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Re: [Alug] Meeting poster
by MJ Ray 10 Jun '01

10 Jun '01

Neill Newman <neill(a)entora.co.uk> writes: > any parking available ?? also some basic directions might be nice ;) Yes. I'll add the actual venue info URL to it. -- MJR

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Meeting poster
by MJ Ray 10 Jun '01

10 Jun '01

Postscript of a poster is available from my web site at http://www.towers.org.uk/alug/poster2001-6.ps.gz Please use it. The proper announcement will follow as soon as I've got control (or at least figured out why I don't have control) of the web site. -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] ALUG Librarian stuff
by brodders＠cwcom.net 10 Jun '01

10 Jun '01

Migod! ALUG Library's...come back to life! OK so no-ones ripped a new one in the idea of a peer-peer ALUG Library. That's nice; I assumed we'd go that way so I've quietly been doodling around with the concepts. Have not thought about consequences of wandering people; don't think it's too much of a problem insofar it's generic & will not go away. I'm for doing no more than normal add-person, delete/edit person etc. Um? fine person? New joiners give a sub which they get back when they go LESS losses? Could be expensive. Perhaps a borrowing cap is in order. Another table... NOPE a new attributes of the Person table; default say 4. This might as well be a progress report on what I've done, so here goes. Top level concepts as last reported + thoughts on this issue: Are there any issues if item passed to wrong person. Example: Person A has WonderBook which everyone wants. Person's B,C,D etc. request it. B is at top of list. At the next meet everyone is there except B. Oh dear a ruck forms; A & book disappear from view & when tussle clears D has made off with it. "Well, B had their chance." Is this legal? Don't see why not; B could well miss a meet & it seems fine to me that someone else gets the book. For this to work, everyone must have been issued a key to give A. That may mean another table for the confirmation keys rather then finding a home for <the one key> in say the Transaction table. Alternatively if it's NOT OK to passover B what then? Perhaps C only should be allowed to have the book, not D as decided in the tussle? My instinct is that the more flexible the better; so I'd plump for "issue N confirmation keys & let people decide for themselves". There are more arguments around this area (the confirmation key is now effectively a person ID, so why keep on scrambling it?) but overall I'm happy with this. It's more secure / difficult to defraud this way. Next up, db progress. Postgres is wonderful, BUT as I had everything to hand to get going with MySQL so I made a start using it (also I had another project which used MySQL). Now when I make a start I explore problem areas. This ties in with my design assumptions which are that everything's easy - except for the problems. So I want to know what are the problems & where are they? Once these are conquered I can go back to sleep (=base mode). First up I needed a model environment, so I put together a box networked to a PC. There's the server, here's the client <this included a big diversion fighting various Linux distros; they didn't like the ancient embedded video on the server>. MySQL goes in, fight with that. Many minor mistakes; finally import a test database for the other project; but principles established. Install MyODBC onto the PC; that is a success. Next up how to actually do it? I want a RAD or sumfin'. Access works well via the ODBC, but that's not PC. Hm. StarOffice 5.2! It sort of works and crashes but it's just about usable; snag it it doesn't quite fit MySQL nicely. At this point I was going to make a start putting some default forms together. OK not for the final system; they'll have to be over the web. But these are 1st shot functional screens to get things going; SO5.2 has a GUI editor all drag'n'dropish with predefined stuff (fields, buttons, pull down lists etc) & that's nice esp. when it accesses the remote test MySQL db and I see real data in the fields on my PC. At that point I went on holiday & now it's now. Be Warned I'm not a coder (well not in the last 15 years). Bye Bye for now! Steve

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Re: [Alug] ALUG Librarian stuff
by MJ Ray 09 Jun '01

