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10369 discussions

rlogin hangs soemtimes
by Eur Ing Chris Green 15 Mar '07

15 Mar '07

I have just moved to Fedora Core 6 on my desktop computer at work. We have a mixed environment of Windows PCs a few Linux ones and a number of Solaris target systems. When I rlogin from my new FC6 system to the Solaris systems the login sometimes just hangs, i.e. I type "rlogin crusade" and nothing happens for several minutes then I get a timeout message. This seems to happen only on the FC6 systems, I have tried it from one other FC6 system and it's the same but from a kubuntu installation (on the same sub-net) it doesn't happen. The rlogin hangs maybe one time in four or so, the other times it connects normally and works OK from then on. Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing this problem? -- Chris Green

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Another question re networking and Fedora
by Eur Ing Chris Green 14 Mar '07

14 Mar '07

The sysop here bodged the /etc/hosts file so that 'hostname' worked sort of correctly, now I've removed the bodge 'hostname' doesn't work right any more. At home (Slackware) I get:- home$ hostname -s home home$ hostname home home$ hostname -f home home$ domainname (none) Here on this Fedora box I get:- $ hostname chrisg.localdomain $ hostname -s hostname: Unknown host $ hostname chrisg.localdomain $ hostname -f hostname: Unknown host $ domainname GEMS -- Chris Green

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Really strange networking/DNS/internet problem
by Eur Ing Chris Green 14 Mar '07

14 Mar '07

I seem to have some very odd networking issues from this new Fedora 6 box at work. The symptoms I have dug out so far are:- There's an odd mix of places that it fails to find with 'dig' and/or 'host'. E.g.:- chrisg$ host enta.net ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached chrisg$ but:- chrisg$ host gradwell.net gradwell.net has address 193.111.200.100 gradwell.net mail is handled by 10 mail-in-2.lb.gradwell.net. gradwell.net mail is handled by 10 mail-in-1.lb.gradwell.net. ("host enta.net" works fine from other places, e.g. from my account om gradwell.net and one at cheddar.halon.org.uk) Similarly "ssh home.isbd.net" just hangs and eventually times out, but ssh to lots of other places works fine. "ssh home.isbd.net" works from other systems here (including another Linux box). Finally although "host enta.net" times out a traceroute to enta.net works OK:- traceroute to enta.net (195.74.96.162), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 193.128.168.254 (193.128.168.254) 25.350 ms 26.522 ms 29.265 ms 2 Loopback0.GW3.CBG3.ALTER.net (158.43.136.5) 5.538 ms 5.945 ms 7.089 ms 3 POS3-2.CR2.CBG3.ALTER.net (158.43.136.57) 7.144 ms 7.198 ms 7.727 ms 4 pos6-0.cr2.lnd6.gbb.uk.uu.net (158.43.253.146) 11.392 ms 11.784 ms 12.172 ms 5 srp1-0.br1.lnd6.gbb.uk.uu.net (158.43.194.238) 12.441 ms 12.851 ms 13.267 ms 6 ge3-0.pr1.lhr1.uk.above.net (195.66.224.76) 20.802 ms 15.856 ms 15.818 ms 7 213.161.78.218 (213.161.78.218) 10.041 ms 10.367 ms 10.698 ms 8 telehouse-web.enta.net (195.74.96.162) 10.443 ms 10.620 ms 10.958 ms I'm really lost and don't kow where to look. I had thought it was a firewall issue or an MTU issue but, as I said, ssh from another Linux box here behind the same firewall works OK. The other box has the same MTU as chrisg and is on the same subnet. -- Chris Green

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How to set runlevel permanently
by Eur Ing Chris Green 14 Mar '07

14 Mar '07

Where/how is the system's runlevel set? I know how to change the 'current' runlevel by running telinit but when you reboot the system restarts in the original default runlevel. I want always to boot into runlevel 3 rather than 6. -- Chris Green

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A Fedora/Firefox question
by Eur Ing Chris Green 14 Mar '07

