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Python question about classes
by Chris G 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

I'm trying to understand (and re-use) some Python code. In general I find Python very easy to understand (one of the reasons I like it) but I'm a bit unclear about one bit of code which is a callback function, it is as follows:- # # # # def cb_prepare(args): request = args["request"] data = request.getData() data["statcatslinks"] = PyblStatcats(request) It doesn't matter that it's a callback function (I can follow how/why it gets called) and I can understand the first two lines. The first line sets 'request' and the second gets the data dictionary from the request object. What I'm not clear about is the last line, PyblStatcats is a class. As I understand it 'PyblStatcats(request)' creates an instance of PyblStatcats and runs its __init__ method, so far so good. But what does 'PyblStatcats(request)' return? It would appear to be a string as it's used to set the value in the data dictionary. However I can't find anywhere in the Python documentation that tells me about this (implicit?) return value. -- Chris Green

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Astronomy Software
by Yvonne Everett 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

Hello Could anyone recommend some open source astronomy software? I'm looking for something to do the job of "Starry Night" and "Registax" so if anyone has any personal recommendations, I'd love to hear them. Thanks -- Yvonne Everett Email: ye103910(a)googlemail.com

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Wireless NICs
by Matthew 08 Jun '07

08 Jun '07

Hi all, I'd like to play with hostapd to use a wireless interface card as a access point, but the application currently supports a fairly limited range of drivers. Having tried to research a range of prospective cards I found one (D-link DWL-G510) that seemed to have the right chipset. I bought it only to find that I actually have the revision with the same chipset as my existing card. Most of the common cards have either the wrong chipset or have a variety of revisions which makes them troublesome to buy. Can anyone recommend a reliable way of acquiring an 802.11g card that uses one of the following drivers? # Host AP driver for Prism2/2.5/3 # madwifi (Atheros ar521x) # Prism54.org (Prism GT/Duette/Indigo) I'm now using the tables at http://linux-wless.passys.nl/ to check chipsets, but if anyone can suggest any others that might help. If anyone has such a card spare (or would mind risk swapping it out for another) I'd gladly trade an equivalent one that uses the rt61 driver (or rt2x00, if you're on a recent enough kernel to use it). Thanks, Matthew

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Problem with 'find' and 'basename'
by Chris G 08 Jun '07

08 Jun '07

I'm trying to change the suffix of all files in a directory hierarchy. Trying to diagnose my problem I have run the following command:- find info -name '*.txt' -exec echo `basename {} .txt` \; A section of the output from the above command is as follows:- info/motorbikes/zzr1200service.txt info/motorbikes/luggage.txt info/motorbikes/index.txt info/motorbikes/restindex.txt info/motorbikes/zzr1200info.txt info/motorbikes/lifts.txt info/index.txt info/test/test1.txt info/test/test2.txt info/test/test3.txt So the `basename {} .txt` is doing nothing at all, why? Looking further it seems as if the `` inside the find are causing the problem as:- find info -name '*.txt' -exec basename {} .txt \; produces the expected output:- zzr1200service luggage index restindex zzr1200info lifts index test1 test2 test3 The actual command I want to execute is:- find info -name '*.txt' -exec mv `basename {} .txt`.rst \; to change the .txt suffix to .rst. Any ideas how to do it? -- Chris Green

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[Fwd: Re: [ALUG] Wireless NICs]
by Barrys linux mail 08 Jun '07

08 Jun '07

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [ALUG] Wireless NICs Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:54:28 +0100 From: Barrys linux mail <bazubuntumail(a)tiscali.co.uk> To: Matthew <matthew(a)aleaiactaest.com> References: <46687E17.4020904(a)aleaiactaest.com> Matthew wrote: > > > Most of the common cards have either the wrong chipset or have a > variety of revisions which makes them troublesome to buy. Can anyone > recommend a reliable way of acquiring an 802.11g card that uses one of > the following drivers? > # Host AP driver for Prism2/2.5/3 > # madwifi (Atheros ar521x) > # Prism54.org (Prism GT/Duette/Indigo) > > Thanks, > Matthew > Hi Try this site http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/ They are very helpful in supplying cards and scripts if wanted. also Ubuntu 7.04 supports some of the wireless cards they sell I have used them and very pleased with service Happy hunting Barry > _ >

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Re: [ALUG] wintar floppy archive
by Richard Bensley 07 Jun '07

07 Jun '07

Hey Ted thanks for the input, as of yet I have not encountered any split archives. I have no doubt I will though. Cheers Richard

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wintar floppy archive
by Richard Bensley 07 Jun '07

