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/etc/shadow - password field
by Chris Green 23 May '05

23 May '05

I was looking in my /etc/shadow file to see which users had passwords (so I could change them to something more secure, I know some are rubbish at the moment) and now I'm not sure what the password field is signifying. Most of the non-login 'system' accounts like 'bin' have a password field of '*', but there are a couple ('postgres' and another) which have a password field of '!'. Do both '!' and '*' indicate no password? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 23 May '05

23 May '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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Backing up IMAP mailbox
by Ben Francis 22 May '05

22 May '05

Eventually I hope to run my own mail server at home, but at the moment I use IMAP with my broadband ISP. I use IMAP because it let's me keep track of what I have and haven't read between work, home and my girlfriends house and a central store for all the emails I've sent. The amount of space on the IMAP server I use is starting to get quite large because of a lot of attachments and I'm paranoid that my ISP is going to notice and delete some of my emails without informing me first. I've been backing up my inbox by downloading the emails via pop3 in Thunderbird to my desktop computer but leaving a copy on the server, but this only backs up my main inbox, not all my subfolders and sent and drafts folder. How can I backup all my IMAP folders remotely? Thanks Ben -- Ben "tola" Francis http://hippygeek.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------- COMPUTER SUPPORT for small businesses and home users http://tolatech.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------

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Restricting ssh logins to certain users (not root)
by Chris Green 22 May '05

22 May '05

Is there any simple way of restricting ssh logins to a system to prevent remote root logins? I'd like to do this to add a little more security so that one has to login as a non-root user and *then* su to root (if you want root privileges for some reason). This would mean that an intruder would need to guess/hack two passwords to get root access. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Welcome
by andy 22 May '05

22 May '05

thanks for the welcome folks,nice to see there are other users in my area. felt a bit lonely as most of the people i know use winbloze software. mention linux to them & they go all glassy eyed or stare at you as if you're from another planet. i sometimes feel as if i'm a scientist who has made a great discovery & no one is listening!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! andy

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Moving Mozilla config etc to Firefox
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 22 May '05

22 May '05

Hi Folks, As mentioned in another mail just composed, I run Mozilla on a somewhat puny laptop. I also have Firefox installed, which is a much more compact and nippy program. The main reason I still keep running Mozilla is that I have a massive collection of bookmarks on Mozilla, built up over the years, and also an assortment of auto-login data for certain websites (userids & passwords), and an unknown number of cookies also accumulated over time. Not forgetting sundry plugins. In order to switch cleanly and conprehensively over to Firefox, I would need to transfer this lot from wherever Mozilla looks for it to wherever Firefox would look for it. I have not succeeded in sussing this out. Nor do I wish to re-create it all by hand! Any tips? (Are the two even totally compatible in this respect?) With 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: 08-May-05 Time: 13:38:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: Humongous computing with Windows XP 64bit Edition
by tom potts 22 May '05

22 May '05

Just a comment on linux memory use vs windows. If I remember rightly the file system on linux tends to keep files in memory until it needs the space so the memory usage goes up so when it says your using 700meg of ram this may actually mean your only using 200 meg for the system but there are 500meg of closed files. Windows seems to scrabble every last bit back and still suffer. I have an amd with 256MB ram with w2k it struggles to get started but isnt too bad after that even though I use VS.NET but it does seem to choke a lot. Running RH9.0 it almost seems to get bored. You can run suse9.2 in 16MBytes Ram but you seem to need 64Mbytes to install it using the graphical interface. Same for RH9! Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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new member
by thedeceiver 22 May '05

22 May '05

hi my names andy, & i thought i'd join your lug mailing list as i have been using linux for about 3 years,mainly suse,mandrake & fedora core.i'm not the greatest user but if i can help in any way i will. i currently run suse 9.3 on my laptop & dual boot on my main p.c.mainly for the kids as they are used to winbloze software. gradually working them to a switch. i also help out in my local school as i am fairly well versed in most i.t. issues. if i don't know the answer i can always find out. thanks for letting me join your lug hope to hear more from other members Andy -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 266.11.12 - Release Date: 17/05/2005

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Combining a collection of images into an animation file
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 21 May '05

21 May '05

I have a collection of image files that I would like to combine into an animation file, e.g. an MPEG. I have been playing around with the ImageMagick toolkit and mpeg2encode. They work, but the quality is not very good. Let me explain that - my images have some fine detail in them I need to preserve in the final animation, and mpeg2encode does not seem to provide any options for encoding quality. Can anyone recommend a better mpeg encoder for linux, which will allow me to control the quality of the final animation? Alternatively, if there is someone on the mailing list who does this sort of activity of a semi-regular basis, could you share the best way to do what I am attempting? -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com/ "I remember the very things I do not wish to; I cannot forget the things I wish to forget." - Cicero

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Where does PHP get it's host name information from?
by Chris Green 20 May '05

20 May '05

I'm trying to get PHP5.02 and Apache2 working again having upgraded my slackware from 10 to 10.1. I've got Apache going OK but PHP is acting a bit odd. The essential problem is that I've got my DNS a little bit awry (this may sound unrelated to PHP but we'll get there). Before we had broadband my system had no name as there was never a need to access it from the outside world. Now we have broadband I've got a sub-domain pointing at the system:- home.isbd.net 84.51.144.229 I have a router which is what the outside world sees when it connects to home.isbd.net and the NAT and firewall are set up to send packets to the appropriate systems on the LAN side. Within the LAN I the systems have names such as fred.isbd.co.uk (I own the isbd.co.uk domain) which only exist within the LAN and, on the Linux box, are set up in /etc/hosts. Thus there are entries such as:- 192.168.13.5 fred.isbd.co.uk fred These are very convenient as one can use the short form 'fred' to connect to that machine. However there are now some oddities occurring and I'm thinking I may have to change some/all of my hosts file. Firstly PHP keeps using the Linux server box's full name (server.isbd.co.uk) to try and do things and is failing miserably. Secondly for some reason the DNS on the LAN can't find home.isbd.net whereas everyone else in the world can find it and DNS on the LAN works for all other addresses. In general what do others here do about naming machines on a small SoHo LAN behind a router? Is there some accepted way of doing it? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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