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Can anyone help me with this problem
by Tony Aldous 03 Apr '10

03 Apr '10

Hi I'm ald0; Can anyone help me with my Ubuntu installation, I get this message "fsck from-linux-ng 2.16 /dev/sda7: clean, 129398/616512 files, 852648/2465969 blocks" & then everthing stops. Being new to Ubuntu I don't know what to do to sort it out.

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Personal thingies....
by Montmorency 02 Apr '10

02 Apr '10

Thanks for all the positive responses, both on the list and by email. A fair number of people claim to be unsurprised. Which I guess shows how generally crappy I am about being closeted. Also, as somebody commented, April 1st, was possibly a VERY BAD day on which to post such a thing, but I guess I didn't think. Anyway, thanks again. katsmeat. montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Personal Announcement
by Bellphegore 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

People don't seem to do much in the way of personal announcements on this list. But I though what the hell as a handful of ALUG people already know about me, as do almost all of my non-ALUG friends. I thought there'd be no harm in throwing it out there, with the vague hope that nobody will actually give a damn. So yeah.... I'm actually one of those funny transexual people. Which really amounts to finding the whole maleness thing a complete annoyance and wishing it would go away. Actually, when I say annoyance, I mean gut-churning feeling of fundamental wrongness that's there 24/7. The next point is what am I doing about it? Well, early days and all that. I've been seeing a therapist, and living part-time as a woman. Sort-of a try-before-you-buy deal, trying to seeing if being a woman actually works for me. It actually does, though at the moment, nothing is certain. The whole process of physical transformation, which is lengthy, expensive and complicated, seems to be a possibility right now, rather than a probability. I'm simply engaging in a process of exploration to see if it'd be right for me. The third point is how does this affect you? Well, if you don't show up to the Norwich pub meets then you've just wasted 30 seconds of your life reading something that's completely irrelevant to you. If you do come to the pub meet, then you may see me come in female role. That's about it. I get the impression this isn't amazingly uncommon in the tech field. A surprising number of geeky women became geeks before they became women, it's not unlikely you know, or know of, some already. Anyway, please view this as my small, personal contribution to redressing the gender imbalance in tech. Katsmeat bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com montmorency(a)ukfsn.org

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Firebug, how to use it to investigate CSS?
by Chris G 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

I'm trying to work out another CSS conundrum and, as per Brett's advice, I am trying to use Firebug to do it. However, at the moment, I really can't see how Firebug can be used to help me find what CSS is applied to a specific bit of HTML. I can follow the HTML facilities of Firebug OK, how it highlights the sections of a page as you click on different bits of HTML in the Firebug window. However I'm not at all sure how to then try and work out what particular bit of CSS is affecting something. Can anyone (Brett?) elucidate a little for me. -- Chris Green

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Graphics package to produce neat, aligned protocol table (TCP header) pictures?
by Srdjan Todorovic 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

Hi, Lets say I'm documenting a low-level protocol or file format and want to produce a picture such as the TCP header (etc) table (http://izecksohn.com/pedro/pub/tcp_header.jpg) what's the best program to use for that? Another example: http://www.wtcs.org/snmp4tpc/images/TCP-Header.jpg I have tried Openoffice drawing tool in Writer, and it does not align well. Inkscape might be good as I can snap to grid. I could use a spreadsheet and then export to picture. Is there a special purpose application for this that anyone has used and would reccommend? I need to be able to insert text into the cells or perhaps refer to the cells in some markup way - also the cells should be fixed width as each cell would represent one byte. Any suggestions please? How would, for example, a graphics designer go about doing this? Thanks all, Srdjan

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Replacing popped-off key onlaptop
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 30 Mar '10

