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10369 discussions

Damn Small Linux
by Simon Royal 26 Jan '06

26 Jan '06

Hi I have been reading about DSL (Damn Small Linux) and wondered if anyone had any experience with it. I know it is capable of running on a 386, so my problem of finding a cheap Pentium laptop to run Linux on sufficiently shouldn't be a problem. I wondered if anyone knows how stable it is? does it work with wifi cards? what the desktop is like? any general info? Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.majikb.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac

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Re: [ALUG] Linux On P2 (Was Ubuntu)
by Peter 25 Jan '06

25 Jan '06

1) Debian with either Windowmaker, fvwm, Fluxbox or Blackbox and Koffice instead of OO. 2) Slackware with same 3) DSL (fluxbox) 4) stx 5) Vector 4.3. Not Soho. 6) Astrumix 7) Maybe Beatrix, didn't work for me. 8) e-live 9) Little Debian (page seems to be only in spanish) 10) Puppy Peter

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Re: main Digest, Vol 7, Issue 29
by David Noble 25 Jan '06

25 Jan '06

I have debian running very quickly on a celeron 650/64 megs of ram. If you use a window manager like Fluxbox or FVWM, it makes all the difference. Good luck! Dave.

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Re: ubuntu
by Peter 23 Jan '06

23 Jan '06

Surely it is not the distribution? Though Slackware or the Slackware derived Vector, might be a bit faster. Surely its the Window Manager? On slow machines, fvwm or Windowmaker should run fine regardless of what distro, and kde or gnome should be painful similarly regardless of distro. Fluxbox or blackbox should be very fast. Or maybe even enlightenment? I found that WindowMaker and the others mentioned would run fine on Debian on a 200mhz mmx with 64Mb memory. Nothing with KDE or Gnome would even boot. KOffice would run fine, but OO was painful. Konqueror was fine too, though xfe was snappier as a file manager. If you want to test before you buy, boot with DSL. If DSL works well, then Ubuntu with a light WM will most probably work too. There are isos of e-live available also, if you want to test enlightenment. Peter

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 23 Jan '06

23 Jan '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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Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 22 Jan '06

22 Jan '06

Hi I have been running a Ubuntu live CD on a G3 iBook and quite liked it, its the best Linux distro I have encountered. Has anyone any experience with it. I want to buy a laptop to run it on and wondered if anyone had it running on a lo-spec machine as I am short on cash so need to find cheap laptop to run it on. I wondered if anyone has wireless experience in Ubuntu as I have a 802.11g wireless network and what machines they have been run on. Regards Simon Royal >- The box said Windows 2000 or better, so I bought a Mac

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Re: Ubuntu
by Simon 22 Jan '06

22 Jan '06

Hey, Yeah, Ubuntu rocks. It's the distro that got me into Linux 100% and I love it! If you want to run it on a low-spec machine, forget Gnome, for a start. You want to install XFCE, it's easy-- do the following; sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop Logout, and click "Sessions" on gdm. Choose XFCE and log back in. The xubuntu-desktop is just a meta package which tells Ubuntu what packages it needs to download for XFCE. Other low-resorce desktops include fluxbox and IceWM. Check them out on Google.. If you look around on the Ubuntu Forums there's a number of threads in the Customisation and Tips section which show you how to fine-tune Ubuntu. For example, disabling unwanted services makes the machine boot quicker. I've not timed mine recently but it doesn't take long at all after disabling stuff like the dialup adapter, the bluetooth module (don't have bluetooth) etc etc. http://ubuntuforums.org/ My laptop has built-in wireless 802.11g and I use it with Ubuntu all the time when I'm at home. Using a prog called "network-manager", apt-get install that for better use. It "just works"(tm).. Never had a problem with it. :) As for cheap laptops, I can't recommend Novatech highly enough. http://www.sionide.net/index.php?page=hardware That's my laptop. It was £609 but they do them much much cheaper than that. See http://www.novatech.co.uk/ -Simon Elliott ps. If you want a set of Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger CDs for PPC, let me know - I have loads.. > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 21:23:40 +0000 > From: Simon Royal <s.royal(a)totalise.co.uk> > Subject: [ALUG] Ubuntu > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Message-ID: <736C81D6-59D7-447F-A5EE-F5F9EB57FF5A(a)totalise.co.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed > > Hi > > I have been running a Ubuntu live CD on a G3 iBook and quite liked > it, its the best Linux distro I have encountered. Has anyone any > experience with it. > > I want to buy a laptop to run it on and wondered if anyone had it > running on a lo-spec machine as I am short on cash so need to find > cheap laptop to run it on. > > I wondered if anyone has wireless experience in Ubuntu as I have a > 802.11g wireless network and what machines they have been run on. > > > Regards > Simon Royal > > >- The box said Windows 2000 or better, so I bought a Mac >

