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FOSDEM upcoming
by Sam Tuke 30 Jan '10

30 Jan '10

6-7th Feb, Brussels. See http://www.fosdem.org/2010/ Is anyone thinking of going to FOSDEM? I'm sure that it'll be a fantastic experience to meet amazing people, learn about new technologies and exciting projects. Also it's good to represent Britain with the largest turnout possible (remind Europe that we aren't all backward numbskulls when it comes to technology - it's just our government). Transport and accommodation may be easier/cheaper if people travel as a group. So, any takers?

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Graphics Card Recommendations
by James Bensley 29 Jan '10

29 Jan '10

Hey List, Can anyone recommend a graphics card that can definitely play full 1080p video under Ubuntu. Currently I have a Palit GT 240 which can play 1080i at 20Mbps OK but above that and it struggles. However 1080p at 16Mbps isn't watchable. I get a better result out of mPlayer than VLC when user VDPAU with X11 but its still not watchable. The machine is dual boot with WinXP Pro x64 SP3 and has the same results? Recommendations are welcome. -- Regards, James ;) Samuel Goldwyn - "I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/samuel_goldwyn.html

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URGENT! Ancient keyboard/adaptor needed!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 29 Jan '10

29 Jan '10

Hi Folks, One for the attic-hoarders amongst you! I need a replacement for one of those old keyboards with the fat (pre-PS2) connector (I forget what their proper name is). Alternatively, if there's an adaptor that would allow a PS2 keyboard to be plugged in to the ancient socket in the back of the case, then that might do the job. Reason: the keyboard on one of my machines (dating back to the 90s) has failed, and I can no longer re-boot it (it needs a manual fsck following a power failure). Any offers/advice/suggestions most welcome! Thanks, Ted. ---------------------------------- E-Mail: Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk Date: 29-Jan-2010 Time: 08:10:00 This message was sent by XFMail ----------------------------------

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Hello!
by Martin A. Brooks 28 Jan '10

28 Jan '10

Hello ALUG, I thought I might try and find a LUG which is a little closer to my home than my usual haunt (GLLUG), and didn't fancy taking on the responsibility of restarting Essex LUG. So, err, hello! Hope you guys are friendly.... :) Mart.

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Dud keyboard solved! Thanks.
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 28 Jan '10

28 Jan '10

Apologies for not responding earlier -- I was in Cambridge most of yesterday, and did not have time to deal with people's replies until today. Many thanks to all who responded. I do seem to have raised a lot of dust in attics! Since I was in Cambridge, I followed up Ken's suggestion, so popped into Maplin's and bought an L90BT (PS2 female to DIN male adaptor). As Wayne indicated, it wasn't cheap (£7.99), but is nicely made and solid. Since Maplins had a few "on the hook" in the shop, there was no issue about being "lucky to find one in a hurry"! Anyway, back at home, this morning I used the adaptor to connect a PS2 keyboard to the DIN socket on the box. Worked perfectly, and I fscked the filesystem (Statutory Declaration: I have not made a typo). I am now back to emailing normally from that machine! The following may be of interest (and a possible useful warning). I dismantled the old DIN keyboard to try to diagnose the problem. The heart of its mechanism is two plastic sheets with "printed circuitry" on them: on the underside of the upper sheet, and on the upper side of the bottom sheet. These lie below the keys, and when a key is pressed it presses the upper sheet down onto the lower sheet, and makes a contact. I suspect that this may be the source of the problem. Because the computer in question is mainly accessed remotely, its keyboard is hardly ever used (except occasionally when rebooting); so, to keep the keyboard out of the way, I have had it standing upright on its edge (the edge that would be nearest to you when laid flat for use). Undoubtedly, at least when putting it back on its edge after use and probably often when just shifting stuff around, the keyboard has been tapped onto the tabletop when in the upright position. This may have caused the plastic sheets to shift inside the keyboard, either getting it out of alignment with the pegs on the keys (that press down on the sheets) or moving it out of touch with the contacts in the keyboard case that connect the sheets with the little chip that feeds the cable. Whether that is the explanation or not, the end effect has been that pressing a key produced no result (and the effect had been intermittent until yesterday, when it had apparently become permanent). So beware! (Another warning: dismantling a keyboard should not be done lightly. There are lots of loose bits inside. Reassembling and getting everything back in line is not trivial. Indeed, I recall, from years ago, taking the bottom off a keyboard only to discover that it had spring-loaded insides. It took ages to pick all the little bits up from the floor ... ). I shall be in touch privately with the people who have kindly invaded their attics on my behalf, once I have brought that machine properly up-to-date again. Meanwhile, thanks again and best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 28-Jan-10 Time: 08:57:50 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] ISP issue, some sites I'm completely unable to access..
by Anthony Anson 27 Jan '10

