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iso burning with cdrecord
by Ian bell 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

I've been wanting to try out syllable from this moths LXF cover disk which involves buring a (bootable) iso file to a CDR. This is casuing me some grief and only a small amount of success. I tried two different windows progs on the wife's (XP) laptop, Nero and Sonic - neither works. The I downloaded a free CD burner for windows, tried the 'burn iso' option, gave it the file name and bingo it worked. So at least I know the iso file is OK. The I dug out my old Iomega 4X USB 1.0 burner and plugged it into my Slackware laptop. As roo cdrecord -scanbus shows the drive OK. However, according to LXF all I need to do to burn the iso is: cdrecord -v dev=1,0,0 isofilename.iso cdrecord goes off and writes a file of the right size, I can see where it has been burned on the disk but it don't boot. What am I doing wrong? Ian

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Virtual K(V)M
by Peter Onion 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

Does anyone know of any existing tools/programs that allow a single keyboard and mouse to be switched between multiple machines ? For example, if I move the mouse off the left edge of host1's screen I would like it to appear at the right edge of host2's screen. I've already been looking at evdev and that seems like a good starting point. Sometimes 4 keyboards and mice get in the way ! And please don't reply with "buy a KVM" because that would be a kludge ! Peter

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CPU temperature monitoring
by Chris Green 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

My computer happily tells me how hot all the bits are and allows me to set alarms etc. but doesn't give me a clue as to what is 'too hot'. So, what sort of temeperatures are reasonable to see for 'CPU' and 'System'? Currently the CPU is 56 degrees celsius. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Re: Re: [ALUG] Best Linux Out There?
by Peter 10 Mar '06

10 Mar '06

There is a lot to be said for Mandriva. It has very comprehensive set of configuration guis - most ALUG people do not need them, but its nice for the rest of us. It will install all the desktop environments you will ever want with no strain. Its easier to install new stuff than Suse because you do not seem to get caught in the endless circle of dependencies as much. It is quite stable. There are lots of rpms for it. I prefer it to Suse, which I have installed with a couple of people, and have had some irritations with. The only real criticism is that moving from version to version is a bit problematic, and you have to agree with what most informed people say, that it is a bit ridiculous to have to do a clean install for every major upgrade. But this applies to everything except Debian or maybe also Gentoo. I think Suse is a bit better, it has a sort of cleanup tool, which seems to work. if you want Debian based, and you want simple and ordinary user friendly, its worth looking at PCLinux and Mepis. Both use apt for packaging. Both come on one CD. PCL has all the Mandriva admin stuff. Worth a serious look. Both are only KDE, but you can add Gnome easily enough. The one I really like is elive. That is a work of art. From the country that brought you the Trappist Triple, and the paintings of Breughel, and you know it as soon as it starts up.... If you want fairly stripped down and reasonably fast for an old machine, Vector and Vector Soho are not bad. If you want super stripped down and very fast for a very old machine, DSL. But if you want to laugh aloud, elive. Peter

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15" monitor for a poor student
by Paul 10 Mar '06

10 Mar '06

Hi Simon (Cyanide ?) Didn't note your email addy last night... Have a Compaq 15" monitor sitting here - Contact me off list and we can make arrangements for it's collection sometime next week. Regards, Paul.

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RE: [ALUG] Best Linux Out There?
by Keith Watson 09 Mar '06

09 Mar '06

> From: Simon Royal Sent: 09 March 2006 14:52 > > Hi > > I have posted a few posting for opinions on some > distributions of Linux and have still not come to any conclusions. > > What is the best Linux out there in terms of user interface, > compatibility with 3 party hardware and general range of > software available. > > I know more and more software developers and producing linux > versions of their software but I want to run Linux on a > laptop with wireless internet, any suggestions please. > My personal favourite is the latest release of Ubuntu (5.10 - Breezy Badger). I've found that it seems to support everything pretty much out of the box and seems to be good at recognising laptop h/w. See <http://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportMachinesLaptops?highlight=%28lapt op%29> for more info. Being based on Debian using Synaptic to keep the system up to date is a doddle. I haven't tried the next release (6.04 Dapper Drake) so can't say how much improvement there's been between it and 5.10, but I found 5.10 to be a lot better then the previous Warty Warthog release and, hopefully, Dapper will improve on 5.10 as much. Try going over to the Ubuntu wiki site <http://wiki.ubuntu.com> and searching for pages with Dapper, Laptop or Wireless in their titles. Lots of info. Regards, Keith ____________ The natural order of things includes us, and its laws are our laws. We are an endless moving stream in an endless moving stream. - Jisho Warner

