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Promoting Linux
by John Seago 12 Nov '01

12 Nov '01

Yesterday, on my way to Ipswich I stopped at SBS Computers in Wittnesham to buy new IDE Cables. Talking to the proprietor, we touched briefly on the subject of Linux, in which he expressed an interest. I offered to return and talk him through an install of Mandrake 8.1, as he was interested in putting a 'free' OS into the second hand computers he sells. I returned today, (having to return some faulty goods to a shop in Ipswich), unfortunately, a problem occurred with installing Mandrake 8.1 in the next batch of Computers being prepared for sale, which I lacked both the experience and knowledge to overcome. Is there anyone on the list in the Ipswich area who could give some help and advice to SBS Computers. This would go a long way towards fulfilling one of ALUG's aims, that of promoting linux, as his customers would be going away with a computer pre-loaded with linux. The contact address for SBS Computers is: < info(a)sbscomputers.co.uk >. John Seago

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Linux Mandrake 8.1 Installations
by Mark Elliss 12 Nov '01

12 Nov '01

Good morning, I might be able to help you out with your Mandrake 8.1 installation problems. I picked up a message (see below) from the ALUG list were John Seago has asked if there was anyone in your area who could help.I am in the area and am willing to help. Regards Mark > Yesterday, on my way to Ipswich I stopped at SBS Computers in Wittnesham to > buy new IDE Cables. Talking to the proprietor, we touched briefly on the > subject of Linux, in which he expressed an interest. I offered to return and > talk him through an install of Mandrake 8.1, as he was interested in putting > a 'free' OS into the second hand computers he sells. I returned today, > (having to return some faulty goods to a shop in Ipswich), unfortunately, a > problem occurred with installing Mandrake 8.1 in the next batch of Computers > being prepared for sale, which I lacked both the experience and knowledge to > overcome. Is there anyone on the list in the Ipswich area who could give some > help and advice to SBS Computers. This would go a long way towards > fulfilling one of ALUG's aims, that of promoting linux, as his customers > would be going away with a computer pre-loaded with linux. > > The contact address for SBS Computers is: < info(a)sbscomputers.co.uk >. > > John Seago >

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Missing Daily Digests
by John Seago 12 Nov '01

12 Nov '01

Last week I only received digests 81, 82, 84 and 85, (if there was a digest for Sunday then that did not arrive either), I know of two other list members who did not get some of the messages, was there some problem? Or is this something else I have managed to break? John Seago

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Ain't Linux Wonderful
by Ian Thompson-Bell 10 Nov '01

10 Nov '01

A couple of days ago I had a major freeze on my Mandrake 8.0 desktop. I was running an mpeg encoder, called appropriately lame, at the time, when the screen just froze. No keyboard response so i was forced to reset. Only problem was e2fsck did not like one partition and kept freezing itself. So I ran the MD8.0 install disk in rescue mode and found I could manualy mount all the partitions and their contents seemed intact. Running e2fsck with the partitions unmounted found the corrupted partition and fixed it. A reboot and there was my system all intact and functional. Ain't linux wonderful? Ian -- Ian Thompson-Bell

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Sundays meeting
by John Woodard 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

I'm not going to make the meeting on Sunday as it will clash with Number One Son's birthday party. So have a good one and I hope you all get your broken bits working and enjoy being in a different venue for a change. -- Cheers, BJ

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Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Edenyard 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

Jenny Hopkins wrote: > I've managed to avoid upgrading a kernel up till now. How tricky is it on > a scale of 1 - 10 for someone slightly above the level of complete > incompetence? > Well - I managed it and my Linux knowledge on a scale of 1 to 10 is probably just below 1 at the moment. I had a slight false start, owing to some missing symlinks, but I soon fixed those, thanks to this list, and then it was ALMOST trivial - just type in the right commands in the right order and make plenty of tea between each command. Also, I discovered a mag called Linux Format (thanks to John Seago) and that has a cover CD bearing the source code for kernel 2.4.9, which is what I used for my new kernel last week. So I didn't even have to download 28Mb of source code before I started! I'd read somewhere that I should expect the compilation to take hours or days on an old PC (my P166 is ex-skip) but I was done in less than an hour, once I'd sorted my way through the 'make menuconfig' stage. So if I can, I'd say anyone can. If you want me to share my lack of knowledge any further, feel free to ask! I found the Kernel HOW-TO quite helpful and there's a README in with the source (which, had I read it more diligently, would have probably saved me falling into the lack-of-symlinks hole...). Hope this encourages you? Gerald.

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thanks for pages_failed info
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 06 Nov '01

06 Nov '01

Ta to all for help with the alarming pages_failed messages. I now understand that 1. I shouldn't set a large cronjob to run every minute by mistake ;-) 2. Kernel 2.2.18 is not so hot on memory management and i need to do my first new kernel installation 3. I need to set sysrq in some boot script or other to avoid crashing out like i had to yesterday. Now I can spend the next month trying to find out *how* to do these things...whoohooo! Sorry if I caused any confusion cross-posting on two lists. Some interesting merge talks coming out of it though. Jenny.

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RE: clug Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Ian Wells 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

> > I've managed to avoid upgrading a kernel up till now. How > tricky is it on > > a scale of 1 - 10 for someone slightly above the level of complete > > incompetence? > > If you have some idea of what hardware is in the system (or a .config > file hanging aroudn from last time), then it's pretty simple, > really. Some people find the kernel-package package in Debian is > helpful, but I tend not to use it. I recommend make menuconfig... After last night, and making a kernel with the IPSec patches in by just typing the right (one) command, I've decided that make-kpkg is lovely. Now all I have to do is switch my firewall box over to Debian. And repair its disk. And ideally find it a monitor which hasn't got 20 second phosphor persistence... Incidentally, when I've used SysRq I've found it needed enabling with an echo 1 >/proc/sys/kernel/sysrq on boot. Do it. It's invaluable when your machine goes tits up. (Especially when it's a general workhorse machine that everyone uses, with 40G partitions and a strange intermittent kernel bug that makes it impossible to reboot.) -- Ian.

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Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by MJ Ray 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

John Fremlin: > MJ Ray <markj(a)cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> writes: > > Hold AltGr and SysRq, then tap out s u u b (sync, unmount, unmount, boot) > You should sync after umount too or else you'll probably get spurious > fscks on boot (it needs to write a clean umount flag to the superblock) Surely a sync won't do anything to a read-only disk? (OK, I lied: "u" is actually remount-read-only.) -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for nmbd"
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 05 Nov '01

05 Nov '01

MJRay wrote: >Yes, .17 and .18 blew up quite spectacularly on tsw a few times. It seems >that certain situations end up with swap being consumed and never released. >.19 (or maybe .20 now?) cured the problem. I've managed to avoid upgrading a kernel up till now. How tricky is it on a scale of 1 - 10 for someone slightly above the level of complete incompetence? Jen

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