Re: [Dorset] Social Networking in a Corporate Environment
On 30 September 2014 at 14:33 Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk wrote: Hi Terry, I believe that the management are not really sure what they want in terms of functionality so are looking for suggestions. We have discussed this locally What's the nature of the information you want to share? Considered blog posts? One-line QA? A curated resource of information? That's part of the problem; they're not really sure. I think it might function as a newsletter in some scenarios, but with the ability to accept comments, where appropriate. In other scenarios, it might be used to seed ideas, with inline drawings / photographs, etc to really get over the message. The key I think is engagement. When Groklaw was at it height it was generating hundreds of responses to each article, with ideas flying thick and fast. I don't believe a mailing list (as suggested elsewhere) will work like that for people who aren't necessarily technical, whereas an active blog or Facebook type solution might, because of the multimedia element. As a bonus, it might also be useful to have the ability to collaborate on documents etc. I think we are looking for suggestions to see what might be the most attractive. Does anyone have any experience of Corporate Social Networks (linux based or otherwise)? Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-10-07 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] Social Networking in a Corporate Environment
On 30 September 2014 at 15:30 Andrew Montgomery-Hurrell darkliq...@darkliquid.co.uk wrote: If they already use Microsoft Office (and especially if they already subscribe to Office 365) then Yammer is a service that is specifically designed to be a corporate social network at the Office 365 Mid-Size Business tier. I've never used it though and naturally it's a service, not something you can run yourself on your own hardware. We are looking for a solution that can be hosted within our Corporate network, preferably on Linux servers. I've had some brief exposure to Atlassians Confluence software, which you can buy to self-host or pay for monthly per user as a service and it seems pretty good, though like all things it has a bit of a learning curve. I've only barely used it though, so can't say much about it other than people I work with have given it very high praise. It's probably better if you buy into the rest of Atlassian's suite of tools like Jira and Hipchat, etc but by itself I don't imagine it's too bad. I don't think having to pay is the issue; it's about having it hosted on our network. Speaking of Hipchat, that might actually fit the bill. It's basically an IRC style private chatroom client, but depending on the plans you get (and you can even use it for free with unlimited users if I recall) when you attach images or files to messages, they stay in the system so they can be referred back to, at least for a time. If what they need is something more real-time rather than a long-term document storage/sharing system, then that might work out well for them. I use hipchat extensively at work for communicating with my team, sharing files, talking to clients, holding meetings, etc and find I rarely use anything else for sharing things, getting feedback or collaborating on projects. I can highly recommend it, and since you can trial it for free, if it sounds like it might fit the bill, I'd encourage you to investigate it. We also use their dev API to feed in info from our various monitoring tools for servers, software builds, support tickets, etc so it acts a company-wide notification system as well as shared communications platform. Thanks for the ideas. We will be investigating all of them. Anyone come across Zimbra (http://www.zimbra.com/)? Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-10-07 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] C-MOTIF
Has anyone ever heard of a programming language called C-MOTIF? It has come up in a requirement and Google doesn't throw up any useful hits. I'm wondering if they really mean 'Programming in C for the MOTIF Window Manager'. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-08-05 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Hot Backup Mode
Can anyone explain hot backup mode in the context of file server as opposed to a database? Can it be done? Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-08-05 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] Next Meeting - One Week Tonight
On 29 June 2014 at 22:52 C A Wills infocawi...@talktalk.net wrote: Hope to be there with an old problem. Back before going to Switzerland I had a USB HD back-up fail and it was suggested that I try connecting via an adaptor. Terry has a lead which may do (could you bring it with you please Terry?) Im not sure which lead you mean. I have an adaptor which can take a standard 2.5 inch HDD; is that what you meant? Will bring disc and power cord with me to try again. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-07-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Next Meeting - One Week Tonight
Hi All, I'm 'Up North' this week, but will be back in time for next week's Meeting. It will be at The Broadway at 8 pm, exactly one week tonight. See http://dorset.lug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=meetings:pub#the_broadway. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-05-06 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Next Meeting - One Week to Go
