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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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