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Terminal emulator with customizable menus - is there one?
by Chris Green 12 Dec '15

12 Dec '15

I currently use xfce4-terminal in xfce, I find the menu bar quite handy. What would be nice is a way to add custom entries to the menu-bar and/or pull-down menus. Is there a terminal emulator out there with customizable menus? -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 10th December
by Viperfang 09 Dec '15

09 Dec '15

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 10th December at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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PC slow to boot prt 2
by Bev Nicolson 06 Dec '15

06 Dec '15

I asked about my slow to boot (and sometimes slow to shut down) pc a while back now and have htop installed. I should have asked this then but which bit of the info it gives me do I need to give you lot in order to diagnose the problem? Bev.

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Minimal mail sending
by Mark Rogers 05 Dec '15

05 Dec '15

What's the simplest (least config, lowest footprint) way to give a Linux box the capability to send email? Eg: if I have a Pi running a few cron jobs and I want it to be able to email me any issues, that kind of thing. Or a web server that might need to send forgotten password reminders but little else. It'll never need to receive email or provide mail services to others. I've used ssmtp in the past but recently found something better, but for the life of me can't remember what it was! But as it's a common requirement I'd like to know what other people do. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 4th December.
by Viperfang 02 Dec '15

02 Dec '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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New Server recomendations
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 25 Nov '15

25 Nov '15

Hi folks. I'm going to have to replace an ancient Pentium (2?) with 2gb ram that's run as a file server with software raid (twin disks), media server, print server, web server. None of these are high use and the web server is only internal. Anyone got any recommendations for a low-ish power, small-ish form factor machine that will run linux that I could use? Existing machine is running Ubuntu, and I'd probably continue with that, or Lubuntu, or possibly debian. Also is there any easy way to migrate from the existing machine to the new one? Presumably I can't simply move the disks from the old machine to the new one? (This bit's a bit off topic- sorry) Also probably got to get sprog a Windows machine. It's a long time since I've delved into the wacky world of windows. Schoolwork and games like train simulator and minecraft would probably be it. Can't decide for sure, but probably a laptop. Any good deals or recommendations? TIA Steve

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MP3 detected but not opened
by Bev Nicolson 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

Now, given my last few questions I may regret asking this but here goes anyway. I've got an MP3 player. (Philips GoGear, if that's any help.) It used to be opened automatically when I plugged it into my computer but it doesn't now, though it is recognised. (14.04LTS.) It's just a problem with this device. (A bit of me is wondering if it's like the sound problem I had briefly. All I had to do was find Sound in a menu and un-mute.) Bev.

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Font config ?
by Bev Nicolson 20 Nov '15

20 Nov '15

When everyone's exhausted the mice jokes (pesky meeces) can you apply your minds to this. I have googled and see it's a common problem but didn't understand the solution. While I was upgrading to 14.04, a message came up to say 'font config out of memory lines 14, 23 and 32.' It now says this when I switch the computer off. So, what does it mean and how do I fix it? Bev.

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Mouse trouble
by Bev Nicolson 20 Nov '15

20 Nov '15

Not sure what's up with my mouse. I asked someone in a reputable computer shop recently about the fact that my mouse exhibits odd behaviour. It'll crash if I have two browsers open and playing a video, for example. He suggested upgrading to Ubuntu 14.04LTS. Which I have done and it's worse. Switching off and on again is the only thing that works. New mouse? Bev

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Simple CCTV app
by Mark Rogers 18 Nov '15

18 Nov '15

I have a couple of Wifi IP cameras that I'd like to record output from. I can either capture an image or (I think) an RTSP stream. I just want to store them somewhere I can refer back to them in future if needed. Ideally making efficient use of storage. Any suggestions? At the moment I have ZoneMinder installed but it's quite big and heavy, I frequently find it isn't running (eg after a system update) and it stores all the images as JPEGs rather than as a movie, where I would have thought that the latter would be rather more efficient. It crossed my mind I could probably script something that captured images at a regular frame rate and then turned batches of them into videos later, but there's probably a way to avoid reinventing the wheel. Note: The camera is constantly seeing motion (it's view is through a tree apart from anything else) so motion detection isn't much use unless it can be quite intelligent. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Case insensitive scripting
by Chris Walker 15 Nov '15

15 Nov '15

Hopefully somebody can point out my error with a script. This is it =================== #! /bin/bash # Script to extract thumbnails from .ts files for use on a Humax machine set -e # set -x # shopt -s nocasematch for FILE in *.ts do bname=$(basename "$FILE") dir=$(dirname "$FILE") # extension="${bname##*.}" filenamewoext="${bname%.*}" imagefile="${dir}/""${filenamewoext}.png" ffmpeg -i "$FILE" -vframes 1 -ss 00:01:00 -f image2 "$imagefile" done =================== My problem is that I can sometimes have .ts files and others .TS files so how do I persuade bash to search for both case types? As you can see, I've tried setting 'nocasematch' but it's commented out as that doesn't seem to work for me. Searching online produced the 'tr' command but how do I apply that, if indeed it is the correct solution? Any help appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Has anyone used or know anything about FibreWiFi Limited?
by Chris Green 15 Nov '15

