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Re: [ALUG] Debian and large hard drives
by adam＠thebowery.co.uk 31 Dec '04

31 Dec '04

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 09:27:14PM +0000, Chris Walker wrote: > I think he'd still like Debian though and on the large drive. He's currently > contemplating installing it on a smaller i.e. less than 137 GB drive which is > also in the machine but currently used. > > What does he need to do to an install on the large drive? He doesn't live in > this part of the world and isn't an ALUG subscriber so I'll have to be the go > between. It could be that the BIOS on the machine doesn't know about large disks (i.e. greater than 137G) try looking for a BIOS update for the machine, as if the Debian installer is going by the size reported by the BIOS then you will see a problem. I would expect once you have the machine installed it will work fine as the kernel will talk direct to the IDE controller rather than look at geometry via the BIOS. Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem

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Christmas Meal
by Wayne Stallwood 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

Have we got a firm date for the Christmas meal yet ? I remember there being some discussion about the 7th or the 14th of Jan and I think we have established Buckinghamshire Arms as the venue (or was that just a suggestion that has stuck in my mind) My head is still clearing after the Seasonal Event of Overconsumption and I want to get my social calendar in shape before the Predicted Post New Year's Eve Blackout (currently scheduled to last until at least Jan the 5th)

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'locate', does anyone find it useful?
by Chris Green 29 Dec '04

29 Dec '04

I tend always to use find when looking for files but recently discovered 'locate'. However the 'locate' way of doing things strikes me a not very useful as it searches for the string you give it in every part of the filename which, in general, gives far too many hits. E.g. if I do "locate organ" in the hope of finding some file containing organ music I get thousands of hits with 'Korganizer' etc. in. I also tried "locate -r '^organ" but that found nothing (which is also wrong). "find / -name 'organ*'" does what I want (if slowly), is there any way of doing the same search with locate? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 27 Dec '04

27 Dec '04

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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Regular expressions
by Nick Daniels 26 Dec '04

26 Dec '04

Hi I use mailfilter for deleting spam on server Since I never get spam sent to above address, but xyzzy(a)danielsn.freeserve.co.uk etc. can anybody tell me a regular expression for "If not above address deny". This is the type of term used in Mailfilter: DENY=^To:.*nigel DENY=^Subject:.*spam Regards - Nick Daniels

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Modem/Router recommendation
by Nick Daniels 24 Dec '04

24 Dec '04

Hi I seem to be getting an ever increasing number of requests for Linux details from people.usually ordinary home /office users The people concerned are able to install it themselves, but the main problem is they are using the supplied modem - Speedtouch USB Can anyboy recommend a cheap Modem/Router which will work straight out of the box for Linux? Most of the users quickly give up when they find they cannot get straight onto the internet, those who do usually stay converted Regards Nick Daniels Many thanks for your help during the year

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Linux Virgins Reviewed
by kpwatson＠pop3.ukfsn.org 24 Dec '04

24 Dec '04

Now I don't want to raise the hopes of any of our unattached and footloose members but you might be interested in this site <www.linuxvirgins.com> For the PC inclined amongst us, have a joyful solstice festival and best wishes for the coming year , for the non-PC, A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year. :o) Keith

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.mime_types or .mime.types?
by Chris Green 24 Dec '04

24 Dec '04

Should a MIME types file be called .mime.types or .mime_types? I have both on this Solaris box and want to know which one to get rid of! -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Can one turn off Firefox's "guess what you're going to type"?
by Chris Green 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

Firefox's "guessing" is getting on my nerves and I'd really like to turn it off but I can't see anywhere in Preferences that would do it. The way it works in the address box is just about OK, there you can hit Tab to select the first "guess". However elsewhere this facility doesn't seem to be available so you have to move to the mouse to do anything useful. The real nuisance is that the "guess" often obscures useful and relevant information. Does anyone else find this 'feature' annoying and distracting? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Postfix dilivery to wrong place?
by James Taylor 20 Dec '04