14 Mar '07

Another Fedora "being too clever" annoyance! When I start Firefox it insists on going to the page:- file:///usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html The 'Home Page' in Firefox preferences doesn't override this, I have it set to about:blank. What were they thinking of to hard code this somewhere in the startup scripts! Anyway, does anyone know how to turn it off? -- Chris Green

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How to get rid of Gnome
by Peter Alcibiades 14 Mar '07

14 Mar '07

OK, then what you have to do is log on as root and do gdmsetup from a terminal. This should bring up all the gdm configuration screens. And I think that in one of these there is a controller for what options are offered at login time. You can't do su -, because then it refuses to open the display for reasons the rest of the group will immediately understand and know how to deal with....but I don't! Its something to do with specifying the screen used at launch. However, the root log on should work. Peter

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How to get rid of Gnome
by Peter Alcibiades 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

Sorry, what you do is just su, not invoking the root environment. You don't have to sign on as root. Then gdmsetup runs fine. At least, it does for me. And on the first screen there is a checkbox for including the configure option at logon. The thing I have found about gdm compared to xdm on old machines is that it seems a lot slower, don't know why. Peter

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Character display problem
by Eur Ing Chris Green 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

On this new-fangled Fedora 6 system at work I'm getting what I assume are meant to be quotes displaying as a strange sequence, e.g.:- âmainâ Note that the above appears to me as:- â\x80\x98mainâ\x80\x99 I think the above is meant to be `main', or something like that. It's only happening in some places, for example man pages and compiler error messages. I suspect that the original Gnome incarnation was doing something 'clever' and now that I'm using plain X and fvwm2 I need to turn something off - but what? -- Chris Green

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How to get rid of Gnome
by Peter Alcibiades 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

Not at all an expert on Fedora (I installed it for a while but replaced it with Debian). However, the problem is how to configure GDM. When I start up GDM, there is a button someplace, it depends exactly how its configured where it is, which lets you pick the session. It should be something like Options > Select Session, and on my version of GDM its down at the bottom left of the screen. This should show you all the different WMs you have. When you pick the session option you want, it should then ask you whether you want to make the new session your default or not. But I'm left feeling that it cannot be this simple a problem or you'd have seen it at once. Is it maybe that when you install the other WMs they are not finding their way into the Sessions menu? That seems very odd. As far as I recall, it worked fine with my short lived Fedora install. Peter

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.profile *never* executes
by Eur Ing Chris Green 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

I thought I understood (vaguuly) the reasons for .profile and .kshrc or, for bash, .bash_profile and .bashrc but on this new Fedora system it doesn't work as I expect. The system boots and runs gdm which allows me to log in and, as far as I can see, my .profile (or my .bash_profile) *never* gets executed. Surely it's supposed to get executed at least once when you first log in, but it's not getting executed here for me. If I ssh into the system then the .profile gets executed (as expected by a 'login' shell), but isn't gdm (or kdm, or xdm) meant to do the login shell bit for you before starting your window manager? -- Chris Green

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Opera
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

Hi Folks, I've just been playing a bit with the latest version of the Opera browser (I tried it a few years ago, when it was fairly new on the scene; but it wasn;t really up to sbuff then). It seems to work very smoothly, on the whole, but I have a couple of queries so far. 1. I went to the BBC TV page, andlaunched a video clip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders/eastenders/episodes/episode_hub.shtml Up it came, and duly played (I have RealPlayer already installed, and Opera seemed to find it easily), but I also got a popup with the warning message from RealPlayer: You are using a browser that does not support scriptable plugins. Many embedded player sites may not work correctly. I've never had this from Firefox (which I've been using for a few years). and I wouldn't have expected it from Opera, if it's as smooth as it claims to be. Comments? 2. I've tried to import my existing Firefox bookmarks, to see what would happen. Procedure was: File --> Import and Export --> Import Netscape/Firefox bookmarks and gave the dialogue window (with "Look in /home/ted/" at the top) the path to the file relative to that directory: .mozilla/firefox/y8f9fahn.default/bookmarks.html after which I got the message "One entry has been imported"; the I clicked "OK". Now, after Bookmarks --> Opera I have a new item "Netscape bookmarks" -- but it seems to be null and void! Any ideas? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 12-Mar-07 Time: 21:46:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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How to get rid of gnome?
by Eur Ing Chris Green 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

