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Problem playing AVI files, they don't play, just stick at first frame
by Chris G 02 Oct '10

02 Oct '10

I seem to have broken something on my system, I'm sure AVI files *used* to play OK. When I try opening them with either mplayer or with totem they just show me the first frame and that's it. With totem I can drag the time slider across and the movie plays so decoding would seem to be OK, it's just that it doesn't play automatically. Any ideas what might be wrong anyone? -- Chris Green

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Apache and chrome query oddity
by James Bensley 01 Oct '10

01 Oct '10

Luggers', I hope you are all well. I'm hoping someone out there will know what is wrong with an apache server I have. SSL is up an running, a .htaccess in the web root redirects all incoming http request over https. When someone browses in chrome to http://apache_server the index document (in this case index.php) is parsed to the browser as a download? If I browse to http://index.php I am redirected to https://index.php and it works fine, if I browse to just https://apache_server its fine, but http://apache_server isn't working, chrome just downloads the index page? What could this be, I'm no apache master, could it be a MIME miss-match between browser and server? -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/ There are 10 kinds of people in the world; Those who understand Vigesimal, and J others...?

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Unsetting bits using sed or similar?
by Mark Rogers 01 Oct '10

01 Oct '10

Help! I need to go through a text file, and for all lines similar to this: X-Mozilla-Status: 0009 .. I need to unset the 4th bit (so the above becomes 0001). Not all X-Mozilla-Status: lines which have the bit set have status 0009, however. I have 0008, 000b, 0018, and so on. Suggestions? Background: Somehow I managed to delete a load of email in Thunderbird which I need. It ended up in Trash so I moved it back to my Inbox, but for some reason it didn't appear in my Inbox, but did get deleted out of Trash. However by "deleted" I mean it set the 4th bit of the status word, so until I compact the folder I can recover it by unsetting that bit. I still need to work out why it didn't go back into my Inbox, I think I may have discovered a bug there. -- 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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Change of email address
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 30 Sep '10

30 Sep '10

Sending this for the benefit of any you who may have my existing email address (ted.harding(a)manchester.ac.uk) in their address-books. Apologies to all others to whom this may be irrelevant! Since Manchester University seem to have decided that retired persons no longer contributing to research in a Department shall no longer keep their email accounts, my existing email address will cease to function shortly. I have set up a new email address which is: ted.harding(a)wlandres.net (Ted Harding) The existing one (ted.harding(a)manchester.ac.uk) will still work for a week or two (possibly longer). If you have my existing email address in your addressbook, please update it to the new one. This message is being sent from the new address, so you may simply be able to derive the new entry directly from that (using some "add to address book" function). Thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 30-Sep-10 Time: 19:14:49 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Nvidia driver custom refresh rate
by Tim Green 28 Sep '10

28 Sep '10

On 28 September 2010 13:51, John Woodard <mail(a)johnwoodard.co.uk> wrote: > root@Trigger:/home/bj# apt-get install read-edid > Reading package lists... Done > Building dependency tree > Reading state information... Done > read-edid is already the newest version. > 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 540 not upgraded. > root@Trigger:/home/bj# read-edid > read-edid: command not found > root@Trigger:/home/bj# According to http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/read-edid, the command line tools are get-edid and parse-edid. Tim.

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Nvidia driver custom refresh rate
by John Woodard 28 Sep '10

28 Sep '10

Hi All, I'm normally pretty adept at figuring things out but this one has me stumped. Googling has sent me down many alleys most of them blind. I have 2 identical machines one with Ubuntu 10.04 the other with Windows 7 Ultimate. The run through a KVM switch to the same monitor using their on-board Nvidia Geforce 6100 graphics adapters. The monitor is a cheapo AOC 24" TFT panel which is adequate for my purposes, mainly general office stuff, accounting, surfing, email etc. This monitor is weird in that it requires a refresh rate of 61Hz rather than a standard 60Hz to give a steady display at its native resolution 1920x1200. In the Nvidia control panel in Windows it is easy to set a custom refresh rate, so no problem and a nice display. Ubuntu 10.04 however using the current proprietary driver from the Ubuntu repositories does not have the same facility, unusable display so dropping back to a non native resolution for the monitor is the only way to use the GUI. Back in the day you used to be able to hack your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and insert a new modeline to facilitate this but as far as I can tell this has no effect with the current incarnation of the Xorg server. I suspect the monitor is not outputting its configuration, data or something. I have removed the KVM switch and the problem still remains so it isn't that blocking the data from the monitor reaching the driver. Can anybody enlighten me on how to manualy do this and get the proper 1920x1200 resolution working @ 61Hz rather than the sole 60Hz option allowed by the Nvidia control panel? Cheers, BJ

