main

main@lists.alug.org.uk

10369 discussions

Slow HW Clock
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 28 May '06

28 May '06

Hi Folks, I've discovered that the hardware clock on one of my machines is running about 2/3 slow: loses about 20min in each hour. For the time being, I'm writing the system time to it every so often, and the system time is updated hourly by NTP. But the principal irritation of it is that the system clock is set from the HW clock on bootup, so I have to make provision to over-ride that. I don't know of any important system functions that directly consult the HW clock rather than the system clock. Do you? Also -- and here I'd really welcome good ideas -- does anyone have any suggestions for why this might be happening, and/or for what to so about it? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 27-May-06 Time: 13:34:41 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

3 6

How do you keep all your files in sync on multiple platforms?
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 28 May '06

28 May '06

Like me, I expect several of you have multiple PCs, each with their own different OS installed. I'm investigating how to setup automatic synching between them. What I would ideally like is something that runs in the background and syncs (via peer-to-peer) the files automatically between Linux, OSX and Windows. I've found unison under a GPL license that supports all platforms, but it's only for merging two sources. I've found groove.net, but that's Windows only. Foldershare.com supports Mac and Windows, but not Linux and I don't like the idea of storing my own files externally. What I've done in the past is just have separate file stores on each machine and then sync them up to a master internal FTP server, but this sucks and is not time efficient when the same file ends up on more than one machine as I need to manually check for the most recent version. So, how do the rest of you handle synching your files on multiple platforms? -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com/ "Oh, Great Spirit, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference." - Native American Indian

3 2

Relative speeds of ways of doing 'X over the internet'?
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 28 May '06

28 May '06

Does anyone have any ideas about, or is there a web site that will tell me about, the relative speeds of different ways of running X applications across the internet? I'm specifically interested in runnning jpilot (a Palm Dekstop replacement that runs on Linux) remotely through my ADSL connection. The only way I have run it to date is tunnelling X through an ssh connection. This works OK in the sense that it's full functional but it's not really fast enough for normal use. It's just a way of getting at the data if I really need to. What I'm after is knowing if there are better and/or more optimised ways of connecting so that this would become a usable utility when accessed remotely. In terms of bandwidth use jpilot is sort of 'middling', it is much, much more usable than running Firefox via the ssh tunnel for example but not as quick as running an rxvt terminal. (An rxvt terminal actually runs quite quickly but there's little point as it only offers the same function as an ordinary ssh session which is quicker and easier) So, can anyone offer any ideas please. -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

8 18

Real-time Audio Processing and Streaming
by Richard Lewis 26 May '06

26 May '06

Hello ALUG, I'm doing some work with one of the post-grads on a Web-based audio mixer for live sound sources. The user will see each of the, say, half-dozen sound sources arranged on the screen and as he moves his cursor (or "joystick") towards one, it becomes predominant in the mix. Each of the sound sources will play either a continuous stream from a live microphone or continuous loops of interesting cached sounds. My basic plan is to have this sort of "joystick" metaphor on the client side which responds to mouse gestures by sending lots of small HTTP requests representing Open Sound Control commands using AJAX to a PHP (or possibly the dreaded Perl) script on the server side which, in turn, forwards the OSC commands to the mixer software. The output audio stream from the mixer should then be MP3 encoded and streamed back to the client to play in his embedded media player. I have a clear view of how I will implement everything up to and including the server side PHP (or Perl). After that I'm not so sure. There are two aspects that I'd appreciate anyone's wisdom on. First is the mixing software. The reason why I've mentioned OSC is because my colleague is an experienced Max/MSP user and would like to use either that or PureData to handle the mixing. However, I'm worried about how well this will scale up when multiple users are connected. Will I have to run one instance of Max (or pd) for each client connection? Should I perhaps consider a more UNIXy tool like ecasound or something? Second is the streaming software. I'm a bit surer about this: I've looked at Icecast and it seems to do MP3 encoding. I reckon it can probably handle multiple client sessions as long as each connection has its own distinguishable source audio stream which I suppose depends on how I choose to implement the mixer. Has anyone had any experience with it? Is it very resource intensive? Any thoughts or experiences would be very welcome! Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

