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Progress (or lack of it) on my new system
by cl＠isbd.net 28 Sep '06

28 Sep '06

Well I haven't made a lot of Linuxish progress on my new system. The essential problems which make it difficult to install any Linux on it are:- The JMicron PATA controller isn't recognised by install versions of the Linux kernel. There is (I believe) support for it in the latest 2.6.18 kernel but the problem is how to get that kernel built on the system. The Realtek Gigabit RTL 8168 NIC interface isn't supported in current kernels. A driver is available but needs to be, yes you've guessed it, compiled into a new kernel. I have currently got Windows XP64 Professional installed in a partition on the new system, that was moderately easy though one has to feed it several floppys during the install and it's a bit of a guessing game which ones should be used at times. So, anyway, I have at least proved the system works and can copy stuff to and fro even if only in Window'ish formats. I need to come up with a strategy for getting a basic system onto my new box that will then allow me to compile a new kernel with the required bits in it. One question this raises is one that I originally asked - what Linux version should I choose? The original answers here were along the lines of "try them all" but I really don't fancy having to recompile kernels for all of them (and I don't believe one recompiled kernel will work for all, each distribution will almost inevitably have its own tweaks I believe). I think the three choices are Suse, Ubuntu or Mandriva. Suse 10.1 seems to have the fullest support for Vmware Server so, if nothing else seems to point elswhere, I may go for Suse. So, how do I get a system loaded? The options would seem to be:- Get the distribution files onto the disk using Windows XP and install from there. Question - can Linux installers read Windows file systems? Add a "well known" NIC to the system (I have spare PCI slots) and do a network install, this I think may be the simplest approach. Do a USB drive install (I'm not sure I have a big enough USB memory thingy). Any comments or ideas? -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Problem installing on an all SATA system
by cl＠isbd.net 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

I am trying to install ubuntu 6.06 server on my new hardware. The system is intel core 2 duo based with all SATA drives (including the CD/DVD drive). The installation CD boots OK (presumably because at this stage it's using the BIOS to access the drives) but after starting the Linux kernel and setting the language I get a message "No common CD-ROM detected" (or something like that anyway). I.e. there aren't drivers for a SATA CD/DVD drive. It then asks me to either select one of the old non-IDE drivers for the CD-ROM or to install a floppy with the drivers on it. So, how do I get this to actually install? I guess that the floppies with the SATA drivers for windows aren't going to help much, or will the ubuntu install recognise windows drivers? -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Hosting issues for not-for-profit image site
by Mark Rogers 22 Sep '06

22 Sep '06

I've been in contact with a website which hosts a large range of images (www.bioimages.org.uk) The images are "a large selection of pictures of Natural History objects, mostly British in origin", which currently amount to around 400M of HTML (autogenerated from a database) on IIS, and 3-4GB of photographs hosted separately. The site is currently offline due to attempted site rips causing load and bandwidth problems. I've offered to help look at the problem, but due to the capacity required I don't think I'm in a position to help with the hosting, although I may be able to help technically. Several issues comes to mind which I'd like advice on. I think there are Apache modules which can help to control the abuse aspect, but I'm not sure where to start - any suggestions? There are options like scripting the site (eg using PHP) and limiting the number of downloads per session. I could probably come up with a solution but its not something I have experience in managing. If anyone has suggestions for a generous host that would be useful too. What he's currently looking for is hosting for the HTML but not the image library, but cites bandwidth as the biggest problem. I need to work out why that is - I'd be surprised if the bandwidth fotr the HTML itself is a huge problem (although I think the way the pages are generated means that they are static pages with new timestamps after each generation, so search engine traffic alone could be massive). I have no direct connection with the site; its a friend who manages a site which makes reference to the images that brought the problem to my attention. I am inclined to help because I think this sort of thing is what the web should be about (ie decent libraries of decent information). -- Mark Rogers More Solutions Ltd :: 0845 45 89 555

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Putting Exchange out of business?
by Christopher Dawkins 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

>> Or you could install an imap or pop server on the machine and point your >> mail client at it, can be especially useful if the machine breaks for >> some reason and can't send mail as you notice that you either can't >> connect to it any more or that you at least get the messages (or notice >> a lack of them). > > That sounds like a challenge. If it worked, I could put Exchange on > their win servers out of business :-) It does work. Of course it works. It's been working on my servers for over a decade now, with sendmail and postfix and pop and imap, humming away with 100% reliability and no problems (apart from some caused by clients running a system I believe is called "Windows"). It's been working reliably since long before this thing you call "Exchange" was thought of. Yet, for inexplicable reasons, some places use this thing you call "Exchange", and despite problems with things I believe are called "viruses" (my experience is limited: these have never troubled the machines I use) they have continued to use this thing you call "Exchange". The whole business is quite incredible to a rational being, but it happens. Basically, there's no point in an alternative that is undoubtedly both more reliable and more economical. They'll stick to this thing you call "Exchange". I suppose we are lucky that it remains technically and legally possible for us to choose the better alternatives. There are already many ways in which we become digitally deprived if we do not conform to the herd mentality (flock? sheep? what is the collective noun for lemmings?). Our freedoms hang on a very narrow thread. -- Christopher Dawkins Garnetts Corner, Braintree Road, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DS cchd(a)pjcd.org 07816 821659 01371 821076

