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Slow HW Clock
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 28 May '06

28 May '06

Hi Folks, I've discovered that the hardware clock on one of my machines is running about 2/3 slow: loses about 20min in each hour. For the time being, I'm writing the system time to it every so often, and the system time is updated hourly by NTP. But the principal irritation of it is that the system clock is set from the HW clock on bootup, so I have to make provision to over-ride that. I don't know of any important system functions that directly consult the HW clock rather than the system clock. Do you? Also -- and here I'd really welcome good ideas -- does anyone have any suggestions for why this might be happening, and/or for what to so about it? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 27-May-06 Time: 13:34:41 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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How do you keep all your files in sync on multiple platforms?
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 28 May '06

28 May '06

Like me, I expect several of you have multiple PCs, each with their own different OS installed. I'm investigating how to setup automatic synching between them. What I would ideally like is something that runs in the background and syncs (via peer-to-peer) the files automatically between Linux, OSX and Windows. I've found unison under a GPL license that supports all platforms, but it's only for merging two sources. I've found groove.net, but that's Windows only. Foldershare.com supports Mac and Windows, but not Linux and I don't like the idea of storing my own files externally. What I've done in the past is just have separate file stores on each machine and then sync them up to a master internal FTP server, but this sucks and is not time efficient when the same file ends up on more than one machine as I need to manually check for the most recent version. So, how do the rest of you handle synching your files on multiple platforms? -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com/ "Oh, Great Spirit, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference." - Native American Indian

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Relative speeds of ways of doing 'X over the internet'?
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 28 May '06

28 May '06

Does anyone have any ideas about, or is there a web site that will tell me about, the relative speeds of different ways of running X applications across the internet? I'm specifically interested in runnning jpilot (a Palm Dekstop replacement that runs on Linux) remotely through my ADSL connection. The only way I have run it to date is tunnelling X through an ssh connection. This works OK in the sense that it's full functional but it's not really fast enough for normal use. It's just a way of getting at the data if I really need to. What I'm after is knowing if there are better and/or more optimised ways of connecting so that this would become a usable utility when accessed remotely. In terms of bandwidth use jpilot is sort of 'middling', it is much, much more usable than running Firefox via the ssh tunnel for example but not as quick as running an rxvt terminal. (An rxvt terminal actually runs quite quickly but there's little point as it only offers the same function as an ordinary ssh session which is quicker and easier) So, can anyone offer any ideas please. -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

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Real-time Audio Processing and Streaming
by Richard Lewis 26 May '06

26 May '06

Hello ALUG, I'm doing some work with one of the post-grads on a Web-based audio mixer for live sound sources. The user will see each of the, say, half-dozen sound sources arranged on the screen and as he moves his cursor (or "joystick") towards one, it becomes predominant in the mix. Each of the sound sources will play either a continuous stream from a live microphone or continuous loops of interesting cached sounds. My basic plan is to have this sort of "joystick" metaphor on the client side which responds to mouse gestures by sending lots of small HTTP requests representing Open Sound Control commands using AJAX to a PHP (or possibly the dreaded Perl) script on the server side which, in turn, forwards the OSC commands to the mixer software. The output audio stream from the mixer should then be MP3 encoded and streamed back to the client to play in his embedded media player. I have a clear view of how I will implement everything up to and including the server side PHP (or Perl). After that I'm not so sure. There are two aspects that I'd appreciate anyone's wisdom on. First is the mixing software. The reason why I've mentioned OSC is because my colleague is an experienced Max/MSP user and would like to use either that or PureData to handle the mixing. However, I'm worried about how well this will scale up when multiple users are connected. Will I have to run one instance of Max (or pd) for each client connection? Should I perhaps consider a more UNIXy tool like ecasound or something? Second is the streaming software. I'm a bit surer about this: I've looked at Icecast and it seems to do MP3 encoding. I reckon it can probably handle multiple client sessions as long as each connection has its own distinguishable source audio stream which I suppose depends on how I choose to implement the mixer. Has anyone had any experience with it? Is it very resource intensive? Any thoughts or experiences would be very welcome! Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis Sonic Arts Research Archive http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Would anyone care to Samba?
by Barry Samuels 25 May '06

25 May '06

I have an IBM ThinkPad R51 less than a year old which came with Windows XP although I have Debian installed on it which is what I mostly use. However there is one Windows application, MapInfo, which I use occasionally and for which I have never found a Linux substitute. I had the laptop set up to connect to my normal Linux (Debian Testing) desktop machine via Samba and was able to use it. Then two things happend. 1. I moved the mount point of the partition on the Linux machine to which the laptop, running Windows, connected. I changed the paths in smbd.conf and did think to restart Samba. 2. I also upgraded Debian Testing on my non-laptop machine. Now the laptop won't even recognise that the Debian machine is there although it is connected to the network and I can ping the Debian machine. My first thought was to look in the logs on the Debian machine for errors but there are no errors! Where do I go from here to find which machine is the cause of the problem? I assume it must be the Debian desktop because that's the only one that's changed. Both smbd and nmbd are running on the desktop. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Linux.com : Runit makes a speedy replacement for init
by Keith Watson 25 May '06

