- main - earth.li

Media playing software - do they all build their own indexes or what?
by Chris G 22 Mar '11

22 Mar '11

I'm just beginning to dip my toe(s) into moving recorded music and other such things (e.g. radio programmes) onto a computer or computers. One thing I'd prefer is to be able to keep all the files in a directory hierarchy of my own making rather than using a media player's own way of doing things. How does most media player type software handle this? If you point them at a hierarchy full of sound files do they build their own indexes from the shape of the hierarchy and the content (as in genre information etc.) of the files or what? Are there any (all?) that work like Digikam with images for instance where you can tell it to keep *all* of the information in the image files (as well as building its own index) so that if you move the hierarchy or want to access it with other software everything works still? -- Chris Green

7 18

OT: Embedded development project anyone?
by Phil Ashby 22 Mar '11

22 Mar '11

Hi all, I've been offered a small development contract that I can't take up at the moment, and was wondering if anyone hereabouts would be interested. Details that I have at present: Porting C from AVR to Cortex M3 based SolderCore board (www.soldercore.com) Rowley Associates IDE available Please contact me directly if you are interested in more info and I'll put you in touch with the request originator. Phil.

1 0

Ubuntu Theme
by Simon Royal 21 Mar '11

21 Mar '11

Hi I use Ubuntu 10.10 and the default theme is an orange and black combo called 'Ambiance'. Every so often my EeePC boots to a different looking theme, a grey one that looks like a 9.10 theme. It doesnt do it every boot. I cant replicate it. If I go into Appearance then I can change it back. Any ideas? Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

2 1

PLay CDs with shift of pitch?
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 21 Mar '11

21 Mar '11

Greetings! The nub of my query: is there a program which will play an audio CD, with an option which allows the pitch to be shifted? Background: Since quite a while ago (at least back to the 80s) you could buy "Music Minus One" records (on 33rpm vinyl then), along with an appropriate printed musical scores. The idea was that you could buy, say, a piano concerto "Minus One Piano", so it just played the orchestral part, and you would play along on your piano. Likewise say a piano quintett "Minus One Piano", or a string quartett "Minus One Cello". If you are playing a missing string (e.g. violin) part, you can of course easily tune your instrument to the pitch at which the record-player is playing. Not so easy if you are playing the piano part -- you don't want to re-tune your piano each time! However, in those days you could find record players with a knob which allowed you to change the speed of rotation of the turntable, so you could tune the playback pitch of the vinyl disk. It seems Music Minus One is still available, but now they're on CDs, not on vinyl disks. And, for personal reasons, what I want is the "Minus One Piano". While I have a few of the old ones on vinyl, the disks are no longer in great shape, and also I no longer have a speed-adjustable turntable. Therefore, on the basis of the above logic, I'm looking for a program which can play back a CD with adjustable shift of pitch (and that's a "proportional" shift, of course, so that say lowering it by 1/4 of a semitone means 1/4 of a semitone throughout the whole bass-treble range). Any suggestions appreciated! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 10-Mar-11 Time: 17:49:19 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

5 7

Re: [ALUG] Kiddy Friendly Browser
by Simon Royal 18 Mar '11

18 Mar '11

Simon Just thought I would point out a serious flaw with the Firefox addon. It has to be manually activated by clicking on the K icon in the Firefox toolbar. There is no way of launching Firefox ready in kiddy mode, which I think kind of defeats the point. Simon ----- Original Message ----- From: Simon Elliott To: Anglian Linux User Group Subject: Re: [ALUG] Kiddy Friendly Browser On 13 March 2011 16:21, Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> wrote: > So at present they are running Windows XP on some good spec P4 Celeron > 2.5Ghz machines, but with all the anti-virus and anti-malware software > it makes the machines crawl. They are also using a kiddy safe browser > called KidZui which I think is a kiddy front end for IE You are mistaken.. Kidzui do a Firefox add-on. Problem solved? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/kidzui/ Looks like it runs full screen when you click the K on the toolbar, I wonder if there's a command line switch to launch Firefox with Kidzui enabled full screen automatically, pop that in the start up applications and you'd be away. -Si _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

1 0

Any suggestions for a simple way to print four passport photos on one sheet of 4 x 6 paper?
by Chris G 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Has anyone got any ideas of how to print four copies of a single image on a 4" x 6" piece of paper? I guess one way would be to put them into an Open Office document to position them but it seems a bit overkill for such a simple thing. -- Chris Green

3 3

Is there a way to provide a secondary/backup SMTP server for Evolution?
by Chris G 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

