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RE: [ALUG] Thursday Working Lunch
by Karl Foley 11 Feb '05

11 Feb '05

> I have no idea how to do it in Linux... But maybe this can help: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Rip_Streams_With_MPlayer

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Suse 9.1 to 9.2 Upgrade
by Karl Foley 11 Feb '05

11 Feb '05

Just upgraded my Laptop from Suse 9.1 to Suse 9.2 using the downloadable DVD (anyone want a copy of this?) and it went remarkably smoothly. I had quite a bit of hassle with Suse initially getting things like ACPI, Wireless, Samba and special keyboard keys but it just migrated the whole lot. It didn't like the version of Evolution I had installed but after I removed this I simply reinstalled post upgrade. Works like a charm. --- ATB, Karl.

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Emacs Startup Scripts
by Dan Hatton 10 Feb '05

10 Feb '05

Emacs keeps a bunch of scripts to run at startup, in the directory </etc/emacs/site-start.d>. These scripts were making the startup of my emacs painfully slow, so I moved most of them to a directory </etc/emacs/site-dontstart.d>. All was well until the other day, when Debian (stable) released a new and more secure xemacs21 package. As part of this package's installation process, a program called emacs-install gets run. After spending (I think correctly) a huge amount of time compiling bits of Lisp, emacs-install died, complaining that it wasn't finding the startup scripts where it expected, leaving me unable to complete the installation. Is there some "official" method of disabling the startup scripts that doesn't cause this problem, please? (I'd also quite like to know the answer to the same question, with respect to the system startup symlinks in </etc/rc?.d>.) -- Thanks Dan Hatton <http://www.bib.hatton.btinternet.co.uk/dan/>

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New toys
by Wayne Stallwood 10 Feb '05

10 Feb '05

Not strictly Linux related but has anyone seen the new Mac Mini that's recently been announced ? http://www.apple.com/uk/macmini/ Looks pretty sweet to me and I also find it quietly amusing that for less than twice the price of a boxed copy of Windows XP Pro you can buy an OS that is at least twice as good, plus the hardware to run it on.

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next meeting Thursday 10th February at the City Gate, Norwich from 8pm (social)
by Brett Parker 09 Feb '05

09 Feb '05

Hi all! (this e-mail might look a little familiar, as I sent it sometime last week, just want to make sure everyone is well informed and ready to come and socialise, obviously :) As is usual on the second Thursday of the month, this Thursday (10th February) we'll be congregating in the City Gate from around 8pm. We should have a penguin in attendance so you know who we are, sometimes we lurk at the far end of the building in the restaurant area. If you want to do gpg keysigning then at least a few of us should be there with sigs and id. Full details can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/2004/all-NorThu.html Directions at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/citygate.html Pictures from August of people so you know who to look out for: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ If you wander in and look for the scruffiest looking person going, that's probably me... I usually turn up as one of the first people, and am usually one of the last to leave... Beer is always accepted as a bribe, though of course, the next day I may entirely fail to remember what the bribe was for, and thus not do anything :) Hope to see lots of you there, -- Brett Parker http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ (the obligatory boring website) iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk (jabber and email!)

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[nmm@uit.co.uk: Exim Conference and Tutorial]
by adam＠thebowery.co.uk 09 Feb '05

09 Feb '05

----- Forwarded message from Niall Mansfield <nmm(a)uit.co.uk> ----- To: main-admin(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Exim Conference and Tutorial From: Niall Mansfield <nmm(a)uit.co.uk> Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2005 16:14:10 +0000 Hi, 206 Mailing List admin(s) We're organizing a Conference about the Exim mail server, in conjunction with the UKUUG. The conference takes place 25/26-Feb-2005 in Birmingham, UK. All the important Exim people are speaking. It would be great if you could publicize it to your group. The full programme is at: http://uit.co.uk/exim-conference/index.htm#programme Thanks, Niall tel: +44 1223 302 041 UIT Cambridge ----- End forwarded message ----- -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem

