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10372 discussions

Open University and software
by Bev Nicolson 28 Aug '07

28 Aug '07

I'm hoping to do some studying with the OU but looking at their web site it basically says that they can't support Linux. I thought I'd ask whether folk on this list have had any problems with software incompatibility (which is for Windows but can, they say, be used on Macs) and Ubuntu. Thanks. 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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WINE
by Yvonne Everett 28 Aug '07

28 Aug '07

Hello Does anyone have a particular good reference guide/notes perhaps on how to get WINE running? I've tried this before to allow me to use MS Money through Linux but have had several problems. So now I have a completely clean install of Kubuntu 7.04 and am ready to try WINE again for MS Money. Any suggestions before I make a start would be much appreciated. Rgds -- Yvonne Everett Email: ye103910(a)googlemail.com

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X between Xorg and X11R6
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 28 Aug '07

28 Aug '07

Hi Folks, A new question! (All this up-to-date Linux stuff is finding the gaps in my obsolete knowledge ...). I'm currently trying (rather, wanting to try) running X apps remotely on one of my machines, with Gentoo running off the Live CD on the new laptop. So: A = new laptop, latest Gentoo off live CD X is Xorg B = old laptop, Red Hat 9 from 2003. X is X11R6 Normally, when I want remote X apps to display locally, I enter xhost + locally, and get "connection is allowed from any host". And it then works. On A, I again enter "xhost +" and still get "connection is allowed from any host". So far so good, it would seem. However, A has no telnet client, and rlogin won't work, soI have to use ssh to log in from A to B. This seems to work: I log in, I can tour directories, etc. B knows where I'm coming from: B:$ who am i ted ..... (192.168.1.8) which is fine. But it hasn't attributed an X DISPLAY: echo $DISPLAY returns null. So on B I set export DISPLAY=192.168.1.8:0.0 which is what I'd normally do. But now, when logged in to B, I issue xterm There is a delay, and then the message xterm Xt error: Can't open display: 192.168.1.8:0.0 Does this have something to do with Xorg doing things differently from X11R6? The process I went through above would have worked between any of my X11R6 machines. Or might it have somthing to do with my logging in using ssh rather than telnet (Machine B is set up to be friendly to anything on my LAN 192.168.1.*). Any suggestions appreciated! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 27-Aug-07 Time: 18:00:54 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Backing Vista into a corner
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 27 Aug '07

27 Aug '07

Hi Again, with repeat apologies! The laptop on which I propose to install Linux has Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed. There is one hard drive: 120GB. Partition info according to Vista is: Vista (C:) 91.2GB free, 104GB total System (S:) 1.41GB free, 1.46GB total Gentoo finds the HD at /dev/sda, and fdisk gives: /dev/sda1 Start=1 End=702 Blocks=5,632,000 ID=27 Type=Unknown /dev/sda2 Start=702 End=893 Blocks=1,536,000 ID=7 Type=HP/NTFS /dev/sda3 Start=893 End=14894 Blocks=110,050,304 ID=7 Type=HP/NTFS Presumably (matching on partition size) /dev/sda2 is the 1.4GB "System" partition which Vista identified (dunno what that's for, though; but at least it's a known filesystem type). And of course /dev/sda3 is the Big One, which Vista has all to itself. And Vista does not see /dev/sda1 at all. This may be something to do with machine boot-up, BIOS config, diagnostics, or the like. Anyway, my real question is to do with backing Vista into a much smaller corner of /dev/sda3. Perhaps I'll be benign and let it have as much as 40GB to run around in, maybe less, however. So this means resizing the /dev/sda3 partition, and adding new partiitions in the space released. There shouldn't be problems with the latter, once the former has been done. But this is the first time I've been anywhere near an NTFS filesystem. While I've done this often enough for DOS/VFAT systems, I don't really know what sort of animal NTFS is, and how kindly it would take to being "downsized". Still less do I know what tool I should use for the resizing, what dangers to watch out for (I don't really want to zap Vista, since it sould come in handy sometime), nor whether the Linux bootloader )e.g. GRuB) will work smoothly with this setup. Also, will the fact that the partitions do not begin and end on cylinder boundaries (see above fdisk info) matter? So I'd welcome experienced advice about these and any related issues that need taking care of when installing Linux alongside Vista. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 26-Aug-07 Time: 20:51:22 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Ubuntu vs Gentoo [vs etc.]?
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 27 Aug '07

