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Burning to a remote drive
by Wayne Stallwood 06 Dec '11

06 Dec '11

Hi there. So I am on a laptop now which means the built in optical drive has sub par performance, currently I am archiving a good deal of material from old DVD's onto a Media Server (HP MicroServer) The MicroServer has a bay for a SATA optical drive so I am going to add one anyway....for the archiving I can just run local copies on the server which will be fine. However I got to thinking that sometimes I have a bit of a run on making discs as well and it would be nice to be able to burn from CD burning software on the laptop to the remote drive. When the laptop is docked there is a Gig-E connection between the two and I assume that NBD's support burning as it is just native access to the raw block device over the network ? But has anyone actually done this and did it prove reliable ? Or is there a better way, Am I better off using iSCSI rather than NBD's ?

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th December
by Viperfang 05 Dec '11

05 Dec '11

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 8th December at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- 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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ALUG Hello everyone :)
by wiedxma k 03 Dec '11

03 Dec '11

Hi everyone, I joined the mailing list yesterday and I thought I would introduce myself. I am a woman. And I work and live in Ipswich. I’ve been interested in GNU/Linux since 2002/2003. The first distro I saw and got installed on my HP nx9020 laptop was Slackware. Someone told me ‘if you learn Slackware, you will be fine with any distro”, so I gave it a go. I used to work on Windows 98, Windows XP and HP, HP-UX. The job I do now has nothing to do with Linux or computers. I neither am IT professional nor a geek. (OK, maybe a very little one:)) Today I use Ubuntu on my old HP nx9020 and Windows 7 on my brand new, shiny, lovely ThinkPad T420s. It’s just a few weeks old baby and the only reason it’s got Windows 7 on board is that I was curious how it looks and feels like and if it’s any better than XP. I’m not impressed. Actually, it annoys me more and more every day. So, the time to install some nice and working OS is coming. I like reading books, walking, chatting on IRC and learning new things. I’m not a very talkative person (as for a woman!) so you may see me hanging quietly at #ALUG quite often. So, this is me. And I look forward to chatting to all of you ALUGers! Krystyna (Medea)

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USB Port Replicators
by Jim Rippon 02 Dec '11

02 Dec '11

Hi everyone, I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck or otherwise with USB Port Replicators - and specifically the sound and serial outputs on them. I've a system at home that lives underneath my desk, but has no sound card, but given my radio is on the blink I was looking at getting some use out of my mp3 collection and rediscovering some old tunes. Looking at something like the following ebay lot: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Targus-Mobile-USB2-0-Port-Replicator-PAEPR092E-NE… Appreciate any feedback :) Jim

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Energy monitoring
by Mark Rogers 01 Dec '11

01 Dec '11

I'd like to play with one of the various energy monitoring gadgets that seem to be everywhere these days. I'm looking for one that will transfer data to my PC, and obviously that PC is running Linux (Ubuntu 11.04 at the moment, not sure if it will go to 11.10 yet...) Any suggestions/recommendations? I'm as lazy as they come so ideally I'm looking for something that can be permanently connected to my PC (therefore presumably a wireless connection will be involved at some point); I don't really want a box that collects data that I then take to my PC to download it once a week/month/year/never. And I'm also looking for access to the raw data, but also suggestions for suitable GUIs welcome too. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Any PHP PDO/Sqlite experts here, can't fathom this error message
by Chris Green 28 Nov '11

28 Nov '11

I'm flummoxed by this error, even worse is that the code seems to work sometimes but I can't see any pattern in the data that causes it. The code is as follows:- try { $insQuery = "INSERT INTO log "; // $insQuery .= "(seqno, year, month, day, hour, minute, waterway, pk, place, distance, eng_hrs, fuel_cm, fuel_lt, note, type, sailing)"; $insQuery .= "(seqno, year, month, day)"; $insQuery .= " VALUES "; // $insQuery .= "(:seqno, :year, :month, :day, :hour, :minute, :waterway, :pk, :place, :distance, :eng_hrs, :fuel_cm, :fuel_lt, :note, :type, :sailing );"; $insQuery .= "(:seqno, :year, :month, :day);"; $st = $db->prepare($insQuery); foreach ($rows as $row) { $row['seqno'] = $seqno++; $st->execute($row); } $st->closeCursor; } catch (PDOException $e) { dbglog("PDO() insert error" . $e->getMessage()); dbglog("insquery: $insQuery"); foreach($row as $k=>$v) { dbglog("k is: $k, v is $v"); } } ... and what I'm seeing in the log is:- 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: PDO() insert errorSQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 25 bind or column index out of range 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: insquery: INSERT INTO log (seqno, year, month, day) VALUES (:seqno, :year, :month, :day); 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: year, v is 2011 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: month, v is 11 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: day, v is 12 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: hour, v is 10 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: minute, v is 00e 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: waterway, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: pk, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: place, v is Cappy 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: distance, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: eng_hrs, v is 2695.3 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: fuel_cm, v is 8.5 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: fuel_lt, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: note, v is Engine started after replacing blown mega-fuse, all OK otherwise 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: type, v is TEF 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: price, v is 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: sailing, v is 1 13:53:59 192.168.1.4: k is: seqno, v is 0 So what does "General error: 25 bind or column index out of range" actually mean, I could find nowhere that explains it. Now my guess is that it's telling me that I have a column name wrong somewhere but my 'log' table definitely has columns year, month, day and seqno of the correct type. Maybe I have the syntax wrong somehow for the VALUES() bit but again I can't find any really good explanation of exactly what the syntax is, it seems decidedly woolly. -- Chris Green

