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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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Kmail & spam
by Nick Daniels 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

Hi All the spam I receive is addressed to xyzy(a)freeserve.co.uk not as above I have configured Kmail pop filters to- If to contains xyzy-delete on server but it takes no notice. I basically do not want to download it -Is it me being stupid? Regards Nick

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Pissup in a Brewery
by Daniel Silverstone 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

Hi, I'm organising a party to go on a tour of the Milton Brewery. There are 15 spaces on the tour, five are already allocated, leaving 10 up for grabs. It's £10 per head and we expect the visit to be in early January on a weekday evening. Fridays (and Thursdays) are most busy for the brewery, but if I can get a 15 strong interest, we can see what we can get. Wednesdays seem a possibility for many people. Milton is not near a train station, but there will be some people driving out of Cambridge and Ely to get there (yes, some non-drinkers have booked in already) so lifts may be available. Anyone interested enough to have their name down on the list should mail me privately. I'll subscribe you to the private discussion list we have, and put your name on the website http://users.pepperfish.net/dsilvers/pissup.html We do need to get the decision made by mid December ideally, so please get your dibs in fast. D. -- Daniel Silverstone <dsilvers(a)digital-scurf.org> Digital-Scurf

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Linux
by Stan Fraser 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

Has anyone seen the "Linux" Desk lamp in British Home Stores just the gift for Guy or Gal who has everything Regards Stan

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Choice of video card
by Edenyard 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

Does anyone have any recommendations for a suitable video card that would work on a Slackware 9.1 Athlon 1GHz system with kernel 2.4.22 and X version 4.3.0? The card is wanted for playing DVDs on and must have an output of some sort suitable for sending to a standard 625-line PAL (or RGB) TV system. I know that there are tons of cards out there, but I'm concerned about getting one that is WELL supported by Linux. Also, is there any reason to choose AGP over PCI, given the use to which it will be put? Thanks for any pointers! Gerald.

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Lurking
by Christopher Dawkins 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

