Re: pulse audio , was Re: Xfce to Stump
On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Nick Rout nick.r...@gmail.com wrote: Those controls are in windows too, but not as poorly named sometimes. Also, often hidden from the volume mixer by default to stop confusing the newbs. -- Kent
Re: virtualbox - virtual screen size adjustment?
On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Nick Rout nick.r...@gmail.com wrote: I am running virtualbox on a windows xp machine with slax linux as guest. windows host is running 1024x768 which sounds pathetic but I am comfortable with it. slax client starts at 1280x1024, which means its in a scrollable window. Its a pain in the proverbial. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to adjust the size that client will be. The only display setting seems to be the ram allocated to the disply driver. Should I just reduce this so that it thinks it cannot draw such a big screen? slax is booting from an .iso. Its not clear, are you running X11/Xorg on Slax? or are you just using a console? If its just a console, then you'll have to use the vga= style settings the others have mentioned. I don't believe there's something yet that works like guest extensions that low-level :) If you're using X(11|org), then I think you have to tell it your display driver is a virtualbox video card instead of whatever it defaults to. The gentoo equivalent of the required changes can be found here : http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Virtualbox_Guest#X_Configuration_Settings but they should apply to anyone . -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Cross-bit compling
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Aidan Gauland wgsil...@no8wireless.co.nzwrote: Ryan McCoskrie wrote: Are you setting the archtitecture flag while compiling _as well as_ linking? Ah, yes, that would be helpful, wouldn't it? Now that I *really* have that option set for the gcc, and not just ld, ld is complaining about incompatible Shared Object (extention so) files, which seems to fit what Volker said. I don't know much about binary execuatbles at this level, but why does it care about the .so files themselves? I thought they were only used at runtime and the header files were used for compilation. Anyway, if what Volker said is true, then I think I'll follow Nick's suggestion and compile in a chroot environment. Thanks, Aidan Also, sometimes you need a differently build CHOST compiler. That is, I believe on amd64, your compiler is likely to have CHOST of 'x86_64-pc-linux-gnu' , and you need an i686 chost. Essentially, I think what you're looking for is a cross-dev toolkit, or a chroot with a crossdev environment built in it. Sorry, Don't know more. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: PHP documentation
On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Andrew Errington a.erring...@lancaster.ac.uk wrote: With PHP it's more a case of not much point developing code you *shouldn't* deploy anywhere. I'm inclined to agree, but still, minimising the suck that I may one day have to encounter, or some poor soul like myself may have the misfortune of encountering is a GoodThing. ( This is why I ditched it and advocate ditching it also ^_^ , but a 50% antisuck solution is better than a 0% antisuck solution ) -- Kent
Re: PHP documentation
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 10:19 PM, Roy Britten roy.brit...@gmail.com wrote: I'm working on a PHP app running on a server running an older version of PHP (4.1.something IIRC) I'm guessing its intentional. Its a ReallyBadIdea™ developing *new *PHP apps in a version of PHP that is now 1. Note-worthily old. 2. Officially unsupported. 3. No longer supported by any of the major players ( by this I mean varying PHP libraries ) For the love of sanity for yourself and your peers, do please seek out migrating to the Lastest And Greatest and Least Vulnerable PHP 5.3. You'll really thank yourself later. -- Kent
Re: Software Freedom Day 09
On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 6:31 PM, Andrew Errington a.erring...@lancaster.ac.uk wrote: On Thu, September 17, 2009 12:54, Rik Tindall wrote: Greetings, Software Freedom Day 2009 is this Saturday, 19 September. The international festival of free and open-source software (FOSS) is in its fifth year, and of celebration locally. Arr! Shiver me timbers! That tharr Software Freedom Day be clashin' wi' International Talk Like a Pirate Day[1]. Remember to give a hearty avast! as you hand out free Linux CDs! A [1] http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html Arrr!, So it be!, And a Sat'rdeys it be too. Thar' be scallywags a-haulin' grevious sayin's methinks. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Pronounce sudo
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Roger Searle ro...@stepahead.org.nzwrote: Only because it was a long time until I heard anyone pronounce it as etcetera, having always thought of it internally as the letters. I have no knowledge of the origins of the folder name. So to borrow Robert's question from this morning, how would people say the folder /etc out loud? And to borrow from Rogers question, how do you all pronounce usr . bin, proc , sys, lib, they're all straight forward ( I hope ), but 'usr' has some degree of ambiguity, especially when some platforms ( looking at you Apple ) have a literal /User which is not correspondent to /usr, and you have to be careful not to enter a disambiguation problem in communicating this to people because they're likely to put the e in there. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Telstra slow download from some sites?
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 8:38 AM, Craig Falconer cfalco...@totalteam.co.nzwrote: Eliot Blennerhassett wrote, On 09/09/09 20:45: Is it just me, or has telstra cable in got a rusty pipe somewhere? Not everywhere, but to/from a number of places in the US at least. I.e. using speedtest.net Local CHC speed 2.9Mb/s down, 1.74Mb/s up - fine. Los Angeles 3.3Mb down 1.8 up Boston 4.6/1.14 but... SanJose 0.05Mb/s down 0.7Mb/s up Works fine for me. DownUp (Mbit) Latency (ms) christchurch48.16 2.3760 wellington 12.01 1.72190 (no peering - internat.) auckland44.03 2.3583 san jose4.311.31189 san francisco 16.51.86191 los angeles 15.10 1.60191 boston 13.46 1.92234 -- I've had speed issues and packet loss to anything that routes via northern california. Southern California is fine, but northern california ( and as such, this appear to be where my traffic goes to Google and YouTube ) as such sucks. I've been getting maximum downstream from youtube of 30kbytes/sec ( yes, yuck, cant even watch low-bitrate without buffering lots ), but ironically, I get 600kbytes/sec torrenting, and can watch HD on that *as* its downloading. And I'm on o'nary DSL w/ telecom. # Here is a reasonably good day. San Diego : 3479 Downstream , 608 Upstream, 324ms ping Los Angeles: 1948 Downstream, 534 Upstream, 162ms ping San Fransisco: 2711 Downstream, 655 Upstream, 197ms ping San Jose: 823 Downstream, 561 Upstream, 198ms ping I had reasonably worse numbers a few weeks ago, but speedtest seems to have forgotten them :( ( I was getting 80% packet loss on one of the hops :/ ) Routes today seem to be going via asianetcom.net , and thats reasonably reliable. But youtube is still sucking at ~50k/s. I'd like conclude evil is afoot, but that would be a bit crazy. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Pronounce sudo
On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Robert Fisher rob...@fisher.net.nz wrote: Today I came across a reminder of the meaning of sudo super user do So how should it be pronounced? soo-doo or soo-dough I pronounce it somewhat akin to pseudo ( That is , with a silent p ) Which I guess was part of the joke behind the name. :) -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Perl Users?
