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USB drive won't automount
by Chris Walker 30 Mar '15

30 Mar '15

Hello, Back in October of last year I had problems with a new kernel on my machine (Mageia 4 64 bit) which I reported here. Over the weekend, I did another upgrade to be greeted on Sunday morning by a kernel panic and it wouldn't go at all. So rapidly getting fed up with it and even more rapidly losing what little I had left of my patience, I downloaded Mageia 5 Beta 3 and using that as a live DVD, booted up the box and did a backup of / to an attached NTFS disc. Encouraged by the fact that the live system worked and even though it's still a beta, I installed it over Mageia 4. It works and even though it's done loads more upgrades since yesterday morning, it's still working apart from a 1TB USB disc. I wasn't seeing any notifications when I plugged it in but that was fixed by a setting on the device notifier. If I plug in a 32GB USB stick, that does pop a notification and I can see the disc in the file manager. But even though dmesg shows the 1TB disc as being present, it's not mounting. Does anybody have any ideas why not? Just in case it's important, I notice that when the machine boots, right at the start there's a message about /usr/lib/udev/rules/50-firmware.rules but that's empty apart from a couple of comments. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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xmodmap at X start
by Richard Lewis 26 Mar '15

26 Mar '15

Dear ALUG, I decided to give up on X display managers some time ago and I now just log in to the console and start X with the startx wrapper. However, I've never been able to get xmodmap to load my ~/.xmodmap file properly in this set up. The file itself is fine; I always execute xmodmap manually after starting my window manager and my key modifications are correctly applied. Just now I've been experimenting with switching from Fluxbox (which I've been using for years) to XMonad. And doing so has brought this xmodmap problem back to my attention because it's the same with XMonad as it's always been with Fluxbox. I've tried putting xmodmap ~/.xmodmap both in ~/.xinitrc and in Fluxbox's start up file. And now in XMonad's start up file too. I've tried adding a sleep: sleep 0.5 && xmodmap ~/.xmodmap after reading a few suggestions that there might be some sort of default that may be getting applied after mine. Any ideas what's going on here? Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis j: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li @: lewisrichard http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Strange javascript/jQuery problem, works locally but not on remote host
by Chris Green 25 Mar '15

25 Mar '15

I am trying to make this simple method of showing pictures on the web work:- http://www.nux.ro/archive/2012/10/Instant_image_gallery_with_Apache_s_mod_a… On my home system (xubuntu 14.10 with apache) it works exactly as it should. However on my hosting at TsoHost it doesn't work, there are no obvious errors but the 'lightbox' style display simply doesn't happen, one just gets a standard directory display and clicking on the image files just opens them as it would without any of the jQuery stuff. I have exactly the same layout (I think!) on both home and TsoHost, images in a directory called mandyFlat at document root and the jQuery bits and pieces in a directory called fancybox at document root. I have rsync'ed back and forth to make sure they're the same. The problem seems to be that the in-line javascript at the end of the fancybox.html file isn't getting executed on the TsoHost installation for some reason. It's very odd really as it's virtually all client side code so what difference can it make where the server is? Can anyone suggest what's wrong? The TsoHost installation is:- http://isbd.net/mandyFlat/ -- Chris Green

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USB mass storage device detected but then disconnects, why?
by Chris Green 21 Mar '15

21 Mar '15

When I plug my camera into my laptop I see the following:- [115757.772243] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pci [115757.868415] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=04da, idProduct=2372 [115757.868422] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [115757.868426] usb 1-1.2: Product: DMC-TZ60 [115757.868430] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Panasonic [115757.868433] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 0000000000000000001X1314210434 [115757.869052] usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected [115757.869255] usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0: Quirks match for vid 04da pid 2372: 90 [115757.869328] scsi7 : usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0 [115757.869867] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 5 So what's wrong, why am I getting that disconnect at the end? -- Chris Green

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Audio open standards / recommendations for portable-ish wireless speakers
by samwise 20 Mar '15