So who is a Fedora expert? How do I get rid of the (vaguely horrible) Gnome desktop on this here Fedora machine and then choose a more acceptable window manager? OK, I can do the choosing and installing of the Window manager I want as I have done that on my home machine. However I can't see how/where to find the hooks that gnome uses to start the gnome desktop. The system is running gdm by the way, which is OK but I can't see where *it* decides which window manager to start. If it's easier I'm quite happy to ditch gdm and use something else (or even nothing, run startx directly). -- Chris Green

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"JPEG Quality"
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

Hi Folks, I have a little query which someone may be able to clarify. Background: I download photos off my digital camera. These are 2304x1728 (4:3) JPEGS, 8pits/pixel, around 2MB in size. As well as storing the originals, I also re-size them to 1024x768 (also 4:3, linear reduction by factor 2.25) because (a) at that geometry they exactly fit my screen, (b) they then come out much smaller in byte-size, convenient for emailing for instance. I do the re-sizing as follows, in ImageMagick: 1. display photo.jpg 2. View --> Resize --> 1024x768 --> Resize 3. File --> Save --> new filename --> Save and here's where my query comes. At this point I get a popup window which asks me the "Choose JPEG quality" with default option 75%. I've wondered how much this "quality" matters, so I've done a bit of experimentation, saving the re-sized file both at 75% (the default) and 100%. Then I put both of them up (on different "workspace" panels) and flip between them. Try as I may, I can't visually perceive any difference between them. Yet, for example, one 75% file has 171064 bytes, and its 100% counterpart has 694833 bytes, 4 times larger. At that difference in byte size, I'm surprised that there's no perceptible difference! Any ideas? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 11-Mar-07 Time: 18:00:49 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Syleham kit meet
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 11 Mar '07

11 Mar '07

Is the Syleham kit meet on 1 April definitely on? A recent posting suggests it is, but the Wiki only says it is "Proposed" [posted 22 Feb 2007]. If it's on, then I'm on! (Thanks, John). 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: 11-Mar-07 Time: 12:35:32 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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A CSS and HTML question
by Eur Ing Chris Green 09 Mar '07

09 Mar '07

How do you know which CSS properties apply to which selectors? I.e. given that I want to change the spacing around lists how do I find whether it's padding or margin (or border?) that I need to change and/or what the defaults are? Not to mention how to know whether it's the space below the heading above or the space above the list that needs reducing. Personally I think we should throw the whole lot in the bin and start again! After playing with this for quite a while and having looked at lots of templates and stylesheets they're all a total mess of the worst sort of unstructured 'code' - it's the equivalent of the worst excesses of spaghetti code in Basic. I don't think it's the fault of the writers of the code, it's inherent in the way that HTML and CSS work. It's almost invitable that the template and stylesheet will become a horrible interwoven mess of classes, IDs and so on. Not to mention - why is it that the default spacing of HTML headings, lists, etc. is so awful? The defaults are such that paragraphs and lists are spaced equally from the things above them and below them. Surely a heading (for example) should be closer to the text/list below it that it refers to and further from what's above it? I always have to go and play games with the spacing to get what looks to me a reasonable layout that I would expect to get by default. .... end of Friday rant! :-) -- Chris Green

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RF Band for Wireless Routers?
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 09 Mar '07

09 Mar '07

Hi Folks, Anyone know what Radio Frequency Band is used by Wireless Routers? Thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Mar-07 Time: 09:53:09 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Against the Day
by Richard Lewis 09 Mar '07

09 Mar '07

Hello ALUG, At the pub meet last night one of the bar staff directed our attention to a copy of /Against the Day/ by Thomas Pynchon which was found on the evening of the annual nosh in February in a Waterstones bag near our table. They've kept hold of it. If its yours, they would probably be happy for you to go in there and claim it. Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Question about borders in firefox or elsewhere
by Eur Ing Chris Green 09 Mar '07