We have (at least) two SMTP servers available to us for sending mail, in fact we have way more than that as we have two ADSL connections from different ISPs (hence two SMTP servers from them) and we also have two hosting services separate from the ISPs and they too provide SMTP servers. Is there any way that we can use these to provide some redundancy when sending mail from Evolution? At present I can't see any really easy way to do it as Evolution doesn't really allow for the use of more than one SMTP unless you manually change accounts. I run postfix on one of the machines here, I could point Evolution at postfix for sending mail, can one tell postfix to try an alternative SMTP server if the main/default one is down? It feels like the MX records for the 'smarthost' that we send our mail to (both from Postfix and Evolution at the moment) should provide this but I'm not convinced that it does. E.g. the mail relay I'm using for my local postfix is relay.mail.gandi.net and that doesn't return any explicit MX records in response to a query. The mail relay used by evolution is provided by my hosting at TsoHost and is mail.isbd.net, that does have an MX record:- chris$ host mail.isbd.net mail.isbd.net is an alias for isbd.net. isbd.net has address 188.65.115.75 isbd.net mail is handled by 0 isbd.net. I can manipulate the zone file for isbd.net but I'm not sure if that will actually do what I need. Can anyone help/elucidate/point me somewhere useful? A bit of Googling suggests that maybe Postfix's fallback_relay is what I need but I'd like to find a tutorial/howto because the basic manual is a bit concise shall we say. -- Chris Green

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Ugliest sites on the net.
by Phil Ashby 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

On 16/03/11 12:00, Bill Hill <mail(a)wbh.org> wrote: > Following from the pubmeet talk about the worst websites out there, (frames, > flash, geocities, vbsript!) well, after a bit of searching I've found again my > contender for this hotly contested category. > > http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/indexpage.html Ye gods (literally!). Did anyone dare to click through to the main page? This appears in a large font: "Pressurous Moments Storybook Collection" It's almost as if someone is doing it on purpose ;) P

2 1

Ugliest sites on the net.
by Bill Hill 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Following from the pubmeet talk about the worst websites out there, (frames, flash, geocities, vbsript!) well, after a bit of searching I've found again my contender for this hotly contested category. http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/indexpage.html %-)

4 4

Dual Boot On 8GB
by Simon Royal 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Hi Do you think it is possible to Ubuntu and XP, dual booted on an 8GB SSD? Im running Ubuntu on my EeePC, but I would like to run XP for a few apps. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

4 4

Kiddy Friendly Browser
by Simon Royal 14 Mar '11

14 Mar '11

Hi I have young children who have computers. They used to have Macs which were running Safari, which had a great built in restricted web access and you could lock down the whole system so it was tamper proof. They moved to PCs as their Macs were getting a bit old and they use a lot of Flash sites and Flash is not well developed for PPC Macs. So at present they are running Windows XP on some good spec P4 Celeron 2.5Ghz machines, but with all the anti-virus and anti-malware software it makes the machines crawl. They are also using a kiddy safe browser called KidZui which I think is a kiddy front end for IE, it too is really bad. Its slow and chokes all the time, but it provides a massive selection of preapproved sites, vids and games. I ran Ubuntu on from a Live CD on one of theirs and it screamed. They both have the same machine and running one with Windows XP minus safety software and the other from a Live CD, the Live CD beat it hands down. KidZui is a Windows only thing and I wondered if there was anything like it for Linux, then I could dual boot Win/Linux for the odd occasion they might need Windows. I found some kiddy friendly distros but I am just after a way of letting them only have access to certain stuff on the web without too much hassle and not a whole new distro for me to learn. There was an excellent Firefox addon called Glubble we used for a while that offered a platform independent safe surfing environment but it no longer works. My kids are only 6 and 8 so it is only sites like CBeebies, NickJnr and Lego that they need access to. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

2 2

Find environment variables used by some process
by Richard Lewis 14 Mar '11

14 Mar '11

Hi ALUG, Is it possible to query the environment variables being used by a specific process; from the outside? Specifically, I want to know if a running Apache has a particular environment variable set. Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Sent from my [insert device/mail clinet here]

4 4

Ubuntu Update Manager Says No Internet
by Simon Royal 13 Mar '11

13 Mar '11

Hi Update Manager told me there were 6 updates, but when I go to download them it says I have no internet. I know I do as I have been on eBay this morning and am writing this in GMail webmail. Anyone else experiencing problems. Most of the updates were for Firefox and Firefox branding, so I thought closing Firefox might help but it didnt. SImon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