Hi all, The next meeting is one week away and will take place at the usual place (The Broadway) and at the usual time (8 pm) on the 1st April. See http://dorset.lug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=meetings:pub#the_broadway. See you there. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-04-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Mega Help Needed - Can't Boot into Kubuntu 13.10
Hi, Yesterday I (belatedly) realised that my desktop PC with Kubuntu 13.10 installed hadn't put any updates in since way before Christmas. Assuming that the Muon Updater had stopped alerting me, I ran it and found that around 300 + packages needed updating, including the kernel. Unfortunately, after the update, the machine froze at the boot message stage. Having no idea what had gone wrong, I did a clean install from the original CD and reapplied all of the updates. After the reboot all seemed well until I installed the Nvidia driver and got exactly the same symptoms. I then concluded that the problem is a mismatch between the new kernel and the old nvidia driver (it worked OK before the new kernel was installed. So now I've booted into Recovery Mode and am sitting in a root prompt. How do I remove the nvidia driver from the system and reinstall the old driver (presumably noveau)? I can see that apt-get allows me to remove the offending package, but I can't remember how to list the installed and available packages that I can access. Are there any other things that I need to do? Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-04-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] OT: Networking through VMs
Guys, I have a very strange networking problem here at work and cannot see the wood for the trees. The OT bit is that the VMs are Windows XP guests running in Virtual PC (XPMode) on Windows 7 hosts. However, the problem is relating to being able to ping between guests and (sometimes) from hosts to guests. is there anyone who is network / VM savvy enough to suggest an avenue to explore? Here is the setup: * 3-off standard Dell desktop PCs running Windows 7 Professional. * 1-off standard Dell desktop PC running Kali Linux Live Disc. * The three PCs are networked together using a cheapo Netgear Switch FS108. (I have also tried a 3-Com hub.) * All physical computers are allocated static IP addresses in the 192.168.0.* range with a netmask of 255.255.255.0. * Each of the three desktop PCs are hosting an almost identical VM running XP professional. The only difference between the three XP instances are hostname and IP address (in the same range as the hosts). There are some applications that are configured differently on each guest, but I don't believe that they have any bearing on the problem because I can shut them down with the same result. * This network is completely private and Firewalls are off in all hosts and guests. Here is what happens when I ping each machine: * All the hosts ping each other OK. * One of the guests (no 3) can always ping one of the other guests, but generally not both. * Guest No 1 can never ping Guest No 2 and vice versa, but both can usually ping Guest No 3. * The hosts running Guests 1 2 also have trouble pinging the guest on the other machine. * The above results are variable. If I use nmap from the fourth machine running Linux I also get variable results: * Usually all XP guests show around 5 or 6 ports open, but this does vary. * All W7 hosts show the same dozen or so ports open. * Sometimes one of the guests shows up as having all of its ports filtered. If I use ping from the fourth machine running Linux I can ping everything! All suggestions gratefully received. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2013-10-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] Open Source Document Management Tools
On 30 September 2013 at 22:21 Adrian Warman warm...@gmail.com wrote: Without knowing a bit more about the number of users, numbers of files, platforms, etc., it's hard to make specific suggestions. However... Might you consider a combination of git plus one of the many git GUI interfaces for the basic storage versioning and control? Out of the box, git supports some astonishing powerful content search (cf http://www.jayway.com/2012/01/25/finding-with-git/ ) For more advanced searching, you might well be better off doing a regular snapshot of the current files (easy using git) and searching those, using a tool such as recoll ( http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html ) I've never used GIT, so I can only surmise that the problem with it and any other source control system like subversion, etc is that it's aimed at mainly controlling ASCII files, whereas office documents tend to be in a variety of formats, including a mixture of binary and markup. Additionally, only a small proportion of the users will be programmers; the rest ranging from mechanical designers through to technical clerks, so any solution should require no special knowledge to use it. The solutions that we have found allow documents (some at least) to be viewed from within the tool, downloaded and / or modified with automatic tracking of Issue States,etc. I know that Source Control tools do all of these things, but we've tried them before and they tend to be a bit opaque to non- programmers. From various suggestions from a number of sources, we are homing in on three packages: 1. Feng Office - http://www.fengoffice.com/web/ 2. Alfresco - http://www.alfresco.com/ 3. Opendocman -http://www.opendocman.com/ Does anyone know anything bad about any of those? -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2013-10-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Open Source Document Management Tools
