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Re: [Alug] Looking for a low-cost Linux based single board computer
by MJ Ray 12 Nov '01

12 Nov '01

Chris Allen: > I have looked at linuxdevices.com, and embeddedlinux.com,=20 > both of which are strong on documentation, but weak on > where I can actually buy boards from... uclinux.com might be worth a look. ISTR that they have boards there. There also seemed to be a lot of useful sites linked from linuxdevices. -- MJR

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Promoting Linux
by John Seago 12 Nov '01

12 Nov '01

Yesterday, on my way to Ipswich I stopped at SBS Computers in Wittnesham to buy new IDE Cables. Talking to the proprietor, we touched briefly on the subject of Linux, in which he expressed an interest. I offered to return and talk him through an install of Mandrake 8.1, as he was interested in putting a 'free' OS into the second hand computers he sells. I returned today, (having to return some faulty goods to a shop in Ipswich), unfortunately, a problem occurred with installing Mandrake 8.1 in the next batch of Computers being prepared for sale, which I lacked both the experience and knowledge to overcome. Is there anyone on the list in the Ipswich area who could give some help and advice to SBS Computers. This would go a long way towards fulfilling one of ALUG's aims, that of promoting linux, as his customers would be going away with a computer pre-loaded with linux. The contact address for SBS Computers is: < info(a)sbscomputers.co.uk >. John Seago

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Linux Mandrake 8.1 Installations
by Mark Elliss 12 Nov '01

12 Nov '01

Good morning, I might be able to help you out with your Mandrake 8.1 installation problems. I picked up a message (see below) from the ALUG list were John Seago has asked if there was anyone in your area who could help.I am in the area and am willing to help. Regards Mark > Yesterday, on my way to Ipswich I stopped at SBS Computers in Wittnesham to > buy new IDE Cables. Talking to the proprietor, we touched briefly on the > subject of Linux, in which he expressed an interest. I offered to return and > talk him through an install of Mandrake 8.1, as he was interested in putting > a 'free' OS into the second hand computers he sells. I returned today, > (having to return some faulty goods to a shop in Ipswich), unfortunately, a > problem occurred with installing Mandrake 8.1 in the next batch of Computers > being prepared for sale, which I lacked both the experience and knowledge to > overcome. Is there anyone on the list in the Ipswich area who could give some > help and advice to SBS Computers. This would go a long way towards > fulfilling one of ALUG's aims, that of promoting linux, as his customers > would be going away with a computer pre-loaded with linux. > > The contact address for SBS Computers is: < info(a)sbscomputers.co.uk >. > > John Seago >

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Missing Daily Digests
by John Seago 12 Nov '01

12 Nov '01

Last week I only received digests 81, 82, 84 and 85, (if there was a digest for Sunday then that did not arrive either), I know of two other list members who did not get some of the messages, was there some problem? Or is this something else I have managed to break? John Seago

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Ain't Linux Wonderful
by Ian Thompson-Bell 10 Nov '01

10 Nov '01

A couple of days ago I had a major freeze on my Mandrake 8.0 desktop. I was running an mpeg encoder, called appropriately lame, at the time, when the screen just froze. No keyboard response so i was forced to reset. Only problem was e2fsck did not like one partition and kept freezing itself. So I ran the MD8.0 install disk in rescue mode and found I could manualy mount all the partitions and their contents seemed intact. Running e2fsck with the partitions unmounted found the corrupted partition and fixed it. A reboot and there was my system all intact and functional. Ain't linux wonderful? Ian -- Ian Thompson-Bell

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Sundays meeting
by John Woodard 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

I'm not going to make the meeting on Sunday as it will clash with Number One Son's birthday party. So have a good one and I hope you all get your broken bits working and enjoy being in a different venue for a change. -- Cheers, BJ

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Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Edenyard 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