07 Jun '07

Good morning all. I have myself a slight dilemma. I have in excess of 500 floppy disks containing an archive of what are called surface files (Wayne could probably inform those curious a lot better than myself). Said floppy disks were created using a piece of software called WinTar to a SCSI floppy drive (it seems). And of course is on it's own unreadable. Has anyone else had any luck accessing WinTar'd media via linux? I'm all googled out! Cheers Richard

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RE: [ALUG] wintar floppy archive
by Richard Bensley 07 Jun '07

07 Jun '07

Thank you so much Wayne! Dd to tar did the trick. Right only a gazillion more to go, then the 30 odd TK50 tapes, and about 300 CD's!...it's going to be a long few weeks. Thanks again Richard

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Ubuntu installation problem
by Chris G 06 Jun '07

06 Jun '07

I am trying to install Ubuntu 7.04 on a system for my mother in law. It boots from the CD OK and works fine as a "Live CD" system. However, when I start the 'Install' program to actually install on the hard disk the window the Install program opens is too large and can't be resized such that the important buttons at the bottom appear on the screen. Thus I can't progress the install. Is this a problem that anyone else has seen? Any ideas on how to fix it? -- Chris Green

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Can anyone recommend a webcam for a laptop?
by Barry Samuels 06 Jun '07

06 Jun '07

Can anyone recommend a webcam for a laptop, a Thinkpad R51 to be specific, that will work with Debian (Testing - kernel 2.6.18)? I'd prefer the type that clips on to the lid/screen and that is small enough to go in the laptop carrying bag. It does NOT have to produce out of the ordinary results but I don't want to pay more than about £25 and preferably less. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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"!!" in /etc/passwd
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 06 Jun '07

06 Jun '07

Hi Folks, Can anyone interpret the following for me? I can't find it referred to in 'man' documentation. Some "user" entries in /etc/passwd have "!!" in the encrypted password field, e.g. sshd:!!:74:74:Privilege-separated SSH:/var/empty/sshd:/sbin/nologin rpc:!!:32:32:Portmapper RPC user:/:/sbin/nologin mysql:!!:27:27:MySQL Server:/var/lib/mysql:/bin/bash postgres:!!:26:26:PostgreSQL Server:/var/lib/pgsql:/bin/bash For the acounts which have /sbin/nologin as "shell" I cannot of course gain entry, even from root. On the other hand, for the accounts (mysql, postgres) which have a normal shell, I can 'su' from root without entering a password; while if I try to 'su' from any other user I'm prompted for a password (which of course does not exist). I'm wondering what the full interpretation of the "!!" is. I know about "*" in the encrypted password field: there is no possible password which encrypts fo "*", so such accounts cannot be logged into. I've already found out something (see above) about "!!" accounts, but is there more that I should know? In particular, if I were (as root) to use the 'passwd' command to give a "!!" account a real password, would I be treading on any toes in the system? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 06-Jun-07 Time: 11:53:29 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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OK, next Ubuntu graphics question/problem
by Chris G 06 Jun '07

06 Jun '07

OK, I now have Ubuntu 7.04 installed and working, network connection up, pretty OK in fact. However it will still only allow me a best resolution of 800x600 even though there are higher resolutions in the xorg.conf file. What else limits the resolution and how do I change it? -- Chris Green

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Red Hat 9 and MySQL-3 --> MySQL-4
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 05 Jun '07

05 Jun '07

Hi Folks, Now a question of my own ... to people who have been down the road below. I'm running Red Hat 9 on one machine, along with the MySQL-3.23.54a which came on the installation CDs. I want to upgrade the MySQL-3 to MySAL-4+, in order to have the increased functionality (especially sub-queries) which was introduced in version 4. My browsings on the web have not revealed an upgrade route which looks authoritative, though I have seen a few people recommend procedures, though not in detail, and I have not seen confirmations that these have worked. I really do want to avoid breaking things on that machine! MySQL is currently at version 5, but older versions (specifically 4.1.22) are available in various formats (binary and source) at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.1.html If anyone has successfully made this upgrade, I would be most grateful to learn, in detail, how they did it! With thanks, Ted. PS I'm not open to suggestions to upgrade the Linux installation. That machine is something of an "attic", and renewing its joists is not compatible with not disturbing what's stacked on them! -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 05-Jun-07 Time: 19:35:32 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Standard output redirection caching
by Dan Hatton 01 Jun '07

01 Jun '07

On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, Adrian F. Clark wrote: > The easiest solution is to put > > fflush (stdout); > > after each printf() invocation -- or equivalent in other languages. Other > solutions tend to be less portable. Thanks, that worked a treat. For the archives, the language is Perl, and, with a bit of manpage searching (once you'd clued me in that the word "fflush" was relevant,) I found out the "equivalent" is to put use IO::File ; autoflush STDOUT 1 ; at the start of the program. -- Thanks again, Dan