Hi, Has anyone any experience of Open Source Document Management Tools? We have been using a proprietary solution at work for some years now, but it is a pretty poor performer and expensive to procure and maintain, so we are looking for a replacement. Key Spec Points are: 1. Ability to store a variety of office and CAD formats. 2. Version tracking. 3. Ability for privileged personnel to add documents to the system. 4. Ability for everyone else (with a company login) to view the documents and retrieve copies. 5. A comprehensive search capability with wild card and regular expression support. The regexp search isn't essential, but we definitely need the wild card search; the current system is rubbish and often returns nil responses when the document is actually there unless the user gets the search terms exactly right. 6. GUI based interface (many staff are not that computer literate). Obviously any other features over and above those listed would be useful, as long as the user interface remains simple for the average user. Is this too much to ask for? We have identified a few tools, but a recommendation goes a long way. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2013-10-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] OT: Reading and Copying UFS Formatted Hard Disks
Hi, Anyone have any experience of mounting disks formatted as UFS? I only need read capability, so I can get some data off the disk, but our efforts to mount the thing were defeated here on Friday. We have a Sparc Ultra 5 box here which has fallen foul of the 'IDPROM contents are invalid' fault (duff battery in the NVRAM) and the box isn't ours so I'm going to have to send it away for repair. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2013-08-06 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] Laptop advice please
On 12 August 2013 at 08:54 Clive Wills ecwi...@talktalk.net wrote: Last night my laptop cover/screen broke again for the second time at the hinge. (Dell Inspiron 1525) It cost over £80 to repair last time and the same has happened this time, it looks as if the hinge puts a strain on the cover. As the laptop is getting old I'm thinking of a new one but what to get? Intel i3 with 300-500Gb drive, good screen and either HDMI or VGA output for the projector, SD card slot and Intel wireless N. I use it as my main PC, nothing special requiring speed or high graphics other than camera pictures, (minor improvements, cropping and aperture adjustments). Price range £200-£400 and wondered about a Tablet but it must have a keyboard, I can't get on with 'on screen' ones (Paul's Asus Transformer looked good but not now available). Does anyone know what to avoid as some of the specs I'm not sure on as it will only be running Linux (do not want M$!!!). It needs to run LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Digikam; I'm on Mint 14 cinnamon at moment. Keen on NovaTec as it's local (Portsmouth) and they give good service but don't know anything about Linux. HP, Acer and Asus seem to be OK but have heard of some problems with Linux on some models. Any help please? I shouldn't write off Novatech too soon; they may not support Linux themselves, but they sell most of their machines OS free and their forums are very lively. When I bought my Netbook from them I was able to discover if it supported Linux by putting the right search terms in. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2013-08-06 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Next Meeting - One Week Tonight
All, I'm almost back from the Hebrides (last week this week), so I'm raring to go to the next Meeting which is on Tuesday 2013-08-06 at The Broadway, Bournemouth. See http://dorset.lug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=meetings:pub#the_broadway. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2013-08-06 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] Setting up hostname in Linux
On 04 April 2011 at 23:37 Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk wrote: Hi Terry, Maybe my memory is faulty, but my recollection of doing this on earlier Unix systems, (like Solaris), is that the hostname went into the file called hostname (or similar) and that did it (after a reboot). Debian/Ubuntu still have that. $ cat /etc/hostname oracI think what confused me is that TinyCore seems to have two independent ways of setting the hostname; the file hostname, just like Debian and Solaris, etc and the bootcode hostname=Myname. It was really confusing, because with the hostname set in the hostname file, I was able to ping 'Myname' successfully, but DNS didn't work and the command hostname returned 'box'. Once I added the bootcode, everything worked. I think I've established that this bootcode method is (if not unique) special to TC; presumably so that a LiveDisc user can set the hostname of a CD based system. I don't have a problem with that, but they shouldn't be independent. I'd have expected the bootcode to write to the hostname file, to keep everything consistent. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday 2011-04-05 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Setting up hostname in Linux
Hi,
Here is a really basic question; how is the hostname defined in modern Linux
distributions? Generally this is done for us by the installer, so we don't have
to know how to do it, other than fill in the name of the PC into the box
provided.
