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cron script causing system to run at 100% cpu usage
by Jenny Hopkins 12 Sep '07

12 Sep '07

Hullo there, There's a script in /etc/cron.daily (on debian-etch server) called 'find', which is starting at around 8.30 am, using 100% cpu power, then kind of sticking there for hours (I just had to manually kill the processes it seems to start, like locate and updatedb and sort). Below is the script, and updatedb.conf. Has anyone any idea why this should be unable to run properly, and would it be a Bad Awful thing to just have it not run? Thanks, Jenny jenny@xios:~$ sudo more /etc/cron.daily/find #! /bin/sh # # cron script to update the `locatedb' database. # # Written by Ian A. Murdock <imurdock(a)debian.org> and # Kevin Dalley <kevin(a)aimnet.com> LOCALUSER="nobody" export LOCALUSER if [ -f /etc/updatedb.conf ]; then . /etc/updatedb.conf fi if getent passwd $LOCALUSER > /dev/null ; then cd / && nice -n ${NICE:-10} updatedb 2>/dev/null else echo "User $LOCALUSER does not exist." exit 1 fi jenny@xios:~$ sudo more /etc/updatedb.conf # This file sets environment variables which are used by updatedb # Global options for invocations of find(1) FINDOPTIONS='-ignore_readdir_race' export FINDOPTIONS # filesystems which are pruned from updatedb database PRUNEFS="NFS nfs nfs4 afs binfmt_misc proc smbfs autofs iso9660 ncpfs coda devpts ftpfs devfs mfs shfs sysfs cifs lustre_lite tmpfs usbfs udf" export PRUNEFS # paths which are pruned from updatedb database PRUNEPATHS="/tmp /usr/tmp /var/tmp /afs /amd /alex /var/spool /sfs /media" export PRUNEPATHS # netpaths which are added NETPATHS="" export NETPATHS # run find as this user LOCALUSER="nobody" export LOCALUSER # cron.daily/find: run at this priority -- higher number means lower priority # (this is relative to the default which cron sets, which is usually +5) NICE=10 export NICE

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adjusting row height in OO
by Peter Alcibiades 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

I've an OO spreadsheet of a reasonable size. It has about four or five sheets, one of which has about 10,000 lines, and it has an array formula to go through and total the categories of this 10k line sheet into an array 6 x 400 cells. Lets say, they could be a 10k list of events, of 400 types, occurring at one of 6 dates. When opening, it takes forever to do something it calls 'adjusting row height'. I can't figure out what it can be doing, since all row heights are default values. Looking on the OO discussion groups, someone has posted this query but got no answer. It makes no difference if its in xls format or odt. Any ideas? Yes, I know one should probably not do this sort of thing in a spreadsheet, and maybe I'll rewrite it in a better vehicle, but the advantage was, done in a spreadsheet its available to any intelligent secretary. Or that was my theory, which was a bit dented when trying to explain how in array formulas multiplication becomes logical and.... It seems simple, but it turned out to be quite hard for them to get their heads around. But its still more accessible than a 'real programme'. Peter

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Re: [ALUG] Clamav issues
by David Reynolds 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

On 11 Sep 2007, at 10:13 am, Brett Parker wrote: > Can we have an ls -lad /path/to/directory/holding/socket, drwxrwxrwx 2 clamav clamav 4096 2007-09-10 17:14 /var/run/clamav/ I may have set these myself when I was fiddling the other day. > preferably the > backend of the clam log when it's restarted (maybe in daemon.log or > mail.log), Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 -> +++ Started at Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 -> clamd daemon 0.90.1 (OS: linux-gnu, ARCH: i386, CPU: i486) Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 -> Log file size limit disabled. Tue Sep 11 13:31:41 2007 -> Reading databases from /var/lib/clamav > the default permissions of the socket... Er, no idea > Err, I think that'd be enough debug info to start with :) > > (Otherwise we're just on speculation!) > > Oh, one other question, does it still start it's networking side up? > i.e. can you connect to the daemon over TCP/IP? Again, no idea. Thanks, Dave -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Impress
by Bev Nicolson 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

Opening a Powerpoint presentation in Impress I find that one slide seems to be too big for the slide area. The last few lines of text are obscured by a grey block of colour which makes the white text impossible to read. How can I resize it? I would read the manual but I've got no idea where to start looking. (And the one I have got doesn't mention any incompatibility.) Bev. -- _______________________________________________ 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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How to allow another user to run something on my X desktop?
by Chris G 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

How can I make it possible for another user to run one specific program on my desktop? I don't want to simply remove the X security completely, I'd rather do it by some sort of SUID'ish sort of approach. The first thing I have tried doesn't work though. I changed the ownership of the program in question to be owned by me and set the SUID bit:- -rwsr-xr-x 1 chris root 2497525 2007-02-14 18:54 /usr/local/bin/xvile I thought that if anyone else executes the program they would 'become' chris but it doesn't work. However thinking about it now I suspect that I'd need to add some code to the program to actually change the user as well as setting the permissions as above. So, is there any other way to get what I want? I just want another user (it's just one user in particular if that makes it easier) to be able to run /usr/local/bin/xvile on my X desktop. It's a home system with me as the only real user so there aren't any serious security implications, there aren't any unfriendly users. -- Chris Green

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Clamav issues
by David Reynolds 11 Sep '07