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APT GPG error
by Richard Lewis 09 Mar '06

09 Mar '06

Does anyone know why I get the following warning message whenever I use apt-get update? W: GPG error: http://mirror.ox.ac.uk unstable Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 010908312D230C5F W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems Is it to do with the mirror.ox.ac.uk mirror? Or is it my set up? I also get a warning when I use apt-get install and upgrade that the packages can't be authenticated which I assume is another symptom of the same problem. Does anyone know what it is? Cheers, Richard --------------------------- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ ---------------------------

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CUPS
by Andy Trevor 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

Hi guys, anyone know if it is possible via CUPS to tag the bottom of each page with the user ID that printed it ? This is aimed at schools where the users are less than careful with their paper usage. I have generic quotas per user per printer per day but would like to know easily who printed what. -- Regards Andy Trevor Technical Director Cutter Project Limited Tel: 07840988311 Fax: 08704781495 http:www.cutterproject.co.uk -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 06 Mar '06

06 Mar '06

The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 9th March. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. People will be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. Topics for discussion will no doubt be as varied as ever. The Reindeer has a reasonable selection of beer as well as decent coffee (with biscuits, if you're lucky). Directions to the Reindeer can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/reindeer.html Pictures of some of the regulars, and irregulars, and, well, just some pictures of people that might or might not turn up are available from: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2006-02-ALUG/ (this was the last meet) http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for. We're /normally/ just to the left of the main entrance, though sometimes we've ended up at the far end of the pub beside the pool table, as there are comfy seats at that end. J. -- 101 things you can't have too | .''`. Debian GNU/Linux Developer much of : 41 - Tea. | : :' : Happy to accept PGP signed | `. `' or encrypted mail - RSA + | `- DSA keys on the keyservers.

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KDE System/Storage Media
by Richard Lewis 06 Mar '06

06 Mar '06

Hello list, This is an extremely non-urgent question: I recently did a fresh install of Debian unstable (20060219) from DVDs on my laptop. I use KDE (3.5.1) and have found that the handy little icons for my media storage devices from the URI system:/media (or just media:/, I think its the same thing) have all gone except for the mounted hard disk! I used to have ones for my /unmounted/ CD drive and my /unmounted/ USB stick. They re-appear when I mount either device but I'd like to have them available all the time. (Not for any good reason, I just like them!) They're also not present on KDE's Media Storage panel applet (which I guess probably uses the media:/ URI to get its information). I've looked around the KDE Control Centre and the /usr/share/kde -like and ~/.kde directories but I can't seem to find how the Media Storage section of the system:/ location is controlled. Does anyone how I may be able to make them come back? Cheers, Richard

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 06 Mar '06

06 Mar '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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DMA errors
by Barry Samuels 06 Mar '06

06 Mar '06

Wayne Many thanks for your help it is much appreciated. On 2006.03.03 23:06, Wayne Stallwood wrote: > On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 22:11 +0000, Barry Samuels wrote: > > > > to get a full drive status and test results...if you can't make > > > sense of them then post the results here. > > > > Results below. > > Looks to be shot I am afraid, however your drive has warranty until > this time next year so I'd copy your system over to another drive and > get that one sent away on a RMA request. > > The logged errors are showing as external interface errors, but the > internal self test failed at block 49372246. Usually this means that > the drive has so many bad sectors that it cannot remap any > more..currently your drive thinks it has remapped 208 sectors. > > You'd probably find that if you ran badblocks on it (be very very > careful with badblocks some of the options will overwrite all the > data in a particularly unrecoverable way) you would find some bad > sectors scattered all over it....Check your backups and replace it > ASAP is my advice. Badblocks had got up to 1700+ bad blocks when I finally stopped it. This, incidentally, appears to affect only one partition. > One more thing..for a 7200 RPM drive I would say that 51 degrees is a > little on the warm side...Even my music server which is in a really > poorly vented NAS box case with no fans other than a sub miniature > case fan has a 7200 RPM drive that has never been over about 42C > > Whether this has caused the failure (through bad case ventilation) or > is a symptom of the failure I am not sure...I would check the temp of > the other drive though. If that is equally high then I'd consider a > case fan. On a standard ATX case there is sometimes a place for a fan > in front of the drive bays..put a fan to suck air in on this > position...if there isn't a space there then put in a rear fan (which > should be set to blow air out). One thing that I'm really good at is forgetting - in fact I would say I'm a 'Master' on that subject. I have only just realised that this problem coincides with the fitting of a hard drive silencing kit. Removing that from the drive reduces the temperature to 21 degrees. The case cooling is fine. It has one fan at the front and one at the back and both are 120mm. CPU temperatures are also fine. The silencing kit and the drive came from the same retailer so I shall tackle them about it. It certainly appears that the silencing kit has caused the overheating and damage. I already have a duplicate drive in the case which is mirroring the working drive and I booted from the mirror drive yesterday to test it and it all works. I shall be swapping that as the working drive and the faulty one can go back with the silencing kit. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Simple photo manager utility - recommendations
by Chris Green 05 Mar '06