30 Mar '10

Hi Folks, Appealing to the hardware-savvy anongst you! I have an Advent 8117 laptop (nice machine, by the way), and one of the keys has popped off (the down-arrow key near the bottom right). For the life of me I can;t suss out how to put the key back on again. The details are probably not specific to this particular machine -- they may well be identical on other makes and models, so if you recognise the description below and know how to put a key back on, I'll be pleased to hear! The key itself has a kind of "trestle-like" hinged frame underneath it, whose function seems to be to keep the key-top level as it goes up and down. This is very tiny. It is presumably also intended to attach itself to something on the keyboard (see below). The bed of the keyboard has a little rubber/plastic nipple which is pushed down by the key (and, lacking the key-top, I can operate it by pressing on the nipple). Above and below this nipple are two lttle metal mountings, each with two little metal flanges projecting upwards. The two flanges on the top mounting have each a little notch near the keyboard bed, as if something is supposed to go in there. The two flanges on the bottom mounting also have a little notch each, in this case being directed somewhat upwards. I guess that the "trestle" structure on the key-top is meant to somehow engage with the notches in the flanges as described above. However, no matter how I try to manipulate things, I can NOT get the key-top to re-attach! I hope that's enough to describe the situation to Those Who Know. Looking forward to very simple and easy-to-execute instructions on how to put things together again! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 29-Mar-10 Time: 20:42:24 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Version control choices for web development
by Mark Rogers 27 Mar '10

27 Mar '10

I've experimented a little with version control over the years (cvs, svn) but never used it in anger even though I know I should. The thing that's always stopped me is that I've never found one that I've liked for web development. What I have is a server in my office that everything gets developed on. When I am happy, I use unison to synchronise the changes to the live site. What this gives me, is no ability to roll back changes if something goes wrong. What I want is for the version on the live site to just be a checked out version from a version control system, with the changes on the dev server being checked in to the version control as we develop. However, to me the logical location for the version control system is therefore my dev server in the office (which has plenty of disk space), but I don't want to open up ports to allow live servers to "pull" a version from the system. I want to be able to "push" a version to the server from the dev server, and that's where I get stuck. The best solution I've ever come up with is to check out a separate local copy which I then unison to the live site, but this is two steps instead of one and (more importantly) means duplicating the site locally for no real benefit - which is a pain if a site has several hundred MB of images, for example. The other part that I've never found a good solution for is handling databases; ideally there should be a way to perform diffs against different MySQL database schemas and apply them but I'm not aware of a way to do this either. On the other hand, what I want to do seems like a fairly "standard" thing so I'm sure either there must be a way or that other people in similar situations have found a better way to do it than I am suggesting? -- 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-ordering columns in an sqlite database
by Chris G 26 Mar '10

26 Mar '10

I know it isn't really necessary as it doesn't actually affect anything (except my sensibilities) but I'd like the ability to re-order columns in some sqlite databases. Well, it *does* have some advantages, it would mean I can do things like "SELECT * FROM database" and get the columns displayed in the order I want rather than the order resulting from database creation followed by adding extra columns as I found I needed them. So, is there any way to re-order columns other than by creating a new table with the required column order, copying all the data across, deleting the old table and renaming the new one? I can't find any neat utilities out there to do this for me. -- Chris Green

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iTunes on EEE
by Mark Rogers 26 Mar '10

26 Mar '10

I've done a bit of Googling but as a non-iTunes user I'd like some real user experience if possible. A customer of mine has ended up with a "ASUS little shitty netbook thing" (his words!) for his daughter, and with the requirement that "all she wants to do on it is surf the internet & manage her itunes on it". They don't like the noddy interface (presumably Xandros?) and I could replace that for him. But iTunes I know nothing about. I gather that Songbird is a suitable replacement, but I have no idea how similar it is to iTunes and whether it'll allow her to manage her music files. Surfing the internet is easy, and they can already do it. What they'd like, of-course, is the XP model. But installing XP is expensive and I'd like to show them that they don't need XP to do what they want. Assuming that they can.... -- 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] Re-ordering columns in an sqlite database
by Govind Chandra 26 Mar '10

