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10368 discussions

How to diagnose this crash on exit from X?
by Chris G 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

I have just installed xubuntu 8.10 on new hardware. It is based on a an Asus P5Q-VM motherboard (all Intel, including graphics) has 8Gb of memory and a quad code processor. It all installed OK without any problems and ran OK. However since I set the graphics resolution to 1600x1200 (the display's default) it crashes *totally* on exiting from X. It's a total, hard, crash - CTRL/ALT/Fn won't switch to a text console, I can't ssh into the system (which I can before it has crashed) and I can't ping the system. There is one other symptom, when I try and switch to a text mode console (using CTRL/ALT/Fn) even when the system is running OK I get a message from my monitor saying "this mode isn't supported" which seems a little odd on a monitor capable of 1600x1200 at more than 60Hz. The monitor is a Dell 2001FP and I'm using the DVI-D input. Does anyone have any ideas how to diagnose this problem? I have hunted around the files in /var/log but I can't see anything that looks significant there. The xorg.conf file is totally uncustomised:- Section "Device" Identifier "Configured Video Device" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Configured Monitor" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Monitor "Configured Monitor" Device "Configured Video Device" EndSection -- Chris Green

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Ripping HD-DVD disks to XVID
by Mark Rogers 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

I have recently bought some HD-DVD disks as they're getting very cheap now that HD-DVD has been killed off in favour of Blu-Ray. I have an HD capable TV with an XVID capable DVD player built into it. And I have an HD-DVD reader (& DVD writer) to plug into my PC. At the moment I haven't connected it up because it's SATA based and I've run out of SATA connectors so some juggling is going to be required (or I can stick it into a Windows PC). So, before I go too far, does anyone have any hints as to how I can rip HD-DVD content and convert it into XVID to burn back to a DVD? I want to basically get a full DVD in MPEG4 format from an HD-DVD. Will I even be able to read the HD-DVD in Linux? (My desktop is Ubuntu 8.10.) I don't have any other HD-DVD player so buying the disks was a bit of a gamble really :-) -- 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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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

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 next week (Monday 17th November) 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. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard to find the pack, look for those huddled around a laptop! This month, we promised to provide a beginner's tutorial to a standards-based VoIP (i.e SIP) alternative to popular proprietary applications like Skype. Following the discussion last month, we'll aim to demonstrate how to get an easy client installed under Windows and Linux, and explain how they can interoperate, as well as being able to break out to the PSTN network. The intention is to show attendees how the Skype feature-set can be replicated using standards-based and open software. We'll aim for a practical demo, but are happy to delve into the real techy stuff, if you have questions - at least one of our members works with VoIP full-time. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. 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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How to deal with MS .docx files?
by Chris G 10 Nov '08

10 Nov '08

Is there any Linux application that will handle MS Word .docx files successfully? A .dox file is a compressed archive of .xml files but unpacking it doesn't really produce anything very usable. -- Chris Green

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Sat Nav and Linux
by mbm 09 Nov '08

09 Nov '08

I am considering buying a satnav and would welcome some advice. I've never used one and I'm assuming any setup software, map updates etc will need a Windows PC. I don't have such a thing and want to avoid buying a satnav which I can't then fully use/update/configure or whatever for lack of windows availability. Any suggestions? Or am I worrying unnecessarily? 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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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 13 November 2008
by David Reynolds,,, 07 Nov '08

07 Nov '08

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Dear ALUG, The monthly second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 13th November 2008 at The Reindeer (10 Dereham Road, Norwich, NR2 4AY; tel. 01603 762223). It's very near the junction of Dereham Road and the Norwich inner ring road (Grapes Hill) and serves a selection of real ales, nice pub food (if you fancy going early to eat) and coffee. There are generally people there from 20:00 onwards and we tend to sit to the left of the main entrance. We look forward to seeing you there. Cheers, David -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk ----- 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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help with wpa_supplicant please
by CDW (Linux) 02 Nov '08

02 Nov '08

Can I say first off that I'm trying to make wpa_supplicant work with DesktopBSD so apologies if some of you feel I shouldn't be asking for help here. I have an old IBM Thinkpad and having tried various brands of Linux, DesktopBSD was the only OS that installed correcly. I then wanted to make it to talk to my other machines which meant networking. It doesn't have a LAN port so I bought what I thought was a good wireless card. I was wrong. It's a Netgear WG511v2 and I've had to install it using ndisgen. I can get the thing to recognise my wireless LAN and if I run ifconfig, it reports :- ndis0: flags=8842<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ether 00:1b:2f:d0:69:59 media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect (DS/11Mbps) status: associated ssid ss2_scanning channel 11 bssid 00:0f:3d:34:d6:f6 authmode WPA privacy OFF txpowmax 100 bmiss 7 My /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file looks like this ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant ctrl+interface_group=wheel network={ ssid="ss2_scanning" proto=WPA key_mgmt=WPA-PSK pairwise=TKIP group=TKIP psk="c:(vo.............$-" } So the question is, does the psk data have to be in quotes and in hex? If so, how do I translate my ascii line into hex? I've read lots and lots of stuff online about all this and to be honest, I'm thoroughly confused. I'd appreciate any help. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .-----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |_______________________________________________|

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Print Postage (Royal Mail)
by Steve Fosdick 31 Oct '08

31 Oct '08

Has anyone had occasion to use the "Print Postage" service from Royal Mail? Does it reply on installing any proprietry software on your PC (including Adobe Flash) or is it usable from a normal web browser? Regards, Steve.

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Firefox 3
by Peter Alcibiades 31 Oct '08

31 Oct '08

Just upgraded to this. Am I alone in finding it very disconcerting? In fact, its so disconcerting that I'm seriously thinking of migrating to Konqueror. First there is the way fonts behave. Completely weird. Large spaces between words. It looks sort of like monospace, but for words, and the spacing on the page of a chunk of prose is weird. Tinkering at great length with the fonts helped a bit, I finally found one of the MS ones that looks not normal, but relatively bearable. Then there is the way that they have helpfully made the tab closures look all the same, whether for the open tab or others, so you can no longer see easily by the fact that the active one is red which it is. Then some pages simply don't display properly - ones which used to in 2.x That is, chunks of them are simply missing. 90% of the themes do not work with 3.x yet, so your ability to change any of the appearance is limited. Perhaps most disconcerting is the way autocompletion now seems to work. When you type in a url, it produces a list of suggestions in large font, with legends under them, most of which appear not to have been ones you've previously visited, and most of which I have no intention of ever visiting. It feels like a sort of weird spam. What on earth was wrong with just giving you a list in some reasonably sized and neutral font? Is there any way to get back to that? And is this actually advertising? Its hard to see that it could be, since many of the links are to sites that would likely not pay. Is it some idiot's idea of how to be helpful? I'd be on K now, except for the fact that migrating the bookmarks is a horrendous process. K seems to do imports in such a way that you end up with everything on one huge page which totally occupies the screen. Why it cannot simply import them in the folders they are in....! Or is this just me? Does everyone else think its the bees knees, the dogs unmentionables and so on? Peter

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Firefox 3
by Peter Alcibiades 31 Oct '08

31 Oct '08

Here is another weird thing. Downloading, everything slows to a halt - FF at least. You can't open another site without a 5-10 second delay. Then after a short period speed falls from the normally scintillating tiscali 120k to around 5k. Gradually. Is this sounding like memory leak? Peter

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