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2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 10th November. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. We'll 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/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 last time we ended up at the far end of the pub beside the pool table. J. -- 101 things you can't have too much of : 41 - Tea.

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Using mailsync with ssh
by Chris Green 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

Having looked into this I have come to the following conclusion. Mailsync only works 'with ssh' to a remote IMAP server, I'm pretty sure it can't access an ordinary mbox (or other) hierarchy on a remote machine by using ssh. I *think* the example in the examples documentation is just that, accessing a remote mh mailbox system which happens to have an IMAP server using the mh hierarchy. If anyone can point me to some documentation and/or help suggesting otherwise then I'd be very pleased to know about it. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Dual Head on Nvidia
by Wayne Stallwood 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

I am just about to order a second 17" TFT to match my existing one, I noticed where I was doing some DVD Authoring last week that I need more screen estate. I would like to stay with Nvidia cards if at all possible, partly because I need good hardware 3D on at least one screen and partly because I know where I can grab a really good dualhead Nvidia card really cheap. Not having done this before I would like to know how it all works before I commit to the extra screen. How for example do the virtual desktops interact with dual head, Do I used the desktop pager in the normal way and choose which display has which desktop ? How does the framebuffer work, does this only work on the first screen ? Has anyone used VMware on a dual head setup, what happens if you set a VM to fullscreen ? Does it go fullscreen on one of the monitors and do you have any choice about which screen that is ? When I was googling about I saw loads of references to xinerama and twinview and other sites that just said to add the second display to the xconfig file. What method should I use to get the behaviour(s) above ?

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

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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Tiff images on a Sharp SL-C3100
by Barry Samuels 06 Nov '05

06 Nov '05

I have just bought an SL-C3100 and one of the things I'd like to use it for is viewing images, from my camera, in the field. The images are 12MB Tiff files and most of the Zaurus software can't cope with Tiff so I'd like to shrink and convert to Jpeg. I've put an Arm binary of ImageMagick 'convert' onto the Zaurus and have installed the libtiff package but if I try to use 'convert' I get a message 'Libtiff is not available'. Can anyone suggest what might cause this? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Re: MFD
by Ten 06 Nov '05

06 Nov '05

Hi there folks. I'm in the process of looking at budget MFDs (the all-in-one printer/scanner/tea-strainer deelies for anyone not familiar with the acronym) for myself and the better half and wondered whether anyone here had positive/negative experiences to share. "Compatibility" with your usual GNU/Linux suspects is a must in terms of both systems and utilities - are there serious gotchas anyone here knows about? Considerations are: 1. Low cost 2. Print/scan/copy at reasonable quality 3. PictBridge and/or Bluetooth for computerless use with digital cameras. Groovy gravy would be: 1. Bluetooth for use with phones etc., but I don't personally need computerless printing, so it's less of a consideration). 2. Ability to handle 35mm film (truly unnecessary) I'd appreciate ideas/gotchas. Cheers, -- Ten

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How to remove empty maildir mailboxes?
by Chris Green 06 Nov '05

06 Nov '05

This is (distantly) related to my previous question, they're both results of my migration from mbox to maildir. I'm doing that so I can rsync my mail folder hierarchy from the system where I actually read my mail to my home system without losing old mails. So, I want to write a utility that can run as a cron job and, maybe, on demand, that will saerch down my mail hierarchy for empty maildir mailboxes and delete them. This involves finding any directory that has empty cur, tmp, and new subdirectories and deleting it. I can see all sorts of horribly clumsy ways of doing it but not any really neat way. Any quick solutions anyone? Amazingly a Google search turned up nothing useful at all, surely there must be a need for a utility like this. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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RE: [ALUG] Installing Debian
by Keith Watson 06 Nov '05

