- main - earth.li

Kit Swap meet?
by Jonathan McDowell 04 Nov '04

04 Nov '04

Another meeting suggestion: How about a kit swap meet? Everyone brings their old junk they want to get rid of for free and we bring some install CDs too perhaps and either we just swap junk or we combine it up to build full machines that we can then give to charity or people can take away? Possibly January, after Christmas when people have got shiny new kit and have old stuff cluttering up the place? J. -- ] http://www.earth.li/~noodles/ [] God is REAL. (unless declared [ ] PGP/GPG Key @ the.earth.li [] integer) [ ] via keyserver, web or email. [] [ ] RSA: 4DC4E7FD / DSA: 5B430367 [] [

6 6

LiveJournal breaks Planet ALUG
by Ben Francis 04 Nov '04

04 Nov '04

Thanks slef for the page on Syndication Tools in the ALUG Wiki.¹ I was just wondering, why is it that certain HTML produced by LiveJournal² (especially images) breaks Planet ALUG/Mabloss³? I'm assuming it's because LiveJournal produces bad code in the RSS feed. Is this the case? What's the best approach to fix this? 1) Syndication Tools - http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/?SyndicationTools 2) LiveJournal - http://www.livejournal.com 3) MaBloss - http://mjr.towers.org.uk/mabloss.html -- Ben "tola" Francis http://hippygeek.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------- COMPUTER SUPPORT for small businesses and home users http://tolatech.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------

3 2

Problem with /dev/tty with kernel 2.6.9
by Alan Williams 04 Nov '04

04 Nov '04

Hiya folks I just upgraded to kernel 2.6.9 on my home machine. I tend to keep the latest, partly to test things out and partly as a learning exercise. I have had occasional problems in the past, but several important programs die under this kernel, in particular less and rxvt which I use all the time. Using strace, I can see the problem happens on trying to open '/dev/tty', which used to be a device pointing at the current terminal and is now a directory containing devices 's','s0',..,'s9'. The application dies with 'EISDIR'. The documentation on this change is obscure (nothing new), though presumably this is soumething to do with the setup of udev. So any info you have on these points would be useful. 1. Why has this particular change happened? 2. What is the alias of the current terminal supposed to be now? 3. Is there any workround you can think of that will enable these programs to work properly without changing the source and recompiling? I suppose I could revert back to 2.4.x but I would rather use the latest stable kernel if I can. Any suggestions gratefully received. The distribution is Slackware 10.0. Alan -- Alan Williams phone 01603 460800 15 Albury Walk NORWICH NR4 6JE alan(a)bearsden.demon.co.uk

2 1

unicode, sqlite and C
by MJ Ray 04 Nov '04

04 Nov '04

This is a typical slippery slope... I start off from a general issue that affects most users, through a specific application, to a specific programming question. Are you holding tight? Is there a C doctor in the house? Some of you may have "enjoyed" the change of character set from ISO-8859-1 (an 8-bit character code, so 256 possible characters)) to utf-8 (a large character set which is converted into 8-bit codes, pairs of 8-bit codes and so on). Basically, 8859-1 only lets you display western European text, while utf-8 lets you have southern or eastern European languages, or greek or cyrillic or whatever, all at once without doing anything unusual with character sets. FAQ at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html The SQLite database seems to use UTF-16 as a basic datatype. I was having a browse after it was suggested that I try writing a Scheme interface to it. When reading http://www.sqlite.org/capi3.html, the following caught my eye: "There is no agreement on what the C datatype for a UTF-16 string should be." Is there really such disagreement on this basic datatype? The FAQ makes it look clearcut on wchar_t. What types do C programmers really use? For my part, Scheme's character and string datatypes seem to cope with unicode in theory, but the implementation details (such as what character set) are still being thrashed out. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and not of any group I know Creative copyleft computing - http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ Unsolicited attachments to the pipex address deleted Will HLF fund tree-killings? http://www.thewalks.co.uk/

10 25

Apache2 processes
by Jenny Hopkins 04 Nov '04

04 Nov '04

Hi, I've recently installed apache2. I notice that it spawns processes like fury but doesn't kill them when the corresponding web page is closed? Is this due to me misconfiguring a config file, perhaps? Thanks, Jen

2 1

What does this do
by Wayne Stallwood 04 Nov '04

04 Nov '04

When typed into a bash prompt :(){ :|:&};: I have been told it does bad things so don't try it, is it folklore or does it really do something nasty ?

