- main - earth.li

EeePC Users
by Simon Royal 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

Hi Are there any EeePC users out there running Linux on one? Mine should be here tomorrow and I am hoping to run the full Ubuntu 10.10 - not the Netbook version - on it. Has anyone any experience? It is a 701SD, so it is a 7" model with 8GB SSD. 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

3 2

EeePC users
by Chris Walker 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

I've seen a few people here complain about their EeePCs so is this any help for you? - http://www.android-x86.org/ Scroll down a little and you will see this - ASUS Eee PCs/Laptops -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

2 1

Overview
by Anthony Anson 11 Feb '11

11 Feb '11

The link 'Overview of all lists etc on the ALUG website is 404 (I was trying to navigate to a list for a new (Welshish) Ubantu user.) -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

4 5

SD & Flash Drives
by Simon Royal 10 Feb '11

10 Feb '11

Hi How reliable and durable are SD Cards and Flash memory. Im thinking of getting an netbook, one of those little EeePC things but the earlier models have limited internal Flash memory. So, extra storage would be in the shape of Flash drives or SD cards. How reliable are they for storing stuff? I read somewhere about the 100,000 rewrite limitation, but how true is this. Ive got a USB thumb drive that I have had for about 6 years and it is still going strong. It has outlasted some of my newer ones. It used to house my website files so was used on a daily basis, written to dozens of times at once. 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

4 7

[ALUG Announce] Norwich 2nd Thursday Pub Meet
by Adam Bower 10 Feb '11

10 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 ----- Hi Geeks, This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place tonight which is 10th February 2011 at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ (website is now updated with new menus and booze lists). People will be there from 8pm, If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll hopefully point you in the right direction. Another possibility is to look for heaps of electronics on a table that look rather like explosives props from action movies, if you see them then you've found us. See you all tonight. Adam -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please. ----- 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

Cataloguing a phone
by Chris Walker 10 Feb '11

10 Feb '11

I've just bought my wife a new phone, a Nokia C6 and want to make sure that everything is off the old phone, a Nokia N95. If I hook them both up to the machine and run lsusb, I see this :- Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0421:032b Nokia Mobile Phones < - C6 Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0510:0032 Sejin Electron, Inc. Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 002: ID 1a7c:0068 Bus 005 Device 003: ID 041e:4052 Creative Technology, Ltd Live! Cam Vista IM Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 004: ID 0421:04f0 Nokia Mobile Phones < N95 But how do I see what's on them? My wife tells me that there are some important messages and pictures on the N95 which she doesn't want to lose. Using her Windows XP laptop, I did a backup of the 95 and Nokia PC Suite said that it had transferred everything over but we can't see those pictures anywhere on the C6. I did think that I could run a dd command to make an image of the phone and its associated memory card. The card is less of a problem as I can take that out of the phone and catalogue in a reader, assuming I have one for a MicroSD card. but the phone is not allowing me to talk to it so any help appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

6 11

Is there any way to prevent those annoying 'share' pop-ups in Firefox?
by Chris G 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

Do those 'share' bookmarking pop-ups annoy anyone else? They drive me crazy popping up when the cursor moves over them. Is there any way to stop them popping up? They're obviously not standard pop-up windows because I already have 'Block Pop-ups' ticked in my preferences. -- Chris Green

4 8

Wanted Hardware?
by Chris Walker 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

My son has given me 3 IDE Removable Caddy enclosures. If you don't know what I mean, take a look at these item numbers in ebay - 370480425397 or 320605837171 They don't come with drives but they're free if anybody wants them. They're white unlike one of the items I've listed and don't have fans. I'm in Wymondham if that helps but I do come into Norwich on occasions. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

1 0

Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives
by mark fernandes (IFR) 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

