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basic question about scripts, change user in midstream
by Peter Alcibiades 09 Nov '11

09 Nov '11

How do I change user in a script, and then carry on with the task at hand? What I need to do is get the user to su to root, give the password of course, then carry on. For instance: su [and this then prompts for his password of course] cd /home/fred/Desktop [ now I would get him to enter a file name of a folder on his desktop and then...] chown -R fred filename What happens when I try this is that after changing accounts, the script stops. Very basic question.........., sorry. Peter

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 10th November
by Viperfang 07 Nov '11

07 Nov '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, 10th November 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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A more subtle (?) sqlite (or actually just SQL) question
by Chris Green 06 Nov '11

06 Nov '11

I have a database which, among other things has a date column and also has some text columns. Is there any way to ask for:- The value of a text column for the last date less than the current date E.g. I have data like the following:- Date Text --------- --------- 2011-11-4 Cabbages 2011-11-5 Fireworks 2011-11-7 Nutcase and I want the result 'Fireworks' given the date 2011-11-6. SELECT Text from db WHERE Date < '2011-11-6'; will give all previous rows, not just the row I want. I sort of need to to say:- SELECT Text from db WHERE Date 'is the biggest one less than' '2011-11-6'; I guess I can do:- SELECT Text from db WHERE Date < '2011-11-6' ORDER BY Date DESCENDING; and use the first row returned but this somehow seems inelegant. Does anyone have any better ideas? -- Chris Green

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How to work out what "SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 25 bind or column index out of range" actually means
by Chris Green 06 Nov '11

06 Nov '11

I'm getting this error when using PHP's PDO to insert records into an sqlite3 database. It's only happening on some inserts. SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 25 bind or column index out of range Now I realise it's probably telling me that some column constraint is being contravened or maybe that I have an invaldid column name or something in the insert. However I can't work out what the error is and without some sort of pointer as to which column (or whatever) is causing the problem I'm at a bit of a loss to find the error. The insert query string being handed to the prepare() function is:- INSERT INTO log (seqno, year, month, day, hour, minute, waterway, pk, place, distance, eng_hrs, fuel_cm, fuel_lt, note, type ) VALUES (:seqno, :year, :month, :day, :hour, :minute, :waterway, :pk, :place, :distance, :eng_hrs, :fuel_cm, :fuel_lt, :note, :type ); and the execute query is being handed an array with matching keys. I'm *wondering* if the issue may be that a couple of fields have characters like '-' and ',' in them, do I need to quote or escape these maybe? -- Chris Green

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HTML question - any way to do this other than using tables?
by Chris Green 02 Nov '11

02 Nov '11

I know HTML isn't strictly linux, but still it's related isn't it and there are lots of clever and helpful people here. I want to lay out some web pages in the following sort of fashion:- Top of Page Heading Sub-heading C1 Data C2 Data C3 Data More C1 data More C2 data More C3 data Sub-heading C1 Data C2 Data C3 Data More data More data More data and more etc etc Sub-heading Etc. Etc. Etc I want all of the columns under the sub-headings to be the same widths so they're aligned all the way down (i.e. the same column widths under all of the sub-headings). Using tables one could either set all the column widths explicitly (but very difficult to make it work at different resolutions then) or one could make the sub-headings a column span and just make the text bold (so as a result it's all one table). Is there any other way that would be less painful? I suppose using the column spanning method isn't too awful but it's a really pity that HTML has no other way of putting text in columns. Note that the columns are not all the same width as I have shown above. -- Chris Green

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Problem 2 - System won't start again after CMOS battery failure
by Chris Green 01 Nov '11