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Antique computer parts: PCI ethernet cards and 5.25 inch disk drives
by Jan T. Kim 19 Jan '06

19 Jan '06

Dear group, in a cardboard box, we've found * two PCI ethernet cards (different models, a large one with a 3Com chip on it and three different sockets, and a much smaller one with just an RJ45 socket * two 5.25 inch disk drives If any of you is interested in these pieces, please send me an email. I'd like to get rid of them all at once. It's pretty clear to me that these things won't have any value unless you happen to have some rather old computer system, e.g. out of historical interest or the like. This email is just an attempt to wrest some final use out of these things before they're scrapped. 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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RE: [ALUG] apt-get question
by Keith Watson 19 Jan '06

19 Jan '06

> From: Owen Synge Sent: 14 January 2006 10:36 > > #!/bin/sh > # clone debian system > # References http://www.inittab.de/manuals/debootstrap.html > # http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:XStg8MdXobEJ:hacking.dk/talks/debian/tip… > # > # > TARGET_DIR=/mnt/hda9/ford_image > DEBIAN_MIRROR_HOST=192.168.0.12 > DEBIAN_MIRROR_PORT=9999 > > DEBIAN_APT_SOURCES=sources.list > DEBIAN_APT_INTERFACES=autoinstaller.etc.network.interfaces > DEBIAN_FSTAB=autoinstaller.etc.fstab > debootstrap sarge $TARGET_DIR > http://${DEBIAN_MIRROR_HOST}:${DEBIAN_MIRROR_PORT}/main > dpkg --get-selections > ${TARGET_DIR}/autoinstall_dpkg.db > debconf-get-selections > ${TARGET_DIR}/autoinstall_debconf.db > cp ${DEBIAN_APT_SOURCES} ${TARGET_DIR}/etc/apt/sources.list > cp ${DEBIAN_APT_INTERFACES} ${TARGET_DIR}/etc/network/interfaces > cp ${DEBIAN_FSTAB} ${TARGET_DIR}/etc/fstab chroot > ${TARGET_DIR} apt-get update > > #base-config > > > #Man kan bruge sin backup med følgende kommandoer: > > debconf-set-selections < ${TARGET_DIR}/autoinstall_debconf.db > dpkg --set-selections < ${TARGET_DIR}/autoinstall_dpkg.db > apt-get dselect-upgrade apt-get -u dist-upgrade > Cheers Owen, interesting use of debconf (now where's my Danish/English dictionary :o) ) Regards, Keith ____________ 'The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, - and, if they can't find them, make them.' - - George Bernard Shaw

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WAN/LAN IP routing/spoofing question
by Chris Green 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

My Zyxel router can limit access to its web configuration menu in various ways, i.e. it can be:- From LAN only, from WAN only or from anywhere From any IP address or from a single specified IP address The trouble is that I'd like to be able to configure it when I'm at home, that means "from LAN only, any IP address" *and* from work which means "from WAN only, specified IP address". The options are exclusive so I can't have both together. Can anyone suggest a way I can either:- Make my home machine's browser look like it's connecting from an outside IP address? or:- Make it look like a connection from work is coming from within my home LAN? I suspect the second possibility above is more likely to be possible, though I don't quite see how at the moment. The router is a Zyxel 2602HW by the way. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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OT: SGI IRIX MIPSpro C Compiler
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