Hi Simon, My 701 eeepc has had no problems with SD or other USB sticks when hooked upto a Huawei 3G soap-bar. Maybe Tony had a duff one. Interested in distro's too. Have used Multiboot to make a USB sick with multiple distros to check feature support. So far Ubuntu NBR 10.10, eeebuntu and Lubuntu (you may detect a theme here :-)) have been tried and am leaning towards lubuntu (as per my son's desktop PC). That said Xandros has been fine as long as you're using the eeepc as an appliance. USB sticks - I've had 2 fail in about 10 years - mainly corruption of files. As has been said it depends on repeated writes to same block and it is a MEAN time between failures (MTBF) so your mileage may vary (it's the distribution about the mean that matters). Regards, Mark ________________________________________ From: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk [main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk [main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk] Sent: 06 February 2011 12:00 To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: main Digest, Vol 68, Issue 5 Send main mailing list submissions to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk You can reach the person managing the list at main-owner(a)lists.alug.org.uk When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of main digest..." Today's Topics: 1. SD & Flash Drives (Simon Royal) 2. FOR SALE: ThinkPad R31 (Simon Royal) 3. Re: SD & Flash Drives (Anthony Anson) 4. Re: SD & Flash Drives (Wayne Stallwood) 5. Re: SD & Flash Drives (Adam Bower) 6. Re: SD & Flash Drives (Anthony Anson) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 22:38:03 +0000 From: Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> Subject: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: Anglian Linux User Group <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <AANLkTik7dfeChRXk1X0psrX1EEsMr4GsK5ecDw0gJmUU(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi How reliable and durable are SD Cards and Flash memory. Im thinking of getting an netbook, one of those little EeePC things but the earlier models have limited internal Flash memory. So, extra storage would be in the shape of Flash drives or SD cards. How reliable are they for storing stuff? I read somewhere about the 100,000 rewrite limitation, but how true is this. Ive got a USB thumb drive that I have had for about 6 years and it is still going strong. It has outlasted some of my newer ones. It used to house my website files so was used on a daily basis, written to dozens of times at once. 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 ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 23:10:27 +0000 From: Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> Subject: [ALUG] FOR SALE: ThinkPad R31 To: Anglian Linux User Group <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <AANLkTi==ziQL1qaZo0bvvmqYBQ7Dj4JsCsMQX_eF1jPm(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi. I am looking at moving to an ultra portable netbook and to do so would need to sell my ThinkPad to make funds for it. So up for sale is my IBM ThinkPad R31. Celeron 1.1Ghz. 512MB RAM (1GB Max, currently has 1x 512MB) 60GB hard drive. CDROM. Comes with two batteries. One is dead, the other holds charge but is temperamental on charging. Original power supply. The rear USB port is broken, so I have put a piece of electrical tape over it. However, the side USB port works fine. Apart from this, it has no other faults. The screen has some pressure marks. Brilliant laptop currently running Ubuntu and XP. Has XP Pro COA sticker on bottom of laptop. Hard drive will be wiped before sending, so you will need your own OS. Could supply a wireless card if needed. It is a NetGear I think, not sure of compatibility with Linux. I would like to keep the Buffalo one I am using. If you are interested let me know. Make me an offer. Or swap for a netbook. 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 ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 01:23:05 +0000 From: Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk> Subject: Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: Alug list <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <4D4DF7F9.9090807(a)girolle.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Simon Royal wrote: > Hi > > How reliable and durable are SD Cards and Flash memory. Im thinking of > getting an netbook, one of those little EeePC things but the earlier > models have limited internal Flash memory. Never had any fail. My oldest one is 64 MB, and I had that when it was state of the art. If you do get an Eee and it has Xandros on it, I'd advise you to install a proper distro on it. I've had xPUD and Crunchbang recommended for the purpose. With Xan-dross on the Eee (or at least, my Eee) you can't use the USB for anything else if you have an internet dongle plugged in. If you then want to use anything else in the USB port(s) you have to remove the dongle and reboot first. The dongle won't work if you have a SD card in the slot either. Other distros installed on the Eee don't suffer from this failing, I'm told. I believe you can get at least 32 GB SD cards - but at a price. (8 GB is currently around ?23, but I am told that it's cheaper on the continent.) > So, extra storage would be in the shape of Flash drives or SD cards. > > How reliable are they for storing stuff? I read somewhere about the > 100,000 rewrite limitation, but how true is this. That's hardly a limitation. Don't forget, your Eee will have similar 'limitations'... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/ ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 01:19:53 +0000 From: Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> Subject: Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Message-ID: <4D4DF739.5020802(a)digimatic.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 05/02/11 22:38, Simon Royal wrote: > Hi > > How reliable and durable are SD Cards and Flash memory. Im thinking of > getting an netbook, one of those little EeePC things but the earlier > models have limited internal Flash memory. > > So, extra storage would be in the shape of Flash drives or SD cards. > > How reliable are they for storing stuff? I read somewhere about the > 100,000 rewrite limitation, but how true is this. > > I think modern and reputable make SD cards/flash memory are now durable to the point that unless you are using them in heavy write scenarios (swap or log files) then the lifetime will exceed the usefulness as technology advances. I have had a few usb flash drives die in my time but most of them have been due to rough handling/water damage/connector damage. I can't remember having an SD/CF card fail on me. Also bear in mind that these figures are talking about writes to a specific block. file allocation,fragmentation and wear levelling in the flash controller all have an effect on this so the real figure will be better. If you are really concerned then making sure you mount with noatime and using a non journalling FS will help prolong life..and improve speed as with flash memory writes are usually slower than reads. ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2011 09:51:31 +0000 From: Adam Bower <adam(a)thebowery.co.uk> Subject: Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Message-ID: <20110206095131.GC20675@electron> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 On Sun, Feb 06, 2011 at 01:23:05AM +0000, Anthony Anson wrote: > > I believe you can get at least 32 GB SD cards - but at a price. (8 > GB is currently around ?23, but I am told that it's cheaper on the > continent.) Wow, you must come from the past in a time machine! :) I got a 16GB micro-SD last month for ?18 and a 16GB SD for ?16. On top of that I paid a premium to make sure I got a card from a reliable retailer (so nothing fake) and getting fast cards. 8GB is around ?8-?10 at the moment, it now means that when I fill an SD card up in a camera that all I do is buy a new card and put the old one in the fire safe. Anyhow, as for the 100,000 writes thing. That is 100,000 writes per block (and is quite an old metric from ye olde days of flash). How often will you actually write to the card? I mean, assuming that you do actually do 100 writes a day to the *entire* card that's still nearly 3 years of life at which point you can throw it away and buy a new one that will have 8x the capacity of the same price..... Adam -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please. ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 11:58:18 +0000 From: Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)girolle.co.uk> Subject: Re: [ALUG] SD & Flash Drives To: Alug list <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Message-ID: <4D4E8CDA.4080204(a)girolle.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Adam Bower wrote: > On Sun, Feb 06, 2011 at 01:23:05AM +0000, Anthony Anson wrote: >> I believe you can get at least 32 GB SD cards - but at a price. (8 >> GB is currently around ?23, but I am told that it's cheaper on the >> continent.) > > Wow, you must come from the past in a time machine! :) I got a 16GB > micro-SD last month for ?18 and a 16GB SD for ?16. Where? > On top of that I paid > a premium to make sure I got a card from a reliable retailer (so nothing > fake) and getting fast cards. 8GB is around ?8-?10 at the moment, Where? > it now > means that when I fill an SD card up in a camera that all I do is buy a > new card and put the old one in the fire safe. It's this 'reliable retailer' thang - The Swedes (Chapelfield Mall) charge ?23 for 8 giggle, as do various camera shops and allied businesses. I *KNOW* you can et them at sensible prices (a correspondent in Germany does), but apart from buying online *I* can't find anyone - in Norwich, at least. Online's OK unless you want one *now*. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/ ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main End of main Digest, Vol 68, Issue 5 ***********************************

