- main - earth.li

Debian books
by James Freer 06 Feb '08

06 Feb '08

Knowing that quite a number of you are Debian users i was wondering which of these books you'd recommend [or others!!]... i'm interested in a book that'll give system info rather than a manual on how to use OpenOffice on Debian as it were! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Debian-System-Concepts-Techniques/dp/1593270690/ref… http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Debian-Linux-Bill-McCarty/dp/1565927052/re… thanks james __________________________________________________________ Sent from Yahoo! Mail - a smarter inbox http://uk.mail.yahoo.com

5 6

hosts.allow syntax
by Jenny Hopkins 05 Feb '08

05 Feb '08

Hullo there, I've got ("have taken over") a hosts.allow file as below: ftp: ALL cvspserver: ALL svn: ALL sshd: ALL telnet: ALL ALL: <domain-we-allow>.co.uk ALL: LOCAL I don't understand why if the ALL keyword is called in the first half, aliases are then described in the second. Surely ALL means just that? What I want is for the cvspserver to be ALL and the others to be restricted to LOCAL and <domain-we-allow>.co.uk. No matter what I try with wildcard *, UNKNOWN, etc, the hosts.allow will only allow anonymous cvs log in with adding ALL:ALL at the bottom, which I don't want to do obviously. Sorry to not rtfm; I have done but it sort of went in one ear and out of the other leaving a puffy pink cloud in the middle. Thanks, Jenny

3 9

Debian books
by James Freer 05 Feb '08

05 Feb '08

Knowing that quite a number of you are Debian users i was wondering which of these books you'd recommend [or others!!]... i'm interested in a book that'll give system info rather than a manual on how to use OpenOffice on Debian as it were! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Debian-System-Concepts-Techniques/dp/1593270690/ref… http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Debian-Linux-Bill-McCarty/dp/1565927052/re… james

1 0

Fwd: Anyone a BIOS/EEPROM burner please?
by Mark Rogers 04 Feb '08

04 Feb '08

One of my local LUG members has the following request, anyone here able to help? ------------ Good evening, As I failed to realize that today is "nothing works" day, I upgraded a Tyan Tiger MPX mainboard from BIOS 4.03 to 4.06 At least, that's what it said it did. Instead, it bricked the machine. I've taken the BIOS chip out, it's a 4mbit part by SST, 32pin square (9pin/7pin) 3.8mm PQFP. If anyone has the tools to write to it, please let me know. Regards, Tony V. P.S. Feel free to send this mail on. I realize that the person doing this will want to be compensated for their time. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

2 2

su with user ID (not name)
by Mark Rogers 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

I'm trying to delete a load of files owned by previously existing users. In other words I then need to "su [username] -c 'rm -r [dirname]' where [username] matches the owner of the files. (I don't have root access to the server but do have the ability to su to any of the users I need to delete files for.) If I use "ls -l" I see the user names truncated to 8 chars, so I'm using "ls -ln" to see the numeric user ID of the files instead. However su doesn't work with numeric UID values. So either I need to find a way to get the fullname of the owner (I know stat will do this but I have a lot these to do and I can't see a good way to just get a list), or find a way to map the UID to a name for su, or some other workaround I haven't thought of. Suggestions? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

3 6

Characters on screen wrong using SSH
by Barry Samuels 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

When I use SSH to log in to a remote machine and use something like Aptitude or MC on the remote machine some of the characters on the screen e.g IBM box characters appear as something else which makes the screen difficult to read. Is there a way to cure this? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

4 4

Cambridge and East Anglia Python Users Group
by Richard Lewis 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

Dear ALUG, The Cambridge and East Anglian Python Users group will hold its fourth "first Tuesday" social meeting on Tuesday 5th February at the Carlton Arms (Carlton Way, Cambridge, CB4 2BY). People intend to arrive from around 20:00 and I will be going from Norwich by train if anyone would like to join me. Please feel free to contact me on- or off-list regarding this if you like. Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis - UEA, MUS PG http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1 0

Backup servers (r)synchronised between sites
by Mark Rogers 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

I have two sites that are Internet connected via standard ADSL, and that want to have a simple backup server in each site that uses the other site to store an off-site redundant copy of the data. I plan a Linux server at each site, each with a small o/s drive and two pairs of large SATA drives using software RAID (one pair for each site). That combination should give a good idea of the budget available for this.... Forget hot-swap SCSI drives on hardware raid cards etc! I can easily see how I could rsync the first raid array on site A ("A:md0") across to B:md0, and B:md1 to A:md1. Where I need advice is picking the best backup approach for the users at each site to use to populate their respective backup storage in the first place. (Most of the users will of-course be using Windows, and should be treated as untrained monkeys for the sake of this project.) Given the bandwidth limited ADSL link between the two sites (but with high off-peak limits) I need a backup method which does not cause rsync to needlessly send unchanged data. If I used something like Cobian Backup to create incremental backups, although the disk space usage would be relatively small the periodic full backups will cause rsync to send full backups across the link even though 90% of the content of those backups will already have been synchronised previously. I've seen solutions that use hardlinks between identical files to provide rolling backups on Linux, but I need to support Windows. Any suggestions? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

2 4

PDA to use with Linux?
by Jan T. Kim 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

Dear All, my Palm Tungsten is getting increasingly short of breath (battery life) and so I think of getting a successor. I'd like a handheld of some sort that * uses flash memory (i.e. permanent storage that survives battery outages) * interoperates with Linux (the Palm can be backed up and restored using pilot-xfer, but I've not found anything useful to work with the data in the *.pdb ("Palm Database") files) * is small (the Zaurus SL-C palmtops seem interesting to me in many ways, but I think they're just a bit too bulky for shirt pockets, and also, they're quite expensive) * provides a decent choice of software for contacts, diary keeping, and (ideally) an advanced "To Do" tool that understands dependency graphs and integrates with the diary Any recommendations / experiences / comments? Please let me know. Best regards, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | email: jtk(a)cmp.uea.ac.uk | | WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*

2 1

TV adapter
by Barry Samuels 29 Jan '08

29 Jan '08

I would like to get a Hauppauge WinTV Nova T 500 adapter which I understand works with Linux. That's the easy part. It would be very inconvenient to install it in my desktop because it would require a connection to a TV aerial socket and I don't have one near my desktop. My idea would be to assemble another computer using some spare parts that I have together with some parts that I would have to re-aquire. I say 're-aquire' because I would have had all the necessary parts if I hadn't given away a lot of them (CPUs, hard drives, RAM) to a local computer recycling charity a few months ago. Why is it that one does not have a use for these parts until they've gone? I'm assuming that if I assemble the said computer with the TV adapter in it (putting it near a TV aerial socket) and can connect wirelessly to my desktop then I could access the TV adapter from my desktop using something like MythTV. Would such a thing be possible? I would be looking at a minimal install of Linux on the new box with all the processing done on my desktop. This would assume that I could connect the two boxes using nothing more than a wireless adapter in each i.e. no router. My desktop has an on- board wireless adapter and I have two spare PCI adapters one of which I could use in the new box. Is it possible to get two wireless adapters to communicate in this way? Would that be fast enough to cope with the data from the TV adapter? What sort of specification for the new machine would be required? I have a Gigabyte GA-7ZXE mainboard which takes a Socket A Athlon (which I would have to aquire) and it takes PC-133 SDRam (which I would also have to aquire). What's the minimum RAM I would need? I would also need to aquire an IDE hard drive. What's the minimum size I could get away with? I wouldn't normally want to use a screen or keyboard after the machine has been setup - would that cause problems when booting? What else haven't I thought of? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

3 3