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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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Missing touchpad
by Matthew 28 May '07

28 May '07

Hi all, I bought a new laptop the other day - an HP 510 - and put Debian Etch on it, and it doesn't find the touchpad. I don't think it's a hardware problem, since it worked fine under the manufacturer's installation of Windows XP and when booted from the recovery disk. I've also tried live CDs for SLAX and Ubuntu, which behave the same way as Etch. The research I've done hasn't turned up anyone with the same problem on the same machine, but a few people have fixed apparently similar problems by fiddling with udev; something that hasn't got me far yet. The problem seems to occur mainly with recent kernels, often appearing after a kernel upgrade. My 'uname -r' is 2.6.18-4-686. /var/log/Xorg.0.log includes: (II) Synaptics touchpad driver version 0.14.6 (1406) Synaptics Touchpad no synaptics event device found (checked 13 nodes) (**) Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" (**) Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0" Query no Synaptics: 6003C8 (EE) Synaptics Touchpad no synaptics touchpad detected and no repeater device (EE) Synaptics Touchpad Unable to query/initialize Synaptics hardware. (EE) PreInit failed for input device "Synaptics Touchpad" (II) UnloadModule: "synaptics" /etc/X11/xorg.conf includes: Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad" Driver "synaptics" Option "SendCoreEvents" "true" Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" Option "Protocol" "auto-dev" Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0" EndSection That was generated from the debconf DB, so clearly something thinks the device is meant to be there. Strangely, 'modprobe synaptics' returns: FATAL: Module synaptics not found. The touchpad isn't in /proc/bus/input/devices and it doesn't generate any output if I cat the nodes in /dev/input (nor the useful-looking ones in /dev, especially /dev/psaux as mentioned in xorg.conf). It isn't mentioned in syslog even with udev set to debug messages. I don't really know enough about the device to set udev rules or use mknod; I'm not even sure which bus it's on. Anyone got any ideas? Thanks, Matthew

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ISA NIC card puzzle
by Ted Harding 27 May '07

27 May '07

Hi Folks, I'm puzzled! Can someone give me a hint? I've had an (ancient) NE2000 clone which plugs into an ISA (not PCI) slot running happily on a very old machine (ca 1995) for years. On SuSe 5.2 I had it set up to use module ne.o, with options "io=0x300". Now that machine's PSU has failed, so I moved the hard drives etc. to another box (of more recent vintage ... ). Now it fails to find the card and/or any IRQ line when given 0x300. I've removed all other ISA cards from that box to make sure there are no conflicts. I've tried this not only with the "native "SuSE-5.2 off the hard drive, but also booting with tomsrtbt ("Linux on a Floppy" and with Ubuntu live CDs, in all cases without success. I'm puzzled that it works one the one box but (with the same system and settings) fails on another. Is there a possibility that ISA IO addresses and IRQs can change between different motherboards? With thanks, Ted.

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Moving
by J.R. Seago 26 May '07

26 May '07

As I am moving from the most easterly county in England to the North of Scotland, I am temporarily un-subscribing from the list until I can get myself a new connection and email address. Hopefully I will reintroduce myself in the next two weeks. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: [ALUG] Astronomy Software
by J.R. Seago 24 May '07

24 May '07

On Thursday 24 May 2007 12:00 "Yvonne Everett" <ye103910(a)googlemail.com> wrote: > Hello > > Could anyone recommend some open source astronomy software? I gave my wife's god-daughter a copy of 'The Open CD' and she was very pleased with http://www.stellarium.org/ thatshe could use with 'Windows'® -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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$1 = £1.07 !!!!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 23 May '07

23 May '07

A posting on the Seattle Linux List got me looking (out of curiosity ... ) at http://ostg.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/ masterid=26157844/search=sony%20ux [all one line] -- about the Sony VAIO VGN-UX280P "Micro PC". A very nice little animal, if you can afford it (and there's no info anywhere about being able to run Linux on it). BUT: Go to the relevant Sony UK web page at http://www.sonystyle.co.uk: http://tinyurl.com/32httz and compare with the Sony US web page at http://www.sonystyle.com http://tinyurl.com/3ytxo9 US Price: $1595.00 UK Price: £1999.00 So, at the current exchange (£1 = $1.99), and discounting VAT, Sony's price in the UK (£1701.28) is more than twice Sony's price in the US. Unless it's now $1 = £1.07. I bet it's a deal between Sony and Virgin Atlantic to encourage translatlantic flight. Rip-Off-Britain = ROB. Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 23-May-07 Time: 22:14:51 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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How to get files out of an rpm package?
by Chris G 23 May '07

