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Re: [ALUG] baffled by touch still
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

Fedora also works perfectly. It must be a question of the kernel version. Peter

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baffled by touch still
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

I'm completely baffled by this. It works perfectly under natty narwhal, booting from the live cd and doing no additional installs. Natty is rather unstable, but the touch screen stuff works. Natty is on 2.6.38, don't know if that is materially different for touch screen drivers. I am trying to see why it doesn't under debian. try xev, and it shows nothing happening when the screen is touched. The debian kernel is 2.6.32. When I do lsusb, it sees the device, gives bus 003 and dev 007. When I plug it in and out and try cat /var/log/dmesg I find this buried someplace in the results: [ 6.937367] generic-usb 0003:0408:3000.0003: hiddev0,hidraw2: USB HID v1.10 Device [Quanta Computer Inc. Optical Touch Screen] on usb-0000:00:02.1-3/input0 So it seems to be seeing the device itself, and it seems to be logging when its plugged in and out. There is no xorg.conf file in Squeeze, or in Natty. So my old quick and dirty approach to this will not work - generate one and then copy it over. Maybe try another live CD? Any suggestions? Peter

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touch screens yet again
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

In a fit of brilliance, this is really a partially sighted guy stumbling around amid the rocks, I did cat /dev/usb/hiddev0 and then touched the screen. This produces a string of garbage! So I know that the usb link to the touch is working, its actually sending data. Why then does not the system pick it up and treat it like a mouse movement? Peter

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/ full
by Chris Walker 26 Feb '11

26 Feb '11

I was trying to dd a laptop drive to an image file on a NAS drive and managed to fill up the / partition. I've now fixed that but in order to avoid the same problem, can somebody tell me how to duplicate a drive, or at least the recovery partition (it's a Windows drive) by specifying where the temporary file can go? Or if there's a way to do it without generating an intermediate file it would be appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Deleting Files In Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 26 Feb '11

26 Feb '11

Hi When you delete a file in Ubuntu it gives you no warning. Now I know that sounds pretty stupid and most of the time it is a time saver as you don't have to click 'Yes' at the 'are you sure' button, but it does mean things can accidentally get sent to the bin. Is there a way of getting it to ask before sending it to the bin? Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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question about touch screens
by Peter Alcibiades 24 Feb '11

24 Feb '11

I have a touch screen, T2250MTS, by iiyama. Boot from a Natty Narwhal CD, and it works perfectly. How do I find out what it is using on NN, and get Debian to use the same drivers, so it works on Debian too? I have installed the tslibs, and that does not seem to help. Peter

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Installation fled to the bowels of /
by Anthony Anson 24 Feb '11

24 Feb '11

On the flatpot running Lenny, installed the Vodafone dongle using (if I remember the name corretly), Gdeb Ran the files down in user/shared, but can find no way of putting a link up to the 'desktop' or anywhere sensible, like Applications/internet Anyone have a pointer, please? -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Taking Music From iPod
by Simon Royal 24 Feb '11

24 Feb '11

Hi I am looking for a program to remove music from my iPod. It works fine in Ubuntu - it is an oldish 40GB iPod Photo - I can play and add music to it, but I need something to pull the music off. I had a couple of tools on the Mac to do it, YamiPod and Senuti, but havent found anything for Ubuntu. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Getting started with git
by Mark Rogers 21 Feb '11

21 Feb '11

Hopefully a quick and easy question... I have some code developed for a website on a test (Linux) box, which I'll call TestServer. A colleague has a copy, mostly in sync (manually), on his Windows desktop, ("WindowsDesktop"). Both of these are in my office behind my office firewall. I need to get the code onto a Linux box located in another office ("RemoteServer") in such a way as to allow me to make changes anywhere and manage the synchronisation, so I plan on setting up a git repository on my external server ("HostedServer"), and pull the site from (and push back changes to) it from RemoteServer. Of-course my starting point is that all of this has been done so far without any version control or other synchronisation. So, are there any pitfalls I should be aware of if I now try to get everything into git? Should I at least try to get everything synchronised in one location first? (I'd rather not, as I'd prefer to use git to manage that sync.) Are there any issues I need to be aware of given that one person will be using a Windows box? (I'm assuming they'll use TortoiseGit; I'll probably set things up on my Windows laptop too.) I've asked questions about git here here before and played around with it but still not used it in anger, but now I have someone I need to share development with I'm determined to finally get it together and use git properly. I don't want to ruin that ambition and fall flat by starting out wrong! Secondary issue: the sites make extensive use of a database. I should at least make attempts to ensure that the database schema is managed by git (but not the data in the database). Any suggestions as to how best to do this? Mark Rogers

