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More ftp
by Anthony Anson 05 Jun '13

05 Jun '13

Support@ asks: > Do you know what your public IP address is? Do you have a fixed IP > address? I'm in the Tea House in Naardge, so haven't access to my hard copy crib(s) - I don't *think* my IP address is fixed, BICBW. I can't discover anything on this box (MSi Wind Notebook running Mint) which will tell me - I'm sure there is, but I've never had to look. Can I ask the terminal, and if I can, what would the magic formula be? (Pretty please...) -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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UPnP vunerability
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 05 Jun '13

05 Jun '13

Hi all, I came across this and thought I'd better spread it, in case it may affect you. This show http://twit.tv/show/security-now/389 pointed out that someone has discovered that there is a UPnP vulnerability in a large number of routers out there. Basically, UPnP allows devices to configure your router for you, and discover what services are available on the network. UPnP has its flaws, but is reasonably safe if confined within your local area network. Unfortunately, a bunch of routers expose UPnP to the public internet. There is a possibility that if you have one of these routers, a hacker could use UPnP to discover what's on your network, and connect to it, and compromise it. There's an easy way to check. Go to https://www.grc.com/default.htm Click on the link for Shields up (3/4 of the way down the page) Click on the proceed button. Then click on the GRC's Instant UPnP Exposure Test button. This will scan your system. If you see the message "THE EQUIPMENT AT THE TARGET IP ADDRESS DID NOT RESPOND TO OUR UPnP PROBES! (That's good news!)" Then you're ok. If it doesn't say that, then try disabling UPnP on your router, and try again. I personally always disable UPnP - however, I don't have anything that needs it, e.g. XBox games. HTH Steve

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 7th June.
by Viperfang 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

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

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O/T Uninstalling Linux and making Windows boot again
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 02 Jun '13

02 Jun '13

Hi geniuses :-) I have a laptop that I purchased with Windows XP installed on it. I installed Ubuntu on it, and then migrated that to Lubuntu, but there's still Windows on a partition of it's own, and it still boots. I'm thinking about giving this machine to my kid who doesn't need linux, just windows. Is it possible to uninstall Linux and get the copy of Windows to boot correctly again. The problem is I don't have the windows install disk, so I'm reliant on any windows programs that may be installed on the disk, or any genuine tools that may help - I don't want to download a dodgy copy of Windows to do it! Afaik, if I just format the linux partitions, it will remove most of the initial boot loader, and then it won't boot windows any more. I'm using Grub btw - the old version (V1.??) Has anyone done this before or have any ideas? Cheers Steve

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RAID discs
by Chris Walker 31 May '13

31 May '13

Having seen that others are suffering RAID problems, perhaps now is an opportune time to ask about mine. I have an Edimax enclosure with 2 x 1TB discs in it. I got a notification from it yesterday to say that sdb had either failed or would fail within the next 24 hours. The drives were bought at the same time as the enclosure so given that one is failing or has failed, is it wise for me to replace both? The discs in there at the moment are Seagate drives and I don't think I specified anything special for them i.e. I just bought 2 discs. This time I'm going to go for something like a WD Red drive which are specified for NAS use. So 2 questions. Does anybody have any recommendations for discs or are the Western Digital discs ok? And second, should I replace both or is one ok for the time being?

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ftp problems
by Anthony Anson 31 May '13

31 May '13

Using up-to-date Mint, and happily using Fire FTP. Suddenly, half the page vanishes, leaving me with just the local side and a 'send' arrow. I can navigate through the local directories. Can't restore Fire FTP it to its proper configuration (AFAICS), so have been using Filezilla, mainly successfully - but - from time to time it connects, but the remote site spits my shaking-hand out. Status: Waiting to retry... Status: Connecting to ###.###.###.#:21... Status: Connection established, waiting for welcome message... Response: 438 Access denied. Please contact your support. Error: Could not connect to server (The :21... is kindly supplied by remote server, and should show there. It's a Linux server BTW.) Contacted Support and in the morning received two e-mails, just after I'd successfully ftpeed the file I tried to put up the evening before. No change in user, password or remote address data. Support has no idea why it wouldn't work the previous evening. *Could* the server be too busy, and <rhetoric> if so, couldn't it say so </rhetoric>? Any idea what 438 is? (I don't want to use a search injun using this dongle on GPRS unless I really have to...) -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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Compaq Proliant servers going free
by mick 29 May '13

29 May '13

I'm not sure how many freeglers there are on this list, but I thought I'd pass this on anyway. "THREE complete Compaq PROLIANT 8500R servers offered in Eaton: http://norfolkfreegle.org/Post/ViewPost/13591" Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- blog: baldric.net gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Software RAID error
by Mark Rogers 29 May '13