27 Jan '10

Ken Hamer wrote: > On 26/01/2010 22:38, Anthony Anson wrote: >> Not sure where their exchange is - might even be Bunwell... >> </thinks> > Depends what is meant by Tibenham. Some parts of it are on the New > Buckenham exchange - unlucky ones on Tivetshall through cables made of paper. Or wet string? >> If I want a reasonable connection I have to take the little box into >> Norwich, where the dongle will play nicely. >> Afraid you are not alone. But fear not! Mr. Brown is trying to get >> you 2Mbps! This will happen Real Soon Now. Not a lot of good - Mr. Brown will have to explain to BT that their bit of beryllium between their pole and their junction box is broken, and suggest to them that since I've been telling them this for around five years, a bit of (an?) expedition might not go amiss - which is why my connection is via Vogonfone. Mind you, since I don't try to access video streaming, music and the like, the PAYG dongle only costs me - has only cost me up to now £2½ per month. >> Can't get the wi-thingy to work with the Fat Cat's wireless router >> thobut. > That will be thick walls, long reach, incorrect encryption key, broken > adapter or broken router. Maybe all five. All routine. Try HomePlug > devices. Devolo ones work. Of course your router needs to be getting > a connection. Does it? I haven't got a router connected - I take the Eee into the Fat Cat, and so does Neville of this (ALUG) parish. We get the magic screed from the bar, and key it in. Neville's flaptop connects straight away, mine just sits there, claiming that it's connecting. This happens every time. Wireless connection works in my brother's house, at my sister's, in other pubs, friends' houses, but not at the Fat Cat. It doesn't reject the attempt, it just sits there smugly and pretends it's doing something. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Re: [ALUG] Is there a calendar/appointments program that will show?me a list of the next n appointments?
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Jan '10

26 Jan '10

On Tuesday 26 January 2010 09:45:15 Chris G wrote: >.... I was rather trying to get away from displaying in a terminal > window. > Must have a look at railender. But my guys don't see a console window, they would have zero tolerance for that. All they see is a desktop icon, which is labelled 'print calendar'. Double click it, and a little dialogue box comes up looking pretty, and asking 'you want to print?' They click the OK button in this window, and the next thing they know, they are looking at an open office word document with a list and the secretary reformats and prints from that. I generate 365 days looking forward. Don't know exactly what you can limit the konsolekalendar output to. But I'm anyway filtering and reformating the raw output, so it would be possible to just get everything using konsolekalendar, and then select in the filtering scripts. They find kontact quite nice to use otherwise, multiple address books, to do lists, the integration of kjots now, stickies. The format of the list was the only thing they didn't like, so it seemed worth going to a bit of trouble to fix it. It would be nice to have a usable todo out of the box. But kontact is so convenient for them with all the parts in the left pane. Peter

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Is there a calendar/appointments program that will show me a list of the next n appointments?
by Chris G 26 Jan '10

26 Jan '10

Well, having just about sorted out my events/appointments *recording* I now want a 'screen friendly' way of displaying them that will alert me to upcoming appointments without taking up too much screen real estate. My appointments/events will be in an iCalendar file (or at an iCal server) so most programs can see them, however I can't find anything to show them to me as a list of events. So far I have looked at:- Sunbird - no list mode at all, only week, month, next n weeks, not to mention that you can't have just the one pane showing. Evolution - does have a list view but you can't close down all the other panes so only the list is showing. Orage - no list view Osmo - no list view I guess it's not all that difficult to DIY, I already have a little python utility for showing upcoming reminders in the xfce panel. I could adapt this to do something similar in a small terminal window but if there's something out there that can do what I want already I might as well use it. I just want a utility to display the next x events (maybe limited to the next y days) in a simple list - date/event/description - so I can run it as a sticky window visible on all my worktops. -- Chris Green

