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How to make a terminal window stay 'on top' automatically?
by Chris Green 28 Apr '14

28 Apr '14

I want to start a terminal window in "Always on top" mode, is there any way to do this? I can use wmctrl to set the 'above' option but it's a command line utility itself so as this is running from a detached script I'd have to fire up yet another terminal window to run wmctrl to set the option. I need a wmctrl that can run without a terminal! -- Chris Green

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Robolinux
by Chris Walker 28 Apr '14

28 Apr '14

Hello, I've just downloaded and installed a copy of Robolinux on a spare desktop machine. It says that it's a replacement for Windows XP as it will keep the Windows stuff secure without fear of a virus or malware. I paid a few dollars for the basic version as I thought I would be able to configure the XP stuff myself. But it seems they want me to pay for more of it first. But then the thought occurred to me that I might be able to do all this stuff with VirtualBox anyway. This is the link to the info about the secure bit - http://www.robolinux.org/stealth-vm-info/ There's a video on the site showing how a virus attacks the VM. What I find more than a little annoying is that it says I can do this for free and yet there's no way to get past the donation page. The question remains though. Is this special software or simply a cunning bit of configuration of a virtual machine on the part of Robolinux? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Syntax problems
by Chris Walker 26 Apr '14

26 Apr '14

Hello, I need more help please. I'm trying to make my machine convert some .ogg files to mp3 using twolame (my distro doesn't have lame, only twolame) and I'm trying to do it like this :- for t in {01..15}*.ogg; do twolame -b 320 $t $t.mp3; done but it's failing with this message 'Usage: twolame [options] <infile> [outfile]' All the filenames are like this '02 - I Close My Eyes And Count To Ten.ogg' with perhaps 15 or so tracks per folder. In order to find my error, I tried this - for t in {01..15}*.ogg;do echo 'found tracks '$t;done and that lists all 15 tracks but despite hacking away for almost an hour, I can't persuade it to convert the files. So what *should* I be typing to make this work? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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GIMP and photo editing
by Bev Nicolson 23 Apr '14

23 Apr '14

This should be simple and usually, if I want to remove a splodge or mark from a photo I'd use Resynthesise. In this case I want to hide/remove a bit of flower but I've tried Resynthesise and cloning and neither really work. The first seems to use the flower next to it to copy its pixels rather than the soil/foliage and the second makes it look rather too obvious where 'surgery' has occurred. Anyone have an answer? Inkscape is not an answer! (In case you're tempted.) Bev.

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whois, howis?
by Anthony Anson 22 Apr '14

22 Apr '14

Installed whois Terminal: ~ $ whois mcfmarketing3(a)gmail.com No whois server is known for this kind of object Ummm ? -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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sqlite printf not found
by mark fernandes 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

I found this forum post (appears to be a version thingie. http://www.mail-archive.com/sqlite-users@sqlite.org/msg83325.html Drat it - you've gotten me interested in using sqlite! Regards, Mark

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Re: [ALUG] How to format numeric output from sqlite3?
by mark fernandes 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

YMMV with this as I'm not an sqlite guru... You may need to prefix the printf with a sqlite3_ . Elsewhere for mprintf example gives: char *zSQL = sqlite3_mprintf("INSERT INTO table VALUES('%q')", zText); sqlite3_exec(db, zSQL, 0, 0, 0); sqlite3_free(zSQL); HTH, Mark

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SQL question for the SQL gurus out there
by Chris Green 17 Apr '14

17 Apr '14

I think there should be a way to do this but at the moment I can't see how, I always find SQL difficult to fathom though. I have a table with dates, times and temperatures in it. I want to select the maximum temperature for each year, how do I do that? The table has columns as follows:- ID Date Time Indoor Temperature Outdoor Temperature What I want to get out of it is something like:- 2014 21.23 2013 30.45 2012 25.31 It's a sqlite3 database so there's no procedural language easily available. I guess I could write a Python script to do what I want, that might be the easiest way. -- Chris Green

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Fw: Invite: ORG Norwich Launch Event
by mick 17 Apr '14