20 Dec '04

Ok, I have a wierd problem here: System: Using postfix as the mail agent, I have a virtual table and an aliases table. Debian stable / unstable / extra bits Problem: Before two / three weeks ago some mail delivered to jt(a)imen.org.uk ended up in tola's. At this point, there where no entries for tola in any tables, and two for jt in the aliases. Nobody else on any domain or username was affected. To edit this, I changed the virtuals table to read as the below, ran the postmap restarted postfix etc, Now, no emails to tola(a)imen.org.uk are recieved at all - they all go to jt. I have tried swapping the ordering of the tola and jt lines in the Virtual file around with no success. Does anyone have any idea what is going on between us? (Again, no other users seem to be affected) Relevant entries in files follow: --------------------------------------------------------- The Virtual table has the ordering (only section relvant): imen.org.uk tola(a)imen.org.uk tola jt(a)imen.org.uk jt @imen.org.uk jt The Aliases has the ordering (all lines relevant to tola or jt): jamest: jt root: jt -- James Taylor [jt(a)imen.org.uk] Still time to enter the Alug Christmas Competition: One liner's to echo the first line of a file in 256 char's or less. http://www.moosecomputerservices.com/Competition

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 20 Dec '04

20 Dec '04

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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Christmas competition.
by Paul 18 Dec '04

18 Dec '04

In response to a query on IRC, I offer a small competition for the festive season. A one liner in a scripting language of your choice to print the first line of a file - The winner will be judged on convolusion & inappropriate use of commands. The limit is 256 characters. To be judged by the gathered hordes on Dec. 26th. Regards, Paul. -- Pieces of seven, pieces of seven - A parroty error. "To err is human...to really f*** things up requires the root password." From a collection of quotes at http://www.indigo.org/quotes.html

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ALUG library online !!
by Wayne Stallwood 18 Dec '04

18 Dec '04

I have been experimenting with OpenDB tonight with a view to using it to manage the Alug library. As well as making the librarians life a bit easier it allows borrowers to check the loan status of books etc, post reservations and reviews/comments. You can check it out in my test area here http://cgi.digimatic.plus.com/opendb/login.php Use the "sign me up" link to request a login (may take some time as I have to respond to a mail to make the user active) There are still a few bugs to be ironed out (mainly because OpenDB is more geared towards lending entertainment media not books) and it still needs a general tidy up. I would appreciate some feedback as to whether this is useable by ALUG members, fedback on bugs etc. If deemed acceptable then I am happy to have a link on the ALUG site pointing to my hosting space, alternatively if MySQL and PHP are available wherever the ALUG main site is, it could be moved there when finished. Please note that the items currently in the database are merely samples to test the system with...booking one as a reservation does not mean that you will get it at present, in fact your reservations will probably get deleted so that others can play with it.

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For a bit of light hearted relief..
by Martyn Drake 17 Dec '04

17 Dec '04

http://rack911.com/149411289.swf (Requires sound) Indeed! Regards, Martyn

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Enumerating files with spaces
by Graham 16 Dec '04

16 Dec '04

Probably a simple one, but I can't figure it... I want to do some conversions on a set of files in a directory, such as for file in * do do_something_with $file done However, I want to do the files in date order, not alphabetically, so I tried for file in $(ls -tr) etc. But this only works if the files don't have spaces in their names; "for" breaks them up into space-delimited tokens, which is no use at all. How do I do this (apparently) simple thing? -- GT

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RE: [ALUG] ALUG library online !!
by Keith Watson 16 Dec '04

16 Dec '04

> From: David Reynolds Sent: 16 December 2004 10:27 > > Looks good to me. Beware of the orange theme though. > Obviously a theme > for people with poor sight... Who said that? :o)

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RE: [ALUG] ALUG library online !!
by Keith Watson 16 Dec '04

16 Dec '04

> From: Wayne Stallwood Sent: 16 December 2004 01:55 > > I have been experimenting with OpenDB tonight with a view to using it to > manage the Alug library. As well as making the librarians life a bit easier > it allows borrowers to check the loan status of books etc, post reservations > and reviews/comments. > > You can check it out in my test area here > http://cgi.digimatic.plus.com/opendb/login.php Looks very good. Basic functionality seems to be there and the I/F is reasonably intuitive (oh, and the horizontal theme seems to work ok). > Use the "sign me up" link to request a login (may take some > time as I have to respond to a mail to make the user active) > > There are still a few bugs to be ironed out (mainly because OpenDB is more > geared towards lending entertainment media not books) and it still needs a > general tidy up. > > I would appreciate some feedback as to whether this is useable by ALUG > members, fedback on bugs etc. > > If deemed acceptable then I am happy to have a link on the ALUG site pointing > to my hosting space, alternatively if MySQL and PHP are available wherever > the ALUG main site is, it could be moved there when finished. Personally, I'd go for it. Regards, Keith ____________ There is only one thing certain and that is nothing is certain. - G.K. Chesterton