20 Mar '15

Hi, all. I recently sent my trusty hi-fi which had reached a grand old age of over a decade and a half of useful service off to be recycled. The CD player had long-since stopped working and the radio was never very good, so it ended its useful life being a glorified amp. I'd like to replace it with something but I'm not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination, so I haven't really got much of a clue in this area. I want something I can connect wirelessly to stream stuff from my Android smartphone, tablet and PC etc. I expect it needs to connect to wi-fi whilst at home where it will be most of the time, but I'd like to be portable enough to move it without too much hassle on occasion to locations where it won't have access to a wi-fi network. As an example, my last hi-fi was recently used to run a few ceilidhs - so I'd like it to be moderately powerful, so I can take it a hall in the middle of nowhere and be capable of playing music streamed from my smartphone, over bluetooth I imagine, and loud enough to work at such an event. In an ideal world, if I could buy two such devices and have them stream together so that I can have the same music playing in two separate rooms, that'd be quite handy. Maybe synced over wi-fi? Now, my (vague) question is - are there any open standards I should be looking for in this area of audio streaming / hi-fi? Is there any device which will provide the above and also things like internet radio functionality (maybe even DAB+?). I'm not looking for a full-on surround sound system, and I don't want to be locked into proprietary technology - I want something which will play nicely with my rooted OmniROM smartphone and, if I ever get round to building one, a Linux-based media server. I don't yet have a NAS setup, but I'm in the market for one of those eventually. I'd like to be able to play stuff from the NAS when I get that setup, so what sort of things should I be considering from the speaker side and also the NAS side? I've heard of DLNA but not done much reading around on it yet. I've also heard of Sonus and the (arguably defunct?) Squeezebox as decent proprietary options but not sure they quite fit my requirements? Has there been any open technologies in this area I should look for? Or, as I'm beginning to suspect, should I be looking at something which doesn't have much intelligence in and is basically just a big wi-fi & bluetooth speaker. I fully intend to do some proper reading around, but I was Interested in anyone's general opinions of things to look for and to give me some pointers to decent buzzwords / protocols that might be worth googling. I thought it might be a topic of interest to others too. Cheers in advance for any help! Peter. -- I am aiming to run the London Marathon 2015 in aid of the PSP Association. All sponsorship gratefully received. :) http://www.bagshot-row.org/marathonformum

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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS get auto/clean auto/remove
by Richard McLellan 18 Mar '15

18 Mar '15

I'm still having issues with this. Sometimes these actions do clear out /root but most times they don't. Is there a way to automate and clear out /root and what am I missing? Should I do these actions before starting any browsers? Cheers Richard

2 1

SSD upgrades
by Mark Rogers 18 Mar '15

18 Mar '15

I'm considering SSD upgrades to my desktop and/or laptop, likely starting with my desktop. I generally need a decent capacity on my desktop so that will be traditional storage, but I want the boot device to be SSD. I know almost nothing about SSD so I'd like some advice. I'm looking at (eg) Crucial MX100 SATA 512GB (~£140), but I could go up to Samsung Evo 850 for an extra £40. (Or maybe 256GB would be enough and I'd benefit more from spending my money upgrading multiple machines?) What I want to achieve is (a) O/S boots and runs from SSH, so loading apps etc is faster, (b) any swap space is on SSD, (c) and temp space (including browser caches etc) is on SSD, and (d) (it would be nice if) anything else on slower storage could be cached on SSD.[1] Getting fast storage is great if my hardware can make good use of it. So how do I find out whether my Linux boxen will support transfer rates that make SSD worthwhile? If my motherboard can only give me 3Gbps, is it fair to assume that I will still see major improvements over traditional hard disks even if not the full benefit of the SSD? What other things should I know? Any tips? [1] My typical usage seems to be Firefox or Chrome open with 100+ tabs, maybe a couple of VirtualBox VMs open, maybe a few LibreOffice docs open. -- 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] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 16 Mar '15

16 Mar '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, 16th March, 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. Cheers, Peter. -- I am aiming to run 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

1 0

Alternative to Mencoder for Stop Motion Animation
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 09 Mar '15

09 Mar '15

I've been successfully using mencoder for my sprog who makes the occasional stop motion animation video thusly mencoder mf://*.JPG -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=2000 -fps 5 -o clip.avi mencoder isn't installed any more because its codebase is in a bit of a state. Does anyone have any experience of a similar simple command-line replacement? I've tried an animation suite program but it brings my tired old laptop to its knees and makes it run too hot, hence the command line request. I've googled but I still haven't found what I'm looking for.... Cheers Steve

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 12th March
by Viperfang 09 Mar '15

09 Mar '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, 12th March 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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Recovering data from a disk image
by Mark Rogers 05 Mar '15

05 Mar '15

I have a disk image taken around ten years ago. It has a .dsk file extension, which might be a clue to what I used to take the image but more likely is something I picked because it was a disk! I'm trying to recover data from it but none of my normal tools are recognising it. Eg: $ file myfile.dsk myfile.dks: data $ fdisk -l myfile.dsk Disk myfile.dsk: 39.7 GB, 39711651840 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4828 cylinders, total 77561820 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Disk myfile.dsk doesn't contain a valid partition table Testdisk isn't giving me any clear results (it can find an ext3 partition but doesn't seem then able to extract anything from it). I'm pretty sure this was a straight image from a physical disk (it could have been a virtual disk but it's 39GB so I doubt that). It's quite possible that the default geometry settings in tesdisk etc are wrong but short of random guesses I don't know what to try. I am confident my data is there; if I view the raw data I am able to find a lot of it (mostly scripts which are therefore in plain text). Not that this is a very easy way to extract data! Suggestions as to what I should do to recover data? If it helps, the first 4096 bytes are all zero (so there's no obvious file header). 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 6th March.
by Viperfang 03 Mar '15

