- main - earth.li

testing to main - pleas ignore
by Syd Hancock 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

Annoying but necessary. Syd

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Re: [ALUG] The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story
by Stuart Hammond 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

I dont think it fair saying that linux has a long way to go for non technicle endusers, i am for all practicle purposes a newbie to linux, what i have found is that if i want to change any thing or customise any thing (well at least at my level) you can and its easyer than windows by far. The diffrences between them though is that the guys at microsoft seemed to make an OS which is aimed at being userfrendly and forgot about everything else (and its not like it all works as it should so even the most technicaly inept monkey could od it bits of it ae still damned annotying and difficult) where as in linux user frendlyness is a secondary option, having an OS which works and dosent fall kicking and screaming to the ground evrytime some script kiddie in kazakhistan gets bored and dcides to release his softwarre of doom into the world. _________________________________________________________________ Sign-up for a FREE BT Broadband connection today! http://www.msn.co.uk/specials/btbroadband

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The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story
by Graham Trott 04 Apr '04

04 Apr '04

A cautionary tale for anyone producing end-user software. Also an amusing and informative read. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html -- GT

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Re: [ALUG] DVD-R questions
by Steve Fosdick 04 Apr '04

04 Apr '04

On 2004.04.03 19:27, adam(a)thebowery.co.uk wrote: > The (very) unscientific results of this showed that whichever way I tried this > the job took the same amount of real time in seconds to complete (around 2m19s) > (this I presume is that even without using dma the dvdburner can shunt more > than enough data over the IDE bus), the difference was that when I wasn't using > dma the amount of cpu usage as system (according to top) was pegged at around > 60-70% of cpu with the idle time at about 40-30% and a load average of around > 0.89 and when using dma the system time dropped to under 5% with an idle time > of about 95% and a load average of 0.60ish. This is on an athlon 1700+ machine > and a via kt400 motherboard chipset with everything connected up nicely with > the best type of cables etc. etc. OK, so that's a data transfer rate of 3.27 MB/s and yes, at that speed PIO can keep up at the expense of more CPU time used. As the device gets faster the same is not true. Doing a similar test for a hard disk I remember getting rates of approx. 5 MB/s for PIO and approx. 25 MB/s for DMA. For a DVD burner running at 11 MB/s the difference would be important. Steve.

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NTP between local PCs
by Edenyard 04 Apr '04

04 Apr '04

I'm trying to get two networked Linux boxes to show the same time in X by using ntp. I'm running ntpd on the main one and I've added the IP address of the secondary one to /etc/ntp.conf. However, using ntpdate doesn't set the secondary PC's clock to agree with the main PC, because ntpdate complains that the main PC is too high a stratum. Does anyone know how to get over this. I suspect that the main problem is to do with the main PC not being connected to a kosher ntp server at the time (since there's no internet connection) but it seems that it ought to be possible to sync the two machines' clocks nonetheless. When there IS an internet connection, the main PC uses ntp quite happily to adjust its clock to whatever external server I select, but, even then, the secondary box won't sync to the main one. I've read through all the HTML documentation that comes with ntp in the Slackware 9.1 distribution, but no joy. Any clues, please, anyone? Gerald.

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DVD-R questions
by Wayne Stallwood 03 Apr '04

03 Apr '04

I was kindly given a Pioneer DVD A-04 today. Getting a bit old now, but it does (or should do) the job. I have two slight problems though. The drive is up and burning, but k3b on SuSE 9.0 moans that if I want to use Disk at Once mode I need to either find a copy of cdrdao that supports ATAPI writers or start using ide-scsi. I have never had to use ide-scsi before as I have always had SCSI writers, I tried the obvious adding hdc=ide-scsi bit to Lilo (as a guess) but it just resulted in the kernel complaining that it couldn't enable DMA for HDC. After a boot cdrecord --scanbus couldn't see it so I guess that didn't work out so well. How do I enable ide-scsi for this drive. Also, This drive has had a firmware update to enable it to write at 2x to the new style media , but k3b (or whatever tools it uses under the GUI) has firmly decided that this drive is a 1x drive. Any ideas how I change this or force the issue. Funilly enough it also missreports the maximum speed of my Yamaha SCSI drive as 6x when cdrecord is quite happy running it at it's full speed of 8x Side note, Anybody can make me a silly offer for my ageing (but still pretty good) external SCSI writer (complete with Ultra2 lead) even if the drive is a bit slow, the external case may be handy for a faster drive.

