main

main@lists.alug.org.uk

10369 discussions

RE: [Alug]Adrian Kiddle rejoining ALUG
by Adrian Kiddle 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

Thanks Dan, I tried it out yesterday with some kind assistance from Simon Jude and it works very well. -----Original Message----- From: Dan Beimborn [mailto:Dan@celticmusic.com] Sent: 17 September 2003 11:15 To: Adrian Kiddle Cc: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: [Alug]Adrian Kiddle rejoining ALUG Adrian, check out rdesktop: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rdesktop/ DB

1 0

RE: [Alug]Fax Server?
by Jonathan Dye 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

nickheppleston(a)gmx.co.uk wrote: > I'm looking for suggestions for a fax server. At my last compay, we > used RightFax - a Win NT4 application - that allowed users to 'print' > to a fax spooler which would then be sent via a dial-up modem. Is > there anything similar out there in the open-source world? > > Any help would be greatly appreciated. have a look at hylafax. You can set it up so you can print to it or send files to it with various (unix) command line tools. There are also some windows drivers/plugins according to the homepage. JD _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses by the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service

1 0

[Alug]Norwich meeting schedule.
by Syd Hancock 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

I would like to have regular sunday meetings in Norwich every two months, held regularly on the last weekend of the month (i.e. roughly mid-way between the mid-monthly evening meetings). 1. Syleham is planned for every third month so every six months there would be a possible overlap. But, provided we don't choose the same date, I suggest that it is worth trying out since the extra mileage means that for some people Syleham is just that bit too far south of Norwich and for others Norwich is a little too far north compared to Syleham. 2. Use of UEA facilities with bandwidth would be great if it could be arranged regularly and reliably. If not then a reasonable venue that happens is better than a great venue that doesn't. **If there is anyone on the list who is able to book a room at UEA please contact me.** Can people who work at UEA book rooms? As has been said before, you don't need to do anything except make the booking. No organising, no responsibility to take, nothing... unless you want to do more of course :-) Any comments on these suggestions? Syd

11 37

[Alug]isdn card
by Syd Hancock 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

I've bought an ISDN pcmcia card (may be cardbus, not sure) to use with a Thinkpad T23 running mandrake 9.1. It is made by IBM and has the name "International ISDN PC card" printed on it. P/N is 09N3606 I (perhaps naively) assumed that it would be recognised as a serial port just like my pc-card analogue modem but it isn't. If I'm logged in to a console as root when I insert it then I get a message to the effect that it is an unsupported card, product info "ISDN", "CARD" followed by function: 6 (network) I've spent some time with google but am still not sure whether it is possible to use it with linux. Any and all help, advice or explanations suitable for a puzzled novice will be very welcome. TIA Syd

1 0

[Alug]Bourne Grammar Open Day
by Ben Francis 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

Bourne Grammar School in Lincolnshire will be holding a general 'Open Day' on 2nd October after school finishes for the day (I *really* hope that date is right ). I'm in the sixth form there and hopefully will be showing off my 'GNU/Linux Lab' on the day. Any luggers are more than welcome to attend to have a peep and make suggestions for future improvements. Please don't expect anything special as I'm new to Linux myself, it's basically 6 workstations running a hard disk install of Knoppix (main reason being ease of re-installing if someone breaks something) and a Debian web server, all low spec machines that are surpless to requirements elsewhere in the school. They're wired into the school's windows NT/2000 network and the 2 meg ADSL line. The workstations currently don't *do* much either as they've only been there since the beginning of term! It's nothing like the established system I've heard about at Skegness and *still* haven't been to see ;) I'd really appreciate the support, and if you do come up to the IT rooms and I start to try and explain Linux to you *please* stop me before I embarrass myself completely! I could do with some help convincing the Director of ICT that Linux in school is a good idea if I'm going to have a lasting effect before I leave :) Confirmation of date and a more specific time to follow. Many Thanks -- Ben "tola" Francis

