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

I'm considering writing a python script to do some mailbox manipulation but I'm finding the documentation a little confusing, or at least a little lacking. I'm looking at:- http://docs.python.org/lib/mailbox-maildir.html http://docs.python.org/lib/mailbox-mbox.html What I can't quite get my mind round is why the Maildir sub-class of Mailbox has list_folders(), get_folder() etc. whereas the Mbox sub-class doesn't have these methods. >From the user's point of view maildir and mbox mail work the same, you can have a list of mbox folders in exactly the same way as you can have a list of maildir folders. In fact the Maildir sub-class documentation is not at all clear about what you get when you call list_folders(), a list of folders at what level in the hierarchy? -- Chris Green

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