3 3

Would anyone care to Samba?
by Barry Samuels 25 May '06

25 May '06

I have an IBM ThinkPad R51 less than a year old which came with Windows XP although I have Debian installed on it which is what I mostly use. However there is one Windows application, MapInfo, which I use occasionally and for which I have never found a Linux substitute. I had the laptop set up to connect to my normal Linux (Debian Testing) desktop machine via Samba and was able to use it. Then two things happend. 1. I moved the mount point of the partition on the Linux machine to which the laptop, running Windows, connected. I changed the paths in smbd.conf and did think to restart Samba. 2. I also upgraded Debian Testing on my non-laptop machine. Now the laptop won't even recognise that the Debian machine is there although it is connected to the network and I can ping the Debian machine. My first thought was to look in the logs on the Debian machine for errors but there are no errors! Where do I go from here to find which machine is the cause of the problem? I assume it must be the Debian desktop because that's the only one that's changed. Both smbd and nmbd are running on the desktop. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

2 2

Linux.com : Runit makes a speedy replacement for init
by Keith Watson 25 May '06

25 May '06

<http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/03/2126222 > ...interesting article. Does anyone use anything other than SysVinit for booting? Regards, Keith ____________ Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is to you. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

1 0

Can someone explain?
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 24 May '06

24 May '06

Hi Folks, Someone out there will know the answer to my ignorant query ... Suppose I have an up-and-running internet connection via my ISP. So I telnet into a remote host (e.g. nessie.mcc.ac.uk) and establish a login-session. So far so good. Next, for DSL reasons, the internet connection is interrupted (the router re-syncs). Shortly afterwards, it is re-established again. But now, I have lost contact with the login session. My question is: What is the mechanism (or perhaps absence of mechanism) leading to losing the contact? Or, turning the question on its head, what is it that keeps my link with the remote host alive so long as the internet connection stays up? The naive version of the question: If my packets can find their way to my login to nessie before the line drops, and nessie's can find their way back to my telnet, how come they can't continue to do so after the line drops and is re-estiblished? I hope people understand what I'm asking -- I'll try better if you don't! Thanks, and 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: 24-May-06 Time: 21:03:41 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

3 4

Why always public-key encryption algorithms?
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 23 May '06

23 May '06

Why is it that *everything* uses some sort of public-key encryption algorithm for storing sensitive data? It's stupid! OK, it's brilliantly useful for sending data across the internet and so on but for storing one's own sensitive data it is entirely pointless as far as I can see. For example if I want to store a file with some sensitive data in it and only only want to be able to decrypt it myself then surely anything *but* a public key encryption algorithm makes sense. Essentially a public key algorithm means that there is always a brute force way of getting at the data, it may take more computing power/time than is available but it is in principle possible. Other ways of encrypting can be made essentially uncrackable if you want. Are there any encryption experts here who can persuade me that I'm being silly? -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

4 11

USB On Old Laptop
by Simon Royal 23 May '06

23 May '06

Hi I have an old laptop with no USB, a ThinkPad 380ED which has 16bit PCMCIA slots. Can anyone suggest where I would get a USB PCMCIA card from? I have searched eBay but even the great online garage sale failed to return anything. It doesn't have to be USB 2 a simple USB 1.1 card would do but all they have is cardbus cards. Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.simonroyal.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac

3 2

For Sale
by Wayne Stallwood 23 May '06

23 May '06

As previously mentioned I have upgraded my home server and the old one is looking for a new home if anyone is interested. It's a converted Gigabyte NAS box. Originally it was a Linux based appliance server that offered basic filesharing, print, firewall and mail services. It's a very nicely built little unit, a tiny tower measuring about 400x300x90mm. Quiet enough to sit in the corner of a room without causing much annoyance (it is a LOT quieter than my new 1U rack server) Many moons ago it was de-commissioned at one of my clients due to hard drive failure (the original OS was lost as part of that failure) I fitted a 120GB hdd and installed Ubuntu Server. It has served me very well ever since. In fact the main reason I retired it was that I couldn't find a half height PCI line card (the only type that will fit) that would play nicely with Asterisk. It has a PIII 866 Mhz CPU 128MB of RAM (standard dimm slots, one free) 2 NIC's (so it could make a nice firewall if nothing else) 1 PCI Modem 120GB HDD (with space for another) It also has a little LCD on the front that shows POST status during startup. This was originally also controlled by the OS and showed running status as well. It is plugged into a PCI card (more on that in a mo) on what I think *may* be a parallel port. However I have never managed to get lcdproc to drive it (and can't for the moment even remember what chipset the LCD is) so at the moment it shows the post bits and then stops at "Starting operating system....." at which point the OS driver should be taking over. A brave new owner can have another go or take one of my spare hd44780 displays to try and replace it. The PCI card also has a socket for a "disk on chip" I still have the 8MB part that was in there, however this contains the bootloader for the original OS and was interfering with the Ubuntu boot so I removed it. The only slight complication is that it is a headless unit (no VGA and no PS/2 keyboard socket) When I originally set it up I got around this by taking it apart and plugging in a PCI graphics card and a USB keyboard on an internal USB header. Alternatives would be to perform a minimal installation with the drive in another machine. With this in mind I would install the new owners OS of choice and set it up for their network prior to handing it over. I am told that the Debian installer will default to ttys0 if there is no local graphics, which would make life a little easier (it has a serial port on the back panel) £80

1 0

Secure web access to password protected data - suggestions?
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 22 May '06

22 May '06

I'm after setting up a small amount of 'secure' data on my web server that I can access and, preferably, modify via the internet using a browser. I.e. I basically want a web page (or a hierarchy of web pages) whose content is password protected. The ideal sort of interface would be a Wiki sort of approach - I think. Is there anything out there that can do this sort of thing? There are a number of PHP based password storage utilities but these are rather restictive of the format in which you can store data, I'd much prefer to be able to store free format text. There are two basic approaches as well:- Use client side decryption (i.e. Javascript or Java) so that only the encrypted data is sent over the internet. For me it wouldn't even be necessary to send the decryption code with the pages as I'm quite happy to install that on the two or three systems where I want to be able to view and modify the data. This approach has the advantage of not requiring an encrypted (https:) web server. User server side encrypt/decrypt and an https: server. This requires more effort to set up apache to do https: but I suspect is rather easier to do the actual encrypting and decrypting. In fact, given that the 'source' code lives on a fairly secure machine at home how vulnerable would the data be if it was just in a password protected Wiki? (i.e. the data itself isn't encrypted) Any and all ideas welcome. (well, except writing it down on a piece of paper and carrying that around with me) -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

2 4

SysAdmin position
by James Green 22 May '06

22 May '06

Hi, If anyone's looking for a sys-admin position and has relevant experience, you might like to submit your CV to employment(a)stealthnet.net Job involves administering various Debian installations including production web, database and mail servers. Also involved with be a certain amount of looking after our "admin" network in Gorleston including Windows XP workstations. Although the successful candidate will find a Mac Mini on their desk should they want to use it :) We're ideally looking for 4 years experience, but 2+ will be considered. You will also be expected to take part in on-call rotas. Desirable experience: MySQL Replication Exim4 / Cyrus Bind9 PHP/Perl Windows administration CVs to: employment(a)stealthnet.net P.S. Don't look at www.stealthnet.net and believe it all - it hasn't been updated in years. Complete new version in beta! Kind regards, James Green

3 2

RE: [alug social] Re: [ALUG] Fwd: First ALUG competition of 2006
by Keith Watson 22 May '06

22 May '06

> From: sfr Sent: 21 May 2006 12:14 > > On 20/05/06, Brett Parker <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> wrote: > > On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 10:07:14PM +0100, Paul > <lists(a)bulldoghome.com> wrote: > > > > > Guess Brett wants to keep the prizes all for himself... > > > > Have we ever worked out what they are yet? > > yes.. well... > > first prize is LOTS of Kudos, international fame, and a certificate. > and something else ... an early release copy of Windows Vista > > second prize is some kudos, slightly less fame, and er... > something else. > ... TWO early release copies of Windows Vista > hang on a minute, I'll look in the charity-shop box. > > -- > eli alternatively... 1st prize - the opportunity to supply Brett with pints of beer for a whole night 2nd prize - ditto (but followed but a chinese/indian take away of Brett's choice) 3rd prize - you don't want to know about the 3rd prize Regards, Keith ____________ Even before I can say it, it is no more. - Sengai