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RE: [ALUG] For a bit of light hearted relief..
by Keith Watson 16 Dec '04

16 Dec '04

> From: Martyn Drake Sent: 15 December 2004 22:16 > > http://rack911.com/149411289.swf > > (Requires sound) > > Indeed! > > Regards, > > Martyn Muhahahahahaha!!!!

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Re: [ALUG] Urgent - kind new home required!
by Keith Watson 15 Dec '04

15 Dec '04

Only just caught up with this thread. Is it sorted now? or still unresolved? I'd like to help but can't for the next couple of months because of other commitments, but after that I'd be happy to take a stint. So that the task doesn't continually fall to one person maybe we can pass it around every 6 months or so? Incidentally does anyone know if other lugs operate their own library? and, if so, how they organize things? Be particularly interested to know if any of them have computerised it in any way or form. Regards, Keith ____________ Carpe Diem, quam minimum credula postero. - (Seize today, and put no trust in tomorrow.) - Horace

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ubuntu modem problem
by Nick Daniels 15 Dec '04

15 Dec '04

Hi When I use the ubuntu live CD, I can set up my modem, using pppconfig, (a standard serial port 56k, detected by Suse, Mandrake , Debian etc). When I install Ubuntu, I get "no network devices detected" I have tried pppconfig with TTYS0 etc, but obviously this does not work. Any ideas please? Regards Nick Daniels

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Unofficial Ubuntu 4.10 Starter Guide
by Keith Watson 15 Dec '04

15 Dec '04

<http://ubuntuguide.org> A most excellent piece of work, in fact could also be called the Unofficial Debian Starter Guide (or even the Unofficial GNU/Linux Starter Guide). Answers many of the questions that often seem to pop up on lists like this one. Regards, Keith ____________ CORSAIR, n. - A politician of the seas. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

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Urgent - kind new home required!
by Kirsten Naylor 14 Dec '04

14 Dec '04

Hi, Who would like/would be willing/can be persuaded to take over the Alug library? Adam and I have been looking after the library for nearly two years now, but we don't have the space to hold onto it any more. It is a large-ish and heavy box of various interesting geek/computing/coding type books which gets taken to the bigger meetings (not usually pub nights). These are books which have been donated by members of Alug present and past. There is also a little notebook wherein is inscribed in letters of ballpoint the names of those borrowing any books, which books they borrowed, the date they borrowed them and a contact detail or two. There is ample scope for whoever takes over to put the whole thing on a web page, use software to organise it all, etc etc, we use the box and the notebook as it has been simplest that way for us. If you have space in a cupboard, room in the boot of your car, a tendency to go to the bigger meetings, and benevolence towards Alug in your heart, would you please consider giving the library a new home? Our storage space is now at a premium, so even a temporary home would be gratefully accepted. /Kirsten

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Nice levels and I/O
by Wayne Stallwood 14 Dec '04

14 Dec '04

Leading on from my previous question---- Say I wanted to run this backup on a live machine, how do I limit I/O so that the machine remains responsive. The copy operation itself only uses a small percentage of processor time, but hammers the living daylights out of the disk I/O so surely using nice to limit it wouldn't slow it down much. It's not important for this particular thing, but I am interested to know if it's even possible considering that the kernel doesn't even really know how busy the disks are. Or is nice clever enough to know that something else with a higher priority is wanting disk access ? My plan is that now I have made the initial copy I can use rsync to keep it up to date...or is there a better way ?

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RE: [ALUG] top
by Karl Foley 14 Dec '04

14 Dec '04

> hi = dunno Hard interrupts (Hardware IRQ Servicing) > si = dunno Soft interrupts (Software Interrupt driven routines)

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top
by Wayne Stallwood 13 Dec '04

13 Dec '04

Can somebody please provide an explanation (or point me in the direction of one) for the CPU(s) line in top. I get the percentages for us(er) and sy(stem) but what do ni,id,wa,hi and si relate to ? Looked in the man files for top and can't see any obvious mention of them.

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