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Further, more 'philosophical' git questions
by Chris G 11 Aug '11

11 Aug '11

I'm getting my mind round the mechanics of using git better now but before I go too far I have a couple of more 'philosophical' questions about it - not in the Plato/Sophocles sense, more in the how to use it sense! :-) It seems to make sense to me to use git 'directly' to manage places like ~/bin where one has a mixed bag of shell scripts and python. I.e. make ~/bin into a git repository. I don't see any significant downside to this, ~/bin is only for one's own use so you modify/create a script, test it and then 'git add' it to preserve the history. However I'm not quite so sure how to handle bigger projects and/or ones where there are multiple users (or at least multiple installations on my system). Taking dokuwiki (my current example) I can set up a local git repository which is derived from the dokuwiki repository latest stable release and then I can add patches of my own etc. and when the stable release moves on I can merge the patches into the new release. So far so good. However I'm not clear how, having got the 'stable release plus patches' 'git add'ed into the repository how do I then copy out to the various installations? I can't just copy what's in the repository as it appears because that *may* have further un-added changes. I don't really want to run every installation as a git repository. Is there a command to extract all the files from a given branch in git (which doesn't create a new repository)? -- Chris Green

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A rather more specific git question
by Chris G 10 Aug '11

10 Aug '11

OK, I have set up a local git repository on my machine and have checked out a mychanges branch so I can add local changes. Is there any git way of comparing the files in the git repository with files in a corresponding (but with *many* more files in) tree somewhere else on my system? I.e. I want to diff each file in the git repository with a file in a similar tree. I think all the git-diff commands just compare different branches within a git repository don't they? -- Chris Green

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How to use git (or similar) for locally patched versions of installed software?
by Chris G 10 Aug '11

10 Aug '11

I'm wondering what is the best way of setting about this. I use a PHP application called dokuwiki, it's mostly 'as released' and this makes updates etc. fairly easy. However I have a few local patches which I would like to keep track of and also would like to be able to re-install if/when they get overwritten when I get a newer version of dokuwiki. How do I do this using git (or similar)? I don't want to sit at the bleeding edge of dokuwiki releases which is where I would be if I ran a local copy of the dokuwiki git repository. What I want to do is to be able to use the current released version of dokuwiki but maintain a local collection of minor changes and patches. (Dokuwiki isn't the only software I'd like to do this with, it's just the one that's obvious to me at the moment). -- Chris Green

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Transferring audio to CD
by Anthony Anson 10 Aug '11

10 Aug '11

Something which (strangely) I've never tried, as my business, such as is remaining, is in audio, but I don't rate the quality of CDs... Last week I bought an interesting and scarce 45 rpm record - a university rag record - and several Sheddi (denizens of uk.rec.sheds) would like a copy and scan of the label. Scan's no problem, but what program (under Squeeze) would people suggest for writing the best quality audio files to CD (or DVD)? -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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sudo crontab -e vs /etc/cron.d/xxx vs /etc/crontab
by Mark Rogers 10 Aug '11

10 Aug '11

I have a script, /etc/init.d/xxx, which I want to restart at 3am every morning. If I use sudo crontab -e .. and add MAILTO=<my email> 0 3 * * * /etc/init.d/xxx restart .. I get an email at 3am telling me that start-stop-daemon can't be found, so I assume that the environment isn't set up correctly? If I try creating: /etc/cron.d/xxx comprising MAILTO=<my email> 0 3 * * * root /etc/init.d/xxx restart .. then restart crond, I get no email and nothing appears to happen (I've tried with/without the MAILTO). On the other hand, just straight editing /etc/crontab and adding MAILTO=<my email> 0 3 * * * root /etc/init.d/xxx restart .. works a treat. I don't want to be directly editing /etc/crontab so where am I going wrong? Note that /etc/init.d/xxx is hand-crafted so could well be at fault here. -- 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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Scanner now...
by Anthony Anson 09 Aug '11

09 Aug '11

Same project - the record, but I want to scan the sleeve and the label. Plugged-in a scanner - HP ScanJet 4300C, switched it on, and the tube lit as it should. Opened XSane scan. It found the scanner and identified it. So far, so good. Adjusted parameters to desired resolution etc and told it to scan. Acer began working hard according to the fan noise, scanner made a 'Tump' noise, and nothing else happened. I suspect a faulty drive/carriage in the scanner (never used that one before). Before I carry the heavy HP ScanJet downstairs to try that (it works - it prefers an UW SCSI connection, but it will work OK on USB) - is there anything I might have missed? Running Squeeze with Gnome 'desktop'. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Re: [ALUG] Intelligent Linux backups
by Mark Rogers 09 Aug '11