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Installing Linux mail
by Leon Stedman 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

I attempted to put Mandrake 10.1 community Ed. on a disk the other night (just to see). Imagine that I have a brand new computer. Onto this machine I put Linux using a main stream distribution RedHat, Mandrake or suchlike. This box is to be used at home, and will be connected to the isp for a few minutes four or five times a week to send and receive e-mail, and sometimes for a little longer to browse the web. What do I need to do to achieve such a set-up? The mandrake distribution was useless for this! It offered to setup ISPs for every country but my own and crashed when I lied. I need some official way to connect to the isp and log in. I use wvdial on RedHat 9, but that only comes on the full set of CDs for 'drake. Some program to fetch the mail from the isp. (eg. fetchmail?) Something to read it and write replies. (I use pine!) A way of sending the mail when the box is connected, and a way of storing mail until the box is connected. Maybe something to kill spam. A web browser. As an ordinary user, I don't want to know about LANs, WANs, dial-on-demand, gateways, routers etc. unless such information is needed for such a basic set-up. I do have (or can get) two nameservers xx.xx.xx.xx and yy.yy.yy.yy, the phone number of the ISP (0845 xxxxxx), a username, and a password. This is the problem that an ordinary home user faces, when moving over to Linux, and I would be interested in the views of other subscribers to ALUG on suitable programs and their configuration. Leon Stedman.

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RE: [ALUG] Scripting Advice Needed
by Keith Watson 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

> From: MJ Ray Sent: 03 February 2005 18:10 > Brett wrote: > > It should be relatively simple... parse the file for the function > > keyword at the beginning of a line, then select everything up to the > > first occurrence of */, should be relatively simple. > > Let's use sed, the stream editor! > > sed -n -e '/^function /,/^ *\*\//{;/^function /d;p;}' sourcefile.js > Very neat (and original) solution, Mark and it almost works except it doesn't select the function statement as I needed but that simplifies things a bit :o) But before I say how I fixed that, let me try and feed my understanding back to you to make sure I understand this properly; apart from the actual sed command and the options, we have:- '/^function /,/^ *\*\//{;/^function /d;p;}' the single quotes (or apostrophes or whatever you want to call them) i.e. the [ ' ] characters simply delimit the argument string for the -e option, which leaves, /^function /,/^ *\*\//{;/^function /d;p;} and breaking this down as you describes gives, /^function / then a comma separator, then /^ *\*\// followed by {;/^function /d;p;} ok, so for /^function / the oblique strokes are just delimiters and the caret says match at the beginning of the line, which leaves the string to be matched, which is 'function ' (is the trailing space deliberate? to delimit a complete word?) now for /^ *\*\// again the oblique strokes are just delimiters and the caret says match at the beginning of the line, which leaves, *\*\/ which is used to look for */, complicated because the backslash escape characters are needed to specify that the asterisk and oblique stroke are actually characters to be matched rather than special characters. I presume the first asterisk is so that the */ string can be preceded by any extraneous spaces or tabs at the start of the line? Now for the interesting bit :o) {;/^function /d;p;} I think the semi-colons delimit the sed commands, is that correct? if so are the leading and trailing ones needed? so we have; /^function /d and p according to the manual d deletes the pattern space and starts the next cycle, but here you're matching a line starting with the word - function - so only that line is deleted (which is probably why the function definition isn't being output), and the p command just tells sed to print out the pattern space? So to get sed to do what I want I just need; sed -n -e '/^function /,/^ *\*\//p' sourcefile.js Which works a treat!!! :D Once again, many thanks for the elegant solution Mark - rispek init :o). Sorry to everyone else for a long winded reply but I'm not that well up on either sed or regular expressions so I thought picking it apart would ensure that I understood it correctly and that anyone else with the same level of knowledge as me could see what was going on. Regards, Keith ____________ Life is painful, suffering is optional. - Sylvia Boorstein