I recently acquired a SGI Indy with IRIX 6.5 to run my old Ph.D. research on. This now works and I can run the original executables I built several years ago. However, I can't actually recompile any code, because I need an additional piece of software: MIPSpro C Compiler Given that the members of this group come from a variety of backgrounds, I was wondering if anyone out there has a license for this software they no longer require, or can supply it at a low cost. Any help would be useful. Thank-you in advance. -- Ashley

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OpenAdvantage
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

Hi Fenny Folks, You may be interested to study http://www.openadvantage.org and in particular http://www.openadvantage.org/about/whyfree/view which states: Why are We Free? Advantage West Midlands, the regional development agency have provided significant funding to OpenAdvantage and as a result everything on offer at our Solution Centre is free of charge. The EU is adopting a positive stance in the use of Open Source and the West Midlands is taking the lead for the UK. OpenAdvantage offer a full range of services, from consultancy, to seminars and training to enable all business's and organisations understand more, adopt and gain a business advantage from using Open Source software. EEDA anyone? 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: 17-Jan-06 Time: 12:20:44 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Any better ways to merge mbox files?
by Chris Green 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

I have two hierarchies of mbox mail, one is the 'live' one (called Mail) and the other is the archive (called MailArchive). I want to set up a cron job such that all mail that I save in the Mail hierarchy will also be automatically merged into the MailArchive hierarchy. This then allows me to delete old mail from the Mail hierarchy safe in the knowledge that it's archived. The Mail and MailArchive hierarchies have the same basic filenames and structure so a simple 'sledgehammer' approach is to do the following:- Use 'find' to traverse the Mail hieararchy. For each mbox file run 'formail' on both the Mail and the MailArchive mbox into a temporary file Run 'formail' on the temporary file to remove duplicates and put the result in place of the MailArchive mbox. Can anyone think of a more elegant way of doing this? Actually I think I've thought of one possible improvement, I can avoid that second 'formail' by adding the remove duplicates option to the first 'formail' pass. In fact that would seem to be reasonably efficient now I come to think of it. (... and don't anyone say use Maildir, I have moved to using Maildir several times over the past few years and every time I return to mbox after a few weeks. Maildir just isn't so easy to live with, for me at least) -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Introducing myself
by Luzie U. Wingen 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

Hello everybody, after meeting some of you last Thursday in the Reindeer I finally come around joining the mailing list. A short introduction why I am interested in Linux: I am using Linux some years now for scientific computing in the biosciences. There is quite a lot useful software around for Linux and doing analyses with help of scripts seems to be a much more sensible thing than doing millions of clicks on a Windows machine ... I have some experiences with Suse (yes, I am from Germany) and debian but now have to work on Redhat or Fedora. There may turn up questions related to that ... Luzie

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RE: [ALUG] DVD Burning
by Keith Watson 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

> From: MJ Ray Sent: 13 January 2006 19:52 > > "Keith Watson" <keith.watson(a)kewill.com> > > Has anyone got any comments, warnings, POW, etc. about burning data > > DVDs under Gnu/Linux? > > - growisofs is much simpler than cdrecord; > - libburn looked nice, but I've still not upgraded to it, not > sure whether it does DVDs too; and > - I still don't get asked for DVDs anywhere near as often as for CDs. > > Hope that helps, Had a play with both K3B and growisofs at the weekend, both worked very well and did everything I asked. Interestingly K3B seems to use growisofs as its backend for DVD burning. I must admit as an old time fogey (punch cards, paper tape, etc. etc.) I'm still more comfortable with CLI rather than GUI tools (I'm always a little bit paranoid about what GUI tools are doing behind my back) so I think I'll probably be using growisofs most of the time. Regards, Keith ____________ BEAUTY, n. - The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

