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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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Risks (or otherwise) of passwordless ssh use
by Chris Green 20 May '05

20 May '05

I currently use ssh for various logins from home and from work. I have set up the logins so that they work without me entering a password or key phrase at all, i.e. I *think* when asked for a key to generate the encrypted string used for authorisation I entered nothing. I know this creates some security holes but I'm not at all clear what they are really, can anyone elucidate? I realise that anyone with access to my work machine or my home machine will be able to login to these remote systems without knowing the password but that's not a big problem really, there is far more important and sensitive information on my desktop machines than there is on the places where I remotely login. Is this the only risk or is the encryption inherently weaker if I didn't enter a key? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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How to find out what mysql databases I have?
by Chris Green 20 May '05

20 May '05

I always have this problem when I come back to using mysql. How do I find out what mysql databases I have set up? The mysql daemon (mysqld) is running, I can run 'mysql' and I get the 'mysql>' prompt but that's it, there seems ot be no simple way of finding out what databases there are there to use. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Apache + modssl + mount -o ro = segfault
by MJ Ray 19 May '05

19 May '05

Here's one I've not met before: I have an Apache (1.3.x) server doing SSL. The server has a read-only root partition and then read-write partitions for things like /home, /var, /tmp and so on. If Apache is started, all the https sites fail, return no data and say in the log "[notice] child pid 563 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)" or similar. If / is mounted read-write, Apache started, then / is remounted read-only, it works. I can't see any read-only directory being used in the httpd.conf - what's going on at startup that I'm missing? -- Thanks for any tips, MJR/slef http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

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ADSL Router configuration question
by Chris Green 19 May '05

19 May '05

This isn't really a Linux question but it is network/computer related so it's not that far off topic. We've just got ADSL and I'm now up and running with a Zyxel 660H router/switch. I would like to be able to configure the Zyxel remotely using the web interface but I would also like to make a Web server on one of the machines in our home network visible to the outside world. Is it possible to do both of these things at the same time? The Zyxel has a specific menu for setting up access to the management interface, you can enable/disable the telnet and HTTP interfaces for LAN or WAN or LAN & WAN. You can also set the port number associated with these. In the NAT configuration you can set up services on the LAN which you wish to be visible to the outside world. However I don't see how one can have a web server visible to the outside world at the same time as making the management interface visible as they will both appear as the same port number and IP address. I tried changing the port number for the managment interface access from the default 80 to 8080 but that just stopped it working completely because the firewall at the other end wouldn't pass traffic on port 8080. Is there any clever redirection I can do on the LAN to make it possible to connect to the Web server on the LAN and then to the Zyxel router from the LAN side? I could configure using telnet, I'm quite happy to do that, but it's hardly secure over the internet. I suppose I can set it so that it's only accessible from specific IP addresses which might be OK. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Can one create 'per user' host name aliases?
by Chris Green 18 May '05

18 May '05

I've just got broadband (small village in Suffolk) and have a static IP address, however the host name is impossibly long, it is 84-51-144-229.isbdlt032.adsl.metronet.co.uk So, is there any way for me to provide my own personal alias for this name so I can (for example) say "ssh -l username home" where 'home' will be expanded to the full host name? This is on systems where I don't (mostly) have root access, two Linux systems where I have shell access and Solaris systems at work. What I really want is a sort of local copy of the /etc/hosts file which a user can add to. I know I could set a shell/environment variable but this requires prefixing with $ to use it and I'd like something cleaner if possible. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Cleaning a filesystem for compression
by Stuart Bailey 17 May '05

17 May '05

I have a CF card with two partitions - one ext2 and the other ext3. I want to create an image for the card but since it's about 1Gb in size, the image requires compressing before it can be ftp'd. Is there a way to zero out any unused areas in the FS in order to optimise the compression? Many thanks, Stuart. -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) Linux Specialist (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ---------------------------------------- ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please email postmaster(a)linusoft.co.uk immediately. You should not copy or use this email or attachments for any purpose nor disclose their contents to any other person. NO BINDING CONTRACT WILL RESULT FROM THIS E-MAIL UNTIL SUCH TIME AS A WRITTEN DOCUMENT IS SIGNED ON BEHALF OF LinuSoft. LinuSoft cannot accept any responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of this message as it has been transmitted over public networks. *************************************************************************

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"All for the best"
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 17 May '05

17 May '05

Hi Folks, Browsing the Guardian "Online" section this morning I came across an interesting story from last Thursday's edition which I have not seen discussed elsewhere: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1481272,00.html "All for the best "Linus Torvalds, who developed the Linux operating system, once more inspires a community of coders to make his open source software even better. Glyn Moody reports Thursday May 12, 2005 The Guardian You may not have noticed, but the open source community had one of its inner-circle virtual punch-ups recently. What is interesting about the spat - aside from the sight of Linus Torvalds and other top hackers swapping e-insults - is that its resolution helps to explain why Linux is so good, and why it will get even better." [now read on] 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: 17-May-05 Time: 08:43:27 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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