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EU guide to OSS migration
by Dave Briggs 05 Dec '03

05 Dec '03

Not sure if everyone has already seen this, if so, apologies. http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/ida/jsps/index.jsp?fuseAction=showDocument&parent… It's basically a guide by the EU for government bodies migrating from propriatory to open source software. The main document is a 150 page behemoth of a PDF, but I have scanned through it and seems to make sensible reading. They even provide a speadsheet to work out potential cost savings - and you can have in in OpenOffice.org format as well as Excel! True believers, clearly. I am starting a new job at a local council in the New Year and it will be interesting to find out in any discussions have been made about using OSS in their offices. With several governmental bodies on the continent (the Germans are quite keen, aren't they?) making the switch, it would be interesting to know how things are progressing in this country - especially in the wake of all of our rising council tax bills.... Dave

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Re: [ALUG] EU guide to OSS migration
by Dave Briggs 05 Dec '03

05 Dec '03

On Dec 5 2003, MJ Ray wrote: > Some UK councils are moving over. The most high profile migration in > progress is probably SuSE's work with Nottingham City Council. There's a > press release that's more like an article at > http://www.suse.de/en/company/press/press_releases/archive03/nottingham_cit… A brilliant example of the way that OSS can be used to a) reduce costs long term and b) actually do a job *better* than propriatory solutions. I think any organisation that uses propriatory software on servers really must be a bit mental, these days. With more success stories like this, OSS will get more of a foothold in the consciousness of those behind IT policy in these organisations - I think a snowball effect would be highly likely: word would soon spread, especially about the cost savings. You never know, Linux might even end up on council office desktops! > and it featured in GLU&D issue 31 (SCO Erupts cover). I can't see it > online, but I can drop a copy of the article to you if you want. That would be interesting - maybe bring it to the KL meet in the New Year? Dave

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A6 meeting notices
by MJ Ray 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

Last I was at the forum in Norwich, people seemed to like the small meeting notices, so I've turned them into templates, plugged them into a script and produced ones for the other venues: http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/cards.ps.php?loc=NCH for Norwich http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/cards.ps.php?loc=MID for Syleham It's fairly easy to add other venues as details appear, or update the above. Please get them out into shops, windows, noticeboards, etc. -- 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] FOSS for Joe (was Hello There)
by Dave Briggs 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

On Dec 4 2003, Graham Trott wrote: > Capable, yes. Willing, not so sure. People who use Windows expect a > fully graphical approach to anything, whether it does the job better or > not. Once persuaded of the benefits of manual mark-up they're surely > capable, but if they're only doing lightweight HTML the problem is in > making that first step. Many Windows users regard Linux as "DOS but more > complicated" and therefore a retrograde step back from the wonderful > world of on-screen widgets. The way to tempt them in is to provide > familiar eye-candy, not lecture them with a stern, Spartan "Do it this > way, it's good for you". A good point. If Linux is to make the breakthrough to non-savvy desktop users, I suppose there has to be an equivalent application for everything that Windows has. Like you say, the lecture would put people off, I guess.

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RE: [ALUG] cups server problem
by Jenny Hopkins 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

> >> Is the second machine listed in your /etc/exports.allow ? > > > > I thought that was only used for NFS? I think LPRng used hosts.lpd, > > but I > > don't know what CUPS uses. > > Me too. Cups is configured in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf on here, for > network (IPP) connections you need to change the allowed machines, > works very much in the same way as apache's set up as far as I can > see. > > Hope that gives a starting point. > > Cheers, > > Brett. Ah, I should have caught up on all my mails before replying. I've allowed everything in cupsd.conf, restarted the server, but can't print from either a windows samba share or a linux box on the same network: the requests are getting through but tail-ing the cups access/error log don't give clues, logging on full. The windows error is "permission denied", the linux box doens't give one. Both the win and linux are connecting as users I've set up on the server, as ordinary and samba users. I set my firewall to allow everything local in case that was the problem. Baffled, Jenny

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RE: [ALUG] cups server problem
by Jenny Hopkins 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

> -----Original Message----- > From: Paul [mailto:bdi-emc@ntlworld.com] > Sent: 02 December 2003 17:36 > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] cups server problem > > > > Hi Jenny > > Is the second machine listed in your /etc/exports.allow ? > > Regards, Paul. > Oooooh, no! I'll try that when I get home, I've tried everything else.... Thanks, Jenny

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Re: [ALUG] FOSS for Joe (was Hello There)
by Dave Briggs 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