05 Mar '06

What do others use as a file manager for photographs? I think what I'm after really is a simple file manager utility that shows files as thumbnail images rather than just filenames so I can see what the pictures are, select them and organise them in folders. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Routing/URL qustion
by Chris Green 05 Mar '06

05 Mar '06

I get my ADSL service from UKFSN and from the outside world my domain name is 84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net, I have my firewall set up so that HTTP requests get routed to my Slackware Linux box. In addition I have www.isbd.ltd.uk at Just-The-Name with web forwarding set up so that it routes HTTP requests to my home Linux system. Is there any way that I can set my home system so that URLs of the form http://www.isbd.ltd.uk/<something> will work from systems on the LAN behind the firewall? If it can be made to work for all systems that would be great but just the Linux box would be better than nothing. As it is it is quite difficult to be sure that when I post a URL (for an image I want to refer to in a mail for example) that it is correct. As it is at the moment if I go to:- http://isbd.ltd.uk/myimages/toggle.JPG The URL gets translated to:- http://84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net/myimages/toggle.JPG which is correct, but I get a wierd error page which says:- Object Not Found The requested URL '/myimages/toggle.JPG' was not found on the RomPager server. Return to last page Maybe I've got the URL wrong but, if so, how do I diagnose it? There is nothing in the apache error log. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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DMA errors
by Barry Samuels 05 Mar '06

05 Mar '06

My computer has 1 main (primary) IDE drive of 250GB. Recently I have added anothe 250GB drive onto the same cable as secondary. At a set time during the night changed files from the primary drive are backed up onto the secondary drive using Find/CPIO. When this backup happens I get many of the following errors in my logs: Mar 3 07:35:16 dataman1 kernel: hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError}, LBAsect=440937085, high=26, low=4729469, sector=232525840 Mar 3 07:35:16 dataman1 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:02 (hda), sector 232525840 Mar 3 07:35:16 dataman1 kernel: hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } The values vary but the messages are basically the same. After the backup at 1:00 AM there are no more messages until Cron Daily is run at 7:30 AM when they repeat. However after that, whatever I do on the computer, there are no more DMA error messages until the next backup. This did not happen at all until the new drive was installed and the backup sessions started. Both drives are set for UDMA5 (it says in the BIOS). I don't see why these errors should occur for hda as it is only being read during the backup whereas hdb is being written to but then I don't know anything about DMA. I tried changing UDMA5 to UDMA3 on hda to no effect. It is now back to UDMA5. I would dearly like some suggestions from the experts. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Humax PVR9200T and Linux per USB -- any experiences?
by Jan T. Kim 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

Dear list, The PVR-9200T is a DVB-T receiver / HD recorder with an USB interface, see http://www.humaxdigital.com/uk/products/pvr-9200t.asp Does anyone here know what the USB interface has to offer from a Linux perspective? The technical specification and user manual are not too informative, they just indicate that there is some "media eLinker.exe" program included, which allows copying recorded video from the recorder's hard disk to a computer, but it's not clear to me whether I could also do this with Linux (the docs just mention the Windows software and don't provide any technical details about the device's USB port). Ideally, I would like to simply mount the recorder's HD and copy the recording in question to some more permanent storage -- but does the PVR-9200T implement the USB mass storage class? Best regards, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | email: jtk(a)cmp.uea.ac.uk | | WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*

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my computer frozes at boot loading
by Paul, Jean R 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

I am wondering if anyone has encountered the same problems. I have installed dual boot with Mandrake 10 and windows XP. When i turn on my computer if either frozes before the LILO or restarts after i have chosen the operating. Recently when Windows was chosen the computer didn't load XP at all. In addition while i am working with linux, the computer frozes at any time, or just reboots. i would appreciate any help from people who have had the same experience with their PC.

