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Job Post: Flash Dev in Loddon
by Richard 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Hello all, I have recently started working with Oilenium and they are looking for a Flash Developer. Details are here: http://www.oilennium.com/jobs/flash-developer-coding/ Cheers -- Richard Bensley - 07540878285

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Small Distro
by Simon Royal 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Hi. What are peoples recommendations for a lightweight distro? It needs to run on a sub 300mhz machine. I have been looking at DSL and DSLN but would prefer to stick with Xubuntu if possible. I havent been into Linux that long and have been using Ubuntu for the past couple of months. I have also used Fedora in the past too but not too keen on it. Simon --- Catch me on Twitter http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype me: Simon-Royal

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Re: [ALUG] Ubuntu 9.10, Networking and NFS
by phil.ashby＠bt.com 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Steve Fosdick <lists(a)pelvoux.nildram.co.uk> wrote: > > You may have read in another thread that I now have a NAS. The NAS > supports NFS so it seemed completely natural to NFS mount a directory > tree from the NAS on a desktop PC and to put this mount in the > /etc/fstab file so it is mounted whenever the desktop PC is started. I > did this and specified the 'bg' option so that if the file system > concerned is not available the mount is retried in the background. > > Upon the next reboot of the PC it got stuck in the boot process in such > a way that all I could see was the Ubuntu logo and no text. Using the > Ctrl-Alt combinations to switch virtual console did not make any > difference (no text appeared) and Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill a running X > server did not make any difference either. In the end I used the magic > SysReq to reboot the PC. > > Upon choosing the "recovery mode" from GRUB I found that the NFS mount > was not working because the network card was not up. It seems that when > you use the helpful GNOME-based network configuration to configure a > network connection it then does not get started early enough in the boot > process to support the NFS mount which is rather different than if it > had been configured in the /etc/network/interfaces file. I had a very similar issue with my studio machine connecting to the NAS in the house using NFS over a longish ethernet string (~50m). In my case I had used /etc/network/interfaces to permanently configure the network card, and all worked well with 8.04. Upgrading to 9.10 late last year and switching to 'upstart' caused the NFS mount to fail sometimes on startup. Further investigation of the 'upstart' configuration (in /etc/init/*) indicated that there was a race condition between the 'mountall' process and the networking startup: if the network came up quickly enough (which varies a bit depending on the rain and DHCP server response speed :) all was well; if the network init was a bit slow, then mountall would be stopped by the rcS event or exit of it's own accord and nothing would mount the NFS when the network did come up. I fixed this by the rather ugly hack of modifying the mountall-net.conf script to directly call mount on my NFS if it was unable to find mountall running. There are other similar problems it seems with upstart and NFS: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mountall/+bug/501678 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mountall/+bug/430348 Phil.

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Ubuntu 9.10, Networking and NFS
by Steve Fosdick 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

You may have read in another thread that I now have a NAS. The NAS supports NFS so it seemed completely natural to NFS mount a directory tree from the NAS on a desktop PC and to put this mount in the /etc/fstab file so it is mounted whenever the desktop PC is started. I did this and specified the 'bg' option so that if the file system concerned is not available the mount is retried in the background. Upon the next reboot of the PC it got stuck in the boot process in such a way that all I could see was the Ubuntu logo and no text. Using the Ctrl-Alt combinations to switch virtual console did not make any difference (no text appeared) and Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill a running X server did not make any difference either. In the end I used the magic SysReq to reboot the PC. Upon choosing the "recovery mode" from GRUB I found that the NFS mount was not working because the network card was not up. It seems that when you use the helpful GNOME-based network configuration to configure a network connection it then does not get started early enough in the boot process to support the NFS mount which is rather different than if it had been configured in the /etc/network/interfaces file. At this point I also found that one RAID array was failing to start which, after some investigation turned out to be a zeroed-out RAID superblock on one of the partitions which I will discuss in another thread. I now do not know if the failing NFS mount was responsible for the hung boot process and the superblock got corrupted by the magic SysReq reboot or if the superblock was corrupted by a failing drive and the NFS mount was a red herring but it was certainly somewhat surprising. Steve.