09 Mar '07

Is there any way to change the default of tables having no borders in Firefox? I know how to change the HTML of the table to show borders but I wondered if there was a way to give Firefox a set of default table border values. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Are there any HTML 'beautifier' programs out there?
by Richard Jordan 08 Mar '07

08 Mar '07

Several years ago I used to use a program called HTML Tidy. I haven't used it for ages, but it would be worth a look. Google tells me that it can now be found at http://tidy.sourceforge.net/ Richard Jordan

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Are there any HTML 'beautifier' programs out there?
by Eur Ing Chris Green 08 Mar '07

08 Mar '07

I'm trying to understand and unpick an HTML template file, an automatic 'beautifier' would help no end, are there any out there? -- Chris Green

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[Fwd: [ALUG] I think the hard drives dead]
by Chris & Barry Chater 08 Mar '07

08 Mar '07

Hi again, Thanks for your tips and offers of help, as i live near King's Lynn it is too far to go to one of your kit meetings (Didn't you use to hold meetings in King's Lynn once?) I am in the proccess of getting quotes on having a new drive fitted as i am not too technical minded and may have attempted to change the drive on a desktop unit but not a laptop. This one is one of those you have to take apart unlike my wifes Toshiba which has a little removable cover. Got to get this sorted as i need a Linux Fix soon ;-) Barry Hi Would you believe it finally got Ubuntu Linux working on an old laptop, got a wireless card and got that working. then the other day computer froze while watching video on BBC site.Could not get it to shut down, so switched off

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Can one invoke mod_autoindex explicitly, or alternatives?
by Eur Ing Chris Green 08 Mar '07

08 Mar '07

I want a way to produce a web page which includes directory contents like those produced by apache's mod_autoindex. Looking at the apache documentation I can't see any obvious way to do this, it either displays the contents of index.html (if that's what you have set with the DirectoryIndex directive) or it will (if allowed) do what mod_autoindex is configured to do and show you the contents of the directory. I want to be able to ask for something like http://my.site.com/dira/index.html and see what's in index.html *plus* clickable links for each of the files in dira. The HEADER.html and README.html files set by the HeaderName and ReadmeName directives don't quite do what I want (though nearly). Has anyone any ideas or pointers to anything useful. Ultimately what I want is a way to have a directory where I can have a reST generated index.html file and then a list of .PDF (for example) files that can be clicked on. I don't particularly want to have to edit the index.html every time I add or delete a .PDF file. Note, it's not *just* for PDF files but it's probably for a fairly short list of file types. -- Chris Green

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Everything I do at the moment seems to end up with python!
by Eur Ing Chris Green 08 Mar '07

08 Mar '07

I seem to arrive at a python solution for everything I do at the moment:- I was looking for a backup solution and, after a bit of looking around (and help from here) I have decided to use rdiff-backup. It's working well. It's written in python. I've been looking at lightweight markup languages, in particular one for creating HTML with tables, so after hunting around for a while I find reStructuredText which is part of Docutils which is, guess what, written in python. Digging a bit further on from my reStructuredText investigations I found pyBlosxam which seems to be my sort of blog, python of course. Another utility I installed recently used Docutils as well. I'm beginning to think that people who use python must think a certain way which matches the way I want things to work. -- Chris Green

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Linux Format DVDs
by Ian bell 07 Mar '07

07 Mar '07

I have just about every Linux Format DVD from LXF20 (sometime in 2001). As I am soon to move house I want to dispose of them. Might be useful if someone wants an old distro. Happy to bring them to the next kit meet or look out any special requirements. Otherwise I'll skip them. Ian

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I think the hard drives dead
by Chris & Barry Chater 07 Mar '07

07 Mar '07

Hi Would you believe it finally got Ubuntu Linux working on an old laptop, got a wireless card and got that working. then the other day computer froze while watching video on BBC site.Could not get it to shut down, so switched off . Now on start up it says no operating system and it will not let me reinstall Ubuntu, it cant find device to partition. Do you think the hard drive has gone? It also whines when switched off. Is it a big job replacing the drive in a Packard Bell laptop, like pull one out and plug another in or is it deeper than that and more technical. Just trying to work out if it is cost effective to replace drive. Any advice ? Barry

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