Hey, I'm bored. I'm guessing there's not a lot of people on the ML who this applies to, but I figured, Hey, if they're having a python *conference* here, maybe theres enough of us Perl users to get into our own thing like. ( I also note its sponsored by catalyst.net.nz, who seem to have /some/ Perl leanings, esp w/ wellington pm ) There's wellington and auckland .pm groups, but eh, they're on the other island. I've been toting a Little-Brittain esque I'm the only Perl user in my village line on the various IRC networks for a while now, and I figure it a good time to see if that claim is a valid one. http://search.cpan.org/~kentnl/ # This is me, and I'm kentnl on MAGnet/ irc.perl.org , and kent\n on freenode. Any of you out there I'd love to hear about so I can stop feeling like such an alien :) ( I seriously googled, and I came up bare handed, ) For the rest of you, especially of you programmingngy inclined, if you ain't checked out Perl yet, or even haven't doven into it recently, I humbly request you take a gander at - http://www.perl.org/books/beginning-perl/ # A free EBook/Set of PDFS - http://search.cpan.org/dist/Moose # The latest and greatest Object Oriented system for Perl - http://www.catalystframework.org/ # The Perl competition to Rails. - http://search.cpan.org/dist/MooseX-Declare # A much more powerful way to use Moose via creating new syntax for Perl in Perl. out/ -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Perl Users?
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 8:58 AM, John Carter john.car...@tait.co.nz wrote:
On Thu, 10 Sep 2009, Kent Fredric wrote:
I've been toting a Little-Brittain esque I'm the only Perl user in
my village line on the various IRC networks for a while now, and I
figure it a good time to see if that claim is a valid one.
I used perl for years in a previous life... but found it was a
maintenance nightmare.
So I moved to Ruby a few years ago and I'm never going back.
Do yourself a favour and move too.
Sort of like There was one other Perl user in the village, but he/she
changed sex and now won't speak to me. :-)
Oh noes. =)
Granted some of the older perl is a bit nasty. But things are changing
muchly of late.
For instance, this is valid Perl, no source filters!
use 5.010;
use MooseX::Declare;
class OtherClass {
has 'attribute' = (
isa = 'Str',
required = 1,
is = 'rw',
);
method otherClass ( Int $foo ) {
print $self-attribute . $foo;
}
}
role Squashable {
requires 'squash';
method do_squash {
$self-squash;
}
}
class Example extends OtherClass with Squashable {
method squash ( ) {
say Squashed;
}
}
my $i = Example-new( attribute = Hello );
$i-do_squash; # prints 'Squashed';
$i-otherClass(1); # prints 'Hello' ;
$-otherClass(World); # Validation failure, world is not an Int.
So... not even Bi-Curious?
( I have my own reservations about ruby, it shall be interesting when the
majority of projects using it are not new code, but the maintenance of
existing code, I have used it, and am relatively well versed in it, but
these days Perl is *more* fun :D. )
John Carter Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639
Tait ElectronicsFax : (64)(3) 359 4632
PO Box 1645 ChristchurchEmail : john.car...@tait.co.nz
New Zealand
--
Kent
perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 )
for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Perl Users?
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 9:46 AM, Brett Davidson br...@net24.co.nz wrote: Kent Fredric wrote: Hey, I'm bored. I'm guessing there's not a lot of people on the ML who this applies to, but I figured, Hey, if they're having a python *conference* here, maybe theres enough of us Perl users to get into our own thing like. ( I also note its sponsored by catalyst.net.nz http://catalyst.net.nz, who seem to have /some/ Perl leanings, esp w/ wellington pm ) There's wellington and auckland .pm groups, but eh, they're on the other island. I've been toting a Little-Brittain esque I'm the only Perl user in my village line on the various IRC networks for a while now, and I figure it a good time to see if that claim is a valid one. http://search.cpan.org/~kentnl/ http://search.cpan.org/%7Ekentnl/ http://search.cpan.org/%7Ekentnl/ # This is me, and I'm kentnl on MAGnet/irc.perl.org http://irc.perl.org , and kent\n on freenode. Any of you out there I'd love to hear about so I can stop feeling like such an alien :) ( I seriously googled, and I came up bare handed, ) I still dabble in Perl however my usage is rather lightweight - I mainly use it for system administration scripts as it runs on almost any platform I can think of. Have considered learning Ruby at some stage but there is no need at present. There's two of us little green men! Hi 15! ( thats all 3 arms ) Shall we gang up and take John to Optimization club? ...er .. I mean, I'm not supposed to talk about optimization club. Cheers, Brat -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Perl Users?
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Abhinav Keswani abhinav.kesw...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/10 Adrian Mageanu adrian.mage...@totalimex.com: In terms of ETL, the only reason I have used it is because I was forced to help in an emergency situation where something needed to be done yesterday, and certain 'architects' still feel that 'persisting data' means sending CSV files over FTP where they can be parsed by ... something ... and kept ... somewhere. This is not the time for a rant about SOA...and providing RESTful interfaces for data access/manipulation. My sympathies. Seems like you met the server guys http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Server-Guys.aspx -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Open Source Stock Images
On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 9:03 AM, Kerry ke...@katipo.net.nz wrote: Hi all, I like morguefile.com There's slightly less dicking around required to get photos, ( like on sxc.hu, there is a lot of rubbish you have to wade through once you've found what you want ), and the search results aren't laden with photos that are pay-for-use only via $third-party-sponsors . -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Motherboard will only boot from CD/DVD drive
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 1:43 PM, chris che...@gmail.com wrote: however it doesn't rule out things like a flaky northbridge etc. swap things around and see It also doesn't rule out You got a power spike that cooked your hard-drives May not seem likely that 2 hard drives would go out, but humans are bad at accounting for uncertanty -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 ); http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
Re: Backing up PGP keys
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:39 AM, Daniel Hill daniel.h...@orcon.net.nzwrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Wondering if there is a safe way to back my public and private keys any ideas? - -- python -c print \\.join([ \\x79\x71\x6Du\056vgp\x40ae\142nr\.decode(\\x72o\164\x5F_13\)[i] for i in [1, 12, 9, 5, 13, 0, 4, 3, 5, 0, 0, 8, 11, 10, 7, 11, 9, 4, 9, 13, 6, 4, 9, 2] ] ) http://www.facebook.com/YellowOnion msnim:chat?contact=yellow_oni...@hotmail.comhttp://www.facebook.com/YellowOnion%0Amsnim:chat?contact=yellow_oni...@hotmail.com xmpp:yellowon...@jabber.org xmpp%3ayellowon...@jabber.org http://last.fm/user/Yellow-Onion/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkqH/gUACgkQGplaCYOFvysORACaAmPyM8oMJNgHOAGYXNodHG3Z pjEAniRXVxoqkuo7gzVjF//mAtl9beXJ =nkYU -END PGP SIGNATURE- If you want to impress people: memorize your private key. Can't say I've done it, yet, cant say I've met somebody who can :) -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Which Distro for learning linux and server