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Xmodmap Help
by Krishna Birth 24 Sep '10

24 Sep '10

Firstly please note that all k / K letters on this posting are altered to क / क (spiritual reasons.) I am sorry to thrust this project to you (mailing list). I am looकing for advice or if you have the time to construct a कeyboard mapping. There seems to be some problem regarding "if you assign Mode_switch and ISO_Level3_Shift to different keys, you can assign up to six characters to one key!" see http://tr.opensuse.org/SDB:Using_the_Extra_Keys_on_the_Keyboard The diacritics are usually typed with non-diacritic letter. It would be nice to have facility to use both in convenient way e.g. toggling with a Fonts / Scripts कey by permanently turning the Caps Locक to a Fonts / Scripts कey. Could this be done - When this Fonts / Scripts कey is pressed with a letter कey it toggles to diacritic letter 1 or 2 or 3 (depending on how many diacritics are there connected with a 'target' letter) - this toggling will need to factor in a 'remain at same spot' and toggle these diacritics feature. When the Fonts / Scripts कey is released then the cursor would move to the next base. Here are the target letters, the diacritics connected with them and the URL with more info about them: A Ā = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0100/index.htm a ā = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/101/index.htm D Ḍ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e0c/index.htm d ḍ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e0d/index.htm H Ḥ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e24/index.htm h ḥ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e25/index.htm I Ī = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/12a/index.htm i ī = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/12b/index.htm L Ḷ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e36/index.htm l ḷ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e37/index.htm L L̐ = http://pastehtml.com/view/1az9crq.html - http://bit.ly/doq30H l l̐ = http://pastehtml.com/view/1az92sb.html - http://bit.ly/chipOw M Ṁ ̇= http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e40/index.htm m ṁ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e41/index.htm N Ñ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/d1/index.htm n ñ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/f1/index.htm N Ṇ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e46/index.htm n ṇ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e47/index.htm N Ṅ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e44/index.htm n ṅ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e45/index.htm R Ṛ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e5a/index.htm r ṛ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e5b/index.htm R Ṝ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e5c/index.htm r ṝ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e5d/index.htm S Ṣ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e62/index.htm s ṣ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e63/index.htm S Ś = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/15a/index.htm s ś = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/15b/index.htm T Ṭ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e6c/index.htm t ṭ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e6d/index.htm U Ū = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/016a/index.htm u ū = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/16b/index.htm Referring to the above 32 diacritics, in theory a diacritic letter could have up to 7 diacritics 'sign' variations per letter: 1. Macron 2. Dot Below 3. Candrabindu 4. Dot Above 5. Tilde 6. Dot Below & Macron 7. Acute and 2 diacritics 'case' (lower/upper sizes) variations per letter - in 'total' up to 14 diacritics variations altogether per letter In actuality, the maximum letter n/N has 6 diacritics sign/case variations and a/A only has 2 diacritics sign/case variations. Thus if you can turn the Caps Locक into a Fonts / Scripts कey that can allow up to 7 diacritics variations using this toggle approach: Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap once = diacritic letter 1st variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap twice = diacritic letter 2nd variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap thrice = diacritic letter 3rd variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap four times = diacritic letter 4th variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap five times = diacritic letter 5th variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap six times = diacritic letter 6th variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap seven times = diacritic letter 7th variation (sign/case) The above does not require the case कey (arrow upwards) to be used because the above has both lower and upper letters. If you feel that 'case कey' producing upper case letters should be used just as it is with non-diacritic letters, then fine. Thus this would mean: - 50 percent variations of the above toggle with Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap for lower case letters, and - other 50 percent variation of the above toggle Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap + caps कey for upper case letters. "if you assign Mode_switch and ISO_Level3_Shift to different keys, you can assign up to six characters to one key!" see http://tr.opensuse.org/SDB:Using_the_Extra_Keys_on_the_Keyboard Does this mean it is possible? Could 7 characters to one कey be possible? Features to consider for the Fonts / Scripts कey development: 1. Toggle other कeyboard mapped layouts for example, languages and diacritics. 2. Access other fonts through toggling (Fonts / Scripts कey + another कey) without needing going every time to the particular application's micro layer. 3. Design more styles per letter and/or partner with other fonts and thus more styles on a font and accessing them through toggling (Fonts / Scripts कey + another कey) without needing to go to application's micro layer. It would be nice to have some person/s on board and get these things done. Best, Meeकu

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Internet issue, exchange server - Ipswich
by Dalibor Zeman 22 Sep '10

22 Sep '10

Hi guys, I hope you will be able to help me, at least to explain what's going on. A few months ago I lost land line connection (currently in investigation whether it's internal/external problem with Orange as my provider - cannot make/receive calls). Probably in the same time my internet speed for download dropped from 6 MBits to 1MBits I have now. When I check other providers, all of them show the same speed for my location during testing procedure. Do you have any knowledge, info what's happening? Does anybody from my location have the same experience? I haven't used Google to search for this problem yet :-) My post code - IP4 2JL. Thanks in advance for your input. Dali.