1 0

[Alug]ADSL and security
by Dan Beimborn 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > From: bsamuels(a)beenthere-donethat.org.uk (Barry Samuels) > Subject: [Alug]ADSL and security > > My local telephone exchange is becoming broadband enabled at the end > of September and I am working on the assumption that I will be able to > use it (BT's site says I MAY). > > I have a firewall running (Endoshield - very easy to set up) and have > just changed it to Bastille which seems to be working (grc.com). > > Bastille recommends 'psad' which is also now installed. I had Snort > and Samhain installed but do I need these? > > Do I need Packet Mangling enabled in the Kernel which it isn't at > present? Oo, lucky you. There are a couple ways to manage it. Are you planning a separate firewall machine eg adsl -- firwall -- desktops, servers ? If so, the short version of your design goal is to turn off everything on the firewall except reply packets, then forward ports from the outside to the inside only for what you need. Example: firewall has a "real" IP of 1.1.1.1, and an "inside" IP of 10.1.1.1 You sould make your gateway 10.1.1.1 on the machines inside the firewall, and set the firewall up to NAT packets from the lan to the outside. if you have a web server that you want to host at 1.1.1.1 port 80, you would port forward 1.1.1.1 port 80 to 10.1.1.2 port 80, for example. If you are just surfing the web, reading email, and not running any servers, that's dead easy. You can even just ensure that a single desktop machine isn't running any unwanted services and run without a firewall. The best ways to check what ports you have open are the following: nmap localhost (this portscans yourself) lsof -i (this lists any open TCP/IP ports) chkconfig --list | grep :on (this shows what daemons are running on many linux distros) you can also man iptables to see the built-in firewall commands.. iptables -nvL will list any firewall rules in place packet mangling is really only necessary if you want to create some fancy custom rules to allow stateful protocols through, to do complex packet tracking, or other stuff outside the realm of a normal home firewall. If you would like more detail on any of those options, or some sample iptables rule pop up another message and I'm sure that many of us will be able to help! DB

5 5

[Alug]Ford switches to Linux
by Nick Daniels 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

FORD is joining the ranks of governments and local authorities across the world that have switched from Microsoft software to the free open-source alternative Linux. The car giant will run its sales operations, human resources, customer relations management and the rest of its infrastructure operations on the upstart technology. Until now, defectors to Linux have largely been national governments such as China and local authorities in countries like Germany concerned that Microsoft’s Windows operating systems represented a security risk by not allowing them to inspect the source code, the systems’ software foundations, for weaknesses. * Business software applications can now run as easily on Linux as on Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.* Maybe this should be sent to Norwich Council? Regards Nick

2 1

[Alug]RE: EDP
by Ben Norcutt 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

With reference to the story I can throw some light being a network manager in a high school. I too wondered why they said the BB connected schools weren't affected as that is where it hit first and some are still infected. Let me just take a look at my ids logs hmm at least 22 still trying to attack me. Cheers, Ben

1 0

[Alug]Alug evening meet last thursday
by Syd Hancock 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

Six people met at the Forum - Graham, Mark, Jonathan, Tarquin, Syd and a new comer Robert who heard about the meet via the website. We talked a lot about wi-fi, mini-itx, driveless servers based on compact flash - and various pssible combinations of these technologies - and probably lots of other things that I've now forgotten. An enjoyable evening. Next evening meet will be on the second thursday in October - i.e. the 9th Syd

1 0

Re: [Alug]EDP..
by Craig 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

On Monday, Sep 15, 2003, at 18:25 Europe/London, Ian Bell wrote: > On Monday 15 Sep 2003 9:45 am, Craig wrote: >> Anyone checked out the EDP front page news this morning? >> >> How.. er.. amusing. >> > Two bits particularly caught my attention. First that despite their > best > efforts they could not get rid of it, and second that their broadband > connections seemd unaffected (why??). Why they failed to get rid of it is a mystery. Seems that they don't employ active directory? I don't like it when they say 'computer expert'... just really annoying... C