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Recovering a RAID Array
by Steve Fosdick 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

I mentioned in another thread that I needed to recover a RAID array when the RAID superblock on one of the partitions had become corrupted. I could not find any documentation that deals with this - most of the examples assume you are hot swapping a failed device from an array that is running whereas in my case the system would not start the array concerned. If I ran: mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/sda7 /dev/sdb7 /dev/sdc7 /dev/sdd1 I would get an error message about the superblock on /dev/sda7. After much fiddling about the answer turned out to be to add the --force option after which the array is started without /dev/sda7. After that the corrupt but working partition can be added back in: mdadm /dev/md0 -a /dev/sda7 and at that point the array is resynchronised to include /dev/sda7 . Regards, Steve.

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Re: [ALUG] JavaScript/HTML issue
by Ian Porter 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

I am on my mobile, but not sure if this helps ? http://www.codingfriends.com/index.php/2009/07/27/styles-alter-with-javascr… Hth Regards Ian Porter www : www.codingfriends.com On 14 Feb 2010, at 16:02, James Bensley <jwbensley(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Got a page with a frameset containing two frames (frame 0 and frame > 1). The page in the top frames (frame 0) has links and each link calls > the same JavaScript function parsing a different value. I want the > bottom frame page (frame 1) to have its background colour set to the > parsed value. > > My problem is, within the JavaScript function; > window.parent.frames[1].document.bgColor = "#xxxxxx" > > Will change the bgcolor but I have since gotten round to implementing > css. Now this won't change the bgcolor because of the css use of > background-color. > > However; > > window.parent.frames[1].document.style.backgroundcolor = "#xxxxxx"; > > Doesn't change the background color. Internet Explorer shows me this > error: > > 'window.parent.frames.1.document.style' is null or not an object > > I'm stumped? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! > > -- > Regards, > James ;) > > Charles de Gaulle - "The better I get to know men, the more I find > myself loving dogs." - > http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charles_de_gaulle.html > > _______________________________________________ > 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!

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Re: [ALUG] Puppy Linux
by Sam Tuke 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

I've used Puppy a few times. I'd imagine that there's a good chance that it'll run on your machine. Puppy is *very* much lighter than Xubuntu in my experience. XFCE is really not king of the featherweight class any more. Puppy has been good for hardware on past machines of mine. However, it uses all its own configuration applications with their own quirks and so it can take a little while to get used to them at first. Puppy feels like its made to be used as a desktop distro - attractive intuitive desktop with all key apps pre installed, despite its small install size and minimal requirements. If the puppy desktop feels a bit foreign, I recommend that you try an LXDE based distro, as this has replaced XFCE as the most fully featured low spec DE in my view. You might want to investigate these distros as alternatives: tinyme, crunchbang, knoppix Sam. On Sunday 14 Feb 2010 10:17:42 main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > > Hi > > > > Has anyone used Puppy Linux. Im looking for a small lightweight distro with good hardware support. > > > > Puppy Linux seems to work on very low hardware, has flash support out of the box and good wireless support. > > > > I tried Xubuntu but couldnt get it installed. I tried Fluxbuntu but wasnt impressed. I tried DSLN but it required a lot of tweaking. > > > > I just wondered if any of you Linux lovers had tried Puppy Linux. > > > > Ive got a P2 300mhz with 160mb ram. > > > > Simon

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Puppy Linux
by Simon Royal 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

Hi Has anyone used Puppy Linux. Im looking for a small lightweight distro with good hardware support. Puppy Linux seems to work on very low hardware, has flash support out of the box and good wireless support. I tried Xubuntu but couldnt get it installed. I tried Fluxbuntu but wasnt impressed. I tried DSLN but it required a lot of tweaking. I just wondered if any of you Linux lovers had tried Puppy Linux. Ive got a P2 300mhz with 160mb ram. Simon --- Catch me on Twitter http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype me: Simon-Royal

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Linux equivalent to .hosts
by Paul Grenyer 13 Feb '10

13 Feb '10

Hi All I've finally manged to get Ubuntu to connect to my work's fortinet VPN. Yay! However, remote DNS does not work and sticking the company's DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf didn't fix it. What's the Linux equivalent to the windows .hosts file? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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Looking for a web mail viewing app - any ideas?
by Chris G 13 Feb '10

13 Feb '10

I'm looking for something that will allow me to view mail as web pages but I'm not after webmail, I'll try and explain.... I want to be able to incorporate sequences of mail (saved as maildir mailboxes) into a web site so that one can quickly look through an E-Mail 'conversation' via the web. As I said the E-Mail is already at in maildir mailboxes on the system where the apache server is running so the files are accessible, all I really want is a vaguely civilised interface that I can link to from other pages. For example the link might look something like:- http://home.isbd.net/email.php&Mail:boating:leBoat where email.php is the clever E-Mail reading bit and "Mail:boating:leBoat" is the path down through the mail hierarchy to the mailbox I want to show. Ideally you'd see a clickable list of E-Mails from the mailbox. Any ideas or places to look for such a thing (or bits to make it) would be most welcome. -- Chris Green