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Re: [alug social] Discrimination in action?
by Craig 03 Apr '04

03 Apr '04

On 2 Apr 2004, at 22:19, adam(a)thebowery.co.uk wrote: > Just to follow this up, I guess that most of you know but I am sure > there are a > few stragglers and people we have forgotten (sorry!) but Kirsty and I > are > expecting our first baby in November of this year :) Congratulations! Just done name it Joe V2.0 or something like someone in the US did..... C

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Freeserve Problems
by johnseago 03 Apr '04

03 Apr '04

Has anyone else had problems using freeserve as an ISP but using their own email address/domain name/ I ask because I have had considerable problems over the past week. It also transpires, after a fight to get them to admit it, that they are blocking emails with the following subject lines in the headers: Test Hi Hello Mail Delivery System Mail Transaction Failed Server Report Status Error URGENT ASSISTANCE INHERITANCE CLAIM LETTER FROM DR CHRIS CAN I TRUST YOU -- John Seago

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Linux Courses @ City College Norwich
by Craig 03 Apr '04

03 Apr '04

I finally got a reply through someone I know at college offering this course back then in January (Was it January?). The reply was this: "Sorry to take so long to reply, I have been off sick. I am afraid that we have had insufficient numbers to run the courses this summer term so the next start date is September." Hope that helps. C

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Shared Hard Drives for windows and Linux
by Stuart Hammond 02 Apr '04

02 Apr '04

Dear All I have a dual Hard drive systme which i am planning on booting both Linux and Windows XP one of the hard drives is givin over exclusivly to media (music movies ETC.) what i would apprecated advice on is: 1) Whats the best Format for the shared Hard Drive 2) What is the best loss less compression for music which can be used both in linux and windows (i was thinking FLAC but i havnt had any experince of it) And a bit off topic: 3) Any Good Free (as in beer) CD rippers for windows which compress to FLAC or simmiler Yours S Hammond _________________________________________________________________ It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today! http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger

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Tax on open source software by UK?
by Nick Daniels 02 Apr '04

02 Apr '04

Hi I have just come across this on Slashdot It alleges, hidden in the budget , there is a proposal to Tax OSS http://www.lose-it.org.uk Regards Nick Daniels

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MS preps new Shared Source challenge to OSS?
by Ben Francis 01 Apr '04

01 Apr '04

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em... http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/36691.html also here: http://www.cbronline.com/currentnews/7503585eb6e9543f80256e670038578b and here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15060 P.S. Yes folks it *is* April 1st. -- Ben "tola" Francis

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FW: FREE Back issues of Linux magazine (Just pay postage)
by Martyn Drake 31 Mar '04

31 Mar '04

For anybody interested - just get in touch with this guy! :) Regards, Martyn chris bose wrote: > Hello, > > I got your email address from the user group pages of the January > 2002 issue. I am sorry to bother you if you are no longer the group > organizer. > > I have the following back issues to give away to anyone interested, > if they just pay the postage. They are all in excellent condition and > have the cover CD's intact: > > Available issues: Nov and Dec 2000, Jan to Dec 2001, Jan to Nov > 2002. > All with cover cd's, in excellent condition. > > Please get in touch if you would like them. I would prefer someone to > take the whole batch if possible. > > Thanks very much, > > Chris Bose PhD > In Press PR Ltd > t: +44 1488 73737 > www.increase-website-traffic.org.uk

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PLC programming in Linux
by Edenyard 31 Mar '04

31 Mar '04

Has anyone here ever had any experience with using Linux to program a Programmable Logic Controller or similar device? If so, what software did you use and for which make of PLC? I've just spent a very unfruitful afternoon Googling for some clues: so far, nothing! Thanks for any hints, Gerald.

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '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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Hello and March meeting
by Matthew Hipkin 28 Mar '04

28 Mar '04

Firstly, I'd like to say Hi to everyone, I've been signed up for a while but never said anything - wanted to get an idea of what goes on first.. Just wondering if there is a meeting in Lynn on the 28th? (A simple yes/no please my poor little brain can't handle anything more). If there is then I would more than likely be up for it as it is very much within stumbling distance! - Hippy

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Re: Wanted - analogue clock with date for X
by Tim Green 28 Mar '04

28 Mar '04

On Sat, Mar 27, 2004 at 06:25:29AM +0000, main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > Message: 6 > Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 14:01:59 +0000 > From: Chris Green <chris(a)areti.co.uk> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Reply-To: chris.green(a)isbd.co.uk > Subject: [ALUG] Wanted - analogue clock with date for X > > Can anyone recommend an X clock utility that has an analogue clock > face and the date? wmtime seems to do what you want. It is part of the WindowMaker window manager, but Debian has let me install it painlessly and run it on my Gnome desktop. Share and enjoy, Tim.

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Windows/DOS emulators for Linux
by Chris Green 28 Mar '04

28 Mar '04

I'm looking for something that will run Windows/DOS command line utilities under Linux. Is there anything other than WINE nowadays? I only need command line, it's to run a collection of 68000 assembler, linker and build programs. The whole thing has been developed under DOS but a customer of a customer now wants to run it on laptops running Linux. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk)

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Yippee!! Broadband reaches North Norfolk
by IanBell 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

Just heard that our small village on the North Norfolk Coast will be broadband enabled at the end of July this year. Yippee! Ian

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Two free tickets to the Linux User Expo conference (fwd)
by MJ Ray 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

