[Hampshire] LED Monitor repair

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hi all,

I have a Samsung LED monitor SyncMaster 245b that has developed a fault -
the blue LED stays on but no picture is displayed.

>From Googling the issue it could be a blown capacitor or duff resistor.

The monitor is from 2007 but really good picture. I would like to keep it
working.

I cannot open the monitor easily. It's all plastic and seems a tight fit. I
just wondered if there is anyone in the area that can repair monitors at an
economical price.

Thanks,
Imran
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Re: [Hampshire] Configuring Sendmail to Internet

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Thanks for the info Dan. I'll look into sendmail specific stuff now.
On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 at 23:53, Daniel Llewellyn  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 at 21:20, Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire 
>  wrote:
>>
>> I understand that sendmail can be configured to just use itself
>> locally to send mail - happy days, but people have told me that it
>> might open up a can worms such as configuring SPF records etc.
>
>
> While not helpful for the configuration of Sendmail directly, I can help with 
> SPF:
>
> If you don't currently have any SPF records that indicate your ISP's 
> mailserver then you will not be penalised further by changing to your own 
> server sending directly instead of via the smarthost.
>
> However, you should consider adding an SPF record anyway, even if you remain 
> using a smarthost. Your SPF record should be a DNS record of the type `TXT` 
> which contains the definition similar to:
>
> v=spf1 mx -all
>
> You can add extra items such as:
>
> - `a` - tells the receiving mail server to accept any IP address specified in 
> an A record matching your domain, useful to indicate that your webserver at 
> example.com is also able to send mail directly on your behalf.
> - `a:example.com` - same as `a` but includes the name of the domain you want 
> the A record for.
> - `mx` - tells the receiving mail server to accept any IP address specified 
> in a matching MX record for your domain.
> - `ip4:127.0.0.1` - i.e. any valid IPv4 address.
> - `ip6:fe80::1` - i.e. any valid IPv6 address.
> - `include:example.com` - use the SPF rules specified by example.com to 
> augment any rules specified directly.
>
> The `include` directive can be useful e.g. for cases where you also send mail 
> labelled as from your domain via a third-party server such as Gmail: 
> `include:_spf.google.com`.
>
> Full documentation is at http://www.openspf.org/SPF_Record_Syntax
>
> As another example here is the SPF record I use on my own domain, 
> bowlhat.net, which allows my main webserver to send mail in addition to 
> allowing my Gsuite setup from Google:
>
> "v=spf1 a include:_spf.google.com ~all"
>
> I use ~all to cause a SOFTFAIL on any non-matching email where the receiving 
> email either says "I'm not available right now, try again later" or accepts 
> and receives the full email but sends it into the SPAM folder. A HARDFAIL can 
> be indicated by stating -all, which will cause the receiving server to issue 
> a direct refusal rather than a try again message.
>
> I hope this helps,
>
> Dan.

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[Hampshire] Configuring Sendmail to Internet

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

I'm maintaining a server that configured using Sendmail to send
outbound mail to the Internet via a Smart Host, eg.

# "Smart" relay host (may be null)
DS

The ISP says that because we are hosting our own mailserver, we cannot
use their mailhost this way (eg. it's probably only for mail clients,
smaller usage etc)

I understand that sendmail can be configured to just use itself
locally to send mail - happy days, but people have told me that it
might open up a can worms such as configuring SPF records etc.

I would rather make as few changes as possible so as not to disrupt
the existing mail sending functions. Has anyone configured sendmail
like this and is simple or complex, any good pointers to guides etc?

I know some of you might say "Dude, use Postfix|Exim" but I want the
changes to be as minimal as possible.

Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] Webcam that works well with Debian Stable

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Thanks for the tip Petyr! I've just set it up on an spare smartphone and it
works really well. Motion detection works a treat.

I might buy another smartphone for more coverage. Can you recommend any
good smartphone mounts/holders?

Thanks again

On Sat, 7 Jul 2018, 10:36 Petyr via Hampshire, 
wrote:

> I’ve found that Alfred works well…
>
>
>
>
>
> Check it out
>
>
>
> Old phones just link them up – seems to do the job for me.
>
>
>
> https://alfred.camera/webapp/
>
>
>
> *From:* Hampshire  *On Behalf Of *James
> Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire
> *Sent:* 05 July 2018 12:55 Lioncourt
> *To:* Hampshire LUG Discussion List 
> *Cc:* James Courtier-Dutton 
> *Subject:* Re: [Hampshire] Webcam that works well with Debian Stable
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, 5 Jul 2018, 12:33 Artur Łądka via Hampshire, <
> hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:
>
> I checked what guvcview is, and it seems like something we tested. C920
> was working in some GTK+ app, which COULD BE guvcview - in this app you
> can adjust some settings to make it working, but when streaming from
> headless server using VLC or when using default video module in
> Raspberry Pi QT app it was not working because of some compatibility
> problems. I did not test it recently (we are using another webcam for
> development) but have to check if works on newest Debian release.
>
> On the other hand, C920 is a very good webcam, and if it works - it
> works great - no problems with sound or video quality.
>
>
>
> Usb web cams tend to all use the standardised uvc usb profile so they
> should all just work.
>
> Another alternative is a network web cam, that also all use standard
> protocols that work with ffmpeg / mplayer / xine  etc.
>
>
>
>
> 
>  Virus-free.
> www.avast.com
> 
> <#m_8845002565485006456_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
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Re: [Hampshire] Webcam that works well with Debian Stable

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hey thanks Artur - I had my heart set on the Logitech C920 actually
and was a little sad on what you said... however this thread says it
works well with Linux Mint from 2016 with install of package
"guvcview" and miminal set-up.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=131011

One person there says he recorded this video using it from Linux:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpCYH6r4ECI

Another compatibility list is http://www.ideasonboard.org/uvc/ in
which the Logitech C910 is listed as fully compatible (but not 920
which just looks like an updated version of it)

I think I'll buy the Logitech C920 and try it, I'll report back here
and update the list above if it works.

On Mon, 2 Jul 2018 at 08:32, Artur Łądka via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> We are sometimes using in our company webcams connected to headless server. 
> From my experience most of them works perfect. What we had problems with was 
> (on Debian Jessie, maybe it is solved in Stretch) Logitech C920. It offers 
> built in hardware video acceleration, but it was a disadvantage - does not 
> work with default driver, and uses too much CPU when streaming video. On the 
> other side is another Logitech product, C270, which is compatible out of the 
> box and offers very good quality.
>
> RPi community page also can be a good source of knowledge as mentioned 
> before, just make sure that you don't buy a dedicated Raspberry Pi camera, 
> which I believe will not work on PC.
>
> There are some dedicated cameras for surveillance, but not sure about 
> compatibility. Maybe check https://zoneminder.com/ for more details.
>
> Regards,
> Artur
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[Hampshire] Webcam that works well with Debian Stable

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Yo,

I run a home server with Debian Stable (9)

I want to install a webcam to keep an eye on the house/cat while I am away.

I looked at the "motion" project which turns a webcam into a motion
detector, this sounds ideal.

I had an old Creative Webcam (Creative Live! Cam Video IM Pro) in the
garage which I plugged in but sadly that did not seem to get a kernel
driver loaded automagically.

From some research, it seems that older webcams (mine is from circa
2005) had proprietary drivers that do not work well with modern webcam
driver like uvcvideo.

I think I just need to get a modern USB webcam but does anyone have
any recommendations?

My requirements are:
* works well on Linux with uvcvideo and V4L2 support
* autofocus would be good
* at least 720p good
* I'm a total n00b to webcams so what other features I need I dunno
(low-light support?)

Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] [FOR SALE] Dell PowerEdge SC1430 Tower Server, 4Gb RAM with 3Ware RAID card

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Sorry for bump-up, I'm reducing this to £25 or going to donate it to Jamies.
On Fri, 25 May 2018 at 17:02, Imran Chaudhry  wrote:
>
> Dell PowerEdge SC1430 Tower Server, 4Gb RAM with 3Ware RAID card
>
> Was formerly running Debian and Citrix Xenserver in a home lab environment
> with intermittent use (not on constantly).
>
> Intel Xeon 5120 (Dual-core) @ 1.86GHz - which also supports hardware
> virtualization (vmx CPU flag)
> 4G RAM (2 x 2G DIMM, 2 slots free)
> HDD easy-access bay (no HDD included)
> Gigabit Ethernet
> USB ports front and back
>
> In overall good condition with one 2.5" slot cover missing from front
>
> lshw output before 4Gb RAM upgrade: https://pastebin.com/34tDXp96
>
> Asking for £75

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[Hampshire] [FOR SALE] Dell PowerEdge SC1430 Tower Server, 4Gb RAM with 3Ware RAID card

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Dell PowerEdge SC1430 Tower Server, 4Gb RAM with 3Ware RAID card

Was formerly running Debian and Citrix Xenserver in a home lab environment
with intermittent use (not on constantly).

Intel Xeon 5120 (Dual-core) @ 1.86GHz - which also supports hardware
virtualization (vmx CPU flag)
4G RAM (2 x 2G DIMM, 2 slots free)
HDD easy-access bay (no HDD included)
Gigabit Ethernet
USB ports front and back

In overall good condition with one 2.5" slot cover missing from front

lshw output before 4Gb RAM upgrade: https://pastebin.com/34tDXp96

Asking for £75

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Re: [Hampshire] Software RAID1 install problems

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Thanks James. Happily I sorted the problem out.

Turns out the installers of CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu will not
automatically create a BIOS GRUB partiton on the second disc when
software RAID is chosen. Only the first disc gets this partition.

This might be a edge-case bug, since it occurs when GPT and software
RAID is used. I'll report it to the respective upstream Bugzilla's.
The third screenshot in the album shows the error thrown by the CentOS
installer. This is what actually tipped me off because the graphical
installer displays a detailed partition summary and from checking that
I was able to see the missing "create BIOS GRUB partition" command for
the 2nd HDD.

What I did was to boot into a system rescue USB and use parted to
remove the partition table, create a new GPT one on each afresh and
then manually add a 1M BIOS GRUB partition to both discs. The commands
can be seen in the yellow terminal in the album below. This partition
is where GRUB installs some crucial 2nd stage boot-loader files when
using GPT partition tables. You need to use GPT to use discs >2T in
size.

Anyway, I then proceeded with an Ubuntu Server 18.04 install. I chose
to manually create the partitions I needed and proceed with
configuring my software RAID array and then install went off without a
hitch. The fifth screenshot shows the final partition layout from the
Ubuntu installer.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ds9ogmkZpnHZZxr82


As a side-note, prior to the above I was able to get a RAID1 system up
and running but without GRUB installed on one of the discs. My
question is: if the non-GRUB disc has the OS on it as normal, how can
I boot into it without GRUB?


On 19 May 2018 at 14:47, James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire
<hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:
> On 19 May 2018 at 14:38, Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire
> <hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:
>> Hello All,
>>
>> Having a spot of bother with something that should be straightfroward.
>>
>> I'm setting up RAID1 Linux server install. The hardware is a HP
>> Microserver N54L. It has a non-UEFI BIOS.
>>
>> I want to install a long-term support Linux server-oriented distro. So
>> far I've tried both CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
>>
>> I want to install the OS on two 4Tb discs as software RAID1 (mdadm)
>>
>
> I normally leave space of about 100MB at the beginning of the disk for
> boot stuff (grub/bios boot), and then 1GB for the /boot partition.
> I don't know what the minimal you can get away with is, but 1GB from
> 4TB is minimal in my book.
> Then mirror the rest for RAID1.
>
> Kind Regards
>
> James
>
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[Hampshire] Software RAID1 install problems

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hello All,

Having a spot of bother with something that should be straightfroward.

I'm setting up RAID1 Linux server install. The hardware is a HP
Microserver N54L. It has a non-UEFI BIOS.

I want to install a long-term support Linux server-oriented distro. So
far I've tried both CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

I want to install the OS on two 4Tb discs as software RAID1 (mdadm)

However, no matter what I try or what partition scheme I do - I always
end up with problems in the `grub-install /dev/sd[ab]` step.

The specific error I get is not helpful, it justs says something like
"grub-install step failed. This is a fatal error." (see screenshots
from the Ubuntu 18.04 install)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ds9ogmkZpnHZZxr82

I've of course been Googling this and posted in the Ubuntu forum
but... nothing has worked so far.

I can get some partial success, eg. the Ubuntu installer with RAID1
sometimes appears to install GRUB to /dev/sda but fails to do with
/dev/sdb. I can still continue with the installation and boot into the
OS and observe the RAID1 resync taking place.
I then tried to run `grub-install /dev/sdb` post-install but this
seems to mess things up further and /dev/sdb no longer appears "up" in
the array.

The discs are 4TB WD Red which are new. As a test, I installed Ubuntu
to both discs independently in non-RAID and the install went smoothly.

I wanted everything in one partition for simplicity but someone
suggested I try a separate /boot partition. This did not make any
difference. One odd observation is the free space at the beginning and
end of both discs by the guided-partitioner (see screenshots)

On this server hardware I also tried to install the OS on two 160Gb
discs in software RAID1 and the install went smoothly.

My conclusion is that it might be something in the way the installer
auto-partitions the discs and/or something esoteric with the discs.
One thing I noticed with the CentOS 7 installer is that it explicitly
sets up a 1Mb bios_grub partition which as I understand is for GRUB to
work properly with discs >2Tb in size. I can't recall if Ubuntu does
the same (from screenshot it does not).

I've been learning about partition table types. I am assuming the
installer picks the GPT partition table format. This is fine because
of the discs size being >2Tb since MBR format isn't able to address
bigger discs. GPT also seems to be independent of BIOS being UEFI or
non-UEFI and something that just needs support in the OS.

Any ideas? Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] Home user Linux Support opportunities in Southampton/Eastleigh area?

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Correction: flyer detail https://photos.app.goo.gl/4ecCUe8AiFJ226KL2

On 19 September 2017 at 21:06, Imran Chaudhry <ichaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Thomas,
>
> Yes, please do. From the website it looks like general helpers are welcome.
>
> As for the Linux/laptop course, I'm making people aware through the
> Facebook pages of my local areas and I've approached my village parish
> council with a bunch of flyers which they have kindly displayed
> prominently in their display boards.
>
> https://photos.app.goo.gl/sGabK47RsaGMUf2f1
>
> ...I was also in the local barbers this weekend, told them what I was
> doing and they also kindly agreed to host my flyers :)
>
> So far though I have had virtually no interest after two weeks. I
> think I'll give it until the first week of October before calling it
> quits.
>
> It might be just too niche for most people, or I have failed to
> communicate it it an engaging way. Here is the flyer in detail:
>
> https://photos.app.goo.gl/sGabK47RsaGMUf2f1
>
> My thinking was not to mention Linux or open-source at all and the
> "mechanic and driver" would be something easy to understand. I thought
> the "faster web surfing" and "no fear of viruses" would be good hooks
> to get people interested.
>
> I do have a "Plan B" - while I was describing my idea to the parish
> council people, a random visitor overheard my idea and asked if I
> cover things like phones and tablets. It turns out this person had a
> query about lost e-mail on her Samsung phone. I helped her out there
> and then and she gave me the idea of doing something related to phones
> and tablets, eg. going "beyond the basics". She even told me that her
> and her friend would attend such a course. Since everyone has a phone
> or tablet these days it might be more traction. Lets see.
>
>
>
> On 14 September 2017 at 20:48, Thomas Kluyver <tho...@kluyver.me.uk> wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017, at 08:44 PM, Imran Chaudhry wrote:
>>
>> Thanks for that Thomas, this is the first I've heard about the Repair Cafe
>> concept but I fully support the idea.
>>
>> I will try to pop along to the next one in October.
>>
>>
>> Cool! Shall I put you in touch with the organiser?
>>
>> In the meantime I've decided to try and run a local "setup your own Linux
>> laptop"  course to generate my own clientele. I'll report back here on how
>> it goes.
>>
>>
>> I look forward to hearing how it goes. How are you making people aware of
>> it?
>>
>> Thomas

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Re: [Hampshire] Home user Linux Support opportunities in Southampton/Eastleigh area?