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Really silly monitor setup
by Chris G 12 Feb '10

12 Feb '10

I have just bought a new system to set up for a friend. Quite straightforward Asrock G41MH-GE motherboard with a HANNspree 23" monitor. It's been a right royal pain to get going as much because of the silly monitor and BIOS setups as because of a kernel/Intel incompatibility. The monitor initially seems pretty standard with on screen setup and buttons to move through the menus but the real pain is that if there is no signal input you can't activate the menu. It actually tells you this in the manual, I didn't believe it at first but it really is true. I had set the monitor to VGA input (it's dual VGA and HDMI) but (for various reasons, see below) I had the HDMI lead connected. Hit the 'menu' button and notheing happens because there's no input on the VGA connector, sort of Catch22 really, I had to actually connect something to send it a VGA signal to let me get the menu up to switch it to DVI input. OK, it would *probably* have managed itself if I'd left it at Auto input select but we wanted to specifiy which input was being used. Then onto the BIOS on the Asrock motherboard. The boot options only appear for a very short time, too short to actually read them so you have to look in the manual to find it's F2 to get the BIOS setup. The real oddity though is that the splash screen (with the options) *only* appears after a power on, hitting the reset button doesn't show it so then you are really in the dark. I've never come across a motherboard where hitting reset doesn't produce the same effect as power on. -- Chris Green

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Laptop Needed Urgently
by Simon Royal 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

Hi fellow Linux users. I am still im desperate need for a laptop. After only being in the linux world for a short while my Samsung laptop died. I am now without a laptop and have to grab the odd minute on my wifes Windows machine. Does anyone have an old laptop laying around doing nothing, that I could dust off and make use of? An old P1 or P2 would be fine. I would only be running Xubuntu or DSL-N. I live in Watton but can travel. Simon --- Catch me on Twitter http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype me: Simon-Royal

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PHP help wanted - arrays and foreach
by Chris G 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

I'm trying to understand/debug a bit of PHP, the code is as follows:- if (isset($data['date'])) { if (is_array($data['date'])) { foreach($data['date'] as $key => $date) { $date = $this->_convertDate(trim($date)); if (!$date) unset($data['date'][$key]); else $data['date'][$key] = $date; dbglog($data, "Converted data"); } } else { unset($data['date']); } } What's happening is that it always ends up with nothing in $data (what's reported by that dbglog()). I'm confused by what happens with that foreach as, as far as I can see, $data['date'] is just what I would call a list in python, it's not an array indexed by values it's just a sequential array. So, in the foreach loop $key gets the values from the $date array and $date is empty (confirmed by further dbglog()). Am I understanding this right? If I create an array:- $aa = array('abc', 'def', 'ghi', 'jkl'); Then do:- foreach $aa as $x => $y { // what do I get for $x and $y here? } Sorry this is a bit confused/muddled, I'm definitely not a PHP programmer. -- Chris Green

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IT lessons
by Richard Lewis 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/8008.shtml Now *thats* what a proper IT lession should be like. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +----------------------------------------------+ | Support open access to scholarship | | http://freeculture.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ | +----------------------------------------------+

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Blogs and such...
by James Elsey 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

When you come across an interesting article, or figure out how to do something with a new technology your messing around with, do you document it? This is a bit of a generalised question, just trying to find out what you guys do. I've gone for "Blogger", is there anything exciting Wordpress offers that could tempt me over? I'm using the web interface at the moment, its a bit clumsy, are there any good linux desktop applications that make it easier to type up and organise posts? If anyone has a tech blog, feel free to link me up, would be interested to see what others are doing Cheers! James Elsey

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ipv6 (with Virgin Media)
by Jon Dye 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

Hi, I would like to try settings up ipv6 at home in preperation for the global meltdown when we run out of ipv4 addresses. I currently have an internet connection with Virgin Media who I don't believe do native ipv6. I therefore would like to set up a tunnel to a provider. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for particular providers (brokers?), software or general tips (or specific tips relating to Virgin Media). I have several PCs (Windows and Linux) on a LAN which then goes through a router that doesn't have ipv6 capability. One of the linux machines on the LAN is a server that's on 24/7 so I was thinking of using that to do the tunnelling. I don't have a static IP on the router but it hardly ever changes (I think it's only changed when I've unplugged the router for more than a few hours). Suggestions? JD

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Chrome and Flash
by Bev Nicolson 09 Feb '10

09 Feb '10

I installed Chrome (for Linux) a while ago and am still playing with it but wish to install flash. I've found where it is installed already (and saved the relevant bit of text to copy) but it needs to go into another directory as far as I can tell. Do I do this from Terminal? And how? TIA. Bev.

