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Problem rebooting debian server after power down
by Jenny Hopkins 23 Apr '08

23 Apr '08

Hullo there List, I powered down a debian etch server yesterday, for the first time in several months. When powered back up, it is mounting the hard drive read only for some reason, with no hostname. The kernel is 2.6.18-5-amd64, if I boot into older kernels I get the same problem. I've run fsck several times and found no errors. I remounted the drive rw and started trying to manually start services. I tried setting the hostname thusly: jenny@(none):~$ sudo /etc/init.d/hostname.sh start /etc/init.d/hostname.sh: line 19: /lib/init/vars.sh: No such file or directory jenny@(none):~$ Looking in /lib/init, there are no files, only an empty rw directory, but on my other system there are a bunch of startup files. I see the package initscripts is supposed to provide these files, -dpkg says v. 2.86.ds1-38 installed. I went to remove and reinstall it but got such a scary warning i haven't dared yet. Has anyone any idea what on earth is going on? Thanks, any pointers appreciated. Jenny

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Further report on MSI Titan 700 NAS and USB drive
by Chris G 23 Apr '08

23 Apr '08

It's all done now. :-) I formatted the external USB drive as ext3 last night, it worked without a hitch. I have mounted the USB drive on the system in the garage and have exported it using NFS and mounted it on my desktop Fedora system. I changed my overnight backup script in /etc/cron.daily to write across the network to the USB drive on the MSI system and that ran flawlessly apart from one base directory I had forgotten to create. That works *much* better than trying to backup direct to the Freecom NAS drive (that is now the USB drive on the MSI system). Since the Freecom NAS only offered FAT32 lots of things failed to backup to it properly and I had to jump through hoops with rsync to get it to work at all. rdiff-backup just didn't want to know. -- Chris Green

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Can one force apt-get to download rather than use CD?
by Chris G 23 Apr '08

23 Apr '08

I'm finding my way slowly with Ubuntu Server, now I have a minor problem with apt-get. It wants me to put the Ubuntu Server CD into the machine which, since it's in the garage, is a bit of a pain. Can I force it *not* to use the CD but to always got to the internet to download packages I want to install? If so, how? -- Chris Green

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MSI Titan 700 via based system
by Chris G 22 Apr '08

22 Apr '08

Well the MSI Titan system I was talking about arrived yesterday, it's certainly very compact, but with all the 'bits' you could want. I have installed Ubuntu Server 7.10 on it, it installed without a hitch, not a single problem except that I somehow mis-typed my password during installation and couldn't log in when the system booted. Oops! However running 'rescue system' from the CD allowed me to run as root and modify the password file. It runs from a little 60 watt external power supply which is just luke warm after being on overnight so around 20 watts or so consumption seems about right. It's not incredibly quiet, the fan is quite noticeable with it sat on my desk, that's not an issue for me as it's going to be in the garage but it might be for some people. I've got an external disk drive sat on top of it at the moment so it may be a bit warmer than it should, the fan is CPU controlled. I've already got the external USB drive working with it, I haven't dared try and re-format it yet though (any answers on that front?). All in all I'm very pleased with it, exactly what I want at not too bad a price. -- Chris Green

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Lenovo Thinkcentre A61e USFF
by Tim Green 22 Apr '08

22 Apr '08

After Wayne's recommendation I bought one of those Lenovo Thinkcentre A61e USFF thingies. He's not kidding about expansion options - no PCI slots! I think there is a mico-PCI slot free next to the (laptop) memory slot, so WiFi is possible. On the back there are 3 audio ports, 4 USB, 1 Ethernet, one VGA and the DC power socket. That low price of £195.73 + VAT (=£229.98) also includes a sturdy keyboard, a very lightweight optical mouse, and an XP licence, but no CDs and no monitor. The concept is not far off a MacMini, but about three times larger, and black. I'll be installing Hardly Heroin when it's released at the end of the week, and I'll let you know how it goes. Regards, Tim Green.

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Tools to clean "empty space" on disks
by Mark Rogers 22 Apr '08

22 Apr '08

Are there any tools around that can clean empty space on disks? I'm not too worried about doing this for secure deletion purposes, I just want to get a good result from a compressed image of the disk. NB: I tend to use: dd if=/dev/hdb | gzip > hdb.dd.gz .. but there's probably a much better way to do this. Usually it's an NTFS disk but in this particular case it is ext3. -- 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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Firefox toolbars - help!
by Chris G 21 Apr '08

21 Apr '08

I've been playing with Firefox themes and have been customising the toolbars. A while ago I added a new toolbar, basically as a separator for the theme I was using but now I need it no more. So, how do you *remove* a toolbar you've added? You can turn view off for the toolbar but I couldn't make that 'stick', every time I restarted Firefox the toolbar was visible again and I had to turn view off again. So I clicked on "Restore Default Set" in the toolbar customisation window. That got rid of my added toolbar permanently which is something, but now I have loads of icons in the Navigation Toolbar that I don't want. It says "You can add or remove items by dragging to or from the toolbars", no I can't! I can add items by dragging them too the toolbar but I can't remove them by dragging them from the toolbar. How on earth does one remove items? -- Chris Green

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[Fwd: Re: [ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Milestone, Woodbridge Road]
by Dave Crisp 20 Apr '08

20 Apr '08

It looks like I'm actually going to be at this one. I'm scared..... On Wed, 2008-04-16 at 11:49 +0100, Tracy Dickerson wrote: > Hello, Guys and Gals, > > Rick and I will try and be there this month. Sorry for our absence, I > hope all is well. > > Tracy x > > On 15/04/2008, samwise <samwise(a)bagshot-row.org> wrote: > > 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 21 April 2008) at 20:00: > > > > > > The Milestone Beer House > > 5 Woodbridge Road > > IPSWICH > > IP4 2EA > > > > Tel: 01473 252425 > > Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA > > > > The Milestone pub is in the centre of Ipswich, near the now-defunct > > Odeon cinema and not far from The Regent Theatre. > > > > There is more information on the venue, including car parking info, on > > the ALUG wiki: > > > > http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings > > > > 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! > > > > 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 > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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! > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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! >

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Free to a Good home
by Wayne Stallwood 19 Apr '08

19 Apr '08

Alphaserver 800 5/333, in a rack case, 512MB of RAM, 3 4.2GB hotplug disks with a carrier for a 4th, DAT drive (untested), CD ROM. I have OpenVMS installation media (it's up to the buyer to obtain a free hobbyist licence) it had BSD on it I think but one of the disks has failed. The remaining two disks go through block test diags fine however. As a system it probably still has ebay value, I just can't be bothered to deal with listing it, packing it for postage etc Also Last call for my original media server, headless 833Mhz PIII with 128MB RAM, no disks installed, small form factor case. You need to be able to do a serial console installation or attach a pci gfx card and usb ports to do a local console one. Also HP PA-RISC machine, series 9000 model C110. I took this from Noodles before he moved on behalf of another ALUG member who then didn't want it after all. I know nothing about it other that it boots and it is now officially in my way. All of the above need to be collected either as a whole or in part, however you might be able to convince me to attend a meet with some/all in my car boot :)

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What I've decided to buy as a low power system
by Chris G 19 Apr '08

19 Apr '08

I've found this MSI Titan 700 system:- http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=21448 I've not actually bought it from CCL because they're out of stock at the moment, I bought it from Lambdatek (slightly cheaper too). Low power VIA processor, all ready put together for me, Gigabit LAN, what more could I want? Hardly any more expensive than a NAS and much more capable. -- Chris Green

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