26 Mar '10

Brett Parker wrote: > In case one wasn't aware, all fields in sqlite are text. Nothing else. > It doesn't do type checking. It is not really so simple. Please have a look at http://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html For reordering the columns of a table one could resort to a temporary table. create temporary table temptab as select column4, column3, column2, column1 from sometable; select * from temptab; I think that this is more flexible than reordering the columns of the main table. Remember that "temptab" is temporary and lasts only the current session, something I consider a feature. Govind Chandra

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Hi, Geeks!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 22 Mar '10

22 Mar '10

It's been a nice sunny day, and all that; and I've been out enjoying it; and got back to find myself wondering where the word "geek" comes from (dunno why). So on to Wikipedia. Excerpt: "Formerly, the term referred to a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken, bat, snake or bugs." Well, yeah, "bugs" connects. But I hadn't been aware that my very first OS, CP/M, might stand for "Chicken Post/Mortem". Just a thought. And it's still nice and sunny out there, chicks. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 21-Mar-10 Time: 17:23:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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NumLock at startup
by Chris Walker 22 Mar '10

22 Mar '10

As per my other mail, I'm trying to make Mandriva switch off the NumLock LED at switch on. I've got it switched off in the BIOS but when I get to the login screen, Mandriva has already put it back on. I've got it switched off in the control panel but that doesn't affect startup. Any pointers as to where I should look for this? So far all my searches tell me how to switch things on, not how to stop the wretched thing coming on. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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flv video issue
by Bev Nicolson 21 Mar '10

21 Mar '10

The problem is this. Whenever I try viewing a .flv video, Firefox crashes. I have, for another issue a while ago, reinstalled flash and that hasn't made any difference to this particular problem. Any ideas? Bev.

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help with xinput
by Chris Walker 21 Mar '10

21 Mar '10

Hello, Due to health issues, I am trying to use an Evoluent Vertical Mouse with Mandriva linux. http://www.evoluent.com/vm3.html I'm using KDE as my desktop and have been unsuccessful in mapping the buttons. If you look at the picture in the above URL, you can see that the mouse has 3 buttons and a scroll wheel on the right side. It also has another button on the left side, shown in 'Familiar Grip' as button 5. I'm trying to map what is shown as button 2 as a double-click. I can do it under Windows 7 providing I use some extra software as the mouse isn't supported past XP but despite using xinput under Mandriva like this - xinput set-button-map 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 3 9 10 11 12 13, it isn't working as a double click. I also need to map button 5 as a refresh for use in web browsers. I haven't tried that yet as I didn't want Firefox to confuse the issue. I want double-click to work within the desktop. Has anybody done anything similar to this and can point me in the right direction as I'm getting nowhere fast. I also have a special keyboard and want to switch off NumLock at startup as Mandriva is switching that back on but I'll put in another mail for this. TIA. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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port forwarding wierdness
by mick 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

OK - I know this isn't strictly a linux problem (though it may be) but someone here may be able to help, I have an odd problem with port forwarding through a linksys WRT120N router. My network looks like this: outside - Cisco ADSL - DMZ - Linksys - inside The DMZ net is 192.168.1.0/24 inside is 192.168.10.0/24 The DMZ has two debian ARM boxes on it, inside has several different debian/ubuntu boxes, but crucially has my dnsmasq DNS server on 192.168.10.50. That server lists all my local machines. The linksys has NAT turned on. It also allows port forwarding of both TCP and UDP on port 53 from the outside (i.e. the DMZ) to 192.168.10.50. Now the wierd bit. DNS lookups from the DMZ to the inner server through the linksys only work once every 4-5 minutes. So if I fire up nslookup or use dig to resolve any of my internally named servers I can do it immediately, but then get "connection timed out; no servers could be reached" for the next 4 or five minutes whereafter I can again resolve a host. Can someone please suggest what may be going on? Anyone else using a WRT120N? I can't find anything on the obvious forums. (And yes I know I could move the DNS server to the DMZ......) Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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We're not evil??
by Martin Collins 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