09 Aug '11

On 09/08/11 17:03, Martijn Koster wrote: > You want a backup and a restore; and I can't recommend anything for that. > > What you could consider (for the future) is to look at something like Chef, and use that for the initial config of a machine... Later you can them re-run that on a newer machine. And if you wanted you could setup a service to store backups somewhere and then have the machine initialisation scripts pull the data from there. Unfortunately, all the uses I can think of for this are retrospective, ie take that box that works and work out how to re-install it. I suspect that the information I'm trying to get out would be quite useful in setting up an install via Chef 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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Intelligent Linux backups
by Mark Rogers 09 Aug '11

09 Aug '11

Something like this ought to be quite possible but I'm not sure if it exists. I'm using an Ubuntu Server install (11.04) 1. Make a note of the base install (eg ubuntu-server) and version, from which a fresh install could be done on new hardware 2. Create a list of all packages installed/uninstalled relative to that base (by name, not version, assume that a re-install would be applied to current versions of the same packages). 3. Backup all configuration files which were created by the above but have been changed from the distro installed versions, ideally as diffs against the original files. 4. Backup all files which are not part of the distro install (ie as defined by the above), with a list of exclusions (to avoid backing up log files, for example). Does anything like this exist? It seems to me that it should be fairly straightforward (but my knowledge of the relevant packing tools isn't very good so I might be wrong). In principle it would be quite easy from this to backup (say) an 11.04 server and restore to an 11.10 install, and have something which would probably be pretty close to working. As an additional step, say 3a, it would be nice to do intelligent backups of certain files (eg proper database dumps to SQL) which could then be excluded from step 4. Aside from the above, does anyone have a good recommendation for efficiently backing up an existing server via SSH without pulling all the base install stuff but without missing anything? -- 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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How to set mouse actions for a KDE application in [x]ubuntu (i.e. gnome)?
by Chris G 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

I use xubuntu 10.10 on my desktop computer but run a couple of KDE4 applications, one in particular being digikam. I want to get a single click to open images in digikam but no matter what I've tried it stays determinedly double click. In particular I have tried putting:- [KDE] SingleClick=true into ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals, but to no avail. Can anyone tell me how to get single click opening back into digikam (I'm sure it used to work once). -- Chris Green

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Firefox isn't using system default typeface, how do I make it do it?
by Chris G 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

I've obviously changed something somewhere that has made Firefox stop using the system default font settings but I can't fathom out what/where. By this I mean the font used for all of Firefox's menus, etc. not the font used when displaying web pages. On closer examination it seems that if I change the desktop settings to something very different (e.g. Courier), then everything changes to that font. However when I change to my preferred DejaVu Sans then everything *except* Firefox changes to that and Firefox changes to a poor imitation of it. The font used in Firefox is not so tall and is less bold. In addition Firefox seems unable to use DejaVu Sans for web pages too. It's as if Firefox can't see DejaVu Sans but can see all the other fonts. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Transferring audio to CD
by Anthony Anson 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

nev young wrote: > On 08/08/11 00:54, Anthony Anson wrote: >> (Ted Harding) wrote: I can get one of those USB sound cards (which >> should be safe). >>> In which case: Where's a good place to look, and which are >>> good ones? (Oh, and would Debian readily recognise it?). >> >> First I've heard of them too, but filed in the noddle for future >> reference. >> > I have a thingy that works under XP. (and vister and se7en) > It has red and white phono sockets for (line level) audio input and a > USB2.0 (must be 2.0) connection to the PC. > Also has a composite video input. > > While I got it to transfer my VHS tapes to the PC it has a audio to > mp3(I think) function. > > As you're only doing one record you're welcome to borrow it. > I've taken a holiday from the VHS transfer just now any way. Thanks for the offer. I'll probably get by with a cable thobut. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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forensic specialists
by Peter Alcibiades 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

Does anyone have a firm or person they have used for forensic investigations and would recommend? I have a disk (ntfs) which I am looking at and need a professional with a track record to help with. Data recovery. Yes, I did make a clone using dd and worked on that in my bumbling way, so the original is pretty much as was when obtained. I've got quite a bit of stuff off but suspect a secure delete tool was used on some parts. It would be nice to get this confirmed if possible. Peter