06 Nov '05

> From: Anthony Anson > > I've just had an attempt at installing Woody, but fell at, if > not the first hurdle, the next one. > I'd strongly advise installing a Ubuntu distro (latest is 5.10 Breezy Badger) if you want to try out Debian. I'm a dedicated Debianite and also a total convert to Ubuntu after setting up a dial-up PC for a non PC literate friend a couple of months back (Quote: "Wow this is as good as Windows!!"** :-> ) I'm sure someone on the list has some of the latest Ubuntu Live+Install CD packs (I've got some of the previous 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog packs). IMO the install is a dream. Regards, Keith ____________ Though the forest is dense, yet water flows through it freely. - Zen Saying ** recent quote after another acquaintance was bemoaning getting assorted viruses and rogue diallers over the past year, "Oh!, I don't get those, I run Linux" (accompanied by a superior grin) [however I did enable their firewall]

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Installing Debian
by Peter 05 Nov '05

05 Nov '05

I would get Mepis. Assuming you don't mind KDE. Installation is very simple indeed, and after 45 minutes, there you have it, a working Debian based installation with most of what you'll need, and Synaptic for the rest. And you get to try it out from the CD first, to make sure you like it, before going to the trouble of installing. I did try Ubuntu, an earlier version, and didn't like it one bit. It may have improved, but the one I tried, last Christmas, was an utter dog. So at least if you try Ubuntu, make sure its the latest version. I also failed, a long time ago, to get Woody in, no longer recall exactly why, but the latest version is pretty straightforward. Though not as simple as Mepis. Peter

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Installing Debian
by Anthony Anson 05 Nov '05

05 Nov '05

I've just had an attempt at installing Woody, but fell at, if not the first hurdle, the next one. With 640 MB of memory I didn't think a swap partition was necessary so I skipped that. (Anyone disagree?) Formatting the drive was not what you would call intuitive, though. I 'deleted' [1] all the existing partitions on hda, couldn't print the 'help' menu [2], found that using the command letters didn't do anything except return me to the formatting page, and I could find no way of implementing the changes I had made. I understand that the latest version is a lot more user-friendly. [1] altered the hda1 FAT32; hda2 FAT16; hda3 Fat16 to a single unformatted partition awaiting the command to format. [2] the line at the bottom which said 'print help' or something similar had a cursor at the end of it, but I couldn't find any way of moving it or highlighting the lot, or getting it to work. So I removed the CD and shut down. I have a feeling that this is going to be a long job... -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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RE: [ALUG] ACPI on ThinkPad
by Keith Watson 04 Nov '05

04 Nov '05

> From: Dan Hatton Sent: 04 November 2005 00:39 > > I'm trying to set up ACPI power management, but I can't get > my system to resume from suspend-to-RAM; does anyone have any > idea how to proceed, please? > > The details: the system is Fedora core 4, on an IBM ThinkPad, > with a home-compiled 2.6.14 kernel (but the result is much > the same with a Fedora stock 2.6.13 kernel.) > > After I suspend with a (bash) script (cobbled together from > bits of advice and scripts on the WWW,) run in an xterm, > whose functional part > is: > > rmmod uhci_hcd > rmmod ehci_hcd > echo `fgconsole` > /var/cache/acpi/vt > chvt 8 > echo -n "auto_disable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/video echo -n "mem" > > /sys/power/state echo -n "auto_enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/video > chvt `cat /var/cache/acpi/vt` rm -f /var/cache/acpi/vt > modprobe uhci_hcd modprobe ehci_hcd > > then resume by pressing the power button, the system comes > back, and shows me my xsession, but then hangs when trying to > run any commands. > > When I run the script from the console, then resume by > pressing the power button, the system dies (after a long-ish > pause) with various error messages, in which there are > references to "spinlock recursion," "spinlock lockup," and > repeatedly to "ATA Timeout." > Dan, something of an oblique answer I'm afraid but it might point you in the direction of some useful resources. I've recently been setting up my work HP nx9105 as a dual boot WinXP / Ubuntu system. My main problem was USB not working. This turned out to be ACPI related because of a BIOS bug. (Fix was to turn off ACPI and all my USB devices snapped into use :o) ) My point is that the Ubuntu Wiki and forums have a lot of discussion related to laptops and all things ACPI which may provide some ideas about ways you can figure out a solution. Regards, Keith ____________ COMMERCE, n. - A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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ACPI on ThinkPad
by Dan Hatton 04 Nov '05