Anybody use magnatune for streaming through rhythmbox? See this link: http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2010/03/new-business-model-for-magnatune… This would make magnatune more like spotify. Does this mean free listening is coming to an end? Personally I'm a bit cheesed off with it, as I don't listen enough to make a subscription worthwhile, nor do I have internet access 365 days a year so I wouldn't get what I was paying for. However, I did buy 3 or 4 albums from them a year. Forcing a business model on me, although not evil, certainly isn't angelic! Martin

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the problem with lp was the usb parallel converter
by Peter Alcibiades 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

Turns out that the problem with using lp must have been the adaptor. Its a parallel printer, and it was being connected through one of those parallel to usb adaptors. With a parallel cable, and redefined as /dev/lp0, it works. The original method of cat > /dev also works on this definition. No idea why, though. I have used those usb adaptors successfully in the past and if it were possible to hit it using cat >/dev, it seems puzzling that lp could not drive it. Should have thought of trying this earlier, but of course, SFF machines now often don't have parallel interfaces. I also now do lprm on starting up the program to clear the queue, just in case. Regards Peter

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Skype problem
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 19 Mar '10

19 Mar '10

Hi Folks, Maybe some of you can elucidate a Skype puzzle. I have Skype on Win XP (v. 4.0.0.216) and on Linux (v. 2.0). I usually use the Win XP version because it works better. As of yesterday, I had the same Skype name and password on both. I hadn't used Skype for a couple of months, but yesterday evening started it up in Win XP and entered the password. It hung for several minutes, then came up with a message that it had failed to connect. I repeated this several times (thinking maybe Skype was clogged, or something). Same result. And the same result with the Linux version ("P2P connection failed"). Repeatedly. So I wondered if their might be a password problem, therefore logged in to www.skype.com using it, and got in OK. Nevertheless I decided to reset the password anyway. I was sent a password token to log in to the secure site for doing this, and set about re-entering the old password. Got a message "Password too easy to guess" (also required numbers + letters, which it hadn't done before). So I chose a different password. After that, I had no problems using the Win XP Skype with the new password, but when I tried Linux Skype with the new password it still failed to connect. Re-tested again this morning: Win XP Skype works, Linux Skype does not. One remaining issue might be that the Linux Skype version (2.0) may now be too old to be acceptable to Skype, though that would be surprising. I'm aware that Skype can go real flaky at times (though not very often, in my experience), but the above strikes me as puzzling. Any comments and suggestions welcome. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 18-Mar-10 Time: 10:45:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Another HTML question, again about unwanted space
by Chris G 18 Mar '10

18 Mar '10

I seem to suffer from this all the time, too much space between headers and the things underneath them. ... and I've simplified it down to the following:- I have the following HTML:- <p> Paragraph1 </p> <p> Paragraph2 </p> In the CSS I have:- p { background: blue; padding-bottom: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0; } (The background: blue; is just to prove it's being acted on) ... and there's still a great wide white space between the two paragraphs. How can I get rid of it? -- Chris Green

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Ubuntu 9.10 graphics issue
by Mark Rogers 17 Mar '10

17 Mar '10

See screenshot: http://www.more-solutions.co.uk/files/12032010325.JPG I have tried two identical PCs in case the problem is system or video memory. Initially I had the monitor through a KVM, which gave me a lower resolution but usable screen, although with square blocks on the screen where it wasn't updating properly. (I tried to open a terminal window and just got a white box which I could move around but could see nothing in the box.) It was when I bypassed the KVM and rebooted that it identified the screen and gave me a decent resolution login screen followed by the linked screenshot after login. Chipset is Intel 82810E DC-133 (CGC) according to /var/log/messages Suggestions? I'm hoping the screenshot will tell someone exactly what is wrong, but I can't google a screenshot and can't work out how to describe it in words! -- 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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VCF - Bletchley Hotel / [Ips]: Peter Jennings walk
by samwise 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

Following up from last night's discussions, the Peter Jennings ghost walk (which they proudly proclaim has been featured on GMTV!) round Ipswich is on the first Thursday of each month from the Tourist Information Centre, St. Stephens Lane and costs about a fiver, I think. If enough ppl contact me off-list, I'll see if a date can be agreed upon. Also, for those who expressed interest in the Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley Park, here's the link to the The Campanile Hotel which has a preferential rate for VCF attendees: http://www.tnmoc.org/vcf-gb/hotels.aspx And, who knows, maybe by next month Adam can convince the landlady of McGintys to give us a tour of the tunnels underneath the pub ... ;) Cheers, Peter.