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hello Thomas,

Yes, please do. From the website it looks like general helpers are welcome.

As for the Linux/laptop course, I'm making people aware through the
Facebook pages of my local areas and I've approached my village parish
council with a bunch of flyers which they have kindly displayed
prominently in their display boards.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/sGabK47RsaGMUf2f1

...I was also in the local barbers this weekend, told them what I was
doing and they also kindly agreed to host my flyers :)

So far though I have had virtually no interest after two weeks. I
think I'll give it until the first week of October before calling it
quits.

It might be just too niche for most people, or I have failed to
communicate it it an engaging way. Here is the flyer in detail:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/sGabK47RsaGMUf2f1

My thinking was not to mention Linux or open-source at all and the
"mechanic and driver" would be something easy to understand. I thought
the "faster web surfing" and "no fear of viruses" would be good hooks
to get people interested.

I do have a "Plan B" - while I was describing my idea to the parish
council people, a random visitor overheard my idea and asked if I
cover things like phones and tablets. It turns out this person had a
query about lost e-mail on her Samsung phone. I helped her out there
and then and she gave me the idea of doing something related to phones
and tablets, eg. going "beyond the basics". She even told me that her
and her friend would attend such a course. Since everyone has a phone
or tablet these days it might be more traction. Lets see.



On 14 September 2017 at 20:48, Thomas Kluyver <tho...@kluyver.me.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017, at 08:44 PM, Imran Chaudhry wrote:
>
> Thanks for that Thomas, this is the first I've heard about the Repair Cafe
> concept but I fully support the idea.
>
> I will try to pop along to the next one in October.
>
>
> Cool! Shall I put you in touch with the organiser?
>
> In the meantime I've decided to try and run a local "setup your own Linux
> laptop"  course to generate my own clientele. I'll report back here on how
> it goes.
>
>
> I look forward to hearing how it goes. How are you making people aware of
> it?
>
> Thomas

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Re: [Hampshire] Home user Linux Support opportunities in Southampton/Eastleigh area?

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hello Roger,

Likewise, it would be good to catch-up after a while.

I'll make a note to drop a note here closer to date to confirm I am
really going along.


On 15 September 2017 at 11:51, Roger Munford via Hampshire
<hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:
> Imran, Thomas,
>
> I was very pleased to read this because I know the repair cafe people well
> and I will try and pop along in October to see what can be done.
>
> It would be nice to see you again after some years.
>
> Roger
>
>
> On 14/09/17 20:48, Thomas Kluyver via Hampshire wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017, at 08:44 PM, Imran Chaudhry wrote:
>
> Thanks for that Thomas, this is the first I've heard about the Repair Cafe
> concept but I fully support the idea.
>
> I will try to pop along to the next one in October.
>
>
> Cool! Shall I put you in touch with the organiser?
>
> In the meantime I've decided to try and run a local "setup your own Linux
> laptop"  course to generate my own clientele. I'll report back here on how
> it goes.
>
>
> I look forward to hearing how it goes. How are you making people aware of
> it?
>
> Thomas
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Home user Linux Support opportunities in Southampton/Eastleigh area?

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Thanks for that Thomas, this is the first I've heard about the Repair Cafe
concept but I fully support the idea.

I will try to pop along to the next one in October.

In the meantime I've decided to try and run a local "setup your own Linux
laptop"  course to generate my own clientele. I'll report back here on how
it goes.


On 10 Sep 2017 9:56 p.m., "Thomas Kluyver via Hampshire" <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

Hi Imran,

It's not a business, but I recently started helping at the Southampton
repair cafe, which runs monthly on the first Saturday of the month.
Among other things, people bring in computers and electronic devices to
be repaired. There's an explicit aim to help people keep using stuff
rather than throwing it away and replacing it, which fits with one of
the reasons people promote desktop Linux. Of course, most of the
computers that come are Windows or Mac systems, though.

The website unfortunately is down at the moment, and apparently the
webmaster is on a long holiday, but here's the latest snapshot from the
wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170611132036/http://transitionsouthampton.org/

If people at the cafe need more than ~30 minutes of help, I imagine you
could offer your services for a later date. But obviously it would be
disrespectful to treat the volunteer-driven event primarily as a chance
to promote one's own services.

Best wishes,
Thomas

On Sun, Sep 10, 2017, at 02:25 PM, Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> A few months ago I helped out a local Linux user with their laptop
> problems. I left them a very happy customer with a much more modern,
> up-to-date laptop running Debian with their (non-trivial!) e-mail
> system up and running.
>
> It took probably 4 visits and 5+ hours to sort everything out. I
> charged and got paid a fair, reasonable hourly rate for it (much less
> than the commercial PC support businesses were charging).
>
> I really enjoyed the experience and the "customer" suggested I should
> explore doing it as a part-time "business" because I displayed a patient,
> service-oriented nature.
>
> Does anyone know in Hampshire LUG know of opportunities in this around
> the Southampton/Eastleigh area? I have put up several flyers around my
> area but so far I have had no response. I mentioned that I'm a "Linux
> specialist" but I expect the majority to be running Windows I guess.
> It may just be that this particular customer is pretty unique because
> they were Linux user since 2000 but someone else did the technical
> set-up who had since got out of touch.
>
> I would only be doing this mainly for fun, experience and to earn a
> bit of "pin-money". If it's too much like a business it takes the fun
> out of it.
>
> Any ideas/thoughts/comments? Anyone tried this already? Thanks.
>
> --
> Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk
> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
> --

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[Hampshire] Home user Linux Support opportunities in Southampton/Eastleigh area?

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hello all,

A few months ago I helped out a local Linux user with their laptop
problems. I left them a very happy customer with a much more modern,
up-to-date laptop running Debian with their (non-trivial!) e-mail
system up and running.

It took probably 4 visits and 5+ hours to sort everything out. I
charged and got paid a fair, reasonable hourly rate for it (much less
than the commercial PC support businesses were charging).

I really enjoyed the experience and the "customer" suggested I should
explore doing it as a part-time "business" because I displayed a patient,
service-oriented nature.

Does anyone know in Hampshire LUG know of opportunities in this around
the Southampton/Eastleigh area? I have put up several flyers around my
area but so far I have had no response. I mentioned that I'm a "Linux
specialist" but I expect the majority to be running Windows I guess.
It may just be that this particular customer is pretty unique because
they were Linux user since 2000 but someone else did the technical
set-up who had since got out of touch.

I would only be doing this mainly for fun, experience and to earn a
bit of "pin-money". If it's too much like a business it takes the fun
out of it.

Any ideas/thoughts/comments? Anyone tried this already? Thanks.

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Re: [Hampshire] Anyone going to OggCamp 17?