>> I want the lurkers to speak up. > > I'm an inveterate lurker ... > I have never been to a meeting as, generally, they are too far away .. > I'm a lurker (well for a while), but mainly can't make meetings ... Me too. But once spoken up, we've broken cover and are no longer lurkers. However, we must occasionally pop up to thank the active people for all their advice and comments. I've been lurking here (and in many other places) for a few years and it's all been very useful even if am often forced by other pressures to skim or delete the digests I get. This list is very useful to me and, I am sure, to many of the other 200 inactive subscribers. Please keep it going and when we can we'll contribute. A minor reason I lurk is that we are here entirely FreeBSD based. Not Linux, but the same in most respects. Another is that I feel too busy (I know that applies to everyone). A third is that I am on the southern fringe of your geographical area. Anyway, I post now because I have just made what I feel is a critical, though non-Linux, discovery: see last half of message. > Send out an annual resubscribe to non-posters, with two monthly > reminders before removal? Too much effort, unless the copies are costing you money. > One or two may be lost, but are they benefitting anyway? Yes, most of us lurkers are benefitting. > Don't want to accidentaly unsubscribe people if we can help it. Good. > My thanks to Brett and Adam on this one. I don't care what the group calls > itself if I can get such instant, high-quality advice at a moment's notice. Hear, hear. > It's a hard life for a bear of little brain. Exactly. ================= here's the meat ================= Discovery: I don't know how many of you run a network of machines. Five, ten, fifty or the five hundred we have here? Well, we have things called hubs, and things called switches, and things called routers (which are based on FreeBSD boxes with multiple interfaces). Some of our switches are intelligent or managed, but we don't manage them, being half a dozen makes (whichever was cheapest at the time) it's difficult keeping track of all the different management methods, and anyway most of that sort came with CDs that don't run on FreeBSD so they sit on the shelf. Anyway, consider our switches. Each has one incoming port, maybe seven or fifteen or twenty-three outgoing ones. Feeding rows of RJ45 outlets through miles of Cat-5 cabling. These feed client machines through drop leads. The RJ-45 outlets are often arranged in pairs, as a pair fits nicely in a single-outlet box. You have the picture? Fairly common, I think. It all works very well. Very much more resistant to lightning than our Econet system was (we still run Econet, BTW). Doesn't work when the mains power is off, common in this country environment (indeed, we've had eleven power cuts in eleven months) and there's also trip switches that go off from time to time. But that's not the problem. The system works well on a 24/365 basis. But - there's a problem. Suppose you see a drop lead hanging from an outlet cos the user has gone off with his or her portable, isn't it nice and tidy to plug the free end into the adjacent outlet? It is, and it generally causes no trouble. But they now make better switches. Remember the old ones - you press the little button for the input lead, cos to connect two of these hubs or switches together you need a reversed lead or a reversed port? The new ones have auto MDX/MDIX on them, so you don't need reversed leads any more. Just plug them together with straight leads, and they'll work. Very convenient, although in practice you rarely needed reversed leads anyway. So - have you tried shorting any two outlets together, as in the "tidy-the-lead" scenario above? No? Try it. If your network has no broadcasts on it, you may be OK. But if there's a broadcast, it'll go out one port and in the other, then out again, and again, and again. This broadcast storm will feed its way up your network till it all comes to a glutinous halt, until blocked by am intelligent switch or router. We've had a few of these halts. We eliminated the switch responsible. But we've now determined that there was nothing wrong with the switch. It was just too intelligent, in that it had auto MDX/MDIX. But not intelligent enough, in that it caused broadcast storms if two ports were shorted. We never had the problem before (that is, before 13 months ago), because with the older switches you needed a crossover lead to do the damage. With the newer ones, all you need is a normal drop lead and a yen for tidiness. ===== well, that's the discovery. Now for the rant ========= The entire Base-T Cat-5 RJ45 system is powerful, flexible and convenient. But how could they possibly have designed it so that it can be brought down so easily by any tidy end-user? ============= OK, OK ======================================= I know we can sort it out in various ways. I am told that configuring DEVICE_POLLING in the kernels will protect our routers and servers by polling the network cards instead of allowing them to interrupt. But my immediate reaction is to source simpler switches, those without auto-MDX/MDIX. Unfortunately, these are becoming rare beasts now. And to ask you who else has come across the danger to corporate networks posed by the convenience of auto-crossover ports. -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-822698, mobile 07816 821659 cchd(a)felsted.essex.sch.uk

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Government wasting money on IT
by Dave Briggs 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

Read a pretty shocking article on government waste of money on IT in the Guardian this morning. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1082416,00.html Essentially, for those who can't be faffed to click the link, the government wanted to unify the Magistrates Courts across the country with one system. The tender which won was for £146 million. It has now risen to over £400 million, and the system still does not work. This is the latest cock up, following distasters with the passport office and the CSA, amongst others. The Public Accounts Committee report [ http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmpubacc/434/434… ] states that this is the biggest waste of public money yet. What do we think about this, and how could things be done properly? Would the use of open source software improve matters? Why can't they recruit willing and able software engineers and do the job in house? From what I have hear from various sources, there are a lot of good IT people out of work at the moment. Surely they couldn't do any worse?! Dave

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More zaurus fun...
by BenEBoy 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

I finally gotten round to trying to get my zaurus to connect properly with linux (i.e. without me having to manually set the IP address) and have hit a problem. Using the instructions someone here sent me a while back I set up hotplug to grep the output of 'ifconfig' for 'usb0' when module usbnet is loaded. The usb network isn't created until I hit 'sync' on the cradle, so of course when hotplug runs when I put the PDA in the cradle usb0 doesn't exist so nothing happens. Any ideas anyone (using knoppix BTW with a 2.4.21 kernel)? I'm playing with a daemon that (I assume) will poll for the existance of the USB network every so often and set it up if it finds one, but I don't really want another daemon taking up memory cheers, BenE