4 3

FOR SALE: ThinkPad R31
by Simon Royal 05 Feb '11

05 Feb '11

Hi. I am looking at moving to an ultra portable netbook and to do so would need to sell my ThinkPad to make funds for it. So up for sale is my IBM ThinkPad R31. Celeron 1.1Ghz. 512MB RAM (1GB Max, currently has 1x 512MB) 60GB hard drive. CDROM. Comes with two batteries. One is dead, the other holds charge but is temperamental on charging. Original power supply. The rear USB port is broken, so I have put a piece of electrical tape over it. However, the side USB port works fine. Apart from this, it has no other faults. The screen has some pressure marks. Brilliant laptop currently running Ubuntu and XP. Has XP Pro COA sticker on bottom of laptop. Hard drive will be wiped before sending, so you will need your own OS. Could supply a wireless card if needed. It is a NetGear I think, not sure of compatibility with Linux. I would like to keep the Buffalo one I am using. If you are interested let me know. Make me an offer. Or swap for a netbook. 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

1 0

Re: [ALUG] EeePC Ubuntu
by John Woodard 04 Feb '11

04 Feb '11

Agreed the 9" Aspire One 150 is okay but the Asus has far superior build quality. Sorry about the top post anyone know how to make mt Blackberry conform? Cheers, BJ ------Original Message------ From: Wayne Stallwood Sender: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] EeePC Ubuntu Sent: 3 Feb 2011 22:16 On 03/02/11 16:32, John Woodard wrote: > I have 10.04 running on my Acer Aspire One Although to be clear on that if Simon is looking at 10" models avoid the Acer Aspire One 751 at all costs. The GMA500 gfx chipset is a troublesome beast on linux I have just converted my 751 back to a Windows machine and sold it because I was fed up with potential problems every time there was a kernel upgrade. _______________________________________________ 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!