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Just FYI all :)

I blogged about OggCamp here:
https://ejectdisc.org/2017/08/24/a-weekend-at-oggcamp-august-2017-in-canterbury-united-kingdom/


On 18 August 2017 at 18:42, Andy Random <andy.ran...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> After some debate, I'm now in Canterbury, so I guess I will be going :)
>
> Not sure if I will be at the pub or not tonight, but I'll catch up with
> people tomorrow.
>
>   Andy
>
>
> On Sat, 12 Aug 2017, Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire wrote:
>
>> Just a follow-up that I've booked accommodation and am going to
>> OggCamp 17 next weekend.
>>
>> I'll also be delivering a talk on... well, you just have to attend to
>> find out ;)
>>
>> I'm planning to arrive in Canterbury on Friday 18th evening and hook
>> up with the Friday night OGGCamp pub crowd.
>>
>> Anyone wants to car share with me then please contact me off-list. I'm
>> aiming to leave after work from Havant though at 4pm and would like to
>> avoid going back to Southampton but let's see.
>>
>> Thanks :)
>>
>>
>> On 27 June 2017 at 22:39, Imran Chaudhry <ichaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello All,
>>>
>>> Just curious if anyone was planning to go this year? If anyone is
>>> going to go by car I'd be happy to contribute petrol money to tag
>>> along.
>>>
>>> http://oggcamp.org/
>>
>>
>> --
>> Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk
>> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
>> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
>> --

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Re: [Hampshire] Anyone going to OggCamp 17?

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Just a follow-up that I've booked accommodation and am going to
OggCamp 17 next weekend.

I'll also be delivering a talk on... well, you just have to attend to
find out ;)

I'm planning to arrive in Canterbury on Friday 18th evening and hook
up with the Friday night OGGCamp pub crowd.

Anyone wants to car share with me then please contact me off-list. I'm
aiming to leave after work from Havant though at 4pm and would like to
avoid going back to Southampton but let's see.

Thanks :)


On 27 June 2017 at 22:39, Imran Chaudhry <ichaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> Just curious if anyone was planning to go this year? If anyone is
> going to go by car I'd be happy to contribute petrol money to tag
> along.
>
> http://oggcamp.org/

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Re: [Hampshire] How to de-install non-free Radeon drivers without uninstalling all of X.org

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Coorection, laptop model is

Toshiba Satellite C850

Sadly looks like many issues with the hardware by others:
http://www.linlap.com/toshiba_satellite_c850-c855

I'm wondering if the user would have a better experience using a more
up-to-date distro like Ubuntu.


On 25 July 2017 at 16:03, Imran Chaudhry <ichaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been helping someone set-up a Linux laptop upon which I installed
> Debian 9 "Stretch".
>
> The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite CH50-D11Q which has a GPU installed
> - an ATI Radeon 7000 HD series.
>
> I selected the MATE desktop and the default install used the
> opensource ATI drivers - however while the system was usable the
> screen brightness did not work correctly.
>
> When I realized that an ATI Radeon GPU was present I then installed
> the linux-firmware-nonfree package thinking that it would unlock the
> full power of the GPU. On reboot however we found that although the
> screen brightness could now be controlled, the graphical desktop was
> slower than the opensource drivers. Moving windows shows a visible
> re-draw and using a browser scrolling web pages seems to be slow.
>
> After some Googling, I tried instead to install the ATI "Catalyst"
> Linux package from the ATI site but on running it reported my X.org
> server version to be too old.
>
> I then attempted to downgrade to the opensource drivers by
> uninstalling the Xorg packages with "radeon" in their names but this
> wanted to uninstall ALL ox Xorg.
>
> Since the laptop user is non-technical, I did not want to proceed
> further with the fear that they may end up with a broken system.
>
> Can anyone suggest a way to downgrade cleanly? It sounds like I might
> need to install the opensource ATI/Radeon package which might have
> been uninstalled when I installed the nonfree one?
>
> Thanks

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[Hampshire] How to de-install non-free Radeon drivers without uninstalling all of X.org

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

I've been helping someone set-up a Linux laptop upon which I installed
Debian 9 "Stretch".

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite CH50-D11Q which has a GPU installed
- an ATI Radeon 7000 HD series.

I selected the MATE desktop and the default install used the
opensource ATI drivers - however while the system was usable the
screen brightness did not work correctly.

When I realized that an ATI Radeon GPU was present I then installed
the linux-firmware-nonfree package thinking that it would unlock the
full power of the GPU. On reboot however we found that although the
screen brightness could now be controlled, the graphical desktop was
slower than the opensource drivers. Moving windows shows a visible
re-draw and using a browser scrolling web pages seems to be slow.

After some Googling, I tried instead to install the ATI "Catalyst"
Linux package from the ATI site but on running it reported my X.org
server version to be too old.

I then attempted to downgrade to the opensource drivers by
uninstalling the Xorg packages with "radeon" in their names but this
wanted to uninstall ALL ox Xorg.

Since the laptop user is non-technical, I did not want to proceed
further with the fear that they may end up with a broken system.

Can anyone suggest a way to downgrade cleanly? It sounds like I might
need to install the opensource ATI/Radeon package which might have
been uninstalled when I installed the nonfree one?

Thanks

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Re: [Hampshire] Anyone going to OggCamp 17?

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hello Andrew,

I'm in the same situation. Train is an attractive option as I don't fancy
taking a long drive but let's see.

Lets keep each other informed via this thread closer to the time?

Thanks

On 28 Jun 2017 12:33 p.m., "Andy Random via Hampshire" <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

>
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2017, Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire wrote:
>
> Just curious if anyone was planning to go this year? If anyone is
>> going to go by car I'd be happy to contribute petrol money to tag
>> along.
>>
>> http://oggcamp.org/
>>
>
> I'm planning to go, but haven't got beyond that yet.
>
> By that I mean I've not booked a hotel or arranged travel, but my aim
> would be to get there by train and be there for the whole weekend.
>
> This also assumes that by the time I get around to it I can find
> accommodation that I consider affordable and still go.
>
>   Andy
>
>
>
> --
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[Hampshire] Anyone going to OggCamp 17?

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hello All,

Just curious if anyone was planning to go this year? If anyone is
going to go by car I'd be happy to contribute petrol money to tag
along.

http://oggcamp.org/

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Re: [Hampshire] Linux laptop

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Have you already bought it Peter?

I have found http://linlap.com/ usually pretty accurate and useful
when it comes to Lenovo Thinkpads at least. Maybe the laptop you are
interested in is listed there?

On 5 May 2017 at 12:13, Peter Alefounder via Hampshire
 wrote:
> Thanks to all those who replied, Thomas Kluyver, Ian Park, Aaron West
> and particularly Ben Parsonage. Ben - I think you have solved the
> problem. The Dell Inspiron machine looks like it will do very well. I
> investigated Entroware some time ago, but they do not reply to email.
> At the time I was looking for a screen with greater vertical
> resolution, but they all cost a great deal more. I have now made the
> particular program in question detect the screen size and adjust
> the output window accordingly, so that is no longer a problem.
>
> Thomas:
>> 1. Graphics cards: If you're not interested in gaming, stick to
>> Intel integrated graphics.
>
> Only worthwhile game I've ever known was bz, which ran on a Silicon
> Graphics Unix cluster (this was years ago). The Dell machine does
> indeed have Intel graphics.
>
> Aaron:
>> making it work(For me at least) can be half the fun!
>
> I dare say it is, but I have other things to do and would rather have
> something that "just works" with Linux already installed.
>
> Peter Alefounder.
>
> --
> Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk
> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
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Re: [Hampshire] HTTPS Certificate problem

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

+1 for letsencrypt.org - I recently switched to HTTPS for all my
hosted server domains and was very happy to find a "letsencrypt"
package for Debian that automated the entire process. It even
auto-renews the cert for you.