17 Apr '14

oops - sorry, last one sent from wrong address. M anyone else planning on going to this? Mick Begin forwarded message: Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2014 05:32:05 -0400 (EDT) From: Olivia Jardine - ORG <campaigns(a)openrightsgroup.org> To: mick(a)rlogin.net Subject: Invite: ORG Norwich Launch Event Dear Mick Morgan, We’d like to invite you to ORG Norwich’s launch event - The Internet and You: The latest developments in digital rights. http://www.meetup.com/open-rights-group-norwich/events/171314372/ The event will provide an all encompassing series of talks on privacy, surveillance and your digital rights. These will include talks from Jim Killock, Director of Open Rights Group, Paul Bernal, a Lecturer in privacy rights from UEA and Wendy Grossman, author of net.wars. Everyone is welcome, but please reserve your place to avoid disappointment. http://www.meetup.com/open-rights-group-norwich/events/171314372/ When: 6pm, Friday 25th April Where: The Curve Auditorium, The Forum, Norwich How much: Free! The event will provide a fun and informal way to meet with other local ORG supporters, as well as an opportunity to learn about privacy, surveillance and digital rights, so we hope to see you all there. For further details and to let us know that you’re coming, visit our meetup page. http://www.meetup.com/open-rights-group-norwich/events/171314372/ Thanks and best wishes, Olivia --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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How/what does the Heartbleed bug compromise?
by Chris Green 17 Apr '14

17 Apr '14

I've just been discussing with my son exactly what is (seriously) compromised by the Heartbleed bug. I can understand the basics, it means that something encrypted using SSL (i.e. HTTPS protocol connections) can be decrypted by someone who shouldn't be able to do so. Having said that what can a 'bad hacker' actually do? There's a sea of packets flowing around the internet, picking out a series of packets relating to one 'connection' (i.e. with related information in them) is non-trivial as far as I can see, unless the hacker is sitting looking at the data flowing through a switch feeding one particular site. So, it's possible to hack/decrypt a single packet which I suppose *might* contain someone's login details if the username and password was in a single packet. Is this the extent ot the problem? If there's more to it than this can someone explain. For example MumsNet says it's been hacked as a consequence of this bug, I don't quite understand how someone could get at *all* the login details on MumsNet unless they fortuitously got an administrator's login details and the system is stupid enough to allow an administrator to get at all usernames and unenecrypted passwords. Surely quite simple (and well known) security practices would make this sort of thing much more difficult:- Don't send complete Username/Password details in a single packet, easy enough to do by asking for them separately or even crude padding. Don't store user's details in single, big, unencrypted files. Don't store unencrypted passwords anywhere, use the Unix login style of things so that what's stored is the result of encrypting the password and is difficult (as in requires loads of processor ooomph) to decrypt by brute force methods. -- Chris Green

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How to format numeric output from sqlite3?
by Chris Green 17 Apr '14

17 Apr '14

OK, so having worked out how to extract maximum and minimum values for each year from my database (thanks Mark), how do I format them? Here's what I get at the moment:- Year MaxTemp MinTemp MaxOutside MinOutside 2010 14.0625 -0.9375 7 -7.6875 2011 25 -2.1875 41.9375 -8.6875 2012 85 -6.25 37.8125 -14.0625 2014 22.125 5.875 32.875 0.5625 It's actually presented as a table in DokuWiki but that doesn't really affect the issue. How do I get the temperatures shown in sensible, consistent format like NNN.N? According to http://www.sqlite.org/lang_corefunc.html sqlite has a printf() function but when I tried it I got an error saying "No such function: printf" and I can't find anything useful about it by Googling for the error or anything related. So any ideas, apart from horrible substr() manipulations? I *could* go into the Dokuwiki plugin I'm using to get the output from the database into tabular format, I've modified it a lot already, but it would be rather messy to do. So I'd like something I can do outside if possible. -- Chris Green

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DLNA server that transcodes - any recommendations?
by Chris Green 14 Apr '14

14 Apr '14

I'm currently running minidlna as a DLNA server and it's fine except that it doesn't offer transcoding. I now have a client that doesn't understand FLAC so I need on the fly conversion of FLAC to MP3. Can anyone suggest a DLNA server that can do this? -- Chris Green

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Update on ATI Problems
by Chris Walker 11 Apr '14