2 1

EeePC Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 04 Feb '11

04 Feb '11

Hi Has anyone any experience running Ubuntu on an EeePC machine. I have been very impressed with my ThinkPad and impressed with Ubuntu and have settled nicely into the Linux world. My ThinkPad is only a 1.1Ghz Celeron and with 1GB RAM Ubuntu screams along. Id like something a little more portable and compact and have been looking at these Asus EeePC machines, both the 7" and 10" models. The 7" models are 900Mhz machines, the 10" models are 1.6Ghz Atom machines. I only do basic surfing, listening to music, FaceBook etc and writing. I do YouTube from time to time. So nothing heavy. 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

4 3

swap partition question
by Peter Alcibiades 03 Feb '11

03 Feb '11

OK, now that we managed to get the installation transferred to the new machine using clonezilla, just one more question. When I did the transfer, of course it duplicated the original partitions, so we had /, swap and home. The swap partition is sized for the old system, so it is only a bit under 2G. However, the new system has 4G memory. What is the right thing to do? Reclaim some space (it would need to be from / which is 20G or so, so it would be possible to take 6G fairly safely? Leave it alone? Delete it - because do we really need a swap partition if we have 4G memory? Peter

3 2

moving debian from amd64 to i3
by Peter Alcibiades 01 Feb '11

01 Feb '11

Finally got around to doing this. I took out the hard drive from the old machine and using a little plug in usb adaptor, really neat, £10 from ebuyer, and clonezilla duplicated it on the new machine. The problem however, and this has happened before with debian, is that xorg now seems impossible to configure if it doesn't work, except by editing xorg.conf by hand, which is not my favourite pastime. Seems it used to be possible to use dpkg and reconfigure xorg, but if its still possible I could not find a way. So I started up from a PCLinux live CD, became root, set up the screen, then copied the xorg.conf file over to the debian installation, started up from the hard drive, and it all works. This an i3 running on an AMD64 image. I am really a bit surprised that it works. But it seems to. Famous last words. Clonezilla is very easy, and reasonably fast considering the size of the partitions. Peter

3 2

Wanted - simple way to check mains power is available
by Chris G 29 Jan '11

29 Jan '11

I'm looking for the simplest possible way for a script (or any sort of program, can be C, Python, whatever you like within reason) to check whether mains power is on. The computer which is going to check this is running off batteries so will still be running (I'm not quite that stupid!). The easiest way I can think of at the moment is to have some sort of hardware with a presence on the LAN powered by mains so that one can ping it to check that mains power is there. However the 'simplest' device I have at the moment is an old router which seems rather overkill for such a simple requirement. Can anyone think of any better way of doing this for which I am likely to have the hardware available or which will cost very little? I'm quite happy to build simple bits of electronics. The computer running the check is an old eeePc so has only USB and ehternet connections as far as I remember. -- Chris Green

10 15

How to copy a file (using rsync or scp) only if the file exists?
by Chris G 26 Jan '11

26 Jan '11

I have an rsync copy command as follows:- rsync --remove-source-files cheddar.halon.org.uk:odin/tempdata ~/odin This copies tempdata from the remote system to the local system and also removes it from the remote. The file tempdata is put there by a cron job and I want to process the data once only and then wait for new data. This is fine as long as the cron job putting data onto the remote system runs every hour and the local rsync also runs every hour. However if the remote cron job fails then, although I don't process the data again, I get a "No such file or directory" from rsync. I suppose I could just throw the error message away but that would throw other error messages away too which might be important ones. Any ideas? -- Chris Green

1 0

Recommendations wanted for simple, command line, webcam capture program
by Chris G 24 Jan '11

24 Jan '11

I'm after a simple webcam image capturing program to run from the command line (well, ultimately from cron). It's to run on my eeePc on the boat so must be simple and lightweight. I am currently trying webcam and fswebcam without much success at the moment. If anyone has any experience of either of these programs then I'd be pleased to know. It seems that webcam is the nearest to working, I'm am trying to get it to store images locally rather than FTPing them anywhere. It seems to grab an image but then when it tries to copy it fails:- root@eeepc:~# mkdir -p /home/chris/public_html/images root@eeepc:~# webcam reading config file: /root/.webcamrc video4linux webcam v1.5 - (c) 1998-2002 Gerd Knorr grabber config: size 320x240 [none] input (null), norm (null), jpeg quality 75 rotate=0, top=0, left=0, bottom=240, right=320 write config [ftp]: local transfer /home/chris/public_html/images/uploading.jpeg => /home/chris/public_html/images/webcam.jpeg open filename: No such file or directory open filename: No such file or directory open filename: No such file or directory open filename: No such file or directory -- Chris Green