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Re: [ALUG] curious behavior of audacity and usb mike (Peter Alcibiades)
by phil.ashby＠bt.com 08 Feb '10

08 Feb '10

From: Peter Alcibiades <palcibiades-first(a)yahoo.co.uk> > Disconnect the mike, and try to play back? Error message. > > Restart audacity? Now playback works, but recording does not. What > appears to happen on attempting to record is that the track > seems to be > trying to playback through the mic. Well, this is my > interpretation of > what is visible and audible. Probably correct Peter: I suspect the chipset used in the mic is bi-directional (I have a similar issue with an audio+video grabber that also claims to have audio out but no connectors). You should be able to select the appropriate recording device in the mixer applet (KDE or GNOME versions), and should also be able to see what channels your various audio devices claim to have. It's also worth checking what audio subsystem audacity is trying to use, it's probably Alsa for recording, but may be Jack or Pulseaudio depending on versions and audio arrangements in your distro. If audacity isn't using Alsa directly then you need to configure the appropriate sound server (Jack or Pulseaudio) inputs to use the correct underlying Alsa device for recording. Finally - be aware that USB audio devices can come up in any order, so if you want the external sound card to always be device 0 (Alsa hw:0), with or without the mic plugged in, you will need to edit the udev rules to identify each USB device and fix the numbering (this is tricker if >1 device use the same chipset and thus have the same USB vendor and device IDs, although I have been able to make this work using bus IDs instead). For all this GIYF :) Phil.

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Web picture gallery that has a 'narrative' with it - any ideas?
by Chris G 07 Feb '10

07 Feb '10

Are there any 'gallery' type applications (i.e. those like gallery2) which also allow quite a lot of text with them so that one can create a picture gallery with a narrative? -- Chris Green

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curious behavior of audacity and usb mike
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Feb '10

07 Feb '10

Something very puzzling. Well, lots of things are puzzling, but the latest one is this. I have a c-media usb mike. Start up audacity with it plugged in, and it records just fine. Play back the recording? Nothing. Play back another recorded track? Nothing. Disconnect the mike, and try to play back? Error message. Restart audacity? Now playback works, but recording does not. What appears to happen on attempting to record is that the track seems to be trying to playback through the mic. Well, this is my interpretation of what is visible and audible. What happens is that when you click record, the old track becomes audible through the headphones, and a new track appears to open under it in audacity, but it does not seem possible to record in it. So the bottom line is that if you want to record and then play back, you have to do this: start out with the mike plugged in, do the recording, disconnect the mike, restart audacity, then play back. If you want to play back and record, you have to go the other way, once you've played back, you can no longer record. Or I cannot figure out how to, without restarting audacity. The other puzzling thing is that krec does not seem to be able to record at all - or maybe this is me, I can't make it. Am I doing something stupid here or does this sound like a bug in audacity or a configuration problem? I have an external usb sound card, and the phenomenon seems to be the same whether using the onboard sound card or the external. Peter

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IPv6 - why?
by Mark Rogers 06 Feb '10

06 Feb '10

OK, so I know why it was invented: IPv4 running out of space. But having followed the various conversations about IPv6 capable ISPs, I'm left wondering why anyone wants to actually use IPv6 right now? That isn't to argue that they shouldn't, I genuinely want to know. I switched to 64-bit pretty early (because with Linux I could), and dealt with the occasional issues (flash, etc) in return for a system which was theoretically "better" but which felt no real different to a 32-bit machine. But (sad but true) I enjoyed the smugness of running 64-bit without (major) problems, something I couldn't have done with Windows. So what reasons are there to play with IPv6? Just because we can? Because we want to learn about it for the future? Or is there actually anything practical I could do with IPv6 that I can't with IPv4, or that just works better on IPv6? If you convince me that there is a good reason to play, my next question will be how to get started, so be warned :-) PS: For anyone with 64-bit capable hardware there really isn't any downside to using 64-bit Linux now as far as I can tell. -- 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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HTML embedded scripting, is it really this much of a kludge?
by Chris G 06 Feb '10