03 Mar '15

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

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Updating an old Ubuntu Server
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 27 Feb '15

27 Feb '15

Hi y'all. I have a Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS "Lucid". It was originally a server edition. One of the reasons I updated it haven't is because I don't like the Unity GUI. It's becoming apparent that I'm going to have to update soon, but I still don't want to use Unity. What I'd like to end up with is either xfce or perhaps cinamon as the desktop. (any other suggestions?) I'm wondering if this would work: uninstall the ubuntu-desktop package remove any obvious gnome desktop packages. command line update to a more recent verision of ubuntu (the most recent LTS?) then install either a package for xfce, or perhaps xubuntu-desktop package, or perhaps a cinamon package. Do people think this would work? I'm resisting doing a fresh install from scratch then restoring data, packages etc, because I've installed a lot of stuff over the years and tweaked all sorts of things, so I think it'd take me a long while to get it right. It's my server so I don't want to be without it for a long time. Any advice please? Regards Steve

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Asterisk revisited
by Mark Rogers 25 Feb '15

25 Feb '15

A couple of months ago I got Asterisk/FreePBX set up on a virtual machine, and it's been functioning fine but I haven't really made the most of it (lack of time). I look at it now and find it has various errors (files it can't write to etc) from the original install, it seems to work OK but I don't really feel it's set up correctly and I don't know what to do about it.[*] The problem I have with Asterisk that it's way too complex and made more so by the fact that I learn nothing about it in playing with the web interfaces. I am quite happy at the command prompt or editing text files so I am considering a default "apt-get install asterisk" on an Ubuntu box and adding the trunks and extensions manually. Before I do this, is this a crazy stupid idea that's doomed to failure? I don't want anything complex (a couple of trunks, a couple of extensions which will be Android phones with a SIP or IAX client, a bit of routing between them and voicemail). Alternatively: I have been looking at the Raspberry Pi Asterisk distros, and wondering whether I should run one of those at home (where I have a 100M Virgin line) with port forwarding to allow the Android phones to reach it (might have fun with routing when they're on the WLAN at home). Give up on learning anything about Asterisk but have something which (hopefully) will just work. [*] I set up two new VMs last night and tried different fresh CentOS+Asterisk installs following instructions to the letter and still got errors left right and centre. I don't want to install from source (maintenance headache), I just want distro packages that work (otherwise why are they there?) -- 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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Android Jelly bean file help needed
by Bev Nicolson 21 Feb '15

21 Feb '15

I'm not sure if this is off topic (this may be partly because I don't know why I have this problem) but the difficulty is this. (If it is off topic, despite Android being related to Ubuntu, be gentle about pointing this out.) I can get my android (4.2.2) phone to connect to my pc now via usb cable **but** I can't see the dcim folder or the download folder as I used to with my old phone. Indeed, I can’t see any of the usual folders you wish to see to transfer any files from a phone to a computer, even though I have installed a couple of mtp programs. I have googled for info on this and I know it's not an uncommon problem but I've yet to find out how to fix it. Do I need an app (in which case this post is way off topic) do I need to update some bit of software or what? I've no idea. Help. Bev.

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 16 Feb '15

16 Feb '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, 16th February, 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. Cheers, Peter. -- I am aiming to run 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

1 0

What are reasonable temperatures?
by Chris Green 15 Feb '15

15 Feb '15

If one runs 'sensors' what are reasonable (i.e. reasonably safe) temperatures to see? -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 12th February
by Viperfang 13 Feb '15

13 Feb '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, 12th February 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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O.T. Problems with USB sticks
by Chris Walker 11 Feb '15

11 Feb '15

I have a few USB sticks which I use in my car to allow me to listen to things like iPlayer downloads. But only one of the three is recognised by the car now. I've reformatted them under both linux and Windows 8.1 on my wife's laptop but the problem persists. The thing that the two 'failing' discs have in common is that I have also in the past used them on my tv to record stuff. The tv reformats them to NTFS whereas the car expects them to be FAT32. Are there are utilities I can use to see what might be different between the various sticks? For info, one of the 'failing' discs is of the same type as that which *is* recognised in the car whereas the other disc is an almost new 32GB stick from Maplins. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Any VNC experts here - I can't get it to work at all
by Chris Green 10 Feb '15