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Ross Drummond r...@ashburton.co.nz wrote: On Friday 14 August 2009, Daniel Hill wrote: Kent Fredric wrote: For minimal pain, don't unmask the ~ ( testing ) versions of things during stage 1. You'll find if you do you'll find a fun gcc cyclic dependency :) ( that is, don't set ACCEPT_KEYWORDS= to ~amd64 or ~x86 leave them at amd64 or x86 ) Once you get to stage 3 of the build /then/ you /might/ want to switch on that, but don't do it earlier. I have a friend advise me to do this * start with stage 3, updating all the settings then going emerge world gets you the same result as starting * from stage 1 Also if you are new to Gentoo and kernel compilation build your 1st kernel with genkernel. From the man page; Genkernel is designed to allow users who are not previously used to compiling a kernel to use a similar setup to that one that is used on the Gentoo LiveCDs which auto-detects your hardware. Cheers Ross Drummond I myself haven't seen a good reason to stop using genkernel. I get the its only good for newbies line all the time, but I fail to see how. I disable the override-my-kernel-configs and always-do-cleaning-things options and still do make menuconfig or make oldconfig myself ( after doing zcat /proc/config.gz .config ), but genkernel makes the build-everything, do all the other fun stuff, put it in the right place, update grub fun things for me. Most Relevant lines from my /etc/genkernel.conf #OLDCONFIG=no MENUCONFIG=no CLEAN=no MRPROPER=no #ARCH_OVERRIDE=x86_64 MOUNTBOOT=yes # SYMLINK=no SAVE_CONFIG=yes USECOLOR=yes BOOTLOADER=grub # CLEAR_CACHE_DIR=yes MAKEOPTS=-j3 # LVM=no # EVMS=no # DMRAID=no BUSYBOX=yes # MDADM=no # MULTIPATH=no # FIRMWARE=no DISKLABEL=yes LOGLEVEL=5 then all I do after tuning my kernel every update is genkernel --kernname=MyCurrentMood all It updates grub.conf for me. ( Warning: there are a few glitches that have occured from time to time with the awk-based grub.conf updater, it can be picky, so back it up, once you've gotten it to work once though, it tends to work well every successive time. default=0 timeout=10 splashimage=(hd0,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz title=Gentoo Linux (2.6.30-gentoo-r4) root (hd0,4) kernel /kernel-CHT-x86_64-2.6.30-gentoo-r4 root=/dev/sda7 vga=868 video=uvesafb:mtrr=3,ywrap,1440x900...@60 softlevel=offline the above should be a good starting template. Note the important = in the title segment, and the absense of the = in subsequent sections. This is a little known gotcha about grubs configuration, and the awk script is far stricter than grub itself in this case, dying and emitting a blank file if you do it wrong ) Also I managed to tweak my kernel lots so I didn't need an initrd anymore, it was just plain annoying, if you are not so fortunate, use the following pattern ( alternative sets of kernel flags for example only, they all used to be required and I got rid of them recently by selective elimination. Also, the below way to do things will run the genkernel loader which does a lot of magical loading stuff before jumping into init, I did away with that too recently for speed reasons, now genkernel is just a kernel builder for me and doesn't really affect by boot sequence like it does by default ) title=Gentoo Linux root (hd0,4) kernel /kernel-pizzaz-x86_64-2.6.30-gentoo-r1 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda7 vga=868 video=uvesafb:mtrr=3,ywrap,1440x900...@60 initrd /initramfs-pizzaz-x86_64-2.6.30-gentoo-r1 ) -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Anyone else in Chch with broadband down?
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Craig Falconer cfalco...@totalteam.co.nzwrote: Craig Falconer wrote, On 14/08/09 08:38: Co-incidence, there's a big fibre/CID outage in Christhchurch since 0810 this morning. ...and separately there's a failure at Mayoral Drive in Auckland which is affecting DSLs nationwide. Roll on Friday... wait... it is. -- Craig Falconer I was just hit by a 20 minute outage from 9:10 to 9:30. Location in the merivale/cc/st-albans area. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Which Distro for learning linux and server
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Daniel Hill daniel.h...@orcon.net.nzwrote: I'm about to acquire a old computer from my friend (AMD 1.6GHz 80GB HDD) and want to eventually set it up as a webserver, game server, wireless router and any other servers that I mite want to play with I also want to learn linux properly (currently running ubuntu on my desktop) * LFS Pros: Configureable; Cons: same as Gentoo and Slackware? No, LFS does you no favours, no package management. Neither has slackware. Gentoo is like LFS but does all the boring things that you'll do over and over and over and over again for you. Install time has been much much easier for folks the past 2 years, with stage3 being the default instead of stage1, and stage 1 now being officially unsupported. Stage 1 imho gives you a much closer look at how things work. ( I've become a bit of a masochist on the deal, and have installed from stage1 every time just because I can, and its /way/ more fun when its unsupported, because bugs occur and you get to fix them yourself ) Biggest ups IMHO of running a source-based distributions are primarily: 1. Its my party, I'll do what I want to, If I want package $A without feature $B, I'll damn-well do that, upstream wont have to decide that for me. 2. If things break, I get to keep all the pieces, but I'm not stupid, and I've never had a problem that I couldn't fix myself. 3. When I go to fix things, the codes right there, the build system, the installation scripts, everything, its all right in front of my face, no need to wait for upstream to decide it needs fixing and get it done, I can just rip open the guts and get started on it, and If I manage to get it to work, I can tell upstream what I did to fix the problem, so others like myself who encountered the problem get it solved in advance for them. Don't let ricers with arguments of speed dissuade you. There is noting you can really benefit from going insane with compile flags that binary distributions haven't thought of. The very best you can win here is architecture specific features that can be made use of in ways that cant be done efficiently automatically on all hardwares conforming to you general type ( amd64 is a very very wide pool of processors, with lots of very different featuresets ) I build things with debug flags for crying out loud, and I build with package testing on by default. Package testing *will* slow things down substantially. But on the flip-side, you get some notion of package quality, and you can detect things that need to be fixed, and report them for fixing, or fix them yourself, thus, betting the packages you use by proxy. LFS could be an interesting thing for you to do, but eventually, maintenance of everything yourself will become a nightmare, especially if you want to keep up-to-date. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Which Distro for learning linux and server