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Re: [ALUG] Names and topics
by Jenny Hopkins 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

>........ I sometimes wonder how many of these mail boxes are >going to /dev/null and why we see many people join the list but never post? >are they there? do they really exist? I'm here! The list is probably in reality only half the size as most people register both from work and at home..I do anyway. I don't mind if there are talks or not at meetings. But I work full time and have two young children, and weekends are usually quite precious, that's why I don't show up, rather than lack of enthusiasm or preference for a particular style of meeting. As for the name ... I vote for leaving it as Anglian Linux Users group, for the reasons stated by John about 3,657 mails ago on this subject and Kirsten only 65 ago ;-) Jenny

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whie box linux
by Vasko Tomanov 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

Do someone have some info about: http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/index.html some feedback ? Cheers Vasko

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Problem compiling from source
by Graham Trott 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

Guru question: On a couple of occasions when compiling a source package I've had errors such as that below. The common factor appears to be the "error: `__ASSERT_FUNCTION' undeclared". Have I got something set up wrong in my system? -- GT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- make all-am make[1]: Entering directory `/home/graham/Documents/dvgrab-1.2' source='avi.cc' object='avi.o' libtool=no \ depfile='.deps/avi.Po' tmpdepfile='.deps/avi.TPo' \ depmode=gcc3 /bin/sh ./depcomp \ g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I. -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -Wno-deprecated -O2 -Wall -D_REENTRANT -c -o avi.o `test -f 'avi.cc' || echo './'`avi.cc avi.cc: In member function `virtual void AVIFile::Init(int, int, int)': avi.cc:285: error: `assert' undeclared (first use this function) avi.cc:285: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in.) avi.cc: In member function `virtual int AVIFile::GetDVFrameInfo(off_t&, int&, int)': avi.cc:388: error: `__ASSERT_FUNCTION' undeclared (first use this function) avi.cc: In member function `virtual void AVI1File::Init(int, int, int)': avi.cc:951: error: `assert' undeclared (first use this function) avi.cc: In member function `virtual void AVI2File::Init(int, int, int)': avi.cc:1240: error: `assert' undeclared (first use this function) make[1]: *** [avi.o] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/graham/Documents/dvgrab-1.2' make: *** [all] Error 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Announce digest, Vol 2 #26 - 2 msgs
by announce-request＠lists.alug.org.uk 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

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. Web site updates, North and South edges of ALUG (MJ Ray) 2. GnuPG small vulnerability (MJ Ray) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 11:19:42 +0000 From: MJ Ray <mjr(a)dsl.pipex.com> To: announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Organization: Very poor Subject: [Alug Announce]Web site updates, North and South edges of ALUG Details of the King's Lynn and Debian-UK meetings have been added to the web site. A 2004 meetings index page has been created. The site design has changed a little, which hopefully will reduce the number of layout problems. Thanks to Stuart Hammond for suggesting some of the changes on IRC last night and helping to test them. The page at http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/ has changed to be a more useful geographic guide to our area. The side bar link list of other LUGs has been replaced with links to the new pages in /venues/ too. The front page and "join ALUG now" page have been heavily edited. North and South Edges I've not created a page for North Norfolk, because I don't have any links to put on the page, nor any clear idea of what town to link it to. Can someone from North Norfolk tell me, please? For Colchester, I don't even know whether there are still any ALUGgers there. Can you please make yourselves known to me or the main list, please? Can anyone remember how to contact the university there? For Ipswich, I've made a page, but there is no meeting planned and the last one was quite a while ago. I've put a link to the "how to make ALUG meet" page. Please can Ipswich people interested in meeting there make themselves known to the main list? Three come to mind immediately, so there should be enough people out of the 300 who will get this message... -- 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/ --__--__-- Message: 2 Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 16:48:19 +0000 From: MJ Ray <mjr(a)dsl.pipex.com> To: announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Organization: Very poor Subject: [Alug Announce]GnuPG small vulnerability Probably it won't affect any ALUGgers, but ElGamal sign+encrypt keys in GnuPG (ones with G in the --list-keys output) have been found to be insecure. See http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-announce/2003q4/000276.html for more information. For more information about GnuPG and signed or encrypted email, ask at a meeting. --__--__-- _______________________________________________ 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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Fun with kernel 2.6.0-test9
by MJ Ray 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