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Duplicity vs rdiff-backup
by Jon Dye 21 Sep '10

21 Sep '10

Hi all, I've used rdiff-backup in the past for backing up my home directories to a friend's server over ADSL. This works pretty well because rdiff-backup only ever sends the changes. I can delete all but the last 30 (or whatever) days of backups and it still always only sends increments. I've recently started trying to use duplicity as I wanted my backups to be encrypted so that users on the remote server can't see my data. I thought duplicity "builds on rdiff-backup and adds encryption" but I don't think it works the same. As far as I can see, if I want to delete backups older than say 30 days in duplicity I need to have a full backup newer than 30 days. This means at least once every 30 days I need to transmit all the data to the remote end. This takes me over 24 hours on ADSL. Does anyone know if I've got this wrong? Any other suggestions for backups that are *always* bandwidth efficient after the first full and are encrypted? JD P.S. I'm also going to ask on the duplicity list but I thought someone here might know.

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Cli Case Management
by Richard Parsons 20 Sep '10

20 Sep '10

Hi, I'm a solicitor <ducks>, and would like to organise my work at the linux commandline, rather than using MS Office. I like cli apps; I like python; I like bash; I like concise; I like the unix philosophy; I like vim; I like Mutt. However, I don't get chance to use the software that I love at work. Instead, I'm expected to use Word, Outlook and some horrible case management software to manage my documents, and create them from templates. All day long I write letters and other documents on each of my legal cases. I would be exceedingly happy if I could replace this functionality with some nice scripts, so that I could spend my days in front of a nice bash shell. To do that I'd need a script that: 1. Stores data about a case: I need to be able to store some data (could be a simple key/value store for each case). 2. Store documents for each case: I'd like to store each document I produce along with some information on that document (such as how long it took to prepare). If I use a wordprocessor (such as openoffice) is it possible to quickly extract some 'properties' via a script? Would a better solution be to keep the documents in a text format, such as latex code...? 2. Enable templating: I could have a template document (e.g. a letter) and some of the information could be pulled out from the case data to populate it. I would then amend it for the particular circumstances of my case to then print, save etc. 3. Produce reports: I'd like to be able to scan all my cases to produce reports, such as: which case hasn't received any attention for the longest time, or how much work have I done on all my active cases this week etc. I recognise that these are probably separate problems that should be solved separately. However, I'd be grateful for any suggestions on how I might solve some of these parts. Thank you for any thoughts. Thanks in advance, Richard

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Struggling to get my head around git
by Mark Rogers 20 Sep '10

20 Sep '10

I haven't quite got my head into the git mindset, and I've not really found a good overview which has "clicked". The situation I'm playing with is merging what are two seperate developments (branches?) of the same web application. One is a third party web application that progresses over time without my involvement, and the other is the version of the codebase which contains my own customisations. The application in this case is ZenCart (PHP based). Can someone guide me quickly through the points in the sequence below where I should brange, commit, merge, etc? 1. Install ZenCart-1.3.8a 2. Customise to create MyApp. (This customisation takes place over several months/years) 3. ZenCart 1.3.9f is released so I need to upgrade MyApp. 4. After merging, I have a 1.3.9f version of MyApp for testing. 5, Meanwhile, some development continues on the live 1.3.8a version of MyApp. 6. The 1.3.9f version of MySite passes testing, I now need to merge in the changes that took place in 5. 7. Test again, and if testing doesn't complete before more changes take place, go back to 5. 8. Testing complete, migrate to 1.3.9f version of my site as working copy. 9. Some time later, 1.3.10b is released and I want to upgrade again. 10. ... and so on.... I think where I am getting stuck is working out what should be the "master" branch and how to keep switching between branches as necessary. Indeed, I'm not even really sure how many branches I should have here? For anyone who saw my previous posts on this: I have successfully used git to achieve steps 1-4, which in itself is fantastic for me. However, I'm now in the situation that development on the live site has continued before the new version has been accepted, so now I have new changes to apply, and at the moment the only way I can work out to do it is to start from scratch which (a) I don't want to do as the merge was not straightforward, and (b) is clearly the wrong way to be doing it. When I started looking at it again, git status tells me that my test code is on branch "MyApp-1.3.8a", although it is the merged 1.3.9f version of the site code. Either I have done something wrong or I've chosen a bad name for the branch (it should probably just be "MyApp"?) but either way I'm in a muddle! -- 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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Flash part the second
by Bev Nicolson 19 Sep '10