The reason I'm asking is that I've just spent about a week (off and on) trying
to get DHCP and DNS to work on a Tiny Core Installation. I cracked it about
half an hour ago, when I discovered that the hostname file had one thing in it
('Myname', which I had written there) and the output of the command 'hostname'
gave 'box', which is the default for TC. I had to add the bootcode
host='Myname' to get the right answer and then my DNS server started answering
requests for pings etc to 'Myname'.
Maybe my memory is faulty, but my recollection of doing this on earlier Unix
systems, (like Solaris), is that the hostname went into the file called hostname
(or similar) and that did it (after a reboot). Is that right, or should I be
worried about my powers of recall?
Terry Coles
--
Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday 2011-04-05 20:00
Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/
How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] Message to Ralph: What was that command you used?
On 12 January 2011 at 08:55 Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk wrote: It was dig(1); domain information groper. Here's some examples to send onto Paul. Thanks Ralph. I've passed this on. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tue or Wed 2011-02-?? 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Identifying the drive containing a CD
Hi, We're still playing with Tiny Core Linux and are now exploring more ways of adding our own data to the running system from the original CD. You might recall that I was asking some time ago how to write data to the ISO image and rewrite it from a DOS Box. We have found a way to do this, but it has it's own problems because the permissions supported by a Windows machine are less than those in Linux. This makes it difficult to write files into the compressed data that eventually gets written to initrd during boot up. Plan B was always to write the files to the ISO but outside the initrd data and then copy them to the running system after boot up. The problem with this is that we need to be able to identify which drive the CD is sitting in. For the most part this is hdc with Tiny Core systems, but it can be different depending on the type of drive electronics and the number of drives on the system. Is there a way to easily identify the drive that contains the CD once the system has booted? We use a system where everything in the live part of the disc is written to initrd, so the drive is unmounted once booting is complete. However, we still need to know where to look. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2011-01-11 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] Identifying the drive containing a CD
On 04 January 2011 at 13:34 Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk wrote: Does ls -l /dev/disk/* show anything interesting if the CD is in the drive? Perhaps the CD can have a label or UUID. You should at least see the CD drive in by-id although that won't be useful as part numbers change. That comes back with 'No such file or directory'. However: ls -l /dev/cdrom* on this machine comes back with: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Jan 4 12:33 /dev/cdrom - /dev/hdc Which at least tells me the device that is available here, but there is no difference when I put a disc in the hole. I also tried the technique on a machine with two DVD drives, but this was quite confusing because it indicated that the cdrom was hdd, but the TC Mount Tool thought that the CD was in hdc! The TC Mount Tool may well give sufficient clues though because it seems to be able to work out what drives the machine has and also the volume names of each disc in each drive. Maybe the source code for this will let us into the secret. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2011-01-11 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] Writing a Boot sector to a CD
On 09 December 2010 at 07:47 d-...@hadrian-way.co.uk d-...@hadrian-way.co.uk wrote: There is only one problem. I can stick a CD in the hole and open it using any decent burning program, such as k3b or Brasero on Linux or Nero or Roxio on Winblows. I can then add my files and burn a new image. What I don't know is how to copy the boot sector of the original image. If I copy the CD in its entirety, that comes as part of the deal. If I build a new image as described above, all I get is a data CD. We now have a method of doing this using TKZip in Windows (or some other similar tool in Linux) to unpick the files from the compressed parts of the ISO and mkisofs (under cygwin in Windows) to create the new ISO once the additional files have been added. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: The Broadway, Bournemouth, Tuesday 2010-12-14 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] My Identity
I just realised that when I post through Webmail from work, you have no idea who I am ;-( I've just added a Sig. Terry Coles -- Next meeting: The Broadway, Bournemouth, Tuesday 2010-12-14 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Writing a Boot sector to a CD