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Problem with HP 7310 printer (HPLIP) and CUPS, won't print
by Chris Green 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

Are there any HP/CUPS experts hereabouts? I'm having a problem getting my shiny new Officejet 7310 printer to work on my Slackware 10 system. It was a bit of a beast to install on Windows 2000 so problems on Linux as well are nut unexpected. I have built and installed the latest hpijs (1.7.1) and the latest hplip (0.8.7), that went fairly smoothly except that the hplip startup scripts are for RedHat so I had to do a little bit of work to integrate them into the Slackware startup. My existing Deskjet 840C and Laserjet 1150 work fine so CUPS is basically OK. However the Officejet 7310 obstinately refuses to print even though everything appears OK, jobs queue up, it looks like it should work, but no printout. CUPS does report a problem but I can't find any help on how to resolve it, on the "Manage Printers" page in CUPS for the Officejet 7310 it says:- Description: Officejet 7310 Location: Study Printer State: stopped, accepting jobs. "open device failed; will retry in 30 seconds..." Device URI: hp:/net/Officejet_7300_series?ip=192.168.13.44 I can ping 192.168.13.44 OK so the printer is connected, and I can (now) print to it from Win2k. Can anyone suggest what the "open device failed" message indicates is wrong? (I am using the support forums at http://sourceforge.net where the HP printer software is supported too) -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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re.usb serial adaptor
by phil 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

> > From: Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.plus.com> > > All of the USB-Serial adapters I have encountered seem to have latency > issues, Not a problem with this project - it's just a means to upload the new ignition timings. > > AFAIK Brainboxes.... But be > warned that these cards are not cheap. Not the one for me then! > > if you are dealing with a desktop then you may well find the serial > ports on > the systemboard, have not been brought out to the back panel. No dice - it's all Mac hardware here, USB or firewire. > > > From: Ian bell <ianbell(a)ukfsn.org> >> >> > > I bought one from www.Ebuyer.com a couple of years ago and it has > worked fine on my laptop ever since. Works out of the box with > gtk-term and you can even toggle the handshake lines. They are only a > few pounds; their product code is: 40608 Cheers. I'll take a look!

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Re:Problem with HP 7310 printer (HPLIP) and CUPS, won't print
by John Seago 06 Feb '05

06 Feb '05

On Saturday 05 Feb 2005 23:26, Chris Green <chris(a)areti.co.uk wrote: > I'm having a problem getting my shiny new Officejet 7310 printer to > work on my Slackware 10 system. It was a bit of a beast to install on > Windows 2000 so problems on Linux as well are nut unexpected. First check to see if both CUPS and LPRNG are installed, if so uninstall both and reinstall ONLY CUPS, they wont both work together. Also I have had CUPS refuse to work, and found that if one just keeps canceling and starting again sooner or later it then works, (rebooting between attempts seems to get it to go!) Have a look here to see if there is any help from those who actually know what they're doing, (unlike me).: http://www.userlocal.com/articles/slackwarecups.php Userlocal is very useful for Slackware users. -- John Seago GNU/Linux User #219566 (http://counter.li.org) AFFS (http://www.affs.org.uk/)

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PC Hardware Suppliers in Norfolk?
by Keith Watson 05 Feb '05

05 Feb '05

Being something of an old fogey I like to actually go and purchase any new PC spares over the counter (that is when I'm not scrounging old kit of friends and colleagues :o) ). In addition, I like to support local businesses where I can. So do list members know what outlets for PC kit exist in Norfolk (especially in and around Norwich)? And can anyone pass on any good/bad experiences they've had? URL for websites would be good. Regards, Keith ____________ Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things, but just look at what they can do when they stick together.

