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Reliable PCIE USB3 cards
by Mark Rogers 25 Jun '15

25 Jun '15

I've bought a number of USB3 cards in the past which usually work for a while but never for long. Maybe a reboot will bring them back to life, maybe it won't! Any recommendations for a good USB3 card for Linux (Ubuntu)? It'll be mainly used for accessing external USB drives, which may be connected 24/7. Chipset recommendations are useful, but I'm learning that either the card matters as much as teh chipset or not all chipsets are what they claim to be. Ideally I want 4 external ports, but 2 would suffice most of the time. (Everything that I connect to it will be powered so minimal USB power required, although I assume I'll still need to supply additional power to the card?) 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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Unable to install grub to server
by Jenny Hopkins 19 Jun '15

19 Jun '15

Hi all, I'd be grateful for some help getting my server booting again. It's running debian jessie, with software RAID and LVM, running xen (or was). Yesterday one of the disks failed, so I ordered another, and, when it arrived today, removed the dead one from the array, put the new disk in, and.....landed at the grub rescue prompt. So I booted up into a rescue disk, assembled the RAID, mounted the root on /mnt, and did a chroot. Running install-grub on the disk (/dev/sdb) gave me this error: warning: your core.img is unusually large. It won't fit in the embedding area. error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for RAID and LVM install. So I looked at the partition table. I have two partitions, /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb2. The latter is nearly 1TB, and is the root. Both are of type 'linux raid autodetect'. /dev/sdb1 started at 63, so I deleted this partition, created a new one as type linux raid autodetect, and it was automatically assigned the start of 2048. Then I ran grub install again, calling the raid and ext2 and lvm modules, but now I keep getting the error grub-install: error: unknown filesystem I'm not entirely sure what I'm actually doing here....been searching for help for hours. I found one page that suggested grub2 gets confused by a single disk in an array. Here's the current partition table: Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/sdb1 2048 996029 993982 485.4M fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdb2 * 996030 1915060454 1914064425 912.7G fd Linux raid autodetect /boot is part of the root on /dev/sdb2 rather than a separate lvm one. I'm not entirely sure how it even managed to boot before, but I only had the /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb2 in a raid array, so there must have been a subtle difference in /dev/sda that had allowed grub to install to it. Maybe grub was installed before I created the RAID array - I originally only had one disk in there? Anyway, any suggestions very welcome. The trouble with a xen server being that all my eggs are in one proverbial basket. Jenny

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Re: [ALUG] Reliable PCIE USB3 cards
by Mark Rogers 18 Jun '15

18 Jun '15

On 18 June 2015 at 15:31, Bobby Moss <bobbyjmoss(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Wouldn't it make more sense to hang fire until USB3.1 PCIe cards appear? To be honest I know nothing about USB3.1. Any idea when cards might appear? Even so I'd probably only use the release of USB3.1 as an opportunity to get a decent USB3 card cheap and wait for USB3.1 cards to come down in price (and get any bugs fixed!). In the meantime, though, I have drives I need access to now, and I'm currently having to either shuffle them between the available USB3 front ports I have or drop to USB2. So an interim solution is still worthwhile to me. I will keep an eye out for USB3.1 though. -- 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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Detecting ethernet cabling issues
by Mark Rogers 17 Jun '15

17 Jun '15

Are there any tools that would help detect/locate cabling issues? I suspect I have a dodgy connection on a length of cable that runs outside my house between my (Ubuntu) desktop and my (OpenWrt) router. There's a gigabit switch between the two although I could probably reroute cables enough to bypass that if necessary. My old desktop has been generally slow for a while, and now that I've replaced it with a new PC, with a fresh install to a new SSD, it's (very disappointingly) no better. Given that most of what I use it for uses the network in some way I'm thinking that's my next place to look. 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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external HDD
by Anthony Anson 16 Jun '15

16 Jun '15

Just bought a portable hard drive enclosure and USB2 connection cable. The cable has two large USB connectors at one end - the second of which has a much shorter and skinnier cable; and a mini connector at the enclosure end. My not-very-portable storage of similar type, but big, has only one USB connector per end of its cable. I infer from this that the only one of the connectors at the pooter end should be (need be?) plugged in? The 500 GB HDD in the enclosure is SATA, as is the 160 GB one in the notebook. (because I had thought of installing things on the big one and puting it in the notebook...) Anyway, I can't poke it into life. I get the rude message: /Unable to mount location/ and underneath that: /Can't mount file./ Where is the fault? Hardware? Me? (I had meant to bring it along to the Norwich meet last night, but ) -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 15 Jun '15