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ISP issue, some sites I'm completely unable to access..
by James Elsey 26 Jan '10

26 Jan '10

Hey Guys, I'm experiencing rather odd behaviour with my internet connection at home recently, and I'm hoping some of the BT / Telecoms guys out there may have some pointers. I have a terrible connection anyway, around 0.2-0.5Mb at the best of times (was I refered to as the "pauper" or "peasent" of the connection ladder?) Over the past few weeks I'm completely unable to access particular websites, most notably Paypal, national-lotter.co.uk, LinkedIn, and pretty much 50% of any search results in google I want to go to. This is happening across all machines on my network, linux and windows alike, wired and wireless, and also my iphone(unless I put it on 3g) I have a netgear DG834T router, about 6-7 years old. There are no blocked sites and as far as I know the configuration hasn't be altered in some time, so no reason for it to suddenly alter. I am on(...dont laugh)..AOL.. Traceroutes below, as you can see google is fine, but paypal and linkedin are no-goes. any suggestions? [james@nevada ~]$ traceroute www.google.com traceroute to www.google.com (209.85.227.99), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 0.701 ms 0.993 ms 1.276 ms 2 host-92-4-32-1.as43234.net (92.4.32.1) 17.593 ms 21.644 ms 26.533 ms 3 92.31.251.12 (92.31.251.12) 88.683 ms 89.057 ms 89.980 ms 4 xe-10-3-0-scr001.loh.as13285.net (78.144.2.7) 47.956 ms 50.310 ms 55.938 ms 5 xe-11-0-0-scr010.sov.as13285.net (78.144.0.226) 59.461 ms 63.296 ms 67.303 ms 6 google-pp-sov.as13285.net (78.144.5.6) 72.963 ms 18.244 ms 19.564 ms 7 209.85.255.175 (209.85.255.175) 24.930 ms 209.85.252.76 (209.85.252.76) 27.816 ms 32.202 ms 8 66.249.95.170 (66.249.95.170) 45.845 ms 72.14.232.134 (72.14.232.134) 47.719 ms 169.276 ms 9 209.85.252.83 (209.85.252.83) 57.386 ms 209.85.251.231 (209.85.251.231) 61.225 ms 65.619 ms 10 209.85.243.97 (209.85.243.97) 72.739 ms 209.85.243.101 (209.85.243.101) 74.667 ms 209.85.243.93 (209.85.243.93) 31.873 ms 11 wy-in-f99.1e100.net (209.85.227.99) 29.866 ms 34.736 ms 38.122 ms [james@nevada ~]$ traceroute www.linkedin.com traceroute to www.linkedin.com (64.74.98.80), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 0.594 ms 0.874 ms 1.527 ms 2 host-92-4-32-1.as43234.net (92.4.32.1) 17.691 ms 22.002 ms 26.405 ms 3 92.31.251.12 (92.31.251.12) 30.564 ms 52.454 ms 52.924 ms 4 xe-10-3-0-scr001.loh.as13285.net (78.144.2.7) 46.274 ms 50.407 ms 54.782 ms 5 host-78-144-0-253.as13285.net (78.144.0.253) 64.163 ms 64.884 ms 67.766 ms 6 xe-10-2-0-scr010.thn.as13285.net (78.144.1.2) 138.286 ms xe-11-0-0-scr010.thn.as13285.net (78.144.1.0) 19.790 ms 19.498 ms 7 limelight-pp-thn.as13285.net (78.144.3.6) 31.326 ms 31.705 ms 33.123 ms 8 tge11-1.fr4.lga.llnw.net (69.28.172.149) 116.711 ms 117.578 ms 118.541 ms 9 tge8-4.fr3.ord.llnw.net (69.28.172.198) 147.721 ms 150.073 ms 154.725 ms 10 linkedin.tge3-4.fr3.ord.llnw.net (208.111.156.70) 160.655 ms 163.514 ms 168.470 ms 11 * * * 12 * * * 13 * * * 14 * * * 15 * * * 16 * * * 17 * * * 18 * * * 19 * * * 20 * * * 21 * *^C [james@nevada ~]$ traceroute www.paypal.co.uk traceroute to www.paypal.co.uk (66.211.168.114), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 0.746 ms 1.037 ms 1.352 ms 2 host-92-4-32-1.as43234.net (92.4.32.1) 18.230 ms 22.547 ms 27.719 ms 3 92.31.250.44 (92.31.250.44) 30.698 ms 35.535 ms 39.924 ms 4 xe-9-3-0-scr001.log.as13285.net (78.144.2.133) 45.724 ms 56.942 ms 57.867 ms 5 Opal-ge-2.2.0.mpr1.lhr2.above.net (213.161.78.209) 60.632 ms 64.985 ms 68.887 ms 6 abv-l3-pni.London1.Level3.net (208.185.188.186) 73.356 ms 29.552 ms 48.372 ms 7 ae-34-52.ebr2.London1.Level3.net (4.69.139.97) 54.120 ms 57.921 ms 62.327 ms 8 ae-41-41.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.137.66) 136.767 ms ae-43-43.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.137.74) 140.902 ms ae-42-42.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.137.70) 144.830 ms 9 ae-3-3.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.132.93) 168.750 ms 169.572 ms 170.063 ms 10 ae-64-64.csw1.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.178) 171.559 ms ae-74-74.csw2.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.182) 194.713 ms ae-64-64.csw1.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.178) 187.984 ms 11 ae-62-62.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.145) 182.185 ms ae-92-92.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.157) 186.082 ms 190.084 ms 12 ae-2-2.ebr2.Chicago2.Level3.net (4.69.132.69) 172.932 ms 148.265 ms 148.700 ms 13 ae-1-100.ebr1.Chicago2.Level3.net (4.69.132.113) 150.208 ms 115.825 ms 110.926 ms 14 * ae-3.ebr2.Denver1.Level3.net (4.69.132.61) 144.893 ms * 15 ae-21-52.car1.Denver1.Level3.net (4.68.107.38) 164.332 ms 368.666 ms ae-21-54.car1.Denver1.Level3.net (4.68.107.102) 165.221 ms 16 EBAY-INC.car1.Denver1.Level3.net (4.53.1.58) 171.416 ms 175.255 ms 178.668 ms 17 * * * 18 * * * 19 * * * 20 * * * 21 * * * 22 * * * 23 * * * 24 * * * 25 * * * 26 * * *^C James Elsey