After frothing lightly about the kernel-centricity, here's an email about the kernel. Please point out any errors. I started to upgrade my first machine to kernel 2.6.0-test9 at the Sunday's ALUG meeting, as some of may have seen. I didn't actually complete the upgrade there. As with all good projects, I ignored it resolutely for two days and took another look at it on Wednesday. It seems there are some things which can catch out the unwary when you upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6, but it feels a lot faster, so it's probably worth doing if you have a machine with fairly simple hardware. I hear there are still IDE bugs, so maybe you should wait for 2.6.0 proper. Nevertheless, off I went. First off, there's some changes in the device handling. Some time ago, devfs was introduced into the kernel. It offers a /dev which only contains the devices you actually have, rather than having you waste disk on a directory full of mostly unused special files. It seems that time has not been kind to devfs, as it upset kernel developers with a relative lack of maintenance, alleged design flaws and continuing its own incompatible naming scheme. devfs is still there in 2.6 at the moment, but is marked as "obsolete". Before you rush to disable it, note that part of its intended replacement, udev, is on version 0.06. I'm using a distribution which makes devfs fairly essential, so I've left it enabled for now. udev looks like a nice idea. It uses a really important new filesystem in 2.6, the sysfs. This is a virtual filesystem, like devfs and procfs, which exposes "kernel objects" as files. A "kernel object" seems to be a device or driver that is loaded into the kernel. When something is added to sysfs, the kernel calls hotplug (possibly familiar to USB device users) and udev acts on the hotplug event to create an entry in /dev. So far, not much difference. What is different about udev is that it accesses the sysfs object and calls a helper to tell it what to call the entry in /dev. That helper, called "namedev", can identify devices by their serial numbers, so even if you plug your USB printer into a different socket, it can still appear as /dev/lp0 without reconfiguring. Alternatively, it can assign a particular port to a particular device, so *that* USB socket is always your /dev/input/mouse0, even if you change the mouse plugged into it. Of course, this is controlled by text files for now. Will GUI user tools appear soon? More details in the slides and paper linked from http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1029 Secondly, ModUtils has been replaced by ModuleInitTools. Outwardly, there aren't too many changes, as you can still use commands like "modprobe", but it says that a lot of tidying up of the interface between kernel and tools has happened. modules.conf is dead, long live modprobe.conf -- it's a simpler configuration file which can usually be generated from modules.conf by the supplier tool (called "generate-modprobe.conf"). It couldn't handle the trick my scanner does to ask the kernel to rescan the SCSI bus for it on first use of /dev/scanner, but apparently that should be done by udev now. (Yes, that means I'm prodding the scanner by hand until I have switched over to udev...) An improvement which may interest some is the better ACPI support. Sleep, suspend to disk and suspend to swap are claimed to be supported, although I've not yet really tested this. The kernel can do an ACPI power off, which 2.4 never did on this machine. Also, ALSA replaces OSS/Free as the preferred sound system. Yippee! If you haven't been using the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, then you're probably going to get access to all the features of your soundcard for the first time. I had been using the OSS/Free which was installed by the distribution. I didn't even know that the sound card can do half the tricks it can. It sounds much nicer now and debian users won't have to fiddle around as much to make it compile. One final note. On the second machine I upgraded, the compile failed with the error that it couldn't find stdarg.h, which is a header that comes with GCC. It seems that the kernel Makefile uses options to GCC that the GCC manuals say not to use. A quick (and slightly dubious) edit of the Makefile to replace "-iwithprefix include" with "-I/full/path/to/GCC/header/include" made it work. I'm not sure what is different between the two machines, as they supposedly have the same distribution with the same GCC version. -- 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[4]: [ALUG] Cheap web hosting ?
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)zetnet.co.uk> wrote: > And posted his reply to the list. Ah! I've just realised I posted a 'reply to sender' whereas I meant to post to the list. Bother! I really must try and post this to the list!!! > BTW, your [2]: is falling foul of my spamtrap, and I've tried to make an > exception of the subject line with Re:, without Re: and just the > subject, and I've tinkered with the filter five times, reprocessed the > packet five times and it's eaten it five times. Poor thing must be hungry. I've never fallen foul of a spam trap before - how exciting. What ever would it do with Re[4]. Incidentally it's my mailer that does that not me - honest. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Cheap web hosting ?
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

