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Headless RedHat
by Matt Parker 27 Feb '04

27 Feb '04

Hi All, I've got 3 boxen I want to use in my configuration - 2 RedHat 7.3 boxen (one running Oracle 9i, one running IBM WebSphere) and 1 Mandrake 9.1 box. I've got 1 two-port KVM switch so I can view one of the RedHat boxen as well as my Mandrake desktop. The problem is that I cannot get the other RedHat box to boot in headless mode (I don't want to reinstall since a lot of time and effort went into getting Oracle and WebSphere set up correctly). I've tried using serial cable/minicom for the second box, but no joy. Anyone here managed to get Linux/x86 booting in headless mode? Matt -- http://www.mpcontracting.co.uk Experts in Java development and website design

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RE: [alug social] Re: [ALUG] OpenSSH
by MJ Ray 27 Feb '04

27 Feb '04

On 2004-02-27 10:23:32 +0000 Jenny Hopkins <Jenny(a)toby-churchill.com> wrote: >> From: Duncan Sample [mailto:linux@antimatters.co.uk] > >> On a slightly more serious note... when are the LUG meets around >> here? by >> here I mean peterborough/huntingdon area Peterborough meetings are normally the last Thursday or Tuesday of each month. I'm a bit confused about when the next one is, as I've not followed their mailing list closely enough. Anyone for a drink^Wmeeting in Ely? > Look out, all the techie grrrls on this list are DANGEROUS. Hrm, modem and parallel ports? -- 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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RE: [ALUG] Onboard modem Suse 9.0 K7s5a
by Jenny Hopkins 27 Feb '04

27 Feb '04

Keith Watson wrote: > > > a) Put external modem on parallel port!!! > > > > Are you sure this is possible??? > > Of course, no problem!. Just ask Jen, she the list's > resident expert on this. > :o) Heh heh! I was wondering if I should comment when I saw the original mail, but I'm not one to give advice! My modem did survive its unpleasant experience of being plugged into the parallel port and has been working well since, though. Syleham - hoping to make it but weekends get shorter and shorter, had anyone else noticed this? Got to return my library book and dredge a review from somewhere. Jen ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________

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Onboard modem Suse 9.0 K7s5a
by Nick Daniels 27 Feb '04

27 Feb '04

Hi I have been trying to configure my onboard modem on my K7S5A board as I need my serial port for ham radio control. Suse 9.0, finds the modem but I have tried TTYS0 to S4 with no luck. Does anybody know what I should assign it to, or is there other things I should look at? Regards Nick Daniels

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Shell buzzer
by Wayne Stallwood 27 Feb '04

27 Feb '04

I am running SuSE 9.0 here, but I've seen this on other distros When in either a tty session on a shell using konsole I have a really annoying warning bleep when I do certain things, an example is pressing backspace when there is nothing to backspace to of if I try to tab complete something that does not exist. In konsole it is using the soundcard and on the tty sessions it uses the PC speaker. How do you get rid of it ? Regards Wayne

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Announce digest, Vol 3 #4 - 1 msg
by announce-request＠lists.alug.org.uk 27 Feb '04