Jenny Hopkins wrote: > I've managed to avoid upgrading a kernel up till now. How tricky is it on > a scale of 1 - 10 for someone slightly above the level of complete > incompetence? > Well - I managed it and my Linux knowledge on a scale of 1 to 10 is probably just below 1 at the moment. I had a slight false start, owing to some missing symlinks, but I soon fixed those, thanks to this list, and then it was ALMOST trivial - just type in the right commands in the right order and make plenty of tea between each command. Also, I discovered a mag called Linux Format (thanks to John Seago) and that has a cover CD bearing the source code for kernel 2.4.9, which is what I used for my new kernel last week. So I didn't even have to download 28Mb of source code before I started! I'd read somewhere that I should expect the compilation to take hours or days on an old PC (my P166 is ex-skip) but I was done in less than an hour, once I'd sorted my way through the 'make menuconfig' stage. So if I can, I'd say anyone can. If you want me to share my lack of knowledge any further, feel free to ask! I found the Kernel HOW-TO quite helpful and there's a README in with the source (which, had I read it more diligently, would have probably saved me falling into the lack-of-symlinks hole...). Hope this encourages you? Gerald.

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thanks for pages_failed info
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 06 Nov '01

06 Nov '01

Ta to all for help with the alarming pages_failed messages. I now understand that 1. I shouldn't set a large cronjob to run every minute by mistake ;-) 2. Kernel 2.2.18 is not so hot on memory management and i need to do my first new kernel installation 3. I need to set sysrq in some boot script or other to avoid crashing out like i had to yesterday. Now I can spend the next month trying to find out *how* to do these things...whoohooo! Sorry if I caused any confusion cross-posting on two lists. Some interesting merge talks coming out of it though. Jenny.

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RE: clug Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Ian Wells 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

> > I've managed to avoid upgrading a kernel up till now. How > tricky is it on > > a scale of 1 - 10 for someone slightly above the level of complete > > incompetence? > > If you have some idea of what hardware is in the system (or a .config > file hanging aroudn from last time), then it's pretty simple, > really. Some people find the kernel-package package in Debian is > helpful, but I tend not to use it. I recommend make menuconfig... After last night, and making a kernel with the IPSec patches in by just typing the right (one) command, I've decided that make-kpkg is lovely. Now all I have to do is switch my firewall box over to Debian. And repair its disk. And ideally find it a monitor which hasn't got 20 second phosphor persistence... Incidentally, when I've used SysRq I've found it needed enabling with an echo 1 >/proc/sys/kernel/sysrq on boot. Do it. It's invaluable when your machine goes tits up. (Especially when it's a general workhorse machine that everyone uses, with 40G partitions and a strange intermittent kernel bug that makes it impossible to reboot.) -- Ian.

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Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by MJ Ray 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

John Fremlin: > MJ Ray <markj(a)cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> writes: > > Hold AltGr and SysRq, then tap out s u u b (sync, unmount, unmount, boot) > You should sync after umount too or else you'll probably get spurious > fscks on boot (it needs to write a clean umount flag to the superblock) Surely a sync won't do anything to a read-only disk? (OK, I lied: "u" is actually remount-read-only.) -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

MJRay wrote: >Yes, .17 and .18 blew up quite spectacularly on tsw a few times. It seems >that certain situations end up with swap being consumed and never released. >.19 (or maybe .20 now?) cured the problem. I've managed to avoid upgrading a kernel up till now. How tricky is it on a scale of 1 - 10 for someone slightly above the level of complete incompetence? Jen

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Free to a good home
by Chris Allen 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

The following hardware will shortly go in our skip unless anybody would like it... 1 x Sun 3/80 workstation with 19" mono monitor. Unknown amount of memory/hard disk - although was running as my DNS server until a year ago. 1 x Sun 3/50 workstation with 21" mono monitor. This box is *ancient* - it is 68000 based and incredibly solidly built. Unknown amount of memory hard disk (if any). Has not been plugged in for several years. Assorted tapes, cables, mice and other junk to go with the above. All free to anybody that can be bothered to come to Eastbridge (near Leiston in Suffolk) to collect it...