11 Apr '14

Well, it's up and running with my preferred desktop background, most of the applications are back, such as this 'ere email client, without having to set up all the accounts etc, but I have a problem which appears to be intermittent. The icons at the top right of the windows, minimize, maximise and close, keep disappearing. I'm very reluctant to go mucking about trying various files, just in case, so does anybody have any definite ideas as to what might be wrong please? The desktop is KDE 4.11 as I guess that's important. I've looked at, but not touched the plasma files in ~/.kde4/share/config but they don't seem to hold details of icons and the like. As it's all now working and before it all goes nipple north again, I'm about to do another backup. That way, if it all should go wrong, I know I can get back to a working state without having to download tons of updates etc. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Old bag!
by Anthony Anson 11 Apr '14

11 Apr '14

Did anyone notice the white carrier bag (tied up at the top and containing a _BIG_ cup and saucer) which I left in the Coach and Horses last night? 'Taint there today. -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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ATI Graphics failure
by Chris Walker 10 Apr '14

10 Apr '14

Hi, In the past couple of weeks, the screen of my Mageia4 (64bit) machine has decided it doesn't want to display any of the normal desktop icons or display at the full size. Having googled it, I discovered that ATI have moved the driver for my HD4670 card to legacy. So I went to their site and downloaded what they tell me is the correct driver but when I compile it, it's failing. I think the error is because the code is looking for v2.X kernels and not the 3.12 that my machine is running. If I look in the make log, it says this (excuse line-wrapping):- /usr/src/fglrx-8.97.100.7/2.6.x/drm_proc.h:98:2: error: implicit declaration of function 'create_proc_entry' [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration] It's the 2.6 bit in there that makes me think is looking for the wrong version of the kernel. Am I correct in thinking that, and if I am, what can I do about it? I should say that this sort of stuff doesn't come naturally to me and that it's taken me 2 weeks to get to this point, so a little hand-holding will be required! -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Subscription language
by Chris Walker 09 Apr '14

09 Apr '14

Following a sudden and very large increase in spam mail to a previous address used here, I've changed it slightly and of course, in doing so went to the lists web site. Just one question, why is the language set to English USA? As far as I know, they don't speak English, certainly it's not any English I recognise and I spent some time working over there ;-) As an aside, has anybody else noticed a large increase in spam to what was, a previously 'clean' address?

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 10th April
by Viperfang 07 Apr '14

07 Apr '14

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 April 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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Asus EEE PC 900 partitioning
by Tony 06 Apr '14

06 Apr '14

I've acquired an Asus EEE PC that had windows XP on it. It has two SSD's, a 4 gig and an 8 gig and 1GB ram What I'm thinking of doing is partitioning as follows: 4GB SSD: /boot 250mb / (root) whats left 8GB SSD /usr 16GB SD card (class 6) swap 2GB /home whats left Would it be an idea to add /tmp and/or /var to the 8GB SSD or would you recommend a different schema? OS will be LXLE. I've installed LXLE but without the 16Gb SD card (using a 512mb SD card as swap to check it works okay which it does) but undecided how to partition for the final instal using the 16Gb SD card. Thinking of putting swap on the SD card as they are cheap and easy to replace and its easy to backup/restore whatever is on it. Probably not best performance wise but feel advantages out way disadvantages (i.e. less wear/leaves more room on SSD, cheap and easy to replace. will allow hibernate function) Not sure what I will use it for yet, probably mainly surfing, emails and watching movies on the move or from separate mythtv backend using VLC. A lighter OS such as AntiX would probably be better suited but I'm trying to use the same distro on everything (laptops, desktops & netbooks) and LXLE is my preference. I also have squid-deb proxy set up to cache updates. So far liking it more than my Android tablet :)

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 4th April.
by Viperfang 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

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

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Mobile phone external aerial - to improve reception
by James Freer 29 Mar '14

29 Mar '14

Anyone else living in an area with poor reception? For me I get one signal bar with T-mobile - and that's on a good day! Other networks nil. I have been trying to set up an external aerial and I was wondering if anyone else had tried this. james

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Going back to VPNs - when I have one set up what does it do for me?
by Chris Green 25 Mar '14