27 Aug '07

Hi Folks, Apologies to any who receive cross-postings! I'm poised to install Linux on a newly acquired laptop. I've tried out the latest Ubuntu amd Gentoo live CDs, and both work nicely. (Indeed, with their common GNOME interface, there's isn't superificially much difference between them). However, I've formed a slightly happier impression of Gentoo (for reasons which I can't quite put my finger on -- its more of a "comfort" impression; also, the Gentoo live CD seems to have more stuff to try out than the Ubuntu one does). I'd be grateful for any guidance from folks who have experiance of both, as to which may be the better one for long-term use. I'm also planning to give PCLinuxOS a whirl, and maybe also Zenwalk, if anyone has comments. Also feel free to advocate anything else! Essential are good support for Intel 945GM Integrated Graphics Controller (works with i810 driver), Synaptics touchpad with USB mouse as alternative (I hate touchpads, but this machine has no external PS/2 port ... ). With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 26-Aug-07 Time: 20:27:47 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Why does mozilla/firefox/netscape make this so difficult?
by Chris G 25 Aug '07

25 Aug '07

Why are web browsers (well, Netscape and its descendents) so different from all other programs? All I want to do is run Firefox on another system on my (three machine) network and it's very difficult! My 'main' machine runs Slackware Linux and is in the house in my office, it's on all the time so I can advertise the occasional web page etc. It's the machine that appears on the web (at least as web pages) as home.isbd.net. I have set up another machine in the garage using tatty old hardware so when I want to get some information (thread sizes for bolts, spare parts for tools, wall plug sizes, etc.) I can do it there rather than having to go back into the house requiring cleanness etc. As I want access to the same home directory when I'm out there I have used NFS to export my home and when I log in on the garage system I have all the same files that I have on my office system. Everything works fine *except* Firefox (well everything I've tried so far that is). Firefox won't start on the garage system because it sees the office system's Firefox lock file and says that Firefox is running already and I can't have another one. I can think of various ways around this issue (separate profile, don't use NFS but copy some files across, etc.) but really why should I have to? Just about every other program would run up a second instance without any bother at all, why does Firefox do different? Netscape was the same, it's "ancestral"! :-) Other programs that create a lock file like this or a file with the PID in it are server type programs where it makes sense (like mySql), there having only one copy makes sense and I could use it from both my garage and office systems at the same time without hassle. With firefox though it's just a nuisance and I can't really come up with a neat solution. To describe the problem more completely:- I have /home/chris is the *same* file system on both office and garage computers, it's a local file system on the office computer and an NFS export to the garage computer. I have a few files that are different for the garage computer kept in /home/chris/.garage, these are such things as my window manager configuration because the garage computer has a lower resolution display than the office computer. I want office and garage computer firefox to share their installation and configuration so that bookmarks and other things are the same. I just want to run firefox in the garage, but I can't! Possible solutions seem to be:- Run firefox in the garage with a separate profile, but I'm not sure if this works completely and it means that I have to choose a profile every time I start firefox. It also means that bookmarks etc. are *not* shared so I have to do something about that. Shut down firefox on the office system every time I leave it, not really a sensible approach, I'll forget! I can't think of any other ways to do it! Oh, yes, there is another approach. Have an independent /home/chris on the garage system and have symbolic links from there to all the important directories in /home/chris on the office system. Thus firefox has a local (and thus independent) configuration/installation and I can just link bookmarks.html to the office system one to get the same bookmarks. This also has the advantage that the garage system will be more able to work without the office system being there. It's probably the approach I will take though I'm not quite sure how to keep the symbolic links up to date. -- Chris Green

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Ipswich ALUG meeting tonight
by samwise 24 Aug '07

24 Aug '07

Just a last minute reminder about tonight's ALUG meeting ... Wayne, if you need anything else from me (stuff installed on PC, if you need it etc.), let me know! Peter.