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Anyone use BBC iPlayer streaming? How fast a CPU for full screen?
by Chris G 20 Feb '11

20 Feb '11

I can't find anything helpful on the BBC site about this. What sort of processor speed (and memory or whatever else might affect it) is needed to run BBC iPlayer streaming full screen? Full screen in this case means 1920x1080. -- Chris Green

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Woe upon woe...
by Anthony Anson 20 Feb '11

20 Feb '11

OK, not o bad as that perhaps, but I told Lenny to install Pan. Wanted a password, of course, which I tryped-in. Spat it out. I presumed it was the root password? (Can't unforget the term it used, but it wasn't my user one.) Now, I know the root password, or I thought I did - being paired with my user password in a reminder sort-of way - and I wasn't surprised when it rejected it, as for several weeks it had refused to let me in as user, even though I was feeding it the correct password. (Nev will remember it, in the Fat Cat). Now it has agreed that I really *do* know my password, I can get in as user, but not as root, so, thinks I, I'll do a search in / for the passworm file - search on - contains: my admin password. It failed to find it, or at least, to divulge it. So, I'm up a gumtree. But, I know there's a way of changing the root password without being root because a lot of years ago at a kitmoot a certain Mr. Ray did just that for me when I forgot my root passworm for Woody. Help? Pretty please... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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A proper newsreader?
by Anthony Anson 19 Feb '11

19 Feb '11

I'm getting a bit ipssde-off with Thunderbird ATM - none my news items will go - and I tried setting-up a new account with Eternal-epteber, and that won't send, either. So, I'm looking for a sensible newsreader which has decent filters - a crosspost filter is a necessity, and TB2 doesn't have one. I've been back through he ALUG archive (on pooter) and not noticed anything - a good search facility would be an advantage with any new newsreader, too... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Shoutcast list no longer available to Linux?
by Chris G 19 Feb '11

19 Feb '11

Does anyone here use shoutcast to find stations? I can't get it to work again (after an interval of several months) in either Exaile or Rhythmbox. When I try and download the Shoutcast station list nothing happens, or at least nothng gets downloaded. Are there any alternative station lists which are anywhere near as comprehensive as shoutcast? -- Chris Green

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Recommendations wanted for small, probably laser, printer
by Chris G 19 Feb '11

19 Feb '11

We're after a small printer for use on our boat, doesn't have to be battery powered or anything like that, mains power is available. The main criterion is that it should be as small as possible because space is at a premium, I think also laser is preferable to inkjet because it will spend quite long periods idle. So, any recommendations, obviously we want it to be Linux compatible as well, but that's about it - compact, laser, linux compatible. Size doesn't seem to be an important criterion any more when searching for printers so it's difficult to find particularly compact ones. -- Chris Green

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DropBox SD Card
by Simon Royal 18 Feb '11

18 Feb '11

Hi I am having problems with DropBox under Ubuntu. I sync 3000 pics across an XP machine, an old Mac laptop running OSX and I used to do it on my ThinkPad running Ubuntu. I am now trying to set up the same sync on my EeePC. Ive not had a problem before and I have in the past used a custom location for my folder. In fact my ThinkPad had a shared partition for XP and Ubuntu and my DropBox folder sat in there where both OSes could access it and sync. It seems an issue with using an SD card as the source and I dont think - from I can find out - it is directly Ubuntu related. It also seems this worked until recently although people cannot determine whether it was a DropBox update or Ubuntu update. It just continually says 'Downloading ??? files', yet it isnt. If I pop the DropBox folder on the internal SSD then it works fine. Can anyone shed any light. I found some info about mounting fat formatted drives in a certain way using fstab, but that made no difference. If it a particular problem with FAT32 then I could change it to NTFS or EXT4. Any help would great, I need my DropBox working. Oh and one more thing. Uploading works fine. If I drop a file in my DropBox on my EeePC then it will upload no problem and the rest of the machines sync it. Obviously not the other way. If I drop a file in my DropBox on my Mac then it syncs all the other machines but not the EeePC. -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 18 Feb '11

18 Feb '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 ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back next week, Monday 21st February, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://www.pjmcgintys.co.uk/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. We're usually to be found in the lowest section of the bar, near the library entrance to the pub. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. This month will hopefully see the return of Mr. Jamieson who's been out of action for several months, so be on the look-out for the loud guy who's clearly out on the town for the first time in a while. I'll also let ppl know about a new regular coding discussion meet-up (Java/Groovy/Ruby/anything etc.) which is due to be starting in Ipswich on the fourth Monday of the month (not fixed yet), if anyone's interested. Other than that, I might start another religious debate on vi versus emacs as I'm trying to make a sincere effort to pick one up again this year. Hope to see some of there! 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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Sort dd/mm/yyyy
by Richard Parsons 18 Feb '11

