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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 17 Apr '06

17 Apr '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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Meeting report: 2nd Thursday Norwich pub meet, 13th April
by Jonathan McDowell 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

To make up for forgetting to send a meeting reminder this week, here's a brief meeting report. Despite the lack of a reminder there was a good turn out. Richard Lewis, Steve Engledow, Dave Reynolds, Becca Sibley, Paul Corner, Rob[0] (no idea about surname), Neil (again, no idea about surname), Adam Bower, Brett Parker, Eli and myself where all there. We were happily ensconced in our usual corner to the left of the door. A game of Frustration (which appears to be renamed Ludo) was played, though I'm not sure if it was ever completed. Likewise Steve kept starting random games of Pontoon. More on topic discussions included Neil talking about his Zaurus (I no longer have mine), comparisons of recent AMD/Intel chips (in particular with respect to power consumption) and the difficulties of producing a document management system when all you've got is Word (with an interesting diversion into how UK deers got briefly blamed for BSE in Chile). I've no idea what went on at the other end of the table though. A good night I think with a good turnout. Hopefully we'll get an equally good result at the Syleham kit meet in a couple of weeks (Saturday 30th April). J. [0] Dave claims Rob looks like Noel Fielding of the Mighty Boosh, as seen at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8586532516895205430 -- Revd. Jonathan McDowell, ULC | umop 3pisdn w,I u3ym hx3s os w,I

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Slax and network?
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 13 Apr '06

13 Apr '06

Hi Folks, I thought I'd toy with Slaxkware in the shape of the "Slackware Live", or "Slax", CD for which an ISO can be downloaded from http://slax.linux-live.org/ It seems very nice! But there's a network problem which puzzles me. I tried it on a laptop, whose normal LAN address is 192.168.1.5, using as gateway another machine on that net is 192.168.1.3 and which also connects to an ADSL router which has address 192.168.1.1; and has a second NIC for local subnet 192.168.0.0 So, once I'm logged in to Slax (which defaults its network to 192.168.0.0), I ifconfig -a eth0 192.168.1.5 which seems to do that job OK; then route del default eth0 route add default gw 192.168.1.3 eth0 which also seems to do that job OK. When I now do ifconfig and route the results are identical to what that laptop has in normal use. However, while I can ping 192.168.1.3 [the gateway nachine] ping 192.168.1.1 [the router] any attempt to say ping 192.168.0.1 [a third machine on the other subnet] or any external IP address such as ping 130.88.200.20 fails. It's as though the gateway is not acting as a gateway. I can't make out why this should be so, since the laptop setup looks the same as it does in normal use, and nothing has been changed on any other machine. Any ideas, anyone? With thanks, and best wishes, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Apr-06 Time: 11:26:03 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Firefox foreign characters problem
by Chris Green 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

When I run Firefox on Solaris (and I think Slackware, so it is a Linux question, sort of) I get odd funnies in the character display when displaying Polish characters such as:- a with a cedilla l with a line through it etc. These are characters which don't have 'west' European equivalents. I have no problems with French accents or German umlauts. If I run my Windows copy of Firefox the characters display correctly. Under Solaris/Linux the characters are displayed as the right character but either too large, or too small or in a different font. It's not the View - Character Encoding setting, that is correct (and if you change it the characters in question change to funny symbols). So, what do I need to do to get these characters displayed correctly? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Thinkpads
by Syd Hancock 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

Just a note to agree with the recommendation for the T23 Thinkpad. Got one from a seller in Ipswich via ebay a couple of years ago and it still serves me very well - very good value for money. Just about everything works in linux including sound and ethernet - out of the box on a stock mandriva 2006 install and no doubt just as easy on other distros. All those handy function keys for volume, screen brightness, switching to external monitor, suspend to ram etc all work although 'hibernate' to disk using acpi doesn't work for me yet. I use a wireless card in the card-bus slot and it switches cleanly and automatically from ethernet to wireless and back again. Using the GUI tools to setup ethernet and wireless networking was very simple - has to be as I'm no techie. Not a 'desktop-replacement' and no 3D graphics in the X driver but in general it does everything that you need from a laptop on a day-to-day basis. Handles KDE, OpenOffice.org, Firefox etc with no problems. I added a DVD-ROM/CD-writer and K3b works fine. I take it to school sometimes and connect to the overhead projector and sound system to play music DVDs to the kids as a special treat - helps me to enjoy work more too :-) Syd