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LDAP Address Book
by Ben Francis 24 Aug '07

24 Aug '07

Hi ALUG, Does anyone use LDAP for their address book? I use IMAP for email and iCalendar/WebDAV for calendars so I can store them on a server and access them with multiple clients. I want to do the same with my address book. I think the main problem is choosing a schema because different mail clients use different address book schemas. I currently have an address book in Thunderbird and an address book in my OS X Address Book which syncs with my phone. I want to combine the two but annoyingly, Thunderbird doesn't appear to import vCard address books and the CSV import is painful. I'm also looking for a piece of web based address book software which can use LDAP as a back end, any recommendations? So far I've found Turba (http://www.horde.org/turba/), but Horde is a little bloated. I was hoping the Bongo Project (http://www.bongo-project.org) would support LDAP as a back end, but it doesn't yet. Thank ye Ben -- Ben Francis http://tola.me.uk

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Windows crashes Skype!
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 20 Aug '07

20 Aug '07

Hi Folks, I was amused (though also sad) to read of the reasons why Skype went off the air for two days at the end of last week. I quote from their explanation: On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users' computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update. The high number of restarts affected Skype's network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact. Normally Skype's peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly. Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days. Since Skype typically has upward of 5 million users online at a time, one cam imagine the effect if they all rebooted within an hour or so! But what a lovely DOS mechanism! (Not for nothing, methinks, was M$'s first operating system called MS-DOS -- though the DOS boot was then on the other foot). Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 20-Aug-07 Time: 22:31:31 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Skype, RH9, tribulations; alsa-oss?
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 20 Aug '07

20 Aug '07

Hi Folks, Sorry if you experience cross-posting, but I seem to be on a needle-in-a-haystack hunt here. I'm running Red Hat 9 (2003 vintage), 2.4 kernel, on a Compaq Armada 1750 laptop whose sound card is "ESS 1869 Audioline" (though it works OK with 1868 or 11688 drivers). I want to use Skype. Owing to the age of the system, I'm limited to earlier versions of Skype (library compatibility), and these use OSS sound rather than ALSA. Skype works up to successful calling (the "bell" rings at either end, but when the call is accepted all you can hear at the calling end is a repeated clicking (about once/sec) and at the receiving end in a similar rhythm a noise more like someone hitting wood with a hammer in the distance. At the same time, at the calling end, repeated messages come up: GETOSPACE: Device or resource busy GETOSPACE: Device or resource busy GETOSPACE: Device or resource busy ... Extensive web-searching has thrown up various facts. a) The ESS 1869 is bad news Skype-wise anyway; b) The above situation is a well-known issue with the earlier versions of Skype (the most recent versions have ALSA support, but demand more recent libs than I have). c) Some people have reported sucess with deceitful work-rounds, including: -- skype_dsp_hijacker which intercepts Skype's calls to the sound devices and keeps things in order. However, this has not worked for me. Either I get the same as the above, or "Problem with sound device" in Skype plus error message "/dev/dsp-1: No such device" to the comsoles -- alsa-oss which installs a library and uses a wrapper to convert Skype's OSS format into Alsa format. I haven't tried alsa-oss because, seach as I may, I cannot find a download for it (in any version). Even the link on the Alsa Project http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page draws a blank: it cannot change into the directory for alsa-oss! All other links I've found on the Web are dead. I'd be most gratefull is anyone who's travelled along this road and has successfully arrived could help me out! The ideal would be a compilable source package. And if anyone has found a working alternative solution to the abve probelm, I'd be most interested to hear about this too. With thanks, and best wishes, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-Aug-07 Time: 22:31:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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