19 Sep '10

It's that problem again. I now have Firefox 3.6.10 and flash still doesn't work but now it seems to be wobbling in Chrome too. I tried uninstalling it and installing again (using Synaptic) but now I suspect it must be broken. Anyone got any ideas? Bev.

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 17 Sep '10

17 Sep '10

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, Monday 20th September, 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

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How to find characters in character map - or otherwise?
by Chris G 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

I recently wanted to put a degree symbol (as in ˚ hopefully) into some text and it took me ages (as in several minutes) to find the character in the Character Map application. Is there any quick/clever/easy way to find a character like this? In the Character Map you get swamped by Chinese/Cyrillic/Arabic script characters which you *know* are not what you want. Is there a way to see just 'roman' text characters plus special symbols etc.? Or can anyone suggest another way to find this sort of thing more easily? -- Chris Green

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Bash script error; too many arguments
by James Bensley 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

Why does; if [ "$1" -ge 128 -a -lt 192 ] Error out with 'too many arguments', where have I gone wrong here? Also I have in the mean time settled with; if [ "$1" -ge 128 ] && [ $1 -lt 192 ] Is either one of these preferred over the other? -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/ There are 10 kinds of people in the world; Those who understand Vigesimal, and J others...?

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Laptop pointing devices, only those horrible pads nowadays?
by Chris G 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

I'm considering a new laptop/netbook and, having a selection around belonging to other members of the family, I'm still convinced that the standard traackpad is a truly awful pointing device. Are there really *no* laptops/netbooks available with other pointing devices? I have a very nice little wireless keyboard that we use with one of our computers that has a trackball in the keyboard and that works beautifully, can't manufacturers put one in a laptop? I guess I'll have to buy a laptop and add a trackbll of some sort but even then there seem very few which are aimed at the portable market. This isn't *just* a rant, any pointers to useful devices would be very welcome. (Linux friendly of course) -- Chris Green

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Monitoring network traffic
by Mark Rogers 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

Our office LAN is getting painfully slow. It's likely that something is hogging the bandwidth. If I were to put a network hub between the ADSL router and the main office switch, presumably I could run something on a PC also connected to that switch which would point me in the direction of the problem? I'm looking for something fairly simple, that would tell me (eg) which IP address was generating most of the traffic, and perhaps on which ports. Wireshark would probably do what I need but it's not (from what I remember) particularly simple to get simple results from. Or, is there a better option? -- 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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ftp server recommendation?
by Peter Alcibiades 10 Sep '10

10 Sep '10

Quick question - we have just bought an all in one printer that does scan to ftp. What is the smallest and lightest ftp server I could install on one of our desktops for it to scan to? Its behind a router of course, so (maybe wrongly) I'm not expecting security to be a worry. But maybe this is too hopeful? Thanks for the feedback on proxy servers by the way. Its was not for anything that needs to withstand official investigation, just for privacy from the prying. Peter

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git merge tools over SSH
by Mark Rogers 09 Sep '10

09 Sep '10

I'm slowly getting my head around git. I am trying it out on a large project, which is on a server (in my office) to which I have only SSH access, or access to the files via Samba. I ran a merge (which took quite while) and now need handle the conflicts. Looking for a decent tool to assist with the merge, I find that most are GUI based, and that suits me fine (and will help me get others in the office to buy-in to using it). However, if I access the files over the samba share and run "git status" it takes a while (10 mins?), presumably because my local git is having to deal with a lot of traffic over the network. Is there a better way to use a local merge tool on a remote repo? -- 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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anonymous proxy servers
by Peter Alcibiades 08 Sep '10

08 Sep '10

What does anyone use and or reccommend for an anonymous proxy server? I have come on anonymizer.com and also anonymouse.com. Are these decent? Are there any others to think about? Any that are better? Peter

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IMAP Mail Hosting
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 08 Sep '10