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Daniel Hill daniel.h...@orcon.net.nzwrote: Robert Fisher wrote: but if you want to learn more about Linux as you go and are really prepared to get your hands dirty, go for Gentoo. getting my hands dirty is exactly what I want to do just don't know if I can be bothered with the 8h compile time, wondering if there is another distro that'll let me do that but isn't source based I hear good things about Arch linux, its primarily binary, but still has the source-based options in there as a somewhat supported route, unlike debian, where ( having done this myself ) the process for installing packages from source is a lesson in sheer agony. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Which Distro for learning linux and server
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Daniel Hill daniel.h...@orcon.net.nzwrote: Install time has been much much easier for folks the past 2 years, with stage3 being the default instead of stage1, and stage 1 now being officially unsupported. Stage 1 imho gives you a much closer look at how things work. ( I've become a bit of a masochist on the deal, and have installed from stage1 every time just because I can, and its /way/ more fun when its unsupported, because bugs occur and you get to fix them yourself ) I think I mite try Stage 1 and use distcc to speed up the compile time For minimal pain, don't unmask the ~ ( testing ) versions of things during stage 1. You'll find if you do you'll find a fun gcc cyclic dependency :) ( that is, don't set ACCEPT_KEYWORDS= to ~amd64 or ~x86 leave them at amd64 or x86 ) Once you get to stage 3 of the build /then/ you /might/ want to switch on that, but don't do it earlier. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Which Distro for learning linux and server
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Daniel Hill daniel.h...@orcon.net.nzwrote: Kent Fredric wrote: For minimal pain, don't unmask the ~ ( testing ) versions of things during stage 1. You'll find if you do you'll find a fun gcc cyclic dependency :) ( that is, don't set ACCEPT_KEYWORDS= to ~amd64 or ~x86 leave them at amd64 or x86 ) Once you get to stage 3 of the build /then/ you /might/ want to switch on that, but don't do it earlier. I have a friend advise me to do this * start with stage 3, updating all the settings then going emerge world gets you the same result as starting * from stage 1 Thats what I was trying to say, but worded it wrongly. There's no point of doing stage 1 apart from proving you can. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: DVD-RW drive partially faulty
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Stephen Irons stephen.ir...@tait.co.nzwrote: The DVD-RW drive in my laptop is partially faulty: * It cannot read or write CDs -- it just sits there going clonk every two seconds -- pre-recorded music CDs, recorded data CD-R, blank CR-R, makes no difference. It does this even when I have entered the BIOS setup at power on, so it seems to be the drive itself, not related to software. * it plays pre-recorded movie DVDs correctly. I have not tried writing DVDs of any type, or tried reading self-burned /DVD[+-]RW?/ For reference, it is an NEC ND-6550A. I've sadly seen those symptoms in relatively new laptops sadly (albeit, rentals). Couldn't install linux with a CD/RW but could with a DVDRW. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Graphic Tablets
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Kerry ke...@katipo.net.nz wrote: Hi all, I'm in the market for a mid-priced graphic tablet say $200-$350 and I need it to play nice with linux - kubuntu 9.04 and was wondering if anyone has had experience with them? I'd like one that I can source in NZ and one that just works so I don't have to muck around too much with it. I've found tablet support a bit touchy, as far as I can make out, your best chances are with a Wacom. The linuxwacom drivers don't work against upstream( SVN/GIT ) X11 at present, but they work on stable/anything-you'll-have-bundled-with-your-dist. They're a bit poxy, but they work. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: The linux ipod dilemma - what do you suggest?
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Phill Coxon phi...@xtra.co.nz wrote: I recently joined Quest Healthclub in Ferrymead to improve my fitness again. All of the carido equipment - treadmills, biks etc - have screens with an ipod av input so I can plug an ipod in and watch videos. I've tested this with my wife's ipod and it works great. The problem is that I don't want to use itunes and the latest ipod classics are not compatible with the RockBox open source junkbox (rockbox.org). Is there anyone on the list using a late model ipod with linux? Can you confirm whether the latest ipods will work with amarok or what other software you recommend to transfer music / video to the ipod without having to resort to itunes on Windows? 8G nano works for me, you need libgpod, but outside that its reasonably well supported. 1) Amarok integration is the best I've seen. 2) Theres several tools for copying music to them ( Istr there was a kioslave that did the trick at some stage ) as for /video/ however, thats a bit harder, and I've not been able to get that working. Recommendations for great alternative portable mp4 video players are very welcome. The one catch is that they need to have an ipod compatible socket that I can use to plug into at the gym... Thanks! -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Motherboard selection
On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Derek Smithies de...@indranet.co.nzwrote: * drink more coffee.. The easiest way of fixing sound is to try to have just one sound card on the box, which means, no usb sound, no bluetooth. Yes, you can futz around with pulse/alsa etc and get sound to work with multiple cards. The process is helped by drinking more coffee.. Alternative option: stuff using a soundcard altogether, get a portable media device with a good battery life, they work everywhere, so you can go places, and have your music. This reinforces the drink more coffee ideal, as you can thus easily drink coffee at your favourite café while listening to music. Sound cards and drivers will fail you, but at least, when they do, you wont have to suffer if you have something standalone. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: How can I limit the maximum number of outgoing SFTP connections?
On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Phill Coxon phi...@xtra.co.nz wrote: On Thu, 2009-07-23 at 15:32 +1200, Hadley Rich wrote: On Thu, 2009-07-23 at 14:40 +1200, Phill Coxon wrote: I use sftp:// in konquorer to copy files back and forth between the server and my local computer. Try using a different client, I'd try the command line client to start with. I'm using the GUI for a reason - it saves a massive amount of time. I can drag and drop 10 files in a directory in 2-3 seconds as opposed to trying to find and type the 10 file names separately on the command line (even using tab completion). There's way too much potential for typing error on the command line. I'll see what other SFTP clients I can dig up though... lftp http://lftp.yar.ru/ Its purely awesome. You get remote SFTP access just as if it were local files, tab-completion, job control ( each transfer can be 'd ) , everything, even has a mirror command that JustWorks and doesn't slip into nasty recursion problems. Also works for plain-old ftp and in some cases, you can spider websites with it like they were filesystems! -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: How can I limit the maximum number of outgoing SFTP connections?