01 Nov '11

I have a fairly infrequently used system in our lounge that I use occasionally when I want to display stuff on the telvision. Yesterday it failed to boot when I tried to use it so, after a few failed retries I went and got my laptop. As per "Problem 1" *that* wouldn't connect to the WiFi. To get round the immediate problem I got a long patch cable and connected that way, so we could see the pictures I wanted to show on the TV! So, I'd like to get the dead CMOS system back up and running. I've replaced the CMOS battery and loaded "Optimised defaults" into the CMOS. That didn't initially work at all because it didn't enable the SATA ROM and the system, though a few years old, has just one disk drive which is a SATA disk. I've now enabled the SATA disk and the SATA ROM in the CMOS and it gets a bit further, GRUB comes up and offers me three or four kernel versions plus memtest. Memory checks OK. If I just let it go on to the default kernel it pops up the disk ID, thinks for a while, then pops up the disk ID again with "Starting system" below, and that's it. I tried the recovery mode and it looks as if it can't read the SATA disk drive, though obviously the CMOS can as otherwise it wouldn't boot into GRUB at all. It goes through a load of timeout messages and then there's a kernel panic. I was going to try and produce some detail by copying to my laptop but that's waiting for the solution to "Problem 1"! Is there any way to copy/save the boot messages produced by GRUB in recovery mode so I can Google for them and/or show them here so that someone might be able to decipher what's wrong? ... and/or can anyone suggest something deep in the CMOS settings that might have been lost and is necessary for Linux to boot from SATA successfully? It's running Xubuntu 10.10 (I think!). -- Chris Green

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Android phone management with Linux
by Mark Rogers 31 Oct '11

31 Oct '11

What is the best way to manage my Android phone with my Linux (U11.04) desktop? I don't currently use it for music etc, and all the stuff I've found so far seems to focus on syncing to banshee. I'm more interested in contacts, SMS/MMS, and maybe photos (I say "maybe" because it's easy enough to just drag photos off via USB anyway). I'm not particularly looking to sync the contacts etc with something else, just back them up, although sync would be fine. (Specifically: I went to NY recently and got a local PAYG SIM for the duration, then lost my UK SIM, so I now have a new SIM and have discovered just how many of my contacts were on the SIM not on the phone... Also, for the contacts that were on the phone it was obvious when I tried using them in NY just how many were prefixed 0nnn rather than +44nnn and a way to easily edit them all would be nice.) Also I'd like to archive off my SMS messages, so again it's not really about sync but just backup. Phone is an HTC Desire HD, although I will probably replace it with a newer Android (Samsung Galaxy S2 looking likely) in the near future. -- 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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Agile East Anglia
by Paul Grenyer 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

Hi All I've not been around here for a while, but now I'm back! And I'm promoting a new group in Norwich which I suspect would be right up some people here's street. Inspired by the Extreme Tuesday Club (XTC) in London, Agile East Anglia's intention is to organise regular informal meetings for people new to Agile, Agile practitioners and Agile experts to meet, discuss ideas and network. I'm hoping to arrange the first meeting in late November at the Coach and Horses on Thorpe Road in Norwich. http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Agile-East-Anglia-4149630 -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer

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30 Oct '11

I now have a new to me machine. (Ubuntu 10.10, plus all updates.) On logging in I get an error message for the monitor to say (I think) that it's signal is out of range though it's fine once I'm in. However, oddly, I don't get to enter my password. This is, admittedly tricky when you've got a box right over the bit you need to type in but how do I sort these two things out? I hope this isn't a dumb question. I seem horribly good at those just now. Bev.

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Problem 1 - Can't get WiFi to connect - always get "Bad Password"
by Chris Green 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

This is only one of several problems in a row that I'm having trying to get an Ubuntu 11.04 machine back to life after its CMOS battery died. However this WiFi problem isn't directly related, I wanted to use my laptop next to the dead computer to do some Google'ing for the error messages and I can't get the laptop to connect to my WiFi (I normally just plug it in to the ethernet). The laptop *does* connect successfully to other WiFi networks, it currently has wicd rather than trhe default Network Manager. The symptoms, such as they are, are that it sees the WiFi network with the correct SSID and everything but although I have checked and rechecked the password it fails to connect with a pop-up window saying "Connection Failed: Bad Pasword". Other computers can connect to the WiFi OK and I have checked that they are using the same password, they are. It's a fairly simply password so I'm sure I'm not mis-typing it. So, all I can think is that there is some sort of incompatibility between wicd and the router. In wicd I'm selecting "Use Encryption" and "WPA 1/2 (Preshared Key)", on the router (Draytek Vigor 2820n) I'm setting "WPA Pre-Shared Key(PSK)" Is there anything else anyone can suggest that might be causing the failure? -- Chris Green

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