Hi, Things have moved on with the discovery that unlike other bigger Live CDs, Tiny Core unmounts the CD after booting. This means that all we have to do is to write our additional files to the disc alongside the normal files produced by the TinyCore tools. We can then mount the disc again from the running system and read off all our files. There is only one problem. I can stick a CD in the hole and open it using any decent burning program, such as k3b or Brasero on Linux or Nero or Roxio on Winblows. I can then add my files and burn a new image. What I don't know is how to copy the boot sector of the original image. If I copy the CD in its entirety, that comes as part of the deal. If I build a new image as described above, all I get is a data CD. Does anyone know how this is done? Terry Coles -- Next meeting: The Broadway, Bournemouth, Tuesday 2010-12-14 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Using USB Sticks with Tiny Core Linux
Hi, Has anyone played around with Tiny Core Linux? I'm trying to build a custom distro using TC and am managing to sort out most things OK. One thing I'm struggling with is getting the system to automatically mount a USB Stick when I plug it in. The FAQs on the TC website give some information (see http://tinycorelinux.com/faq.html#pendrives), but that seems to be aimed at mounting particular drives, eg ones for which you already have a UUID or Label name. What I want to do is to quickly mount *any* drive that I might chose to put in. At the moment I can do it by sticking the drive into the hole and then writing: $ blkid which tells me the device name and label, etc of the particular device plugged in, eg /dev/sda: LABEL=Stick UUID=- TYPE=vfat. I then have to create a mount point in /mnt, eg /sda, then I can write: $ mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/sda which works. I've tried adding a line to fstab to support /sda, but TC rebuilds fstab at each reboot and creates mountpoints in /mnt from the (now rewritten) version. Is there anything I can do to improve on this? -- Next meeting: The Broadway, Bournemouth, Tuesday 2010-12-14 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] OT (ish): Accessing a SparcStation remotely with a graphical interface from a Windows Box
Hi, We need to do some work with our SparcStation again, but this time remotely from a windows machine. I can telnet to it and carry out the usual shell type activities, but one or two things we need to do with it, launch a dialog box under X. What is the simplest way to do this? I was initially advised to try PuTTY, which was just as good at getting me into a shell as telnet, but I couldn't get it to give me a graphical environment. I was then told to try cygwin, which (eventually) gave me a graphical environment, but so far has defied my attempts to connect. Can anyone suggest how to get any of these solutions working? Or is there a better way? Terry -- Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-11-02 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] OT (ish): Accessing a SparcStation remotely with a graphical interface from a Windows Box
On 11 October 2010 at 14:18 Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk wrote: We need to do some work with our SparcStation again, but this time remotely from a windows machine. I can telnet to it and carry out the usual shell type activities, but one or two things we need to do with it, launch a dialog box under X. I was then told to try cygwin, which (eventually) gave me a graphical environment, but so far has defied my attempts to connect. OK. I've fixed that. I've found my way to the right documentation and I hadn't got inetutils installed. If you had an X server running on your Windows PC then you could set your DISPLAY environment variable to an appropriate value at the shell prompt on the SparcStation before you run your program. That would tell all X clients that the X server to connect to is on the Windows PC. I have cygwin's X server running and I know it is working because I have loaded and run a window manager. http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/ is one Windows X server, and I tend to use xclock(1) as a simple test X client. You may want to make sure it will display OK when sitting at the SparcStation's screen before using it to test connecting to a remote X server. X is running on the SparcStation and is used for a number of things, including the dialog boxes used for our scripts. You've still got to sort out stuff like the X server allowing connections from the SparcStation, and the value of DISPLAY. It's normally hostname:0 but that assumes the Windows PC's IP address is resolvable as hostname on the SparcStation. You could put its IP address in instead. And the :0 may need to be something else, depending on what port Xming listens. This is the bit I need to get sorted. The cygwin docs say: Start snippet On yourWindows machine: 1. Make sure you have the inetutils package installed. 2. Launch Cygwin/X 3. In an X terminal type /usr/bin/xhost remote_hostname_or_ip_address 4. In an X terminal type /usr/bin/telnet remote_hostname_or_ip_address. Use the explicit path to ensure that Cygwin’s telnet is run instead of Microsoft’s telnet; Microsoft’s telnet will crash on startup when run from Cygwin/X. 5. Login to your remote machine via your telnet session 6. In your telnet session type, DISPLAY=windows_hostname_or_ip_address:0.0 7. In your telnet session type, export DISPLAY 8. You can now launch remote X clients in your telnet session, for example, xterm will launch an xterm running on your remote host that will display on your Cygwin/X screen. 