On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Hadley Rich h...@nice.net.nz wrote: On Thu, 2009-07-23 at 15:58 +1200, Phill Coxon wrote: I'm using the GUI for a reason - it saves a massive amount of time. That's what shell expansion is for. last time I used the standard sftp client ( ages ago , before I switched to lftp ) , it neither supported shell expansion or even readline support :/ -- Kent
Re: Motherboards that play nicely with Linux
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 6:38 PM, Aidan Gauland wgsil...@no8wireless.co.nzwrote: Hello, Are there any motherboard manufacturers who usually make motherboards that work well with Linux, or any that Linux users should avoid? Also, should I just disregard notices like this one? Due to different Linux support condition provided by chipset vendors, please download Linux driver from chipset vendors' website or 3rd party website. Thanks, Aidan Generally linux driver support is provided by linux itself, and the lack of appropriate drivers is usually a sign of vendors being difficult and releasing proprietary drivers. For example, Nvidia, ATI, you need to download drivers from their providers because the alternatives reek at present in the video department, for northbridge/southbridge its generally in-kernel these days. Simply avoiding a motherboard manufacturer on linux compliance is IMO not a reasonable notion these days, its usually a case of specifics, not general manufacturers. IE: What chipsets they use, what bios they have, etc, and you should look up these specifics and discern how supported they are. Foxconn for example had a nasty problem where they produced a broken ACPI specification to Linux users causing the machine to fail to boot : ( http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=869249 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=871311 ) But theres no way to know about that sort of rubbish until you find somebody who has that specific model and has had problems with it. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Motherboards that play nicely with Linux
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 8:31 AM, Volker Kuhlmann list0...@paradise.net.nzwrote: And drop your notion that all this (mobo, chips, ...) is vendor dependent. Every vendor makes paperweights as well as useful stuff. They also make great doorstops. -- Kent
Re: dodgy hd
On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 9:27 PM, Steve Holdoway st...@greengecko.co.nzwrote: On Tue, 2009-06-16 at 20:45 +1200, Volker Kuhlmann wrote: Warning: device does not support Error Logging Error SMART Error Log Read failed Smartctl: SMART Error Log Read Failed Warning: device does not support Self Test Logging Error SMART Error Self-Test Log Read failed Smartctl: SMART Self Test Log Read Failed Device does not support Selective Self Tests/Logging smartctl may be the answer... in a year or two. Not now. Its been a while since I saw a hard drive that didn't support smart reporting, so its likely a system misconfiguration. Exceptions being : a) Bizzare system harddrive controller that is only partially supported in linux b) Strange hard drive enclosures attached via USB so the required signals to transmit SMART data don't work. However, case b has also become less prevalent of late. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Mplayer processor load
On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Douglas Royds douglas.ro...@tait.co.nzwrote: Oops. Those numbers were a bit adrift. Here is mplayer playing miniDV: mplr 60% Xorg 22% pulse 10% Eventually it settled down to the 45/45 that I showed below, which might have more to do with kernel load-sharing than anything, though I don't know what X was up to. For the comparison, totem (gstreamer) playing the same DV: totem 45-57% xorg 10-16% pulse 2-15% For some reason, mplayer is slightly more demanding on X, and substantially less efficient at decoding DV than gstreamer is, and it's tipping my elderly laptop over the edge. No video editing for me. try various alternative -vo options, x11 xv, xover, gl, or even vdpau if you have a supporting video card. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Mplayer processor load
On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Douglas Royds douglas.ro...@tait.co.nzwrote:
Having convinced Totem to play both DVDs and DV-AVI just fine, I find that
Mplayer is struggling a bit.
Totem
DVD 31% idle (worst case)
DV-AVI 16% idle (worst case)
Mplayer
DVD 21% idle (worst case)
DV-AVI 0% --- ie. can't play it
What's going on? Watching mplayer, Xorg, and pulseaudio in top reveals:
DVD
mplr 40-46% CPU
Xorg 16-18%
pulse 2-15%
DV
mplr 40-46% CPU
Xorg 45% --- !!!
pulse 2-15%
So it's Xorg that's doing the damage when I try to view DV.
Suggestions?
Douglas.
I transcoded a minute of avi to libdv + pcm
224Mb Played from tmpfs, audio = alsa.
Benchmarks Follow:
compositing enabled {
Doing nothing for a minute {
0.00user 0.00system 1:00.00elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+192minor)pagefaults 0swaps
0.00user 0.00system 1:00.00elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+191minor)pagefaults 0swaps
X : 0 - 8%
Kwin: 3-7%
}
-vo xv {
20.70user 0.80system 1:02.49elapsed 34%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+4508minor)pagefaults 0swaps
22.04user 0.63system 1:02.00elapsed 36%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+4518minor)pagefaults 0swaps
17.50user 0.53system 1:02.08elapsed 29%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+4509minor)pagefaults 0swaps
X-usage 6-19 %
KWin-use 29-43%
Mplayer 19-44%
}
-vo xover {
17.49user 0.77system 1:02.11elapsed 29%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+4770minor)pagefaults 0swaps
17.17user 0.64system 1:02.24elapsed 28%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+4769minor)pagefaults 0swaps
19.28user 0.64system 1:02.21elapsed 32%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+4788minor)pagefaults 0swaps
X-usage: 10:42%
Kwin: 20:40%
Mplayer: 18-44%
}
-vo gl {
22.98user 2.69system 1:02.05elapsed 41%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+6326minor)pagefaults 0swaps
21.58user 2.45system 1:02.13elapsed 38%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+6323minor)pagefaults 0swaps
21.67user 2.73system 1:02.20elapsed 39%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+6341minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Kwin: 14-24%
mplayer: 28 - 56%
X: 5-35%
}
}
compositing disabled {
doing nothing for a minute {
0.00user 0.00system 1:00.00elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+192minor)pagefaults 0swaps
0.00user 0.00system 1:00.00elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+191minor)pagefaults 0swaps
kwin: 0%
x: 0-4%
}
-vo xv {
23.95user 1.05system 1:01.99elapsed 40%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+4507minor)pagefaults 0swaps
X: 5 - 13%
}
-vo x11 {
25.03user 0.79system 1:02.01elapsed 41%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+4783minor)pagefaults 0swaps
X: 12-16%
}
-vo gl {
26.10user 1.51system 1:02.02elapsed 44%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+6338minor)pagefaults 0swaps
X: 1 - 13%
}
-vo vdpau {
23.97user 6.19system 1:02.03elapsed 48%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+4416minor)pagefaults 0swaps
X: 8-15%
}
-vo null {
14.06user 0.64system 1:01.99elapsed 23%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+2852minor)pagefaults 0swaps
X: 0-5%
}
-vo null -ao null {
13.25user 0.56system 1:03.65elapsed 21%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+2577minor)pagefaults 0swaps
X: 0-5%
}
}
Conclusions: Disable compositing ;)
Also, try take Pulse out of the loop and give it straight alsa, I have
learnt that pulse can't be trusted.
My ( modern ) machine has skipping sound with pulse on reasonably little
load.
--
Kent
perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 )
for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Internet shortages
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 12:07 AM, Wesley Parish wes.par...@paradise.net.nzwrote: It pinged slashdot, microsoft, google, and even xtra okay, it just wouldn't let http traffic through. I gave up in the end, as there was nothing I could see to do without having the router password, and she didn't know it. Generally in that case its still default, I was at a friends house recently in a similar situation, they didn't know the password, so I guessed it in 2 attempts ;) -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: Internet shortages
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 8:08 AM, chris che...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 00:07 +1200, Wesley Parish wrote: I discovered that problem some time in April when a friend called me up to go around to her house to fix her Internet router. It pinged slashdot, microsoft, google, and even xtra okay, it just wouldn't let http traffic through. I gave up in the end, as there was nothing I could see to do without having the router password, and she didn't know it. A real bummer, that! isn't the password normally admin or administrator? cheers Chris T or password. or in occasional cases, the name of the manufacturer. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: quick KMail question
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 3:42 PM, Kerry ke...@katipo.net.nz wrote: Hi all, How do you change the default browser within KMail? At the moment if I click on a link emailed to me it opens Konquerer, and I would like it to open into firefox instead Kerry It might be governed by KDE's concept of a default web browser. System Settings - Default Applications - Web Browser (Kde4 ) -- Kent
Re: a do nothing shell ?
