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Scripting a crontab re-read
by Mark Rogers 18 Sep '08

18 Sep '08

Does anyone have any idea how to force cron to reload its user-based crontabs? I have a setup script for a system which does a lot of things, amongst them copying a crontab into /var/spool/cron/crontabs and settings its permissions, however cron ignores it until I crontab -e and make a change (eg add and delete something) and save it. Restarting cron or even the box is not sufficient to make it reload. I discovered that the mtime of the crontabs folder is relevant, but "touch"ing it hasn't solved the problem. (System is Ubuntu 8.04 server.) -- 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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Help with gnome desktop icon please!
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

Hi Folks, On my (debian Etch) Gnome desktop there are some icons, one of which is named "ted's Home". When I double-click on this, up comes a window which displays the contents of /home/ted So far so good ... One of the directories in /home/ted is Downloads, i.e. /home/ted/Downloads I want to put an icon on the desktop such that double clicking on this will open /home/ted/Downloads and display its contents (rather than having to double click on "ted's Home" and then double click on "Downloads"). I can NOT suss out how to do this!!! Help please! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 17-Sep-08 Time: 20:00:41 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Free Text Terminal
by Steve Fosdick 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

Further to my last message, an HP 700/92 text terminal availbale to anyone who will collect. This is one of the models that understands both the HP proprietry escape codes and the DEC/ANSI codes. Uses a non- PS2 keyboard (supplied, not pictured). Has 25 pin D connection for connection to host and a printer port. More details: http://pelvoux.gotadsl.co.uk/freecycle/index.html Steve.

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Free Stuff (computer desk, Monitor, PC)
by Steve Fosdick 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

Free to anyone prepared to collect: A PC desk, Width 762mm, Depth 755mm, Height 710mm A 17" monitor (1280x1024@60Hz or 1024x768@85Hz) An AMD K6 PC More details here: http://pelvoux.gotadsl.co.uk/freecycle/index.html

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Self-hosted DDNS
by Mark Rogers 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

Are there any free (preferably as in speech) dynamic DNS packages, to provide services similar to those offered by DynDNS? Just to be clear, I'm not looking for something like ddclient (which connects to services like DynDNS), I want to set up my own DNS server which can be updated by those types of clients. (The application is industrial hardware we're supplying as part of other solutions which will often be set up with Internet access, often with dynamic IP, and we want to keep track of them.) -- 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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Looking for an alarm/reminder program for Gnome (or X)
by Chris G 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

Having decided that there's no application out there that can manage both my calendar/time management *and* my reminder/alarm requirements I've decided to look for a dedicated alarm program. My requirements are:- Must run in the background or be driven by cron so that alarms will appear regardless of what I'm doing (I will be running an X desktop but that's the only guaranteed thing, actually not quite, Firefox is always running too). When an event is due I want to be able to pop up daily reminders from a specified number of days before the event and to be able to stop them when I have 'done' what is required. I'd like the pop-up (flag, whatever) to be permanent until I acknowledge it, something like an icon in the Gnome Panel would be OK. Events need to be specified by date, time of day is unlikely to be significant. For most things a yearly repeat would be fine (e.g. a 'birthday' type reminder), I also have several which are quaterly but I'm prepared to deal with them by setting up four annual reminders if necessary. Kalarm seems to fulfil most of my criteria - any other ideas? Is there something more 'Gnome friendly' or generic maybe? A PIM or groupware application which can do this might be of interest but I will *not* be running it all the time so note the first criterion above. -- Chris Green

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Text munging tool...
by Ruth Bygrave 16 Sep '08

16 Sep '08

The Mac, and other Unix systems, have fairly good text-munging things for mapping typos to corrected words etc. I use TypeIt4Me for on-the- fly corrections of mistakes I make all the time. I'm having a go at OCRing a book that fell apart: what's the best 'black box' for regex text munging (i.e. pour file in, get corrected file out?) for patterns that turn up again and again? Obvious examples from the book include: digits in whitespace between lower-case alpha characters (meaning page numbers); the string 'ddThe' (goodness knows how this happens, but it seems to be a scanning error for ". The"); lower-case letters with a spurious line- break between them; and so on. These are obvious simple regexes without false positives. Do I: 1) Try to use sed? 2) use something someone has already written in perl or python? or 3) try to write something in applescript? (posted to Alug because it's much more of a Unix question than a Mac- specific question) Regards, Ruth