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 11th August
by Viperfang 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

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 Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 11th August 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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Can't cope with these new fangled GUIs - help wanted with Thunderbird IMAP/SMTP setup
by Chris G 05 Aug '11

05 Aug '11

I'm trying to get Thunderbird to connect to a fairly standard E-Mail account and I'm failing miserably at the moment. The apparent problem is that I don't seem to be able to tell Thunderbird that the user name for both IMAP and SMTP authentication is user(a)isbd.co.uk. I've gone into manual setup for the account and changed the user name to user(a)isbd.co.uk but now when I tell Thunderbird to get mail it says:- Enter your password for user@isbd.co.uk@mail.gridhost.co.uk which is fairly stupid! How do I get Thunderbird to allow me to set the user name to something which isn't <user>@<name of domain>? The correct mail server to use *isn't* related to the name of the domain where the user's mailbox is. The domain for the user's mailbox is isbd.co.uk but the mail server (if you're using SSL) is mail.gridhost.co.uk. -- Chris Green

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Obscure PHP / FTP issue
by Mark Rogers 04 Aug '11

04 Aug '11

Not sure if anyone here will be able to shed some light on this but Google isn't helping. I have some PHP code that opens a connection to an FTP server (running Pure-FTPd), writes a few lines to a file, then closes the connection. In other words: $fh = fopen('ftp://user:pass@ftp.example.com/test.csv','w'); for ($i=0;$i<=100;$i++) fputs($fh, "blah blah blah\r\n"); fclose($fh); The problem is that when I look at the uploaded file it's contents have been truncated. Putting a suitably long sleep() before the fclose "solves" this for some definition of "suitably long" but obviously isn't a real solution. Inserting an fflush($fh) makes no difference. I'm not sure if this is a PHP issue (specifically with the FTP wrappers to fopen/fclose), or a generic FTP issue, or a problem specific to Pure-FTPd. I have however tried to two different servers running very different versions of Pure-FTPd with the same effects. If there was a standard issue here I'd have found something with Google, surely? Otherwise I don't know where to go looking? -- 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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A new appp!
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 02 Aug '11

02 Aug '11

First, my apologies for cross-posting (which I know will affect some of you), but this is one of those news gems which deserves the widest publicity. I just received my ISP Zen's latest News letter. One item therein is: Powerpoint politics There's a new political party in Switzerland and its sole aim is to have PowerPoint outlawed. The Anti-PowerPoint Party says banning the application would allow people to get back to doing some real work. In the party's blog, it claims that so many government institutions use PowerPoint that about 11 per cent of more than 4.1 million employees have to waste time on presentations on a regular basis. The ban might happen. Citizens can force a referendum on any subject in Switzerland. All it takes is 100,000 voters to sign a petition demanding one. URLs in the Zen article: [techeye.net: "Switzerland demands Powerpoint's death"]: http://zen-mail.co.uk/IJT-HCUP-3BFWEB-6SFFZ-0/c.aspx Sample quote: "Looking at the problem Europe wide, SAP thinks that Powerpoint costs the 110 billion Euros which is coincidentally how much the Greek debt bail-out will cost." [techeye.net: US Army declares war on Powerpoint"]: http://zen-mail.co.uk/IJT-HCUP-3BFWEB-6SFG0-0/c.aspx Sample quote: "Sam Nuxoll, a platoon leader in Iraq, seems to have shaken the Pentagon with a quote that said he was spending most of the war making Powerpoint slides. Instead of spending his time dodging bullets, he was making bullet points." ===================================== And I shall add one of my own favourite APP diatribes (much inspired by Edward Tufte, one of the great experts in the presentation of information, and a pioneer in formulating the principles of good presentation): http://services.exeter.ac.uk/cmit/media/audio/ Microsoft-Powerpoint-And-The-Decline-Of-Civilisation-BBCR4-2004-10-18.mp3 (equivalently: http://tinyurl.com/42al9e9 ) [BBC Radio 4, 18 October 2004. Duration 14 minutes. Which was a delightful surprise to me that day, with R4 casually on in the background] See also the Wikipedia article on Tufte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_tufte There's a good (bullet-pointed???) summary of his views on PowerPoint in Section 2.2 "Criticism of PowerPoint". Best wishes to all! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Aug-11 Time: 11:37:35 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Missing files
by James Bensley 30 Jul '11

