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Linix & Windows 2003 Emergency support
by Mark Stangroom 07 Jul '06

07 Jul '06

We are the Students Union at the University of East Anglia. We run a combination of Linux Servers & Windows 2003 servers and Windows XP workstations. We are looking for an individual or company with experience of some or all of the following: SuSE Linux Samba MySQL PostgreSQL Apache Zope Arkeia Rdiff Windows 2003 Windows XP Office 2003 to act as an emergency on call support for when i am on leave or unavailable. Applicants must be extremely reliable and trustworthy. This is just an informal feeler to see if anyone can provide this support in the first instance. Thanks Mark -- Mark Stangroom IT support Union of UEA Students t: 01603 592503 e: m.stangroom(a)uea.ac.uk

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Why Linux
by Ian bell 07 Jul '06

07 Jul '06

I recently read Cliff Stoll's excellent book 'The Cuckoo's Egg' about tracking early net crackers in the late 80s. It got me thinking about BSD Unix (Stoll was at Berkley using a very early BSD Unix). From what I can gather it was BSD's law suit with AT&T that allowed Torvald's kernel to take the high ground which resulted in Linux being the most popular Unix based OS today. However, for me, the core of Linux is seriously disparate - endless kernel revisions, each distro with its own patches, file layout, start up scripts, endless dependency issues and so on. So I was very pleased to find this is not the case with the various BSD flavours. In fact I have just installed NetBSD on an old PC. It has a single source code tree that compiles on 57 different platforms which says a lot about the quality of the code. Its pkgsrc app is what gentoo is modeled on apparently and there are over 5000 apps to choose from (nearly as many as Debian).I am seriously tempted to roll it out across my other PCs. Ian

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FW: A Directory of OSS Suppliers in South East
by MJ Ray 07 Jul '06

07 Jul '06

Please reply to him not me. And s/OSS/Free Software/g. Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 14:49:49 +0100 From: "Matthew Edmondson" <Matthew.Edmondson(a)ncc.co.uk> Subject: A Directory of OSS Suppliers in South East Hi, I am posting to invite those of us who work with Open Source in the Voluntary Commmunity Sector to be included in a directory of OSS suppliers (tech support, consultants, trainers, circuit riders etc). There has been a significant investment in ICT support for groups in the voluntary community sector (VCS) from the government. One result of this is the ICTHub, the website of which was lanched last week. Within this, I hope to raise the profile of OSS and benefits that it can bring to the VCS. The OSS directory partly aims to dispel one of those OSS myths - "there is no support"! This directory will also feed into a national, quality assured, directory of generic ICT support available to the VCS through the ICTHub. We are looking to publish an initial (regional) version of this directory by 12th July - The ICT Hub and GMCVO South East Regional Conference. If you would like to be included then please mail me ASAP with your contact details, as defined at the bottom of this mail. Further to this I will mail you with the alpha version, and again later on to enhance/update the information as the directory grows. Having been a 'circuit rider' myself I know the hassle of 'spam' (email, phone, etc) - so I will look after your contact details and only publish them where you have given specific permission. There are a number of other ways that we are attempting to assist OSS uptake in the VCS. Most of these are to do with supporting the IT professionals themselves. It would also be helpful if you were able to include leads (or forward this) to other companies/organisations/folk within the region who also provide such services to charities that may currently be outside the "community loop", Many thanks, Matthew Edmondson Open Source Consultant - ICT Hub To find out about the ICT Hub: - http://www.icthub.org.uk A flyer for the Event is here: - http://f2.futurate.net:8080/cms/opencms/icthub/events/documents/South_East_… Fields for Contact Details Organisation Name Type (Company, Social Enterprise, Charity, Voluntary Group, Community Group, NGO) Skills(What services do you offer?) Phone Fax general email URL Address City County Postal Code Contact(s) within organisation First_Name Last_Name Title Role Office Phone Mobile Phone Email Permission to publish information on 12th July on paper

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Migration away from LVM
by Dan Hatton 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

Does anyone know how to convert an LVM logical volume into a real partition, please? (Why would I want to do this weird thing? Because it's my swap partition, and I want to be able to load suspend2 saved states from it without having to have an initrd.) I've tried running swapoff -a, followed by the lvremove command within LVM, but LVM refuses to remove the partition, complaining that it's "open." Thanks very much. -- Regards, Dan

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Help with script for ssh exploit attempts
by Laurie Brown 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

Hi, I could use a little help with some scripting. My perl/python is rudimentary, and bash not a lot better, but I'm sure this isn't too hard to do... We get a lot (read thousands a day) of these lines in logs on all the machines we support, including our own: Jul 6 16:53:24 xxx sshd[1628]: Invalid user chris from 202.202.43.110 It's a script kiddie trying to take advantage of an exploit in SSH. We use key-based authentication only, on SSH V2, so no real risk there, but it's annoying. What I'd like to do is monitor the logs for such a line (or maybe three on the trot), and immediately do this: /sbin/route add -host 202.202.43.110 reject which will lock them out until a restart. Any help appreciated! Cheers, Laurie. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie(a)brownowl.com --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Hosting mail in a different place from web pages
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