25 Mar '14

I keep thinking that a VPN might be what I need, but then when I look at VPN documentation etc. I wonder whether it is what I need. So, if I set up an OpenVPN server on my home desktop machine (which stays turned on all the time) and set up access for me as a client from my laptop, what does it mean that I could do that I can't do already? Or, maybe more to the point, what does it make it easier to do? (Note that my home desktop is visible at a fixed IP address from the outside world and I can open up any additional ports through the firewall if necessary.) -- Chris Green

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Strange 'bandwidth strangulation' when using ssh on DFDS public WiFi
by Chris Green 24 Mar '14

24 Mar '14

When this first happened to me I thought it was just a one off oddity but yesterday when I returned on the ferry from France I saw *exactly* the same symptoms on two entirely different systems. It's hardly a big issue either just an inconvenience but I'd love to know why it happens. On the DFDS ferries there is free WiFi available, no hassle, no login required, just an open SSID called DFDS-Pax. My laptop (running Ubuntu 13.10) and my tablet (Android 4.x) both connect to it quite happily. It's reasonably usable as well, hardly lightning fast, but fine for browsing web pages etc. However if I try and connect (from either tablet or laptop) using ssh it starts off OK but after some hundreds of characters it just slows down and stops never to pass another character. If I open another ssh session from the same device the same thing happens, i.e. it gets another few hundred characters through. It's not very consistent, sometimes it doesn't even manage to complete the ssh handshake sequence, but most times it gets to a command prompt and allows me a couple of commands before going to sleep. Anything that generates a lot of traffic (like starting up mutt) always hangs before it gets anywhere but a couple of 'ls' commands will sometimes work. So what might be going on? It's not like ssh protocol is blocked completely so it's not that the port(s) are blocked, it's almost as if there's someone watching and, when they can't see what's being transferred, they stop the data. Any ideas anyone? I suppose I could try a different port for ssh but as it's not specific port blocking I don't think this will fix it. ... and as I said, it's not very important, I don't often want to read my E-Mail while crossing the channel! :-) I'm just curious. -- Chris Green

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Running PHP programs
by Chris Walker 23 Mar '14

23 Mar '14

I want to run Geneotree (http://www.geneotree.com/) so I downloaded it and extracted the files from the zip. I'm not familiar with PHP stuff so I put them in /home/chris/geneotree. There are lots of php files and a few folders but how do I run the thing? There's a config.php file which contains these lines :- ============= <?php /******* PLEASE DON'T MODIFY THE FOLLOWING LINE - NE PAS MODIFIER LA LIGNE CI-DESSOUS SVP ********/ $INSTALLATION_OK = FALSE; /*************************************************************************************************/ /****************************** BEGIN INITIALIZATION CONNECTION PARAMETERS ***********************/ $sql_host = 'localhost'; $sql_base = 'geneotree'; $sql_user = 'root'; $sql_pass = ''; /******************************* END INITIALIZATION CONNECTION PARAMETERS ************************/ ?> ============ Do I need to modify any of them to run it? I'm told that there is documentation on sourceforge but I can't see anything that would help me. I've tried putting htpp://localhost/geneotree in a browser but it fails which is not unexpected. So at this point, I'm stuck and any help would be appreciated.

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Why isn't rc.local getting run? (some sort of runlevel oddity?)
by Chris Green 20 Mar '14

20 Mar '14

I am having trouble getting things in /etc/rc.local to run. As I understand it this *should* be the standard way to make local additions to be run at startup. This is on an Ubuntu 13.10 system runnning on a Beaglebone Black so is maybe a little out of the ordinary. As I understand it /etc/init.d/rc.local gets run by the system startup process and, if there's anything to be run in /etc/rc.local that will be run. This doesn't appear to be happening. If I run '/etc/init.d/rc.local start' manually then the contents of /etc/rc.local get run and there are no errors. So it would seem that for some reason /etc/init.d/rc.local isn't getting run at system startup. The system runlevel is 2. I'm sure that /etc/rc.local should be run at every run level so I don't see how this could affect it. So, what's wrong, or misconfigured? -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 18 Mar '14

18 Mar '14

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, 17th 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 have put together a work team to take on the Swimathon 2014 Team 5 km challenge in aid of Sport Relief. All sponsors gratefully received. :) http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/samwise ----- 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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