9. Launch other remote clients in the same manner; I recommend starting the remote clients in the background, by appending to the command name, so that you don’t have to open several telnet sessions. End snippet I'm OK until I get to step 6, when I get a 'Command not recognised' error. Is sending that command via the telnet session causing the problem or am I missing something else? Alternatives include having the SparcStation export its screen over something like VNC, but I don't know if it can do that easily out of the box. Ralph, if you don't know how to do that, then I don't stand chance :-) Terry -- Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-11-02 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] OT (ish): Accessing a SparcStation remotely with a graphical interface from a Windows Box
On 11 October 2010 at 15:04 Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk wrote: Hi Terry, 6. In your telnet session type, DISPLAY=windows_hostname_or_ip_address:0.0 7. In your telnet session type, export DISPLAY ... I'm OK until I get to step 6, when I get a 'Command not recognised' error. Is sending that command via the telnet session causing the problem or am I missing something else? You probably have a C shell on the Sun. Replace 6 and 7 with setenv DISPLAY windows_hostname_or_ip_address:0.0Excellent! A step forward. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an export command in the csh. According to the man page it is available in sh and ksh, but not csh. Any idea how I do the last step? Terry -- Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-11-02 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
Re: [Dorset] OT (ish): Accessing a SparcStation remotely with a graphical interface from a Windows Box
On 11 October 2010 at 15:50 John Cooper l...@discoverlinux.co.uk wrote: On 11/10/10 15:23, d-...@hadrian-way.co.uk wrote: Excellent! A step forward. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an export command in the csh. According to the man page it is available in sh and ksh, but not csh. Any idea how I do the last step? setenv will automatically export the variable. Easy check, just do echo $DISPLAY and it should say ip_address:0.0 if black, it hasn't set it. you could always fall back to standard shell by typing sh and using the DISPLAY= and export commands Thanks. I've now got that far, but still no graphical display at the PC end when I run my script. I don't suppose that there is any reason why the SparcServer wouldn't do this? Could it have been set up originally to prevent remote graphical working? In use, this device is normally part of an ATE system and has a monitor permanently connected so remote logins wouldn't normally be needed. The most remoteness we've ever had before is the use of FTP to transfer files to and from the machine (and we only did that because it was easier than writing to a suitable removable media). Terry -- Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-11-02 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
[Dorset] Work related: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
Hi, We need to test something using RHEL. We won't be using it (unfortunately ;-( ); we just want to try something out. Is is possible to get a free (unsupported) copy? The links we've found seem to need a password to unlock them. -- Next meeting: Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-09-07 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ -- Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://bit.ly/4sACa
[Dorset] Next Meeting - Next Wednesday in Bournemouth
I'm working away to day (and running a bit late), so just a quick reminder that the next meeting is in Bournemouth next week. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wednesday 2010-08-04 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.orgchannel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
Re: [Dorset] Disk size in Asus EEE
On 23 June 2010 at 09:38 Bob Dunlop bob.dun...@xyzzy.org.uk wrote: I've not used a 700 but I'm guessing disk space is about right. The initial 4G (sda) will also have big chunks reserved for swap and the Xandros recovery partition. Hence only 1.4G for the user. Yes. I've now discovered that sda is split into two parts and df wwas being confused somehow. There is a 100 % full partition of 2.3G called sda1, according to the Diagnostic Utility in the Settings tab. I assume that's the Xandros system partition, but I can't work out how to get at it. The 1.4G partition is sda2. Having had to cleanup a 901 recently I suspect the problme you are hitting is not raw space but inode allocation. Try a df -i to check. Xandros seems to leave a lot of temporary files lying around eating up inodes. One cleanup suggested on the web is: sudo find / -iname '.wh*' -delete Also: sudo apt-get clean I couldn't get those to do anything. I tried both of these by remote control. I wonder if talking a seismologist through things step by step is any easier than your mother :-) It gave us some short term relief. Actually, I'm staying with her for a couple of days; hence the tasks. Ultimate solution is to replace the aging and poorly supported Xandros with something newer. On the 901 for general use I can recommend Ubuntu Remix 10.4. I don't know if it will fit on a 700. That's what I'd like to do, but I think she needs more time to get used to the idea. It runs well on my wife's 900. -- Next meeting: Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-07-06 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.orgchannel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
