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SFD2010 in East of England
by MJ Ray 15 Jul '10

15 Jul '10

Hi - Software Freedom Day (SFD, http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/) is Saturday 18 September 2010 and an excellent annual opportunity to promote Free Software. SFD is not widely known about in the UK, even among LUGs. At the moment, there's no SFD event listed near East Anglia. Would some ALUGgers like to start a SFD event so that people in the East of England have one? Given my current location, I'm trying to help the South West one. Maybe we could run a link between the two events, as well as any international links people can rustle up. Hope to hear back from someone, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and developer for hire at | software www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk | .... co IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html | .... op

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Re: [ALUG] Open source client for Exchange web interface
by Phil Ashby 14 Jul '10

14 Jul '10

On 14/07/10 12:00, Chris G <cl(a)isbd.net> wrote: > There's a little tool I used when I was at BT that does a sort of > 'fetchmail' on Outlook. It was written in Java. I'm desperately > trying to think of its name - but can't at the moment. If I do > remember I will add it here. That was probably the one I wrote called MailFwd, however that was somewhat against the ethos of not forwarding messages off the Exchange platform :) P.

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DSL Wireless
by Simon Royal 14 Jul '10

14 Jul '10

Hi I am enjoying Lubuntu but love checking out different distros. I have been playing with DSL - DamnSmallLinux - today and checking out their wiki it says a RaLink PCMCIA should work out of the box. I have an Edimax card, which is RaLink based but nothing shows up. Anyone have any experience with it as it is a blazingly fast and if I could get wireless working I might use it. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Lubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

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Regex Help
by Richard Parsons 14 Jul '10

14 Jul '10

Friends, I admit that I am terrible with regex. I need a script to output all words beginning with "$" from a text file. Here's what I've got so far: cat file.txt | grep "$" | sed <some-regex> I don't want the whole line, just the word. Anyone help? :) Thanks, Richard

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Newbie Meeting & Repo Question
by Steve 13 Jul '10

13 Jul '10

Hi I've been dabbling with Linux for just over a year and am now consistently using Linux Mint albeit secondary to Windows. Do you ever run a newbies meeting, I still consider myself as that? Also, how is it possible to know (other than the approved Mint/Ubuntu repositories) which repositories/software is going to be ok, I feel like I may be missing out on stuff and in any case even in the approved repos they have disclaimers. Isn't Linux basically Linux won't most stuff play nicely together ? Steve

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Open source client for Exchange web interface
by Dan 13 Jul '10

13 Jul '10

Dear All, Much to my chagrin, I find myself obliged to receive mail on an Exchange server that presents to the world only its Outlook-like web interface. That's right, no POP3, no IMAP, just the web interface. It won't surprise you to learn that all I want to do with this setup is log in, find what new messages are in the inbox, and forward them to a friendlier mail server. Doing this manually with a web browser, however, is a hassle, because the web interface has no facility for forwarding multiple selected messages simultaneously, so I have to open up each message individually, and forward them one at a time. (Aside: I suspect this is a configuration option that's been chosen by the local sysadmins of the Exchange server. If so, they must _really_ dislike me.) So to my (surprisingly on-topic) question: is there an open-source client-side tool that can automate all this drudgery, please? -- Thanks, Dan

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OpenOffice Writer heading style hell
by Srdjan Todorovic 13 Jul '10

13 Jul '10

Hi all, Another OpenOffice 3.1.1 issue: You have a document that is being written, and you use Heading 1 and Heading 2 etc. You write the document and want to add another Heading 2, and suddenly the Heading 2 text is now a different font-family (Arial -> Times New Roman) or has different / unexpected font properties (obtains bold or italic properties). As in, two Heading 2 titles are now different in appearance on the same page! What's up with that? I thought this was supposed to be better than MS Office? I'm going to search the OpenOffice bug tracking system when I get some spare time, but wondered if anyone had an already hashed solution for this. Thanks in advance, Srdjan

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Quickest way to clone drives
by Mark Rogers 12 Jul '10