04 Nov '05

I'm trying to set up ACPI power management, but I can't get my system to resume from suspend-to-RAM; does anyone have any idea how to proceed, please? The details: the system is Fedora core 4, on an IBM ThinkPad, with a home-compiled 2.6.14 kernel (but the result is much the same with a Fedora stock 2.6.13 kernel.) After I suspend with a (bash) script (cobbled together from bits of advice and scripts on the WWW,) run in an xterm, whose functional part is: rmmod uhci_hcd rmmod ehci_hcd echo `fgconsole` > /var/cache/acpi/vt chvt 8 echo -n "auto_disable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/video echo -n "mem" > /sys/power/state echo -n "auto_enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/video chvt `cat /var/cache/acpi/vt` rm -f /var/cache/acpi/vt modprobe uhci_hcd modprobe ehci_hcd then resume by pressing the power button, the system comes back, and shows me my xsession, but then hangs when trying to run any commands. When I run the script from the console, then resume by pressing the power button, the system dies (after a long-ish pause) with various error messages, in which there are references to "spinlock recursion," "spinlock lockup," and repeatedly to "ATA Timeout." -- Thanks, Dan Hatton <http://www.bib.hatton.btinternet.co.uk/dan/>

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Little wild card/scripting problem
by Chris Green 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Can anyone come up with an easy solution for the following? I can invent all sorts of multi-line ways of doing it but I can't think of a simple one-liner. I have (lots of) directories with files with names like the following in them:- 1130938547.25791_1.server:2,RS 1130938547.25791_3.server:2,RS 1130938547.25791_5.server:2,RS 1130940325.30327_1.server:2,RS 1130940325.30327_3.server:2,RS 1130940325.30327_5.server:2,RS 1130945401.24201_1.halkidiki:2,RS 1130945401.24201_3.halkidiki:2,RS 1130945401.24201_5.halkidiki:2,RS I want to run a shell script for loop on the files in these directories, it's easy enough to use find to recursively run through all the directories, the issue occurs when I do:- for i in * do # lots of clever (?) things done The 'for i in *' means that the files are processed in the order shown above with the 'server' files before the 'halkidiki' ones. I want to *guarantee* that the 'halkidiki' ones come first, can anyone come up with a way of doing this? for i in *halkidiki* *server* Doesn't work because not all the directories have both server and halkidiki files. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Cups printing
by Andy Trevor 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Is there anyone out and about that really understands Cups network printing ? If so please contact me on or off list Thanks in advance -- Regards Andy Trevor Technical Director Cutter Project Limited 07840988311 http:www.cutterproject.co.uk

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Linux/OSS conference at UEA
by Karamoon 02 Nov '05

02 Nov '05

Is anyone interested in a Linux/OSS conference at UEA? It should be in term time so we can get some students involved. It would essentially be a day of talks and possibly some workshops aimed at people who are new to linux and oss. A talk on installing and using Ubuntu would be great as I got 100 Ubuntu packs this morning. Positive comments and suggestions our welcome. Matthew __________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

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UEA ALUG society
by Karamoon 02 Nov '05

02 Nov '05

At the recent kitmeet several people(5) expressed interest in starting an ALUG society at Norwich UEA. Starting a UEA society involves getting 30 people to pay £3 each. The society would then be given a grantEli has suggested the name "ALUG/U" for the group. If anyone would be interested in a UEA ALUG society, or has any comments/suggestions, I would be grateful if they could let me know. Thanks for your time and consideration, Matthew(Karamoon) __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com

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Job specs to make you smile
by Guy Eastwood 02 Nov '05

