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Power & Heat in Laptops
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 10 Sep '05

10 Sep '05

Hi Folks, An off-topic question, but you hardware experts may help! On some laptops, the external mains supply passes through an external transformer and it is the reduced voltage which is plugged in to the laptop. On others, the mains lead is plugged directly into the laptop, and the voltage reduction is done internally. In the former case, heat generated in the reduction is dissipated externally, while in the latter it has to escape from the interior of the laptop. So, other things being equal, one would expect the latter kind to run hotter than the former. This certainly seems to correspond to my experience. I have had 4 (ancient) laptops, 3 still working. One of these has the mains plugged in directly, the others all have an external transformer. I have never had heating concerns with the ones which have external transformers, while the "internal" one does run pretty warm, and periodically exhibits screen-flashing/breakup (especially when running "graphics heavy", as in X with lots of re-draw). Since this can often be cured by switching to a console and pressing a tiny button, which blanks the screen, for a few seconds, and also seems more prevalent in warm weather,I wonder if this is associated with overheating of the graphics chip. (There is an internal fan, which cuts in occasionally, but it seems to be a sleepy bugger and doesn't often wake up ... ) Any comments welcome, and will be read with interest! 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: 09-Sep-05 Time: 08:17:31 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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KDE Konqueror Problem
by Ben Whyte 09 Sep '05

09 Sep '05

Hi I have an interesting problem that I wondered if people could help with. I am running Debian testing and kde and konqueror has developed an odd problem, when you open it up to do file management, it will display the contents of a directory, but if you click on a directory it says it doesn't no what to do and what would you like to open the file using. So I have had a look at the file associations and it doesn't have any applications in the file associations. If I add a simple konqueror it recursively opens konqueror windows but shows no files in these windows. Any and all suggestions welcome. Ben Whyte

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Problem: Emacs + ssh X forwarding = BadWindow
by MJ Ray 09 Sep '05

09 Sep '05

Today I was using Emacs and used File->"New Frame on Display..." to put an emacs frame (a window) onto localhost:10 which was forwarded off over ssh to another display. Oddly, with this machine combination that I've not tried before, keyboard input wasn't recognised by Emacs and while using the mouse to try to see what the problem was, the connection was lost with some BadWindow message displayed on the original Emacs frame's minibuffer (vanished before I could copy it). I'm using Emacs 21.3, OpenSSH 4.0p1 and x.org 6.8.1 - has anyone seen similar problems or know what causes them? (By the way, if you've never used "New Frame on Display..." or its predecessors to create collaborative editing sessions, you've been missing out on a useful tool. Give it a go!) Thanks in advance for any clue, -- MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

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FTGH: Epson Stylus 480
by Jonathan McDowell 08 Sep '05

08 Sep '05

1 (one) Epson Stylus 480 colour inkjet printer. About 5 years old, but extremely rarely used (hence getting rid of it in a spree of clearing out junk). Didn't work that well under Linux when I bought it, but I believe it's supported ok these days. Parallel port interface. Boxed. I even seem to have a manual. Free To Good Home. Must collect from Norwich (off Drayton Road). J. -- "Why 'maybe' for everything?" "I'm using fluffy logic." [ Black Cat Networks ] [ 0845 PAYG dialup ] [ ADSL from £20+VAT/month ] [ http://www.blackcatnetworks.co.uk/ ]

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autoconf problem
by Chris Green 06 Sep '05

06 Sep '05

I'm trying to configure a utility using autoconf, when I run ./configure I get all the usual checking sort of stuff, then at the end:- checking for XShapeCombineMask in -lXext... no checking for jpeg_destroy_compress in -ljpeg... no not updating unwritable cache ./config.cache creating ./config.status sed: can't read confdefs.h: No such file or directory creating autoconf/Makefile.defines sed: can't read ./autoconf/Makefile.defines.in: No such file or directory creating autoconf/Makefile.common sed: can't read ./autoconf/Makefile.common.in: No such file or directory creating autoconf/Makefile.common.lib sed: can't read ./autoconf/Makefile.common.lib.in: No such file or directory creating Makefile sed: can't read ./Makefile.in: No such file or directory creating config.h cat: ./autoconf/config.h.in: No such file or directory config.h is unchanged ... but all those errors are nonsense, there is a writable ./config.cache (created earlier by autoconf) and the autoconf directory does exist and has those files in it. What am I missing? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 05 Sep '05

05 Sep '05

The monthly "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 8th September. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. We'll 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. 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/2004-08-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for. We're /normally/ just to the left of the main entrance. J. -- /-\ | 101 things you can't have too much |@/ Debian GNU/Linux Developer | of : 30 - Comfy sofas. \- |

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 05 Sep '05

05 Sep '05

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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IOS with DHCP client
by Ben Vinger 04 Sep '05

04 Sep '05

Hello I have a Cisco 2514, (bought second-hand) for use on my ADSL connection. It runs IOS Version 12.0(9) (IP Plus). In order to use it with ADSL, I need to have a DHCP client on it - only IOS versions 12.2 and later support DHCP client. Can anyone send me a 12.2 or later image (its about 3.8 MB when compressed)? Cheers Ben ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com

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Gigabit Woes
by Chris Glover 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

Hi, Here's one for the networking gurus on this list :-) At work we are intending on using a Linux machine running snort as an IDS (much cheaper than the Cisco alternative) with two gigabit nics. We have been doing some throughput tests, and are not convinced this will work, these tests were without installing snort. Our test setup is as follows:- ----------- ---------- ----------- - Windows - - Linux - - Windows - - 2003 srv------- ------- 2003 srv- ----------- --------- ----------- 10.128.30.2 eth0 10.128.30.1 10.128.32.2 eth1 10.128.32.1 All machines have gigabit NICS, and are connected via a Foundry gigabit switch. The Linux machine we used was an HP Proliant 3.0 GHz Dual Xeon with twin onboard Broadcom NICs using the tigon driver. We had the linux machine configured as a basic router.The linux machine was running knoppix, booted into textonly mode, with nics manually configured (ie only bash and the kernel running, and no iptables). We were doing the tests using netperf. We had applied the tweaks to the NICs from this site http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/networking/features/article.php/3497796 If we put the two windows machines onto the same subnet, and using the "Network Utilisation" graph in Task Manger showed we were running at 85-90% util. When we had the linux machine acting as a router between the two machines, this dropped to 35% util. Admittedly this probably isn't the best method. Using netperf between the windows and linux machine, again gave 85-90% util. This was with both windows machines sending data to both nics of the linux machine at the same time. We cant understand how the throughput can more than half, when sending between the two windows machines via the linux machine. This system is going to go on a very busy network, so speed is essential. We had tried the above test with a DELL single processor Xeon with onboard Intel and PCI Realtek gig-nics, and got very similar results. All tests were done with Knoppix 3.9 (2.6.11 kernel). On the production system we'll probably be using Redhat Enterprise. Anyone got any ideas? Are we missing something in the config? Many Thanks Chris -- Chris ---------------------------------- E Mail: chris(a)glovercc.plus.com SIP: 84411389(a)voiptalk.org IAXTEL: 17003366726

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X Windows programming question
by Chris Green 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

I'm playing with an existing X application program, modifying things to suit my requirements. Most things I seem to have fathomed out OK but I want the ability to change some window properties (it has only one window) 'on the fly'. Initially I just want to toggle one property when the right button (button 3) is clicked. I can catch the button event OK, that's not a problem. I then call XChangeProperty() to change the property. But what do I need to do to get the window redisplayed having called XChangeProperty() ? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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