12 Jul '10

I have some old servers to migrate to new hard disks (all running Windows Server). They have two SATA drives installed (and no spare capacity). I plan on connecting two new drives on USB/SATA adapters, and booting to a Linux Live CD to copy the data. The drives are 80GB drives, about 50% utilised, NTFS partitions. Which is the quickest software method to duplicate the disks? I'm looking for the shorted downtime I can get away with. I can look at commercial offerings if necessary (although they all want extra for copying server disks and I don't really need a pretty GUI). Obviously I'm looking for something which copies the structure and the data without copying all the blank space, so I assume that means it needs to understand NTFS. (It also needs to make the new disks bootable etc if the one being cloned was.) Will it be significantly quicker to take one drive out and clone from one SATA port to another, then swap the drives around to clone the other disk? Bear in mind I would then be doing the two disks serially (and there'd be a few extra minutes of shutting the server down and swapping disks around as well). I could possibly clone one of hard disks using my laptop but that would be USB-USB and I can't see that being anything other than slow. I know that I could do this all with dd but (I assume) it'll be relatively slow due to all the blank disk space being copied. -- 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] Quickest way to clone drives
by James Bensley 12 Jul '10

12 Jul '10

Hi Mark, I have done this with the CloneZilla live CD, it understands many file systems such as NTFS, FAT32, ext2, ext3, HFS etc...This meant I could boot the CD with an external USB drive plugged into a server and image off the NTFS partitions from the server's drives, did some tinkering with the server, decided this wasn't what I had hoped for and so copied back over the images of the partitions... CloneZilla can copy at different levels, at the drive, volume or partition level and as requested, can only copy used space. HTH. -- 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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OpenOffice Writer jumps back a few pages when scrolling past pictures or tables
by Srdjan Todorovic 12 Jul '10

12 Jul '10

Hi all, I have an Openoffice writer document open, and it has a few inserted pictures (though also had this happen when tables are used). If I scroll using the wheel mouse, this appear fine, until the picture or table is visible, and then, if I'm not ultra-fast in my scrolling, the document viewer jumps back a few pages to where I was originally before I started to scroll. Has anyone else experienced this problem? It is very annoying, and any method to solve this would be relevant to my interests. OpenOffice 3.1.1, OOO310m21 (Build: 9319) Thanks, Srdjan

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Ubuntu Alternative Fails
by Simon Royal 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

Hi. I decided to give Ubuntu a whirl on my ThinkPad, that was running Xubuntu. I used the Alternative installer disc as it is quicker and my ThinkPad only has 296MB RAM. However, every version of Ubuntu I have tried fails while installing. I tried 9.04 and now I am trying 10.04. The original CD drive was flakey and nothing would install from it, no versions of Windows or Linux so I put in a new one and XP and Xubuntu 9.10 installed no problem, but Ubuntu still fails. It fails on the 'select and install software' section. It is a brand new burnt CD, burnt at 4x speed. Any ideas. I am now without a Linux installation and dont really want to go back to Xubuntu just yet. Failing that I might try and install Linux Mint. Regards. Simon http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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Re: [ALUG] £400 - what's the best buy?
by Peter Alcibiades 08 Jul '10

08 Jul '10

The i3 looks a better buy than the AMD from Novatech, looking at the barebones. I bought the ebuyer zoostorm Intel 6300 for someone, it was cheap and fast and Debian went in with no problem. A bit noisy. Very good value though. For someone else, what is wanted is a quiet and not huge desktop, aesthetically reasonable. We are probably going to get the steel Silverstone matx case from Scan, the one that is called something like Evolution and sells for about 45.00. Then we will get a couple of quiet fans from QuietPC, and a Nexus 430 psu, and do all this with the matx i3 mainboard bundle from Novatech which has onboard graphics including vga and dvi. I am expecting this to be very quiet. Not sure whether to use the stock Intel cooler which Novatech supplies, or to go with a Scythe lower profile cooler in the interests of getting the noise from that down. Probably the Scythe. This will come in at not much over 400. The compact Novatech i3 is a contender here too, except noise would probably be higher, and cooling less good, than with the silverstone case. I do think Intel has it over AMD at the moment. Its a great pity that we lost Komplett. You could specify exactly what you wanted, starting with their stock models, and a couple weeks later, it arrived all connected and tested. I got someone a Core 2 system with silent graphics card just before they stopped selling. It used a Gigabyte Triton case, and you have to look to see if its running. Peter

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ALUG horse logo
by MJ Ray 08 Jul '10

08 Jul '10

The horse and penguin didn't perish in the wiki fire! Anyone want it? If so, I may have the xcf for GIMP somewhere too. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/comp/alugtalk/alughorse.i.png If anyone wants to draw a better one, that would also be good. If someone can go make an armoured tux sit on the real thing and take pictures... ;-) Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and developer for hire at | software www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk | .... co IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html | .... op

