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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!)

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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

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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/

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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

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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

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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 ------------------------------

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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

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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

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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.

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Re: This list and html email.
by John Seago 18 May '06

18 May '06

Having the signature lines that I do, I was most embarrassed a short while ago to find that I was sending HTML mail to this list. I promptly turned it off, (I'm using Kmail), only to find that it wouldn't stay turned off and it took me nearly a whole afternoon to get it to turn off and stay turned off. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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RE: [ALUG] Evil Computers
by Keith Watson 18 May '06

18 May '06

> From: Wayne Stallwood Sent: 17 May 2006 22:21 > On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 12:09 +0100, Tracy Dickerson wrote: > > > > Then the next morning after switching on, the network card > > seemed to be found but would not connect to the outside world. > > Nothing had changed and I can't work out why this has happened. > > Does the card have a link status light, if so is it on ? > > What does ifconfig say ? (you may have to be root to run > that, depending on your distribution) > > Also run route to list the routing table and ping whatever is > shown as the default gateway (that is the ip address of your > housemates router) > > If that works then try pinging an external address like google on > 66.249.93.99 > > If that works then your name resolution is broken and you > need to look at the contents of /etc/resolv.conf > > This should have something like > nameserver (ip address) where IP address should usually be the same > as the IP address of your housemates router (the address > returned as the default gateway when you ran the route command) > > With that info we should be able to track it down. Had a similar problem with an old Dell laptop a while back. Using a Live Linux CD (Ubuntu Breezy Badger in this case - it's only a matter of time before some marketing type christens them "boot'n'go" :o) ) was very useful in tracking down hardware vs. software issues. Regards, Keith ____________ CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else (q.v. EXPERT). Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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RE: [ALUG] This list and html email.
by Keith Watson 18 May '06

18 May '06

> From: Adam Bower > Sent: 17 May 2006 21:01 > > 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 > attachment 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 Although I have no axe to grind wrt html mail I must admit that my sight is poor enough that I find plain text easier to deal with (and there's the admin issue of the consequent bloat in message size). I go along with Adam on this, I think a quiet word off list would be a friendly way to ask new members (and the odd recidivist :o) ) to refrain from submitting html posts. Regards, Keith ____________ TWICE, adv. Once too often. Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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Evil Computers
by Tracy Dickerson 17 May '06

17 May '06

Hey guys and gals, Thank you for all your helpful posts and for welcoming me so nicely. I know have a pc at home (a friend of mine gave me his old one). I have a new problem for you to think about (if you would like to) The network card worked fine to install Fedora Core 5 on top of Windows 98 from the internet. When Windows had been wiped and Fedora was installed, I managed (with a little trouble) to connect to the internet and get all my e-mails etc (lovely 206 of them *sigh*) Then the next morning after switching on, the network card seemed to be found but would not connect to the outside world. Nothing had changed and I can't work out why this has happened. I have deleted all the network settings and rebooted, this didn't help, so I took out the network card and re-seated it. Again nothing happened. The only thing I can think of that I have not tested is the network cable that runs into my housemates router. This also hasn't changed or moved and we checked the router. He is getting a connection. Puzzled now. Any suggestions before I buy a new network card and start again? Tracy x _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Bletchley Park
by Richard Lewis 17 May '06

17 May '06

Hello ALUG, Just before we all left last night, I remembered that a little while ago on IRC mention had been made of a possible trip to Bletchley Park. Now that the weather has taken a turn for the better, I wonder if anyone still thinks this may be fun? There's a fairly informative website at: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ They do group weekend visits between 10:30 and 17:00 for 8.00 GBP per head for 20+ people and allow (possibly require) booking. Maps and various route planning info: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/visit/findus.rhtm For those of us in Norwich, the train journey is not all that good: AFAICT you need to go through London (Liverpool St -> Euston) and it takes about 3:30 hours. By road it will probably take about 3 hours (A11, through Thetford, Cambridge, A428 through Bedford to Milton Keynes). Any thoughts? Cheers, Richard -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Re: [linux-users] Segfaults with Firefox-1.0
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 17 May '06

17 May '06

On 17-May-06 David Johnson wrote: > On Wednesday 17 May 2006 13:53, Ted Harding wrote: >> >> If anyone else would like to try this and report >> results, I'd be obliged. >> > > I'm seeing the same issue with my Firefox (v1.0.8), > but Konqueror has no problems with it. > > Accessing it with popup blocking disabled seems to fix it, > so I guess it's a bug in Firefox's popup blocking... > > Regards, > David. Thanks, Dave (Gilbert) for confirming that firefox can be flaky, and David (Johnson) for the above. Yes, you were right! Disabling pop-up blocking solves the problem. The reason http://www.shop.bt.com bombs right out is that you get one of those smarmy "special offers and competitions" popups while the top page is still loading. You're not meant to miss it! (Which leads me to wonder: can a website send a popup which might force a popup blocker to segfault? Good way to get you to turn off the blocker ... ). Thanks, and all best wishes, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 17-May-06 Time: 14:21:46 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Segfaults with Firefox-1.0
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 17 May '06

