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Re: Laptop
by J.R. Seago 10 Apr '07

10 Apr '07

I see that I'm still a little woozy and haven't altered the subject line or addressed the posts properly, I'll stop for the night and go to bed, with the nightcap! Apologies to all. -- J.R. Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: main Digest, Vol 22, Issue 13
by J.R. Seago 10 Apr '07

10 Apr '07

On Tuesday 10 April 2007 18:58, main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > I'm hazarding a guess here (based on your email address)... but, even if > you had a magical laptop and the power went out how would you get online > if your adsl router didn't have power? :) You'd need some kind of ups or > a usb dsl modem (but they eat battery very quickly). Of course a ups on > the dsl gear and a laptop would give the most uptime in the event of a > power failure, but i'd look at a ups for the main machine anyway "just > in case" so it doesn't get the psu busted if it happens in the future. > > Adam Everything else just restarted itself when the power came back, printer router, monitor the lot, it was just on the third power down, (I think rather than out), that the computer wouldn't reboot, it did about 5 > 6 hours later, but apparently it the, internal power supply, (is that the right description/nomenclature), will reset after a while. I'd been having a bad night which was why I was up at five anyway, (unlike you my daughter is all grown up, and dose'n't get me up in the night. Which is why I wasn't thinking straight and leapt to the conclusion I could spend some money and buy shiny new toys. But as I said above I'm going to see the nice man who tried to get everybody working without charging them, to see about surge and UPS thingy's, I might be better tomorrow, and think straight, when today's pills have been topped up with a nightcap! Thanks to every body for the advice, but I'll just stick to the boring sensible stuff at the moment! -- J.R. Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Scheduling problem
by Stuart Bailey 10 Apr '07

10 Apr '07

I'm having trouble with a process taking too long, and holding up other processes. Basically, the process produces a bitmap showing a map of the geographical position, with a number of feature plotted. Whilst this is going on, data from a GPS receiver is being displayed on screen. These are separate processes. However, when the map is being produced, the data display freezes. Once the map is finished, the data display continues as if nothing happened. I've tried running the mapping process under nice, with a priority value of 20 (minimum), but this has made no significant improvement. Is there a way to limit the processor time that a process can take - say specifying that the process cannot exceed 20% processor time? Many thanks, Stuart -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Owner) Linux Specialist (0845) 6583563 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ----------------------------------------

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 10 Apr '07

10 Apr '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, 12th March. Apologies for the slightly later than usual reminder; I blame Easter confusing me. 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/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, even if the images are getting a bit old now. 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. -- [ I'd love to but... I'm having all my plants neutered. ] ----- 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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Debian Testing, USB and Win CE
by Barry Samuels 08 Apr '07

08 Apr '07

I have just bought a navigational GPS unit which serves for use in-car and whilst walking. It has a label on the back which says: Win CE .NET 4.2 Core. I also have a Thinkpad which came with Windows XP. This GPS unit is recognised by XP using active sync but I'd prefer to use RAKI (synce-kde) running under Linux. After plugging the unit into a USB port I get this in the logs: kernel: usb 1-7.1: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 33 kernel: usb 1-7.1: device descriptor read/64, error -32 kernel: usb 1-7.1: device descriptor read/64, error -32 kernel: usb 1-7.1: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 34 kernel: usb 1-7.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice There is nothing else in the logs relating to that connection and RAKI does nothing - it apparently does not recognise it and I don't know what the error means. Any help would be welcome. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Etch...
by mephi 08 Apr '07

08 Apr '07

I don't know how many Debian users there are on this list, but for those of you that are, it's looking like Etch is finally released. I'm apt-get-ing now, I wonder how much this is gonna break my server. www.debian.org Matt

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Redundant web hosting
by Mark Rogers 08 Apr '07