27 Feb '04

Send Announce mailing list submissions to announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announce-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk You can reach the person managing the list at announce-admin(a)lists.alug.org.uk When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announce digest..." --------------.--------------------------------------------.------------ alug-announce | Newsletter of the Anglian Linux User Group | Weekly(ish) --------------'--------------------------------------------'------------ ** Please send articles for this letter to announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk ** *** Please send replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk, not announce... *** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Today's Topics: 1. [lugmaster] Update on the EU's IP Enforcement Directive (James Heald) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 18:50:08 +0000 From: James Heald <j.heald(a)ucl.ac.uk> To: lugmaster(a)mailman.lug.org.uk Reply-To: "A closed discussion list for UK LUGMasters." <lugmaster(a)mailman.lug.org.uk> Subject: [Alug Announce][lugmaster] Update on the EU's IP Enforcement Directive -- FFII News Update -- 25 February 2004 -- +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ -- For immediate release -- Please redistribute widely As expected, the proposed text for the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) was nodded through by the European Parliament's Legal Affairs committee without a vote on Monday afternoon. The Directive is now scheduled to be debated by the full Parliament on Monday 8 March, and voted on (with amendments possible) on Tuesday 9 March, ready to be approved by ministers on Thursday 11 March. A report of the MEP's discussion can be found at: http://www.ipjustice.org/CODE/Report_of_JURI_Committee_Meeting.html =09 One notable comment is that of Malcolm Harbour (UK Conservative MEP), who said that: "This Directive, contrary to public presentation, is not mainly about the commercial interests of the software industry, but about important brandnames that are an incentive for criminal elements (tangibles)... When getting e-mails MEPs should reply that the Directive is not about Free Software and not even about the digital world. It should pass in First Reading". This should be read in the context of Article 2 of the Directive, which states that: "...the measures and procedures provided for by this Directive shall apply, in accordance with Article 3, to any infringement of intellectual property rights as provided for by Community law and/or by the national law of the Member State concerned". A page by Ian Brown of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), outlines some of the measures in the directive and how they could be used by claimed rightsholders against small software projects: http://www.ffii.org.uk/ip_enforce/oss.html EFF Alert =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Electronic Freedom Frontier (EFF) today also issued a briefing about the directive, and an online petition which will be sent to key MEPs, http://action.eff.org/action/moreinfo.asp?item=3D2873 http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=3D2&item=3D2873 =09 "The European Parliament is poised to adopt a controversial directive on Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement that would give rights-holders incredibly powerful tools in their fight against intellectual property infringers. While this might sound like a good idea at first, a closer look reveals that the directive doesn't distinguish between unintentional, non-commercial infringers and for-profit, criminal counterfeiting organizations. If this directive is adopted, a person who unwittingly infringes copyright -- even if it has no effect on the market -- could potentially have her assets seized, bank accounts frozen and home invaded. Don=92t let these tactics become the latest weapons in intellectual property rights-holders' destructive war on "piracy".=09 =09 "The key to the directive is the definition of 'commercial scale'. Several of the more extreme new remedies are only available for commercial- scale infringement. However, this is largely undermined by the definition in new recital 13a of the directive, which states, 'The acts which are committed on a commercial scale are those carried out for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage'. "Although it goes on to say, 'This would normally exclude acts done by end consumers acting in good faith,' the meaning of 'indirect economic advantage' is unclear and the directive is not limited to intentional infringements. Therefore, there is concern that rights-holders will be able to use the new tougher penalties against consumers who accidentally or unknowingly infringe, including those who commit minor infringements without any commercial purpose or impact." FFII view =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D =09 FFII stands by its previous statements about the Directive, as picked up for example in this Slashdot discussion: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=3D04/02/20/216227 =09 In particular FFII draws attention to the proposal to make "Anton Piller" orders available for all alleged IP infringements, without even the proposed restriction to commercial scale. Currently these measures are unknown outside the UK and France. Furthermore, in the UK, after very strong criticisms from the most senior judges, a strict new code of practice was brought in in the early 90s which cut the number of applications granted by a factor of ten.=09 =09 "We are talking about unannounced dawn raids by private security firms, piling in with legal authority and seizing entire computer systems and filing cabinets full of documents. That is a terrifying and destructive experience for a small firm," explains FFII's James Heald. That is why FFII is arguing that such measures should only be available in the most extreme circumstances, and where there is clear evidence of a deliberate knowing intent to infringe for commercial gain on a commercial scale. Such measures are simply not appropriate where there is no such deliberate piracy, and no such emergency, in cases as complex as those in patent law and disputed ownership of confidential information/trade secrets, which routinely can take five years in court. "FFII says that without better defined safeguards the Directive will lead to a far more agressive, lawyer-driven legal environment for creative businesses. Having seen how similar legislation is used in the United States, FFII fears that it will provide the perfect means for agressive litigators holding dubious intellectual property rights to "pull a SCO" and use the powers of the Directive to seriously harass and damage small open-source projects and innovative businesses". FFII believes that: 1. Disputes about patents and trade secrets/confidential information should be taken out of the scope of the directive altogether. The draconian measures being discussed are completely inappropriate for such complex disputes. Ideally the directive should be limited back to its original proposed scope, namely commercially organised, fully intentional, copyright and trademark infringement. 2. The Directive should only apply where there is intent to infringe for commercial gain on a commercial scale. It should not apply unless there is good evidence of recklessness or a deliberate knowing intention to infringe. 3. Articles 7 to 10 should even then only apply in exceptional cases. It should be clearly stated in the Directive (as at the moment it is not) that they are not intended to become automatic standard procedure in all IP disputes. *** FFII urges all European citizens to contact their local constituency MEPs as soon as possible, to make them aware of the dangers of this Directive. *** Contact details for UK MEPs can be found at: http://www.europarl.org.uk/uk_meps/MembersMain.htm =09 =09 James Heald, UK co-ordinator, FFII http://www.ffii.org.uk/ip_enforce/ipred.html _______________________________________________ lugmaster mailing list lugmaster(a)mailman.lug.org.uk http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/lugmaster --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announce mailing list Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce End of Announce Digest