29 May '13

I'm having problems understanding what is happening on my RAID array. $ cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md0 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1](F) 976629568 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [U_] To me, that suggests that sdb has failed, however, syslog contains lots of errors on sda but no mention of sdb. Amongst the things I've learned this morning, is the fact that I'm not getting any notifications; this only came to light because a VM that is hosted on this RAID array has lost the ability to write to one of its virtual disks (but not all of them). Should I conclude that both disks have failed? What is the best route to recovery here? Ie which disk do I swap out first with a new disk? Logically swapping out sda is the only thing that makes sense to me but advice welcomed. smartctl reports that neither disk had SMART enabled, which is odd because I thought they had, so there's no information there. I have enabled it this morning but don't want to try doing self-tests at this stage unless someone more knowledgeable than me says I should. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Re: [ALUG] how to block new connections whilst allowing existing established
by mick 27 May '13

27 May '13

On Sun, 26 May 2013 20:34:24 +0100 Adam Bower <adam(a)thebowery.co.uk> allegedly wrote: > On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 08:09:07PM +0100, mick wrote: > > > > Before I start playing in earnest, does anyone know of a more > > elegant solution? > > Have you looked at profiling the connection length and how the client > works? I work for a CDN and to be honest since we acquired a > particular customer the scenario changed from us having a traffic > pattern that when taking a node out of our delivery group after 2 > hours it would see no connections, since this new customer even after > removing a node from delivery it will still see significant amounts > of traffic after 24 hours. > > The way we deal with it is to let some customers get "unlucky" but > then given the client immediately does a new dns lookup and goes to a > new server it means the interruption to them would be very brief. > > Anyhow, you might want to look at some kind of load balancer like > varnish for this scenario as if not a stuck connection might mean your > reboot never happens. > > Also, see if the clients can support range headers, if so they can > resume the download from the missing bit. This means it's not the end > of the world when a download fails. > Adam Thanks for this. But I should have said that my mirrors are on VMs in datacentres I don't control. So I have no chance of sticking a load balancing proxy in front of the servers. Furthermore, the "customers" are not paying me anything (I give the mirrors to the community) so I have no form of communication with them. I /could/ just be brutal, but I don't want to be - and as you will see from my answer to Nev, it turns out I don't have to be either. Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- blog: baldric.net gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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how to block new connections whilst allowing existing established
by mick 27 May '13

27 May '13

Hi guys I run a couple of mirrors serving "tails" over http. Occasionally I need to shut those servers down and reboot (for example I have just upgraded both of them to wheezy). Both servers are reasonably busy (they ship out about 2-3 TiB each per month) and normally have active connections at the time I want to power cycle them. Connections can (of course) come from anywhere and some people may be on slow lines and may be over half way through a download of one of the 700 meg iso files. If I simply power cycle the server they will likely lose the connection and the download. I'd like to be more friendly than that. So what I have in mind is some mechanism that I can invoke to prevent new connections being established but permit the existing ones to complete before I switch off. I've thought about cobbling together an iptables script which will change the lines: BLAH –dport 80 -m state –state NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT to BLAH –dport 80 -m state –state ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT temporarily and then switch it back afterwards. But I have yet to try it. Before I start playing in earnest, does anyone know of a more elegant solution? TIA Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- blog: baldric.net gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Network printing again
by Chris Walker 25 May '13

25 May '13

I'm having another try at making network printing work. I bought a Buffalo ADSL router recently with the facility to print using the inbuilt USB port. I connected up the printer and tried to make my system see the it. But it never does. If I set the host address as 192.168.1.1, the system picks the port number as 9100. I've looked on the router and all I can see is a WebAccess External Port set to 9000 so I'm guessing that 9100 isn't likely to be about right. The router can also be used as a media server with a USB disc plugged in instead of the printer. If I do that, the disc is seen as smb://ap0024a5bdb4dc/disk1_pt1/ and I can see and read the files (the buffalo is seen on a wifi network as Buffalo-BDB4DC so that ties in too). But I'm still stuck as to why I can't print. Can anybody suggest a way forward please?

