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Impress
by Bev Nicolson 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

Opening a Powerpoint presentation in Impress I find that one slide seems to be too big for the slide area. The last few lines of text are obscured by a grey block of colour which makes the white text impossible to read. How can I resize it? I would read the manual but I've got no idea where to start looking. (And the one I have got doesn't mention any incompatibility.) 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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How to allow another user to run something on my X desktop?
by Chris G 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

How can I make it possible for another user to run one specific program on my desktop? I don't want to simply remove the X security completely, I'd rather do it by some sort of SUID'ish sort of approach. The first thing I have tried doesn't work though. I changed the ownership of the program in question to be owned by me and set the SUID bit:- -rwsr-xr-x 1 chris root 2497525 2007-02-14 18:54 /usr/local/bin/xvile I thought that if anyone else executes the program they would 'become' chris but it doesn't work. However thinking about it now I suspect that I'd need to add some code to the program to actually change the user as well as setting the permissions as above. So, is there any other way to get what I want? I just want another user (it's just one user in particular if that makes it easier) to be able to run /usr/local/bin/xvile on my X desktop. It's a home system with me as the only real user so there aren't any serious security implications, there aren't any unfriendly users. -- Chris Green

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Clamav issues
by David Reynolds 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

Hi, I seem to be having some issues with clamav at the moment. It only seems to be creating the socket file on a reboot. If it gets restarted any other time, I get no socket file and then exim won't talk to it. Anyone have any ideas? I'm running the following versions of clam (on debian): ii clamav 0.90.1-3etch7 antivirus scanner for Unix ii clamav-base 0.90.1-3etch7 base package for clamav, an anti-virus utili ii clamav-daemon 0.90.1-3etch7 antivirus scanner daemon ii clamav-freshclam 0.90.1-3etch7 downloads clamav virus databases from the In ii clamav-testfiles 0.90.1-3etch7 use these files to test that your Antivirus ii libclamav2 0.90.1-3etch7 virus scanner library Thanks, David -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Setting paragraph margins using CSS, is it really this clunky?
by Chris G 10 Sep '07

10 Sep '07

Is there really no way to set a lot of margin-top and margin-bottom values for paragraphs without explicitly setting a class= for each paragraph where you want to change the default? Other things (like font-size and alignment) can be changed by wrapping a set of paragraphs in a <DIV>....</DIV> and setting the values in the DIV's class but margin-top and margin-bottom are not inherited so this doesn't work for margins. All I want to do is have a set of paragraphs with bigger margins than the default and it looks as if I'll have to do:- <P class=bigmargin>..............</P> for every paragraph, which rather defeats the object of using CSS, I might just as well write the margin size there. -- Chris Green

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Suspend2 Debugging
by Dan Hatton 09 Sep '07

