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Re: Gnome/GTK file open dialog hangs
by Chris G 30 Mar '07

30 Mar '07

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 09:24:42PM +0100, Chris G wrote: > Yet another reason to hate the Gnome/GTK file open dialog. > > On my system it is now taking more than 30 seconds to open the file > opening window. What's it trying to do for all this time and/or how > can I fix it? > > Presumably it's trying to open something that isn't there or there is > a broken nfs/network link of some sort but it's a broken design that > hangs for such a long time trying to do something and doesn't tell me > what's wrong either. > After a bit of searching around I found what the problem was, an smbmount that had lost what it was mounting. However it wasn't as if it was set up to be visible on the file open dialog, it was just the contents of a sub-directory that had gone AWOL. I now hate that file dialog even more than I did when it first appeared, not only is it a pain to use, it's semi-broken as well. -- Chris Green

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Internet radios
by Jonathan McDowell 30 Mar '07

30 Mar '07

For a while I've been wanting a stand alone, self contained device that can play music over an 802.11b/g wireless link - something in the style of a radio, with built in speaker(s), display and control. Recently I discovered such devices exist - Currys in the centre of Norwich have the Logik IR100 radio and there are also variants by BT and Bush. Does anyone on the list have any experience of any of these? I'm slightly wary of the Logik only having a single speaker, but given my main intended usage location is the kitchen I suspect I'm not going to miss the lack of stereo. J. -- Revd. Jonathan McDowell, ULC | Funny how life imitates LSD.

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Gnome/GTK file open dialog hangs
by Chris G 29 Mar '07

29 Mar '07

Yet another reason to hate the Gnome/GTK file open dialog. On my system it is now taking more than 30 seconds to open the file opening window. What's it trying to do for all this time and/or how can I fix it? Presumably it's trying to open something that isn't there or there is a broken nfs/network link of some sort but it's a broken design that hangs for such a long time trying to do something and doesn't tell me what's wrong either. -- Chris Green

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Strategies for setting DISPLAY variable?
by Chris G 29 Mar '07

29 Mar '07

Does anyone have any neat/elegant/clever ways of setting the DISPLAY variable when working in a situation where I may use X in different places and want to run X applications from different remote machines? Usually I am doing the following:- Logging on to my desktop Linux box called chrisg and starting the X server there. Running local X client applications on chrisg. Running remote X client applications on Solaris and other boxes which I want to display on chrisg OK, so to do the above I can simply hardcode DISPLAY=chrisg:0.0 in my .profile and all will be well. However.... Sometimes I want to use a different desktop machine at work or I want to work from home. This results in two different requirements:- The first case (using a different machine at work) means that my hard-coded DISPLAY=chrisg:0.0 will always be wrong. The second case (working from home) I will be using 'ssh -X' to connect so ssh will be setting the DISPLAY variable and I don't want anything else to change it. So how is one *supposed* to make this all work? I need some way to get DISPLAY set correctly most of the time, I'd go crazy if I had to set it manually every time I rlogin to another machine here at work. I typically have five or six xterms open to Solaris boxes for example. Currently having it hardcoded in my .profile works 'most of the time' but it's then a big pain sorting out the ssh use because the special ssh value for DISPLAY is lost. -- Chris Green

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Is it possible to explitly ask for what mod_autoindex produces?
by Chris G 29 Mar '07

29 Mar '07

I'd like to have a way of viewing the directory that mod_autoindex produces of a directory that has an index.html file. E.g. I go to:- http://www.isbd.net/someDirectory and I get to see the contents of the index.html file that's there. However there's various other files, not linked to from index.html, that I want to be able to see and/or use sometimes. So it would be very useful if I could get to see the directory listing that I would see if the index.html file didn't exist. This is just for my home system's web server and for my own use so security/performance isn't a big issue and I can hack the httpd.conf file as much as I like. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Strategies for setting DISPLAY variable?
by Steve 28 Mar '07

28 Mar '07

>So how is one *supposed* to make this all work? I need some way to >get DISPLAY set correctly most of the time, I'd go crazy if I had to >set it manually every time I rlogin to another machine here at work. I >typically have five or six xterms open to Solaris boxes for example. >Currently having it hardcoded in my .profile works 'most of the time' >but it's then a big pain sorting out the ssh use because the special >ssh value for DISPLAY is lost. I'm sure there must be some environment variable or other that gets set if you're logging in to your machine remotely that doesn't get set if you log in directly. Set DISPLAY from .profile depending on the value of that variable? Or... you could grep ps for your /(ba)?sh/ instance and see if it's running on a real vt or not... summat like that. *clutches at straws* Steve