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Items for disposal
by Stuart Bailey 14 Jan '06

14 Jan '06

Hi, After having a clear out, I have a couple of items to dispose of. If they are of any use to anyone (for free) please let me know by Monday, when they will be sent to the recycling centre. 19" CRT monitor - unbranded, but in full working order Boxed set of SuSE 9.1 disks - complete with manuals. Many thanks, Stuart. -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) Linux Specialist (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ----------------------------------------

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RE: [ALUG] apt-get question
by Keith Watson 14 Jan '06

14 Jan '06

On 11/1/2006, "Adam Bower" <adam(a)thebowery.co.uk> wrote: >On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 02:02:07PM -0000, Safe Hammad wrote: > >> > Then... >> > >> > apt-get dist-upgrade (i /think/) > >> I'd go for apt-get dselect-upgrade (rather than dist-upgrade) ... :o) >> Cheers, >> Safe > >ummm, yeah. That's the one... not used it for some time ;) Interestingly neither dselect-upgrade or dist-upgrade would install _all_ the marked packages. Can anyone think why that was? I wondered if it was something to do with package interdependencies. Anyway I reverted to plan A and apt-get to download the package files on a fast connection, moved them to the new box and dpkg to install them. That worked a treat and I've successfully added the same list of packages installed on my old box onto the new one. --- (incidentally at the bottom of the man page for dpkg it says; To make a local copy of the package selection states: dpkg --get-selections >myselections You might transfer this file to another computer, and install it there with: dpkg --set-selections <myselections Note that this will not actually install or remove anything, but just set the selection state on the requested packages. You will need some other application to actually download and install the requested packages. --- dooh! ) Regards, Keith ____________ Do not fear the arising of thoughts - only be concerned lest your awareness of them be tardy. - Zen Saying

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DVD Burning
by Keith Watson 13 Jan '06

13 Jan '06

Has anyone got any comments, warnings, POW, etc. about burning data DVDs under Gnu/Linux? I got a DVD writer recently, specifically to use for backups, but have yet to get it to work properly with GnomeBaker (is there a better app?, perhaps I'd be better using simple CLI commands) although it works fine with Nero under Windows (haven't tried DVD video burning yet and probably won't for some time). Google turned up 'Coasterless DVD Burning' <http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/coasterless_dvd.htm> which I shall be studying but if anyone knows of any other useful resources they'd be welcome. Regards, Keith ____________ CORPORATION, n. - An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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kexec
by rob page 13 Jan '06

13 Jan '06

Firstly cheers for those that were at the reindeer not being overly terrifying, much appreciated! Still can't get over the oddness of Tiger.. but.. i'm sure I'll recover... probably after a few more cups of tea.... anyway... as I was saying last night.... Never reboot again! kexec... switch kernels on the fly! http://www.xmission.com/~ebiederm/files/kexec/README Have fun! Rob. ps: Oh, and I'm sure I agreed to some other stuff... I think posting a video of my p200 booting faster than my athlon-xp... (although its actually a sempron.... it used to be an athlon-xp but that died over summer.... i still think of it as an athlon-xp), right.. more tea.

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rsync failure revisited
by Chris Green 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

Well I've been bashing away at this rsync problem I've had and have finally found the cause, if not the cure. I was trying to to a big rsync upload of data from my home Linux box to a remote system, a total of 35Mb or so and the rsync was simply hanging after a fairly short while, usually on big files. It turns out that my router loses sync when doing the upload, it looks like it can't cope when saturated in the upload direction. It's a Zyxel 660H, I've fired off a report to their support people but I'm not sure how much good that's going to do. A workaround for the moment is simply to limit the bandwidth that rsync uses, it has a convenient --bwlimit option to do exactly this. As it's just an overnight backup, making it a bit slower doesn't really matter. I'm testing it with the limit set to 64kb/s at the moment and it seems to be going OK. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Strange rsync problem
by Chris Green 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