On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 12:59 PM, John Collis j...@indranet.co.nz wrote: Hi, Last time I had to do this, I simply wrote a simple command in C, that would wait for a character and then exit. It doesn't have to be too complicated. You could easily print a simple prompt (to alert any user who looks at a terminal) and then wait. For security just don't use getchar() or any function that is susceptible to a buffer overflow attack and you should be fine. Using a script for this type of usage is not generally regarded as secure. What reasons are against using /bin/cat ? input = output ( so you can type garbage and hit enter to check the connections working still ) and ^D or ^C to disconnect. -- Kent perl -e print substr( \edrgmaM SPA nocomil.i...@tfrken\, \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );
Re: OT: Cabling to a shed
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 10:58 PM, Andrew Errington a.erring...@lancaster.ac.uk wrote: I would run 2 cat5e cables through irrigation tube and keep this 50mm away from the electrical conduit all along the trench. I'd probably go for Cat6 ( or in extreme cases, cat7) these days, its probably insanely over the top, but considering 1. Plausible Electrical Interference sources. 2. Likely 50m length of run. 3. Cabling Permenance likely once its set down. I'd probably prefer to future proof instead of having to rip stuff up if you ever need something faster or more reslient. Cat6 is not substantially more costly than Cat5e these days, so I think it silly *NOT* to take that option. -- Kent
Re: OT: Cabling to a shed
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Kerry Mayes ke...@mayes.co.nz wrote: Also, this is on a lifestyle block so set up is a little different to a suburban situation. If you're out of the city and likely to have electric fences I'd want even more reason to properly insulate things properly. I don't know about the technical details, but I was at a place once where there was a leaking electric fence and for some reason made the showers taps electrocute you. I really don't like the idea of that messing with computers. Somebody else will hopefully know more on electric-fence precautions than I. -- Kent
Re: Access to a friend's disk
On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 11:56 AM, John Williams j...@ihug.co.nz wrote: I gave this disk to my son to use as a backup. It had a Linux distro on it but that was removed, or so we thought. (He formatted the disk with Win2000 format) For some time my son says he could access the disc and he put all his data files on this disk! Now he cannot access them. This is what I find using fdisk: [r...@localhost blue]# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xabea72d4 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 *2089419116881607 83 Linux /dev/sda22102 13907948212427 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda320894178167774720 Empty Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/sda420894178167774720 Empty Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary. You're going to have fun with that. according to my understanding, you have 2 partitions ( at least ) sharing disk space. [ Linux ] ---[ HPFS/NTFS -] I can't recall what caused the last time I saw something like this happen, but I once had a win98 install where this occurred. [ Fat32 ] --[ linux - ] And it would temporarily work for things, and just randomly, windows would erase the bits that coincided with the linux partition and cease it from working. The only legitimate situation for this behaviour is extended partitions, ie: [ Linux ][ -Extended- --][ Whatever ] -[ Part ][-Part---][---Part ] So good luck with that. You might want to DD a copy of each logical partition somewhere before proceeding, because to me, it appears you have a logically corrupt drive layout. Even then, your chances of recovering seem slim to me. Also, note: any attempt to mount these drives in their current state, to me would seem risky, and prone to exacerbate this problem. -- Kent
Re: Linux on USB stick recommendations
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 8:16 PM, David Lowe da...@thistledown.co.nz wrote: For some reason all the web filtering that our IT department runs (to prevent anyone having fun at work) is ignored by Linux (but don't tell them please) ... anyway, it all felt so cool. Xubuntu on a stick is highly recommended. - David Sounds like they're relying on manual proxy configuration to do the dirty work. *laughs* -- Kent
Re: Time to upgrade - 64bit?
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Ben Aitchison b...@plain.co.nz wrote: I've been using 64 bit Windows 7 and 64 bit Ubuntu for a while now. I've had more concerns with 64 bit support in Windows than Linux by far. And in Windows I have *one* 64 bit application that I use that doesn't come with Windows - Putty - Which doesn't even need to be 64 bit. At first I had to use a 32 bit web browser in Linux. Then opera had a 64 bit version with support for 32 bit flash. Then there was finally a 64 bit flash. Now everything is peachy. That said, I'm still not sure how much benefit you really get ;) Ben. And if you swing that way, Java finally got around to releasing a 64bit version with a working browser plugin! So you can finally see the buttons on those awful sites that use Java Applets for every button. -- Kent
Re: adsl queries...
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Craig Falconer cfalco...@totalteam.co.nzwrote: You're generally better with a router IMO. (as long as its not a sodding thomson POS (long story which will end with an axe and fire once I get a replacement)) -- Craig Falconer The current routers available on the market have left me unimpressed, I've tried about 4 different brands and they've all had the same problems, constantly crashing, needing rebooting, and rendering various services inoperable ( HTTP servers on them stops working, DNS Relay stops working , that sort of general malaise ) I got an old school Nokia M1122 from a friend which is so rugged it has an uptime counter that hit 120 days and only got rebooted when my ISP had to actually have a listed service outage. Its old and crusty, and I haven't gotten it to connect over 6000kbits, but it does *everything* I want and none of the rubbish and arm flailing I've gotten with other routers. I'd love to know of any make and models of modern routers that have been proven to not have these problems, especially on an office configuration with 10+ users. ( One model at a place I worked was so bad it literally needed hourly reboots with a 5 minute down time just to get anything done, at the time we put it down to faults in the underlying service or just something that happens, but now I know better ) -- Kent
Re: adsl queries...
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Dale DuRose mafiag...@gmail.com wrote: Ive ever had any trouble with linksys routers. Kent Fredric wrote: I thought they were supposed to be good, however, the model we had was one of the ones that needed constant rebooting :( Probably a result of getting something lower end, but not only did it need constant rebooting, but the web interface it had was overly dumbed down and it simply wouldn't let me do the things I wanted to do. ( Such as change it from distributing its own DNS server to DHCP clients to letting me distribute a different one ). -- Kent
Re: adsl queries...
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Hadley Rich h...@nice.net.nz wrote: On Wed, 2009-04-29 at 17:35 +1200, Kent Fredric wrote: I'd love to know of any make and models of modern routers that have been proven to not have these problems, especially on an office configuration with 10+ users. I'd recommend looking at the Draytek range (disclaimer, yes we sell them). The DV120 is a great little box that can do PPPoA to PPPoE bridging (not a half bridge DHCP hack) so you can use a Linux box or whatever other solid hardware to do all the routing etc. We use a DV2700e (only because the DV120 wasn't available back then) to do the same with an OpenWRT box behind it and it's solid. hads -- http://nicegear.co.nz New Zealand Open Source Hardware Supplier Cheers, I'll definitely have to look them up, especially as I just discovered their manufacturer does something I've always wanted done, a live preview of what the interface looks like so I don't have to worry so much about a big list of effectively meaningless specifications. Anything that lets me have the option of using it as a dumb-relay gets +1 because thats pretty awesome. This Nokia does that really nicely. -- Kent
Re: Dick Smiths $34 mp3 players linux music sorters.
Note 5. Any suggestions for music sorters / play sync packages for linux?