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MySQL BETWEEN
by James Bensley 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

SELECT blah, blah, blah FROM tblBlah WHERE date_entered BETWEEN '01/01/2010' AND '20/01/2010' This will select records from my table who's date_entered field is from 01/01/2010 and 19/01/2010. This is because the BETWEEN command seems to go UP TO the day specified but not inclusive. So I thought I would just add +1 on to the data submitted from the PHP search page which works just great except for when you put 31 in as the day of the month, (so say we search from 01/01/2010 to 31/01/2010) it makes it into 32 and the querie returns 0 rows. However if I add an IF statement to not increment the day value by 1 if "31" is given as the last day in the query, we then only get results for 01/01/2010 to 30/01/2010. How can I combat this or is there a "proper" way of doing this as mine almost defiantly isn't going to be the best method? -- Regards, James ;) Jonathan Swift - "May you live every day of your life." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jonathan_swift.html

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raw printing, yet again
by Peter Alcibiades 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

OK, following or trying to follow, Wayne's advice, I am attempting to use lp -d star temprint.txt. to print to a raw printer. It does not work. My user account is in the lp group, the printer is set up as raw in cups, and it is named star. When I do lpstat -P star all the jobs have piled up there one after the other, and can be cleared by lprm. There are no failure messages however. I have tried lp -P star -o raw But it seems to not recognize the raw option and to only expect page numbers. On the other hand, cat temprint > /dev/usb/lp0 works just fine. If you use cat as above, there is a real risk as Wayne pointed out. If the printer is offline, then its true, the application freezes. This is not desirable at all. Though, its a pretty robust printer, so maybe this is a chance I have to take. And maybe I could provide some kind of choice to just turn off the printing command and clear the queue and tell the user to call for assistance. But it is not good at all. Its a disaster waiting to happen. So it would be nice to be able to use lp. But how? And does anyone have any suggestion why it might not be working or what to check? I also cannot figure out, despite much googling, how to test for whether the raw printer is on line and functioning. Nothing I have tried gives any different result if it is powered on or off. Peter

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I was thinking about going tonight
by Ian Porter 15 Mar '10

15 Mar '10

Just wondering who else is going ?

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VNC problem
by Torben Stones 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

I'm having an interesting but very annoying problem. I have set up xtightvncserver (client) on one machine in listen mode, and then use x11vnc (server) on another machine. I connect the server to the viewer using the -connect argument. This works fine, as I can see the servers desktop on the client box as expected. Now I change my routers firewall rules to forward port 5500 to the client, and then try to connect the server to the client, again using the -connect argument, but this time using my external ip-address. This is where it gets odd. The vnc viewer on the client never seems to get a connection from the server. But if I look at the routers logs I can see that a message was received and matched against the correct firewall rule. I have used ngrep to find out if anything was appearing on port 5500 on the client, and I can see that there is indeed something coming in on port 5500. In ngrep it just appears as user@localhost:~$ sudo ngrep -d wlan1 port 5500 interface: wlan1 (192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0) filter: (ip or ip6) and ( port 5500 ) ### T 192.168.0.2:45401 -> 192.168.0.6:5500 [R] ...... ### T 192.168.0.2:45401 -> 192.168.0.6:5500 [R] ...... All this means to me is that something is appearing on port 5500, but as it isn't connecting then I can only assume that the wrong stuff is coming in. When I just use the internal address then I can see alot more on port 5500 for example the name of the display. Can anyone help me with the next step as I don't know what to do next. Thanks Torben -- You've got a lot of choices in your life. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.

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