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Debian, Slackware, hardware, BIOS and what am I doing wrong?
by John Seago 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

I have at last managed, with help, for which many thanks, to get my BIOS set up properly so that I could install Mandrake 8.1. However I am still unable to get Debian or Slackware in. I was told this afternoon that I may get some more suggestions if I post to this list again, so here is a reiteration of my position and the problem. I have two hard disks, one 10 gig as the primary master (with `Windows' on), the second 40 gig disk, (with partitions for Linux, and Mandrake 8.1 installed on /dev/hdc5 is the secondary master. The CD drive is set as the primary slave. I can get Debian to install as far as the base system, but on rebooting into it it can not access the CD drive. Slackware does not install as when one gets to the point where the system is installed it reports all sorts of stuff not installed from an earlier part of the installation. Am I trying to do something which is impossible, should I only be installing one set of linux, am I trying to do it in the wrong order? I could get rid of windows from the first disk, but I would prefer to keep it for the better quality printing it provides, (although I could be persuaded that the other benefits of Linux outweigh it). Suggestions and advice would be welcomed. John seago

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Announce digest, Vol 1 #5 - 2 msgs
by announce-request＠lists.alug.org.uk 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

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..." *** Please send replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk, not announce... *** oMMMoMo Mo MMMMMMMoMo " "o"o"o"o oMMMoMoM oMMMMMM"MMM" " " " " " "o"o "oMMMoMMM " oMo"M"oo MM" " MoMoMMMMMMM oM " " "oMMM " " MoMMMMMoMoMoooo Mo MMM MoMoMMMMMoMMMMM o" MoM " MoMM "MMo"oMoMMMoM"" MM " MMMMo MMMMMoMMMMMM" oM " MoMMM MMMoMMMo"MM Mo" "MMoMo ooMMMMMMMoMo" oMo oMoMMM " "oMoMMMoMoMo MoM oMoMMM MMMMMMMMMoMMM "oM oMoMMM "M"M"MMoMMMo" " o "oo " MMMM" MMMMMoMoM o" " "oM " " " "o MMMoMMMo"o M " oM " " MMMMMMMoMo o" "oMoMoooMo" " o " " MMoMMMoMoMo " "o"o MM"""""""oM oM " "MMo oMMMMMoMMMoMo " """ """ " o"MMMMoMMMoMMMo"MMo"o" o o o oo MMMMMMoMMMoMMMoMoMo MMMMM MMMo oMMM MMMo MMoMMM oMoMMMoMMMoMMMoMMMo"o oMMMMM MMMo oMMM "MMo MMM "MM MMMMMMMoMMMMMMMoMMMM" " " MMo"MMo MMMo oMM" MMMo oMM" """ " MoMMMoMMMoMMMo" " " MMMoMMMo MMMo oMM" MMMo oMM"oMoMo " "MMoMMMoMMM " " MMMMMMMo MMMo oMM" MMMo oMM" "MM oMMMoMoMoMMMoMMMoMo" " oMM" "oMM" "MMMMM" "MMMMM" MMMoMM" ooMMMMMMMoMMMMMMMoMMMoMo "M" " " " " " """ """ "oM """oMM" " " "MMoMMMoMMMoMM" " " " " " " " alug-announce : The Newsletter of the Anglian Linux User Group Today's Topics: 1. [Robin Marjason <RobinM(a)belkin.com>] [uklugs] Linux support with Belkin UPS (MJ Ray) 2. Death of alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk (MJ Ray) --__--__-- Message: 1 To: announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk From: MJ Ray <markj(a)cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> Organization: Cat-killingly bad Date: 19 Oct 2001 01:53:56 +0100 Subject: [Alug Announce] [Robin Marjason <RobinM(a)belkin.com>] [uklugs] Linux support with Belkin UPS From: Robin Marjason <RobinM(a)belkin.com> Subject: [uklugs] Linux support with Belkin UPS Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 09:25:35 +0100 Dear Sir, I am not in the business of sending unsolicited mail but have received some positive feedback from Linux users regarding our range of Uninterruptible Power Supplies that you may find interesting. It seems Belkin may be unique as it offers free shutdown software that supports Linux. This software (Bulldog Sentry) facilitates a safe shutdown during an extended power outage. If you need any further information feel free to contact me (details below) or visit the relevant page at http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=&Section_Id=4 83&pcount=&Product_Id=120918&Section.Section_Path=%2FRoot%2FPowerProtection% 2FUninterr%2E%2E%2EerSupply%2F I hope this information proves useful. Yours sincerely, Robin Marjason Belkin Ltd Mob: 07876 745508 DDI: 01604 678381 Tel: 01604 678300 Fax: 01604 678330 E-mail: robinm(a)belkin.com http://www.belkin.co.uk --__--__-- Message: 2 From: MJ Ray <markj(a)luminas.co.uk> To: announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 23:37:57 +0000 Subject: [Alug Announce] Death of alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk At around 8pm on Monday 5 November 2001, the old email address alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk will be finally disabled. Subscribers should ensure that they have the new email address main(a)lists.alug.org.uk in their address books and settings, which has been in use for several months. This is in preparation for the UEA Student Union ceasing to operate their mail server some time in December. Most people shouldn't notice any change, as the lists were moved many weeks ago. Thank you for listening. -- MJ Ray Email: markj(a)luminas.co.uk Director Tel: +44 (0)20 8553 6622 Luminas Internet Applications Fax: +44 (0)870 28 47489 This is not an official statement or order. Web: www.luminas.co.uk --__--__-- _______________________________________________ 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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Re: clug Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by MJ Ray 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