On Dec 4 2003, MJ Ray wrote: > Anyway, a short recap of what I remember from the last discussion: > there are some GUI tools, but code editing gives the finest control. A > true "WYSIWYG [HTML] editor" is impossible. I think this is right. I hand code my websites, and I am *so* un-techy that I can't even get my soundcard to work in Linux. I have tried using Dreamweaver on a machine at work, and I have to say that it confused the hell out of me - I think it might actually be easier to hand code. I use gedit to edit my files - even bluefish etc manage to confuse me! There are loads of good HTML guides on the web, although often having a book in front of you helps. One of the reasons I like coding websites is that it is a really simple way of "programming" (I know, I know; I am using the term in it's loosest sense) a computer, and getting some good results. My advice would be: Give it a go! Dave

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FOSS for Joe (was Hello There)
by Ben Francis 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

P.S. http://home.freeuk.com/losingtouch/pics/office_suicide.gif -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto:tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only

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Re: [ALUG] Video cards (or Names and topics)
by Edenyard 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

MJR wrote: > > Video cards that play DVDs? Actually the card? Not use a program? I > think you get the idea. > Well - maybe I've been labouring under a misapprehension all this time, but I've seen advertised some cards, such as this one: "GeForce2 MX400 AGP 64MB Graphics Accelerator - (blah, blah) Allows full-screen, full-frame DVD playback." Or there's this: "nVIDIA TNT2 M64 Graphic Accelerators - (blah, blah again) DVD playback using Power DVDXP4.0 with RCA composite and S-VHS outputs" I don't know whether quoting those two makes it any clearer why I've been asking my question, or whether I'm barking up some sort of a wrong tree. I assumed that proper DVD decoding (whatever that might be) needed more power than a CPU could give and so some sort of purpose-made hardware did the decoding. But why would a card's spec specifically talk about allowing full-screen DVD playback if the type of card had no bearing on this???? > > From http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- > "If you can't get an answer, please don't take it personally that we > don't feel we can help you. Soemtimes the members of the asked group > may simply not know the answer. No response is not the same as being > ignored" > Thanks for the reference - I'll go and find it next time I'm connected. Clearly, though, there have been (infinitely) more answers since I made my comment than before (ratio = 6:0) so I'm not sure that the sentence you quoted above explains why I didn't get a response before. Cheers, Gerald.

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Kernel Bug found at root of Debian's Compromised Servers
by Wayne Stallwood 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/debian-security-announce-2… Patches available for 2.4.18 2.4.23 and 2.6.0-test6 onwards are unaffected.

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RE: [ALUG] cups server problem
by Jenny Hopkins 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

Wayne Stallwood wrote: > > Not a CUPS expert by any means, but this sounds like a > flaky/incorrect printer > driver to me. > > What printer and CUPS driver are you using ? > Hi, The posts on this arrived after I left work yesterday, but I had another go last night and got it working. I think what *may* have happened is that because I'd been initially faffing about with various drivers/ports/settings the parallel port had got into an unhappy state. So when I then thought it should work as I'd got the settings correct (Epson Stylus C70, driver something like cups-2.4-gimp-something, /dev/lp0) it still kept spitting out nonsense. In the end a reboot cured it and it printed me a glorious test page. I then spent a while trying to print to it from a second linux box; I could see the request was getting through to the server by watching the output to the logfiles, but it seemed unhappy with "get_printer_attr" - "no good!" type errors. It'll be something silly somewhere. Thanks, Jenny

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Advice required on CD burning software
by Nick Heppleston 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

Morning all, Starting to get into the world of creating my own CD's and as my new laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, I need to start writing data CD's. Can anybody recommend CD-writing software (and CD-RW software if there is a difference) for Linux? I run Gentoo over a blistering 56k dial-up modem so am looking for a few recommendations before I unleash the power of the modem ;-) Cheers, Nick -- Nick Heppleston 07989 581766 | nickheppleston(a)gmx.co.uk The Funky PC - http://www.thefunkypc.biz

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Re: Playing DVDs with Linux using Ogle
by Richard Lewis 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

> I thought I would have a go at trying to get my PC to play DVDs this weekend > so I done an apt-get install ogle-mmx ogle-gui then ran install-css.sh and > linked /dev/dvd to /dev/hdc. > Why not just link to someting more obvious? # ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd > If I type "ogle" I get the ogle gui appear When I first started using Ogle I used to use it on the cmd line: $ ogle -u cli I remeber I often had to issue this command about 3 or 4 times and eventually it just worked. > However if I then click on FILE and OPEN DSC the following appears: > > libdvdcss error: failed opening device > libdvdread: Can't open /dev/dvd for reading. Do you know what version of libdvdcss, libdvdread and libdvdplay you have installed? Get the latest versions and make sure they're installed properly and with --prefix=/usr. They has quite a few dependencies so make sure they're all installed as well. http://developers.videolan.org/ (You may have to compile you're own versions of these; I don't know whether they're [libdvdcss] in Debian or not and I can't check because packages.debian.org is still down!) Cheers, Richard