18 Feb '11

Hi everyone I have some data like this: something:01/01/1980:something something-else:12/05/1993:foobar another-something:32/01/2012:barfoo etc In other words, it's a colon delimited file in which the second field is a date in the form dd/mm/yyyy. How do I sort the whole file in date order by the second field? I can see that 'sort -k' allows me to pick the positional part of the fields and -t allows me to pick the delimiter. But I can't work out how to combine them so that the whole file is sorted. Thanks Richard

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EeePC
by Simon Royal 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

Hi First can I start by apologising for mutliple threads. I have started this one, but will keep all future questions within this thread. I am having sleep/suspend issues on my EeePC. It is odd as it works 50% of the time fine. I close the lid, it goes to sleep, I open the lid and press Esc and it wakes fine - sometimes. It is a 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. I cant replicate it or work out what is causing it not to work other times. Any ideas? Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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question about logging user activity
by Peter Alcibiades 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

Hi, We have got a grant from a charity to install a system which gives public access to a few hundred graphical exhibits, basically stuff we would like to have on display, but either they are too fragile, they are too big, or there is no space to hang them. To make the thing accessible we really need to have a reasonable amount of the information associated with the graphic, a few hundred words of prose, and probably a thumbnail. The grant was enough to buy is a nice big screen, we will reuse an older computer to drive it, and we'll mount it on a suitable stand for the public, and it also covered scanning these often very large graphics. We have pretty much decided to use tellico as the interface for this purpose. This is partly because all the information is in tellico already, its what we use for the main catalogue, so it saves work, and it means that keeping everything in sync is real easy. I feel OK about all this part, its just background and not the thing I'm asking about. A condition of the grant (as is apparently usual nowadays) is that we do tracking and evaluation on how much and if possible how the system is being used. This is the question. In the above circumstances, what would you use to log user interactions? If we only logged numbers of uses of the app, that would be a start, and a lot easier than getting questionnaires filled out, which people probably will not do anyway. If we could log which graphcs are being looked at, and how often, that would be very nice as we could think about other ways of making them more accessible. Any suggestions? I am sure it must be possible, but a quick pointer to what people have used successfully for this kind of thing could save an awful lot of flailing around. Peter

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Re: [ALUG] EeePC
by Alex Scotton 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

I was purely commenting on the irony behind apologising for multiple threads, within a new thread... I have no issue with the multiple threads, I use gmail which groups emails of similar subject anyway so pfft On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Alex > > Like I said I will not be starting any more threads. > > I don't really understand what the problem is anyway. > > I have a sleep issue - I write a post about it. Someone will reply if > they want to. I have a different problem on the same machine - I write > a post about it. Someone will reply if they want to. > > If all problems are in one thread it makes it hard to follow and check > if things have been resolved. > > I am on a number of groups and they all use separate emails for > separate issues, hence the reason I do it here. > > Simon > > On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Alex Scotton <alex.scotton(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> You've started another thread, to apologise for creating so many >> threads?.... interesting >> >> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Hi >>> >>> First can I start by apologising for mutliple threads. I have started >>> this one, but will keep all future questions within this thread. >>> >>> I am having sleep/suspend issues on my EeePC. It is odd as it works >>> 50% of the time fine. I close the lid, it goes to sleep, I open the >>> lid and press Esc and it wakes fine - sometimes. >>> >>> It is a 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. >>> >>> I cant replicate it or work out what is causing it not to work other >>> times. Any ideas? >>> >>> Simon >>> >>> -- >>> --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: >>> http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. >>> --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' >>> running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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! >> >> >> >> -- >> Alex Scotton >> mob: 07950 524744 >> home: 01603 768361 >> Web Design | Graphic Design | MySQL Design and Optimization | SEO, >> advertising and Marketing Services | Computer Repairs | Network, >> Active Directory and Streaming Services | NLB and Bandwidth Shaping >> http://goo.gl/FIbia >> > > > > -- > --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: > http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. > --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' > running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1 > -- Alex Scotton mob: 07950 524744 home: 01603 768361 Web Design | Graphic Design | MySQL Design and Optimization | SEO, advertising and Marketing Services | Computer Repairs | Network, Active Directory and Streaming Services | NLB and Bandwidth Shaping http://goo.gl/FIbia

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EeePC Suspend Linux
by Simon Royal 15 Feb '11