11 Sep '07

Hi, I seem to be having some issues with clamav at the moment. It only seems to be creating the socket file on a reboot. If it gets restarted any other time, I get no socket file and then exim won't talk to it. Anyone have any ideas? I'm running the following versions of clam (on debian): ii clamav 0.90.1-3etch7 antivirus scanner for Unix ii clamav-base 0.90.1-3etch7 base package for clamav, an anti-virus utili ii clamav-daemon 0.90.1-3etch7 antivirus scanner daemon ii clamav-freshclam 0.90.1-3etch7 downloads clamav virus databases from the In ii clamav-testfiles 0.90.1-3etch7 use these files to test that your Antivirus ii libclamav2 0.90.1-3etch7 virus scanner library Thanks, David -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Setting paragraph margins using CSS, is it really this clunky?
by Chris G 10 Sep '07

10 Sep '07

Is there really no way to set a lot of margin-top and margin-bottom values for paragraphs without explicitly setting a class= for each paragraph where you want to change the default? Other things (like font-size and alignment) can be changed by wrapping a set of paragraphs in a <DIV>....</DIV> and setting the values in the DIV's class but margin-top and margin-bottom are not inherited so this doesn't work for margins. All I want to do is have a set of paragraphs with bigger margins than the default and it looks as if I'll have to do:- <P class=bigmargin>..............</P> for every paragraph, which rather defeats the object of using CSS, I might just as well write the margin size there. -- Chris Green

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Suspend2 Debugging
by Dan Hatton 09 Sep '07

09 Sep '07

I could use some power management help, please. I like to suspend my system with Software Suspend 2 (or Tux on Ice, as it seems to be rebranding itself) when I'm not using it. However, since I upgraded my kernel from 2.6.20.6 to 2.6.22.5, the system sometimes (perhaps 25% of the time) fails to resume after a suspend. I've got suspend2 logging very verbosely. A successful suspend/resume cycle writes ~11kB of stuff to /var/log/messages, whereas a failed suspend/resume cycle writes ~1.4MB. The first place the two sets of logs differ is that, where the successful cycle writes Stopping tasks ... done. Preparing Image. Try 1. Preparing Image. Try 1. Stopping tasks ... done. Starting to save the image.. Starting to save the image.. - Final values: 23908 and 102848. Writing caches... Writing caches... 20%...40%...60%...80%...100%...done. The failed cycle writes (I've snipped out instances of IPtables logging rejected packets, and some messages from gpm and sleepd.) Stopping tasks ... geset+0x11d/0x1a9 [<c01391b7>] do_suspend2_step+0x2d7/0x649 [<c0139816>] _suspend2_try_suspend+0xab/0xe1 [<c0138678>] suspend2_attr_store+0x180/0x1c6 [<c0193100>] sysfs_write_file+0xa8/0xd1 [<c0193058>] sysfs_write_file+0x0/0xd1 [<c015c58f>] vfs_write+0x8a/0x10c [<c015ca25>] sys_write+0x41/0x67 [<c0103ace>] sysenter_past_esp+0x5f/0x85 [<c0720000>] ieee80211_process_probe_response+0x122/0xe4d ======================= Mem-info: DMA per-cpu: CPU 0: Hot: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Cold: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Normal per-cpu: CPU 0: Hot: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 30 Cold: hi: 62, btch: 15 usd: 13 Active:0 inactive:0 dirty:0 writeback:0 unstable:0 free:724 slab:2680 mapped:21865 pagetables:670 bounce:0 DMA free:1968kB min:88kB low:108kB high:132kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:16256kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no lowmem_reserve[]: 0 483 Normal free:928kB min:2764kB low:3452kB high:4144kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:494668kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 DMA: 0*4kB 0*8kB 1*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 1*512kB 1*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 1968kB Normal: 0*4kB 0*8kB 0*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 1*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 928kB Swap cache: add 78, delete 77, find 18/27, race 0+0 Free swap = 505444kB Total swap = 1015800kB Free swap: 505444kB 128736 pages of RAM 0 pages of HIGHMEM 4191 reserved pages 171366 pages shared 1 pages swap cached 0 pages dirty 0 pages writeback 21865 pages mapped 2680 pages slab 670 pages pagetables 20%...40%...60%...80%...100%...done. Any ideas, please? -- Thanks Dan Hatton

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 09 Sep '07

09 Sep '07

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 "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 13th September. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. People will be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. Topics for discussion will no doubt be as varied as ever. The Reindeer has a reasonable selection of beer as well as decent coffee (with biscuits, if you're lucky). Directions to the Reindeer can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/reindeer.html Pictures of some of the regulars, and irregulars, and, well, just some pictures of people that might or might not turn up are available from: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2007-05-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2006-02-ALUG/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for - the most recent images are from the meet a few months back. We now have an area reserved for us, so should be easier to find. As you enter through the main door you'll see a small set of steps ahead of you - the area just up those steps and to the left is where we'll be. J. -- 101 things you can't have too much of : 49 - Bandwidth. ----- 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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Simple (I hope) HTML/CSS question
by Chris G 08 Sep '07

08 Sep '07

I want to use an image as a background, OK, fairly easy I think, I put the following into my CSS style file:- body { background: white url(sky.jpg) no-repeat; } I only want the image once at the top of the page, hence the "no-repeat". However, big problem, is there any way to tell my browser to fit the image to the width of the browser page rather than the other way around? It's easy enough if I'm displaying an image using the HTML IMG operator as I can set the "width=100%" and the image is scaled to fit across the browser's window but I can't see any easy way to do this when the image is set as a background. I can sort of understand that this might not be possible but it would be really nice if it was possible by some means as I want to use the image as a backdrop for all my page headings. If I can't do it using CSS "background" how can I get two images (or an image and a heading) to be put one on top of the other? -- Chris Green

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