23 May '07

I want to extract some files from an rpm package but I don't have an rpm database on my slackware box so I can't just do "rpm -i <name>". As far as I know the package only has three files in it, a python script and some documentation. I just want those files. How can I get them? I've searched around using Google and this particular program seems only to exist as an rpm. -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road
by samwise 23 May '07

23 May '07

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back again next Monday (21st 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! 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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Journal/diary program for 'local' use
by Chris G 22 May '07

22 May '07

I'm sure I found something like this a while ago but now all I can find is blogs. I'm after something that's half way between an appointments calendar (or even a PIM) and a diary/journal. I.e. I want a program that allows me to remind myself about things but also allows me to wax lyrical about my doings for the day. Ideally it will allow me to write using my choice of text editor but that's not absolutely essential, it certainly doesn't *have* to have a GUI interface but on the other hand I don't mind if it does. Being able to view the calendar/diary from the web would be a plus but isn't really important. Any suggestions anyone? -- Chris Green

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FAO Mark Ray
by J.R. Seago 22 May '07

22 May '07

Mark, if I remember correctly you use the phone co-op as your ISP. It looks to me to be the one to go for, if I can get it outside Inverness, they do already have broadband at the new house having been on the receiving end of numerous ISP's who have gone bad. Is it a good deal in terms of quality the £24·99 is a £1·00 more than I'm paying now but as any profit goes to a good cause I'd rather pay that and get a reasonable service than pay less and end up with all the hassle I've had in the past, any thoughts please? -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Next Monday's Ipswich meet
by samwise 21 May '07

21 May '07

Hi, I've posted a reminder to Announce with details of next week's Ipswich meet which should come through when it's authorised. Wayne, were you thinking of trying to attend? Just wondering, as I have some books I could donate to the library, if you're going to be there? Cheers, Peter.

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OT, but ...
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 19 May '07

19 May '07

Hi Folks, I'm writing to ask for reactions to an item in today's Daily Telegraph "Digital Life" (in the "Review" section). This week, they're testing "Mini-PCs", and I quote their review of the Apple Mac Mini ("From £399"): "Apple's Mac Mini is the tiniest 'small form factor' computer in this group. It is 6.5in square, 2in high, and has a gorgeous brushed-metal finish below the iconic Apple-white lid. Unfortunately, it's also the perfect case of style over substance. The 1.66GHz version is certainly cheap, but it's also very slow. Even the faster model uses only a 1.83GHz Core Duo processor (not the nippier Core 2 Duo) and has just 512 MB of RAM. You will also have to supply the keyboard, mouse and monitor. We'd recommend the Mac for undemanding word processing, surfing the web, or impressing your friends. For amything more intensive, steer clear." Ehh?? "very slow"?? What *do* people use computers for these days. then? For years I've been doing word-processing (including "demanding") and web-surfing on A: 75MHz CPU + 64MB RAM B: 366MHz CPU + 128MB RAM C: 733MHz CPU + 512MB RAM (which at the same time happily runs Win98 in VMWare) (etc). and I've done a lot of quite intensive computational work too (dunno about impressing my friends, though ... ); and I've never had a machine more beefy than (C). I can see that the Apple Mac Mini could be inadequate for computing predictions of climate change, or similar; but what the hell can it be that enough of Joe Public want to do with a computer that it wouldn't be up to? (OK I can see a case for more RAM; but that should be upgradeable). Any comments? Ted. PS For comparison, the complete set of today's "Mini PC" reviews can be found at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/digitallife/index.jhtml and click on "on trial" -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-May-07 Time: 17:09:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Blogs and Wikis and things like that
by Chris G 18 May '07

18 May '07

I am trying to work out what a blog might do for me. I have a wiki running on my home Linux box alread (TWiki) and I find it useful for some things, I tend to use it as a CM tool rather than a wiki really as I am about the only contributor! :-) Still it allows me to give other members of the family some space to play in and it allows me to add to and create web pages when I'm away from home. Now I have a need for a diary type tool of some sort and, fairly obviously, blogs come to mind. However having played with a couple I'm still a bit confused as to what they actually offer. Apart from the ability to edit a web page and add stuff on a sequential basis is there anything special that a blog does that a wiki doesn't? Or, more particularly, are there any things that a blog makes easy that are more difficult with other tools? -- Chris Green

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UPS again
by J.R. Seago 18 May '07

18 May '07

Having a wife and daughter resident at home who are both becoming increasingly 'Green', today they presented me with an 'intelligent' six gang surge protected distribution thingy from 'Lakeland' to plug in to my UPS. This switches everything else plugged into the five subordinate sockets once the computer, (plugged into the first socket) has been powered down. At the moment I have my Netgear ADSL router plugged into this thingy, is that OK? Will my router survive being turned on and off when the computer and monitor is? Will it retain its settings, as I can cheat and just not power down my computer, although I might get caught if they spot all the pretty lights on at night! or I can plug the router directly into the UPS. -- J.R. Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: UPS again
by J.R. Seago 18 May '07