2 1

Superblock problem
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 23 Jan '11

23 Jan '11

Greetings All! I have hit a big snag. On an old machine, I have a hard drive /dev/hda. I had to re-set the machine it when it seized up just now. On re-booting, it went of course into fsck and then announced: fsck.ext2: No such file or directory while tryin to open /hda1 The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid, and really contains and ext2 filesystem ... then the superblock is corrupt and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> ... fsck failed. Please repair manually and reboot. The root filesystem is currently mounted read-only. To remount it read-write do: .... At this point, [**] I logged in with the root password, and ran fdisk /dev/hda1, and I got blanks for all the fields. When I ran fdisk /dev/hda, I got Device Begin Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 1 1 1024 822525248+ 83 Linux Native which looks right. I then ran the suggested "e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hda1" alternative, and it went through the familiar series of checks and asked for approval for the familiar set of corrections. All semed to go well. Then it came boot to the root prompt "#" and, as usual, I pressed Ctrl-D to log out and reboot. Now, on re-boot, I get the same as before down to [**] above, and this time I do e2fsck /dev/hda1 and this time I get: /dev/hda1: clean, 213963/2058240 files, 3193368/8225248 blocks So it looks as though it succeeded. Now I again do Ctrl-D to reboot. But, on re-boot, I again get exactly the same as first time down to [**] above. So it is as though the superblock has not been fixed (though apparently the alternative superblock was fixed). SO: QUERY: How can I try to fix the superblock and get it booting normally? With thanks for any good suggestions! Bes wishes to all, Ted. ---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 22-Jan-2011 Time: 23:13:49 This message was sent by XFMail ----------------------------------

3 2

Re: [ALUG] Ubuntu help
by Chris Walker 21 Jan '11

21 Jan '11

On 17/01/11 16:06, keithjamieson(a)hotmail.co.uk wrote: > > I'm trying to persuade a Virtual Ubuntu installation to talk to a > > Windows 7 host. > > > > What's frustrating is that one share works but another doesn't and I > > can't see why, other than the 'Protocol error' which is displayed. > > > > Is there somewhere on the virtual machine where this stuff is logged so > > that I can perhaps see what's going wrong? > > Only in the syslog of the virtual machine. I dont think there are > anything in the VM "program" to help. But I'll probably be proved wrong > in the next post! > > > I've looked in the syslog but that doesn't show any networky-type errors. > > Do both have the correct IP addresses AND netmasks? > Can they ping each other ? > Can you install Wireshark to see if packets are being received by the > other machine? > Does this install use the PC host as the NAT address, or the virtual > machine use a similar IP address? > Are there firewalls running on either of the machines? Before I answer those questions, can I just point out one thing that I mentioned above? One share is working fine. It's when trying to create another that it's failing. > Can you try a pre-rolled small VM, like Puppy ? Yes I can and have but didn't try multiple shares. I'll give that a go though to check. I'm writing this under Mandriva. There I can run Windows XP as a guest and despite having multiple shares on the host machine, in XP it will only allow me to have one share to a NAS drive - there are 4 shares to that under Mandriva - so I'm wondering if it's a Windows limitation that's preventing me having two shares to the host machine. I realise that this isn't the place to ask Windows questions so I won't pursue that here. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

4 6

sdb1
by Simon Royal 20 Jan '11

20 Jan '11

Hi When I boot my ThinkPad in to Ubuntu it gets stuck. It flashes on a screen and says something like unable to find sdb1. I have to press S to skip mounting it and continue booting. It is annoying. I think this has something to do with Storage Device Manager which I use to automount a FAT32 partition - which I use as shared storage for my files. I dual boot Ubuntu and XP and have a spare partition to put everything. I looked in Storage Device Manager and could find no reference to sdb1. sda1 = xp sda2 = ubuntu sda3 = swap sda4 = fat32 shared partition. sda4 is set to automount with correct rw permissions. This works fine. Any ideas? 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