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php-xml, mandriva etc - long
by Syd Hancock 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

Hi Dave Briggs Apologies for not threading - just read the posts on the archive. First - hopefully you are using MDV2006 and not an earlier version and especially not one of the magazine cover disks that appear from time to time. Because of the lead-in time before publication they are always outdated and in some cases have had various packages added and removed randomly. If you cannot d/l a recent version then email me. 1. Internet connectivity on your linux box - you really do need this for any distro in order to install updates as well as new packages. Can you use ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) on the windows computer and connect your mandriva box to it with ethernet? I've done this in the past with no problem - that was pre-XP though so things may have changed e.g. not sure if XP-home has ICS - it seems to lack most things that are useful. 2. easyurpmi - hopefully you have googled for this by now but if not, here is a brief intro. urpmi is the mandriva command-line utility for installing rpm packages. It has the major advantage of handling dependencies unlike classic 'rpm' as well as several others. The Software Installer in MCC (Mandriva Control Center) is a GUI front-end to this and other utilities - generally slower than command-line (of course) but has many useful sorting functions, information about all files and file-locations to be installed etc etc. easyurpmi is a website (group of mirrored websites) that make setting-up the sources for apps very easy. You just put in your system details (processor, distro version, repository types required etc) and then copy/paste the output into a root command line terminal. Try 'man urpmi' for more info. http://easyurpmi.zarb.org is the place to go. You need as a basic minimum update-source, main, contrib, plf-free and plf-nonfree. You can then disable the CD/DVD installation media (in MCC) if you wish as main contains more packages than fit onto the DVD/CDs. php-xml may be an example of this. I would suggest installins update-source first and installing all the updates. Even on dial-up it can be done overnight. plf will let you install stuff that enables encrypted-dvd reading and many other non-free multi-media formats that make the jolly old inter-web such a joy to use (heh...). plf are now hosting repositories for ubuntu as well. 3. php-xml is on the devel (aka 'community') mirrors in 'main' and may well be on the 'official' branch of the main tree. In fact many people, myself included, use the devel (aka 'community' in MDV2006 although not in earlier versions) repositories instead of the so-called 'official' sources (hopelessly confusing naming conventions BTW). Despite its name, devel contains the most recent and (generally) stable versions. If you do this then you do not need a seaparate 'update-source' and you will need rregularly to update all sources and install updates from the command line as root: urpmi.update -a; urpmi --auto-select 4. Then there is 'cooker' which is the stuff actually in the process of being developed - not for general use. It's the same structure that debian uses of course. 5. There are many other repositories of rpms built for mandriva although reports of how stable they are vary widely. 'Seer of Souls' (yeah, really) has a good reputation at present although I don't use it myself but does offer things like KDE3.5 etc that mandriva has not yet incorporated. google will find it for you if you want to give it a whirl - and selecting/deselecting repository sources in MCC is very quick and easy. 6. Look in the boot section of MCC - you should be able to set the options to login your user and start X from there if they were reset when you changed the graphics driver. Hope this helps. Feel free to email me off-list if you prefer. Syd

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Re: ThinkPad & Wireless
by Robert Grant (DEV) 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