Matthew: > > apt-get install kernel-image-2.2.19 > You get much better performance if you roll your own kernel, IME. The > default Debian kernel contains a whole pile of cruft that you Just > Don't Need. Indeed, but there's nothing inherently "wrong" with it and the original query was how tricky is it to *upgrade*, not compile. Use make-kpkg if you want to tune things -- it's not that hard -- but in a hurry, the debian kernel-image packages are an easy upgrade. -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] RedHat7.2 memory shortage?
by MJ Ray 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

Glen: > faster than Mozilla - is there a suite of 'lighter' programs that I should > choose? Any recommendations? There are two things I feel happy with recommending at the moment: http://www.icewm.org/ or http://www.xfce.org/ Which you'll get on with better depends on your personal taste and whether you mind having to put it together yourself. XFCE has a website being put together for it called "XFCE IP" or something similar which will list applications that work well with it. -- MJR

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RE: clug List proposal (admin)
by Ian Wells 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

> I was told that the CLUG listserver maintainer is long gone, > however. So > changes to CLUG are probably not advisable / impossible. It's majordomo. Youcan control it remotely, but nobbing over the global settings isn't possible. > Keeping UseNet discipline and self-moderation is probably > best for clug - > just be (self) disciplined about threads? An FAQ can be > supported if the > anarchy / total freedom approach breaks down irretrievably. I'd say - very small mailing lists don't work so well because no-one has the information others need - medium sized mailing lists work well, because the information's available and people pay attention to conversations they're not actively participating in, so that the same questions aren't repeated over and over; and - in big mailing lists, there's too much noise to continually pay attention, which means that people with answers give up replying to questions and others don't spot the useful information in the flow of traffic, leading to the same things being asked over and over. Given Wells's theorem of mailing lists, I think that a CLUG+ALUG list should be about the right size to get useful discussions going and that (judging by the volume of technical traffic, as opposed to 'anyone coming out this Sunday') the CLUG list alone isn't quite big enough. -- Ian.

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RE: clug Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Ian Wells 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

> John Fremlin: > > MJ Ray <markj(a)cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> writes: > > > Hold AltGr and SysRq, then tap out s u u b (sync, > unmount, unmount, boot) > > You should sync after umount too or else you'll probably > get spurious > > fscks on boot (it needs to write a clean umount flag to the > superblock) > > Surely a sync won't do anything to a read-only disk? (OK, I > lied: "u" is > actually remount-read-only.) Depends whether a remount-read-only flushes out the 'file system clean' bit when it's done at this level, or whether the change waits for the next sync, which is presumably the concern. Aiui a normal remount/umount wouldn't return until the flush is complete, but this method is far from normal.