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OT: e-mail accounts
by Richard Lewis 26 Feb '04

26 Feb '04

Hello List, (Sorry, this may be a little off topic...) As should be obvious I currently use an e-mail account from UEA. But, as with all good things, my time at UEA must eventually come to an end and I was just wandering if anyone knew of anyone who provides free e-mail accounts that would work well with a normal mail client (like KMail, Evolution etc.) I suppose I mean POP-based rather than Web-based. Cheers, Richard

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OpenSSH
by Craig 25 Feb '04

25 Feb '04

They just released v3.8 today. *stretches* It is still morning and I need another cup of tea... (Off topic.. does anyone love other tea? Like English Breakfast, Assam, Earl Grey etc? ;) C

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Postfix sender address
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 25 Feb '04

25 Feb '04

I'm running Postfix under Debian (Testing). At present I use an option in my mailer to translate my senders local address to the address I want but I'd prefer to have it done by Postfix. I want barry@localdomain to be translated to barry(a)beenthere-donethat.org.uk I looked through the Postfix documentation and assumed that I need to use the /etc/postfix/canonical file. I have tried the following entries: barry@localdomain barry(a)beenthere-donethat.org.uk @localdomain beenthere-donethat.org.uk None of these work. I still get the included sender address as barry@localdomain. I did remember to run postmap /etc/postfix/canonical and to be on the safe side I also ran postfix reload. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Re: Any ssh experts around?
by Jenny Hopkins 24 Feb '04

24 Feb '04

Chris Green wrote: > > So, why doesn't the first one work? I think I've set > everything up but I may have missed something obvious. Any > ideas anyone? > Chris, sorry if you wrote you did this and I didn't spot it (digests are cumbersome to follow), but have you changed the "Password Authentication" line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config file? Jen ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________

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firefox browser
by Bryce Martin 24 Feb '04

24 Feb '04

Has anybody else had persistent trouble trying to download firefox 0.8 from the official website. I haven't been able to do it for more than two weeks now. I keep getting timed out on the server. I initially thought this might be a short-lived problem, but it has persisted for a long time now. Can anyone offer advice about this? -- Regards, Bryce.

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ADSL
by Vasko Tomanov 24 Feb '04

24 Feb '04

I want to receive 256 MBit ADSL connection for my company with one static IP address. I live in Marlow , SL7 3EA I have my own modem etc. I have BT Line I not need some setup help. And I will be happy to buy this service from some one who run his business on Linux .. if some one in this list provide this type of services send me his phone number to give him a call Cheers Vasko

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Any ssh experts around?
by Chris Green 23 Feb '04

23 Feb '04

I'm trying to set up an ssh connection to a remote system where I have a shell login account and I can't get it to do RSA (or DSA) authentication and not askk me for a password. I have a number of other logins where the passwordless login works fine. If I turn debugging on (with -vvv) the sequence up to where it demands a password is:- debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug3: start over, passed a different list publickey,password debug3: preferred publickey,keyboard-interactive,password debug3: authmethod_lookup publickey debug3: remaining preferred: keyboard-interactive,password debug3: authmethod_is_enabled publickey debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Offering public key: /home/chris/.ssh/id_rsa debug3: send_pubkey_test debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug1: Offering public key: /home/chris/.ssh/id_dsa debug3: send_pubkey_test debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug2: we did not send a packet, disable method debug3: authmethod_lookup password debug3: remaining preferred: ,password debug3: authmethod_is_enabled password debug1: Next authentication method: password On a very similar system where the passwordless login works I get:- debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password,keyboard-interactive debug3: start over, passed a different list publickey,password,keyboard-interactive debug3: preferred publickey,keyboard-interactive,password debug3: authmethod_lookup publickey debug3: remaining preferred: keyboard-interactive,password debug3: authmethod_is_enabled publickey debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Offering public key: /home/chris/.ssh/id_rsa debug3: send_pubkey_test debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 149 So, why doesn't the first one work? I think I've set everything up but I may have missed something obvious. Any ideas anyone? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk)