>> from work... if only shockwave and some decent qualitative >> research software were available for linux things would be >> perfect. > >Not sure what you mean by "qualitative research software" >(let alone "decent") -- if you were more explicit we might >make some good suggestions! I've been doing quantitative >research with Linux for the last 23 years, and by now there's >a lot of good stuff about. But "qualitative" -- what do you >need for this? > 'Qualitative' analysis software is designed for research based on sources such as interviews, observational notes or transcribed media. The core functionality is to allow some kind of 'coding' of text files. For example, when reading through my interviews with Tanzanian businessmen I mark any section of text that deals with 'source of start-up capital'. Then whenever I want the software will show me on a single page all the passages relating to this concept. Obviously, there are lots of other such concepts like 'gaining a good reputation', 'doing business with kin' and so on. The software allows me to organise these in various ways, do boolean searches for passages relating to combinations of concepts, incorporate quantitative data on respondents and much else besides. People used to use boxes of index cards to do this kind of work. I use QSR's package Nvivo, which is not available for Linux. Neither, I believe are the other half-dozen widely used programs. I apologise however, that this remark was rather lazy in that I have not investigated this very thoroughly yet. I was carried away at both the fact that I've got a few things working well in Kubuntu recently (remember I am a strugluger) and that for once perhaps I could offer something relevant here (the 3Com Xjack card info). Best wishes, Rob

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php-xml
by Dave Briggs 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

Hi guys Managed to get Mandriva to work in the end - set the graphics driver to be a generic ATI one and it seems to work - though I have to log in and load KDE by hand now. I want to install MediaWiki to have a play with it, and have created the database, put everything in place but the installation php script is moaning that I don't have the php-xml package installed. A quick google has proved pretty inconclusive, and there is no sign of this on Rpmdrake. Any clues on where I can get this from? One complication is that I don't have internet access on this machine, so I have to download it on my Windows box and transfer it across. Cheers Dave

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

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Re: ThinkPad & Wireless (Rob Grant)
by R.Grant＠uea.ac.uk 09 Apr '06

09 Apr '06

[Simon Royal wrote] > Hi > > I have decided to buy a cheap PC laptop and run Linux on it. I was > going to buy a Mac laptop - being a Mac fan, but I can get a second > hand PC laptop with higher specs cheaper than a Mac one. And as it is > going to run Linux it doesn't matter. > > I have been told IBM Thinkpads are good for Linux can anyone recommend > anything in particular? > > Also I want to buy a wireless PCMCIA card that will work on a laptop > and under Linux, any suggestions? I agree that Thinkpads are an excellent choice, both in general and for Linux in particular. For wireless, some web research told me that any card with an Atheros chipset should be supported by my distro- Kubuntu Breezy- so I ordered a 3Com Office Connect Xjack 3CRXJK10075 11g card from Amazon for just under £40. This worked out of the box beautifully. It has a retractable arial, so no awkward protrusion when not in use. Pushing the arial in also turns off power to the card. The only downside is a flashing green LED that you could use to guide in an aircraft- but a small piece of black insulation tape cures this. The card is actually easier to use in Ubuntu than in XP, which I have on the same machine as a dual boot. I think that maybe this is because installing the 3Com software was a mistake. Anyway, just getting it to connect is rather clunky. Opting for Thinkpad also means that you can take advantage of a lot of helpful stuff that others have written on the web about their experiences with linux. There are also packages written specifically for the machine to get features such as volume on-sreen display and trackpoint configuration working. The first of these is easily accessible from the Ubuntu repositories. The other requires a little fiddling with kernel patches. Trackpoint is so splendid imho, that I wouldn't buy another laptop without it. The relative 'stickyness' of its functioning in Ubuntu is one of the very few downsides compared to Windows. So even though I am probably the least technically able person on this list by a long way I'm going to try and do the kernel patching. Or at least I would if I didn't suspect that the patch will be included in the kernel that ships with Dapper. On the downside this will mean compiling driver modules for the built in winmodem again- but if I can do it anyone can. The Thinkpad I have by the way is a T22, PIII 900MHz 256MB purchased from ebay second hand for about £305 including shipping in 2004. The only upgrade I've done is to replace the 20G HD with a 60G one when it burnt out. A lovely keyboard for typing and a nice sharp display. Case has cracked near the DVD/floppy drive bay: my holding it by the front edge probably contributed to this. Now the thing is working pretty beautifully with Kubuntu. Plays most DVDs (mission-critical as I have no TV) using Mplayer, which also records audio streams like BBC, all my mp3s with Amarok, opens Word, Excel and Powerpoint files from work... if only shockwave and some decent qualitative research software were available for linux things would be perfect. By the way, if you do decide to give the 3Com card a try, make sure that you check that the precise model you go for has actually got a supported chipset like Atheros- that is why I gave the full part spec above. Best wishes, Rob