15 Nov '15

While searching around recently for good broadband deals I came across FibreWiFi Limited. They offer direct WiFi (as in microwave based) internet connections. The prices seem quite reasonable, see:- http://www.fibrewifi.com It looks like we should be covered looking at their coverage map. So I'm very interested. Does anyone know anything about them? -- Chris Green

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Mount issues
by Chris Walker 07 Nov '15

07 Nov '15

Hello, Can somebody point me in the right direction please? I'm trying to mount another linux box and although it mounts, I can't write to it which is my desired aim. The box in question is a Humax Freeview machine and I can telnet into it and run commands from the command line and having installed ntfs-3g on it, I can now delete files from an attached usb drive using the screen menu on the device. The files are iPlayer programs which I download here, on my Magiea 5 machine. Before I installed ntfs-3g, the contents of the fstab on the Humaxc looked like this :- /dev/sda1 on /media/drive1 type ntfs (ro,uid=0,gid=0,fmask=0177,dmask=077,nls=utf8,errors=continue,mft_zone_multiplier=1) Afterwards, and after a reboot, it now looks like this :- /dev/sda1 on /media/usb-drive1 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other) As I said, it mounts here but all the files are owned by root and of course I can't copy new files to the USB drive. I can FTP files to the box using humxftp as the user and a password of 0000 so my question is, what should I have in the fstab file on my machine to allow me to read from and write to the usb drive on the Humax? In case you're curious, the relevant line from my fstab is currently this :- //Hummy/media /home/chris/Humax_Fox_HDR/ cifs nosetuids,uid=0,gid=0,credentials=/etc/samba/auth.hummy.humaxftp,sec=ntlm,_netdev 0 0 and the credentials file has two entries for user and password as in the FTP command. Any help appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 6th November.
by Viperfang 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Cross platform (desktop) event driven comms application development
by Mark Rogers 14 Oct '15

14 Oct '15

I have an application where some software talks via TCP/IP to some hardware but there are issues with the communication. I need to quickly knock together a desktop application (initially running on Windows unfortunately but that's temporary so cross platform is important) that will run on the PC and to start with simply pass the messages back and forth whilst logging them, but will then need to start manipulating the messages as they pass through. So instead of <software> <-> <hardware> I'll have <software> <-> <my app> <-> <hardware> In effect I'm putting together a (legitimate!) man in the middle "attack". What tools would anyone here use? Node.js comes to mind (i have no experience of it). Probably Python with a suitable socket library (again, no experience...). The result needs to be fairly reliable (so will need to sensibly handle dropped connections, and not leak memory or lock up after a few hours/days). Obviously that depends on me doing things right but some tools make that easier than others... My app doesn't need a GUI; a hand edited text file to provide configuration will suffice. But the ability to add one if it becomes useful would be handy. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: [ALUG] fstab question
by Peter Berrie 08 Oct '15

08 Oct '15

Many thanks to both. I stared at that line over and over again without seeing it! Peter

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How to add a file to a mercurial repository and then push?
by Chris Green 07 Oct '15

07 Oct '15

I have a small mercurial project, local and also on bitbucket. I want to add a .zip of the whole thing and push it to the repository but I can't get it to push. I've created the zip, added it, committed it. So locally all is well:- chris$ hg manifest License.text README.md action.php plugin.info.txt rst.zip syntax.php chris$ However it won't push it:- chris$ hg push pushing to /home/chris/dev/dokuwiki/plugins/rst searching for changes no changes found chris$ So how do I get rst.zip added to the remote repository, it's definitely not there, it's at:- https://bitbucket.org/chrisisbd/dokuwiki-plugin-rst -- Chris Green

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SVN server move
by Mark Rogers 05 Oct '15

05 Oct '15

Another "if only I could work out what to Google for..." question: I had an SVN server on old hardware, which I duplicated to new hardware and updated DNS. Then, from site (the only location any changes get made to the code) I performed a commit. However it turns out that the client had the old server IP in its hosts file (and wasn't using DNS) and was therefore committing to the old server not the new one. This has now been fixed. So what do I need to do from the client to re-send its committed changes to the new server? I believe there was actually only a single commit made if that helps. (The old server is now offline.) Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th October
by Viperfang 05 Oct '15

05 Oct '15

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 8th October at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Android sound recorder woe
by Bev Nicolson 05 Oct '15

05 Oct '15

4.2 Jellybean and I can’t record any sound on my phone. The app (one that came with the phone) looks as though it works but all I get from the speaker is white noise which is a shame as there have been some fabulously noisy birds tweeting away recently (pre migration, I assume.) I have tried switching it off and on again. Any ideas? A google doesn't seem to bring up any useful advice. Bev.