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Re: xwWindows
by Richard Lewis 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

>> Do anyone use wxWidows ? > > Many people use wxWindows. I think the site http://www.wxwindows.org/ > keeps lists of examples. > >> I juts thinking to base my staff on it or to use the standard way - >> GTKor >> KDE ? >> Some suggestion ? > > It depends how portable you wish your program to be. wxWindows can run > in lots of places and make a reasonable attempt at *looking* correct, > although it can't integrate as well with GNOME or KDE. > > I like to see people develop GNUstep, but that's another story. I would choose wxWindows over GNUstep; wxWindows runs on Unix variants, MacOS (inc. < 10) and Windows; whereas GNUstep only really runs on Unix variants. wxWindows is written in C++ against GNUstep in Objective C. (Though I suppose whether this is an advantage or disadvantage is enturely a matter of opinion ;) ) wxWindows is at a further stage of development. (2.4.2 against 1.9 & 0.9.1) Cheers, Richard

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Reminder: Norwich thursday meet next week
by Syd Hancock 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

Don't forget: Norwich monthly evening meeting next week, thursday 11th December, from 8pm at the Forum bar. Syd

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Video cards (or Names and topics)
by Edenyard 01 Dec '03

01 Dec '03

Thanks to Adam, Anthony and MJR for the thoughts on video cards. Adam wrote: > > to make your own VGA to Scart/RGB cable and use custom refresh rates to drive > the TV, you could possibly kill your tv doing this :) As far as I know there > are no consumer gfx cards that do RGB out (they either do composite or > s-video) > if anyone can prove me wrong then that would be fantastic. > RGB out was only a preference - I'd happily accept composite PAL or even YUV. But I suppose YUV is even more unlikely than RGB? Anthony Anson wrote: > > Did you say why you wanted a different card and what constitutes 'good'? > Yes, I did. I want something that plays DVDs well and something that gives composite, RGB or YUV video signals (in addition to the standard VGA socket). What constitutes 'good' is being well supported by Linux, i.e., having stable drivers that make all of the card's functions work. MJR wrote: > > Most likely, your question wasn't precise enough > Well - fair enough, if it wasn't. However (and with all due respect), I'd have thought that "I want well-supported video card for Linux that plays DVDs with video out" might have been specific enough to get something going? > > (seen ESR's paper about "smart questions"?) > No! What's that all about, then? Thanks for the input! Gerald.

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wxWindows
by Vasko Tomanov 01 Dec '03

01 Dec '03

Do anyone use wxWidows ? I juts thinking to base my staff on it or to use the standard way - GTKor KDE ? Some suggestion ? Cheers Vasko

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cups server problem
by Jenny Hopkins 01 Dec '03

01 Dec '03

Hi List, Are there any CUPS experts out there? I tried to set up cups printing system last night, but when I try and print a test page from the webadmin page on the localhost it prints the first top half-inch of "This is a test page" in inch-high letters then grinds to a halt and just sits there. Thanks, jenny

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Playing DVDs with Linux using Ogle
by Ian Douglas 01 Dec '03

01 Dec '03

Hi folks, I thought I would have a go at trying to get my PC to play DVDs this weekend so I done an apt-get install ogle-mmx ogle-gui then ran install-css.sh and linked /dev/dvd to /dev/hdc. If I type "ogle" I get the ogle gui appear and I get the following console errors: Note[ogle_ctrl]: ogle 0.8.2 Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_gui with pid 4483 warning: failed to load external entity "/home/ian/.oglerc" WARNING[ogle_gui]: Couldn't load config file WARNING[ogle_gui]: interpret_config(): Couldn't read '/home/ian/.oglerc' Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_nav with pid 4484 warning: failed to load external entity "/home/ian/.oglerc" WARNING[ogle_nav]: Couldn't load config file WARNING[ogle_nav]: interpret_config(): Couldn't read '/home/ian/.oglerc' Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_mpeg_ps with pid 4485 Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_vout with pid 4486 However if I then click on FILE and OPEN DSC the following appears: libdvdcss error: failed opening device libdvdread: Can't open /dev/dvd for reading. vm: faild to open/read the DVD Debug[ogle_ctrl]: child: 4484 exited with 1 Debug[ogle_ctrl]: pid: 4484 exited with status: 1 Debug[ogle_ctrl]: child: 4486 killed Debug[ogle_ctrl]: pid: 4486 terminated on signal: 2 Debug[ogle_ctrl]: child: 4485 killed Debug[ogle_ctrl]: pid: 4485 terminated on signal: 2 Debug[ogle_ctrl]: child: 4483 killed Debug[ogle_ctrl]: pid: 4483 terminated on signal: 2 Debug[ogle_ctrl]: removing shmid: 10616832 Note[ogle_ctrl]: exiting ian@rhino:~$ I am confused.... why is ogle unable to open /dev/dvd? Ian.