1 0

Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 22 May '06

22 May '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

1 0

Apple Front Row
by David Noble 21 May '06

21 May '06

Hi All At boarding school, I decided to get a Mac Mini as a 'Media PC', to be able to play films through the projector. (The advantages of the Mac Mini being that it is supposedly fast enough for the job, quiet and small, and with a relatively bombproof operating system. Also, the video input quality on the projector is poor at best, and it is only worth using the RGB input on it.) However, the new Intel (core solo) chip is a pile of rubbish (compiles slower than my 3 year old AMD), and much to the amusement of my friends crashes when a DVD is paused in Front Row for over 5 minutes. I do not know why it does this, but I certainly wish Apple never changed to Intel. It was definitely a step backwards from a modern chip (PowerPC) to one that has had extensions bodged onto it (Intel 8086) over the past 20 years since the Intel 8086. (on my PowerBook G4, I have never had problems with DVDs freezing). I'd put up with it if it was open source, but being a commercial product, and still crashing /after/ a major system update (downloaded and installed all the patches today), but being a system that has cost a lot of money, I'd at least expect it to be able to pause a DVD without crashing. I want to see if Linux can be installed on it, and use that and Kaffeine or Xine just to play back DVDs. I warn anyone who wishes to rely on FrontRow. At least on the Intel series. Regards Dave

2 1

Network drives for Linux
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 21 May '06

21 May '06

Does anyone have any experience of using a network drive with Linux? Nearly all the reasonably priced ones I have seen advertised tell you all about how they appear as a 'local drive' on Windows systems but give no clue as to how/whether they will work with Linux. One actually appears to be running Samba but that still isn't ideal for Linux. While I'm asking, if I press an old system into service with a basic Linux OS installed on it how can I network its drives? Can one just mount drives across the local network or does one *have* to run something like NFS or Samba? -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

4 7

Linux box
by Bob Dove 21 May '06

21 May '06

Hi Guys (and of course Ladies), I'm surprised by the relatively low spec some of you guys are running Linux on. I've got a Celeron powered box with 96mB RAM (Win98/2 word processing box) - I'll have a play and see what happens. Any of you tinkerers connected a 'doze and Linux box via KVM for quick change one to 'tother? Incidentally, I'm also surprised at the low regard for OOo - which is my main office in 'doze (I perforce have to have Bill's office installed 'cos most people seem to use it.) I would say that within my immediate circle - I'm the only non MS user. Can't understand why people spend so much on MS when there is so much good open source stuff out there? Perhaps I'll give AbiWord another go - the last time I tried it it was a pain - especially the blo**y US spell check (US as in RAF tech parlance as well as the place across the pond). Cheers, BD.

5 4

Vista
by Bob Dove 21 May '06

21 May '06

Hi Guys, BBBG [Big bad Bill G] wants to 1/ Rule the World, or 2/ Own the World, or 3/ At least dictate how you use and what you use on your computer. The power requirements for Vista are such that I can't imagine anyone actually giving in to the dictat except to use Linux instead and write really powerful programs to emulate BBBG. Then of course, there are people out there with more plastic than grey matter who will spend the ever increasing amounts of dosh BBBG wants. And there'll always be 'pooter' builders keen to provide the necessary hardware. Personally, to run Quark and PhotoShop - which is all I want to do really - it is all overkill and I'll stick to 'doze 2K. Of course, it is the gaming fraternity who need the blistering power that BBBG is tapping into. Problem is of course, BBBG makes a pretty point and press desktop full of apparent usability while Linux won't let brick brains in! I must say that even (to my wife's intense annoyance) a dedicated box for Linux has (or would have if I had any) caused hair pulling and revision of Anglo Saxon usage. I have been watching the thread as to how little you really need to run a minimum Linux distro - and the little is in fact quite large. Mind you, Solitaire in Linux is much prettier than 'doze! Cheers, Bob Dove.