02 Nov '05

Here's the result of a jobspec work asked me for a while back. I didn't give the print guys the final copy so the typo's aren't mine yet.. the wording... well, see what you think ;o) We got two really good members of staff added to tech dept as a result too! http://surefyre.com/surefyreold/surefyre_images/nomcse.png (No the position isn't open still) I've since come across people all over the place that have seen/heard of this ad LOL! Is weird reading the ad again, the jobspec is so much more demanding now. G

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Advice required on implementing, configuring and managing a large number (> 500) of networked desktops
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 01 Nov '05

01 Nov '05

Hi all, I'm looking for some advice and hints on how to go about installing and managing a large group of desktop machines, with shared file stores and resources such as applications, printers, etc. By large, I mean more than 500 machines. Think of a large university lab or internet cafe, where people can login to any machine, do their 'work', access their files independent of terminal used, etc. Based on my knowledge so far, under Debian GNU/Linux, the actual installation of all the machines is relatively straight-forward. Once I have setup the roles and machine groupings (based on tasks and application needs), I can use the FAI (Fully Automated Installer) which hold master 'settings' to assign each machine to a group and watch the install take place. As and when machines fail, I can just configure a new one for a specific group and then let it install and put it on the network. My confusion comes when I want to work out how to get central authentication, shared file stores, and where the line should be drawn for local/network storing of applications, files, etc. There is also the problem of scaling to 500+ machines. I know this is possible, as I used to see it in action at UEA when I studied in SYS. xdm used to talk to something (LDAP?) before allowing login. The directory of users/passwords was shared between nearly all machines so you could login to any machine using your assigned userid. So: 1) How do I do central authentication? 2) Could I use NFS for shared file access with user /home being mounted as r/w at login, or would this cause a denial of service attack on the server? Are there more scalable alternatives with intermediate caching, etc? 3) Will > 500 desktops require more than one server for shared file access? What are the preferred replication procedures in this case? 4) What the best way to network that many machines? I can run switches and bridges between the machines. Should I load-balance or shape the traffic in some way to ensure fair and fast access to the shared file store? How do I check for network saturation other than looking at blinking coloured lights :) 5) Security. I would assume standard unix security would stop one user fiddling with another's files, but how does that work over a network file store? 6) Am I correct to assume that it is best to have applications installed locally on the machines given the number of machines? 7) Is there a way to sandbox the user, so they don't enter parts of the system they aren't supposed to? I know that there is the normal root access restriction, but what about forcing them to use their network file store, rather than leaving stuff in /tmp. I know quite a bit of this depends on what the machines will be actually used for. At present, I am looking for more general advice from people who have done this before to help guide my research into this topic. In fact, I am also interested on how this would work on non-linux machines, e.g. Windows and Macs. Do these need to run separatedly, or could non-Linux based machines authenticate against a shared profile directory? I know there are many large windows based deployments. For example the Norfolk Library Services runs one for internet and application access. In fact, they seems to run a reduced version of Windows that limits what the user can and can't do. Does anyone know how that actually works? To keep this on topic, please email me off-list for non-linux based discussions. -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it." - Karl Marx

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Linux.com article: Hardware emulation with QEMU
by Keith Watson 01 Nov '05

01 Nov '05

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/10/24/1845248 Regards, Keith ____________ You can never turn your back on reality, it surrounds you. - Stanislaw J. Lec

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Re: [ALUG] Hunt the Swap Hog
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 01 Nov '05

01 Nov '05

On 01-Nov-05 Maz Walker wrote: > On 11/1/05, Ted Harding <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> wrote: >> >> What might be the best way to find out what could be >> hogging swap-space? > > > Hi Ted > > Try running top and then press the f key to add another field, > then the p key to add the swap size. You can change the sort > order of top on the latest versions, press h for help to see > if yours can do that. Hope that helps, > Maz. Thanks, yes it does a bit! Unfortunately swap is not one of the variables I can sort on in my 'top'. A:age M:resident memory usage N:pid T:time (or cumulative time) P:CPU usage only! Tried getting 'ps' to show me, but it's confusing and I'm not sure whether it did or not. Cheers, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Nov-05 Time: 20:44:26 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Hunt the Swap Hog
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 01 Nov '05