On 1 February 2017 at 21:01, Thomas Kluyver via Hampshire
 wrote:
> I'm not at all an expert on HTTPS, but if you're running a public web
> server now, the standard advice is to use letsencrypt
> (https://letsencrypt.org/ ) to create certificates. They're free and you
> can get them from an API, but unlike a self-signed certificate, it will
> be trusted by all major browsers.
>
> Thomas
>
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2017, at 08:58 PM, Stephen Davies via Hampshire wrote:
>> Along with the general move to using HTTPS I configured my webserver to
>> allow HTTPS connections.
>>
>> However one of my users reported this error.
>>
>> The certificate is not trusted because it is self-signed. The
>> certificate is only valid for bonzo.lan The certificate expired on 21
>> January 2017 at 13:51. The current time is 1 February 2017 at 20:49.
>> Error code: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER
>>
>>
>> Some expert guidance on how I can resolve this would be most welcome.
>> The system was built just over a year ago hence the certificate expiry.
>> As it said, the cert currently in use is self signed but as yet I've not
>> explicitly done anything regarding certs in the webserver.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>   Stephen Davies.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk
>> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
>> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
>> --
>
> --
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Re: [Hampshire] Desktop PC & large bundle of PC parts / electronics / network cards etc

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hello!

I have reduced this bundle to £25 if anyone is interested - thanks

On 2 January 2017 at 18:17, Imran Chaudhry <ichaud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Happy New Year to all :)
>
> I had a Christmas clearout - full details below.
>
> Photos of the bundle: http://imgur.com/a/p3wvm
>
> I'm asking £50 for the lot.
>
> Large bundle of computer parts - you will be able to build a perfectly
> decent working desktop PC with this lot plus a couple of low-power
> Compaq servers - and still have plenty of parts to spare!
>
> Good for someone who maintains and tinkers with computers as a hobby
> or business or for education/learning purposes.
>
> DESKTOP PC CASE / MOTHERBOARD / CPU / MEMORY
>
> I have had this case for 15 years and it has performed extremely well.
> Good looking with outer door (lockable - child/kid proof - I have the
> key), quiet and efficient with rubber grommits on the cages. I only
> selling it because I use my laptop more often. I was running it very
> happily with Windows 10 on an SSD and it booted up super-quick in a
> few seconds.
>
> Full specs below but in summary it comes fitted with an A-bit
> motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU with a top-notch Zalman fan and
> 4Gb of OCZ RAM with heatsinks. Not the latest and greatest but good
> enough for a second PC or kids homework PC or for an older relative
> who wants to get onto the internet. All you need to make this usable
> is a PSU, HDD/SDD and graphics card/GPU. I found the on-board network
> and sound a bit unreliable so I am including a seperate soundcard and
> network card fitted.
>
> * Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @ 3.00GHz / Socket 775 LGA
> * IP35 Pro motherboard / Intel P35/G33/G31 rev. A2
> * 4Gb OCZ RAM (4 x 1Gb sticks)
> * Antec Sonata case in "Piano Black" with component rails, cage trays,
> assorted screws and bits
> * Philips DVD-RW with IDE cable (works but sometimes will not eject right 
> away)
>
> MEMORY
>
> Job lot of various PC and laptop memory modules I have accumulated
> over the years.
>
> Sold as UNTESTED but I believe all work. I doubt I would keep bad
> memory around, I would have recycled it.
>
> * 2 x Virtium 256Mb SDRAM SD-168P-UB-25672 / VM374S3323 / Virtium
> VM374S3323-GLS 256MB PC100 100MHz ECC Unbuffered 168-Pin DIMM Memory
> Module (VM374S3323GLS)
> * Samsung 512Mb DDR2-667 PC2-5300, 200p SODIMM, 1.8v / M470T6554EZ3
> * 2 x Samsung 1Gb 1Rx8 PC3-10600 SODIMM / M471B2873FHS 1.5 volts
> * 2 x 1Gb DDR 266 PC2100 Unbranded
> * Micron 256Mb PC2100 DDR / 9704745-01-217 / mt8vddt3264ag-265ca /
> 256MB 184p PC2100 CL2.5 8c 32x8 DDR DIMM RFB
> * Aeneon 256MB PC3200 DDR-400MHz non-ECC Unbuffered CL3 184-Pin / DDR
> 400 CL3 PC3200U-30331 / AED560UD00-500C88X
> * 256Mb DDR-266 / 1302-04C1 / MDAB-302HA / pq1 brand
> * 128Mb PCC-133 SDRAM / 053LDGH03040353 / Unbranded
> * HP 256Mb DDR 333 CL2.5 / p/n 305957-041 / 256MB, 333MHz, DDR333
> PC2700, 184p DIMM, 2.5v
> * 2 x Samsung 1Gb 2Rx8 PC2-4200F / M395T2953CZD / DDR2 4200(533)
> Fully-Buffered ECC SERVER RAM
> * 2 x Kingston 512Mb 1Rx8 PC2-4200F DDR2 SDRAM 240-pin / 239-0713
> / 995285-013.a00lf 512mb 1rx8 pc2-4200f 444-11-ao
> * Hynix 512Mb DDR 400Mhz CL3 PC3200U-30330 / HYMD564646B8J-D43 AA-M /
> IBM 11S38L4378ZJ1YNL57D05D / HYN FRU:73p2684 / ECC SERVER RAM
>
> OTHER STUFF
>
> * 2 x Compaq Deskpro EN Small Form factor PC (Pentium 3, 256 or 512Mb
> RAM fitted, these make very good low power 30W idle servers)
> * Various capacity IDE HDDs
> * Various CD/DVD RW drives
> * Amstrad Sky box with remote and power cable
> * Laptop DVD drives
> * Thompson Broadband router with PSU
> * ASUS 300W PSU / Power Supply
> * Various AGP/PCI Graphics cards / Sound cards / network cards
> * Various cables / fans / adaptors etc
> * SCART and TV cables
> * Telephone cables
>
> Will consider swap for a bicycle in good condition or bicycle
> parts/equipment or hiking gear or what-have-you (iPod?), let me know!
>
> --
> Key fingerprint = EF78 310C C517 9564 9ECA  82F6 68FA E621 17E1 5D16



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[Hampshire] Desktop PC & large bundle of PC parts / electronics / network cards etc

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Happy New Year to all :)

I had a Christmas clearout - full details below.

Photos of the bundle: http://imgur.com/a/p3wvm

I'm asking £50 for the lot.

Large bundle of computer parts - you will be able to build a perfectly
decent working desktop PC with this lot plus a couple of low-power
Compaq servers - and still have plenty of parts to spare!

Good for someone who maintains and tinkers with computers as a hobby
or business or for education/learning purposes.

DESKTOP PC CASE / MOTHERBOARD / CPU / MEMORY

I have had this case for 15 years and it has performed extremely well.
Good looking with outer door (lockable - child/kid proof - I have the
key), quiet and efficient with rubber grommits on the cages. I only
selling it because I use my laptop more often. I was running it very
happily with Windows 10 on an SSD and it booted up super-quick in a
few seconds.

Full specs below but in summary it comes fitted with an A-bit
motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU with a top-notch Zalman fan and
4Gb of OCZ RAM with heatsinks. Not the latest and greatest but good
enough for a second PC or kids homework PC or for an older relative
who wants to get onto the internet. All you need to make this usable
is a PSU, HDD/SDD and graphics card/GPU. I found the on-board network
and sound a bit unreliable so I am including a seperate soundcard and
network card fitted.

* Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @ 3.00GHz / Socket 775 LGA
* IP35 Pro motherboard / Intel P35/G33/G31 rev. A2
* 4Gb OCZ RAM (4 x 1Gb sticks)
* Antec Sonata case in "Piano Black" with component rails, cage trays,
assorted screws and bits
* Philips DVD-RW with IDE cable (works but sometimes will not eject right away)

MEMORY

Job lot of various PC and laptop memory modules I have accumulated
over the years.

Sold as UNTESTED but I believe all work. I doubt I would keep bad
memory around, I would have recycled it.