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Standard output redirection caching
by Dan Hatton 01 Jun '07

01 Jun '07

Dear All, When standard output is redirected to a file, it gets cached, so that nothing is actually written to the file until (say) 4kB of standard output has built up. I'm sometimes too impatient to wait that long to see the output of my programs, especially when the program in question is a long, slow numerical calculation that might be producing only a few hundred bytes of output per day. Is there any way of either switching off this caching, or inspecting the contents of the cache before it gets written, please? -- Thanks very much Dan Hatton <http://www.bib.hatton.btinternet.co.uk/dan/>

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Weird blackout on browser!
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 31 May '07

31 May '07

Hi Folks, I just observed something strange, using Firefox. I wonder if others find the same. 1. Go to http://www.rspb.org.uk/supporting/campaigns/suttonfen/index.asp and get a nice page. 2. Now scroll down and find "Find out more", and click on A wonderful site for future generations to enjoy I get a complete blackout! 3. Now click the "Back" button to return to the previous page. Again, this is completely blank. Check that the URL in the location window is the same as you originally entered at (1). 4. Clear the URL, and re-enter the URL from (1). Again completely black! 5. Open something else, e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and normal service is resumed. Now clear the URL again and enter the URTL from (1). It's still black! But if you clear the cache and re-enter, it's OK again. The only explanation I can think of is that the cache of the page at (2) is considered to be the cache for the URL at (1), even though (2) is not at the same URL as (1), being http://www.rspb.org.uk/supporting/campaigns/suttonfen/wonderful.asp What's interesting is that if I do it the other way round: 6. Clear history, cookies and cache, close down broswer, restart browser, and enter this last URL above, I then get a parfectly good page. But now find the "> Sutton Fen Appeal > ..." at the top, click on that, and you get a black page again. This of course should take you to where you were at (1) in the first place, since it is the same URL (as seen in the URL box). So it's the same effect: the transition (by any means) from either page to the other makes everything black! I'm a bit puzzled by all this. Any ideas? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 31-May-07 Time: 14:33:29 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Epson picturemate 100 printer
by Barrys linux mail 31 May '07

31 May '07

Hi Has anybody been able to get this printer to work with Ubuntu as all I get is printer recognised and then starts to feed paper and then it stops.Any Ideas? Barry

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Calendar/diary - I've found a usable solution
by Chris G 31 May '07

31 May '07

I seem to have found a solution to my calendar diary requirement. I've been looking for a simpler wiki (than TWiki) for personal use and after a fair amont of hunting around and wasting time trying things out I decided on MoinMoin. It's widely used (and I almost tried it myself once before) and it supports reStructured text as one of its markup languages so fulfilled quite a few of my wiki 'wants'. It turns out that MoinMoin has a ready made 'out of the box' macro that generates a calendar with clickable days that take you to the page for the day which (as with any wiki) you can create if it doesn't exist already. That's a large chunk of what I want, if I can link some sort of appointments utlity to the pages I create then so much the better but that will be a bonus. -- Chris Green

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Re: Missing Touchpad (Solved)
by Matthew 31 May '07

31 May '07

Hello all, It works! Having found a 'how I got Ubuntu to work on my HP 510' article (http://arewold.wordpress.com/2007/05/26/installing-ubuntu-704-on-a-hp-510-l…) I followed instructions to make a small change to the kernel (forcing the outcome of a check that was presumably going wrong, I think). My custom kernel boots it with the touchpad working as hoped. dmesg now includes: input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /class/input/input3 Thanks for all your help, Matthew

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Re: Missing Touchpad
by Matthew 30 May '07

30 May '07

> What does the output of dmesg say, in particular anything with "PS/2" or serio mentioned? The only line that mentions 'serio' is the one that loads the keyboard controller, and doesn't look relevant. The output of 'dmesg | grep PS/2' looks a little more interesting: PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303,PNP0f0e] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12 mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice That might be it, since I have no PS/2 ports (although it probably doesn't prove anything: maybe it can gain PS/2 ports with a docking station or something and needs a PS/2 controller for that). > I had a feeling that some modern machines put the pointing device on the usb bus and not the ps2 serial one. > does lsusb show anything that might be the touchpad ? With my [external] USB mouse unplugged, lsusb looks like: Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 I think those are the ports themselves, or something. I hope that gives someone some ideas: thanks for the help. Matthew

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bbc 'play it again'
by Jenny Hopkins 30 May '07

30 May '07

Hullo there, Has anyone on list had any luck with getting the bbc website 'play it again' working? Thanks, Jenny