1 0

[Alug]EDP..
by Craig 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

Anyone checked out the EDP front page news this morning? How.. er.. amusing. C

2 2

[Alug]Norfolk County Council response (fwd)
by Tarquin Mills 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

---------- Begin forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 17:56:38 +0100 Subject: Norfolk County Council response Briefing note in response to questions raised by Mr. Tarquin Mills on NCC use of free operating system software. How much do we spend on Microsoft Software? As NCC has over 6,000 PC's and a wide range of servers we would need to undertake some further research into the number of MSOffice, Project, Publisher, Visio and Windows Server licences we currently have in order to give a comprehensive answer. As there has not been any significant growth in the number of PC's and servers then the number of new licences would not be great but there would be the costs of upgrades to existing licences as well as the annual maintenance costs to consider. All our new PCs come with Windows installed and therefore it is difficult to identify the actual cost for the operating system software element. Initial discussions with PC suppliers indicate there is unlikely to be any discount in buying PCs without the Windows operating system. Quantifying these costs will therefore be difficult. NCC in conjunction with other local authorities has negotiated various commercial arrangements with suppliers in order to ensure that its procurement of software achieves value for money. Some of these arrangements may be confidential and therefore it may be difficult to provide more than summary information. Is the Authority trailing free Operating Systems? Whilst 'Linux' is an excellent operating system and would be a cost-effective choice for many organisations, there are significant reasons why Norfolk County Council is not considering its use at the moment: We have a huge range of applications, many of which are specifically designed to run on Windows desktops or servers. Many of our applications will simply not run on Linux so it's not just a question of replacing the operating system. We would have to evaluate all of our systems to identify which are and aren't compatible with Linux. Those that aren't will have to be rewritten or replaced. This will be a very time consuming and costly process and it would probably take many years to get a return on our investment. It will also divert resources away from other projects and impact on the day-to-day running of services as both users and support staff are trained and have to become familiar with the new systems. The risks associated with such a migration will be very high. Many of our applications help meet statutory obligations or support critical services. Since the change of operating system will impact on a large number of applications, it follows that many of the Authority's key services could also be affected. Although the Linux user-base is growing, there are a limited number of companies doing application development for the operating system. Moving to Linux now will reduce the number of software suppliers available when procuring new system. This would be particularly acute in the already specialised Local Government area. Gartner (an independent ICT research company) have recently (June 2003) conducted some research into the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the Windows v Linux desktop. These vary from a saving of £400 per user/year to an increase of £100 per user/year depending on the version of windows and the application software. These calculations did not include any of the migration costs which for a enterprise like NCC would be considerable nor the cost of dealing with document compatibility issues when trying to share documents with other users running Microsoft Office. Supported versions of Linux are not free and it would not be feasible for NCC to rely on the open-source community for support in the delivery of its business critical systems. NCC is continually looking at ways of reducing its costs and believes that bigger gains can be had from deploying desktop management tools more effectively and implementing new processes rather than migrating to a new operating system. NCC has recently worked with Gartner on developing its Technical Architecture Strategy and this included a review of its operating system and software standards. The outcome of this review was a recommendation that our strategic direction should be Microsoft. Ann Carey e-service directorate =============================== One of the reasons give above points to illegal activities by M$. -- Tarquin Mills RUNG (RISC OS Users, Norfolk Group)

2 1

[Alug]Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '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!)