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USB Playstation adaptor controllers no longer working
by samwise 26 Jan '10

26 Jan '10

Hi, all. Got a new hardware issue that I'm not really sure where to start debugging. I run Debian AMD64 Testing and, when Lenny was Testing, I had a great setup for playing with emulators. I have four PSX pads which I could use via two USB adaptors - each adaptor supporting two of the pads. However after upgrading to Squeeze (kernel version 2.6.30-2), which involved several kernel upgrades and an upgrade from KDE 3 to 4 plus swapping out the motherboard and graphics card at around the same time (I know, I know - I just didn't test absolutely everything between upgrades), I've come back and discovered the USB adaptors are no longer recognised, though they do have power lights etc. when plugged into the computer. I've tried both in a Windows PC and they work, so it's not a hardware fault. Also, I have a new PC USB joystick which /does/ work with the new KDE 4 setup, and is automatically recognised in the KDE 4 Control Center. I've done some googling but haven't found anything which looks particularly relevant. Does anyone have any suggestions as to where to start debugging this? I think I was spoilt first time round - the adaptor didn't require any special drivers or config tools. Last time, it was one of the few things that "just worked" when I built my Lenny computer. It just showed up as two joypads in the general KDE 3 System Settings - plus the correct joypads devices were automatically built and placed in /dev. :( This is as far as I've got debugging it on my own - I can see it being recognised by lsusb and dmesg, but no idea what the next step is to getting it to auto-populate the right devices in /dev. Something to do with HAL, maybe? I tried ensuring the joydev kernel module was loaded manually, but it made no difference. I can supply more info, as required. Cheers, Peter. # lsusb Bus 002 Device 003: ID 046d:c504 Logitech, Inc. Cordless Mouse+Keyboard Receiver Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 010: ID 0b9a:016a Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0424:20fc Standard Microsystems Corp. 6-in-1 Card Reader Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0409:0058 NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub where the joypad adapter shows up as "Bus 001 Device 010: ID 0b9a:016a". $ dmesg <SNIP> [279764.908007] usb 2-1: new low speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 4 [279765.111875] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0b9a, idProduct=016a [279765.111878] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0 [279765.111946] usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

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