08 Apr '07

Any reason why the following won't work? It sounds too "easy"... Server A is the primary DNS for a domain, and hosts its website, its database, and its email (SMTP in, dropped to POP3 mailboxes via spamassassin). All relevant records are in the DNS: www., pop3., etc, and point to Server A. Server B is the secondary DNS for a domain, but all the records (www./pop3./etc) point to Server B (not A). Server B has an exact copy of the website, the database (synchronised through MySQL replication), and drops any email it receives through its own spamassassin into its local POP3 mailboxes. Server A also uses fetchmail to collect mail from Server B and drop it into its local POP3 boxes, in case any arrives there. TTL on DNS records on both servers is set to a short period (say 15 mins). In normal use, the domain resolves to server A and server B just acts as a redundant backup. If/when server A fails, its DNS vanishes and so clients request from the DNS on server B, which directs them to the website and database on server B and drops email into its local POP3 mailboxes. (The end user, when checking their email, will likewise get Server B when they query pop3.theirdomain and start collecting email from Server B.) When server A recovers, things go back to normal, with any remaining mail in the POP3 mailboxes on Server B pulled over by fetchmail. Server A and B will be in entirely different locations (maybe not even on the same continent!) The only obvious problem which comes to mind is that writes to the database on Server B will get the databases out of sync, therefore I'd make remove write access to the databases from the website and modify the website code to handle that. In case anyone ends up at server B when server A is up and running, it could be told to connect remotely to the database on server A unless it can't, falling back to database B. In this scenario session handling would be messed up unless the session info is stored in the database and sync'd across. NB: From experience a lot of spam follows the lower priority MX in case it bypasses the spam checker, which would put a lot of the spam load onto the redundant server, hopefully allowing legitimate email through more quickly. -- 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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CSS question, probably very naive.
by Chris G 05 Apr '07

05 Apr '07

I'm sure there's something fundamentally silly wrong with this but I can't see what it is at the moment. Here's a snippet of a CSS file:- .header { border-top: thick solid #cccccc; border-bottom: thin solid #cccccc; color: #0E0E0E; background: #EEEEEE; height: 8em; } h1.header, h2.header, h3.header, h4.header, h5.header, h6.header { padding: 0px; background: #EEEEEE; color: #003366; font-weight:normal; line-height:140%; } .crumbs {color: blue; background: white;} a.crumbs {color: red; background: white;} a.crumbs:visited {color: blue; background: white; text-decoration: none} Now the .header bit is doing what I expect for the part of my HTML that has a <div class="header"> ..... </div> around it, I get a nice pale grey background. But none of the h1/h2/h3/h4 'inside' the header seem to work. They still get a default white background. Similarly the .crumbs is working (I tried changing the background to check) but none of the a.crumbs are working. What am I doing wrong? Surely something obvious and silly but I can't see it. I even ran a CSS checker on it and it checks out perfectly, just doesn't actually do anything! -- Chris Green

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Re: Webmin/Usermin & proxies
by Matthew 05 Apr '07

05 Apr '07

Progress! With a <Proxy> block to Allow from all, I get 500 rather than 403 ;-) It looks like an Apache issue still, although I can't be sure. I saw a neat trick somewhere about trapping errors in your proxy (so that you can serve a different page if your backend application server is down); maybe I can find the instructions again and use that to work out where the fault is. Curiously, I have a set of other virtual servers that proxy heavy requests to another instance of Apache and I don't recall having declared a <Proxy> with Allow for them. They use mod_rewrite instead of ProxyPass, but I get the same results either way when passing requests to Usermin. I'll try some more tweaking; thanks for the help. >> I believe you need to add something like >> >> <Proxy *> >> Order deny,allow >> Allow from all >> </Proxy> >> >> To allow access to the proxy. > > I've just been reliably informed (by Brett on IRC) that <Proxy *> is > not a good idea and that you should bind it to a particular ip:port > > So.. > > <Proxy ip:port> > Order deny,allow > Allow from all > </Proxy>

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Use of () in 'test' (or [ ])
by Chris G 05 Apr '07

05 Apr '07

I want to group some logic in a test in a bash script. I.e. I am trying to write something like:- if [ this -a (that -o theOther) ] but bash always complains about 'syntax error'. I have reduced the code to the trivial:- home$ if [ ( true ) ]; then but still get the syntax error. According to the man page for test the format is:- ( EXPRESSION ) EXPRESSION is true I *think* that is trying to tell me that I can use () to group parts of what is inside the []. However, as I said, it refuses to work as I expected. I have tried all combinations of spaces etc. either side of the () but it still just gives a syntax error. Is this just a case where the () are punctuation in the man page rather than real () to use in the expression? Or am I doing something obvious wrong? (probably!). I know I *could* rely on precedence in the tests to get the result I want but it's much easier to write and to understand using () for grouping the logic. -- Chris Green

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