2 1

Hang on resume from suspend to disc in 2.6.35
by Dan 20 Jan '11

20 Jan '11

Dear All, My Acer Aspire One, with the kernels known in Gentoo as 2.6.35-gentoo-r4 or 2.6.35-gentoo-r12, hangs on resume from suspend to disc - after counting up to 100% and printing the message "Suspending consoles (use no_console_suspend" to debug". Suspend/resume works fine with kernel 2.6.34-gentoo-r6. The 2.6.35 kernel configs were generated from the 2.6.34 kernel config using "make oldconfig". Firstly: does anyone immediately know what the problem is, please? If not: how do I persuade suspend/resume to produce an informative log file to help with diagnosis, given that the whole process happens while klogd and syslogd are stopped? -- Thanks, Dan

1 2

Internal Broadcom
by Simon Royal 18 Jan '11

18 Jan '11

Hi I am trying to get a permanent wireless solution for my R31. I have a variety of devices that work under Ubuntu but some have issues. USB Zydas stick - it works fine, but is taking up my only free USB port (as I broke the other). Edimax PCMCIA card - hangs the machine when on battery. Buffalo PCMCIA card - works great, but is my sons. Intel Mini PCI card - hangs the machine after a few mins. So far - apart from the USB stick - the Buffalo card which is Broadcom 4306 based card has been the most reliable. Whilst scouting around on eBay I found a Broadcom based Mini PCI card which uses the same chipset. Are the problems I have with my other internal card - the Intel 2200BG - related to my particular card, those Intel cards or Mini PCI cards in general? Would a different card suffer from the same problems? I know you cant really answer it, but does anyone have any experience or problems with other internal wireless cards. It is only a few pounds so I wont lose too much if it doesnt work when it gets here. 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

2 1

DD-WRT VPN settings
by Ricky Bruce 18 Jan '11

18 Jan '11

Somewhat off topic but as dd-wrt is Linux based i tenuously justify it to myself. I use strong vpn along with a dd-wrt flashed router to create two seperate wifi SSID's from the same router. One is my standard wifi and routes all traffic normally through my UK IP. The other redirects it through the VPN through virtual network vlan3 and is used to access USA based services such as Netflix on devices that lack the ability to run a VPN client. (Dare i say Apple TV?) I followed the instructions in the strong vpn forum (http://strongvpn.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=806) to get it up and running and for the most part it is working great. However on occasion the router seems to drop the VPN connection and revert to the UK ip. Rebooting the router does not on its own fix it, neither does setting the router to reboot periodically once a day. The only way i have found so far to reliably establish contact with the VPN is to edit and then resave the firewall script, and then power cycle the router. I use Mint at home, and while i have been using Linux for sometime i have been lucky enough to never really have to go beyond configure; make; make install when using my machines, so my scripting knowledge is severely limited. Can anyone suggest any ways to make the router detect when it has dropped the VPN connection, reload the required script and reboot? Below is the copy of the firewall script that is in its current form. VPN_IPUP=/tmp/pptpd_client/ip-up grep -v "exit 0" /etc/config/pptpd_client.ip-up > $VPN_IPUP echo ' sleep 15 # Load ebtables for i in ebtables ebt_mark ebtable_filter ebtable_nat; do insmod $i; done # Clean up ebtables -t nat -F ip rule del from 0/0 fwmark 4 lookup 4 ip route flush table 4 # Hack: take QoS down (but we need it enabled for ebtables) iptables -t mangle -F # Set up ebtables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i wl0.1 -j mark --set-mark 4 ebtables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i vlan3 -j mark --set-mark 4 ip route show table main | grep -Ev ^default | while read ROUTE; do ip route add table 4 $ROUTE; done ip route add table 4 default dev ppp1 ip rule add fwmark 4 table 4 ip route flush cache ' >> ${VPN_IPUP} chmod +x ${VPN_IPUP} Kind regards, Ricky

1 0

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 17 Jan '11

17 Jan '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 17th January, 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. Hopefully, see some of you 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

1 1

Ubuntu help
by Chris Walker 17 Jan '11

17 Jan '11

I'm trying to persuade a Virtual Ubuntu installation to talk to a Windows 7 host. What's frustrating is that one share works but another doesn't and I can't see why, other than the 'Protocol error' which is displayed. Is there somewhere on the virtual machine where this stuff is logged so that I can perhaps see what's going wrong? I've looked in the syslog but that doesn't show any networky-type errors. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

1 0