Is it possibe to have mail hosted in a 'different place' from where web pages are hosted? That's a bit of a vague question, I'll expand:- I own several domains, the two relevant ones are isbd.co.uk and isbd.net. Currently everything to do with these two domains is hosted with BsNet (essentially the same as x-1.net) they are fine for the web hosting side of things and anyway that's not so important at present but we do have occasional hiccoughs with E-Mail. Is it possible to move all E-mail to somewhere else? I.e. to keep the web hosting unchanged where it is but to remove all E-Mail from BsNet? I suspect it's something to do with MX records and things like that, I do have access to and the ability to modify the zone file, is that what needs to be changed? In fact I may as well show the current zone file for isbd.net:- $TTL 86400 @ IN SOA ns0.futile.net. root.futile.net. ( 2003011901 ; serial 28800 ; refresh 3600 ; retry 604800 ; expiry 86400 ) ; minimum ; IN NS ns0.futile.net. IN NS ns1.futile.net. IN MX 10 mx1.mail.bsnet.co.uk. IN MX 100 foundation.bsnet.co.uk. IN MX 200 relay.bsnet.co.uk. ; IN A ip.address.of.host ; localhost IN A 127.0.0.1 ; this is a commented out line So it's easy enough to change thos MX records but presumably the places they point at will need some configuration to so that they accept mail for xxx(a)isbd.net and do something useful with it. Any good tutorial/howto pages for this anywhere? -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

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Re: Why Linux?
by John Seago 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

On Thursday 06 July 2006 10:58 am, Ian bell <ianbell(a)ukfsn.org> wrote: <snip> > However, for me, the core of Linux is seriously disparate - endless > kernel revisions, each distro with its own patches, file layout, start > up scripts, endless dependency issues and so on. So I was very pleased > to find this is not the case with the various BSD flavours. In fact I > have just installed NetBSD on an old PC. It has a single source code > tree that compiles on 57 different platforms which says a lot about > the quality of the code. Its pkgsrc app is what gentoo is modeled on > apparently and there are over 5000 apps to choose from (nearly as many > as Debian). Is 5000 "nearly as many as Debian", which has over 15490 packages? It would seem to be over 10490 short of "nearly". > I am seriously tempted to roll it out across my other PCs. That is the main advantage of *free* software, everyone has the freedom to choose. One is not 'locked' into any particular software. the whole gamut as laid out here: http://www.freeos.com/ and probably several other URL's as well, HURD is one which comes to mind and I'm sure there are others, the 'Tunes' project for instance. All provide variety and *choice*. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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escaping a "!" in a bash shell
by Jenny Hopkins 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

Hullo there, I'm trying to echo a command to a serial port that happens to require a "!". In order to send the command I need to escape the ! with a backslash. However, I'm finding that at the other end, the backslash stays there rather than being stripped off, so the received command is also escaped and therefore doesn't work. Emulated on a terminal: I send jenny@phaedrus:~$ echo "\!tts MALE" > /dev/ttyp2 and receive \!tts MALE But I need to receive !tts MALE Any hints on how to acheive this? Thanks, Jenny

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NeXT computers seek loving home
by Richard Lewis 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

Hello ALUG, We've been having a bit of a clear-out and my boss was about to throw out a pair of NeXT computers. Luckily, one of the post grads and I managed to get to them in time. We've had a look over them and this is the inventory: NeXTcube N1000 [1] ================== CPU: MC68040 25 MHz RAM 16MB (4 x 4MB SIMMs) notes: * This machine would not boot properly. It sounds the like HDD may be corrupt. * The back panel is split at the top NeXTstation N1100 [2] ===================== CPU: MC68040 25 MHz ? RAM: ??MB (8 x ??MB SIMMs) notes: * The power supply [3] from this machine apparently broke some time ago and is missing. * Therefore, this machine is untested. NeXT MegaPixelDisplay monitor N4000 =================================== NeXT MegaPixelDisplay monitor N4000A ==================================== 2 x NeXT keyboard ABQ ===================== Part No. 2230 2 x NeXT mouse AFF ================== So, in summary, its a complete NeXTcube and a complete NeXTstation neither of which we've been able to boot. The cube was willing to boot from its network card but we decided not to try to install Debian or NetBSD[4] or anything as doing that may be part of the attraction of owning the machine for someone. Also, someone interested in NeXT hardware may be able to recover the NeXTstep OS. Possibly. The machines were given to the studio director at the UEA Music School some time ago because, apparently, they have a collection of IRCAM[5] software on. If anyone is interested in these machines then let me know within a week or so and you can come a take them away for nothing. We decided that we'd rather they were given away to a good home that just dumped. If there's no interest then we'll try selling them on eBay but we'd like to avoid the hassle if possible (the cube is extremely heavy; built from some magnesium alloy[6]!). Let me know! Cheers, Richard PS. Tim Berners-Lee developed Web and HTTP on a NeXTcube! [1] http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/reach/435/nextcube.htm [2] http://old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=555 [3] http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~heller/NeXT/power_supply_repair.html [4] http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/intro.next68k.html [5] http://www.ircam.fr/?L=1 [6] http://photo.simson.net/hacks/cubefire.html -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Barcode reader error with Belkin KVM
by Jenny Hopkins 04 Jul '06

04 Jul '06

Hullo there, I fixed a problem that has introduced another problem. I admin a bank of 8 computers running debian stable, kernel 2.6.1, which were connected to a Belkin KVM via PS2. From there we have an ordinary PS2 mouse, and a PS2 keyboard with splitter to a barcode reader. We started getting problems with the mouse going completely bananas. I googled the problem being a known one with Belkin KVM switches and 2.6 kernels, and Belkin then suggested we tried using a USB connection between PC and KVM to stop the problem. This has stopped the mad mouse kernel problems, but now I find that the barcode reader isn't working properly - either no string at all or only half the code is appearing when I bleep. I can't find any errors reported ithe logs, so it seems that the information maybe isn't even getting past the KVM. The keyboard seems to be working correctly. Has anyone any idea of what could be going on? Thanks, Jenny

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