4 5

Report Generators
by Chris Green 04 Nov '04

04 Nov '04

Are there any Report Generator programs available for Linux? I mean a program like the report generator in Paradox or Access, a program that allows data to be selected using a query and then fields can be placed as required on a form. I've found a couple on freshmeat.net, Agata and Lightbulb, but neither is what I'm after really. Agata seems quite limited and Lightbulb costs money. Has anyone used Agata, it may not be as limited as it looks at first. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."

2 2

Re: Migrating an Access application to Linux (Chris Green)
by tom potts 03 Nov '04

03 Nov '04

I havent tried this but it looks close: http://www.knoda.org/ it needs kde apparently Tom ___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

2 1

Re: [ALUG] Re: unicode, sqlite and C
by Matt Parker 03 Nov '04

03 Nov '04

On 3/11/2004, "Brett Parker" <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> wrote: >On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 04:09:12PM +0000, Matt Parker wrote: >> >> On 3/11/2004, "Brett Parker" <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> wrote: >> >> Like I said, you really need to read up on the subject before spouting >> off inflammatory, but false, statements. This is how it works:- >> >> 1) You compile your source code into byte-code. >> 2) The JVM loads your byte-code at start up >> 3) The "Just-In-Time" Compiler compiles your byte-code to native code >> on the fly and optimises it on each iteration >> 4) On tight loops you therefore can end up with more optimised native >> code than something like GCC can produce >> >> The only thing is that this process happens everytime you re-start the >> JVM, but then if you're running it on a server (where I believe Java >> should only really live - it's not useful for desktop apps really) you >> don't care about that because you never restart it. > >Sorry, never restart a Java servlet engine? Never restart a Java app? I >find this a fascinating concept, and one that I've never actually seen >work. > You obviously like an argument don't you? Sarcasm IS the lowest form of wit and you are rapidly demonstrating that idiom correct. Firstly, the JIT compiler doesn't take very long to reach optimal performance and secondly no I don't re-start my servers very often. >> You'r obviously not using it correctly. If you look on a site like >> JobServe you'll see that Java for server-side processing is one of the >> (if not the most) common languages. All those people can't be wrong. > >You've seen the number of sites that use PHP, right? Are you saying that >all those people are also not wrong? If you're just going on numbers, >there's a hell of a lot of Java developers, and PHP developers about, >what's used depends on who's available, not neccessarily on wether it is >right for the job. Please don't use the argument that "it's got lots of >users, therefore it's good", it isn't an argument that sticks. > Show me where I said that PHP was not a useful tool for certain problems? Then show me where PHP is capable of running enterprise level, high volume, transactional sites with full fail-over, load-balancing, guaranteed messaging etc. The right tool for the job... Matt

2 2

For anyone who uses procmail to sort incoming mail
by Chris Green 03 Nov '04

03 Nov '04

This is (probably) only of interest to anyone who uses procmail to sort their incoming mail into different mailboxes. Many of the mailing lists I subscribe to (including alug) insert the mailing list's name into the subject line. I got fed up with this as it wastes useful space that would be better used to show me the subject. I very often (used to) lose the end of the subject off the RHS of my screen. I already know what list the mail is from because procmail has put it pinto the appropriate list mailbox. So I played around with my .procmailrc file, read the manual pages a few times and came up with the following recipe which removes the list name from the subject (as well as storing the mail in the appropriate mailbox, as before) :- :0 fh * ^TOalug | sed 's/\[ALUG\]//' :0 A: alug -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."

4 5

re: Linux based version of the accounts system
by tom potts 03 Nov '04

03 Nov '04

www.gnucash.org dont know if its got an html front end. I've got half of one written in .net (mono should work) but with the above it took away the motivation ___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

4 5

Migrating an Access application to Linux
by Chris Green 03 Nov '04

03 Nov '04

How easy is it nowadays to migrate an Access application to Linux? I'm getting rather fed-up with trying to maintain an Access 97 application on Windows 2000 and migrating to Linux might be the answer. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."