8 11

This list and html email.
by Adam Bower 20 May '06

20 May '06

Hi Guys, I just thought I'd drop a quick email to the list just to clarify that the Alug list is a plain text only list but I'm bending the rules a bit for new joiners to the list as I feel it is better to let them participate and get involved with Alug instead of freezing them out straight away. When we get new people join the list who have a mail held for moderation because it has an html part I am going to let the post through and then mail the new joiner directly asking them to try and post in plain text only. (Obviously if they have posted with html and it has created a massive attachement then I will not allow it to go to the list). Obviously this isn't set in stone as it's up to the people on the list what we do but I'd like to hear a few opinions of if people think I'm doing the right/wrong thing. Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li Avoid ID cards, renew your passport: http://www.renewforfreedom.org/

9 16

Balsa - here's an easy one
by Barry Samuels 20 May '06

20 May '06

Since I've upgraded Balsa to 2.3.8 some of the toolbar button images have disappeared. Does anyone know where they are kept? I can see some in /usr/share/balsa/hicolo/24x24/apps/ and I've added one called 'balsa-compose.png' which I obtained from a Balsa Theme but it doesn't show up. One other puzzle is that there is a printer button with an image showing but it's not in the list in the above directory. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

1 0

Multiple instances of sshd
by David Noble 20 May '06

20 May '06

Hi Is it possible to run multiple instances of sshd on different ports (or for that matter a single instance on different ports)? Have any of you had experience doing so, and is there anything I should be particularly careful about? Regards, Dave

2 1

Good news from MS!!
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 19 May '06

19 May '06

Hi Folks, "Microsoft has released 'minimum' and 'recommended' specifications for Vista. The minimum means that the operating system will run but some new features will be disabled. Recommended means that this is what is needed to get the most basic configuration of the whole package working. VISTA HARDWARE CHECKLIST Minimum Recommended Processor 800MHz 1GHz 32 or 64 bit System Memory 512MB 1GB Graphics card DirectX 9 capable Runs Windows Aero Graphics Memory - - 128MB Free space on Hard Drive 15GB 15GB Source: Microsoft" Well, that's good news! If Vista catches on, there should be a good bit of decent kit coming cheap onto the secondhand market that would run Linux very nicely. Looking forward to that! 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: 19-May-06 Time: 20:03:23 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

6 5

Re: [ALUG] Forged email
by John Seago 19 May '06

19 May '06

On Friday 19 May 2006 09:02, Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.plus.com> wrote: > Do nothing, or if you are a good citizen you can try to track down who > sent it so that you can warn them (you might know them) that they have a > virus. > > clue- Whois says it was somebody on Virgin Internet Pay as you Go Thank you so much, I'll work back through my address book and incoming mail this afternoon. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

1 0

Forged email
by John Seago 19 May '06

19 May '06

AOL have informed me that I have sent an email containing an unrepairable virus. I know from the following lines: X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 X-Spam: Not detected X-AOL-IP: 82.10.38.23 That it was not sent using my computer as it only has installed upon it slackware10.2. Any advise as to what action to take gratefully accepted -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

3 2

RE: [ALUG] Fwd: First ALUG competition of 2006
by Keith Watson 19 May '06

19 May '06

> From: Wayne Stallwood Sent: 18 May 2006 22:13 > On Thu, 2006-05-18 at 21:43 +0100, Brett Parker wrote: > > > > I haven't quite written the system yet, it's sort of in a> midway state > > because I've not quite decided how to write it yet (lame, I know ;) > > Write it ??? > Have we not learnt anything from Diebold in the US > > I demand a paper ballot ! No problem... ...you'll find hydraulic voting booths installed in most private and public buildings. The ballot papers can be found on convenient tear-off rolls and, after you have cast your vote, lift the lid on the voting box, deposit your completed ballot paper in the water and operate the handle to deliver your vote to the nearest counting unit. Regards, Keith ____________ Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things, but just look at what they can do when they stick together.

1 0

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

main