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ALUG Poker
by Simon Elliott 28 Mar '07

28 Mar '07

Hey all, How many people would be interested in an ALUG Poker Night, not a huge buy-in - maybe £5 or something. Not even for money the first time if people want to learn to play the game before playing for monies... It'd probably be at my house, but anyone could host it. I've got a bunch of chips and some cards and an itching to play some poker, so who'd be up for it? --Simon

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test
by David Reynolds 27 Mar '07

27 Mar '07

ignore this, it is a test. -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Alug Wiki Theme
by Rob Page 27 Mar '07

27 Mar '07

Hi All, I've been having a look into setting up a nicer looking default theme for the alug wiki, at: http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/ However instead of writing my own, it might be worth nicking one that someone else has already written, and if required just tweaking that. So, I propose that all who are interested, go have a look at this nice friendly list of stuff we can steal and pick one: http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/ThemeMarket#head-ff1060dba5fbc752171749e9b34… Bear in mind, this isn't going to be *the* alug wiki theme, merely the one that gets set by default and for non-logged in users. Unless one is vastly more popular, I'll set up a few of the favourites on my website, and then we can have a final vote on which it'll be. Also, as a slight ps, is the alug wiki frontpage supposed to be the alug frontpage, as that is what it's looking like at the moment. If it is going to be the frontpage, shouldn't we make it the frontpage, and iif it's just being the wiki frontpage, then it possibly needs to be less 'welcome to alug' (and have this sort of thing on another page). Cheers, RobRob.

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Hello Again
by Tracy Dickerson 27 Mar '07

27 Mar '07

Hello, It is Tracy again from IPLUG. I have changed account so that I can post in Plain Text format and not the HTML that others dislike so much. Tx

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road
by samwise 26 Mar '07

26 Mar '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 second of the new monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meetings starts at 20:00 on Monday 19th March: 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 As mentioned at the first meet, I'm going to be suspiciously absent thanks to my work forcing me to stay overnight in London. My second in command was due to step-in but has, unfortunately, been unavoidably waylaid by a bargain last-minute skiing trip. Grrr ... Anyway, Venura who has been an attendee since the ... well ... last month ... ;) ... will be along to make sure no Gnome/KDE fistfights break out. I'll leave Venura with my laptop and some conversation-starting material, but otherwise the format will remain fairly loose, like last time. All are welcome, both novices and experienced users, especially those already involved with ALUG. 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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perl question - can you switch off regular expression matching?
by List Mail 26 Mar '07

26 Mar '07

I want to switch off the significance of special characters when matching an expression in perl, i.e. I have a line that says:- if (@_[0] =~ /$a/i) (isn't perl horrible!) and I want a '.' in the $a to be actually matched. I can't easily escape the '.' with a '\' because the $a is also used as a filename and if I put the '\' I get a filename with a '\' in it as well which I don't want. All I actually want is a case insensitive string comparison with no characters having any special meaning at all. -- Chris Green

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Help required! Orange Live Box
by Paul Coulsey 25 Mar '07

25 Mar '07

Greetings all, Has anybody out there had any joy connecting the Orange Livebox to their Linux system? Regards Paul

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Mac Mini (G4) TV-Out adapter
by Mr. Adam ALLEN 23 Mar '07

23 Mar '07

I seem to recall that others on this list ended up buying Mac-Mini (The G4 PowerPC version). Google hasn't turned up any meanigful results so figure it's worth asking. The Mac Mini is really my firewall/router thingy, but want to hook it up to the TV for accessing Ogg's/MP4's via Myth(Music|Video). Does anyone have successful experience of the DVI-TVout adapter? (http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wo/StoreReentry.wo?prod…) Would rather not spend £15 if it a complete non-starter. Cheers, Adam

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Firefox renders pound signs incorrectly in text files
by Eur Ing Chris Green 23 Mar '07

23 Mar '07

When I view text files in Firefox any pound signs (as in UK currency, not #) are shown as a ? and quite a few subsequent characters are lost. Pound signs in HTML are fine. Does anyone have any idea why this might be? Is it a browser issue or a web server issue (this is text files being served by apache on my home Linux box)? -- Chris Green

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Accented characters in Firefox - how?
by Eur Ing Chris Green 22 Mar '07

22 Mar '07

I can type accented characters into text OK, e.g.:- áàéèê but I don't know how to do it in Firefox when entering text into a textarea - how does one do it? -- Chris Green

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Partitioned hard drive
by Chris & Barry Chater 22 Mar '07

22 Mar '07

Hi Is it possible to put two different versions of Linux on my laptops new hard drive which is partitioned in two 20 gig halves. Say like Ubuntu and one of the other distributions for instance. Barry

