- main - earth.li

Power & Heat in Laptops
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 10 Sep '05

10 Sep '05

Hi Folks, An off-topic question, but you hardware experts may help! On some laptops, the external mains supply passes through an external transformer and it is the reduced voltage which is plugged in to the laptop. On others, the mains lead is plugged directly into the laptop, and the voltage reduction is done internally. In the former case, heat generated in the reduction is dissipated externally, while in the latter it has to escape from the interior of the laptop. So, other things being equal, one would expect the latter kind to run hotter than the former. This certainly seems to correspond to my experience. I have had 4 (ancient) laptops, 3 still working. One of these has the mains plugged in directly, the others all have an external transformer. I have never had heating concerns with the ones which have external transformers, while the "internal" one does run pretty warm, and periodically exhibits screen-flashing/breakup (especially when running "graphics heavy", as in X with lots of re-draw). Since this can often be cured by switching to a console and pressing a tiny button, which blanks the screen, for a few seconds, and also seems more prevalent in warm weather,I wonder if this is associated with overheating of the graphics chip. (There is an internal fan, which cuts in occasionally, but it seems to be a sleepy bugger and doesn't often wake up ... ) Any comments welcome, and will be read with interest! 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: 09-Sep-05 Time: 08:17:31 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

3 2

KDE Konqueror Problem
by Ben Whyte 09 Sep '05

09 Sep '05

Hi I have an interesting problem that I wondered if people could help with. I am running Debian testing and kde and konqueror has developed an odd problem, when you open it up to do file management, it will display the contents of a directory, but if you click on a directory it says it doesn't no what to do and what would you like to open the file using. So I have had a look at the file associations and it doesn't have any applications in the file associations. If I add a simple konqueror it recursively opens konqueror windows but shows no files in these windows. Any and all suggestions welcome. Ben Whyte

3 3

Problem: Emacs + ssh X forwarding = BadWindow
by MJ Ray 09 Sep '05

09 Sep '05

Today I was using Emacs and used File->"New Frame on Display..." to put an emacs frame (a window) onto localhost:10 which was forwarded off over ssh to another display. Oddly, with this machine combination that I've not tried before, keyboard input wasn't recognised by Emacs and while using the mouse to try to see what the problem was, the connection was lost with some BadWindow message displayed on the original Emacs frame's minibuffer (vanished before I could copy it). I'm using Emacs 21.3, OpenSSH 4.0p1 and x.org 6.8.1 - has anyone seen similar problems or know what causes them? (By the way, if you've never used "New Frame on Display..." or its predecessors to create collaborative editing sessions, you've been missing out on a useful tool. Give it a go!) Thanks in advance for any clue, -- MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

1 0

FTGH: Epson Stylus 480
by Jonathan McDowell 08 Sep '05

08 Sep '05

1 (one) Epson Stylus 480 colour inkjet printer. About 5 years old, but extremely rarely used (hence getting rid of it in a spree of clearing out junk). Didn't work that well under Linux when I bought it, but I believe it's supported ok these days. Parallel port interface. Boxed. I even seem to have a manual. Free To Good Home. Must collect from Norwich (off Drayton Road). J. -- "Why 'maybe' for everything?" "I'm using fluffy logic." [ Black Cat Networks ] [ 0845 PAYG dialup ] [ ADSL from £20+VAT/month ] [ http://www.blackcatnetworks.co.uk/ ]

5 5

autoconf problem
by Chris Green 06 Sep '05

06 Sep '05

I'm trying to configure a utility using autoconf, when I run ./configure I get all the usual checking sort of stuff, then at the end:- checking for XShapeCombineMask in -lXext... no checking for jpeg_destroy_compress in -ljpeg... no not updating unwritable cache ./config.cache creating ./config.status sed: can't read confdefs.h: No such file or directory creating autoconf/Makefile.defines sed: can't read ./autoconf/Makefile.defines.in: No such file or directory creating autoconf/Makefile.common sed: can't read ./autoconf/Makefile.common.in: No such file or directory creating autoconf/Makefile.common.lib sed: can't read ./autoconf/Makefile.common.lib.in: No such file or directory creating Makefile sed: can't read ./Makefile.in: No such file or directory creating config.h cat: ./autoconf/config.h.in: No such file or directory config.h is unchanged ... but all those errors are nonsense, there is a writable ./config.cache (created earlier by autoconf) and the autoconf directory does exist and has those files in it. What am I missing? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

4 5

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

05 Sep '05

The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 8th September. 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. 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. J. -- /-\ | 101 things you can't have too much |@/ Debian GNU/Linux Developer | of : 30 - Comfy sofas. \- |