15 Jun '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 ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back today, 15th June, at 20:00: The Mulberry Tree 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 225776 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA WWW: https://www.facebook.com/MULBERRYHOSPITALITY The Mulberry Tree, previously known as The Milestone Beer House, is a grade 2 listed building in the centre of Ipswich. It is located at the intersection between Woodbridge Road and the A1156, across the road from the old Odeon cinema and not far from the Regent Theatre. It re-opened on Thursday March 29th 2012 after a major refurbishment, under its original name of The Mulberry House and has already begun to regain a good reputation for its selection of beers and ales. It has a sizeable car park to the rear of the building. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. I'll be there, but I may be a tad late ... Cheers, Peter. -- I ran the London Marathon 2015 in aid of the PSP Association. All sponsorship gratefully received. :) http://www.bagshot-row.org/marathonformum ----- 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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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 11th June
by Viperfang 09 Jun '15

09 Jun '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, 11th June 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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Re: [ALUG] Hi
by John Cohen 02 Jun '15

02 Jun '15

Thanks for the welcome, good to know there's quite a few linux users around. Mark, I rely almost entirely on Pro Tools, which of course only runs on windows (badly) or mac, or a hackintosh in my case. But there are certain things I do on one of my linux boxes, like more creative sound design, including csound and pure data. Ardour's saved the day a few times when I needed emergency Foley recordings and didn't have my proper rig with me. I think I'm away on the 2nd Nev, but if not I might see you then. cheers, John -- John Cohen (+44)7500042065 www.john-cohen.com On 27 May 2015 at 13:18, Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk> wrote: > On 27/05/15 12:51, Tony wrote: > >> >> Personal opinion of W7 is that it is bloated resource hog. >> > > Well, that's a 'given', but it's there, and there's loads and loads of > room on the HDD. I do have an XP CD and XP Crack, but have never used > either. > > Basic >> install consumes around 20gb. Is there not a linux alternative to >> Irfanview you could use? >> > > Don't think so, but haven't looked for ages. > > I use Shotwell to download and catalogue >> captures, Luminance HDR to process RAW HDR's, Gimp and Darktable to >> tweak and refine. Fotoxx could be an alternative to try. >> > > I've been using The Gimp, but for basic manipulation of graphics I haven't > found anything to beat Irfanview. > > -- > Tony > http://www.girolle.co.uk/ > > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! >

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 5th June.
by Viperfang 02 Jun '15

02 Jun '15

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

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Ubuntu UPS
by Mark Rogers 31 May '15

31 May '15

I've had a Leibert UPS for a while and for some reason I decided today to plug the UPS cable in so I could get around to configuring NUT. However I noticed that without doing anything else, Ubuntu (15.04) was showing me a battery indicator (much as it would if this was a laptop). I removed power and it showed discharging, but not until a few minutes had passed. Similarly when restoring power it too several minutes to show charging. Any ideas where I can tweak this? I can't see any of the usual tools installed. (I did find /sys/module/battery/parameters/cache_time but changing that to zero had no effect.) -- 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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Mapping a local IP to a remote one
by Mark Rogers 29 May '15

29 May '15

I'm sure that if I could make a decent job of explaining what I mean I could Google for this but... My PC is (say) 192.168.1.10, and it can access a remote device (192.168.2.100) via a VPN. What I want to do is give my PC an extra IP address (eg 192.168.1.11) and map all network traffic to that IP address (on any port, and including broadcast traffic) to 192.168.2.100, and send any responses back. In doing so, any other PC on my LAN would be able to access the remote device as if it were local (192.168.1.11). Can I do this? (Background: In this case I have some brain-dead Windows configuration software that can only talk to devices on the LAN, so I need to make the remote device appear as if it were on the LAN. However I have had similar challenges in the past where using a local Linux box as a conduit to remote devices would have been useful.) If relevant, whilst 192.168.2.100 is not a Linux PC (it's an industrial I/O unit), I do have a Linux PC on the remote network that could form part of the tunnel if required. The key point is that I need the remote unit to appear to be on the local network, not just to be accessible from it. My Windows PC can ping (etc) the remote unit fine via the VPN itself, but the configuration software will only search for and work with devices on 192.168.1.0/24, so I need to fake it. -- 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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Hi
by John Cohen 28 May '15

28 May '15

Hi everyone, I'm a sound designer living and working in Norwich and London (I mainly do sound-post production for films/commercials) I've been using linux for a few years now, (since 2007 I think?) and recently I've built and maintain a server for our small company. Still consider myself a rookie but am trying to learn as much as I can during my spare time! Look forward to reading you all / meeting some of you at a local pub some day. Cheers, John -- John Cohen

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git help
by Chris Walker 28 May '15