2 1

"top -bn1p1" shows constant system CPU usage of 4.9%
by Mark Rogers 09 Mar '11

09 Mar '11

top -bn1p1 .. should return the data for (b)atch processing, without any refreshed (n1), for process 1 (p1). (The p1 is there just to save it sending me data for all processes, I'm not interested in anything apart from the header information.) It always[*] on my test system shows 4.9%sy If I run top normally, I notice now that it always shows 4.9% on the first scan, then starts to vary. Any suggestions as to why it never deviates on first scan? [*] "Always" in as much as I have some code that logs the value every 5 mins, and for over a day it hasn't changed; it's a test server that is fairly heavily used during the day and not at all at night, so I'd expect some variation. All the CPU usage figures are almost static, there's max 0.1% variation in some of the others. Also, suggestions as to other ways to get this sort of information would be welcomed. All I want is some sample data to use in another process, so I'm logging CPU, memory and disk usage (etc) as reported by top and df. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

1 0

ssh conundrum
by Chris G 08 Mar '11

08 Mar '11

I have a shell login on host cheddar.halon.org.uk, while I was away for a few days recently (that bit's irrelevant really), cheddar.halon.org.uk was (presumably) moved to an new machine and thus its host key changed. So, when I came home, my passwordless login to cheddar.halon.org.uk failed with the usual ssh message about 'host key has changed', maybe a man in the middle attack, etc. I removed the relevant line from ~/.ssh/known_hosts, logged in again, the correct line was added to ~/.ssh/known_hosts and all was well again, or so I thought. However, it doesn't all work again as it did:- While ssh logins to cheddar.halon.org.uk from terminal windows on my GUI desktop are passwordless logins from shell console terminals (i.e. CTRL/ALT/n ones) ask for my password at cheddar.halon.org.uk (N.B. they don't ask for the key to my passphrase, it's the cheddar.halon.org.uk password that is asked for). I'm sure these used to work. More to the point my rsync backup to cheddar.halon.org.uk that runs as a cron job has also stopped working, it's expecting a passwordless login to cheddar.halon.org.uk but like the ssh login from a console it's failing because cheddar.halon.org.uk is asking for a password. So both the above problems point at some sort of screw up with ssh_agent but it's complicated by the following:- The file ~/.ssh/config contains:- Host cheddar.halon.org.uk IdentityFile ~/.ssh/np_id_rsa and ~/.ssh/np_id_rsa and ~/.ssh/np_id_rsa.pub haven't changed so why isn't it being used? Any ideas as to what else might have been affected by the host key change at cheddar.halon.org.uk? It's possible some previous misconfiguration was masking something such that the passwordless login was working for some other reason than the config file above but I still need to sort it out. -- Chris Green

4 5

Re: [ALUG] Best Format For External Drive
by James Bensley 07 Mar '11

07 Mar '11

On 7 March 2011 21:30, Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> wrote: > James > > I thought about NTFS, but it just doesnt play nice with OSX or Linux. > OSX hsa native read capabilities but its a struggle to get it to write > well - even using ntfs-3g. > > Simon Agreed (mostly). I would have mentioned the lack of write support from OS X as I use it every day but you only mentioned Linux and Windows in your original post. However, I'm surprised people still have any mentionable issues with Linux, I haven't in a long time (not to say that isn't just a fluke though!). If Mac wasn't going to be an issue I would have went NTFS simply because you never know what's going to be happening 6 months from now, however it may obviously be the case that you do know this...Evil which doctor :D -- James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/ There are 10 kinds of people in the world; Those who understand Vigesimal, and J others...?

1 0

[ALUG Announce] Norwich 2nd Thursday Pub Meet
by Viperfang 07 Mar '11

07 Mar '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, This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 10th March at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). There should be people there from 8pm, although some poeple meet up 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 OFTC (irc.oftc.net) 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

1 0

Mobile to PC software
by Bev Nicolson 07 Mar '11

07 Mar '11

I'm not wholly convinced Phone Manger is the one I'm after or if PC Suite will work happily with Ubuntu. (Actually on looking at PC Suite, it's got more features than I want or need.) My phone is a Sony Ericsson W205. All I want to do is save text messages onto my computer when my phone gets too full. Ta. Bev.