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Mandriva on Toshiba laptop
by Dave Briggs 08 Apr '06

08 Apr '06

Hi chaps I am playing around with different distros at the moment, and having got Ubuntu working on my Toshiba laptop, I soon got bored and had a go with Mandriva. I'm finding that even more boring, though, because the b*st*rd thing won't work. It either gets as far as the KDE desktop loading up, plays a little tune, then keeps playing the last note of that tune on, and on, and on... Eventually I get bored, and switch the thing off. Then, when I startup again, it only gets as far as the KDE loading screen, it says something like "restoring session" and *then* hangs. Any ideas on what might be wrong, and what I might be able to do to get things going again? Assume I know nothing, because I don't! Cheers Dave

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Re: [ALUG] Talks offered Ted Haegar from Novell and Jono Bacon
by MJ Ray 08 Apr '06

08 Apr '06

I wrote about the 20th April meeting offer: > Either way, I'll publicise it if I have final details by Tue 4th. Are there confirmed details for this talks meeting yet and do you need any help with it? Best wishes, -- MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ irc.oftc.net/slef Jabber/SIP ask

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Newbie Distros
by Simon Royal 08 Apr '06

08 Apr '06

Hi I am looking at different distros. I need high hardware compatibility, ease of use for newbies plus reasonable speed out of dated hardware. I have yet to find a laptop, but have been looking at anything from Pentium 2 300Mhz upwards. Ubuntu I have tinkered with Ubuntu 5.10 live cd on a G3 iBook 500Mhz with 386MB ram and an AMD 1.3Ghz desktop with 768MB RAM and both were ok speed wise. I know an install would speed things up anyway. OpenSUSE I have heard good things about OpenSUSE but I don't know how power hungry it is. Vector Linux Finally I was looking at Vector Linux as it is aimed to run comfortably with only 32MB RAM and under a 1gig install space, but I don't know anyone who has used it. If you could help point in the right direction for a low specced distro that runs on a laptop and is usuable on a daily basis without having to delve to much into the Linux underbelly just to get things going. Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.simonroyal.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac

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Cobalt RAQ4
by Mark Rogers 08 Apr '06

08 Apr '06

I have a Cobalt RAQ4 sat in front of me, which I either need to reinstall with its native OS or stick something else on it. I don;t have any particular purpose in mind for it, although as it has two network ports I'm thinking of using it as a gateway/firewall. Suggestions for an OS/distro? -- Mark Rogers More Solutions Ltd :: 0845 45 89 555

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RE: [ALUG] Re: [Fsfe-uk] Date Stamp
by John Seago 07 Apr '06

07 Apr '06

There still remains, for me at least the puzzle that unless I set Kmail to display the FULL headers of the digest messages from FSFE, the 'Long Headers' date everything from FSFE UK Thu Jan 1 00:59:59 1970. I have however carried out an experiment 'Standard Headers', 'Brief Headers' and 'Fancy Headers' don't display the date on the email, (the digest version), at all. Having changed the headers there seems to be no alteration to the date displayed in the folder. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Zero-width non-breaking space/Unicode byte-order mark
by John atkinson 07 Apr '06