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Re: [ALUG] hello from me
by allan miller 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

>Have you tried inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org )? Provides pretty good >vector graphic editing facilities a la Corel. I haven't looked closely at the latest release yet but my impression is that it has some way to go before it matches the later Coreldraws. And I have been creating graphics that really push it to its limits. So I am loath to move to something that is less featured. Doctrinal purity has its limits. Allan

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Re: [ALUG] hello from me
by allan miller 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

> >BTW, where abouts are you ? Sorry, forgot to mention it. I live in central Norwich (near the railway station). Allan

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Re: [ALUG] hello from me
by allan miller 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

>Aren't there Linux builds of some of the Corel draw versions ? >I am sure I have read about it somewhere. >If not I am sure I have seen it running under wine before, that could be a >whole lot easier that having to maintain a whole VM just for one application. As far as I am aware they are old versions whereas I am using version 11 and need some of its features. Now that I have got the software and hardware that will run it all OK I don't mind using it but one would like to move to total Linux software. Allan

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hello from me
by allan miller 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Hello I have just subscribed to the list. My name is Allan Miller. I have been using Linux extensively for the past 4 years now. After trying various distributions I have settled on Slackware. Occasionally I try a new distribution but end up fairly quickly back with Slackware. I like its speed and simplicity of setting up (I used to dislike the others with everything hidden behind gui's). Because I like fiddling/tuning I can quite easily get lost for hours tweaking things - a bit like a car mechanic who spends hours under the bonnet tuning etc and never takes the car out on the road. And a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Although 99.9% of the time I boot into Linux I still use Windows within a Vmware virtual machine as I use Coreldraw a lot and there is nothing equivalent yet under Linux. It has been a bit of a solitary life as I don't know anyone else who is using Linux. regards Allan

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List config
by Andrew Savory 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

Hi, It seems there is a problem with the ALUG main mailing list: it does not allow you to unsubscribe (or at least, it ignores unsubscribe requests). Messages to 'main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk' with a subject of 'unsubscribe' appear to fail silently. John or Adam - could you check all is well with the list config? Thanks, Andrew. -- All views are my own - who else would want them?

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RE: [ALUG] PC Hardware Suppliers in Norfolk?
by David Studholme (JIC) 04 Feb '05

04 Feb '05

I have bought quite a few bits of kit from these guys in Thorpe St Andrew, with no problems at all: http://www.anglianinternet.co.uk/ Cheers Dave Matt Parker wrote: > I've found MG Computers to be excellent.

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Scripting Advice Needed
by Keith Watson 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

I have a stack of JavaScript files from which I want to extract the function definition lines and the following comment block for documentation purposes, e.g. in the source files functions are defined thusly; function thisIsAfunction (firstArg, secondArg, thirdArg) { /* ************************************************************** * a description of the purpose of the function, what * argument values are expected and some examples * of use. * */ [then the body of the code for the function, which may contain further comment blocks that I want to ignore] } Question is can I do this with the ubiquitous egrep? or will I need to use something like perl or awk? Any ideas or suggestions? Anyone know of something that already does this? And before someone asks, yes I have tried google and found one possibility, an awk script that will extract _all_ the comments but not the function definitions [eXtract Source Code Comment <http://members.tripod.com/vgoenka/unixscripts/xscc.html>]. Most hits were from people who wanted to remove comments to either just compress the source or count lines of code. Regards, Keith ____________ Never annoy Dragons. For thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup. - D&D saying

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RE: [ALUG] Scripting Advice Needed
by Keith Watson 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