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Any WordPress users here - is it really this awful to change a WordPress domain?
by Chris Green 24 Nov '11

24 Nov '11

I've been developing a simple web site for someone using WordPress (along with zillions of others I believe). I've now discovered that it is horrendously awful to move it to another domain! Not only are links in WordPress absolute but there are also loads of database entries which have the absolute URL in them. So one has to fix all the links in pages one has created *and* one has to search through the database and fix URLs there too. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!! Setting the 'WordPress Address' and the 'Site Address' on the dashboard settings page only fixes URLs generated by the code (i.e. the menu links to pages). Apart from anything else it makes doing maintenance/development a nightmare. Is there any way around this or is the only approach for maintenance to have two parallel sites one 'development' and one 'live' where one tries out changes on the development site and then repeats them (hopefully correctly) on the live site. -- Chris Green

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Clam
by Bev Nicolson 23 Nov '11

23 Nov '11

Now it may be that I've missed something obvious here but I've got Clam installed but can't see anyway of running it, either with mouse clicks or otherwise. How do I do that? (Lucid, 10.10) Bev.

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bash getopt
by samwise 21 Nov '11

21 Nov '11

Hi, Has anyone done anything with GNU enhanced getopt in bash to process incoming command line parameters? My understanding is that I have the choice of using the built-in "getopts" command within bash (on a CentOS 5.3 derivative distro), which doesn't support long options (e.g. --long-option as opposed to -l), or I can use the getopt (enhanced) 1.1.4 binary which lives in /usr/bin/getopt. I want to use long options, so I'm using the GNU getopt binary. An example script is below. Note that there is one oddity - for compatibility with some other related scripts, I need the first parameter to be something else ... so the first few lines are intended to munch $1 and pass all the remaining parameters to getopt. I don't think that should affect anything, but I've left it in as that's how I'm currently testing it. My problem is that I don't seem to be able to get the parsing to work as I expect. Specifically: # ./cmd.sh . -i -o 1 input -i is -o So the problem here is that it's quite happy to set the required parameter for -i to be -o ... when actually I was expecting it to catch that -i was missing a parameter. I think I had this working using getopts, but I need to be able to support long options now. I've messed around a bit with several different ways of writing the case script, but not managed to get it working any better. So, idle question ... has anyone got a script like this where the error checking is a bit more robust than the sample below? Cheers, Peter. #!/bin/bash paramArray=("${@}") unset paramArray[0] paramArray=("${paramArray[@]}") getopt -T if [ "$?" != "4" ]; then echo GNU enhanced getopt not detected. Quitting ... exit 1; fi # Override defaults with incoming parameters, if specified PN=`basename $0` ARGS=`getopt --name "$PN" --longoptions input:,output:,noshort:,verbose --options i:o: -- "${paramArray[@]}"` if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo "Invalid option specified or expected parameter argument missing. Quitting ..." exit fi eval set -- "$ARGS" while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do case "$1" in -i | --input) echo input $1 is "$2"; shift;; -o | --output) echo output $1 is "$2"; shift;; --noshort) echo noshort $1 is "$2"; shift;; -v | --verbose) VERBOSE=yes; shift;; --) shift; break;; esac shift done exit;

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Relative risks of different ports/services being open
by Chris Green 21 Nov '11

21 Nov '11

I'm wondering what are the relative risks of the different ports I have opened up on my firewall. Currently the ports I have open are:- 22 - ssh (but limited to only allowing two IP addresses to connect) 80 - http 25 - smtp 873 - rsync (not sure if I actually use this now, must check!) I'm considering what the risks of opening up port 443 (https) are to use with shellinabox and ssh. This would allow ssh from a web browser anywhere into my desktop machine (in addition to https access to the apache server of course), is this a significantly bigger risk than the limited ssh access that I have now? My thinking is that the port 443 access to ssh *is* significantly riskier than my existing ssh access, however I'm not sure if I'm being overly paranoid given that I already have open access on port 80 to my web server. What I'm really asking is whether worrying about open ssh access (with a good secure password) is a bit irrelevant given that port 80 is open to web browsers? Or is the damage that could be done if someone *does* guess my password (or it gets out by some other means, quite possible) for ssh much worse than anything using a browser/apache exploit? Any/all help appreciated, including ways that I could limit the shellinabox access to specific clients. As it is the client I'm thinking of is my Kindle but nothing at the shellinabox end can see anything to do with the Kindle because the proxying in between effectively anonymises the connection. -- Chris Green

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