4 7

Android mail client
by Richard Lewis 06 Mar '11

06 Mar '11

ALUG, We get a few messages blocked for moderation because (I think) they are base64 encoded; that is, the Content-Transfer-Type header says "base64". (Note that this is distinct from Content-Type; a text/plain message can be base64 encoded.) The pattern seems to be that all such messages are created using the Android mail client. A cursory Web search has turned up no solutions, but I did find an issue report: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2630 which I didn't read carefully enough to notice whether it includes a work-around or fix. This message is merely for information. Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------------ Every time you send an MS Office document, Bill Gates kills a kitten. ------------------------------------

4 3

Iceweasel "mail client"?
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 05 Mar '11

05 Mar '11

Greetings, In order to bypass a possible "spam block" on my normal email client, I brought up the destination on their web page in Iceweasel, and clicked on their "mailto:" link. This opened a mail-composing window, into which I entered my message (with Cc: and Bcc: to my own address). I then clicked "Send". Since then nothing has happened. Seeking to try to track down what may have gone on when I did the above, I have tried to locate anything to do with email in Firefox itself. Complete blank! Can anyone point me to what this Iceweasel/Firefox email client is, what it does with emails composed as above, where it stores any copies, indeed where it stores anything at all to do with emails sent by this route? And what about any incoming mail? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-Mar-11 Time: 20:32:35 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

3 4

Re: [ALUG] Best Format For External Drive
by Simon Royal 05 Mar '11

05 Mar '11

Simon I plumped for FAT32 in the end. A nice all round compatible format. NTFS is a bit better but still has poor support under Linux and Mac OSX and while ext3/4 is a great one, it is only if you are using Linux only. Im only storing music and pics, none of which are over 100MB each file so FAT32 is good enough. Its only storage and backup and will not be accessed very often, mainly written to with new files. Simon ----- Original Message ----- From:Simon Elliott

1 0

stupidly high load averages when VM is doing nothing
by mick 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

Hi Guys I am having a lot of trouble with one of my VPSs - a new one I bought for threepence halfpenny from ThrustVPS. I won't bore you with all the details of the problems I am having (I think the systems are HUGELY oversold) but I have one oddity which I am not sure is the ISPs fault or mine. The server is a XEN VM running Ubuntu 10.04 (server edition). I am seeing ridiculously high loads (regularly 2.5 upwards) when the server is actually supposed to be doing nothing. The only process I can see which may be responsible is a kernel process called events/1 which is chewing silly amounts of cpu - see top display below. PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 16 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 85 0.0 569:39.41 events/1 3196 root 20 0 19224 1420 1072 R 0 0.3 0:00.16 top 1 root 20 0 23688 1828 1244 S 0 0.4 0:00.90 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 kthreadd 3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.06 migration/0 4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 76:43.23 ksoftirqd/0 5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0 I confess I have /no clue/ what this means and I can't find anything useful through searches. Has anyone any idea where I should start looking? (uname -a Linux beam 2.6.32-28-server #55-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jan 10 23:57:16 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux) Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

2 3

Our shiny new Alug twitter account
by Adam Bower 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

Hi All, I've setup a twitter account for Alug today which can be found at: http://twitter.com/#!/anglianlug For the moment we're planning to use it for meeting reminders and also as a central hub for finding Aluggers on twitter. Currently I'm running the account with Viperfang (Ben), if anyone has any suggestions for what else we could use it for they'd be welcome! Thanks Adam -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please.

1 0

Best Format For External Drive
by Simon Royal 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

Hi I am about to format an external drive. I have a 60GB IDE laptop drive in an enclosure full of stuff and it is FAT formatted. I have a blank 120GB SATA laptop drive in an enclosure and I want to format it for use in Linux and Windows and then move everything from the IDE to the SATA. What is the best format. FAT32 is a bit old and clunky, what about NTFS. If it was just for Linux then I would pick ext3 or ext4. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

2 1

Posting on the list
by Wayne Stallwood 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

This has been covered in responses to individual threads but I think it is time a global appeal was made. Please can we stop reposting the same question or updates to the same topic under different threads and/or with slightly modified subject lines. Those that are doing this may think that by "bouncing" their question like this they will raise the chances of someone with a solution responding but the reality of this is that it makes some of us not feel like trying to help at all. The specific objections to this are that beyond cluttering the list for those of us that employ a threaded view of posts this also..... Makes the archives harder to use, speaking for myself I take comfort in that by replying with a (hopefully) helpful response I am not only trying to assist the original poster but anyone else who searches the archives later on with a similar problem..if responses are split between threads regarding the same subject then it becomes less likely that the solution will be found. also By seperating the discussion across multiple threads the chances of advice being repeated is increased as it is less obvious what has been previously suggested by others. This doesn't help anyone...particularly the person with the original question. Many Thanks Wayne

1 0