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 23 Feb '04

23 Feb '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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kmail
by Bryce Martin 21 Feb '04

21 Feb '04

For some reason I can't solve a problem I have with Kmail on my laptop which gives the following error every time I try to mail or reply someone. The server did not accept the sender address. The server responded: "Invalid extension (Martin) " The message will stay in the 'outbox' folder until you either fix the problem (e.g. a broken address) or remove the message from the 'outbox' folder. Note: Other messages will also be blocked by this message, as long as it is in the 'outbox' folder The following transport protocol was used: ntlworld Can you help me resolve this problem? I can recieve mail using Kmail, but not send a thing!!! Regards, Bryce ===== ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html

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Firebird -> Firefox
by Ben Francis 21 Feb '04

21 Feb '04

I'm sure a lot of people already know about this, I may even have missed it being discussed already. Mozilla's stand alone browser, Firebird has recently been renamed... again. The name change is because of a clash with the open source database project of the same name and hopefully we'll get to stick with this one. Mozilla Firefox as it is now known is my browser of choice in both Windows and GNU/Linux so I just thought I'd make sure people were up to date with the latest news. The press release linked to below gives more details about the most recently added features. http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-02-09.html Keep geeking. -- Ben "tola" Francis | 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk | mailto:tola@imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only

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VPN
by Vasko Tomanov 20 Feb '04

20 Feb '04

Hi , I want to setuop a VPN but I don't know how to do this: So we have: mikes PCs on internal network --> mike's main pc --> second network card --> cable modem --> internet --> my ADSL modem --> my linux firewall. My modem has an external address but uses NAT to convert to internal address before arriving at my linux firewall. I can set up port forwarding. some ideas ? Cheers Vasko

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Job open - PHP developer - East Cost
by James Green 17 Feb '04

17 Feb '04

Hi all, Not exactly on-topic, but perhaps reaching an appropriate audience all the same -- my employers have a position open that might interest ALUGers. The position is as a PHP developer. If you're interested in the following areas we invite your CV in to us (details below): - templating technologies, perhaps smarty in particular - multi-lingual support - multi-country support - running several hundred websites from one backend pool of code - creating backend technologies that are highly flexible Examples of existing technology live and in action: http://polyphonic.ringtonezone.co.uk/en/uk/ringtones/ http://icecooltones.com/en/uk/polyringtones/ Successful candidate will work in a small tightly knit team to produce a re-write of this core company product through which we make considerable sales. MySQL traditionally used, however current research is turning towards Postgresql. Virtually all our production servers and developer workstations run Debian Linux. Ideally looking for two years commercial PHP experience. Company is StealthNET Ltd, one of the UK's fastest growing and most successful premium rate billing companies. We provide the technical platforms for thousands of resellers around the world, and are completely debt-free. From five people two years ago to 20+ today, and plenty of positions open. Complete chaos most of the time but extremely busy all of the time, plenty of room for gaining experience. I would also have had a Perl position open for our SMS platform, however that just got filled! Staff receive corporate gym membership for a small (rediculously small, believe me) heavily subsidised fee, pension contributions and a healthcare package on top. Any questions, or to throw your CV into the hat, please contact: Sheena Rimmer employment(a)stealthnet.net 0870 800 1777 Please mark it for the PHP role. Thanks, James

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A couple of interesting articles about working for yourself
by kpwatson＠pop3.ukfsn.org 17 Feb '04

17 Feb '04

This is a bit off-topic but from other conversations I've had with people on this list I think the links might be of interest. I found them fascinating; part 1 = http://homepage.mac.com/monickels/techjob.html part 2 = http://homepage.mac.com/monickels/techjob2.html Keith

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SpamAssassin False Positives
by Nick Heppleston 17 Feb '04

17 Feb '04

Morning ALUGers! I've got an interesting one with false positives in SpamAssassin and I'm hoping someone here might have used or even had the same problem. I have a client who runs a precision instrument business for the scientific industry. They have a number of clients out in Japan and legitimate e-mails from them are being flagged as spam. Our default score for spam is 4 and these messages are coming in ranked at 4.495, hence they are being flagged as spam. I'd be happy to change the setting to mark all messages with a score higher than 5 as spam for this client, but that wouldn't stop a small number of spam messages (10) I've received today alone in my own Inbox. We have identified some phrases we believe might be causing the high ranking but I don't actually know how to train SA that these phrases are ok and shouldn't be marked as spam. Apart from increasing (or is it decreasing) the spam ranking for the clients domain to 5, I can't see a way around this. Any suggestions? Nick -- Nick Heppleston 07989 581766 | nickheppleston(a)gmx.co.uk