Re: [Dorset] Disk size in Asus EEE
On 23 June 2010 at 00:57 Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk wrote: You'd think, looking at that, that much of sda's space is not being used. You can use fdisk(8) to list the partitions on each drive. The size of each unit is given in the preamble. sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb Thanks. This shows up even more: sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 4001 MB, 4001292288 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 486 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 300 2409718+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 301 484 1477980 83 Linux /dev/sda3 485 485 8032+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/sda4 486 486 8032+ ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32) / sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb Disk /dev/sdb: 4026 MB, 4026531840 bytes 31 heads, 30 sectors/track, 8456 cylinders Units = cylinders of 930 * 512 = 476160 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 9 8457 3928064 b W95 FAT32 It could be sda has a partition that isn't being mounted so it's available for use. I don't know about being available for use, but there are at least three partitions that aren't accessible to everyday users. I'll definitely think about an upgrade to UNR. -- Next meeting: Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-07-06 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.orgchannel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
[Dorset] Disk size in Asus EEE
I'm getting a bit confused with the diskspace available on my mother's Asus EEE 700. By default, these came with a 4G flash drive and I've added a 4G SD card. Xandros seems to have appended the SD Card to the original 4G, because the Disk Utility (a GUI tool in the Settings tab) says that all the space is on one drive. However, it also says that there is only 4G In a shell I get: /home/user df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs 1.4G 841M 508M 63% / /dev/sda1 1.4G 841M 508M 63% / unionfs 1.4G 841M 508M 63% / tmpfs 249M 20K 249M 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 128M 24K 128M 1% /tmp /dev/sdb1 3.8G 561M 3.2G 15% /media/D: Can anyone explain where her other space has gone? She keeps filling up the disk, even though there is loads left. -- Next meeting: Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-07-06 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.orgchannel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
[Dorset] OT: Bling Disaster
I couldn't resist posting this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/11/bing-loophole In essence, Bing has this huge security hole (why are we not surprised). The guy that discovered this problem was then threatened with legal action by MS if he didn't remove the info from his Blog. (He didn't say how to do it, but anyone with half a brain can work it out from MS's own docs apparently.) Did anyone say 'Let's shoot the messenger'? Or maybe 'The Emperor has no clothes'. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wednesday 2009-12-02 20:00 Dorset LUG: http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.orgchannel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
[Dorset] OT: MS Patents using a GUI to access sudo!
Another one I couldn't resist: http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1Sect2=HITOFFd=PALLp=1u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htmr=1f=Gl=50s1=7,617,530.PN.OS=PN/7,617,530RS=PN/7,617,530 There's a lot of discussion about this over on Groklaw and PJ has got it a bit wrong by saying that MS has a patent on sudo. However, even if you think it makes sense to patent software (I don't), it seems that all they have done is to patent a method of escalating priveledges (not necessarily to root), by presenting the user with a GUI. Under the bonnet it seems to do a bit more than sudo, which allows priveledge excalation as defined by the sudoers file (AIUI). The patented method seems to examine the priveledges of all of the users on the system and chooses one that gives sufficient priveledge, but no more. Seems to be a lot of work for little gain, but even if it was useful, it's only a incremental update to what the sudo tools in KDE, Gnome and MacOSX already do. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wednesday 2009-12-02 20:00 Dorset LUG: http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.orgchannel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