07 Apr '06

I have a new computer loaded with SuSe Linux 10.When I attempt to invoke a program I have successfully used in the past for many years I get the response "cannot execute binary file". The file, (written for me years ago) forming the program has "execute" permission. I understand this means that the operating system realises this is a program, but not a standard binary program file containing machine instructions. I was told the operating system looks for an interpreter program to run it. The interpreter, not containing the expected character sequence, uses the default system interpreter and looks at the first line of the file, finds that it contains non-printable byte values and so condemns it as a binary file. My program file, as written, contains only printable characters and starts with the identifying #! /bin/sh It turns out that to the first character in the file there has been added a "Unicode byte-order mark" otherwise known, I am told, as a "zero-width non-breaking space". This by its nature is not a printable character nor a visible one. It is one, however, devilishly difficult to get rid of on a permanent basis. Following directions I tried, starting with the command "locale". The output indeed ended with "UTF8", the initial cause, I understand, of all the trouble. Again following directions I typed "LANG=en_GB" followed by "locale" again and then, using "vi" edited the file. The hated rogue character showed as three components in blue. When, using "x", I got rid of them, I thought I was on top of the problem, but the final stage which I will quote in full defeated me. This is 'Finally, edit the file $HOME /.bash_profile and insert "LANG=en_GB" or "LC_ALL=en_GB" as appropriate to prevent the problem coming back'. The computer crashed. Moreover, I have not succeeded in locating the file. I suspect I have gone about it in the wrong way. I would be grateful for the exact key strokes required to get the file into "vi". It seems strange to me that Linux, without my knowledge or my permission should insert a zero-width non-breaking space that not only prevents a program, very important to me (and, no doubt others), from working, but makes it difficult to handle the file because the first byte is not a printable character. Please forgive my abysmal standard of computer literacy. In mitigation I would point out that I have been in touch with several gurus with, it seems, a total absence of familiarity with the zero-width non-breaking space alias the Unicode byte-order mark. John Atkinson (Ancient John -- and I do not mind being called that because I now am ancient)

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HTML
by John Seago 07 Apr '06

07 Apr '06

It would appear, despite my signature lines that I have been sending HTML email, I have two installations of Slackware 10.2 and the HTML Toolbar has been turned on on one installation. and that when using that installation I have been sending HTML email's. I did think that it may have been turned on by my wife, however she has only used the browser to look up the likely implications for her chickens should Avian Flu break out. I can only apologise to any to whom this has caused inconvenience. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: [Fsfe-uk] Date Stamp
by John Seago 06 Apr '06

06 Apr '06

On Thursday 06 Apr 2006 12:01,MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: > Is this the only list with this effect for you? Yes. > Has anyone else on fsfe-uk noticed it? I have raised it once or twice with FSFE, I have no knowledge that others have the same problem, or indeed if it is considered to be a problem. > Can ALUG help us at all? -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: [Fsfe-uk] Date Stamp
by MJ Ray 06 Apr '06

06 Apr '06

John Seago <johnseago(a)two-ravens.org.uk> > I find that once again FSFE-UK has reverted to not timestamping emails > to me at all, and they are again arriving at my machine, allegedly, on > Thu Jan 1 00:59:59 1970 Is this the only list with this effect for you? Has anyone else on fsfe-uk noticed it? Can ALUG help us at all? Hoping, -- MJR/slef Laux nur mia opinio: vidu http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Bv sekvu http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct

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RE: [ALUG] Ubuntu/Win2K Dual Boot
by Keith Watson 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

> From: MJ Ray Sent: 03 April 2006 07:27 > > Simon Royal <s.royal(a)totalise.co.uk> > > I have two hard drives in it at present, one of which is a slave and I > > use to store my stuff on. If I was to replace it as it is only a > > 540MB drive with another bigger drive, say 2-5GB would this be enough > > to run Ubuntu on? > > Surprisingly, Ubuntu recommend 2GB of disk space as a minimum > for their standard desktop install. > > > Also how would this be affect her Windows installation on her primary > > drive? > > Not at all, although you'll need another way to boot. > > > Would installing Ubuntu interfere with booting up as I obviously want > > Windows to be the default boot method and have a boot menu that I > > could select Ubuntu on when I wanted to use it. > > I would hope that Ubuntu's boot manager (Grub, with any luck) > can do this simply, but I've not had Windows installed for > 11 years now. I've done this several times over the past couple of months. The Ubuntu install will allow you to specify where and what you want your partitions to be and will pick up the fact that you already have other OSs installed (i.e. windows) and set up grub to run dual-boot. It will set up Linux to be the default but it's a simple matter to edit the grub menu config "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst" and tweak it to how you want (hint: run "sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.old" first, then you can roll back if you get something wrong - been there, done that, etc - which is where the Ubuntu Live CD is a godsend!!). As for partition sizes; you'll need a swap partition of somewhere between 256 and 512 meg depending on your memory size (I find the size Ubuntu suggests usually works fine) and although a 2Gb partition is good enough for the basic install, if you want to install any significant extra packages or all the multimedia goodies (see http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/03/12/209257 or, imo even better, http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/) then you'll probably want 4Gb. If you have spare disk capacity then 5Gb should keep you happy for some time :o). Regards, Keith ____________ A bend in the road is not the end of the road... - unless you fail to make the turn.