1 0

Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 05 Sep '05

05 Sep '05

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. 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 tkirc, bitchx, xchat 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://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

1 0

IOS with DHCP client
by Ben Vinger 04 Sep '05

04 Sep '05

Hello I have a Cisco 2514, (bought second-hand) for use on my ADSL connection. It runs IOS Version 12.0(9) (IP Plus). In order to use it with ADSL, I need to have a DHCP client on it - only IOS versions 12.2 and later support DHCP client. Can anyone send me a 12.2 or later image (its about 3.8 MB when compressed)? Cheers Ben ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com

1 0

Gigabit Woes
by Chris Glover 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

Hi, Here's one for the networking gurus on this list :-) At work we are intending on using a Linux machine running snort as an IDS (much cheaper than the Cisco alternative) with two gigabit nics. We have been doing some throughput tests, and are not convinced this will work, these tests were without installing snort. Our test setup is as follows:- ----------- ---------- ----------- - Windows - - Linux - - Windows - - 2003 srv------- ------- 2003 srv- ----------- --------- ----------- 10.128.30.2 eth0 10.128.30.1 10.128.32.2 eth1 10.128.32.1 All machines have gigabit NICS, and are connected via a Foundry gigabit switch. The Linux machine we used was an HP Proliant 3.0 GHz Dual Xeon with twin onboard Broadcom NICs using the tigon driver. We had the linux machine configured as a basic router.The linux machine was running knoppix, booted into textonly mode, with nics manually configured (ie only bash and the kernel running, and no iptables). We were doing the tests using netperf. We had applied the tweaks to the NICs from this site http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/networking/features/article.php/3497796 If we put the two windows machines onto the same subnet, and using the "Network Utilisation" graph in Task Manger showed we were running at 85-90% util. When we had the linux machine acting as a router between the two machines, this dropped to 35% util. Admittedly this probably isn't the best method. Using netperf between the windows and linux machine, again gave 85-90% util. This was with both windows machines sending data to both nics of the linux machine at the same time. We cant understand how the throughput can more than half, when sending between the two windows machines via the linux machine. This system is going to go on a very busy network, so speed is essential. We had tried the above test with a DELL single processor Xeon with onboard Intel and PCI Realtek gig-nics, and got very similar results. All tests were done with Knoppix 3.9 (2.6.11 kernel). On the production system we'll probably be using Redhat Enterprise. Anyone got any ideas? Are we missing something in the config? Many Thanks Chris -- Chris ---------------------------------- E Mail: chris(a)glovercc.plus.com SIP: 84411389(a)voiptalk.org IAXTEL: 17003366726

3 4

X Windows programming question
by Chris Green 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

I'm playing with an existing X application program, modifying things to suit my requirements. Most things I seem to have fathomed out OK but I want the ability to change some window properties (it has only one window) 'on the fly'. Initially I just want to toggle one property when the right button (button 3) is clicked. I can catch the button event OK, that's not a problem. I then call XChangeProperty() to change the property. But what do I need to do to get the window redisplayed having called XChangeProperty() ? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

2 1

re: DNS searching
by David Noble 30 Aug '05

30 Aug '05

Cheers, managed to do it- in the end, it turned out the dns server addresses were hidden in a very obscure menu on my d-link router ;) Thanks, Dave

1 0

DNS search
by David Noble 30 Aug '05

30 Aug '05

Hi, On Suse 9.1, how can i find out the DNS servers if my router doesn't tell me? Is there some sort of daemon/configuration script that can be run? Thank you very much, David Noble

6 6

[ALUG Announce]WS Free Info Infrastructures, London, 1-2 October
by MJ Ray 30 Aug '05

30 Aug '05

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock(a)okfn.org> wrote: > ~ For Redistribution Far and Wide ~ > > On the first weekend of October (1st and 2nd) the World Summit on Free > Information Infrastructures (http://www.wsfii.org/) is taking place in > London. This event will bring together individuals and groups from > across the world working on projects such as free wireless networking, > free of copyright mapping and open hardware. A provisional programme is > available here: > > http://www.wsfii.org/programme.html > > The event is open to all but we encourage you to register because space > is limited. A small entrance fee of £10 is planned to help pay for costs > but concessions are available. You can register via: > http://www.wsfii.org/register.php ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 29 Aug '05

29 Aug '05

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. 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 tkirc, bitchx, xchat 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://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Multi-card reader
by Brett Parker 26 Aug '05