I have a co.uk domain name which is detagged and now due for renewal. I understand from Nominet that I have to have the domain hosted before I can renew it and that if I renew via full member of Nominet it will cost me far less than the standard Nominet charge. All I want is a holding page as I don't intend to actively use the domain at present. Can anyone in the know suggest a web hosting provider who would handle this inexpensively? Regards Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Toy
by Anthony Anson 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Snarfed from The Shed: Here, if any Penguinistas want to waste a bit of time, have a look at xplanet. 's really rather shiny. It's turned the background piccy on my screen into a picture of The Whirled, upadted every few minutes, with day and night rotating around it as it does, and the piccies are real ones, and every few hours it grabs a new piccy of what the clouds are doing and overlays it ... you can lose hours playing with it. Coo. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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Gentoo
by Richard Lewis 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

OK, I've had a look at the Gentoo website and it looks quite cool. I'll have a go at installing (if the UEA network decides to behave itself! Grr!) Just a couple of questions: 1) People say it takes a long time to install. If I've got a PIII, 512MB RAM, 20GB HDD, etc and I want a fairly standard system (KDE, basic development tools, a few music progams) how long does anyone think it might take? 2) Its source based, which seems like a really good idea. But can you use portage to install any old source.tar.gz? Or do they have to be recognised ones? (in the portage 'tree', is it, or something?) And if you can't is there a way that you can make them installable with portage? 3) Does it have an equivalent to Debian's 'non-free' or MDK's PLF? (For things like libdvdcss, pardon my French ;-) Cheers, Richard

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Linux Friendly MP3 Player
by Matt Parker 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

I just bought an Oracom 200M 256Mb player. Mandrake 9.1 detected it automatically and magically added an entry to my fstab. Not only does it sound absolutely fantastic, it was only £80 and it says "Diverse OS support for Windows, Mac and Linux" on the front of the box in big letters. No OGG though, but that was too much to hope for. Matt -- http://www.mpcontracting.co.uk Experts in Java development and website design

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When?
by Anthony Anson 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

When I log on (using Gnome - to start with, anyway) I'm asked for username and password, both of which I've remembered this time - certain listmembers will know why (!), I can get into the program, and following yesterday's help, I can now get out of it without a parachute. Q: If I need to get in as root, do I type 'root' instead of username? Q: Under what circumstances might I need to go rooting? Q: I fired Wine up yesterday and it demanded a Windows program to play with, and sulked because the one I had in mind was in the CD romdrive waiting to be installed. How should I set about installing the program, where should I put it, and how? (It's my internet software, and someone has reported that it runs under Wine. If it does, expect me to lay down a barrage of questions about modems and error messages. And Syd, I really will try to get most of the answers off that CD you kindly sent me, honest I will.) -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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Open networks
by Graham Trott 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

For those interested in open (wireless) broadband, head off to http:// consume.net. -- GT

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