18 May '07

Tthank you to all those who replied to my query. The router is plugged into the mains again, although I can use a surge protected four gang out of the UPS to the router transformer, and then plug the six gang intelligent thingy into that. -- J.R. Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/ () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: main Digest, Vol 23, Issue 21
by Matthew 18 May '07

18 May '07

> "Hub_2" is a 5-port > which (IIRC) claims that each port can independently negotiate > its rate with whetever its connected to. There is no such > claim for "Hub_1". > ... C ... only has a 10BaseT Switch_1 might have auto-negotiation for speed even if it's not claimed: it is very common on switches. If it doesn't, your problem is likely to be because Switch_1 and Machine_C are expecting different speeds. I don't know exactly what that would do, but I would expect collisions and hence delays. Try swapping the switches over. >> and are they all indicating that everything is >> plugged in at 100 meg? > > I don't know -- how can one tell? Most switches either have an additional light on each port when the link is at 100Mbps, or one of the lights is a different colour based on data rate. Hope that helps, Matthew

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journal/diary tool for local use
by Chris G 18 May '07

18 May '07

Going on from my question about blogs what I'm really after is a diary/journal tool for local use. I.e. I don't want (or need anyway) to publish the result on the web. I'm sure I found one a while ago but I can't find it again, does anyone have any ideas? -- Chris Green

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Comments on Network Lag?
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 17 May '07

17 May '07

Hi Folks, I'd welcome comment on the following situation, which has arisen since I've (temporarily) changed my home network topology. Previously (machines designated as A, B, C): ADSL---Modem | Hub_1----------------A [at which I sit] | 5 metres | 10 metres| | | 1 metre Hub_2----------B | +------------C 1 metre The above has worked very smoothly. Now, in order to have machine to hand while investigating a hardware (power switch) issue, I have brought it near to machine A, with the resulting topology: ADSL---Modem | Hub_1----------------A [at which I sit] | | 5 metres | +-----------------C | 10 metres| | | | 1 metre Hub_2----------B Now, when I am sitting at A and running certain X apps on C (which have relatively heavy throughput such as raster re-drawing of sections of screen), there is clearly congestion: output from C on A's screen can hangs for a few seconds at quite frequent intervals. But it can also happen from time to time when I'm simmply typing text into C (as now). Not much has changed: the cable to C has been plugged into a different hub, with a different cable (5m instead of 1m). Comments would be welcome! I don't think such a change should have much effect. 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: 16-May-07 Time: 23:14:22 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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sensors modules problems
by Barry Samuels 17 May '07

17 May '07

I changed my machine's innards some months ago which included an Asus P5W DH DeLuxe mainboard (64-bit board running 32-bit Debian Testing with kernel 2.6.20.1). Searching on the internet revealed that, apparently, the sensors driver to use for that board was w83627ehf but when trying to load I got the message "No such device". Next step was to run sensors-detect which gave me a list of modules: i2c-i801 i2c-isa eeprom lm78 That worked but gave me only one temperature and one fan. The temperature reading was 33 C which corresponed with the CPU temperature in the BIOS and the fan reading matched the BIOS reading. These readings were stable for some months. There was no reading available for the mainboard for which the BIOS gave a temperature of 38 C. I normally don't reboot or turn this machine off but just recently I did reboot and noticed that the temperature reading displayed was now the same as the mainboard temperature i.e. 38 C. Rebooting and going back into the BIOS showed that the two temperature readings were much the same as they had been for months so the temperature now displayed appeared to be that of the mainboard and not the CPU as it was before. So I'm baffled. Why the sudden change? Is there a module available that will give me both temperatures? I have also found recently that removing i2c-i801 appears to have no effect. I use gkrellm to display temperatures and trying 'sensors' produces the message: Can't access procfs/sysfs file Unable to find i2c bus information; For 2.6 kernels, make sure you have mounted sysfs and libsensors was compiled with sysfs support! For older kernels, make sure you have done 'modprobe i2c-proc'! sysfs is mounted but I don't know if Debian's libsensors2 is compiled with sysfs support. Any suggestions please? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Line speed problem
by Nick Daniels 15 May '07

15 May '07

Hi Bit off topic for lists but, this morning I noticed my line was slow, according to Plusnet speed check I am getting 125kbs, and for the last year I have been getting 990kbs. Yet they insist there is nothing wrong. Can anybody suggest anything (else) to check my end before I loose my temper with them? Running Kubuntu, Netgear DG834, tried another computer same results Kind Regards - Nick Daniels

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