08 Sep '10

Hi Folks, Since it appears that Manchester University has taken a decision that its retired folk shall now be obsolete, email-wise, it is very likely that my current email account will be de-activated soon (I'm already using it on borrowed time). So I shall be looking for a new email address. I'm very happy (in terms of general quality of service) with my ISP (Zen) and would not want to change. However, Zen's email only offers POP3 download and does not offer IMAP access. The webmail interface is clunky and slow, so preliminary sampling and deletion of delivered emails would be very tedious. On the other hand, previewing using IMAP (when it works properly) is very fast. I'm therefore asking if poeple can recommend a provider of email hosting on which I could have an account with IMAP access. I would want this to be of high quality and reliability and capable of handling high levels of incoming traffic (for various reasons, I can get up to 500 emails a day -- most of which I delete on the basis of the Subject alone, some others after a quick look at content, leaving typically some 5-10% to download; so I need to be able to do this quickly). Recommendations? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 04-Sep-10 Time: 18:41:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Merging the changes between directories
by Mark Rogers 07 Sep '10

07 Sep '10

Suppose I have: DirectoryA - contains a PHP web application, unchanged, exactly as downloaded DirectoryA2 - contains a customised version of DirectoryA DirectoryB - contains a new version of the PHP web application I want to merge the changes that represent DirectoryA -> DirectoryA2, into DirectoryB to create DirectoryB2. This seems to me the sort of thing that diff can do in its sleep but my past attempts have failed. It also probably points at some kind of version control solution, although there is no version control in place at the moment (if this is a good time to implement it then I'm all ears!) I don't expect this to be completely automated, but I believe and expect that using the right tools I can substantially improve the job from the starting point of comparing individual files manually. I have so far got as far as diff --brief -r DirectoryA DirectoryA2 [If specifics help, DirectoryA is version 1.3.8a of ZenCart, DirectoryB is version 1.3.9f of ZenCart, and DirectoryA1 is a site built on version 1.3.8a of ZenCart, but with obvious changes (changes to stylesheets, new images, new plugins, etc). From a practical point of view, DirectoryA2 is mostly a superset of DirectoryA (new product images, plugins, templates, etc) but there are customisations (usually fairly trivial ones) to core files, and there will be a number of files from DirectoryA that were deleted (installation files, docs, etc). There would also be some file and directory permission changes.] -- 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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Remote access challenge
by Mark Rogers 07 Sep '10

07 Sep '10

I have a file open on my desktop PC at home, which I want to read now I'm at work. It's just some notes I started writing in a new document in gedit, it's not been saved (I don't think, anyway). I have SSH and NX access to my home desktop. If I connect with NX I get access to my home desktop GUI but not to the session I have currently open with the document in it. Suggestions? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Re: [ALUG] Remote access challenge
by Steve Engledow 07 Sep '10

07 Sep '10

On 7 September 2010 10:17, Ted Harding <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > On 07-Sep-10 08:53:26, Simon Ransome wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> On 07/09/2010 09:22, Mark Rogers wrote: >>> I have a file open on my desktop PC at home, which I want to read >>> now I'm at work. >>> >>> It's just some notes I started writing in a new document in gedit, >>> it's not been saved (I don't think, anyway). >>> >>> I have SSH and NX access to my home desktop. If I connect with NX >>> I get access to my home desktop GUI but not to the session I have >>> currently open with the document in it. Possibly overkill but you could ssh in, install x11vnc (which is a vnc server that provides vnc access to a running X session), run it and then vnc into your machine - tunnelling through ssh for security of course :) Cheers, Steve

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Malicious Javascript
by Dan 07 Sep '10

07 Sep '10

Dear All, Browsing with Namoroka 3.6.8 on Gentoo, I just stumbled across a webpage containing Javascript that was probably trying to install malicious code on my system. The script - claimed (implausibly) to be a malware scanner, and (even more implausibly, because the places it claimed to have looked were Windows-specific directory names that don't exist on my system) that it had found half a dozen items of malware on my system; - generally made a nuisance of itself by grabbing focus with dialogue boxes (this seemed odd - my browser settings forbid Javascript to raise or lower windows, yet my main browser window was, to all intents and purposes, irreversibly lowered by the presence of the dialogue boxes, and the only browser actions possible were to click on dialogue box buttons or do a window-manager close on the dialogue box) - did a passable impersonation of Windows Update (or at least, it would have been passable if the system I was looking at it with had been running Windows ;-)); and - finished up by offering me a download of an executable Windows binary, which I rejected. I took a look at the Javascript source code, but it was _very_ obfuscated. My question is - could the script have got any sort of access to my local filesystems or otherwise done any damage? -- Thanks, Dan

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