* 2 x Virtium 256Mb SDRAM SD-168P-UB-25672 / VM374S3323 / Virtium
VM374S3323-GLS 256MB PC100 100MHz ECC Unbuffered 168-Pin DIMM Memory
Module (VM374S3323GLS)
* Samsung 512Mb DDR2-667 PC2-5300, 200p SODIMM, 1.8v / M470T6554EZ3
* 2 x Samsung 1Gb 1Rx8 PC3-10600 SODIMM / M471B2873FHS 1.5 volts
* 2 x 1Gb DDR 266 PC2100 Unbranded
* Micron 256Mb PC2100 DDR / 9704745-01-217 / mt8vddt3264ag-265ca /
256MB 184p PC2100 CL2.5 8c 32x8 DDR DIMM RFB
* Aeneon 256MB PC3200 DDR-400MHz non-ECC Unbuffered CL3 184-Pin / DDR
400 CL3 PC3200U-30331 / AED560UD00-500C88X
* 256Mb DDR-266 / 1302-04C1 / MDAB-302HA / pq1 brand
* 128Mb PCC-133 SDRAM / 053LDGH03040353 / Unbranded
* HP 256Mb DDR 333 CL2.5 / p/n 305957-041 / 256MB, 333MHz, DDR333
PC2700, 184p DIMM, 2.5v
* 2 x Samsung 1Gb 2Rx8 PC2-4200F / M395T2953CZD / DDR2 4200(533)
Fully-Buffered ECC SERVER RAM
* 2 x Kingston 512Mb 1Rx8 PC2-4200F DDR2 SDRAM 240-pin / 239-0713
/ 995285-013.a00lf 512mb 1rx8 pc2-4200f 444-11-ao
* Hynix 512Mb DDR 400Mhz CL3 PC3200U-30330 / HYMD564646B8J-D43 AA-M /
IBM 11S38L4378ZJ1YNL57D05D / HYN FRU:73p2684 / ECC SERVER RAM

OTHER STUFF

* 2 x Compaq Deskpro EN Small Form factor PC (Pentium 3, 256 or 512Mb
RAM fitted, these make very good low power 30W idle servers)
* Various capacity IDE HDDs
* Various CD/DVD RW drives
* Amstrad Sky box with remote and power cable
* Laptop DVD drives
* Thompson Broadband router with PSU
* ASUS 300W PSU / Power Supply
* Various AGP/PCI Graphics cards / Sound cards / network cards
* Various cables / fans / adaptors etc
* SCART and TV cables
* Telephone cables

Will consider swap for a bicycle in good condition or bicycle
parts/equipment or hiking gear or what-have-you (iPod?), let me know!

-- 
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[Hampshire] [JOB] Full Stack Engineer – Web Development & Other roles

[Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire]

Hello All,

My employers, Jobsite Ltd, are looking to fill several technical roles:
http://www.jobsite.co.uk/vacancies?agency_id=17872

Most are based at our Havant offices. Not all are Linux-related!

It's the best employer (and group of people) I have ever worked for -
and I've been in various IT roles for 15 years or so!

Please contact me if interested so I can advise/help/guide or answer
any questions.

Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] OggCamp 15

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hello Paul,

I was in the same situation as you and ended up not going.

I was booked at a TravelLodge a 30 minute walk from the venue (near Albert
docks) - it was ~£95 for the night (with a discount code I had). Lucky I
got the room cancellation insurance :)

The hotel staff told me parking is free there so I would have parked and
just walked to get around.

Hoping it's closer to home next year. I'm still gutted I missed the one in
Farnham a few years back because I didn't jot it in the calendar properly!

On 29 October 2015 at 15:04, Paul Tansom <p...@aptanet.com> wrote:

> ** Imran Chaudhry <ichaud...@gmail.com> [2015-10-26 08:24]:
> > Just curious - any Hampshire LUG people going to OggCamp 15 this weekend?
> >
> > I'm planning to go, I also have an idea for a talk :)
> >
> > My first ever visit to Liverpool too, I'm staying the night and coming
> back
> > Sunday. If I get time, are there any "must see" places I should check
> out?
> ** end quote [Imran Chaudhry]
>
> I've got a ticket, but work and family look to be challenging whether I can
> make it or not. The fact that it is up in the air has meant that I haven't
> booked any accomodation. It looks incredibly expensive, even when I looked
> early on, and parking looks to be a nightmare.
>
> --
>  Paul Tansom  |  Aptanet Ltd.  |  https://www.aptanet.com/  |  023 9238
> 0001
>  Vice Chair, FSB Portsmouth & SE Hampshire Branch  |
> http://www.fsb.org.uk/
>
> =
> Registered in England | Company No: 4905028 | Registered Office: Ralls
> House,
> Parklands Business Park, Forrest Road, Denmead, Waterlooville, Hants, PO7
> 6XP
>
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[Hampshire] OggCamp 15

[Imran Chaudhry]

Just curious - any Hampshire LUG people going to OggCamp 15 this weekend?

I'm planning to go, I also have an idea for a talk :)

My first ever visit to Liverpool too, I'm staying the night and coming back
Sunday. If I get time, are there any "must see" places I should check out?

Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] PC Reboots instead of shutdown

[Imran Chaudhry]

Solved... I think.

Bought a new graphics card and when I went to install it the PSU did not
turn back on. It must have been on it's last legs.

Bought a new 500W PSU, installed and... Debian shutdown normally. No
oddities.

Case closed.

Note: if you get similar oddities it might help to run "dmesg" or
"journalctl --since=yesterday" in a terminal and observe anything in bold
for clues.


On 24 October 2015 at 18:27, Imran Chaudhry <ichaud...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Some odd behaviour from my PC of late.
>
> My desktop PC starts up again about 20 seconds after I select shut-down in
> Debian Jessie.
>
> It has dual-boot Windows 10 and Debian Jessie and it does not happen with
> Windows 10.
>
> What could the issue be? I'm thinking something to do with systemd which
> is a new thing in Debian Jessie. I've not made any hardware changes
> recently. It happened out of the blue.
>
>
> --
> Key fingerprint = EF78 310C C517 9564 9ECA  82F6 68FA E621 17E1 5D16
>



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[Hampshire] PC Reboots instead of shutdown

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hello all,

Some odd behaviour from my PC of late.

My desktop PC starts up again about 20 seconds after I select shut-down in
Debian Jessie.

It has dual-boot Windows 10 and Debian Jessie and it does not happen with
Windows 10.

What could the issue be? I'm thinking something to do with systemd which is
a new thing in Debian Jessie. I've not made any hardware changes recently.
It happened out of the blue.


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Re: [Hampshire] Advice on specs for a gaming machine

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Roger,

I can't advise I'm afraid - like you I have no need for such power.

An alternative would be to buy him a PS4 or XBoxOne if those games are
available for it.

If you don't get a good response from HantsLUG then I found a good
response from asking here: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc



On 11 August 2015 at 16:56, Roger Munford
rogermunf...@parussoftware.co.uk wrote:
 My son has listed his dream machine for 1080p gaming, (maybe 1440p) in
 particular The Witcher 3, FFXIV, GTA V, WoW and Dishonored 2 on its release.

 I have no need of a machine costing more than £200 and am in no position to
 evaluate his choices. My eyes moisten at the thought of a Raspberry Pi 2.
 I was wondering if anybody with experience in these matters could advise. I
 just have a feeling that this is overkill.

 Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core
 ProcessorZalman CNPS10X Performa CPU Cooler
 Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
 G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
 Crucial M500 240GB 2.5 Solid State Drive
 Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
 Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card
 Thermaltake Versa H23 ATX Mid Tower Case
 EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply


 Thanks very much

 Roger

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[Hampshire] [Free] Desktop PC - free to a good home

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Folks,

Me again giving away another desktop PC (or Linux server) looking for
a new home.

Sempron 2600+ 1.6Ghz
512Mb RAM
40G HDD
Ethernet port
Built-in sound
CD-RW drive
USB ports

I can supply a GeForce 3D card if needed.

It has Debian Jessie installed with the MATE desktop. It runs OK but
is not super-quick so it would suit someone with light requirements -
or it will make a good cheap server.

Contact me off-list please.

I'll give priority to more needy people.

Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] [Free] Desktop PC - free to a good home

[Imran Chaudhry]

Pix: http://imgur.com/a/Ai9KS

On 31 May 2015 at 16:27, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi Folks,

 Me again giving away another desktop PC (or Linux server) looking for
 a new home.

 Sempron 2600+ 1.6Ghz
 512Mb RAM
 40G HDD
 Ethernet port
 Built-in sound
 CD-RW drive
 USB ports

 I can supply a GeForce 3D card if needed.

 It has Debian Jessie installed with the MATE desktop. It runs OK but
 is not super-quick so it would suit someone with light requirements -
 or it will make a good cheap server.

 Contact me off-list please.

 I'll give priority to more needy people.

 Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] Alternatives to TrueCrypt?

[Imran Chaudhry]

 Can't speak specifically about creating encrypted USB HDDs but if you liked
 TrueCrypt, I'd strongly urge you to look at Veracrypt.
 https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Downloads

 I tried it and it looked so like tc (which I've used for years) that I was
 actually quite surprised when it couldn't read a truecrypt container.   But
 it does seem to work well.

 Cheers
 Rob

Hey now that looks interesting Rob, thanks.

When you said codeplex I thought thats Windows only though?...but
I spy a Linux client there.

I'll give this a spin. It looks exactly like TrueCrypt - but maintained.


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Re: [Hampshire] Alternatives to TrueCrypt?

[Imran Chaudhry]

 Use LUKS. Standard Linux encryption.

 There is also directions on how to create a Whole disc encryption method here.
 I have not followed it, but it might work.
 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1112552

 The idea is to have you enter the boot up password in GRUB, and then
 GRUB decrypts the boot partition in order to find the linux kernel.
 Then the kernel loads in the normal way, with the entire disk being
 encrypted apart from the boot sectors.

 Kind Regards

 James

Thanks James, this looks good - I'll give it a go.

I remember now years ago I used the LUKS front-ends cryptmount and
cryptsetup to do exactly what I'm asking.

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[Hampshire] Alternatives to TrueCrypt?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Just wondered what software folks are using to encrypt USB HDDs?

I used TrueCrypt pretty successfully but it's now unmaintained:
http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/

I tried out eCryptfs sometime back but found it a bit of a hassle as
it meant I had to mount things twice (the USB HDD and the encrypted
partition).

What alternatives are out there which are secure, maintained and
somewhat hassle-free when it comes to removable storage?

Bonus points for GUI-based and able to be used easily with Debian stable.

Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] UK digital skills report

[Imran Chaudhry]

I understand this reference and I saw the episode Ship in a Bottle
just the other day.

This is a interesting topic, yes it will happen someday. In fact I
think in the future we will have AI's do most of the decision making
for us in life - just like in Iain M. Banks Culture novels. So not
in 10 years but maybe closer to a 1000.

I'm thinking of my own experience and with my current employer... no
way. Not even close. People under-estimate the amount of good
communication skills you need as a developer, especially if you work
in an agile (Scrum, Kanban etc) environment. It's just as important
as the technical skills. You need to interact with human beings in
other spheres and interpret what they are saying: UXers, product
managers, SEO specialists, marketing, sales people... They are not
gonna speak to you in a well-formed language unless they too become
AIs.

You need a human being with a good well-rounded head on their
shoulders to do it well - and it's going to stay that way for a long
time.



On 22 February 2015 at 16:14, Daniel Llewellyn diddle...@gmail.com wrote:


 On 22 February 2015 at 11:45, James Courtier-Dutton james.dut...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 What is missing is the AI to read and understand my spreadsheet or
 document like a developer would.
 I.e. Read a document that is not written in source code, and be able
 to understand it as well as if they were reading source code, even in
 the semantics are less strict.


 and we all know how this ends. namely with some blind engineer asking the
 computer to make a holmesian villain capable of beating an android.

 --
 Daniel Llewellyn

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[Hampshire] [Advert] Desktop PC with keyboard and mouse - FREE to a good home

[Imran Chaudhry]

Desktop PC with mouse and keyboard

pix: http://imgur.com/a/AH36u

Just done a fresh install of Debian Wheezy, runs OK in Gnome Classic
but could do with more RAM

Celeron 2.4Ghz
512Mb RAM single stick (has two slots for DDR RAM, I think mobo can
take up to 4Gb)
60Gb HDD
DVD-ROM drive

Would suit someone with simple internet use needs or it can be beefed
up a bit and used as a workstation.

Please contact me off-list! Thanks

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[Hampshire] Patch your Linux systems (Ghost vulnerability CVE-2015-0235)

[Imran Chaudhry]

Sounds like a pretty serious one, proof of concept involved an email
sent to a Exim mail server to get a remote shell.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/27/glibc_ghost_vulnerability/

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[Hampshire] [JOB] Developers, Testers, UX etc

[Imran Chaudhry]

Jobsite are hiring! All roles based near Portsmouth, UK.

http://www.jobsite.co.uk/job/developer-952323347?src=searchtmpl=dissctr=IT

http://www.jobsite.co.uk/job/automation-test-engineer-952323037?src=searchtmpl=dissctr=IT

http://www.jobsite.co.uk/job/ux-researcher-952323233?src=searchtmpl=dissctr=IT

http://www.jobsite.co.uk/job/business-systems-analyst-952323327?src=searchtmpl=dissctr=IT

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Re: [Hampshire] Arch vs Debian

[Imran Chaudhry]

Absolutely.

It's called vim.
 On 10 Oct 2014 08:58, Gordon Scott gor...@gscott.co.uk wrote:

 On Thu, 2014-10-09 at 20:31 +0100, Keith Edmunds wrote:
  I kept out of the systemd debates at the time, but once the decision was
  made, I got myself a quick intro to it from one of my tech guys. I was
  very favourably impressed. I don't want to start a war about it, but it
  isn't the demon (hehe) it's been made out to be by some.

 I think this is all down to one's personal attitude to risk in the
 context.

 If on doesn't mind if a machine breaks for a while, or indeed if the
 challenge of fixing it is what makes you tick, then you may want to go
 for the highest risk option.

 If your machine is a tool to do a job and it breaking is a significant
 concern, you'll likely go for a low risk option.

 The only person who can decide what risk is appropriate is oneself.
 Everyone else just has their opinion.

 Now editors, that's another matter ... there is only one true editor,
 but I'm not going to tell you what it is :-D

 Gordon.

  --
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  You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone
  who will never be able to repay you.
 



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Re: [Hampshire] Arch vs Debian

[Imran Chaudhry]

On 8 October 2014 10:24, Leo li...@fractal.me.uk wrote:
 I use Arch on my laptop and it takes some maintenance when I upgrade (e.g.
 merging configs, fixing package clashes), and I was wondering how it
 compared to Debian Unstable? Has anyone used both; does Debian Unstable
 require more/less/similar amount of maintenance to Arch?

 Thanks,
 Leo

Hi Leo,

Why do you want to run Debian unstable instead of Debian stable?

I've never run sid (the Debian Unstable codename) but I know people
who run it as their day-to-day OS.

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Re: [Hampshire] Arch vs Debian

[Imran Chaudhry]

On 8 October 2014 16:33, Leo li...@fractal.me.uk wrote:
 I want to run something with newer software (I currently use Xubuntu as well
 as Arch) than Debian stable.

I guess I was after what newer software you mean: if it's major apps
like web browsers then it's pretty simple to run the latest Chrome and
Firefox on Debian stable.

Anyhow, if it's a recent laptop then I totally understand why you want
the latest system software. I'll leave this thread to be answered by
someone who runs a rolling release.

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Re: [Hampshire] Skilled in automated tests?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Quite right, sorry - web applications.

On 26 September 2014 15:22, Andy Random andy.ran...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi Imran

 On Thu, 25 Sep 2014, Imran Chaudhry wrote:

 Is anyone here skilled in automated testing?