30 Jul '11

So I made a boo boo today... Like a fool I pulled my NTFS external USB drive out of my Ubuntu 10.04 laptop a second too early. I was moving some files from the laptop to the drive and just as the bar was reaching complete I pulled the USB cable out. It was a load of files and folders I had looped and "right clicked > cut". I would have thought that say the last file of the selection wouldn't be there because I interrupted the cut process right at the end but no, all the files aren't on the external drive and because it was a cut not a copy they are gone from my laptop. Anyone know how I can scan my external drive for the presumably unclosed files and "close them" or something data recovery-esq like that? -- James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/

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Re: [ALUG] Why is the time correct on my virtual machine?
by Mark Rogers 29 Jul '11

29 Jul '11

On 28 July 2011 17:39, Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk <mailto:tony.anson@girolle.co.uk>> wrote: Is there any possibility of a crosslink with the two virtual machines? Both running in Virtual Box, mayhap? They are both inside vbox, yes. However, I installed ntpd on the second virtual machine and checked its time against the time server, and it was different, albeit only a few seconds. So coincidence is looking more likely? -- 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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Why is the time correct on my virtual machine?
by Mark Rogers 28 Jul '11

28 Jul '11

I have a server (running Ubuntu 10.04/Zentyal + VirtualBox). It's time is about 5 mins out (it doesn't seem to have any time sync built in). Hosted on it are two virtual machines, both with accurate times. One has (in root's crontab): */10 * * * * /usr/sbin/ntpdate -s uk.pool.ntp.org .. so that explains that one being correct. However the other one does not, and I can't see anything that would be keeping it in sync. I've looked in root's crontab, as well as all of /etc/cron*. There's no ntpd script in /etc/init.d. It's running Ubuntu 11.04 (server). How would this one be staying correct? -- 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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Pinging Server's 127.*.*.* subnet
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 25 Jul '11

25 Jul '11

Hi all, I was trying to add a extra IP address to my server's localhost because I wanted to run a apache virtual host on a separate IP address. I used sudo ip addr add 127.0.0.5/32 dev lo and then I could ping 127.0.0.5 successfully. When I'd finished, I ran sudo ip addr del 127.0.0.5/32 dev lo which didn't return any error messages. I than ran ping 127.0.0.5 and still got responses. I ran sudo ip addr del 127.0.0.5/32 dev lo again and it told me that it could not do it "RTNETLINK answers: Cannot assign requested address" It may be that the ip addr add has nothing to do with it, but on this machine, my server, I can ping any address I've tried in the 127.*.*.* range and get a response. Is this normal, or have I messed something up? If so, what have I messed up? Is there anything I can run that show's what's providing these ports? It's an Ubuntu machine, running dnsmasq, apache. Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS Any ideas? Or am I being thick??? Steve

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Network delay issue
by Stuart Bailey 22 Jul '11

22 Jul '11

I have a mid sized network, around 80 users. Most of these users are using windows clients, with a few macs. There are 3 Linux servers, 2 for file services (samba and netatalk), and one as domain controller (Samba) and email (cyrus / postfix). There is also a windows server used for Sage. We have recently started to notice periodic delays in network traffic. I am not aware of any changes to the network at the time when this problem started - it has been fine for 18 months or so. This has been noticed as follows: 1. remote ssh into Linux server - typing gets momentarily delayed, for about 5-10 seconds, then resumes. This occurs randomly, but typically every minute or so. 2. Remote desktop (to a windows client), freezes, and occasionally drops out. 3. File access to samba shares sometimes takes a very long time, or times out. Then a retry works almost instantly. 4. There is also a DOS (runs in XP command window) based database, whose files reside on a samba share. When scrolling through records, this occasionally freezes, then resumes. The delay periods are all fairly consistent - ie, they affect the above for roughly the same periods. I have monitored tcpdump from the Linux server whilst accessing the database, and can see server responses from samba to the DOS client, immediately before a delay occurs. I am certain the servers are not responsible, since it affects services on different machines, and can see samba packets from the server at the right time. Also, I've monitored the broadband traffic, and can see nothing unusual. The network has gigabit connections from the servers to 3 stacked switches. Fibre between buildings - although the problem affects all buildings. Clients are typically on 100M connections. the windows clients are all running NOD32 AV. RKhunter and chkrootkit are run on the servers overnight, and show nothing. I'm not sure what else to look for. I've monitored the servers with wireshark, and they look normal. Any ideas would be welcome, please. Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Managing Director) Linux Specialist & Software Developer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Phone: (0845) 658 3563 Direct: +44 (0) 1953 878162 Fax: +44 (0) 1603 858583 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.linusoft.co.uk __________ Information from ESET Mail Security, version of virus signature database 6308 (20110719) __________ The message was checked by ESET Mail Security. http://www.eset.com