17 May '06

Hi Folks, I've been noticing a tendency for my Firefox-1.0 to segfault when accessing certain sites. It may not be Firefox of course, but a possible (e.g.) RAM weakness or something else hardware related. The message to the terminal is always run-mozilla.sh: line 451: 2894 Segmentation fault "$prog" ${1+"$@"} which is a line in the startup-script. One site which seems to trigger it every time is http://www.shop.bt.com If anyone else would like to try this and report results, I'd be obliged. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 17-May-06 Time: 13:53:05 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Encryption
by Richard Brooklyn 17 May '06

17 May '06

The other day, I got myself a new laptop, all is well and good with it running Ubuntu Dapper. I saw a article in Linux Format about encrypting the hard drive. I did follow it closely, but was unable to make it work. This was probably due to me trying to encrypt / instead of something like /home so I gave up. But I do wish to try again. I've just downloaded OpenSUSE 10.1, which gives the option to encrypt during the installation. It [the OpenSUSE install] seems to work pretty well, especially if you're just a single user, you can set a nice long password for /home, and it will ask for the passphrase during start-up, which I was very happy with. But it's got me wondering. Exactly how secure is this? Let's say I can use either OpenSUSE 10.1 or Ubuntu Dapper .. Say someone steals my laptop. Is it possible they will ever get hold of my data (ie. decrypt it)? Should I be encrypting more than just /home? (I was thinking about /tmp -- but I don't want to keep entering in loads of passphrases on every boot). Is it possible to encrypt / at all? That would be very handy, then it's just one passphrase, and I know that everything is secure, but I know I can expect a performance hit with this (which is not important). Cheers, Richard.

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64 bit operating systems
by Nick Daniels 16 May '06

16 May '06

Hi Many thanks for all the advice: I downloaded Suse 10.1x64 this weekend and it runs perfectly, and detect all my hardware, however, I am determined to get Kubuntu/ Ubuntu running as well The problem with the Xsever not starting in Ubuntu 64 bit appears forums, with the answer "change the driver from "nv" to "vesa" in xorg.conf" How can I edit xorg.conf from the command line? Kind regard- Nick Daniels

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NHS to use Linux
by Stuart Bailey 16 May '06

16 May '06

Thought this might be of some interest... http://www.novell.com/offices/emea/uk/news/press/2006/newsletter_nhs.html -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Owner) Linux Specialist (0845) 6583563 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ----------------------------------------

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 15 May '06

15 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!)

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Heeeelp! My display system is rather messed up.
by Barry Samuels 14 May '06

14 May '06

First an apology. This message may appear twice because I forgot to set my identity in the mailer so the first one may not make it. I'm running Debian Testing (Etch). I've been waiting 6 months to do an update because K3b was missing from the distribution for about that time and it has just reappeared. So I did the update and then discovered that my mga drivers from Matrox no longer work. I see that other people had the same problem. There is an MGA driver package listed but it depends on the xserver-xorg-core package which isn't in the distribution (this is getting ridiculous). Matrox don't (yet?) provide a driver for xorg 6.9 but after a search I found that someone had modified the latest Matrox driver to suit 6.9 which I have now installed. There is still something seriously wrong with the display system however and I don't know if it's an xorg thing or something else. I don't think it's the new MGA driver because I get console problems even if I don't run X. If I run 'joe', the editor, from a standard console (No X) I find I cannot get out using Ctrl-C, it's just ignored, but I can exit with Ctrl-K-X. However I then have to type 'reset' to get the console to behave properly. Whilst in the editor I often can't scroll down to see the end of the file. I cannot start X as a user but I can as root. If I start X as root and then exit I have to do the 'reset' thing again. I can start KDM as root and then log in as a user but if I logout, back to KDM, I'm stuck because Ctrl-Alt-Fn doesn't work either. All I can do is reboot. Is this likely to be an xorg problem and where do I look to solve it? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Heeeelp! my display is rather messed up.
by Barry Samuels 14 May '06

14 May '06

I'm running Debian Testing (Etch). I've been waiting 6 months to do an update because K3b was missing from the distribution for about that time and it has just reappeared. So I did the update and then discovered that my mga drivers from Matrox no longer work. I see that other people had the same problem. There is an MGA driver package listed but it depends on the xserver-xorg-core package which isn't in the distribution (this is getting ridiculous). Matrox don't (yet?) provide a driver for xorg 6.9 but after a search I found that someone had modified the latest Matrox driver to suit 6.9 which I have now installed. There is still something seriously wrong with the display system however and I don't know if it's an xorg thing or something else. I don't think it's the new MGA driver because I get console problems even if I don't run X. If I run 'joe', the editor, from a standard console (No X) I find I cannot get out using Ctrl-C, it's just ignored, but I can exit with Ctrl-K-X. However I then have to type 'reset' to get the console to behave properly. Whilst in the editor I often can't scroll down to see the end of the file. I cannot start X as a user but I can as root. If I start X as root and then exit I have to do the 'reset' thing again. I can start KDM as root and then log in as a user but if I logout, back to KDM, I'm stuck because Ctrl-Alt-Fn doesn't work either. All I can do is reboot. Is this likely to be an xorg problem and where do I look to solve it? Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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