10 Feb '15

I am trying to set up a Raspberry Pi (running Raspbian) as a remote display using VNC. I.e. the Pi will be a 'listen only' client and my laptop is the VNC server. I'm getting absolutely nowhere! :-( I have installed the TightVNC bits at each end, that's tightvncserver on my xubuntu laptop and xtightvncviewer on the Raspberry Pi. I have tried two ways to get this to work, first the conventional way:- Run 'vncserver' on the laptop, this appears to run OK and ps shows an Xtightvnc process running. Then run 'vncviewer x201' on the Pi (x201 is the name of my laptop), it just says "vncviewer: ConnectToTcpAddr: connect: connection refused. Unable to connect to VNC server" Alternatively try getting the client to 'listen' for a connection:- On the Pi run 'xvncviewer -listen -fullscreen' and 'vncconnect tvpi' on the laptop (the Raspberry Pi is called tvpi). Nothing happens at all, just silence. The two machines can definitely see each other, they're on the same LAN and I can ssh back and forth. Help!! -- Chris Green

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I presume there will be a Thursday in Norwich this week?
by Anthony Anson 10 Feb '15

10 Feb '15

Have to ask - in Naaardge tomorrow, where I can connect, but may not be online otherwise until - well - sometime-or-other. -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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Wanted - decent interface for viewing pictures
by Chris Green 09 Feb '15

09 Feb '15

For the umpteenth time when we recently looked at some pictures I decided the 'media centre' way of looking at them is truly awful! I have my digitised photographs arranged the way I want them in a hierarchy of years/months/days with descriptions in (most of) the folder names. So when I view them I want to be able to use the hierarchy to navigate easily. We have a WD TV Live media player which is quite well thought of in reviews but it makes viewing pictures a real chore for a number of reasons:- It's slow by design because of the way it fades from one image to the next, thus you're never quite sure if you really have clicked on the '>' button or not. It hides the hierarchy above the current directory so you have to navigate by memory basically, or go too far up and then down again. No image manipulation at all, you can't zoom in for example. There's no way to jump to the next folder/directory in sequence, i.e. if I have just looked at 1973/04/07 I want an easy way to go to 1973/04/08 but I can't. The other 'media' software have seen (we have another make of media player where my wife stays during the week, also built-in TV apps) is no better as far as I can see. So, what I suspect I want is an easy way to use the program(s) I use on my Linux desktop (or laptop) directly on the TV screen. I could dedicate a system to the TV but this entails either leaving it on permanently or waiting for it to boot every time one uses it. A Raspberry Pi is a possibility, leaving it on is then not an issue but there are downsides like will it be fast enough and it needs a keyboard and mouse. Another fundamental problem is that whoever is managing showing the pictures needs to be close enough to the TV screen to read text and that's likely to be too close for comfortable viewing and/or sociability. So on to my final idea, use a laptop with the TV as a remote display. The viewing software runs on the laptop and the person running it can use the laptop keyboard and touchpad/mouse to control things. The only issue is handling the dual display, has anyone got any advice on this front, e.g. ways to have different views on two different displays, etc. -- Chris Green

3 8

File manager with preview
by Mark Rogers 08 Feb '15

08 Feb '15

Somewhat prompted by Chris's picture viewing enquiry but sufficiently different to warrant a separate thread. I'm looking for a file manager for viewing directories in my PC, which as a decent preview feature. Ie typically I'd like to see a directory tree in a left pane, the file list in a middle pane, and a preview of the currently selected file in the right pane. Of particular interest is having the preview work on as many different file types as possible. Images obviously, but also PDF, .odt/.doc[x] etc. Background: It's for my wife (a bookkeeper). She has directories of files which are receipts in various formats (scanned images, PDFs, emails, etc) and for the purposes of entering them into an accounts package she often just needs a cursory glance at the file content to get at the date, value, and a general idea of what it was for. At the moment she's spending more time opening and closing documents than she is doing anything else. -- 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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DHCP failure after BIOS clock reset
by Mark Rogers 08 Feb '15

08 Feb '15

I have a little (headless) ARM box running Debian with a built in clock module, but whose battery had died. On replacement the box failed to get an IP address via DHCP. On investigation it appears that because the clock was "wrong" it couldn't perform DHCP queries ("Unable to setup timer"). I think "wrong" doesn't just mean inaccurate (it was claiming to be in 1928) but corrupt (hwclock reported corrupt registers). The clock would get reset by a time server as soon as it got online, but without valid clock it couldn't get online to get the valid clock... Anyone know any more about this or able to point to a general workaround for next time this happens? All I have found (after the event) is here: http://www.solid-run.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=525 .. which confirms what I thought but doesn't really offer a solution (logging in to set the clock on a remote headless unit isn't particularly convenient!) 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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Linux Mint 16 & Lenovo T520 Track Pad
by Paul Grenyer 07 Feb '15

07 Feb '15

Hi All I've a Lenovo T520 with Linux Mint 16 installed. It's been working perfectly until a few weeks ago when the track pad stopped working once I log in. After googling I've found a few people with the same problem but the solutions are a bit hit and miss and it never stays fixed after a reboot. Can anyone help, please? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer Have you got your ticket for NorDevCon yet: http://nordevcon.com 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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