28 May '15

Can somebody help me with some git commands please? I have a git repo called https://github.com/tonercloud/beertent and which contains two projects, harbour-beertent and harbour-beerguide. But I want to split out harbour-beerguide into a separate repository and also if possible move harbour-beertent up a level so that beertent is empty and just leave that repo as harbour-beertent. I created a folder on my machine called beerguide_gitrepo/ and having looked at this page and run step 3 - https://help.github.com/articles/splitting-a-subfolder-out-into-a-new-repos… that folder now contains a beertent folder and that in turn now has two sub-folders harbour-beertent and harbour-beerguide. But so does beertent_gitrepo. I've done as far as step 4 but that's where I am reluctant to go any further for fear of royally screwing things up. Step 5 says I should run 'git filter-branch' but for me, it lacks clarity. As I said above, I want to remove the beertent name and just leave things named harbour-* So can anybody tell me precisely the command(s) I should type in to remove harbour-beerguide from the local beertent_gitrepo and similarly remove harbour-beertent from the local beerguide_gitrepo and remove the beertent folders completely? TIA -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Starting Nexus at Startup
by Paul Grenyer 28 May '15

28 May '15

Hi All I've got a digital ocean droplet with Sonatype's Nexus installed and I'm trying to get it to start when the droplet starts. I've followed the instructions here: https://books.sonatype.com/nexus-book/reference/install-sect-service.html and updated the properties file with these: NEXUS_HOME="/usr/local/nexus-2.11.2-06" RUN_AS_USER=nexus PIDDIR="/home/nexus" and can now start and stop the service like this: service nexus start service nexus stop I added the JAVA_HOME environment variable and added JAVAM_HOME/bin to the path for the nexus user, even though I suspect they're not needed. When I restart the droplet, nexus doesn't start. The nexus log isn't written to either. I believe I have the permissions right in /etc/inid.d: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 14639 May 28 01:48 /etc/init.d/nexus I've even tried adding: nexus ALL = NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/nexus to the sudoers file, but all to no avail. I don't know where to check the log for service starts either. Can anyone help, please? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer Have you thought what Naked Element could do for you? http://nakedelement.co.uk/ It's time to get technical: http://norfolkdevelopers.com

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 18 May '15

18 May '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 ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back today, 18th May, at 20:00: The Mulberry Tree 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 225776 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA WWW: https://www.facebook.com/MULBERRYHOSPITALITY The Mulberry Tree, previously known as The Milestone Beer House, is a grade 2 listed building in the centre of Ipswich. It is located at the intersection between Woodbridge Road and the A1156, across the road from the old Odeon cinema and not far from the Regent Theatre. It re-opened on Thursday March 29th 2012 after a major refurbishment, under its original name of The Mulberry House and has already begun to regain a good reputation for its selection of beers and ales. It has a sizeable car park to the rear of the building. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Unfortunately, I probably can't make it this evening - but hopefully there will be some other regulars in attendance. Feel free to discuss who's going and when on the main mailing list. Cheers, Peter. -- I ran the London Marathon 2015 in aid of the PSP Association. All sponsorship gratefully received. :) http://www.bagshot-row.org/marathonformum ----- 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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LibreOffice Hackfest in Cambridge on May 21st
by Sam Tuke 07 May '15

07 May '15

Pardon my for posting directly to your mailing list -- I have an announcement that may be interesting to LibreOffice users in the area. Later this month on May 21st-23rd the first UK LibreOffice Hackfest takes place next to Cambridge Train Station. Everyone is welcome to participate and learn how to hack on LibreOffice. Full details, including transport, accommodation, and reimbursement information, can be found here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Hackfest/Cambridge2015 A printable poster / flier about the event can be found here: https://libreoffice-from-collabora.com/spread-the-word-libreoffice-hackfest… Thanks for reading, Sam Tuke.

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Port Forwarding with Apache
by Paul Grenyer 04 May '15

04 May '15

Hi All I'm frustrated because this is something I have done several times, have working in production and am not able to do again. I suspect there's a piece of understanding I'm missing. I've installed Apache on a Digital Ocean, Ubuntu droplet: aptitude install apache2 a2enmod proxy a2enmod proxy_http service apache2 restart And configured it to forward to port 8938: nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin paul(a)nakedelement.co.uk ServerName solr.nakedelement.co.uk ServerAlias solr ProxyRequests Off <Proxy *> Order deny,allow Allow from all </Proxy> ProxyPreserveHost on ProxyPass / http://localhost:8983/ ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8983/ </VirtualHost> service apache2 restart However, when I go to the droplet in the browser I get a 404. I have an existing droplet which is configured in exactly the same way and when and I access it in a browser via its IP address I get a 404, which is odd, because if I access it via solr.nakedelement.co.uk it works and the url just points to the IP address. I've tried the obvious thing of removing ServerName and restarting Apache, but there's not change. What am I not understanding? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer Have you thought what Naked Element could do for you? http://nakedelement.co.uk/ It's time to get technical: http://norfolkdevelopers.com

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Clocks
by Chris Walker 01 May '15