26 Aug '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Chris Walker <chris_linux(a)wymondham.demon.co.uk> wrote: > On Wed 23 Mar, Brett Parker wrote: > > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > Hash: SHA1 > > > > <snip /> > > Chris Walker <chris_linux(a)wymondham.demon.co.uk> wrote: > > > This has 4 slots in it too but I'm failing at the first hurdle. Trying > > > the command above gives me 'bash: modprobe: command not found'. > > > > Ahhh! I may have neglected to say that they need to be run as root, as > > it's loading kernel modules... > > > > I'm *assuming* that Mandrake has modprobe, it's part of the usual base > > system, so it should have. > > Ah. I missed that vital step. OK. Done that and now, having the steps you > gave me earlier, I now have loads of new icons on the desktop. > > I'll have a crack at editing the fstab file now to see if I can get it to do > all this automatically on boot up now. > > I appreciate both your help and that from Chris Glover. You'll probably want to add the modules to the /etc/modules file (or that's where I'd add them on a debian system, anyways... *goes look it up for Mandrake...*) OK - for Mandrake it appears that the file is /etc/modules.conf, and it'll be a line something like: probeall ehci-hcd usb-storage that you need to add, or expand the probeall line to include them. Then the modules should get automagically loaded on boot. Thanks, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCQYPlEh8oWxevnjQRAhZsAKDOTBJEh0gaGyHEeDz1bnMuVZZi0QCfbqRN xLL3iWeKsawO+NOjr0rdGP4= =qyPP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

6 7

3gp files
by Ten 23 Aug '05

23 Aug '05

I wonder if anyone has any ideas on this.. The 3gp video files produced by my phone (or, for that matter, any other phone I have access to) are not so readily accessible through media players as I'd hoped. Some 3gp files can be played by mpeg4 stuff, but phone-shot ones are without sound. Now usually, this sort of thing is a matter of being told "ah, everybody uses package X", but I can't find much in google. I have progressed through several levels of the inferno, past xine, even into the dark and shady lands of RealPlayer(shudder)'s 3gp support, and have now reached the truly gutwrenching depths of running Microsoft's Windows Media Player (shudder still more). All the files work perfectly in WMP, which is consequently associated with 3gp files on our machines for pragmatism's sake. This, is not a desirable state of affairs. ...Help, anyone? There are 10 types of people in this world -those who understand binary, and those who don't.

4 4

A strange filesystem - er - thing!
by Barry Samuels 23 Aug '05

23 Aug '05

Sorry - did it again - forgot to set my correct email identity for the list so I'm sending it again. Apologies for any duplication. I wanted to try the K3b DVD Ripping/Encoding option. The 'Help' says: "First step is to choose the title/movie you want to rip. For this click on the drive icon of your DVD-Drive. You will now see a list that shows the content of the DVD with all movie sequence. The longest movie sequence (usually the main movie) is automatically selected. Right click on the title and choose copy." So I did that. Then it says: "In the following dialog enter the destination directory in the first line. The second and third will be filled out automatically. Don't change these paths." There wasn't a following dialogue and it immediately started filling my Home partition which I didn't want so I killed K3b. It still went on writing to the Home partition until it was full. I determined to delete whatever file it had written to the partition except that there wasn't one. Even KDirStat wouldn't acknowledge that the partition was full, saying that it was 66% used, and didn't show any large files - hidden or otherewise. 'df' and 'di' showed the partition as 100% used. In the end the only way I managed to cure it was to reboot when things went back to normal. Does anyone have any idea where the space went - how can it be used but not show anything using it? Regards to all Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

3 2

Using Real VNC Free edition & Personal edition on Linux/XP
by David Simon Cooper 23 Aug '05

23 Aug '05

Hello folks, I am promoting remote desktop access for support services to a couple of small companies I am working for. I can use the linux VNC client to connect to the XP machines and help them when they have problems, I tested it at home and it works great, I am setting up their on site firewall to use static real IP addresses from the ISP and to do the routing etc, I have this sorted. I am recommending the Free Edition of VNC (I will ensure the company makes a donation to the developers for each licence) because it is simple and fast. I have a few questions you may be able to answer: a) Free edition - The password challenge response is encrypted using DES but all other traffic is not. I will not be sending any critical data over the link but how is the data represented? I am guessing it does not send the text that is visible on the screen on the remote system as plain text etc rather that it uses some kind of framing technology. If I am seeing all of the data on their screen I take it that their VNC server is not sending all of the data as is back to me. b) Personal edition - I could buy them this version as it is only about £15 per licence and it does support full encryption but I am concerned about the speed (I am 120 miles away) and it does not have a Linux version which means I would either have to use an XP machine to provide support, I could instead buy the over-the-top enterprise edition or settle for the unencrypted Free Edition. I have considered the security implications. To make things safer with the Free Edition I could just put an icon on their desktop and ask them to run the user mode app whenever they want me to connect, this would mean the server is only running when they want stuff fixed, they could close it when stuff is done, very safe. I would of course have the "ask for permission" option enabled on VNC for security reasons. Do you folks have any views on this? Cheers David Cooper