Amarok is good for me. I have a large collection and it helps me run through
things more analytically. My friends think I'm crazy for using statistics
to help guide my play tastes, but I can't stand repeats.
It has good support for tag editing inbuilt, and has handy inbuilt burn all
these tracks to CD ( via k3b ) , and multiple 'transfer to removable media'
features, but I can't attest to their quality, no mp3 player here.
But IMO, amarok is definately worth a look, especially if you have a large
collection ( its not really oriented at all to people whom have 100 mp3s )
Can play most things ( via xine most the time ) and supports tag editing
en-masse, and can also play lastfm streams :D
¢¢
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Trustworthiness:
Vendor reliability:
Privacy:
Child safety:
Re: Dick Smiths $34 mp3 players linux music sorters.
On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 9:05 PM, Kent Fredric [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Trustworthiness:
Vendor reliability:
Privacy:
Child safety:
oh dear, it would appear one of my extensions messed with gmail . Yay for
WOT
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: [OT] Advice on NZ International Freelancing/Taxation Systems?
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 9:31 PM, Christopher Sawtell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
I wonder if you would be so kind as to explain exactly what relevance
this posting has to Linux, and why you prefer the advice of a bunch of
unknown Linux geeks to that of a qualified professional who is
properly versed to answer your questions?
a) The statistical aggregation of Geeks vs Financial advisers on the
internet are in favour of Geeks.
b) Geeks, statistically ( in my opinion at least ) are more likely to have
amongst their numbers peoples whom have had experience with distance-working
( due to it being virtually impossible in a large majority other fields )
c) peoples falling into the prior conditions a b in relation to
specifically New Zealand related issues account for a very minor slice of
the population, so its an advantage to request help in a New Zealand geek
oriented group.
d) I'm a php developer ( some of you may cringe .. although I hope not ),
and for this I exclusively use GNU/Linux ( Gentoo for those who ask, I do my
share of reporting fixing bugs when I can ) and In my experience at least,
due to the design model of windows machines being ( in my opinion )
fubarized in terms of network usability and security, at least in my
estimation the number of people remotely working in windows-centric systems
are few ( sorry, Im a religious fanatic, don't try say anything good about
microsoft products around me )
e) If the peoples I requested information from were to refer to any
real-world support, it would be preferable that the real-world support be in
a geographically opportune location, ie: Christchurch, so that I may have
less problems with gett ing there.
So to my logic at least, I was looking for : A New Zealand oriented group
of peoples whom were likely to have had at least some members whom have
experienced remote working ala freelance-like scenarios whom were in the
same town as me.
Considering I've had CLUG on my ML now for a year , it appeared to be the
logical path for me to take. :)
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: slightly OT - child process control
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 2:51 PM, Aidan Gauland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Now that I think about it, you're all right, and I don't need to go to
all that trouble. What I had in mind was a sort of interactive
world/game to use as a desktop environment, but I could just put that IN
a restricted X session, and not make the program the restricted
environment.
Thanks,
Aidan
If you wished to be really restricted you could set up a login profile
environment for the 'child' user which ran only the approved program or a
launcher for an approved set of programs that runs in either ratpoison or
evilwm, that way by the time they figure how how the window manager actually
works you've got bigger things to worry about ;)
On top of that you can use group control to limit whom can and cannot run
what programs, but by default most distributions are not very friendly to
this and you only get some vague controls, and I've only heard of it being
done by LFS guys whom installed every package as a different group to give
full access control rights to entire program suites/libraries
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Trustworthiness:
Vendor reliability:
Privacy:
Child safety:
Re: OT: web hosting recommendations?
On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Roy Britten [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I'm looking for web hosting options. Linux-friendly, obviously.
Anyone have any recommendations (or horror stories)?
I recommend RimuHosting.com .
New Zealand operated with servers internationally.
I was set up with root within 4 hours of my application, despite the fact I
hadn't paid yet and that is was a Sunday.
Cheap service, convenient payment options ( I pay by monthly direct debit!,
something I wish I could do with more providers due to my inherent distrust
of Visa payment solutions ) fast service, fast servers, reasonable
space/bandwidth allocations.
Unlike these kiwi options that charge $ARM for disk space and $LEG for
bandwidth, I have a 4G disk space 96M ram w/ 30G transfer allowance on a VPS
host with full root access only 39$ a month. I haven't seen a price-wise
comparable host in New Zealand ( for example, free-parkings nearest offer is
twice that and still has a lower bandwidth limitation, but admittedly, you
can probably blame telecom for that )
Reply off-list and I'll collate responses.
+ Im another person who cant follow instructions.
Thanks,
Roy.
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
[OT] Advice on NZ International Freelancing/Taxation Systems?
Hi,
I've been stalking this ML for quite a while, but alas, my first post needs
to be off topic.
I would go through the more 'official' channels, but for this subject..
well.. there are none, and the official parties seem to be lobotomised.
I'm trying to find information as to how I organise ( for contract
employment distantly )
* International funds payments to my New Zealand account on a regular basis
from a foreign country ( Uk to be exact )
* Appropriate Taxation methods for this scenario
As yet, I have been unable to source any New Zealand specific information,
and the reply I got from IRD was basically a run-around potentially
indicating the mails handler being completely foreign to the concept of 'We
have this thing called the internet where I can do stuff in a different
country without leaving the house', to the extent they basically told me
they didn't have a generic example case for online-based-foreign works and
that I'd have to snail mail somebody the exact same question I asked them.
I know we have special taxation agreements with Uk so we dont get taxed
twice for work, but beyond that its as vague as an Ice sheet.
Any assistance would be much appreciated,
As would any tips as for 'things to watch for' in the realm of this job
type.
Many Thanks in advance.
Kent.
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: [OT] Advice on NZ International Freelancing/Taxation Systems?
Many thanks to all contributions :)
I went to my bank today and sorted some stuff out with them, seems they
suggest following route:
1) Set up a foreign bank account
2) Have your employers pay into that
3) Periodically wire transfer to NZ bank account with swift codes etc.
( this is apparently because banks change for the privilege of doing a wire
transfer in the order of around $50 each .. which on a weekly basis would
kinda be almost as bad as tax. )
However, they didn't clarify what doing that would entail of tax
requirements and so-forth, whether I'd get charged tax in UK paying my bank
a/c and it would come to me via wire transfer untaxed, or the tax would not
be applied at deposit time and would be applied on the event of transfer, or
even if it would be applied at all and I'd have to fill out my own IR56.
My biggest concern now is whether or not i need that IR56 because I loathe
crunching the numbers on accounting.
( /me thinks he needs a ruby script to do it for him :P )
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: What specs do you recommend for new desktop / server?
On 2/28/07, Volker Kuhlmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Wed 28 Feb 2007 12:53:19 NZDT +1300, Kent Fredric wrote:
Btw smartmontools will tell you what the disk thinks the damage is.