06 Feb '10

I've been trying to find out the rules about embedded scripting in HTML, things like PHP and JavaScript. It seems like it doesn't really have any rules! Part of the problem is that Google makes it impossible to search for anything other than alphanumerics so you can't search for things like <SCRIPT> or <?php. So, first question, is there *any* way now that Google rules the world to search for things like this? Moving on, how can one find what *actually* works inside a <SCRIPT> section in HTML? Is it only javascript that really works there in 'most' browsers or are there other possibilities? The other question is how does <?php work at all? I can't find anything that documents how or why it should allow PHP to do things. I'm maybe missing something obvious but given Google's total inability to look for such things doing any sort or searching is a bit difficult. I have O'Reilly books on HTML and PHP but neither of them really addresses how this works. I do realise that <SCRIPT> starts client side scripting so is limited by what's implemented in browsers, however it is at least a 'proper' HTML element. <?xxx seems more of a bodge, is it actually a bodge or is there some smeantic/syntactic logic to it? -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] HTML embedded scripting, is it really this much of a kludge?
by phil.ashby＠bt.com 05 Feb '10

05 Feb '10

Chris asked: > So where is this <?php syntax defined? Is it part of HTML, is it a > bodge added by apache or what is it? That's really what I was asking, > I (sort of) know the difference between server side and client side > stuff (I think I did even say something about <SCRIPT> being client > side) and <SCRIPT> is at least 'proper' HTML. It's defined in the PHP specification, so it must be implemented by any PHP enabled server (be that Apache, IIS, Lighttpd, etc.), and since it never reaches the browser it's not part of the 'proper' HTML or subject to that specification. Here's the manual ref: http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.basic-syntax.phpmode.php Other server-side scripting languages use similar techniques, eg: ASP: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/k33801s3.aspx JSP: http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/syntax/2.0/syntaxref20.html Cold fusion: http://www.opencfml.org/dashboard.action Such syntax abuse all started with server-side includes back in the 90's: http://hoohoo.ncsa.illinois.edu/docs/tutorials/includes.html HTH, Phil.

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Re: [ALUG] lp printers and startup
by Peter Alcibiades 02 Feb '10

02 Feb '10

On Monday 01 February 2010 09:46:18 Wayne Stallwood wrote: > ..... > If the printer is configured as a raw device in cups and raw support is > enabled then you should be doing > lp -dprintername temprint.txt > > Then cups will manage the task of spooling the job until the printer is > online and it should all be managed properly. > > I see this is for a receipt printer because you are sending cutter and > drawer kick commands, you aren't hacking receipt printing support onto > phppointofsale are you ? If so I probably still have the stuff from when > I did that about 4 years ago, no doubt it would need updating and it is > so nasty it never got accepted as a patch to the main project :) > Yes, now I see. Finally! I'll have a go with this. It makes sense. It is a receipt printer, but the POS is my own hack. It works, but I'm painfully aware that it lacks a lot (all?) of the stuff professionally designed POS systems have. The reason why I am using a raw printer is money - the one we bought cost £40, new but discontinued model, and one from the same supplier that would be new and run in CUPS in native mode would have been a couple hundred. The difference was important. Still and all, with a used barcode reader and this package and using kbarcode and a bunch of other OSS things, the total cost of moving to bar codes was really cheap. It ran last season on a £35 reject machine, and was perfectly satisfactory. Peter

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lp printers and startup
by Peter Alcibiades 01 Feb '10

01 Feb '10

This is another question about my raw printer. The following command works perfectly: cat temprint.txt > /dev/usb/lp0 and I've managed to get the hex characters going over to it to operate the cutter and to open the cash drawer. The printer is set up in CUPS as raw, queue raw. Its connected using one of those usb to parallel adaptors - usb at the PC and parallel at the printer. However, there is one remaining flaw. It only seems to work if the printer itself is powered on at startup of the pc. Why? Is there a shell command I can execute that will do whatever it is that is done at startup to get the system to know that the printer is there? And how would you test for whether this has been done? I have in mind, when the system is started, check to see if they have the printer turned on, if not beep at them, tell them to turn it on, then when they click the button saying, OK its on now, execute whatever this shell command is.... Thanks Peter

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