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wintar floppy archive
by Richard Bensley 07 Jun '07

07 Jun '07

Good morning all. I have myself a slight dilemma. I have in excess of 500 floppy disks containing an archive of what are called surface files (Wayne could probably inform those curious a lot better than myself). Said floppy disks were created using a piece of software called WinTar to a SCSI floppy drive (it seems). And of course is on it's own unreadable. Has anyone else had any luck accessing WinTar'd media via linux? I'm all googled out! Cheers Richard

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RE: [ALUG] wintar floppy archive
by Richard Bensley 07 Jun '07

07 Jun '07

Thank you so much Wayne! Dd to tar did the trick. Right only a gazillion more to go, then the 30 odd TK50 tapes, and about 300 CD's!...it's going to be a long few weeks. Thanks again Richard

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Ubuntu installation problem
by Chris G 06 Jun '07

06 Jun '07

I am trying to install Ubuntu 7.04 on a system for my mother in law. It boots from the CD OK and works fine as a "Live CD" system. However, when I start the 'Install' program to actually install on the hard disk the window the Install program opens is too large and can't be resized such that the important buttons at the bottom appear on the screen. Thus I can't progress the install. Is this a problem that anyone else has seen? Any ideas on how to fix it? -- Chris Green

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Can anyone recommend a webcam for a laptop?
by Barry Samuels 06 Jun '07

06 Jun '07

Can anyone recommend a webcam for a laptop, a Thinkpad R51 to be specific, that will work with Debian (Testing - kernel 2.6.18)? I'd prefer the type that clips on to the lid/screen and that is small enough to go in the laptop carrying bag. It does NOT have to produce out of the ordinary results but I don't want to pay more than about £25 and preferably less. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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"!!" in /etc/passwd
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 06 Jun '07

06 Jun '07

Hi Folks, Can anyone interpret the following for me? I can't find it referred to in 'man' documentation. Some "user" entries in /etc/passwd have "!!" in the encrypted password field, e.g. sshd:!!:74:74:Privilege-separated SSH:/var/empty/sshd:/sbin/nologin rpc:!!:32:32:Portmapper RPC user:/:/sbin/nologin mysql:!!:27:27:MySQL Server:/var/lib/mysql:/bin/bash postgres:!!:26:26:PostgreSQL Server:/var/lib/pgsql:/bin/bash For the acounts which have /sbin/nologin as "shell" I cannot of course gain entry, even from root. On the other hand, for the accounts (mysql, postgres) which have a normal shell, I can 'su' from root without entering a password; while if I try to 'su' from any other user I'm prompted for a password (which of course does not exist). I'm wondering what the full interpretation of the "!!" is. I know about "*" in the encrypted password field: there is no possible password which encrypts fo "*", so such accounts cannot be logged into. I've already found out something (see above) about "!!" accounts, but is there more that I should know? In particular, if I were (as root) to use the 'passwd' command to give a "!!" account a real password, would I be treading on any toes in the system? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 06-Jun-07 Time: 11:53:29 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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OK, next Ubuntu graphics question/problem
by Chris G 06 Jun '07

06 Jun '07

OK, I now have Ubuntu 7.04 installed and working, network connection up, pretty OK in fact. However it will still only allow me a best resolution of 800x600 even though there are higher resolutions in the xorg.conf file. What else limits the resolution and how do I change it? -- Chris Green

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Red Hat 9 and MySQL-3 --> MySQL-4
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 05 Jun '07

05 Jun '07

Hi Folks, Now a question of my own ... to people who have been down the road below. I'm running Red Hat 9 on one machine, along with the MySQL-3.23.54a which came on the installation CDs. I want to upgrade the MySQL-3 to MySAL-4+, in order to have the increased functionality (especially sub-queries) which was introduced in version 4. My browsings on the web have not revealed an upgrade route which looks authoritative, though I have seen a few people recommend procedures, though not in detail, and I have not seen confirmations that these have worked. I really do want to avoid breaking things on that machine! MySQL is currently at version 5, but older versions (specifically 4.1.22) are available in various formats (binary and source) at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.1.html If anyone has successfully made this upgrade, I would be most grateful to learn, in detail, how they did it! With thanks, Ted. PS I'm not open to suggestions to upgrade the Linux installation. That machine is something of an "attic", and renewing its joists is not compatible with not disturbing what's stacked on them! -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 05-Jun-07 Time: 19:35:32 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Standard output redirection caching
by Dan Hatton 01 Jun '07

01 Jun '07

On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, Adrian F. Clark wrote: > The easiest solution is to put > > fflush (stdout); > > after each printf() invocation -- or equivalent in other languages. Other > solutions tend to be less portable. Thanks, that worked a treat. For the archives, the language is Perl, and, with a bit of manpage searching (once you'd clued me in that the word "fflush" was relevant,) I found out the "equivalent" is to put use IO::File ; autoflush STDOUT 1 ; at the start of the program. -- Thanks again, Dan

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Standard output redirection caching
by Dan Hatton 01 Jun '07

01 Jun '07

Dear All, When standard output is redirected to a file, it gets cached, so that nothing is actually written to the file until (say) 4kB of standard output has built up. I'm sometimes too impatient to wait that long to see the output of my programs, especially when the program in question is a long, slow numerical calculation that might be producing only a few hundred bytes of output per day. Is there any way of either switching off this caching, or inspecting the contents of the cache before it gets written, please? -- Thanks very much Dan Hatton <http://www.bib.hatton.btinternet.co.uk/dan/>

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Weird blackout on browser!
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 31 May '07

31 May '07

Hi Folks, I just observed something strange, using Firefox. I wonder if others find the same. 1. Go to http://www.rspb.org.uk/supporting/campaigns/suttonfen/index.asp and get a nice page. 2. Now scroll down and find "Find out more", and click on A wonderful site for future generations to enjoy I get a complete blackout! 3. Now click the "Back" button to return to the previous page. Again, this is completely blank. Check that the URL in the location window is the same as you originally entered at (1). 4. Clear the URL, and re-enter the URL from (1). Again completely black! 5. Open something else, e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and normal service is resumed. Now clear the URL again and enter the URTL from (1). It's still black! But if you clear the cache and re-enter, it's OK again. The only explanation I can think of is that the cache of the page at (2) is considered to be the cache for the URL at (1), even though (2) is not at the same URL as (1), being http://www.rspb.org.uk/supporting/campaigns/suttonfen/wonderful.asp What's interesting is that if I do it the other way round: 6. Clear history, cookies and cache, close down broswer, restart browser, and enter this last URL above, I then get a parfectly good page. But now find the "> Sutton Fen Appeal > ..." at the top, click on that, and you get a black page again. This of course should take you to where you were at (1) in the first place, since it is the same URL (as seen in the URL box). So it's the same effect: the transition (by any means) from either page to the other makes everything black! I'm a bit puzzled by all this. Any ideas? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 31-May-07 Time: 14:33:29 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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