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Hi to All
by Rob Snow 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

Hi there Luggers, I have just signed up to this list and the lug. My interest in Linux stems from a spell working in the Charity Sector. We managed to convert our whole organisation to Linux across ten to fifteen sites (It varied as the project evolved and then unfortunately wound up). My current interest is fueled by offering family and friends an alternative to the commonly available "commercial" offerings. My favored flavors are Opensuse for modern kit and Puppy for the rest. I have recently moved to Norfolk near Downham Market, and am currently a full time parent! I look forward to meeting you all, either on-line or at one of the social meets. Regards Rob

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remote update of debian etch to lenny
by mick 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

Advice please people. I have two VPSs. One runs Lenny, the other etch. There are sufficient differences between the two for me to want to standardise on lenny. (I also run lenny internally on a couple of NSLU2s). Upgrading should not be a problem. I have experience of doing exactly that on local machines - but I have never done it from the end of an ssh connection when the machine in question is housed in a remote datacentre (and, moreover, is a virtualised image). The debian site (at http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.html) recommends against upgrading remotely using telnet, rlogin or rsh, but suggests that ssh will be OK. So, before I jump in with both feet, any experience anyone could share would be good. Particulary I would like to be aware of any potential gotchas. I really don't want to be stuck with a partial upgrade that I can't get back in to. Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Christmas Meal - Who's coming?
by Montmorency 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

OK... for the Christmas meal at the Coach and Horses on the 10th of December. we have: Sam Tuke Ian <ian(a)titanexplorer.co.uk> Steve <steve(a)offend.me.uk> Adam Bower Richard <richardbensley(a)gmail.com> Myself Bill Hill Reply to the mailing list if you want to come. The menu is here http://i.imgur.com/bcvVP.jpg I'll repost this on the mailing list in a week's time as a final-call. Then get in touch with the pub next Tuesday or Wednesday to let them know the number coming. Montmorency montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Cannot copy/paste between two screens on a xinerama/twinview setup
by Srdjan Todorovic 27 Nov '09

27 Nov '09

Hi everyone, Got a strange thing happening on this machine - I can copy text by selecting and highlighting, and pasting by pressing middle mouse button (wheel button). This works fine as long as the copy text source is on one screen, and the paste destination is on the same screen. But it does not work if I have text on one screen and want to paste to another screen. Two physical monitors are plugged into the same video card. TwinView is enabled. Is this a: - nvidia issue - X11 issue - KDE issue - kubuntu issue - legacy software issue? It's as if each physical screen has a separate copy/paste buffer. As long as a small portion of a window is over both screens, I can copy/paste from that window into each. This is very annoying! Anyone have ideas? Thanks! Srdjan

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gdi and raw printing
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

Wayne, do you then mean to set up CUPS with a printer defined as raw, ie with no ppd defined, and then print using that? Its not networked, its local mode only, parallel, and it will just print a few lines very fast, so there is no real way it can need to queue jobs. I came across the suggestion to do cat > [filename] >lp0 elsewhere and now have confirmation from the supplier that the printer will simply print plain text sent directly to it. So this will probably work. Thanks all.

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gdi and raw printing
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

OK, still struggling with this stuff, and yes, I have googled it to death with mixed success. How does raw printing work exactly? Do you get to send an ascii character stream directly to the printer, and how does the printer know what to do with it? Are there any decent references anywhere? All I am looking to do is send a few characters and line feeds, and don't care about fonts or formatting of any sophisticated sort. One would think it should be possible using lpr, but if anyone has actually done this, it might save a lot of time and experimentation. This is just printing characters, its not real document printing, layout, all that stuff. Peter

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touch screen packages
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

Don't really like all-in-ones - you get more flexibility with separates, that's my feeling anyway. My friend down the road is stuck, for instance, with a perfectly decent 24 inch apple screen, which has some kind of werid obsolete computer welded to it, and he is going to end up replacing the lot at vast expense, when were they separates, £300 would give him a screamingly fast (by comparison) replacement....An exaggeration, but not much of one. They are convenient, yes. But for us, it will definitely be separates. Peter