1 0

[Alug]Re-partitioning a Win laptop
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 14 Sep '03

14 Sep '03

Hi Folks, I've just acquired a 2nd-hand laptop which has Win98 installed in a single 6GB partition (the entire HDD). Since this software is not entirely useless (rumours to the contrary notwithstanding) I intend to keep this on say 2GB, making the remaining 4GB over to something really useful (Linux of course). So I shall be fips-ing the partition down to 2GB and then setting up Linux partitions on the remainder. This, as far as it goes, I know how to do. However, a couple of issues concern me and I'd welcome informed advice from people who've been there before. 1. At present, it seems that the Win98 is set up to look after Virtual Memory (aka swap space) in its own way ("Dear user, please don't get involved in anything as difficult as this ... just leave it to us"). I seem to recall that Windows uses some sort of "hidden file" for swapping out. Qs: Will I be treading on any toes on this front by cutting back the disk space to the first 2GB in this way? Or will Win98, next time it starts up, simply do its usual swap thing in the space it then finds available? If there would be problems, what should be done to avoid them? 2. I want to keep the power-management ("go to sleep" on inactivity timeout or on pressing the "snooze" button on the machine) available in both Win98 and Linux. Q: I believe that one of the options is "hibernate to disk", where the system state is saved somewhere on the HDD. This is a similar issue to number 1: what toes would I be treading on? Q: There is also a converse issue: If I fail to set up the Linux partitions properly, and the laptop writes its system state out to disk when it wants to sleep, could this overwrite something that shouldn't be overwritten? Again, if there could be problems, what should be done to avoid them? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 13-Sep-03 Time: 10:16:59 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

6 5

[Alug]RE: Broken CD drive
by Richard Lewis 13 Sep '03

13 Sep '03

One other thing: it now restarts itself whenever I open and close the drive and sometimes while I'm typing. And it won't shut down properly: once power down is reached the system restarts instead. Richard

2 1

[Alug]2 debian questions...
by BenEBoy 13 Sep '03

13 Sep '03

OK, in the past 2 weeks I've gotten rid of Morphix because I wanted the speed increase of LFS and whilst trying to compile KDE for lfs realised that life is too short to mess around getting stuff to compile (kdelib is a nightmare. I managed to fix one of the errors I got with my half remembered C skills (I used to be a quite good C coder until I got a job with COBOL) then I got another one about ambiguous function calls and gave up), so I gave debian another go (couldn't get X11 working last time I tried). Anyway, could someone give me an example of their sources.list file please? I assume using the UK mirrors would be good enough but thought I'd check just in case not... Secondly, can someone tell me how to just get the security updates when I do an apt-get upgrade? I'm pretty sure there is an ftp server or two which just has the security updates but I haven't been able to find it with my googling powers. I assume specifying the source when doing the upgrade will do what I want it to, but without a server to connect to I'm stuffed aren't I ;) Sorry for the debian newbie questions... BenE

3 2

[Alug]BootDisk
by Michael Sage 13 Sep '03

13 Sep '03

To All, I have given up on the idea of having IDE RAID the costs are just too high to have a proper hardware RAID (like Adaptec cards etc). I have setup a mandrake system, as it supports RAID as an install option, which is nice! My BIOS unfortunately does not let me boot off the second drive (which is bad), which means should the first drive in the array fail I would be, well, up the paddle without a creek! What I intend to do is use a boot disk to boot the system into its RAID state, so it doesn't matter which drive is down, so my boot order will go Prim IDE, Floppy, CD. There are two things I could do with help with! 1. Why can't I boot off the secondary IDE? It comes up with L 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 etc 01DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. I am sure this is a BIOS problem. 2. How \ What do I need to create the boot disk simply to kick off the boot process off any drive? My RAID config works like this: Md0 mounted on /boot is a boot array MD1 mounted on / is the rest. Any help would be great, TIA. Michael

2 2

RE: [Alug]-lvgagl
by Jonathan Dye 12 Sep '03

12 Sep '03

Nick Daniels wrote: > Hi > I am trying to install a progarmme called linrad (DSP), > it needs > svgalib which I have installed. > When I make linrad I get " cannot find - lvgagl" I > think it is part of > svgalib, > If I type whereis lvgagl I get :- > linux:/home/nick/linrad-01.06 # whereis -lvgagl > whereis [ -sbmu ] [ -SBM dir ... -f ] name... > I have been windows free for two years , please dont let me > reinstall it Nick Daniels Try: whereis lvgagl (without the -) JD _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses by the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service

