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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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RE: [ALUG] [ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting :The Milestone, Woodbridge Road
by Tracy Dickerson 19 Mar '07

19 Mar '07

I look forward to seeing everyone tonight. Have a good day Laters Tracy x -----Original Message----- From: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of samwise Sent: 17 March 2007 18:15 To: announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: [ALUG] [ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting :The Milestone, Woodbridge Road 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 _______________________________________________ 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!

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Can anyone suggest any neat ways to do this.......
by Eur Ing Chris Green 18 Mar '07

18 Mar '07

It's too long to fit in the subject. How can I have a directory with the same name that is actually a different place according to the architecture I'm running? I need this at work because I'm running on a mixed network of Solaris and Linux. Most executables don't cause a problem:- Shell scripts work the same on both Solaris and Linux (well, nearly) so they just live in ~/bin which is on my path. Most executables which are called in the normal way using the PATH are OK too, they can live in a different directory and the PATH can be changed according to architecture. In my case the Solaris ones are in /proj/chris/bin and the Linux ones are in /user/home/chris/bin. OK, so that leaves the nasties! One example is sendmail, this has to be called with a full path (presumably a security thing). Thus I have in my muttrc file:- sendmail=/proj/chris/bin/msmtp which works for Solaris but not for Linux. So, where can I put the two different versions of msmtp so that I get the riht one? I have root access on the Linux box but not on the Solaris box. Unfortunately /proj/chris/bin is visible on *both* Linux and Solaris so I can't create a Linux /proj/chris/bin. -- Chris Green

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Free to a good home
by Wayne Stallwood 18 Mar '07

18 Mar '07

ATI Raedon 7000 Dual head (32MB I think) AGP. Principally a Dual DVI output but I may be able to lay my hands on some VGA adaptors if required. Dynamode USB ADSL modem, Conexant AccessRunner based so (at least on Ubuntu) just needs the firmware from the windows driver saved into the right place in Linux. Dell Dimension XPS-T500 (PIII 500) complete with 20GB HDD, CD ROM etc. Only Missing RAM but tested with RAM from another machine and it is all fine. ATI RAGE 128Pro (Xpert2000Pro 32MB AGP) Graphics Card Xerox P8EX Mono Laser, almost completely out of toner. but works perfectly via USB or Parallel on Cups, Only used until contents of it's original consumables were depleted. (you can get a cartridge refill kit from consumable cafe for £8.50 + VAT) or a new cartridge is circa £60 Dell 19" (Sony Trinitron, flat faced) CRT display in black. Normally I sell these for a nominal fee but I happen to know this particular one has done a lot of hours. Picture still looks good however the mains switch is intermittent (fine if left on or in standby but takes a couple of presses to get it into the on state if turned off) Not worth my time to fix given what I sell perfect examples for, so free if anyone wants it. Quantum DLT4000i drive, double 5.25" bay, SCA SCSI SE interface up to 20GB native tape capacity (40GB compressed). New/Old stock but untested. I am hoping to be at the next kit meet on the 1st, but if I do make it I probably wont bother dragging all of this kit to Syleham unless anybody going specifically says they want it. Otherwise of course anybody is welcome to come and collect any of these bits from my house in Bury St Edmunds by arrangement.

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FC6 networking problem, a clue at last
by Eur Ing Chris Green 16 Mar '07

16 Mar '07

I'm investigating my FC6 to home problem and it looks as if my router may be blocking some of the traffic, trouble is I don't know what the message means. The router log is saying:- FIREWALL fast tcp seqnr check (1 of 2): Protocol: TCP Src ip: 192.168.1.1 Src port: 22 Dst ip: 193.128.168.194 Dst port: 51097 Does anyone have a clue what that indicates? The destination is certainly the work system (193.128.168.194). -- Chris Green

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Anyone have a web site behind a NAT router I can try?
by Eur Ing Chris Green 15 Mar '07

15 Mar '07

Does anyone here have a web site behind a NAT router that I can try accessing from my problem FC6 box please. Then I would have a bit more evidence that the problem is something to do with the router (and/or NAT). -- Chris Green

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Networking (across the internet) problem
by Eur Ing Chris Green 15 Mar '07

15 Mar '07

My FC6 at work to Slackware 11 at home problem continues. It originally seemed to be just an SSH problem but I think it's more than that, I can't see web pages on the apache sesrver on my home machine either. Since the only two 'holes' in the firewall at home are for ssh and http I can't really try anything else. The symptom seems to be that just about nothing (in the way of data) gets from my home machine to the FC6 machine at work. Working from other machines at work (Solaris and other Linux distributions) everything works fine. Similarly the FC6 machine at work seems to communicate with the rest of the world without problems. There is one set of messages about a similar problem that I have found on Google which suggests it may be an MTU size problem. I have tried setting the MTU at both ends to 576 but I'm not convinced I've done this right. If I just do:- ifconfig eth0 mtu 576 at both ends is that all that's needed? Does the change take effect immediately or what? The *only* thing I can think of that's really different when talking (or not) to my home system is that it's through a NAT router and this is what, maybe, points at the MTU issue. Though I really don't understand why it only happens from the FC6 systems. -- Chris Green

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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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