01 May '15

Hello, My machine seems to be having problems with its clock. Linux keeps resetting the RTC to minus one hour. The desktop is currently showing the time as 10:46 for example. If I run timedatectl, it shows this :- Local time: Wed 2015-04-29 11:43:59 BST Universal time: Wed 2015-04-29 10:43:59 UTC RTC time: Wed 2015-04-29 10:43:59 Time zone: Europe/London (BST, +0100) NTP enabled: yes NTP synchronized: no RTC in local TZ: no DST active: yes Last DST change: DST began at Sun 2015-03-29 00:59:59 GMT Sun 2015-03-29 02:00:00 BST Next DST change: DST ends (the clock jumps one hour backwards) at Sun 2015-10-25 01:59:59 BST Sun 2015-10-25 01:00:00 GMT Just before I booted into linux (the machine dual boots between Mageia 5 and Windows 7) I set the time in the BIOS to be 11:43 but I see that it's changed already. Does anybody have any ideas what's going wrong, and more importantly how to fix it? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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"Router" distros
by Mark Rogers 30 Apr '15

30 Apr '15

In our office we have relatively poor ADSL connectivity (4-6 Mbps - I know some people here have far worse though). We currently have two ADSL lines linked together via a Draytek router and do OK. However I'd like to think about adding a third line and that goes beyond what the Draytek can do. So I'd like suggestions for Linux distros which could replace the Draytek and do some half decent load balancing (and possibly caching for eg Linux and Windows updates etc) across multiple connections. It would need to be able to handle a number of VPN connections too (PPTP unfortunately but that's determined by the other end points). I'm not interested in rolling my own - it needs to "just work" in the way that the Draytek does. ClearOS and pfSense are on my radar although I have no experience of either. Any other suggestions or advice? -- 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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External HDD
by Anthony Anson 30 Apr '15

30 Apr '15

Bought a 500 Gig SATA drive and a portable enclosure to corral it, the idea being to install the latest Mint on it, and update Thunderguts and Firefox (or whatever it's called this week), then transfer what I want from the drive in my MSi notebook. I plug in the USB connections and a pretty blue light comeson, the drive is spinning, but there is no sign of it where there should be. True, I haven't played with the jumpers yet, but surely, there ought to be *some* acknowledgement that there's a drive there? And what number has Mint reached? I'm running 14 at present, and I have a feeling that it's a bit too long in the tooth... -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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Firefox crashing again and again
by Bev Nicolson 29 Apr '15

29 Apr '15

I have googled (using Chromium which seems fine) and looked at the info Mozilla provide but it isn't that useful. The problem is this. I try starting Firefox (37) and while it's doing that it crashes. If it does appear I get an entirely blank window (not toolbars, nothing.) I've tried running it in safe mode but to be honest, I've no idea how to diagnose the cause from there. Help, please. Bev.

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Google Maps
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 28 Apr '15

28 Apr '15

Greetings All. A quick query (sorry it's probably not Linux-relevant, though it might be). As of today (possibly yesterday) Google Maps is not coming up as it usually does and indeed what does come up is blank and useless. Previously (e.f. Sunday) it had been fine. There is a "search box" but it fails to find a named location or a post-code. The above for iceweasel/firefox browsers. On Opera browser I at least get a world map which I can zoom into, but still cannot enter a specific location or do anything else (e.g. find a route from A to B). What are other people's experiences? With thanks, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 28-Apr-2015 Time: 19:48:56 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

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external drive
by Anthony Anson 27 Apr '15

27 Apr '15

Hum - can't find any jumpers to play with... -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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Securing Ubuntu
by Paul Grenyer 22 Apr '15

22 Apr '15

Hi All I've a service running on port 8983 of an ubuntu Digital Ocean droplet. In front of that I've got Apache web server forwarding from port 80. It seams that Digital Ocean droplets don't have any security, which obviously isn't great for production. I'd like to secure my server ready for production, but I'm not really sure where to start. I'm assuming I at least need to block access to all ports except 80 and the SSH port, but I don't know how. What else do I need to do? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer Director paul(a)nakedelement.co.uk +44 (0) 1603 383458 @nakedelement http://nakedelement.co.uk

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ext3 missing data
by Mark Rogers 21 Apr '15

21 Apr '15

I have an ext3 filesystem on a 4GB SD card in a remote unit. It had a large log file causing the disk to be full. At that point I was unable to SSH into it so I had someone on site put the SD card into a Windows laptop and used Ext2FS to delete the log file (and to fix the network issues that were preventing my logging in). I can now SSH in and that log file is gone but the disk space isn't back, leaving me running with only a few MB available. What do I do? I am restricted to what I can do via SSH logged into the unit (ie with the filesystem mounted and in use), or via TeamViewer to a Windows 8 laptop with an SD card reader in it. -- 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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