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 01 Dec '03

01 Dec '03

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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Given the talk of lurkers...
by Owain Sutton 01 Dec '03

01 Dec '03

....thought I'd introduce myself New to Linux, arriving here for various reasons, but the main one is being unable to trust MS with anything remotely secure.... Desperatly wishing I could claim that OpenOffice is better than MS Office, but I can't, sorry. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, deserved retirement a long time ago. In short, I guess I'm hoping that a dual boot box will give me the best of both worlds in the short and medium term (yes, unfortunately there's some software I need which is Windows-only). Anyway, that's my ambivalent position stated :D ....btw count me out of most meetings, because Woodbridge without a car is not fun :S

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Fedora - what's in a name?
by Ben Francis 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

It seems RedHat didn't do their research very well when choosing a name for their new project. Is this going to cause any serious problems? http://www.fedora.info/fedora.shtml Building their brand could be quite difficult when it happens to be someone elses... -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto://tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only

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Re: [ALUG] Names and topics
by Edenyard 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

MJR wrote: > > I want the lurkers to speak up. We have 250 addresses getting copies > of this. Even if we assume that all the meeting venues get different > people (definitely untrue IMO), that means we only see about three > dozen of them to talk with. How do we get the other seven-eighths > involved? > Alright, then! I didn't think I had anything useful to add to this thread, but because MJR wrote the above and I have a lot of respect for what he writes, I'll attempt to add in my tuppence. Why don't 'the others' get involved? I can only share my experiences. I run a Linux system, from which I have learnt a lot but I've only scratched the surface, as things go, and I still need lots of help. One area in which I really do need help just now is in getting a good video card. I posted a message about this and, when I saw all those digests waiting to be read earlier today, I felt sure that the answer to my question would be in there. But no! Nothing! What? Does nobody else on this list use a video card? Or have I not used the correct incantation to get a response? So how come no-one had ANYTHING to say on this subject? Now this isn't, by any means, the first time I've had this experience on this list. Maybe I'm not alone (I'll assume that I'm not singled out for this treatment), so if others have had this experience with ALUG (or any LUG, really), then maybe it's not so surprising that lots of would-be members don't participate as much as would be desired. Right - I suppose you'll want to excommunicate me after that contribution.... Cheers, Gerald.

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Re: Jamming the network
by Christopher Dawkins 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

>> And to ask you who else has come across the danger to corporate >> networks posed by the convenience of auto-crossover ports. > I had this at a middle school I do work for, One little darling student > did exactly this. <snip> > It is annoying that such a thing can happen, but to be honest it's no > worse than in the old days of a missing t-piece or a cable fault, > bringing down a whole coax lan. True, those were the days. But the Base-T system has been so comparatively rock-solid reliable and proof against all the problems we used to have that it has been a shock to find that it is so easily compromised. And the problem has only arisen with the more recent equipment! > You should be using spanning tree protocol (sometimes called spamming > tree protocol when it breaks) which should allow these kind of redundant > links that you are creating. Indeed redundant links should be/are a good > thing. Yes, redundant links are, I am building up a number, and I have looked at STP. The main reason I haven't used it is that I prefer the idea of subnets, routed, RIP and routers instead: routers based on multi-port FreeBSD boxes. I don't see how STP (or subnets) cure this switch-jamming problem, except that the more intelligent the device the more capable it is of preventing the jam from spreading back onto the network spine. However, we have some quite large (multi-building) branches containing hundreds of outlets that are all within the same easily-jammed area. Luckily I don't yet have a large number of auto MDI/MDIX switches and am hoping to obtain more older models, which are immune to this problem because normal users don't possess crossover leads. -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-822698, mobile 07816 821659 cchd(a)felsted.essex.sch.uk

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Enticement, was: Names and topics
by MJ Ray 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

On 2003-11-29 11:45:57 +0000 Chris Walker <linux(a)wymondham.demon.co.uk> wrote: > I'm already committed to other meetings on Thursdays so that's why > this > lurker doesn't attend them. I think we've been trying hard to scatter the days. Ely (might be trains there from Wymondham if you like beer) and K.Lynn have been on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so far. Sunday afternoon meetings are being planned further ahead to give people more notice (thanks to Syd and John). Is there something more we can do to make it more attractive? ("No" is fine as an honest answer IMO.) -- 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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