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Syleham Meeting Sunday 29th
by John Woodard 16 Feb '04

16 Feb '04

Hi all, Syleham and Wingfield Village Hall is booked for Sunday 29th from 2:00pm onwards although I'll be there from around 1:00pm. The planned screening of Revolution OS will go ahead. Other activities planned none but bring along your kit if you require assistance and someone may be able to help. Post to the list if you have any specific requests. Usual disclaimers apply, if you bring kit, it is your responsibility, label it etc. Venue Details at http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/syleham.html mail to the list if you need a lift or picking up from the nearest station `Diss'. Oh yes this time THE BAR WILL BE OPEN! I will make sure I have the keys. Cheers, BJ

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Freeserve problems
by Nick Daniels 16 Feb '04

16 Feb '04

Hi A bit of topic, but I think Freeserve have achieved the ultimate, any mail sent to me since Friday is apparently bounced with this message > This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. > > A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its > recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: > > nick(a)danielsn.freeserve.co.uk > SMTP error from remote mailer after end of data: > host mail-in.freeserve.com [193.252.22.143]: 550 Error: > Message content rejected I can send mail, But the only thing I receive is Spam Regards Nick Daniels

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KL Meeting Postponed
by MJ Ray 16 Feb '04

16 Feb '04

There will be no King's Lynn meeting this week, unless someone steps forward pronto to take it over. The planned speakers haven't time. Next month's King's Lynn meeting will be cancelled, unless someone tells me they can take it over. We hope to run the web talks meeting on a weekend afternoon in late March, so that it's easier for people to travel to. Please email me off-list if you want to come and there are days that you can or can't do. As far as I know, the next ALUG meeting is at Syleham on Sunday 29th February, including a screening of Revolution OS and a bar. I am happy to give lifts from Lynn/A134/Thetford/A1066 area if wanted: please email me off-list. -- 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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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 16 Feb '04

16 Feb '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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Backing Up and Restoring a Debian System
by kpwatson＠pop3.ukfsn.org 13 Feb '04

13 Feb '04

At the end of this next bit of inane rambling is a question. The inane rambling is there to try and put the question into some sort of context. <inane> By a somewhat circuitous route I've lately been thinking about the best ways to back up and restore my Debian based GNU/Linux system. It was prompted by a number of things one of which was showing someone at work how easy it was to set up a Debian system using Knoppix. I must admit even I was a bit impressed by how easy it was to boot from the CD, run the install to HD script, tweak the sources file, and then apt-get update and apt-get upgrade. Took about an hour to do the lot (including re-arranging the partitions of the existing disk so we could dual boot with Windows*). That included installing GRUB as a boot manager. But it got me thinking about how easy it would be to use Knoppix as a recovery tool if I should need to do a re-install from scratch. And that got me wondering about how I could get from the Knoppix configuration back to my preferred configuration. At the moment I just dump of whole chunks of various partitions using some pre-written backup scripts I got from somewhere (probably just Googled around the web and picked them up from there). But I've always thought that it was a bit of a sledgehammer approach and the there must be a more elegant way of doing this. There is some useful info about back-ups on the Linux documentation Project site (www.tldp.org) Linux Complete Backup and Recovery HOWTO, Ch.8 of Linux Administration Made Easy - Backup and Restore Procedures and Ch.12 of The Linux System Administrator's Guide - Backups. All together these give some pointers to which bits of the system you need to back up. </inane> <question> So say I have just done a complete re-install from Knoppix, and also recovered all the important config files into /etc (e.g. fstab, passwrd, XF86Config, etc). Could I then get enough info from the backed up apt config files to feed into apt and have it install any missing packages, remove any unwanted packages and update any out of date packages (and possibly downdate (is there such a word?) anything too recent)? Is this information something I'd need to generate via apt when I do my back-ups? </question> I you can do this there are some interesting possibilities, like taking regular snapshots of your setup and being able to roll-back to the earlier configurations. Has any one tried this? I've had a look with Google and can't find anything similar but it's entirely possible that I was using inappropriate search words. Regards, Keith * OK so I used PartitionMagic and not Parted but I couldn't find Parted on the Knoppix disk and we had a PM bootable CD to hand. But I've used Parted before and it worked just as well.

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