Re: Condolences
My sympathy and condolences to Chris and Caleb Sawtell. Wesley Parish Quoting Barry Marchant [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hello cluggers, Those of you who know Chris and Caleb Sawtell will be saddened to hear that Chris lost his Partner of 20 years, and Caleb his Mother last Saturday. I am sure all cluggers will join with me in offering you both our sincere sympathy. Barry Sharpened hands are happy hands. Brim the tinfall with mirthful bands - A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge I me. Shape middled me. I would come out into hot! I from the spicy that day was overcasked mockingly - it's a symbol of the other horizon. - emacs : meta x dissociated-press
[Fwd: Ubuntu 8.10 released]
Original Message Subject:Ubuntu 8.10 released Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:11:31 -0700 From: Ubuntu Announcements [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop and Server, continuing Ubuntu's tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. Read more about the features of Ubuntu 8.10 in the following press releases: Desktop editionhttp://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-8.10-desktop Server edition http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-8.10-server Ubuntu 8.10 will be supported for 18 months on both desktops and servers. Users requiring a longer support lifetime may choose to continue using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS rather than upgrading to or installing 8.10. Ubuntu 8.10 is also the basis for new 8.10 releases of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and UbuntuStudio: http://kubuntu.org/news/8.10-release http://xubuntu.org/news/intrepid/release http://ubuntustudio.org/8-10_release_note To Get Ubuntu 8.10 -- To download Ubuntu 8.10, or obtain CDs, visit: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu Because Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is a long-term support release, users of that release will not be offered an automatic upgrade to 8.10 via Update Manager. For instructions on upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10, see: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge. We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues. They are available at: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810 Find out what's new in this release with a graphical overview: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810overview If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but aren't sure, try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel, on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums: #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users http://www.ubuntuforums.org/ Helping Shape Ubuntu If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/ About Ubuntu Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, and servers, with a fast and easy install and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away. Professional technical support is available from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit: http://www.ubuntu.com/support More Information You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this release on our website: http://www.ubuntu.com/ To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's very low volume announcement list at: http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce -- ubuntu-announce mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce
Re: Horse Re: OT Learning 'C' - any pointers?
I've found a patch for vmware server for the latest kernels: http://www.insecure.ws/warehouse/vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz Just proven that it works with Ubuntu Intrepid. (But I'm also downloading 2.0 to give it another go.) K 2008/10/29 Craig Falconer [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Oh on that note I should probably add that horse is now back up and working. I messed about with vmware server 1.06 and 1.07 for a while but they didn't want to play nice with the latest kernels. So I had a look into xen which started off nicely. However that path came to a crashing halt when Xen required grub to boot (I've run lilo since forever) and then grub would not install with an XFS root filesystem. Grump! I then tried the new vmware server 2.0 I gave the 2.0 beta a go last year and discovered it was utter dreck then. Its much improved now, and actually works fine. So horse is up and trotting as usual. For those who have limited access, there's a http shell available at https://shell.clug.org.nz/ Its terrible but does work acceptably. Christopher Sawtell wrote: http://shell.clug.net.nz:8080/~chris/sawtell_C.shar It's a shell archive. Say:- sh sawtell_C.shar to open it. It's not complete, but about 3,500 people have thanked me for it, so it can't be too bad. -- Craig Falconer
Re: Horse Re: OT Learning 'C' - any pointers?
And, bizarrely, the patch isn't required with (and messes up) 1.06 under intrepid server. (?) 2008/10/31 Kerry Mayes [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I've found a patch for vmware server for the latest kernels: http://www.insecure.ws/warehouse/vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz Just proven that it works with Ubuntu Intrepid. (But I'm also downloading 2.0 to give it another go.) K
Re: Horse Re: OT Learning 'C' - any pointers?