25 May '06

<http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/03/2126222 > ...interesting article. Does anyone use anything other than SysVinit for booting? Regards, Keith ____________ Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is to you. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Can someone explain?
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 24 May '06

24 May '06

Hi Folks, Someone out there will know the answer to my ignorant query ... Suppose I have an up-and-running internet connection via my ISP. So I telnet into a remote host (e.g. nessie.mcc.ac.uk) and establish a login-session. So far so good. Next, for DSL reasons, the internet connection is interrupted (the router re-syncs). Shortly afterwards, it is re-established again. But now, I have lost contact with the login session. My question is: What is the mechanism (or perhaps absence of mechanism) leading to losing the contact? Or, turning the question on its head, what is it that keeps my link with the remote host alive so long as the internet connection stays up? The naive version of the question: If my packets can find their way to my login to nessie before the line drops, and nessie's can find their way back to my telnet, how come they can't continue to do so after the line drops and is re-estiblished? I hope people understand what I'm asking -- I'll try better if you don't! Thanks, and 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: 24-May-06 Time: 21:03:41 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Why always public-key encryption algorithms?
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 23 May '06

23 May '06

Why is it that *everything* uses some sort of public-key encryption algorithm for storing sensitive data? It's stupid! OK, it's brilliantly useful for sending data across the internet and so on but for storing one's own sensitive data it is entirely pointless as far as I can see. For example if I want to store a file with some sensitive data in it and only only want to be able to decrypt it myself then surely anything *but* a public key encryption algorithm makes sense. Essentially a public key algorithm means that there is always a brute force way of getting at the data, it may take more computing power/time than is available but it is in principle possible. Other ways of encrypting can be made essentially uncrackable if you want. Are there any encryption experts here who can persuade me that I'm being silly? -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

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USB On Old Laptop
by Simon Royal 23 May '06

23 May '06

Hi I have an old laptop with no USB, a ThinkPad 380ED which has 16bit PCMCIA slots. Can anyone suggest where I would get a USB PCMCIA card from? I have searched eBay but even the great online garage sale failed to return anything. It doesn't have to be USB 2 a simple USB 1.1 card would do but all they have is cardbus cards. Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.simonroyal.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac

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For Sale
by Wayne Stallwood 23 May '06

23 May '06

As previously mentioned I have upgraded my home server and the old one is looking for a new home if anyone is interested. It's a converted Gigabyte NAS box. Originally it was a Linux based appliance server that offered basic filesharing, print, firewall and mail services. It's a very nicely built little unit, a tiny tower measuring about 400x300x90mm. Quiet enough to sit in the corner of a room without causing much annoyance (it is a LOT quieter than my new 1U rack server) Many moons ago it was de-commissioned at one of my clients due to hard drive failure (the original OS was lost as part of that failure) I fitted a 120GB hdd and installed Ubuntu Server. It has served me very well ever since. In fact the main reason I retired it was that I couldn't find a half height PCI line card (the only type that will fit) that would play nicely with Asterisk. It has a PIII 866 Mhz CPU 128MB of RAM (standard dimm slots, one free) 2 NIC's (so it could make a nice firewall if nothing else) 1 PCI Modem 120GB HDD (with space for another) It also has a little LCD on the front that shows POST status during startup. This was originally also controlled by the OS and showed running status as well. It is plugged into a PCI card (more on that in a mo) on what I think *may* be a parallel port. However I have never managed to get lcdproc to drive it (and can't for the moment even remember what chipset the LCD is) so at the moment it shows the post bits and then stops at "Starting operating system....." at which point the OS driver should be taking over. A brave new owner can have another go or take one of my spare hd44780 displays to try and replace it. The PCI card also has a socket for a "disk on chip" I still have the 8MB part that was in there, however this contains the bootloader for the original OS and was interfering with the Ubuntu boot so I removed it. The only slight complication is that it is a headless unit (no VGA and no PS/2 keyboard socket) When I originally set it up I got around this by taking it apart and plugging in a PCI graphics card and a USB keyboard on an internal USB header. Alternatives would be to perform a minimal installation with the drive in another machine. With this in mind I would install the new owners OS of choice and set it up for their network prior to handing it over. I am told that the Debian installer will default to ttys0 if there is no local graphics, which would make life a little easier (it has a serial port on the back panel) £80

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