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Fire FTP trying to confuse me...
by Anthony Anson 23 May '13

23 May '13

and succeeding. Up to this morning Fire FTP has been intuitive and easy to use, however, from having a local and a remote side in separate panes on the same page, it has taken the liberty of listing everything on one side, and only having an upload arrow - no download one. I may have accidentally clicked something which has brought this about, but I can't find anything to restore the default position. Any ideas? -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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DHCP Error
by steve-alug＠hst.me.uk 21 May '13

21 May '13

Hi folks, I'm confused about another thing too. I have an external backup drive, connected via a network cable. When things boot up, it gets IP addresses for its drives from my dhcp server. This used to work fine. Recently however, I find that the drive's complaining of a "DHCP network addressing problem" (according to the blinking light code!). If, before the drive boots I disable my UFW firewall with sudo ufw disable, then boot the drive, then enable the firewall, everything's OK. If I don't disable the firewall while the drive's getting an IP address, I get the error. I'm running dnsmasq as a dhcp server. My ufw rules are like this $ sudo ufw status Status: active To Action From -- ------ ---- 67 ALLOW 169.254.0.0/16 68 ALLOW 169.254.0.0/16 67 ALLOW 0.0.0.0 68 ALLOW 0.0.0.0 192.168.55.66 ALLOW 192.168.55.0/24 I've omitted 4 rules which open up specific ports, with a format like this as they're not relevant (at least I think they're not relevant) 192.168.55.66 123 ALLOW Anywhere 192.168.55.66 456/tcp ALLOW Anywhere As I understand it, the ports I need to allow access to are 67 and 68. When something asks for an IP address and it hasn't already got one, it broadcasts from the broadcast address 0.0.0.0. Sometimes, a machine will assign itself an IP address in the 169.254.0.0/16 range - e.g. a Windows machine that can't find a DHCP server on the network. If I allow this range then such machines can contact the DHCP server. The final line should allow anything with an address in the range 192.168.55.0 - 192.168.55.255 to contact any port on my server 192.168.55.66, which is where the DHCP server is. It seems to me I must have something wrong with the UFW rules, otherwise why would disabling it allow the drive to get a DCHP lease? What have I got wrong? Any ideas appreciated. Cheers Steve

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Network Engineering
by James Bensley 21 May '13

21 May '13

Hi All, I'm Not sure how many people know about the following here already, and hope fully this isn't against any list etiquette rules; I'm sure many of you use the various Stack Exchange sites, such as http://serverfault.com/, http://stackoverflow.com/, http://unix.stackexchange.com/ and http://askubuntu.com/. Now there is a new site that recently came out of Beta for public access, http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/. If anyone has networking questions I urge you to sign up and start asking! If the site doesn't get enough traffic in this initial stages it could get shut down, and so far it is proving to be a great well of knowledge. Many thanks, James.

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Network Engineering
by James Bensley 21 May '13

21 May '13

Hi All, I'm Not sure how many people know about the following here already, and hope fully this isn't against any list etiquette rules; I'm sure many of you use the various Stack Exchange sites, such as http://serverfault.com/, http://stackoverflow.com/, http://unix.stackexchange.com/ and http://askubuntu.com/. Now there is a new site that recently came out of Beta for public access, http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/. If anyone has networking questions I urge you to sign up and start asking! If the site doesn't get enough traffic in this initial stages it could get shut down, and so far it is proving to be a great well of knowledge. Many thanks, James.

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 20 May '13

20 May '13

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, 20th 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. Apologies for the late reminder, I was away all weekend and missed my own reminder reminder!!! Cheers, Peter. ----- 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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Debian linux 3.8 and grub
by Richard Lewis 18 May '13

18 May '13

Hi ALUG, I recently upgraded my Debian unstable system and it included the 3.8 Linux kernel. There seem to be some problems with this kernel and my wireless network card. So I just want to set the old 3.2 kernel as the default boot option for now. However, setting: GRUB_DEFAULT=2 in /etc/default/grub and running update-grub seems not to have taken effect (the 3.8 kernel still gets booted). I notice GRUB now seems to have a new initial menu with just two options (paraphrased): "Boot Debian"; "Advanced Options". Selecting Advanced Options presents the more familiar list of kernels to boot. Where did this new menu come from? Could it be interfering with my GRUB_DEFAULT=2 option? Is there a way to remove it? Or any other suggestions why my default kernel option may not be working? Thanks, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis j: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li @: lewisrichard http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Claws mailbox over quota?
by Chris Walker 14 May '13

14 May '13

Following a query from Mick, I decided to try importing all my mail from Thunderbird into Claws (v3.8.0) and it's all been going well until I tried to import a mailbox from 2009. The messages in the import folder total 399 and yet there are only 350 in the imported folder. I clicked on the red exclamation mark at the bottom of the Claws window and it tells me '*** IMAP4< Alert: Mailbox is at 99% of quota' but despite searching everywhere I can, I can't find any mention of quotas. Can anybody help please?