09 Jun '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com> writes: > No somebody who has learnt the hardway that you need to design the > code, if nothing else to design the bugs out. I'm not ont for creating > BIG designs etc... just nice highlevel concept diagrams and other > USEFUL things like that. Yeah, pretty pictures. Everyone likes pretty pictures. 'cept me. I'll take a good explanation over a specialised diagram requiring a key almost any time. > How can you say that? I originally posted a relational scheme to the > list and was told tht it was naive and was lacking and some other > scheme were posted, had we designed it correctly we would have the > scheme ok first time round. http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/pipermail/alug/2001-May/001083.html Only Brett seemed to criticise it... > [...] What we must avoid like the plague is making assumptions, any > engineer ot scientist will tell you that an assumption is the mother > of all f*** ups. What am I? A pomegranate? > Good code is code which meets the needs of the application and > doesn't crash. [...] Being written is a prerequisite for these. > Good. For now we need to just assume we have a RDBMS until the point > when we have the design done. Is an RDBMS appropriate, or should we just assume an OO backing store? -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] ALUG Librarian stuff
by MJ Ray 09 Jun '01

09 Jun '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com> writes: > [...] We are analysing a system here and we need to maintain an > implementation specific view of things until we get into the design > stage. As I can see things, we skipped the feasibilty stage and also > the analysis and Design stages, and thus we have arrived at the > implementation phase with some major lack of designs. ARRRRRRRRRRGH -- another "big design" fan? Do the phrases "you aren't gonna need it" and "do the simplest thing that could possibly work" mean anything to you? http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeProgrammingRoadmap I mean, yes, let's design this thing, and the start of this thread is a good starting point, but let's not waste time procrastinating and drawing pretty pictures of the system. Good code is written code, before anything else. > [...] Can we get anything on the alug.org.uk hosts in the way > of either mysql or postgres? I don't know, but I'd expect so, or at least a hostname pointed somewhere that did. -- MJR

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[alt.uu.comp.os.linux.questions] Recommended Linux Reference Books??
by MJ Ray 09 Jun '01

09 Jun '01

Here's a thread from elsewhere about something we discussed... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 21:49:41 GMT From: "X_Factor6" <m.tiesman(a)home.com> Subject: Recommended Linux Reference Books?? Message-ID: <VFST6.30136$Q9.6942135(a)news1.elmhst1.il.home.com> what are some good reference books for Linux?? I already have a couple from O'reilly & Associates. Let me know Thanks. X_Factor6 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 03:04:28 +0200 From: "R.V. Gronoff" <regis.gronoff(a)laposte.net> Subject: Re: Recommended Linux Reference Books?? Message-ID: <9fp951$5af5t$1(a)ID-77205.news.dfncis.de> References: <VFST6.30136$Q9.6942135(a)news1.elmhst1.il.home.com> "Linux Essential Reference", by Raymond Debonne ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 08:13:53 GMT From: jayfar(a)netaxs.com (Jayfar) Subject: Re: Recommended Linux Reference Books?? Message-ID: <slrn9i12a0.44s.jayfar(a)access.netaxs.com> References: <VFST6.30136$Q9.6942135(a)news1.elmhst1.il.home.com> I'm looking at a cow-orker's copy of "Linux - The Complete Reference," 4th edition (2001), by Richard Peterson, which includes info on 2.4 kernel. It's from Osborne, ISBN #0-07-212940-9 and weighs in at a hefty 1200+ pages. Jayfar - - Netaxs Network Operations Center ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 08:26:27 -0500 From: David Douthitt <ssrat(a)mailbag.com> Subject: Re: Recommended Linux Reference Books?? Message-ID: <3B20D283.703E5F3D(a)mailbag.com> References: <VFST6.30136$Q9.6942135(a)news1.elmhst1.il.home.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To me, every UNIX administrator and every UNIX power user should have the following book: * "UNIX in a Nutshell", by Daniel Gilley and the staff of O'Reilly & Assoc. You didn't say what sort of books you wanted: * Technical? * Programming? * Administration? * Introductory? However, I would recommend the "....Unleashed" series - like "Linux Unleashed" and "Red Hat Linux Unleashed." Also likely a good source is "Running Linux" published by O'Reilly. Also, when you go looking at books, don't just look at Linux books, but also at generic UNIX books - stay away from version specific books (like Unixware or Solaris or HP-UX) - they all have their differences. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 15:22:33 +0100 From: SteveCampbell <the.goonden(a)ntlspamworld.com> Subject: Re: Recommended Linux Reference Books?? Message-ID: <La5U6.19288$YB3.2950923(a)news2-win.server.ntlworld.com> References: <VFST6.30136$Q9.6942135(a)news1.elmhst1.il.home.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit the best and most relevant docs are on your system ot at www.linuxdoc.org having said that, you are probably like me and much prefer printed stuff you can relax with over a coffee. Just remember that other source of info as it is invaluable. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 16:15:01 -0000 From: rodsmith(a)speaker.rodsbooks.com (Rod Smith) Subject: Re: Recommended Linux Reference Books?? Message-ID: <ti1ug55cl3dn39(a)corp.supernews.com> References: <VFST6.30136$Q9.6942135(a)news1.elmhst1.il.home.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii The field of Linux books is pretty broad. There are tutorial books, reference books, etc.; and these cover Linux generally, Linux networking, Linux programming, etc., as well as sub-sets of these (like books on specific servers). I've got a Web page with suggestions in several categories at http://www.rodsbooks.com/books/. (That page features my own books, so I can't claim to be an unbiased source of information. ;-) Sub-pages include some suggestions on books by others, though.) - - Rod Smith, rodsmith(a)rodsbooks.com http://www.rodsbooks.com Author of books on Linux & multi-OS configuration ------------------------------ End of Digest ************* -- MJR Member of the Anglian Linux User Group, UK Meets every month or so and OPN #alug on Mondays at 2000 UK http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/