09 Sep '07

I could use some power management help, please. I like to suspend my system with Software Suspend 2 (or Tux on Ice, as it seems to be rebranding itself) when I'm not using it. However, since I upgraded my kernel from 2.6.20.6 to 2.6.22.5, the system sometimes (perhaps 25% of the time) fails to resume after a suspend. I've got suspend2 logging very verbosely. A successful suspend/resume cycle writes ~11kB of stuff to /var/log/messages, whereas a failed suspend/resume cycle writes ~1.4MB. The first place the two sets of logs differ is that, where the successful cycle writes Stopping tasks ... done. Preparing Image. Try 1. Preparing Image. Try 1. Stopping tasks ... done. Starting to save the image.. Starting to save the image.. - Final values: 23908 and 102848. Writing caches... Writing caches... 20%...40%...60%...80%...100%...done. The failed cycle writes (I've snipped out instances of IPtables logging rejected packets, and some messages from gpm and sleepd.) Stopping tasks ... geset+0x11d/0x1a9 [<c01391b7>] do_suspend2_step+0x2d7/0x649 [<c0139816>] _suspend2_try_suspend+0xab/0xe1 [<c0138678>] suspend2_attr_store+0x180/0x1c6 [<c0193100>] sysfs_write_file+0xa8/0xd1 [<c0193058>] sysfs_write_file+0x0/0xd1 [<c015c58f>] vfs_write+0x8a/0x10c [<c015ca25>] sys_write+0x41/0x67 [<c0103ace>] sysenter_past_esp+0x5f/0x85 [<c0720000>] ieee80211_process_probe_response+0x122/0xe4d ======================= Mem-info: DMA per-cpu: CPU 0: Hot: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Cold: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Normal per-cpu: CPU 0: Hot: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 30 Cold: hi: 62, btch: 15 usd: 13 Active:0 inactive:0 dirty:0 writeback:0 unstable:0 free:724 slab:2680 mapped:21865 pagetables:670 bounce:0 DMA free:1968kB min:88kB low:108kB high:132kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:16256kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no lowmem_reserve[]: 0 483 Normal free:928kB min:2764kB low:3452kB high:4144kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:494668kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 DMA: 0*4kB 0*8kB 1*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 1*512kB 1*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 1968kB Normal: 0*4kB 0*8kB 0*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 1*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 928kB Swap cache: add 78, delete 77, find 18/27, race 0+0 Free swap = 505444kB Total swap = 1015800kB Free swap: 505444kB 128736 pages of RAM 0 pages of HIGHMEM 4191 reserved pages 171366 pages shared 1 pages swap cached 0 pages dirty 0 pages writeback 21865 pages mapped 2680 pages slab 670 pages pagetables 20%...40%...60%...80%...100%...done. Any ideas, please? -- Thanks Dan Hatton

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 09 Sep '07

09 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 "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 13th September. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. People will be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. Topics for discussion will no doubt be as varied as ever. The Reindeer has a reasonable selection of beer as well as decent coffee (with biscuits, if you're lucky). Directions to the Reindeer can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/reindeer.html Pictures of some of the regulars, and irregulars, and, well, just some pictures of people that might or might not turn up are available from: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2007-05-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2006-02-ALUG/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for - the most recent images are from the meet a few months back. We now have an area reserved for us, so should be easier to find. As you enter through the main door you'll see a small set of steps ahead of you - the area just up those steps and to the left is where we'll be. J. -- 101 things you can't have too much of : 49 - Bandwidth. ----- 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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Simple (I hope) HTML/CSS question
by Chris G 08 Sep '07

08 Sep '07

I want to use an image as a background, OK, fairly easy I think, I put the following into my CSS style file:- body { background: white url(sky.jpg) no-repeat; } I only want the image once at the top of the page, hence the "no-repeat". However, big problem, is there any way to tell my browser to fit the image to the width of the browser page rather than the other way around? It's easy enough if I'm displaying an image using the HTML IMG operator as I can set the "width=100%" and the image is scaled to fit across the browser's window but I can't see any easy way to do this when the image is set as a background. I can sort of understand that this might not be possible but it would be really nice if it was possible by some means as I want to use the image as a backdrop for all my page headings. If I can't do it using CSS "background" how can I get two images (or an image and a heading) to be put one on top of the other? -- Chris Green

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Sage alternatives for linux
by Jenny Hopkins 04 Sep '07

04 Sep '07

Hullo there, I'm looking for an accounting system that will run with the backend and the front on linux. Something like Sage, which takes care of accounting and payroll, also customers, jobs and invoices. Sage requires windows running on the workstation, however. I've looked at gnucash but it's scary and unfriendly, with the customer and invoicing side not being what is needed. I'm after a system that can have multiple front-end users and a database backend in postgresql or mysql. Hard cash may change paws, it doesn't have to be free. I did start writing one with a web front end, - the customer and invoicing part is okay but the more I do accounts the more I realise this is a mad, stupid thing to be doing. Thanks Jenny

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Anyone have a use for DAT tapes?
by Chris G 04 Sep '07

04 Sep '07

Further to my clearout, I have about 30 DAT tapes, some still wrapped, some used (but not heavily). They're mostly DDS2 data tapes. Any use to anyone? -- Chris Green

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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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