Maybe that's the one i need to fix my broken vmware server 2 at home after accepting the remaining patches adept was offering. I've not had a chance to look around yet. Though that's a hardy box and from memory that's 2.6.24-something, so maybe not. Thought that might happen - it certainly sucks that vmware breaks every time there's a new kernel version! Yay, it's friday... Cheers, Roger Kerry Mayes wrote: And, bizarrely, the patch isn't required with (and messes up) 1.06 under intrepid server. (?) 2008/10/31 Kerry Mayes [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I've found a patch for vmware server for the latest kernels: http://www.insecure.ws/warehouse/vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz Just proven that it works with Ubuntu Intrepid. (But I'm also downloading 2.0 to give it another go.) K
Friday fun with a mouse
I have always [1] wanted a big spinny knob while editing audio using Audacity or Ardour, or editing movies using Open Movie Editor. You know the type that you flick to speed your way backward or forward through the file, or turn slowly to step through frame-by-frame. But I have always [2] been too cheap to spend $100 or more on a Griffin Powermate or Contour Shuttle, which I will use a few times at most. I made an actual knob from an offcut of MDF, a hole cutter, a sanding disk, a can of silver spray paint and a liberated hard-drive motor for the bearings. It spins quite well for 30 minutes labour. The web provided a number of ideas for making a sensor out of an old ball mouse, using the slotted disk and sensor. But that seemed much too difficult, so I just mounted a whole optical mouse upside down underneath the spinny knob, looking up at the bottom of the knob which I had left unpainted. This made a one-dimensional mouse. It was easy to mount my own switches in parallel with the original mouse buttons, to make button to select next and previous track, undo, redo, etc. The mouse has plenty of resolution. At high speeds, though, when you flick the wheel, the mouse cannot keep up with the high speed. You have to find a mouse with a high tracking speed. The trick is to mount the mouse as close to the axle as possible. The next step was to find out how to disconnect the spinny wheel motion from the X mouse pointer, connect it to the media transport control in Ardour, Audacity and Open Movie Editor and make the buttons do useful things in those applications. I have mostly succeeded with Ardour. Mouse Events When you move a mouse, magic happens inside the Linux kernel, then events start appearing in a number of places: * /dev/input/mouseN, where N is different from each mouse * /dev/input/mice, which gather together input events from ALL of the mouses [3] connected to your system * /dev/input/eventM, where M is different for every input device: keyboards, joysticks, mouses, trackpads, etc The /dev/input/mouseN and /dev/input/mice devices report standard PS/2 mouse events. These only report up to three buttons, not the five on my mouse, so I ignored these. The /dev/input/eventM devices are much more interesting, reporting events in an undocumented format, but one that knows about every key on every keyboard known to man, multiple mouse axes (relative movements), multiple joystick axes (absolute position) and so on. To find out which mouse corresponds to your modified mouse, you can look at /dev/input/by-id/long-identification-string-event-mouse. These are sim-links to the appropriate /dev/input/eventM device. The long-identification-string is the same as that reported by lsusb and lshal. The problem is that mouses do not have serial numbers, so if you have two from the same manufacturer, they get the same identficiation string, so the last one plugged in (or detected at startup) wins the sim-link. The alternative, then, is to use /dev/input/by-path/long-path-string-event, where long-path-string points to where the mouse is plugged in: a USB port on a hub connected to a bus controlled by a USB controller plugged into a PCI slot. Expect to see something like: /dev/input/by-path/pci-:00:1d.3-usb-0:2:1.0-event-mouse But these can (and do) change when you re-boot, so this is not a real alternative. My semi-solution was to ensure that my modified mouse was from a different manufacturer from the one I keep as a real mouse, so they are mounted at a different /dev/input/by-id location. X input events == Under Ubuntu Intrepid, X uses HAL to find out which devices to use. You can see HAL's view of the world using lshal. Specifically, there is a HAL key input.x11_driver to specify which X driver to use: the PS/2 style, the expanded PS/2 (IMPS2), internal (system) style or the event driver evdev. To prevent X from using a particular device, you have to put a policy file into /etc/hal/fdi/policy, and use it to set the HAL key input.x11_driver to the empty string I make a policy file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/spinny.fdi containing: ?xml version=1.0 encoding=ISO-8859-1? deviceinfo version=0.2 device match key=linux.sysfs_path contains=/sys/devices/pci:00/:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0 merge key=input.x11_driver type=string/merge /match /device /deviceinfo To find the value for match key=..., I did lshal with the spinny mouse disconnected, then again with it connected, and found what changed. The merge key=... part sets the input.x11_driver key to the empty string. Now, moving the mouse and pressing the buttons does...nothing. Looking at the corresponding entry from lshal, you can see which /dev/input/eventM device is uses. To see things happening, do $ sudo hexdump /dev/input/eventM You will see groups of eight 16-bit hexadecimal numbers flying past as you move the mouse. These