3 2

[Alug]-lvgagl
by Nick Daniels 12 Sep '03

12 Sep '03

Hi I am trying to install a progarmme called linrad (DSP), it needs svgalib which I have installed. When I make linrad I get " cannot find - lvgagl" I think it is part of svgalib, If I type whereis lvgagl I get :- linux:/home/nick/linrad-01.06 # whereis -lvgagl whereis [ -sbmu ] [ -SBM dir ... -f ] name... I have been windows free for two years , please dont let me reinstall it Nick Daniels

1 0

[Alug]RE: Broken CD-ROM drive
by Richard Lewis 10 Sep '03

10 Sep '03

I've also just checked and it won't boot from discs which I know are bootable. So perhaps it is a hardware problem. Still, any ideas would be welcome! Richard

1 0

[Alug]Broken CD-ROM drive
by Richard Lewis 10 Sep '03

10 Sep '03

Dear ALUG, My DVD/CD-RW combined drive on my laptop has stopped working! I'm using Mandrake 9.1 (and Windows XP sometimes) on a PIII laptop system. Neither operating system will recognise the drive at all. The hardware itself is unlikely to be faulty as it makes all the usual noises and flashes when you put a disc in it. The sym link /dev/cdrom is missing as are the devices /dev/cdroms/cdrom0 (though the directory /dev/cdroms still exists) and /dev/scd0. (I also tried running cdrecord --scanbus out of interest and this reported that there were no suitable devices). The problem first occured when I went to put a CD in the drive and, as it opened, the machine just re-booted itself. I decided not to let it do an integrity check (Mandrake runs fsck) and it booted normally until init informed me that it had found a new device: /dev/scd0 and asked me if I wanted to run config tools for it, OK I said. It finished booting but it had made no difference. If anyone has any ideas then please let me know. Thanks very much, Richard

2 1

[Alug]IDE Hardware RAID Card
by Michael Sage 09 Sep '03

09 Sep '03

To All, I have been looking about a bit on the web and trying to read up on IDE Hardware raid cards for Linux. I am trying to build a small server for my website. I would really like hardware raid RAID 1 (mirroring) as software raid will be difficult to setup on the slackware install I am trying to do! Does any one know of a cheap IDE Raid card that is supported by linux? TIA. Regards, Michael

1 0

[Alug]Today is linux day on the BBC
by BenEBoy 09 Sep '03

09 Sep '03

The beeb have a few linux articles on their tech site today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1507326.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2193275.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3090918.stm and sort of http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3089746.stm Apart from claiming it's linux's 10th birthday this weekend (Huh?) it's OK, and they are going to publish an artcle this saturday about installing linux so that should be worth a look. BenE

2 2

[Alug]Reminder: weekend meeting in Norwich this month
by Syd Hancock 09 Sep '03

09 Sep '03

ALUG meeting on sunday 28th September, 2-6pm, The Nelson Room at the Billy Bluelight, Hall Road, Norwich. Talk on the some aspects of what occurs during the boot process to be given by MJR. Some more info on the ALUG website http://www.alug.org.uk in the Meetings section (although not a lot as I've not had time to update it - so if there are any queries, it might be best to email me off-list). Syd

2 3

[Alug]Lilo boot.b
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 09 Sep '03

09 Sep '03

Can anyone tell me how I can get a boot.b file for Lilo? I'm running Debian Testing and there is no boot.b file in my /boot directory. I also have another machine running Debian Testing and that has no boot.b file either. The Lilo package doesn't contain a boot.b file and running Lilo doesn't create one. The Lilo documentation doesn't explain where it comes from. I'm trying to re-create some Mindi emergency boot discs and that appears to require this file. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

1 0

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

main