I find smartmontools uncircumstantial at best, most of the time.The
best use I've had for it was on my box where I recently encouterd a
highly unusual problem with my Hitachi which has been resulting in the
disk becoming IO-Locked due to a disk timeout, which could _only_ be
fixed by a hard-power-off :/.
The problem did not occur to any of the boot-off-cd hard-drive
testing utilities, they all did a full disk read without a problem,
but for some particular reason, reading an actual file off that disk
resulted in the total denail of disk access. I managed to remedy this
tho, by an unusual technique. I extracted the exact block addresses
from the ext3 debug utility, and wrote a ruby script to extract them
directly from the disk using the in-disk-order, which was much
different to the actual file order, as for some reason, the locks
-this- technique resulted in were recoverable, ie: no reboot needed.
And after doing that to the file twice ( and seeing the
block-relocated-count skyrocket ), the file started working
normally! ( I don't know a lot about internals of hard drives, but
I've thus concluded about 30% of the disk is reserved for oops
copies! )
Oh, and running smartmon tools on a disk that doesn't spin up or
communicate with the IDE bus ... kinda hard. ;)
I've had 2 Samsungs die within 8 months (the one I bought, and the
replacement), although this particular model was reported by people with
larger sample sizes as being very reliable. I bought a Samsung again
because I like them (quiet, not hot-running).
I've been recently told Samsung make good drives, I do recall they
used to line the drive insides with rubber to get rid of the noise.
I've become a Hitachi advocate tho ;).
me. Toms Hardware recently did a review on a bunch of -new- psu's and
found their long-term stress tollerance below tollerable on many
models,
Entirely plausible!
And those tests were on _HIGH_end PSUs, they didn't test any of the
multitudes of brandless abominations that often come with the case (
ie: I've seen case PSU combos for sale for less than a price of a
case -without- a psu,... that -cant- be healthy )
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: What specs do you recommend for new desktop / server?
On 2/27/07, Phill Coxon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
What is the best recommendation for processors these days? Does Dual
Core or Core 2 Duo have any major performance advantages yet?
Its good, but bang-for-buck AMD is still cheaper, at least it was last I looked.
My current motherboard has VIA chipset which I (later) read somewhere
can have problems with linux. I've certainly noticed that disk
performance has been very sub-standard with the current computer and
frequently causes.
I've always been a via fan, solely because you can be almost
guaranteed everything will just intrinsically support it. Especially
important if your running a Unix-like OS which is slower on the uptake
of new hardware. As for hard drives I can't say I can measure a speed
difference on SATA between my VIA On board my add on- Silicon Image
PCI card ( which I got to increase my SATA port count, and have since
moved totally to the PCI card simply to make drive order easier to
work out and it shaves a few seconds at boot time, as well as making
the connectors easier to access for hot swap instead of having to dive
through the cabling masses to get to the connectors. ), and my boards
getting on 3 years old now and still going strong( that's probably
almost 3 years of aggregated up time on it too, I'm not a fan of
power-downs. ), but then again, its an ASUS, and I -do- like ASUS
boards.
Plan wisely. ( and always make sure to have a quality PSU, long story
short, bad ones kill hard drives).
Good dual head 3D video cards? I might look at something like a Nvidia
Geforce 7300GT.
My main uses for this computer are:
* Normal desktop use
* Website development - running Zend etc.
* running VMware (a necessary evil)
* Digital video work via firewire.
* full development server - apache 2, php, mysql, the usual services.
Thanks!
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: What specs do you recommend for new desktop / server?
On 2/28/07, Volker Kuhlmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
( and always make sure to have a quality PSU, long story
short, bad ones kill hard drives).
How do they kill hard drives?
Sometimes power supplies blow up, frying the lot - not restricted to
disks, hard or otherwise.
Experiential Circumstances .. or we just got plain really bad luck.
Computer killed 2 Samsungs ( disk useless, but still ran, but very
slow, disk kept stopping responding randomly ), and a Western digital
( I put it in my computer (with decent PSU ) and it failed to even
spin up, and with everything plugged in it made my computer take half
an hour -just- to get to the grub prompt. ).
The samsungs took 6 months each to drop dead, and the WD took about 8.
I replaced the PSU on that box with a TT as a christmas gift ( it was
previously a 'generic' psu ) and its been running for 2 years straight
with no problems ( now with a seagate). That to me signifies either
the problem being solved, or simply really bad luck, or the seagate
being more resiliant to the hell ( and in my recent experience on my
own box, I cant stand seagate drives either ).
I opted for the PSU being the soultion, which seemed most logical to
me. Toms Hardware recently did a review on a bunch of -new- psu's and
found their long-term stress tollerance below tollerable on many
models, and did write in the section that sometimes they have
computers which seem to have all sorts of werid problems which the
only solution that works is replacement of PSU.
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: Microsoft's dirty tricks archive
If anybody gets a copy, I'd be interested in a DVDRW roast of it, I
currently am stuck with dialup library comps :(
On 2/28/07, Brett Davidson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hell - maybe I should host it... :-)
Brat.
I'll take a look at it tonight... :-)
-Original Message-
From: Wesley Parish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, 28 February 2007 12:23 p.m.
To: Canterbury Linux Users Group
Subject: Microsoft's dirty tricks archive
I noticed this on The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/26/microsoft_archive_goes_torrent/
Is anyone in CLUG downloading it, for archival purposes? (It would be
nice if the U of C would put it on the ftp servers, but we must be
serious ... it would only aid quality research into matters such as
anti-competition law, IPR, research and development, etc ... and run the
risk of embarrassing Microsoft.
Quality research versus embarrassing a potential sugar daddy ... let's
toss a coin, shall we? ;)
Wesley Parish
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
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: VNCing to an application
On Sunday 25 February 2007 23:17, Chris Hellyar wrote:
Ssh tunnel with compression enabled? If a windows client, cygwin-X will
work for ssh tunneled X apps.
putty + Xdeep ( http://www.pexus.com/Download/download.html ) works
good for me :). Xdeep is nice and light and supports more X features
than most of the competition. I haven't tried cygwin-X tho.
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: Bright Monday - Linux to Population Stats in Authors Pass New Zealand..
On 2/26/07, Don Gould [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[11:40:59 a.m.] Al Yard says: .. I found an internet cafe in Arthur's
Pass. they had 10 machines 8 were linux..
[11:41:10 a.m.] Don Gould HP Laptop says: really, fantastic!
[11:41:45 a.m.] Al Yard says: ... and only 10 people live there
Nice, thats higher population density than the south pole :D
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
Re: OT - 2 or 3 pin Cat 5 cable connectors... pfft, Friday light humour...
On 2/23/07, Joseph Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
...until someone in the middle unplugs their T-piece, and brings the whole
network down :P
Christopher Sawtell wrote on 23/02/07 12:06:
Sometimes one appreciates the olden days of CAT2 co-ax when adding another
host was simply a matter of a couple of BNC connectors and a Tee-Piece.
Get some unwitting user to loop a patch cable on a switch, loads of fun ;)
--
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print enNOSPicAMreil [EMAIL PROTECTED][(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