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Reasonable good-quality touch-screen
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

Hi Folks, Apologies for cross-posting b A project I'm involved with -- setting up an educational display at a local museum, with (modest) Royal Society funding: see http://www.prickwillow-engine-museum.co.uk involves installing a wall-mounted screen for animated display under touch-screen control. The cost needs to be reasonable (euphemism for "as cheap as poss, subject to acceptable quality"). One of us has poked around a bit, and found: [A]"The MSI Wind top AE1900 is the most expensive at £465 ex VAT but has a 19" screen and Windows XP home. Availability is uncertain and it has no wall mount." [PCworld review at http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/61134/review/wind_top_ae1900.html ] [B]"The Asus ET1602 is 15" widescreen and £355 ex VAT including Windows XP home and is wall mountable though it requires a difficult to source adapter." [PCpro review at http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/desktops/256873/asus-eee-top-et1602 ] [C]"TheShuttle X50 is 15" widescreen and is available "bare bones", no memory, hard drive, or software. It does have the dual core version of the Atom processor, the others are single core, and does have the industry standard VESA wall mount fixings. With 1GB ram and 160GB hard drive, no operating system it's £379 ex VAT. With Windows XP home it's £415 ex VAT." [PCworld review at http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/55884/review/x50_aio.html ] There is willingness to use Linux (and some of us know our Linux)! One issue is that a 15" screen is probably too small for wall mounted display to (e.g.) visiting school groups, so there's interest in the larger screen. Reviews of [A] and [B] are critical of display quality ("the ropey screen" for [B]) and no great enthusiasm overall for any of the three. If we do go Linux (which I'd like) there'll be an issue of adequate touch-screen drivers for the hardware we actually get. I see that X11 now has quite an array of touch-screen modules, so it possibly might work "out of the box". The reviews (and the home pages) for the three above don't seem to mention what cards/screens they have, so I haven't been able to identify these to the point of being able to cross-check with X11. So I'd be most obliged is anyone who has experience of any of the above could comment or advise, in the context of our intended use. Also, advice on Linux-based solutions to the general question of touch-screen boxes with wall-mountable screens, preferably larger than 15-inch, and broadly in the price range £350-450 (we prefer the lower end ... ) would be most welcome. The guy who poked around wrote: "I would favour the Shuttle X50, we will want a secure wall mount." With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 25-Nov-09 Time: 20:25:11 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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touch screen packages
by Peter Alcibiades 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

I have no experience. Not yet at least. But was proposing to use on a similar project an Iiyama PLT1930SR/19 for £385 from ebuyer - 19 inch monitor. And put it together with Acer Aspire Revo R3600 Desktop PC, Atom 230 1.6GHz, 160GB HDD, 1 GB RAM, HDMI, nVidia GeForce 9400 ION, WIFI, Linux Which is on sale at ebuyer for 150. Or use some other atom based sff machine, but this one is so cheap. I was thinking of getting one of those compact flash to ide adaptors, then using the debian variant that is firefox only, so its basically debian with the only thing on it a browser. I guess you could do it yourself, but this is prepackaged. There is also browsermode linux. There seem to be a couple of these around. We are a little way away from doing it, I first have to do a demo not on a touch screen, then get funds committed if they still like it.... Peter

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Replacing duplicate files with hard links
by Mark Rogers 25 Nov '09

25 Nov '09

Does anyone make use of any tools which can search for duplicate files and (assuming they're on the same filesystem) replace the duplicates with hard links to the first copy of the file? There seem to be a few scripts around but since it'll be messing with my files I'd rather go by recommendation if I can. (The plan is to free up some space on a server which has lots of duplicate images.) Also, any "gotchas" that should put me off trying this would be appreciated. -- 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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