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ImageMagick convert
by Mark Rogers 19 Mar '09

19 Mar '09

Any experts in using ImageMagick lurking? I need to resize an image to fit into a 350x350 box. Which means I need to (a) scale the image so no dimension exceeds 350, then (b) centre the image in a 350x350 canvas. Eg for a 700x600 image, (a) creates a 350x300 image which (b) then converts to 350x350 without distorting it (by adding "whitespace". Ideally I want some control over what the canvas colour ("whitespace") will be, in particular transparent would be a good option, but white will do for now. The first bit is easy: convert -resize 350x350 old.png new.png I've tried various ways to do step (b) without success. (A single command which does both would be best, but two separate commands would be a start!) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Acer Aspire One Wireless
by Richard Lewis 19 Mar '09

19 Mar '09

Hello ALUG, How's anyone else's experience with wireless on their Acer Aspire One? I'm running Debian unstable on mine and wireless is quite dodgey. It's the stock 2.6.26 kernel from unstable along with the madwifi drivers (0.9.4) installed via m-a. Initially, if I do $ sudo iwlist scanning it says: wifi0 Interface doesn't support scanning. ath0 Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down it's only after I've done: $ sudo ifup ath0 that it'll actually search for networks. This doesn't seem right. This aside, once I've added a suitable configuration to my /etc/network/interfaces it's very reluctant to connect to it. Normally when I do $ sudo ifup ath0 the little wifi LED doesn't flash, it waits for 20 seconds or so while it does DHCPDISCOVER a few times and then gives up. After this iwlist returns no results: wifi0 Interface doesn't support scanning. ath0 No scan results Then occasionally it connects. The LED flashes as normal, it connects almost immediately and reconnects without problems after suspend to RAM or shutdowns. Usually I go all day Saturday without it working and then it starts working on Sunday. (During the week I use ordinary ethernet.) But this weekend the wifi elves seem to have forgotten to visit my computer. I wondered whether being on AC power vs. battery may make a difference but it doesn't seem to. (Thankfully. It'd pretty useless if it needed to be plugged in to connect to a wifi network.) I also tried installing the 2.6.28 kernel from sidux which has the ath5k drivers in it but that doesn't seem to make any difference either. Is anyone else finding their's bad? Or is it just me? Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +-------------------------------------------------------+ |Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.| |http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html | +-------------------------------------------------------+

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 16 Mar '09

16 Mar '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back tonight (Monday 16th March) at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Tonight reportedly sees the return of a long-time member, and we might end up chatting about VoIP again, and my experiences replacing Office Communicator with open source software. Hope to see you there, Peter. ----- 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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Postfix confusion
by Wayne Stallwood 15 Mar '09

15 Mar '09

It doesn't usually give me much trouble but at the moment I am having a bit of strangeness with my media server which uses postfix to send out various alerts etc. My main.cf is below and /etc/mailname is digimatic.co.uk It all seems to work well except it is ignoring .forward files in the user home folders, i.e I have a user 'francis' who has his own email address in the .forward but if I mail 'francis' it gets routed to francis(a)digimatic.co.uk rather than the address in his forward file. Similarly I tried a .forward in my own home dir of info(a)digimatic.co.uk but the mail to me still goes to my username wstallwood(a)digimatic.co.uk myorigin = /etc/mailname smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Ubuntu) biff = no append_dot_mydomain = no #delay_warning_time = 4h # TLS parameters smtpd_tls_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem smtpd_tls_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key smtpd_use_tls=yes smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${queue_directory}/smtpd_scache smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${queue_directory}/smtp_scache smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd smtp_sasl_security_options = myhostname = localhost.localdomain alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases mydestination = localhost.localdomain, localhost relayhost = mail.digimatic.co.uk mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 mailbox_size_limit = 0 recipient_delimiter = + inet_interfaces = all message_size_limit = 10240000

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Printing with lpr
by Richard Lewis 14 Mar '09