15 Feb '11

Hi Well everything is working under Ubuntu on my EeePC 701SD, almost everything. Sound, wifi, webcam and screen worked out of the box, but I am having suspend problems. I have searched the net and cant find any references to new versions of Ubuntu, they all relate to version 7 and 8. When I shut the lid, the EeePC goes to sleep. All the lights go off and the power light flashes which is it sleeping/suspending. When I open the lid it doesnt wake. I got a brief glimpse of the desktop for a spit second but then the screen stays blank. The lights change back to what they were before but no screen. Any ideas. EeePC 701SD and Ubuntu 10.10. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Eee Experience
by Simon Royal 15 Feb '11

15 Feb '11

Hi For anyone interested, my EeePC arrived today and I thought I would share my experience. I played with the built in Xandros system and agreed it was rubbish. It lasted about 2 mins before I was installing Ubuntu. I installed it via USB stick and it went on, no problems with the install. It took about 20 mins. So far everything is working out of the box, sound and wifi at least. Screen size seems fine. I have not tried out the built in webcam or mic yet but even if these do not work out of the box I can sort these out later. Mine is a 701SD with 8GB SSD. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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Sysadmin work, anyone?
by Jenny Hopkins 15 Feb '11

15 Feb '11

Sorry to post to main with this, but if anyone would like a spot of work this guy is looking urgently for someone. I've taken on more work than is comfortable already, so have no time. Let me know if interested and I'll pass on his email etc. Thanks, Jenny Hi Jenny, About 4 months ago my mum passed me your email address about a bit of freelance sys admin work for a site I’ve been building with a friend for the last couple of years. In the next couple of weeks we are finally starting a proper advertising campaign, hence I’m panicking about having absolutely no concept of when/why/if our site will get overloaded/crash/go down. We are currently on a 1GB slice with slicehost.com, running a Django 1.1 site, with a PostGreSQL database and Apache 2/memcached (the memcached thing I am taking on faith from a previous developer who said he’d set it up, but he wasn’t the most trustworthy guy!). the website is www.gayhop.com, and at present have never had more than maybe 10-20 people online at one time (at that was just for a few days when we told friends about it, generally it’s just 2 or 3 of us connected simultaneously). I know from various reading around and asking slicehost support that our options are either to simply throw more servers into the equation (which I guess gets expensive pretty quickly) or go for a setup similar to this: http://rackerhacker.com/redundant-cloud-hosting-configuration-guide/ with a DB server, a static media server, a load balancing server, and an actual app server (or several of each). As you may guess, I know very little about sys admin stuff. I’m a frontend developer mostly, although I’m fairly competent with Django now, having had to write a lot of code to get things working the way we want after our Django developer left in September. But I know nothing of Apache/linux/server setup. I guess what would be great is to know: a) What you think we should do regarding our setup to minimise the chance of going down b) How much you’d charge to advise us and do the work, OR if you’re way too busy – whether you can recommend anybody else? {I asked him for a few more details....} Hi Jenny, thanks for your response. The idea for now would be hiring somebody to do a one-off job of advising us on the best steps to take to cope with higher numbers, and then implementing those. so for now no support contract, although if we find somebody good that would obviously be something we will need in the future. Our slice was setup by our last developer, I did none of it and really do know nothing! It’s running Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid) according to SliceHost. In terms of user numbers – really no idea! I’d want a setup that can at the very least cope with 100 online users at one time (maybe our current one can – I’ve no clue), though if advertising goes well this would hopefully quite soon get up towards the thousand mark. At that point though I’m sure we would need to re-evaluate our server setup anyway, and get a sys admin to do serious upgrading for us. Thanks again for your help already. Kyle Duncan

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Truths In SSD Writes
by Simon Royal 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

Hi I am awaiting the arrival of an Asus EeePC, which is SSD based. Ive been reading about the limited writes on SSD, with conflicting info. Does anyone have a clear info on this. Do they have limited write capabilities? Is this within a normal users/machines lifespan? What happens when it reaches it write limit. There are tricks to reduce write such as use a non-journalised file system like ext2 instead of ext3/4 and do not use a swap partition. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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USB Booting
by Simon Royal 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

Hi I am awaiting the arrival of my EeePC, which should be here tomorrow. It is still running Xandros - the lightweight Linux distro it comes with - and I would like to run Ubuntu on it. Is there anyway of testing if a USB stick will boot or is bootable if you have no machines that will boot to USB. I made a USB stick of Ubuntu 10.10 using Unetbootin. However, I have a 1.5Ghz PC tower that does not boot to USB, a Toshiba SP A10 that does not boot to USB, a IBM ThinkPad R31 that does not boot to USB and an Apple PowerBook G3 which is not x86 nor does it boot to USB. So, I have no way of testing whether this stick will actually work, although I see no reason for it not to. Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad R31 running Ubuntu 10.10 & Windows XP Home. Apple PowerBook G3 'Pismo' running OSX 10.4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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