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"keyring camera"
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Hi Folks, Does anyone either have (and be willing to sell for a reasonable price), or know where in the Norwich/ K.Lynn/Ely/Cambridge/BSE area one could buy, one of those little "keyring" style digital cameras (e.g. Phillips 007, but not necessarily)? Flash not required, but reasonably decent photo quality is desirable. The usual shops, even specialist digitial photo shops, don't seem to have such things at the moment, but maybe I'm not searching web sites efficiently. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 02-Mar-06 Time: 16:32:22 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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RE: [ALUG] "keyring camera"
by Keith Watson 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

> From: Keith Watson Sent: 02 March 2006 16:40 > > From: Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk Sent: 02 March 2006 16:32 > > > > Hi Folks, > > > > Does anyone either have (and be willing to sell for a reasonable > > price), or know where in the Norwich/ K.Lynn/Ely/Cambridge/BSE area > > one could buy, one of those little "keyring" style digital cameras > > (e.g. Phillips 007, but not necessarily)? > > > > Flash not required, but reasonably decent photo quality is > desirable. > > > > The usual shops, even specialist digitial photo shops, > don't seem to > > have such things at the moment, but maybe I'm not searching > web sites > > efficiently. > > > > With thanks, > > Ted. > > <http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=35313&DOY=#DOY&criteria=#c riteria> > > Regards, > > Keith > ____________ > Live life as life lives itself. - Zen Proverb Unfortunately doesn't seen to be Linux compatible. Regards, Keith ____________ CLAIRVOYANT, n. Persons who have the power of seeing that which is invisible to their patrons, namely, that they are fools. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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RE: [ALUG] "keyring camera"
by Keith Watson 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

> From: Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk Sent: 02 March 2006 16:32 > > Hi Folks, > > Does anyone either have (and be willing to sell for a > reasonable price), or know where in the Norwich/ > K.Lynn/Ely/Cambridge/BSE area one could buy, one of those > little "keyring" style digital cameras (e.g. Phillips 007, > but not necessarily)? > > Flash not required, but reasonably decent photo quality is desirable. > > The usual shops, even specialist digitial photo shops, don't > seem to have such things at the moment, but maybe I'm not > searching web sites efficiently. > > With thanks, > Ted. http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=35313&DOY=#DOY&criteria=#cr iteria Regards, Keith ____________ Live life as life lives itself. - Zen Proverb

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transfer pictures cured
by robert 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

I found out that all i had to do was to send a picture message direct to my email address,though i might have to print it out first before i can use it(A4 size). Robert

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Transferring pictures
by robert 01 Mar '06

01 Mar '06

I was just wondering whether you can transfer pictures from a mobile phone to a compter with Linux on.On Suse 9.2 my Sony Ericsson registers but only the modem in it.The phone came with a pc disk but only works on Windows XP which i don't have(hence Linux).My phone is Sony Ericsson k608i Thanks Robert

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Charity Webhosting
by Tony 01 Mar '06

01 Mar '06

Can anyone recommend a reliable host for a local registered charity (based in Suffolk). I'm looking for Linux hosting with PHP and MySQL. I don't expect a lot of bandwidth use initially - their previous website had hardly any hits but hopefully with some fresh ideas, useage will increase. They are reforming with a new name so domain name (.co.uk) required. They are a charity that provide support to the voluntary and community sector throughout Mid Suffolk and serve other charities. They are quite happy for the hosts logo to be displayed on the site (provided it is not too overpowering!). Chances are that follow up business will follow from other charities so would be interested in details of what the host can offer on a commercial basis in respect of business introduced from other charities (and non charities). Main thing I am looking for is reliablility with very little down time. Also daily backups would be good as the site will be dynamically produced. Thanks Tony

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RE: [ALUG] Windows Vista UI
by Keith Watson 01 Mar '06

01 Mar '06

> From: Wayne Stallwood Sent: 01 March 2006 00:30 > > What do we think the implications will be for Linux when > Vista becomes available, will the KDE team try to follow on a > similar path ? Will Gnome look really old and outdated to > users coming from Windows ? well, I think Gnome, KDE, et.al. are already streets ahead when it comes to theming the UI anyway. Whenever I have non-linux aware friends/family looking over my shoulder when I'm using my system they nearly always remark on how great my "Windows" theme looks. Regards, Keith ____________ 'I can see nobody on the road.' said Alice. 'I only wish I had such eyes,' said the King 'to be able to see Nobody! And at this distance too!' - Lewis Carroll

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miniBB
by David Noble 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Do any of you have much experience in editing the php.ini file? I compiled php without the mysql option, and although the phpinfo function and other basic functions work, for some reason I can't connect to mysql from php. I am able to connect to mysql directly; and it appears to function normally otherwise. Cheers, Dave.

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