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SSH keys
by Mark Rogers 21 Jul '11

21 Jul '11

I have a remote server that I want to allow SSH access to but only to certain people, and I don't trust passwords, so keys are the way to go. However, all I know about setting up keys is based on the user creating a public/private key pair, and the server adding that user's public key to it's trusted keys to allow access. Ideally what I want to do is the other way around, in that I want to generate the key pairs on the server and copy the relevant key to the clients so that they all share the same key (there won't be many users and I just want to give them a key rather than have them create keys themselves). What is the "correct" way to do this, or am I doing something horribly wrong? I figure that I can set up the key pair myself as usual, but then copy the private key from my PC to anyone else who needs access, but I'm not sure if that's the right approach. (I'm quite OK with the idea of creating different keys for different users, adding them to the server, then issuing the keys to the users, so I can revoke access from any given user quite easily if I need to; I just don't want the users having to do the key creation bit.) If it's relevant, most of the users other than me will be connecting via Windows (PuTTY), and will need to be able to tunnel through the SSH connection for various apps. -- 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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CSS/HTML question - how to vary a CSS value easily?
by Chris G 20 Jul '11

20 Jul '11

I have done a Google search for 'dynamic CSS' and I can see large scale ways of doing what I want to do but I was wondering if anyone has a simple way of doing it. What I want is a way to insert a variable amount of vertical space between blocks of HTML. The particular case I'm interested in is where I have a <UL> below either a <P>...</P> or below a heading <Hx>. The problem is that the HTML is generated by a Wiki so one doesn't have *direct* access to the generated code and the text above a list is *always* a paragraph, it's not possible to turn it off. The existing CSS setting margins for paragraphs and headings works right for 99% of cases but when you have lists under heading *and* lists under paragraphs it's very difficult to get things right using just the CSS. So, a quick (and dirty?!) approach to fixing the few places where the spacing is too small or too large would be to have the ability to insert an empty block/paragraph where one could set the height/margins easily. A quick, single case, bodge is something like:- <DIV id=unvert><P></P></DIV> With CSS for div#unvert setting appropriate size/margins. However what I'd *really* like to do would be to enable setting of the margins or height of the paragraph from the code somehow, that would allow one to insert more/less space as required rather than needing lots of different CSS ids, one for each different spacing. Any ideas, or completely different approaches, or am I missing something entirely? -- Chris Green

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Surprised at different 'rm -f' operation when root or not root work?
by Chris G 20 Jul '11

20 Jul '11

I have just discovered that 'rm -f' (also 'rm -fr') only overrides permissions when run as root. I.e. if I have a file I own that is read only I *can't* delete it if I am the user that owns the file, even using 'rm -f', however if I sudo to root privileges then 'rm -f' will remove the file even if there is no write permission. Strangely the man pages on my system don't seem to document this difference between root and non-root use of rm. For the -f option it just says:- `-f' `--force' Ignore nonexistent files and never prompt the user. Ignore any previous `--interactive' (`-i') option. Which seems to be the non-root case, i.e. it *doesn't* remove a file where you don't have write permission even with '-f'. So where is the 'do it regardless of permissions' action which happens when root uses 'rm -f' documented? Finally, the thing that caused the problem, how do I guarantee that an 'rm -fr' run by a user will be able to delete everything in the specified directory tree? Do I have to do a 'chmod -R +w' first? -- Chris Green

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Scripting question - how to get *relative* directory within a bash script?
by Chris G 19 Jul '11

19 Jul '11

I need to find what the relative directory (relative to $HOME that is) within a bash script and, at the moment, I can only see rather messy ways of doing it. To go into more detail I want a way to generate a string of the form ~/subdir1/subdir2 when a script is run from ~/subdir1/subdir2. The best I can come up with at the moment is to get the full path to the current directory using pwd and then to remove $HOME from that string using sed, e.g.:- fullpath=`pwd` relpath=`echo $fullpath | sed s#$HOME#~#` Actually that's not quite as nasty a I thought, but it still feels like there should be a neater way. (I haven't tried it so there may well be issues with quoting etc. but you can see the idea) Any ideas? -- Chris Green

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