Free tickets for the conference part on 20 and 21 April at London Olympia. http://www.linuxexpo.org.uk/ for more details. Entirely arbitrarily and without discussion: The first two people to email main-admin(a)lists.alug.org.uk get passed on as ALUG. You *MUST* be going to the expo. Special mentions in the results for including penguin ASCII-art. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 2004-03-26 14:03:13 +0000 From: Jono Bacon <jonobacon(a)yahoo.com> Subject: Two free tickets to the Linux User Expo conference Hi all, Just on theblower to Maggie Meer from Linux User & Developer and they are offering two free tickets to the Linux User & Developer Expo conference. These tickets will let you sit in a session. You can claim two tickets for two members of each LUG. Oh,and I am speaking at the expo too. ;) Jono -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

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Wanted - analogue clock with date for X
by Chris Green 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

I have just migrated my work desktop from running natively on a Sun Spark workstation to running via an X server on a PC. After a week or so of using and tuning it I have most of the wrinkles out of it now but there's one remaining minor niggle. I run the (very) old Sun OpenWindows 'clock' on my desktop as it provides an analogue clock display *and* the date in a nice written format (e.g. it says "Fri Mar 26" at the moment). However it's somewhat imperfect when run on this PC X server, in particular the dots marking the hours are missing. Can anyone recommend an X clock utility that has an analogue clock face and the date? (The other niggle I haven't sorted yet is a total inability to 'compose' characters, I think I'm stuck on this one) -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk)

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Alsa in 2.6.x
by James Green 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

This may be a wild stab in the dark, but I'm hoping someone out there has this one resolved already... Bought Unreal Tournament 2004. The demo worked nicely under kernel 2.6.4. Installed the retail version, and the following occurs: bash-2.05b$ /usr/local/ut2004/ut2004 open /dev/[sound/]dsp: No such device I've searched google without much luck. The Linux Games FAQ at icculus.org/lgfaq/ mentions some alternate drivers to be set as environment variables, which I see make no difference. I've compiled alsa in, with oss compatibility. The compatibility modules are indeed loaded. Other applications are giving sound fine, including the UT2004 demo. Most frustrating! Can anyone help? Thanks, James Green

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[Alug Announce]Meeting on Sunday, meeting in late April and quietness
by MJ Ray 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- ALUG: ---- 1. Meeting in King's Lynn at 2pm on Sunday 28 March, Globe Hotel http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/2004/03-28Sun.html 2. Opinions sought on late April Norwich meeting http://lists.alug.org.uk/main/2004-March/018217.html 3. Some list threads about ax25 and ALSA in 2.6, but a fairly quiet week on the list http://lists.alug.org.uk/main/2004-March/threads.html Other: ----- 1. Other UK lists reported on were quiet, so here's a reminder about free tickets for 20/21 April at London Olympia http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/expo/ -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ ----- 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

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Mandrake / automake version
by Joe Button 25 Mar '04

25 Mar '04

Hi. I'm trying to build ardour from CVS on Mandrake 10 community. When I run autogen.sh I get a message telling me I need automake >=1.5 (Mandrake uses 1.4 as standard). I tried changing the symlinks for aclocal and automake in /etc/alternatives/ to the 1.7 versions and running aclocal but I got a message saying aclocal: configure.ac: 4: macro `AM_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT' not found in library Can anyone explain what I need to do to use a later version of automake? Thanks for any help.

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Going ALSA-only with full mixing
by MJ Ray 25 Mar '04

25 Mar '04

On Monday's IRC, we discussed a little bit about how to get ALSA mixing sounds, but I'm not sure anyone got it working until after the meeting, so here's a summary and intro for those who missed it. Usually, only one thing opens the sound device at once and that's a pain. Different workarounds (esd, arts) exist, but it's surely better to do this in the sound driver. ALSA supports hardware mixing on some cards and is included in 2.6 kernels. Look at the Soundcard Martrix on http://www.alsa-project.org/ and see if your card has a (4) which means hardware mixing supported. If you have hardware mixing, using the right ALSA drivers is probably all you need to do. I think using ALSA-enabled programs is best, which usually just means installing the right package or compiling with the right options. For applications using the old /dev/dsp device, I think the module snd-pcm-oss should cope with it. I've not tested that and would like to hear what you find. If you don't have hardware mixing, then you need to enable the dmix plugin by editing a config file. Instructions are on http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/asoundrc.php3#softmix but you probably want hw:0,0 instead of the 1,0 in the example. My main machine doesn't do hardware mixing, so I did this. In my experience, this *will* highlight any misconfigurations or weaknesses in your sound setups, which is why it's not done by default for cards that can't do hardware mixing. I found that sounds played out with horrible clicks, but I had a minor option for my card incorrect in modutils.conf. When I put that right, it worked fine. The XMMS sound player complained until I increased the two _size options in the config file. Also, XMMS needed to be told to use user-defined "default" output instead of the detected card and not use "mmap mode". I don't know exactly what all that does (although I could guess), but trial-and-error is wonderful, isn't it? Now, what about OSS-only programs? The OSS emulation doesn't cope for software mixing, as far as I can tell. While sound is playing via ALSA, I get "device busy" from things trying to use /dev/dsp. Running them through aoss (from the alsa-oss package) works. Anyway, I hope you enjoy mixing your Frozen Bubble music with http://muzik.agnula.org/ or similar ;-) Thanks to IRC #alug for help. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

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