14 Mar '09

Hello ALUG, I have a PDF I want to print on two sides per sheet. Often I just use the print dialog from evince for this, but evince is refusing to open this one properly. So I'm trying to use lpr. According to the Web lpr takes a -o switch which allows me to send options to my printer, including duplexing options. However, my man lpr suggests otherwise. No -o switch is documented and, indeed, lpr just shows the usage instructions if I try running it with a -o switch set. e.g. $ lpr -P ISMS -o Duplex=DuplexNoTumble Tymoczko08.pdf usage: lpr [-cdfghlmnpqrstv] [-#num] [-1234 font] [-C class] [-i [numcols]] [-J job] [-Pprinter] [-T title] [-U user] [-wnum] [name ...] $ lpr -P ISMS -O Duplex=DuplexNoTumble Tymoczko08.pdf $ lpr -PISMS -oDuplex=DuplexNoTumble Tymoczko08.pdf $ lpr -PISMS -ODuplex=DuplexNoTumble Tymoczko08.pdf $ lpr -P ISMS -o 'sides=two-sided-long-edge' Tymoczko08.pdf $ lpr -P ISMS -O 'sides=two-sided-long-edge' Tymoczko08.pdf So why does everyone on the Web have a -o switch for their lpr and I don't? Mine is version 1:2008.05.17 from Debian unstable. Any suggestions? -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +-------------------------------------------------------+ |Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.| |http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html | +-------------------------------------------------------+

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How to refer to 'all my files', including hidden ones?
by Chris G 13 Mar '09

13 Mar '09

I often have this problem! :-) How can one refer to all one's own files and directories easily? E.g. I am sitting at /home/chris and, for whatever reason, I want to apply a command to all the files, including hidden files. A command like this for example (where I have moved some files in which belong to someone else), I become root and do:- chown -R chris * Well, that's OK but it doesn't include hidden files, so:- chown -R chris .* That's no good either because it tries to run the command on .. as well as . and the hidden files. There are things like:- chown -R chris .[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]* but it feels like there should be an easier way. I know there's better syntax than [a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]* (using + I think), but it's still hardly elegant. -- Chris Green

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How to truncate a mailbox periodically?
by Chris G 13 Mar '09

13 Mar '09

Can anyone suggest a neat/easy way to keep only (say) the last seven days of messages in an incoming mail spool? I have a couple of mail spools where I want to be able to do this, possibly with different 'number of days' expiry. -- Chris Green

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Free Laptops !
by Wayne Stallwood 10 Mar '09

10 Mar '09

Aha..now I have your attention Just a reminder that nobody has stepped up to become the ALUG librarian yet and the book collection is kinda really starting to get in my way now. This (for the right person) could be the stepping stone to many great things, so I am sure there is someone out there who really really wants to take this on.. Come on now..don't be shy..make yourself known and all the fame and fortune of being the only current ALUG librarian will be yours. On a mostly related note, part of the library is a collection of Linux user magazines from circa 2004/2005. Any objections to me chucking them out ? Anybody out there who actually wants them or has a good reason for us keeping them in the library speak now.

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Names sorting in Linux, is it just me that wants surname first?
by Chris G 10 Mar '09

10 Mar '09

Does anyone else here find that Linux applications' idea of how names should be presented in address lists etc. seems to be wrong, or at least not ideal? Having decided that I don't want to live with Evolution's quirks I took a look at Thunderbird, a well sorted mainstream application if there was one surely. But it *too* decides that the "Screen Name" for entries in the address list is presented as first name followed by surname. Thus, more importantly than the presentation, the names are *sorted* by first name which is decidedly not the way I expect to look names up in an address list. Am I missing some obvious configuration option that sorts names in surname order? This has happened in several different Linux apps when synchronizing data from my PDA whereas when I synchronized with Outlook (spit) I got exactly what I expected, names sorted by surname. It's this sort of thing that puts people of Linux a bit. -- Chris Green

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Bbattery charging "mystery"
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 10 Mar '09

10 Mar '09

Hi Folks, Yesterday I observed something which surprised me (running Debian Etch in VirtualBox in Win XP on an Advent 8117 laptop). WHen I sat down at the desk, I noticed the battery-charging LED flashing. When I check the battery level monitor (in both Debian and XP) it was at 20% and charging. An hour later it was fully charged. I generally leave the laptop running continuously, days on end, and its power supply is permanently connected to the mains. It's possible that something disturbed to connection for a while (perhaps most likely where the mains cable connects to the PS brick), and that something later re-established it (I do tend to swim in a pile of clutter so stuff gets pushed around), but the event prompted me to wonder the following. Might it be that, if a laptop (at any rate for some models) is kept continuously connected to the mains for days on end, then for the sake of battery health a re-charge cycle is initiated, whereby the input from the mains-connected PS brick is internally disconnected for a while, until battery-level drops to a fairly low level, and is then re-connected? It is, of course, known that it's good for battery life to submit it to a discharge/recharge cycle every so often; but I've not heard of this being built-in to laptops' power monitoring. (But then there's a lot of stuff I haven't heard of). Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 22-Feb-09 Time: 09:44:56 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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