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£400 - what's the best buy?
by James Freer 08 Jul '10

08 Jul '10

I want to get a new PC - what would be the best buy? I wondered about this one http://www.ebuyer.com/product/193626 Perhaps some of you build PCs in which case can you do better buy than this? Obviously to run linux [inc compiz which i haven't been able to do on current PC]. I had thought about a laptop but i thought they ran a bit slower than a desktop for a comparable spec. thanks james

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Re: [ALUG] [Fsfe-uk] Fwd: Open Source Motion
by MJ Ray 07 Jul '10

07 Jul '10

ALUG members may like to see the Norwich City Council Open Source Motion which is being discussed at http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.fsf.uk/5909 For further national news, see http://floss.pro/fsfeuk Does anyone think other Anglian councils might follow suit, maybe even note the strategic benefits, call it Free and Open Source Software and consider exit costs too? Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and developer for hire at | software www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk | .... co IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html | .... op

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Changing broadband provider
by Bev Nicolson 07 Jul '10

07 Jul '10

Or more particularly, getting it to work once I have. I'm after some reassurance essentially as I'm moving from Virgin Media to a non BT ISP and this is new territory. With VM, I needed to be taken through registration via their IP address (yes, some support for Linux!) but will I need to go through something like that again when I swop the way I get broadband? Ta. Bev.

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Re: [ALUG] Anyone use a USB Mobile Broadband dongle?
by Chris G 05 Jul '10

05 Jul '10

Just to report that both dongles are now working with very little effort at all. I just installed usb-modeswitch and both dongles worked without any hassle at all. The Virgin Mobile Alcatel one just plugged in, was trivial to set up and worked. The Belgian one was a *little* more involved but not bad:- I bought an unlocked Hauwei (3) dongle one Ebay for £19.99 I got a Mobistar pay-as-you-go SIM in Belgium for 15 euros Plugged said SIM into the dongle and it connceted but would only access the Mobistar site saying it had run out of credit. I then realised I had to 'enable' it by putting it in my mobile phone and texting 'start' to specified address. ... and now the Mobistar dongle is working too, hence this message. It was all rather less painful than I feared. -- Chris Green

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USB Floppy drive problems
by Chris Walker 02 Jul '10

02 Jul '10

Can somebody point out my error please? I have a usb floppy drive attached to my machine. If I insert a DOS floppy, the light comes on and Dolphin pops up to tell me the disc label. But I want to read some adfs formatted floppies and the thing isn't playing ball. If I run cat /proc/partitions with the DOS floppy in, it tells me it's sdc but if try it with an adfs floppy the light comes on and goes off. If I then type mount -t adfs /dev/sdc /media/floppy it tells me that there is no medium found on /dev/sdc so what am I doing wrong? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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cron not running script
by Jenny Hopkins 30 Jun '10

30 Jun '10

Hi folks, I've set up a script** to run from cron as below. This script runs from a terminal as it should, but won't run either from cron.d or from cron.hourly when stuffed in there. Can anyone see anything glaringly obviously wrong with it? It's run as /etc/cron.d/update-ip, with the following line: */5 * * * * root /bin/checkIP.sh **I'm sure it's a crappy script, but as long as it does the job..... ;-) Puzzled, Jenny #!/bin/sh #checks IP of courthouse every 5 mins and updates file on stoneboat /etc/ddns/courthouse-ip set -e currentIP=$(/usr/bin/wget -q -O - checkip.dyndns.org | sed -e 's/[^[:digit:]|.]//g') remote="stoneboat:/etc/ddns/" local="/tmp/courthouse-ip" echo $currentIP > $local >> /home/jenny/checkip.txt 2>&1 ##the last bit was put in to troubleshoot scp $local $remote exit 0

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Sound - is it just me or is it really such a black art?
by Chris G 29 Jun '10