01 Nov '05

What might be the best way to find out what could be hogging swap-space? 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: 01-Nov-05 Time: 19:29:43 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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RE: [ALUG] Help for UEA student
by Keith Watson 01 Nov '05

01 Nov '05

> Quoting Laurie Brown < >: > > > I'm pretty sure one or two subscribers to this list work > at/in UEA... > > A friend of mine's daughter has just started there and has been > > obliged to put McAfee on her (XP Pro) laptop. The problem is, > > everytime she joins the UEA net, the machine slows to a > crawl. Would > > anyone be so kind as to take a look at it for her please? > > > > Cheers, Laurie. > > From: Simon Sent: 31 October 2005 16:59 > > This is true and also some-what annoying. Windows users > *have* to install McAfee anti-virus 8 before they can connect > to the network. A friend of mine had to uninstall McAfee 10 - > seems silly but I suppose it's a good thing in a way. I have > McAfee on my Windows 2000 installation, I haven't noticed > that it slows down. The only thing I would put it down to, > would be scanning all the files on the disc for virii which > would slow the machine down but you can't really stop it doing that. > Yes, we use McAfee here at work and it seems to run ok on my HP laptop (Win XP Pro). You do get an initial hit as it insists on doing a full scan of all the local disks which does hammer the machine at first. It may be worth her just starting up and leaving it for a couple of hours (days?). Other than that, Simon may be right in suspecting something else that's doing a lot of disk i/o, that may also cause McAfee to do a lot of work if it involves disk writes. I'm going to shut up now as this is way of topic for an ALUG post - sorry folks! Regards, Keith ____________ The shortest answer is doing. - George Herbert

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 31 Oct '05

31 Oct '05

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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PHP / MySQL web developer Job
by David Reynolds 30 Oct '05

30 Oct '05

Hi, I've been asked to post this job application here, in case anyone is interested: Job Type: Permanent Job Title: PHP MySQL Website Developer Location: North Norwich, Norfolk Salary: Negotiable Details: We are looking for a team player to join our development team. We have an excellent track record in delivering a diverse range of web projects to small and medium sized business across Norfolk. Ideally you will have commercial experience developing websites using PHP and MySQL preferably in a Linux environment. Ideally you'll also have an ability to create graphic designs for a web environment. Please forward a covering letter and CV to paul(a)paston.co.uk Cheers, David -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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/var/log/lastlog
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 30 Oct '05

30 Oct '05

Hi Folks, It's spring-clean time again ... Been recovering disk space occupied by stuff I don't really want to know about. In particular, /var/log/lastlog is 19MB in size, but the output of 'lastlog' is 2225 bytes on 35 lines, telling me *ALL About the Very Last Time Each User Logged In*.[1] Most of these are, of course "pseudo" users like bin daemon adm lp sync shutdown halt mail news uucp operator games gopher ftp rpm vcsa nscd sshd rpc rpcuser nfsnobody mailnull smmsp pcap apache xfs named ntp gdm who never log in anyway! So that's 19136220/35 = 546749 bytes or half a MB for each "user", and from inspection nearly all of that is bytes with value "00"! (Indeed it gzips down to 18668 bytes, i.e. 1/1000). Now I can use an extra 19MB of space on that partition (whose free space varies from near-0 to about 400MB depending on what I'm up to), so I'm feeling mean about 19MB devoted to totally boring info. Hence I'm wondering (a) what's the best way to suppress this lastlog stuff; (b) would it traumatise the system to suppress it? Thanks for any comments! Best wishes to all, Ted. [1]. E.g. ftp **Never logged in** ted pts/12 brandy Sun Oct 30 10:09:37 +0000 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 30-Oct-05 Time: 10:41:23 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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