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Why doesn't the OO plugin for Firefox open .doc files?
by Eur Ing Chris Green 21 Mar '07

21 Mar '07

I have the OO plugin for Firfox installed but it only opens its 'native' file types within Firefox. It can open .doc files as a Firefox 'helper' application but it would be much neater to do it as a plugin. Is it really not possible to get it to work as a plugin with .doc files, currently it seems so nearly there that it can't be difficult. -- Chris Green

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How do I make a startup script run a program as a different user in SuSE Enterprise 10?
by Chris Glover 21 Mar '07

21 Mar '07

It's been so long I cant remember how to do it. Thanks Chris -- Chris ---------------------------------- E Mail: chris(a)glovercc.plus.com SIP: 84411389(a)voiptalk.org IAXTEL: 17003366726

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Automounter - need documentation on auto.master options
by Eur Ing Chris Green 20 Mar '07

20 Mar '07

Although I have a sort of working solutionn to my original problem the automounter is still doing things I don't understand. I'm having trouble working out how the automount daemon decides on what remote filesystems it should mount. I have worked out that it's the file /etc/auto.master that controls what automount does but I can't really understand the syntax of that file - the man pages are a little opaque/obtuse. My /etc/auto.master has the following entries:- /misc /etc/auto.misc /net -hosts +auto.master (Plus quite a few unhelpful comments) I can basically understand the first line, that uses the file /etc/auto.misc to automount CD drives and floppy drives. I don't really understand what the "/net -hosts" line does, I think it means that you'll get automounted directories in /net from hosts listed in /etc/hosts. Anyway it isn't mounting the directory I'm interested in. What I really *can't* fathom out is that last line the "+auto,master", it seems to be making automount mount all sorts of things but I can't work out how or why. I *think* it's saying that automount should get an 'auto.master' file from the places defined in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file which has:- automount: files nis nisplus but I can't get to find how this actually works and I can't get to see what auto.master it actually uses. The command line nis utilities refuse to admit to there being any automount information. How can I get to see what 'automount' information is available? -- Chris Green

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Are there any automount gurus out there?
by Eur Ing Chris Green 20 Mar '07

20 Mar '07

I've read the automount and autofs man pages and, while I'm somewhat the wiser, I'm still not sure if it's possible to do what I want. What I want to do is prevent automount from automounting one particular directory. Now from what I (think I) have understood I think it's a /net entry in /etc/auto.master is making the script in /etc/auto.net execute and, essentially, allowing one to automount all file systems which other computers on the network have exported. What I want is to stop just *one* of these exported file systems being mounted on just my Fedora Core 6 system at work so I can have a local file system there instead. So, does anyone know if this is remotely possible? -- Chris Green

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re: awk problem
by Paul 20 Mar '07

20 Mar '07

Can't remember who was fighting with a problem with awk, but... awk 'NR>1 {sub(/$/,"\r");print $4}' Regards, Paul.

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GNOME + system sounds
by Greg Thomas 19 Mar '07

19 Mar '07

I''m running GNOME 2.16.2. Playing sound from the Sound Recorder, or using aplay at the command line works just fine - and all the tests make the right noises in the device tab of Sound Preferences. Yet, for some reason, the System Sounds (in the Sounds tab) remain stubbornly silent. I've got ALSA installed as a kernel module, and ESD as the playback device for sound events. Anyone have any clues as to why (FWIW it's a Gentoo system running in a VMware Player). Ta, Greg

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Firefox, how to start a *different* Firefox?
by Eur Ing Chris Green 19 Mar '07

19 Mar '07

How can I prevent a 'remote' Firefox from using the 'local' Firefox instead of starting a real remote one? I sometimes need to run a specific version of Firefox which I have installed on Solaris here, it has a very specific version of Java which I need for a particular Oracle plugin. Now I have a Linux desktop system I run a Linux Firefox as my everyday browser. What I want to be able to do is run the Solaris Firefox on my Linux display without having to first shut the Linux Firefox down. By default when you try and run the (remote) Solaris Firefox it will look and see that you have a copy of Firefox running on the same display and just sends the URL you have given it to that display rather then running a new copy of Firefox. How do I force it to run? -- Chris Green

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Another Firefox question - keyboard setup
by Eur Ing Chris Green 19 Mar '07

19 Mar '07

I know there's a way to do this but I've forgotten what it is. How do I get "Unix'ish" keyboard shortcuts in Firefox? In particular I want CTRL/U to be "delete line". I suspect it's something in User Preferences but how do I find out what it is? -- Chris Green

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