6 8

Wierd problem with G++
by Stuart Bailey 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

Hi, I'm trying to investigate a weird mathematical problem I've come across using G++. I only have G++ on SuSE 9.1, and so I'm unable to test the code on other systems, kernels etc. I would be grateful if someone could compile and run this code and let me have the results: #include <iostream> #include <math.h> int main() { float l = 45.4567; float d = floorf(l); float m = floorf((l - d) * 60.); float s = (((l - d) * 60.) - m) * 60.; std::cout << "l = " << l << std::endl; std::cout << "d = " << d << std::endl; std::cout << "l-d = " << l - d << std::endl; std::cout << "(l-d) * 60.0 = " << (l - d) * 60. << std::endl; std::cout << "m = " << m << std::endl; std::cout << "s = " << s << std::endl; float r = (s / 3600.) + (m / 60.) + d; std::cout << "reconstructed= " << r << std::endl; return 0; } Basically, I getting an odd value printed for l - d (it comes out as 0.456699 and not 0.4567 as expected). Many thanks, Stuart. -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ---------------------------------------- ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please email postmaster(a)linusoft.co.uk immediately. You should not copy or use this email or attachments for any purpose nor disclose their contents to any other person. NO BINDING CONTRACT WILL RESULT FROM THIS E-MAIL UNTIL SUCH TIME AS A WRITTEN DOCUMENT IS SIGNED ON BEHALF OF LinuSoft. LinuSoft cannot accept any responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of this message as it has been transmitted over public networks. *************************************************************************

9 17

Re: [ALUG] Weird problem with G++
by Richard Lewis 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

On Saturday 30 October 2004 13:59, Tim Green wrote: > > float l = 45.4567; > > float d = floorf(l); > > std::cout << "l-d = " << l - d << std::endl; > > > > Basically, I getting an odd value printed for l - d (it comes out as > > 0.456699 and not 0.4567 as expected). > > "float" is not that acurate. You might have more luck with "double". > Try having a lookm at http://www.win.ua.ac.be/~jvvloet/libcff/ and http://www.swox.com/gmp/ Also, my scientific calculator has a function for dealing with fractions (much more respectable in mathematical circles than decimals, well at least in theory anyway) and writing a class to implement fractions is the kind of thing that C++ textbooks are full of (you get to do operating overloading and all sorts...) [and don't forget Python: http://pinkstuff.publication.org.uk/~neil/python/fractions/] Cheers, Richard -- Richard Lewis richardlewis(a)fastmail.co.uk

1 0

Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '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!)

1 0

RE: [ALUG] wireless routers
by Karl Foley 31 Oct '04

31 Oct '04

> -----Original Message----- > From: main-admin(a)lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-admin@lists.alug.org.uk] > On Behalf Of Stan Fraser > Would like to share my internet connection at home between 1. Linux PC, 2. > WinXP Pro PC 3. Laptop WinXP Home (but probably not for much longer). I > was > thinking of getting a Wireless router so I can use my laptop in the living > Which router would anyone suggest, price range up to say £80. I'm using a LinkSys WRT54G here which works great. Best thing is the router runs Linux which you can modify. I'm using WiFi-Box from: https://sourceforge.net/projects/wifi-box/ It adds quite a few features to the basic firmware including: Better firewall with more port mapping Built-in VPN server Able to adjust output power I noticed that LinkSys have just released the WRT54GS which claims to run about 38% faster than standard 54G.

1 0

Syleham meeting
by John Woodard 30 Oct '04

30 Oct '04

Next meeting at Syleham will be Sunday 28th November 2004 2:00 - 6:00pm. Bring kit if you want to, bar will be open. Meeting venue page here http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/syleham.html Cheers, BJ

7 14

Pro-Linux report sexed down by government
by Nick Daniels 29 Oct '04

29 Oct '04

Hope this is not to much off topic but it seems relevant: The Office of Government Commerce's report into the viability of using open-source software in the public sector was toned down in its praise of Linux security before release, silicon.com has discovered. A copy of the report, seen by silicon.com with amendments still visible, shows changes were made to the government's stance on the particular advantages of Linux versus proprietary software when it comes to security. The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) is the Treasury office charged with improving public sector procurement and project management in the UK. The pre-release version of the report read: "Linux would appear to offer numerous strengths in terms of security." In the final version this became: "There is no definitive answer on the relative security merits of open or closed-source software." The pre-release version also described the visibility of Linux code as a boon to its security, saying: "The structure of the Linux operating system is regarded as inherently more secure than that of Microsoft Windows... The open-source code can be viewed in its entirety and in the event of a problem the worldwide Linux community can act to resolve any issue with urgency." The final version, however, is more muted. "While some argue that many eyes lead to fewer security flaws, others argue that those wishing to exploit, or tamper with, open-source code have an easier time than with closed source code," it reads. http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39125400,00.htm Regards Nick