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Ubuntu/Win2K Dual Boot
by Simon Royal 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

Hi I have been toying with putting Ubuntu on my eMac and dual booting with OSX. I have decided I want leave my lovely Mac well alone. Its an all-in-one machine and I would need to repartition the main drive to dual boot and my recent attempts with Yaboot have not been too successful. It would be easier to try it on my wifes PC. I have two hard drives in it at present, one of which is a slave and I use to store my stuff on. If I was to replace it as it is only a 540MB drive with another bigger drive, say 2-5GB would this be enough to run Ubuntu on? Also how would this be affect her Windows installation on her primary drive? Would installing Ubuntu interfere with booting up as I obviously want Windows to be the default boot method and have a boot menu that I could select Ubuntu on when I wanted to use it. Any help in setting this machine up to dual boot Windows 2000 - which is already installed and I don't want to mess up - and Ubuntu would be greatful. Regards Simon Royal >- The box said Windows 2000 or better, so I bought a Mac

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

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Kit meet booked
by John Woodard 02 Apr '06

02 Apr '06

I have booked the Mid Suffolk venue Syleham and Wingfield Village hall for a kit meet on Sunday 30th April 2:00pm - 6:00pm. Details of the venue and a map are available at http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/syleham.html. Normal waivers apply, your kit is your responsibility, please mark it and any associated cables etc. I will open the hall up at around 1:30ish to allow kit to be assembled etc. and will get the bar open if it is required. Any questions please post to the list. Cheers, BJ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.3/296 - Release Date: 29/03/2006

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PHP fopen writing to a device node
by Wayne Stallwood 02 Apr '06

02 Apr '06

I am trying to write some data to a device node in php..It works fine, however I am having trouble handling errors. What I want to do is, if the device fails..then prompt the user and write the data to a file instead. At the moment if my fopen fails because say the device node doesn't exist, or is busy, or because my script doesn't have the right privileges then it can be trapped with something like if (!$handle = fopen($lpdev, 'w')) { echo "Cannot write to ($lpdev) Using dump file"; $handle = fopen('/tmp/dump.txt'); } However if the device node is free but the device on the end of it isn't responding..it just sits there waiting. I have also tried if ($handle = fopen($lpdev, 'w') === FALSE){ echo "Cannot write to ($lpdev) using dump file"; $handle = fopen('/tmp/dump.txt'); } or trying to trap it with "or die" None of those seem to work either, if there is nothing responding on $lpdev (/dev/lp0) the fopen will just sit there trying to write to it (seemingly for ever) So I am guessing what I need is some sort of timeout on the fopen after which it exits and runs the alternative code....but part of me is thinking that fopen is really meant for files not devices and files are either there or not and writable or not..hence my trouble. Am I using a square peg to fill a round hole..or is there a way of wrapping up the fopen to get it to do what I want. Help as always is appreciated

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Wireless wires
by linux＠davebriggs.net 31 Mar '06

31 Mar '06

Hello chaps I have gotten hold of a Netgear MR814 and am trying to get it set up with my Tiscali broadband, using a Sagem F@st dsl modem. Anyway, the problem I have is that the cable that currently goes from the modem to the PC ends with a USB wotsit, wheras the router needs it to be an ethernet one. Tiscali sell something called a RJ45 Network Cable (1) - is this what I need? Also, I have been supplied with a USB wireless adaptor, but would plugging the router straight into the PC with an ethernet cable produce better results? (before you ask, the wireless is for my laptop!) Thanks in advance Dave 1 - http://www.tiscali.dslshop.co.uk/product_details.asp?idProduct=248

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