29 Jun '10

I never seem to be able to get sound apps working quickly/easily in Linux (or WIndows for that matter). Is it really such a black art. For example I'm trying to get twinkle (VOIP softphone) to work in Ubuntu 10.04. Installs OK, configures OK with my VOIP provider, works perfectly as far as making the call is concerned. I can dial a number, the number rings and I get all the confirmations when the far end picks up the phone and hangs up. .... but there's no sound, which is rather fundamental for a phone application! And there's no way to diagnose it at all, no simple tests to play a sound, nothing, nada. How is one meant to configure and test sound setup on Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 in this case) with no simple tests to try out. Sound does appear to work as my Virtualbox Windows XP guest plays Windows sounds fine. However I can't find *any* Linux application which will play a test sound for me. Twinkle offers me a whole raft of different sound 'devices':- ALSA: default device ALSA: plughw:0,0: HDA Intel (ALC1200 Analog) ALSA: plughw:0,1: HDA Intel (ALC1200 Digital) ALSA: Other device OSS: /dev/dsp: Realtek ALC1200 (HDA-Intel) OSS: other device So which do I choose (I think I've tried most of them!)? -- Chris Green

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Is there anything like a 'non-blog' Wordpress?
by Chris G 29 Jun '10

29 Jun '10

I've been around this loop before and not really got anywhere but still there's no harm in asking. Is there anything as simple and straightforward as Wordpress for creating web sites that *isn't* a blogging platform? There are many much more heavyweight CMS/Portal systems such as Drupal and Joomla but there really doesn't seem to be a site creation application as simple to use as Wordpress. I *can* use Wordpress to create a site which isn't fundamentally a blog by turning off loads of options and using its static 'pages' but it somehow seems silly to turn off so much of what it's intended to do. I already have ways to create utilitarian web pages from restructured text and that's fine for 'own use' internal web pages but I'm looking for something just a bit more sophisticated between that and a full-blown CMS. -- Chris Green

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What would give me a high load average when tops reports nothing much?
by Chris G 28 Jun '10

28 Jun '10

I have an odd situation here, after a recent reboot my system seemed *very* slow indeed, took ages to start the X desktop etc. and when I looked at the load average with 'uptime' it was over 5 which is pretty silly considering there is really nothing much happening. While the X desktop was still thinking about appearing I ran a virtual console, logged in (even that was a bit slow) and ran tops. Tops reported virtually nothing consuming processor time. So what's going on, why is my system slow, especially when starting, but nothing actually seems to be doing much. This is a Core 2 Duo Quad core processor with 8Gb of memory so really should be quite quick - especially when doing nothing! Running uptime now (40 minutes after power-up) the load average is 0.03 which is more like what I'd expect to see? Is there any way to see what that load average is indicating? -- Chris Green

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Anyone use a USB Mobile Broadband dongle?
by Chris G 26 Jun '10

26 Jun '10

I've just ordered mobile broadband from Virgin for my wife to use with her laptop (Ubuntu 10.04) when on the move. It comes with an Alcatel X220 USB dongle. Does anyone here use one (same or similar), if so a couple of questions:- What are the chances of it working 'out of the box'? The Alcatel X220 says it has Linux support. If not then any ideas where to go to find useful information? (I've done some Googling and have some ideas but more is always useful) I'm assuming there's a SIM in the dongle because we want to use it in Belgium as well and I'm hoping all I need to do is buy a mobile broadband SIM there and stick it in the dongle. Am I right? Is there some initialisation/configuring needed to activate the SIM? -- Chris Green

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Lubuntu
by Simon Royal 26 Jun '10

26 Jun '10

Hi I just wanted to say thanks for the Lubuntu suggestion. Its fast. Installed it last night only took a couple of hours via normal installer vs Ubuntu and Xubuntu which took about 4 hours via the alternative installer as the normal installer wouldnt run. Lubuntu is fast, even on my P2 300mhz with 296MB RAM. Chromium browser opens within two or three seconds and rips from page to page at an amazing speed. Plus it has all the benefits of a Ubuntu base like all my hardware being detected straight away including wireless card. So far so good. A new install means setting up sound again but so far so wow! Very impressed. Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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VOIP from the computer - possible? how?
by Chris G 25 Jun '10

25 Jun '10

We have VOIP phones on our home network working completely independently of the computers, the base station just plugs into a switch or router and off it goes. Now, however, I'm thinking it would be useful to be able to use VOIP from a netbook or laptop while travelling around. So, is there a straightforward way to connect a headset to a Linux computer and use it as a VOIP phone? How does one dial a number if so, presumably some sort of on screen interface. Lookin in synaptic (the GUI package manager for Ubuntu) there seem to be a few possibilities - kphone, twinkle, etc. - any recommendations for what works well etc. ? -- Chris Green

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