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Re: [Alug] List proposal (admin)
by MJ Ray 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

James wrote: > A nice idea. Same complaint here: I post using a number of source addresses, > and I'm certainly not going to go through the @rse ache of subscribing > multiple addresses to ALUG just to workaround dumb moderating software. Well, sod you. These CLUG people seem to have an aversion to trimming quotes and their mailserver is still not accepting my subscription request, so maybe they deserve to be held. :^) Seriously, there are reasons why the ALUG lists are set up in the way they are. Bitter experience is one of them and I think the issues around them have been talked to death on-list, so the archives might make interesting searching. > When a friendly human admin has time to moderate, that's bearable. I don't > object to moderated lists, when there is a good reason to use that approach. This list is not moderated, but posts by unknown addresses and ones which match certain other common features of past spams are held for one of the (currently three) list admins to take a look at before they are allowed through. > I was told that the CLUG listserver maintainer is long gone, however. So > changes to CLUG are probably not advisable / impossible. One possible change is to move the CLUG list to more useful location. > Nor should anyone get the hump at ALUG over criticism - let it be > constructive. Can you tune the moderation? Yes, but the current settings seem optimal. > Keeping UseNet discipline and self-moderation is probably best for clug - > just be (self) disciplined about threads? An FAQ can be supported if the > anarchy / total freedom approach breaks down irretrievably. The ALUG FAQ is http://www.alug.org.uk/articles/2001a/alugfaq.html > Its _all_ about Linux - innit! Indeed. Our areas overlap and I always hoped our activities would overlap at some point. It's nice to see it starting to happen. -- MJR

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RE: clug Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Ian Wells 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

Might I suggest that we set up a joint mailing list for techie discussions, and then have separate ones for clug/alug meetings and other geographically-based discussions? -- Ian (who keeps getting 'message moderated' messages from the alug list)

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"VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

This lovely message was waiting to greet me on all consoles of my debian box when i came in to work this morning, and I can't telnet in. A search on google says: >Upgrade to 2.2.19 , that should fix the problem. It's a bug in the >releases between 2.2.14 and 2.2.19, afaik. Has anyone heard of this before? I'm using kernel 2.2.18pre 21, activity on box over weekend should have been minimal apart from backups running. And what were those keys that try to reboot cleanly again? (not the ctl-alt-del) (Hope it isn't going to be one of "those" days....) Nice to meet so many folk yesterday. Jenny.

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RE: clug Ctrl-Alt-SysRq Enabling
by Ian Wells 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

> Ian Wells wrote: > > > > < Snipped > > > > > > Incidentally, when I've used SysRq I've found it needed > enabling with an > > echo 1 >/proc/sys/kernel/sysrq on boot. Do it. It's > invaluable when your > > machine goes tits up. > > < Snipped > > > Thanks Ian > > That gets my tip of the day vote! Just checked and found > that my Eridani > Linux 6.3 systems ( Redhat 6.2 update based ) all have that unset. > > Presumably it will be the same story for other default RedHat systems. > > One more change to default init that's highly recommended... It's also not there by default in Redhats to 7.1 (not tried 7.2), although RH-default kernels have sysrq compiled in. Strange. Dunno whether there's a nice way of turning it on; we just bodged up an init script for it.

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RedHat7.2 memory shortage?
by Glen Tyler 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

Hi everyone, I'm just starting migration, and was impressed enough with what I'd seen of an old copy of RedHat 6.0 to install RedHat 7.2 on my machine. Its a P133 with 64MB, and 4.0GB hard drive. While I'm impressed with all the eversocool features of this (desktop) install, it has slowed the system to a crawl. Everything seems to take ages to load and respond, and trying to do anything more than just move the mouse about or type in Kword seems to involve a huge amount of thrashing of the hard disc (the swap space being utilised?). I've noticed that balsa as and email client and Galeon as a web browser seem faster than Mozilla - is there a suite of 'lighter' programs that I should choose? Any recommendations? Glen

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Re: clug "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

Tom Huckstep wrote: >Just to clarify, I didn't get nmdb in my error messages, just what >ever happened to be running at the time, e.g. `VM: >do_try_to_free_pages failed for mozilla', particularly when running >memory hungry programs. That would make sense - nmbd would have been trying to allow NTserver to access the linux box to copy my backup file to its backup tape. But my backup file was getting its proverbial knickers in a twist. Thanks all. Jenny.

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Re: clug "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

Martin Oldfield wrote: >The problem stems from the machine running out of memory, so it's >probably unrelated to nmbd. I'd look at the time you saw the error, >and then look for cron jobs running just before that time. Groan. Thanks Martin, I had set a cron job for * 21 * * *. Stupid thing to do, but even more stupid as it is the 2nd time I've done that. Some people *never* learn....... ;-) Jenny.

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