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Debian 3.1
by CDW (Linux) 15 Sep '08

15 Sep '08

My son has picked up a Sun Sparc workstation which has Debian 3.1 on it. It was from a freecycle mail list but the preson donating it was a bit clueless - he said he worked for an Apple Store but the iMac he was also trying to make work, didn't. That was due to a blank boot CD and a dead hard drive. The Sun works and gets to a login prompt but that's the problem, no userids or passwords as you might expect. As my son doesn't have broadband and so can't easily download a full CD, is there an easy way to recover the machine, perhaps by blowing away a file containing the afore-mentioned userids? If so, what can I do to help him? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .-----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |_______________________________________________|

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Re: [ALUG] How's the EEE-PC keyboard - does anyone here have one?
by Bev Nicolson 14 Sep '08

14 Sep '08

Bamboozled and Confused, I wouldn't worry about it. regards mostly harmless. Bev. > > On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 08:17:21PM +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote: > > > > > Micro Mart also ran a comparison article in this week's edition. They > > > > > concluded that the Elonex WebBook was "best value". Apparently > > > > > CarPhone > > > > > Warehouse sell a version with ubuntu loaded. > > > > > > Huh! Last time I spoke to Carphone Warehouse (asking about > > > > Linux-compatible broadband dongles, no-one in the dhop had even heard of > > > > Linux... > > > > > > Someone needs to tell PC World that as they're running an ad that > > > compares their notebook with the one Carphone Warehouse are offering > > > and making it sound (to me) like Linux is a bad thing... > > > Bev. > I'm confused! > > How d'ye do, Confused: I'm pleased to meet you. I'm bamboozled. > > But, I keep a special bargepole with which not to touch PC World. I've > got another one now for not touching CarPhone Warehouse. > > <OT> Did you hear about the dyslexic pimp? > > He bought a warehouse... > > </OT> > > -- > Tony > http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/ > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! > -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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Alug Library
by Wayne Stallwood 14 Sep '08

14 Sep '08

As most of you know I have been the ALUG Librarian now for some time. However as of sometime around Christmas/Early next year I will be moving to a house with one less bedroom and I think I may run into problems storing the books, Also the house I am moving to is likely to be a building site for some time and really the less things I have around the easier life will be. Therefore this is a call for a new librarian to stand up or for us to discuss the future of the library. I am completely happy to continue to host and maintain the online library catalogue..it is only the actual storage of the books that might present a problem. This might actually also make more sense if someone who attends the meetings more regularly than me took over. Also this might be a good time to discuss the future of the library, at the moment and since I took over it is almost completely inactive. Part of this is I think due to the logistics of the books being in Bury St Edmunds in the possession of a member who rarely attends meets but mostly I think because the collection is quite out of date. The O'Reilly group membership has been processed and we have received exactly one book. To receive more free we really need to get something up to promote the books (or at least review them on our site) or actually request specific books and see what happens. There is also a group discount for members who want to purchase books, but I have not had time to figure out the logistics of this. These bits would require more time than I currently have whilst amongst house clearing/renovation to get set up but would hopefully result in a selection of up to date books for the library. Another option is to prune the existing collection somewhat to a size where it is more manageable for a member to take over (or perhaps even for me to continue to manage) and then for me or someone else to take steps to get some book donations to replace the purged books with more recent/more interesting books. Alternatively with minimal effort on my part the online library can support a distributed library where members share responsibility for storing the books and the loan is "permanent" until a member leaves or someone else wants to borrow it. The site can then mail the relevant person for each book to tell them that someone else wants to borrow it etc. Your collective thoughts and/or offers to store the library as it stands would be appreciated.

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