5 10

Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 22 Aug '05

22 Aug '05

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. 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 tkirc, bitchx, xchat 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://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

1 0

ssh login changes key mapping - possible?!
by Chris Green 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

I have a very odd keyboard/key mapping problem which occurs on just one system when I use ssh to log into it remotely. I have my keyboard mapped so that the backspace key sends ^H (08) and the DEL key(s) send ^? (7F). I have my keyboards mapped this way on all the systems I use and (if necessary) I use stty in my .profile to set the tty handling to match. This works correctly using ssh from just about everywhere to everywhere:- Home to Areti internet Home to BSNet Work to Areti internet Work to BSNet Work to Home However when I connect from home to work *something* remaps the backspace key so it sends ^? (7F) and remaps the DEL keys so they send some sort of escape sequence. It is an actual key remapping, if I type CTRL/H then an 08 is sent and I get the expected character deletion. Can anyone suggest what might be going on? I don't think ssh should (be able to) do this sort of thing should it? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

1 0

Putting Debian Linux into Microserver (Kuro Box)
by Tatsuhiko Maegawa 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

Just to share my experience with you. I bought Microserver kit - self-build Kuro Box, and 250Gb Harddisk. All this for mere 30,000 yen. This microserver is little smaller than miniMac, and consumes 17watts against 60watts on miniMac. It has PowerPC 266MHz and 128Mb of Ram. I put Debian Linux (Sarge) into it. I built this as web server (Apache + MySQL + PHP4), and run Mambo CMS. So far it runs fine. Sometimes program stops, but you can get away from it since you are asking too much from the box. Details are here http://kurobox.com/ Worth buying if you are thinking of SOHO & Private Linux box, I think. T.

2 2

Gigabit ethernet - USR or D-Link NICs?
by Chris Green 18 Aug '05

18 Aug '05

I have just got a Gigabit 8-port switch and want to upgrade a couple of the NICs to match. Has anyone got any opinions/knowledge as to whether D-Link or USR NICs are liely to be more compatible with a 2.4.xx kernel? (Or other makes for that matter, it's just that D-Link is cheapest and the switch is a USR one). -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

2 1

DSL bandwidth
by Stuart Bailey 18 Aug '05

18 Aug '05

Hi I have a customer who has 512M broadband to their site. They have recently recruited more staff, and find that 512 is not enough. BT have checked their lin3es and say the they're lucky to get 512 (they are about 5 mile from the exchange). Unfortunately, a 2M link is too expensive. Is there any way (perhaps with hardware) to configure multiple 512M links into one high spped link? They ideally want 2Mb Many thanks, Stuart -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) Linux Specialist (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ----------------------------------------

6 5

X programming, fonts question
by Chris Green 18 Aug '05

18 Aug '05

Well my re-write and tidy up of astime is progressing. I'm happy with my 'one line per parameter' initialisation code, much less sprawling than the original. I'm now onto the bits I actually want to change, the original version has (horrible) bit-mapped fonts for AM/PM, day of week, etc. These are actually included in the program distribution as *.xpm files which are built into the code. Thus there is no choice of font and if you happened to want to change the names for the days of the week you have to recode the bit maps character by character. Not to mention the horrible convolutions required to actually select the right digits given the date! astime already has the ability to display some text (called a 'label') on the clock and you *can* specify the font for this. If you simply set the label to today's date and tell it to display you get a much nicer display of the date than the built in one. It also saves several hundred lines of code! It was playing with this facility that prompted me to start changing the code so that the date, day of week, AM/PM etc. are all done more elegantly. So (as before) finally to the question. I can see how to select specific fonts in X but is there any way to find a default font family? I.e. I want the code to be fairly general and work in a passable fashion on any X system, thus specifying a font in the code is risky, there's no font guaranteed to be on all systems. What I want is a way to find a font which is (probably) the default for the window manager in use for example. Going on from that is there an easy way to find the range of sizes available for a given font? Then I can find a default (or at least definitely available) font and select a size which is a reasonable match to the clock size. I suppose I could wait until I get home and look this up, I have a set of X programming manuals, but if anyone here can help that would be useful. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

1 0

PAM issues
by Andy Trevor 18 Aug '05

18 Aug '05

Guys, I am having some issues with pam_mkhomedir If I log on to the server locally with a use account with no home dir all is well, the home dir is greated with the correct permissions. If I try it from an LTSP client all is not well. The Home dir is created as root and of course all goes wrong after that. Any ideas Thanks in advance -- Regards Andy Trevor Technical Director Cutter Project Limited http://www.cutterproject.co.uk

1 0