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Calendar/PIM application that allows links
by Peter Alcibiades 29 May '07

29 May '07

I think the PIM that would have - or might have - met Chris' requirement reasonably well isn't available any more. It was the old Claris Organiser for OS9 and earlier. Years ago now. You had a calendar with appointments, notes, contacts, one or two other things. Then any one element of these could be linked to any others in some simple way. So you had a sort of ad hoc grouping of (say) a person's contact details, every appointment you had with them, every note of every phone conversation, and maybe the text of all correspondence. You got to each element of the set by clidking a link. And you could have as many of these bundles as you wanted. In addition there were the usual categories. So Chris could have had journal entries associated with agenda items, or anything else. Snippets of code associated with a project. Reading lists from people at a given class. Anything at all could be made into a set and once you hit one, the others became available, but if you also wanted to look at items by category, you could do that too. Later on it was sold to Palm and marketed in two forms, the Windows form of Palm organiser not having any of this linking functionality, but the Mac version kept on with it. It was amazing. I kept looking for something like this too, and hoped maybe Chandler might turn into it, but alas... It may have been a functionality that was too obscure for most people to bother with, but once you got used to it, it was very powerful. Al

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Calendar/PIM application that allows links
by Chris G 29 May '07

29 May '07

I'm still searching for a calendar/PIM application that suits my needs (or at least vaguely approximates to them). I want a very simple application that allows me to enter reminders etc. so I can remember appointments etc. I don't want the complexity that most seem to offer but what I *do* want to do is be able to add links of some sort to appointments that can point to what are effectively diary entries. It can be web/HTML or just desktop, I'm not too fussed. I.e. I want a simple appointments diary with a way of linking it to the entries in a journal/diary. It strikes me that this is a very obvious sort of thing to want but I can't find anything that seems to do it. I have installed and tried plan by the way, it seems very 'clunky' to me. It is quite flexible though, e.g. it's one of the very few such applications which lets you actually see a view of today plus the next few days rather than a week that starts on a fixed day or a month. The 'execute' doesn't do what I need either, it runs a program when the appointment is due (or at a time before). What I needed was a way to run a program (to add a dairy entry) when you click on a date, I've found a fairly crude way of doing this using Xdialog. -- Chris Green

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re: odbc, iodc, sqlite, howto
by Peter Alcibiades 29 May '07

29 May '07

Hi Richard, Am I trying to work with sqlite through a gui? Not quite. It was probably less than clear. I have the database all set up. I also have an sqlite ODBC driver installed - the one that comes in the Etch repositories. The programming language doesn't do sqlite natively, it only does ODBC. Yes, probably I should get another language one of these days.... However, all that is OK - I can manage the language, and I can manage to use the ODBC commands and functions it has built in, but to make it talk to the database, I need a DSN apparently. From synaptic, I installed the sqlite ODBC driver, and on checking, it really does seem to be there in /usr/lib. This is where the problems start though. I can't make a DSN for the database, because I can't see how to add the driver using iodbcadmin-gtk. In the gui, it simply doesn't see it even if pointed at it, and it crashes out with the error when you try. So I can't address the database from the language using the ODBC functions, with no DSN. I was attracted to doing this step with the gtk interface that comes with iODBC, because there seemed to be a lot of things to go wrong if you edit it by hand. And I'm very puzzled about why having installed a couple of ODBC database drivers, it cannot see them. Maybe the answer is give up on iODBC and edit the configuration file by hand, and then if that doesn't work, another option is to go out to the shell. Apparently with sqlite you can go out to shell, call it, and then pass a command to it, and that can be a script. This will have to do if I can't get ODBC to work. Which does seem increasingly problematic. Cheers Al

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odbc, iodc, sqlite, howto
by Peter Alcibiades 29 May '07

29 May '07

Hi guys, What am I doing wrong? This is on Etch. First I got sqlitebrowser, created a new sqlite database, then imported my data into it as csv. Seems fine - at least, it can be browsed using sqlitebrowser. Second, apt-get install iodbc and the sqlite odbc libraries. The mysql ones for good measure. Verify they are there. Fire up iodbcadm-gtk and try to set the DSN of my database. It want to know which driver to use, and it cannot see either the sqlite ones or the mysql ones. So I suppose its first necessary to add one. When I point to what seem like reasonable candidates in /usr/lib/odbc, it rejects them because an error occurred when trying to add the driver, invalid keyword pairs. Googling suggests an authorization error, but the same thing happens with the root account. It seems like you have to define a driver before you can do a DSN, however I can't figure out how to define a driver. Any suggestions gratefully received. After this, assuming we ever get over it, comes the fun part of talking to the thing from my programming language. All keeps the blood flowing in the brain! Peter

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