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Debian linux 3.8 and grub
by Richard Lewis 12 May '13

12 May '13

Hi ALUG, I recently upgraded my Debian unstable system and it included the 3.8 Linux kernel. There seem to be some problems with this kernel and my wireless network card. So I just want to set the old 3.2 kernel as the default boot option for now. However, setting: GRUB_DEFAULT=2 in /etc/default/grub and running update-grub seems not to have taken effect (the 3.8 kernel still gets booted). I notice GRUB now seems to have a new initial menu with just two options (paraphrased): "Boot Debian"; "Advanced Options". Selecting Advanced Options presents the more familiar list of kernels to boot. Where did this new menu come from? Could it be interfering with my GRUB_DEFAULT=2 option? Is there a way to remove it? Or any other suggestions why my default kernel option may not be working? Thanks, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis j: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li @: lewisrichard http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Routers
by Chris Walker 12 May '13

12 May '13

Hello, Does anyone have a need for either one or two BT Home Hubs? They're V2 and I've hacked them to enable use on something other than a BT line. They have 'n' wifi and I've had them working on my Talktalk line as a test. They belonged to one of my sons who moved house and wanted to remove clutter from the new home. Good old Dad will take them! If nobody wants them, I'll bung them on ebay and if nobody there wants them, they'll go for recycling. I'm in Wymondham near Norwich but might be prepared to travel within Norfolk/Suffolk/Cambs.

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Possible Chess moves
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 11 May '13

11 May '13

Greetings All! I have a query. Is there some program which, given a Chess position and which player has the move, can output a (preferably numbered) list of the possible moves for that player in that position? Ideally, it should be possible to enter the position by placing pieces on an image of the board (and to change the position by moving pieces, e.g., after a move, by making the move). With thanks, and best wishes to all, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 11-May-2013 Time: 12:23:02 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

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"Highly visible"
by Max Folker 08 May '13

08 May '13

Hi, I'm new here and would like to come along to the Norwich meeting this Thursday. This page (http://alug.org.uk/PubMeetings) says: "New Members are advised to arrange contact (swapping telephone numbers etc) or ask for us to make ourselves highly visible, so you don't end up sitting at a table full of random strangers who aren't interested in Linux." ...I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but yes - if the group could possibly be highly visible that'd be great. Hopefully see you there. : ) - Max

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Where am I going wrong?
by Chris Walker 08 May '13

08 May '13

I have 2 mail readers on this machine, Thunderbird (which is what I'm using to write this mail) and Sylpheed. I also have a Blackberry Playbook which is configured to use one of the same email addresses as used on Sylpheed. I had previously used Sylpheed in POP3 mode but when I realised that it wasn't displaying the mail I'd sent from the Playbook, I figured I'd change the setup to IMAP. Sylpheed wouldn't let me change it so I deleted the account and recreated it as IMAP. But Sylpheed still won't display the sent mail. I then looked around for another free mail reader and found Claws. If I set that up in IMAP mode, it *does* show the sent mail. Further googling showed that Claws was developed from the same code base as Sylpheed so if one program can display the sent mail, why won't the other? Any help/ideas appreciated.

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Qemu networking
by Barry Samuels 08 May '13

08 May '13

I have been using Qemu on my Debian machine running Windows XP for some years including being able to access a directory on the Debian system using Samba from Qemu. Qemu was updated in the recent past and the networking/Samba side of things stopped working. Well, actually, the command line I had been using to start Qemu was no longer accepted and Qemu wouldn't start until I removed the networking bit. I have been struggling to get it going again ever since. I can get Qemu to run but I can't get the networking/samba side to work. My original Qemu command was: /usr/bin/qemu -boot c -m 256 -hda '/usr/local/storage/qemu/win-xp2.img' - cdrom '/usr/local/storage/qemu/mm.iso' -hdb '/usr/local/storage/qemu/win- xp3.img' -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net user,vlan=0 -smb Linux -redir tcp:9100::9100 -soundhw sb16 -localtime -usb -usbdevice host:067b:2303 - usbdevice host:04b8:0005 The current Qemu command is: /usr/bin/qemu -boot c -m 256 -hda '/usr/local/storage/qemu/win-xp2.img' -cdrom '/usr/local/storage/qemu/mm.iso' -hdb '/usr/local/storage/qemu/win- xp3.img' -netdev type=user,id=mynet0,smb=Linux_m,smbserver=10.0.2.4 Qemu starts but I get no access to the network. I get the following message: 'An error occurred while connecting L: to \\10.0.0.2\linux' Not particularly helpful. I also see sometimes 'The network cannot be reached'. I'm sure I used to have an entry of some sort in the Windows Hosts file but the entry is not there now and I don't remember what it was. Searching on the internet has not provided any useful information. Can anyone offer any help please? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 9th May
by Viperfang 06 May '13

06 May '13

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, 9th May 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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