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[Fwd: Re: [ALUG] server mail forwarding]
by Wayne Stallwood 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

Sounds like you need to edit /etc/aliases (depending on your server setup, should work for most machines) and change the line that looks something like root: jenny to root: jenny@ordinary-email-address Isn't it better to create a .forward file in Jenny's home dir, the contents of which (on the first line) are the external address. Can't think why it is better that way (apart from the user not needing to be su to change the address later) but it's the way I've always done this in the past.

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Evolution
by Wayne Stallwood 20 Sep '06

20 Sep '06

As some of you may have noticed, wordwrap in my copy of evolution seems to have become broken. If I just simply type a reply then it stays on a single line to a seemingly unlimited width. But only it seems when I reply to a message. Googled about and looked in all the preferences I can find, but I can't see anything that sets a fixed column width in the composer. It was fine until tonight and I haven't applied any updates or deliberately changed anything for a number of weeks now. Any ideas ?

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server mail forwarding
by Jenny Hopkins 20 Sep '06

20 Sep '06

Hullo there, All mail for root, admin, postgres etc on my server are aliased to jenny, so it gets sent to jenny@localhost. How can I request it is sent to jenny@ordinary-email-address instead? I never remember to go and read mail on the server. Thanks, Jenny

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Possibility of work
by David Reynolds 15 Sep '06

15 Sep '06

Hi, I have been asked if I know anyone who would be interested in doing some work for a customer of ours. I figured I'd post it here and see if anyone was interested. There is some system administration tasks along with a bit of Perl hackery, from what I can tell. Here are the details: > What I need is as follows. > > 1. Some ftp accounts that have been setup in a GUI interface called > plesk > need to have additional accounts set up for ftp. The problem is the > default > setting in plesk allow for only one account and it can see the cgi- > bin which > we don't want. > > 2. I need form mail setting up for use by 4 web sites. However the > version > of form mail needs to generate the following exactly as the data is > then > parsed to a outlook object and then into an access database where > the data > after the : is stripped out. > > Below is an example of the form that is currently generated. If you > know > anyone who is interested in this and some other Linux based admin > please ask > them to get in touch. They need to be 100% honest and reliable. > > Title: Mr > > requiredFirst Name: REMOVED > > requiredLast Name: IN > > Interest4: THE > > requiredTelephone (Evening): NAME > > requiredAddress: OF > > City or Town: PRIVACY > > County: > > requiredPostcode: > > Email: > > howFound: Google > > previous_purchase: No > > Data Protection: Please do not give my details to other companies > > SUBMIT: Submit Request Pretty basic sounding stuff. If anyone is interested, you can ask me for further details of contact the guy directly, here: xxxx xxxxxxxxxx Tel: xxxxx xxxxxx E-mail: xxxxxxx(a)xxxxxxx.co.uk Cheers, Dave -- David Reynolds david(a)reynoldsfamily.org.uk

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Which of the following distributions will I dislike least?
by cl＠isbd.net 14 Sep '06

14 Sep '06

Another facet of my new system...... I want to install Vmware server on the system and so it would seem to make sense to use one of the Vmware supported distributions. I will still probably run my existin Slackware setup as a guest system. So the choice lies between:- Mandriva Suse RedHat Ubuntu Which will I find least different from Slackware? I have previously run Mandriva (when it was Mandrake) and Suse but I found both rather too GUIfied for comfort which is why I went to Slackware. I suspect there's not much to choose between them all really, I have a (very) slight leaning towards Ubuntu but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Linux support for two displays?
by cl＠isbd.net 13 Sep '06

13 Sep '06

While I'm planning my new system the possibility of a dual display arises (at very little cost as far as I can see). Does Linux support dual displays and, if so, in what sort of way does it do it? I going to go very 'main stream' by choosing an AMD Dual Core processor and Nvidia graphics unless there's a very good reason to choose anything else. (I might be persuaded to go 'all Intel' with a Core 2 Duo processor if there are good reasons for doing so though) -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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