> From: Brett Parker Sent: 03 February 2005 14:00 > On Thu, Feb 03, 2005 at 10:39:21AM -0000, Keith Watson wrote: > > I have a stack of JavaScript files from which I want to > extract the function definition lines and the following > comment block for documentation purposes, ...[lots deleted]... > I'd probably go the perl route, but that's because I can't write awk ;) yeah, not my favourite scripting language either, but I know it has it's uses (he said hastily :o) ) > If I get a chance later on tonight, I'll throw something out that should work. gracias, amigo > I assume that the comments are always straight after the function definition? yes > I'd have expected it to be /** at the top of the comment for Java, > but I suppose as this is JavaScript I'm not surprised that it's not. ditto, but that's the way whoever did it coded them. It's quite readable though, so I can see why it was done that way. > It should be relatively simple... parse the file for the function > keyword at the beginning of a line, then select everything up to the > first occurrence of */, should be relatively simple. that's why I wondered if it could be done with a suitable cunning regular expression and egrep. Any regex guru's fancy a crack at this? :o) Keith ____________ CONNOISSEUR, n. - A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else (q.v. EXPERT). - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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Euros
by Stan 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

Once Euros are introduced will the name of the Cash Points (or Cosh Points, depending where you live;)) be changed to Eurinals?

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RE: [ALUG] hello from me
by Keith Watson 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

> From: Anthony Anson Sent: 03 February 2005 11:03 > > The message <20050203102356.GE52285(a)amnesiac.heapspace.net> > from Brett Parker <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> contains these words: > > > > <nostalgia-alert>If you ask me the rot set in when we dispensed with > > > good old shillings and pence.</nostalgia-alert> > > > I missed that bit, see, being a mere youngster... I remember half > > pence pieces though, they where fun :) > > What I want to know is, what on earth happened to ells, bushels, > pennyweights and cubits? The inevitable downward spiral of progress, I'm afraid. > Yoofertoday! I remember when groats were legal tender... Huh. I remember when goats were legal tender... (actually I don't but it's a good line :o) ) Regards, Keith ____________ ARMOR, n. - The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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RE: [ALUG] hello from me
by Keith Watson 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

> From: Brett Parker > On Thu, Feb 03, 2005 at 09:38:05AM -0000, Keith Watson wrote: > > > From: Brett Parker Sent: 03 February 2005 08:10 > > > On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 02:44:16PM +0000, Paul wrote: > > > > > > > > Speak for yourself - I'm living the American Dream for a month... > > > > Glorious sunshine, temperatures up in the 70's... > > > > > > Paul, I know you in merka, but can you speak in an english tongue and > > > use celcius instead of fahrenheit, 70 celcius is "rather warm" so I'm > > > assuming you're in fahrenheit and mean 21.1C ;) > > > > Speak for yourself Brett, as far as I'm concerned > fahrenheit is English and celcius/centigrade is "foreign muck". 70's works for me! :o) > > It's Swedish [1], admittedly, but given that Fahrenheit[2] is a German > invention, they're both foreign... Get with the programme, damn you ;) > Well? English is a (sort of) German dialect and our current sovereign's family also originally hails from that part of the world. So traditionally we English have always had a penchant for things German, anyway it was good enough for my grandparents, it's good enough for me. :o) Notwithstanding that my German acquaintances all use SI units (e.g. metres, litres, Celsius, etc.). > Apparently we're supposed to work in SI units, next to go on the list is > Miles, but hey, that can wait for a bit, there's far too many signs to > change for that ;) Yeah, depressing isn't it? <nostalgia-alert>If you ask me the rot set in when we dispensed with good old shillings and pence.</nostalgia-alert> Regards, Keith ____________ ABSURDITY, n. - A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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RE: [ALUG] hello from me
by Keith Watson 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

> From: Brett Parker Sent: 03 February 2005 08:10 > > On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 02:44:16PM +0000, Paul wrote: > > > > Speak for yourself - I'm living the American Dream for a month... > > Glorious sunshine, temperatures up in the 70's... > > Paul, I know you in merka, but can you speak in an english tongue and > use celcius instead of fahrenheit, 70 celcius is "rather warm" so I'm > assuming you're in fahrenheit and mean 21.1C ;) Speak for yourself Brett, as far as I'm concerned fahrenheit is English and celcius/centigrade is "foreign muck". 70's works for me! :o) Regards, Keith ____________ What you think you own, owns you. - Zen Saying

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '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!)

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