I'm trying to use rsync to upload a mailbox archive from my home system to the system that I usually use for handling my mail. I'm already successfully using rsync in the opposite direction. What happens is that rsync gets part of the way through the transfer (it does about 3.9Mb out of 75Mb) and then it just hangs. I've looked at the files it has transferred and the point at which it has stopped and can see no oddities in permissions or anything like that. The command I'm using is:- rsync --rsh='/usr/bin/ssh -l chris -x' --recursive \ --exclude=in/ --exclude=li/ --exclude=mfolder \ /home/chris/MailArchive halkidiki.areti.com: It's normally run by cron in the middle of the night but I'm trying it just now from the command line and the same problem seems to be there. In my mail I'm getting the following error from cron:- Read from remote host halkidiki.areti.com: Connection timed out rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 4 bytes: phase "unknown": Broken pipe rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(836) This error arrives 23 minutes (consistent for two nights anyway) after the cron command is run. When run from the command line it looks like it's going to take just as long to fail. Has anyone got any ideas what might be going wrong? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Relpats-eht
by Simon 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

Hey all, got some time to waste? Found a cool website yesterday, it's one of those internet puzzles. Start here: http://www.relpats-eht.com/ The answer to each page is the directory name of the second, as is explained on the second page. I'm still not sure if anyone has completed it yet, but there are as far as I know, 12 or more stages to it. Good luck.

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New Year's Resolutions
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

Hi Folks, I don't know how many of you follow Sandra Henry-Stocker's excellent series of articles on open.itworld.com (but it's worth keeping in touch if you don't). The latest has clearly been crafted under the influence of emerging from the festive season, and gives 12 New Year's Resolutions for Unix sysadmins. See http://open.itworld.com/5040/nls_unix_resolution060111/page_1.html They're all good advice, I think; my particular favourites are -- Learn Linux -- Find a better job or make your current job better -- Have a life and (somewhat ambiguously ... ) -- Get yourself certified 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: 12-Jan-06 Time: 09:26:41 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Networking issues
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

Hi Folks, A couple of distinct questions. 1. Computers on a LAN are "behind" an ADSL modem/router which faces out to the Net. Seen from outside, this router has IP address PPP.QQQ.RRR.SSS From inside the LAN it can be accessed either from the above address or from an "internal" IP address 192.168.1.1 On the LAN are sundry machines with IP addresses 192.168.1.yyy or (on a subnet) 192.168.0.zzz Question: Is there any way by which one can address one of the "internal" machines from outside (i.e. the Net). Clearly, for instance, telnet PPP.QQQ.RRR.SSS would at best connect to the router (which does respond to telnet, by the way). What I'm wondering is if there's anything like telnet @PPP.QQQ.RRR.SSS!192.168.1.yyy i.e. to "route" the telnet request for connection to the internal machine at 192.168.1.yyy through the externally visible address PPP.QQQ.RRR.SSS 2. This one's a real Linux question! Suppose the internal machines, instead of having static IP addresses set up on them, get dynamic IPs handed out by the router. With the static IPs, each machine can have a /etc/hosts file which associates the IP address with the machines name within the LAN, including a short "nickname". E.g. 192.168.0.6 brandy.my.home.lan brandy br so, e.g., in the LAN I can do "telnet br". But, with dynamic IPs, this association would break down. "brandy" would no longer have IP address 192.168.0.6 So -- What's the equivalent mechanism when dynamic IPs are used? If I do telnet br would this simply not work (because there's no IP/name association), or is there a mechanism whereby allocation of a dynamic IP address to brandy.my.home.lan would set up an association with this name (and to chosen nicknames "brandy", "br") as in the /etc/hosts file? And, if so, where does it (and its components) reside? 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: 11-Jan-06 Time: 17:15:20 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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