4 5

wireless routers
by Stan Fraser 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

Would like to share my internet connection at home between 1. Linux PC, 2. WinXP Pro PC 3. Laptop WinXP Home (but probably not for much longer). I was thinking of getting a Wireless router so I can use my laptop in the living room. Which router would anyone suggest, price range up to say £80. Also is it possible to get an old ATI All in Wonder card to show the TV? I'm using Suse 9.1 or would I be better swapping the card into the window box and the card from the window box into the Linux box? Thanks in advance for all the help

2 1

bye bye boot sector
by BenEBoy 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

I turned my computer on today but it stopped whilst trying to load lilo (black screen with 'LI' at the top left. It usually says 'LILO 2.whatever). After discovering the recovery disk section of the debian install CD I managed to get everything working again, but was wondering if someone might be able to suggest why it happened (and what I should do now)? I'm running a reasonably up to date sarge (apt-get upgraded last week) and haven't booted into windows for ages so I don't think it can be anything to do with that). The harddrive is about 8 months old and it isn't making any funny noises). Any suggestions please? cheers, BenE

4 4

Hard disk error
by Richard Lewis 26 Oct '04

26 Oct '04

Hello ALUG, I've just added a GB of RAM to my server. The BIOS found it alright but something strange happened when I booted up (its Debian sarge): it took about 2 or 3 minutes to start the syslogd (no disk activity or anything). Then once it had booted things got even worse! $ free -m indicates that the new RAM is working but it seems that hdb2 (which is my /var mount point) will not mount! In my /etc/fstab I have /dev/hda2 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-re 0 1 /deb/hdb1 /home ext3 defaults 0 2 /deb/hdb2 /var ext3 defaults 0 2 and when I issue # mount /dev/hdb2 I get: hdb: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } hdb: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=39067264, sector=39067264 end_request: I/O error, dev hdb, sector 39067264 JBD: IO error reading journal superblock EXT3-fs: error loading journal. mount: wring fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb2, or too many mounted file systems and I can't seem to be able to do anything about because the machine hasn't connecting to the network (maybe it needs something from /var...) so I can't install hdparm. (It can't do anything which requires stuff from /var like run its web server, database server, apt, dhcp-client, ...) Any ideas whats wrong with it? Cheers, Richard -- Richard Lewis richardlewis(a)fastmail.co.uk

7 11

FTGH: Various computing bits.
by Jonathan McDowell 26 Oct '04

26 Oct '04

I don't know if any of this is of interest to people, but if it is please take it off my hands! I'll keep a list with fuller details of the bit and what's gone at: http://the.earth.li/~noodles/junk.html Apple Mac LC475 Intel PII-233 + LX motherboard Full tower AT case Intel Celeron 266 Slot 1 Athlon 800Mhz + mobo 32 port 10Mb/s hub HP Colorado T3000 tape drive + FC-20 controller card PC Chips M747 AT style Slot 1 mobo J. -- If it was easy, the hardware people would take care of it.

1 0

The Decline of Civilisation
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 25 Oct '04

25 Oct '04

Hi Folks, By chance I found myself listening, on Radio 4 yesterday afternoon, to the folllowing gem: Microsoft, Powerpoint and the Decline of Civilisation As the BBC Radio 4 web site puts it: Over 30 million PowerPoint presentations are delivered every day. DJ Taylor asks, "Why?" Well worth listening to. Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/rams/mon1545.ram before this week is out. (15 minutes). Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] Date: 19-Oct-04 Time: 11:32:12 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

4 3

Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 25 Oct '04

25 Oct '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!)

1 0

DSL anyone?
by Ricky Bruce 21 Oct '04

21 Oct '04

I know this topic comes up every few months but what dsl providers would you lot recommend. Id like to find a nice balance between cost (£25 or so a month) freebies, (a router would be a lovely although somewhat unrealistic target) and reasonable speeds. Also i might be moving from Yarmouth to N'arch in a couple of months so the ability to switch to a new property without incurring any penalties or charges would be great. And of course tech support who understood that Linux isnt some kind of Windows program but an OS in its own right. Or even tech support that understood what an OS was :) Cheers in anticipation Rick ps are all ALUGS list messages logged somewhere? LUGs i have been a part of in the past have kept a searchable archive of messages, which has been very useful in looking up past messages for info. _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself with cool new emoticons http://www.msn.co.uk/specials/myemo

23 69