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Re: [Alug] Pingful success at last!
by MJ Ray 09 Jun '01

09 Jun '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com> writes: > Perhaps a more detailed account of what was wrong and how it was fixed > could go on the web so that others who have this problem can get it > fixed. Email it to me. It may motivate me to fix the repository and bring the site up to date. -- MJR

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Pingful success at last!
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 08 Jun '01

08 Jun '01

Let me share my joy with you! After weeks and weeks of trying i have got the linux box at work networked. I'm sitting here with such a grin on my face. First I changed the DLink card for a 3com. Then I struggled with addresses and finally changed the io and irq on the card and matched up the box. Then i fiddled and diddled for ages not seeing what i had done wrong. Then SomeOne Who Knows looked at my box and found out it was using the AUI port rather than the BNC. Then I tried a 3c5x9config utility debian has but got tied in knots. Finally i did the boot-into-dos trick, and ran a 3com config exe file and changed the port. Now it pings, pongs, pangs. Happiness. Joy. Rapture. (sad, sad)

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Re: [Alug] ALUG Librarian stuff
by MJ Ray 07 Jun '01

07 Jun '01

brodders(a)cwcom.net writes: > This is a repost as the original didn't seem to turn up - or if it > did, no - one commented! Not that it didn't appear, just that I don't have enough time. > I don't like this - would you do it? - so I've been kicking around the > idea of allowing casual person-person item passing. These need to be > verified transactions on the database otherwise fraud is simple. The > protocol I suggest below is - good enough?? Comments appreciated. Peer to peer! Trendy. I can't see any obvious problems with the ticketing system, though. > I want to encrypt the lot; ideally the entire database. And the > transactions from server to client must be secure too otherwise login > accounts get compromised. Perhaps we can just find somewhere to run the web site over https connections and use the mailing list passwords? Or somehow else store details for it. Perhaps using encrypted email or something. Is there a security guru in the house? -- MJR

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Freemans Book emporium
by David Freeman 07 Jun '01

07 Jun '01

I can now also get the following Publishers as well. Sybex O'Reilly Harvard University Press MIT WW Norton Yale University Press University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton Chicago University Press Thanks D __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

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