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File[system] encryption - what to use?
by Chris Green 04 Oct '15

04 Oct '15

I currently use two different file encryption methods, I'm wondering whether to simplify my life (slightly) by just using one. However I'm wondering if there is anything better out there, both as regards usability and effectiveness. I use encfs for one directory tree of files which I only access occasionally, I have to re-remember the command line way to decrypt them for use but it doesn't usually take long. :-) There are some security problems with encfs but for *file* encryption what else is there? For some files containing passwords I use vi[le]'s encryption which is known to be weak but it's very handy. I have a trivial script that wraps up the command sequence such that all I have to do is:- nnnn <name of encrypted file> ... and I get prompted for the password, then vi[le] opens the file and I can read it (and edit if if needed). I did try some encryption breaking software on the password files and it did a pretty bad job, it needs some 'clues' as in words that are present in the file to decrypt and, as the files don't contain many words as such, guessing these would be difficult. Are there any alternatives? File system encryption doesn't really help as the machine in question is turned on all the time with the desktop open so it would spend its whole time with the file system decrypted. It's not a laptop so it doesn't have a big risk of being stolen or lost. -- Chris Green

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What is wrong with this line in fstab?
by Peter Berrie 04 Oct '15

04 Oct '15

When I run fsck I get a message saying it failed to parse line 12 of fstab. Here is line 12: UUID=[as obtained from blkid] /home ext3 noatime defaults 0 2 It has noatime because its an SSD. Its wrapped the line of course, in the text editor its all on one line. What is wrong with it? Peter

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Disk errors causing system to lock
by Mark Rogers 01 Oct '15

01 Oct '15

This is something I've noticed before and I figured it was time I understood what was going on. If I try to access bad sectors on a failing disk my entire PC will often lock up at any point requiring disk access, even off good disks. Why is this? Eg: I am using ddrescue to recover data from a failing disk (so that disk isn't mounted and isn't in use in any way other than for data recovery). When it tries to read a bad sector, ddrescue will understandably get stuck for several seconds [1]. However, in another terminal window (or other application), whilst the bad sector is being attempted, anything which requires disk access (eg trivial operations like "ls" or command completion using tab) will hang until the timeout on the bad disk read. Why is this? I assume it's some kind of locking taking place but I don't understand why reading (eg) /dev/sdb should lock any operations on /dev/sda etc. And ref: [1]: What determines the time that it takes for an attempt to read a bad sector to time out? This is on an Ubuntu 14.04.1 desktop, although I've seen it elsewhere. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 2nd October.
by Viperfang 29 Sep '15

29 Sep '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Some questions in and around wifi management
by Chris Green 22 Sep '15

22 Sep '15

I have been spending a lot of time recently trying to get WiFi connections to work reliably. I'm learning, but mostly learning that I don't often know what I'm doing! :-) Firstly I don't think Network Manager is always particularly helpful, for example I'm using WiFi tethering at the moment but also want to turn it off sometimes and see if any local hotspots are available. There seems no way to make Network Manager re-scan, it obstinately continues to show my tethering WiFi when I *know* it's turned off. This rather reduces my confidence in other signals it shows. I have played with using wpa_gui which seems to be more able to do what I want but I don't really understand how it interacts (or not) with Network Manager. Could I uninstall Network Manager and use wpa_gui exclusively? (However then I don't have a way to configure a hard-wired ethernet connection if there is one) E.g. does the 'Connect' button in wpa_gui do all that's necessary or would I have to do the DHCP client, routing, etc., in adddition? Are there any good tutorials about this sort of stuff, or even books? I don't want anything *too* basic, I can get our domestic WiFi working fine without a problem, in that sort of situation Network Manager does a pretty good job. It's when things get a bit more difficult with weaker signals (and sometimes *lots* of them) that I need some help. Oh, and another problem I'm having. I have a Raspberry Pi with an external USB WiFi (long wire with a WiFi with aerial on the end of it) and I'm using some direct manipulation of wpa_supplicant (i.e. built a custom configuration with details found on the 'net) to get it to connect to a WiFi hotspot that uses EAP-SIM authentication. This also involves reading a key from a USB SIM card reader. Much to my surprise I actually got this to work, however my attempts to automate it at system power-up have not worked at all well. I can repeatedly get it to work manually, i.e. by entering commands but I suspect some of the commands fire off background processes and thus automating it is harder than just doing the same thing from rc.local. I have done quite a lot of stuff with rc.local in the past and also with cron jobs and I think I know most of the normal wrinkles. There's just something more going on here, particularly with the wpa_supplicant stuff. Any/all help would be very welcome. -- Chris Green

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