 Jobsite Ltd is hiring for a permanent role - contact me if interested!


 Automated testing is rather a large area...

 Automated testing of what? Can you narrow it down a bit?

   Andy


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[Hampshire] Skilled in automated tests?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi List,

Is anyone here skilled in automated testing?

Jobsite Ltd is hiring for a permanent role - contact me if interested!

Thanks

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Re: [Hampshire] best distro for a small business laptop

[Imran Chaudhry]

Debian Wheezy (Gnome 3) should cover your needs. I installed it on the
laptops of several normal users and they use it just fine.

Gnome 3 has some 3D stuff but it's pretty subtle and practical use of
it imho. It's lighter than people think and I would not worry too much
- the Intel 915GM graphics chipset that laptop has should cope fine.

LibreOffice installed by default

I'd go with Chrome (get the upstream .deb) rather than Firefox as
Flash and PDF reading is built in, kept updated and it's less hassle,
faster etc. I think Java applets work fine with it.

PDF reader = built-in (Evince)
Media player = I just install VLC from the repo or upstream
IMAP mail client = no idea, but it has Evolution built-in which can
also use various calender protocols

I used to maintain my neighbours PCs, he was a skilled plumber and I'm
pretty sure he would be able to use this!


On 11 September 2014 10:07, Joseph Bennie j...@lincore.com wrote:

 I had a relatives Dell Inspiron 1300 in for cleaning few days ago and it 
 reminded me that there are users out there with adequate hard ware - that 
 just need

 a understandable desktop -  without 3D fanfare and indexed searching widgets 
 (i.e. no resources sucking frills that would tax an aged/slow 2.5 5000rpm 
 hard drive / bog standard hardware)
 core business apps i.e. LibreOffice 4.3.x
 a fully functioning version of firefox with flash and java compatibility
 a PDF reader
 a good media player.
 a solid imap mail client
 a usable ical compat calendar

 also its not really enterprise class (more good enough), it doesn’t need to 
 be updated every 4 hrs and its available in 32bit version on an easy to 
 install CD rom.
 Most importantly Its aimed at an average skilled person i.e. a skilled 
 plumber, rather than a science graduate.

 after 10 years - has anyone settled on a distro(s) / distro version that tick 
 this box/ out of the box?













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Re: [Hampshire] best distro for a small business laptop

[Imran Chaudhry]

I informally compared Xubuntu and Lubuntu a while back and did not
find a significant difference between them in terms of responsiveness
and memory use. I found that Debian Wheezy with Gnome 3 to be about
the same responsiveness and unexpectedly a bit lighter in memory use.

All on same hardware.

On 25 September 2014 14:41, Lisi hants...@googlemail.com wrote:
 On Thursday 25 September 2014 14:03:58 Imran Chaudhry wrote:
 Gnome 3 has some 3D stuff but it's pretty subtle and practical use of
 it imho. It's lighter than people think and I would not worry too much
 - the Intel 915GM graphics chipset that laptop has should cope fine.

 I'd have thought that something lighter would be better.  My vote would go to
 TDE, of course, but there are others available:  E.g. Mate, LXDE, XFCE, to
 name but a few that are in the repositories.

 Lisi

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[Hampshire] OggCamp 14 Car Share?

[Imran Chaudhry]

So OggCamp is happening this year and I wondered if anyone from the
LUG is going?

It's tentative for me but I'm thinking of driving up to Oxford myself
and staying Saturday night at the Travelodge Peartree nearby. I just
wondered if anyone would want to car share with me for a bit of fuel
money? I did this a few years back with one or two of you and it was
good to have some company on the long journey!

Thanks

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Re: [Hampshire] XBMC ISO

[Imran Chaudhry]

On 29 May 2014 17:52, Rob Malpass li...@getiton.myzen.co.uk wrote:

 Hi all



 I’m looking to build / get a cheap media centre PC for under the telly.
I noticed [1] and wondered if anyone had used them and had any views…   The
trouble is most of my collection of videos is in iso format.   I have the
original DVD media for each iso but the disk needs to head toward the loft.



 So far as I can tell, none of Apple TV, Roku, PS3 (or anything that
“speaks” DLNA) can handle these type of ISOs.   I’ve just had my first play
with xbmc on a reasonably low specced Ubuntu box.   Seemed to play them
isos fine – albeit a bit of a faff.   I’ve seen these on ebay:



 [1]
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Raspberry-Pi-XBMC-Media-Centre-Mini-Keyboard-64GBclass10-complete-HDMI-WiFi-KIT-/121144886604?pt=UK_Computing_PowerSupplies_EHhash=item1c34cc454c



 I must admit £120 is a bit steep but I guess if it contains everything
and is basically plug and play – fair enough.   Just wondered if anyone had
tried it and noticed any performance issues.

Hi Rob,

Video playback is generally fine but it is the other stuff that lags as
mentioned by others. Not a big lag but enough to annoy me anyway. I think
it will annoy you too as you have an Ubuntu machine doing it ATM.

With £120 you should look for a used Acer Revo 3610 on which you can
install the OpenElec brand of XBMC very easily. This is what I did. I am
99% sure it can play iso files even over a network. Check their wiki.

Search the list for Acer Revo as I asked for XBMC hardware
recommendations a short while back.




 Cheers

 Rob


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Re: [Hampshire] Top posting

[Imran Chaudhry]

On 28 May 2014 10:34, Alan Pope a...@popey.com wrote:
 When a list has precious else to talk about (I guess Linux works for
 everyone most of the time now), and the members have been around a
 long time the flames are easier to start.

I never considered that reason for the low-traffic (that everything
mostly just works) but it's probably true!
I figured that the community is more fragmented now as there is
Facebook, Google+, Twitter and meetup.com's all around us.

On the mostly works now front, I had an interesting read through
this thread recently.
http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/26fjei/as_a_linux_user_since_only_2009_i_just_want_to/

I think all the veterans on this list deserve a pat on the back for
sticking with Linux all these years ;)

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Re: [Hampshire] Top posting

[Imran Chaudhry]

On 20 May 2014 22:41, Samuel Penn s...@glendale.org.uk wrote:

 On Tuesday 20 May 2014 13:27:50 Anton Piatek wrote:
  Gmail on mobile actively makes it more difficult to bottom post

 Really? Click the Respond inline button and it switches to
 inline quoting, and even adds a proper On X, Y wrote line
 to the start of the quoted text.

 You can then start adding text anywhere in the quoted mail.

 At least it does on my phone.

Thanks Samuel, my reasons were same as Anton but I've just responded to
this using your method.

Bear in mind that more of us use a mobile device more these days so
convenience sometimes trumps ettiqutte.



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Re: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Stuart,

I think Michael Pavling has the Revo 3600 which does not have the
optical out - there is an config change needed to get menu sounds I
think.

I ended up getting a Revo 3610 - which sounds like what you have. This
does have optical out. It was really easy to set-up with OpenElec.
Everything just worked - even my RC6 Microsoft Media Center remote
all works. Wireless Logitech keyboard just works. Standby/resume just
works.

The hardest bit was replacing the HDD, Acer really don't want you to
open these things. I had to pry it open with a screwdriver and the
help of some YouTube videos. It's quick even with a spinning rust HDD
so I don't think an SSD will gain me much.

Anyway, it's early days with it but just wanted to report that all is
well so far. The Acer Revo 36x0 seems like an ideal, HD-capable and
relatively cheap XBMC appliance like the old XBox was.

By the way, did you choose NFS because it gives better streaming
performance than Samba?


On 28 April 2014 08:14, Stuart Sears stu...@sjsears.com wrote:
 On 27/04/14 10:25, Imran Chaudhry wrote:
 Hi Michael,

 Replies inline:
 [snip]
 At home I've got a couple of XBMC machines set up, both Atom boards. One's
 an Acer Aspire Revo - it's okay, but was a little fiddly to get all the
 audio configured. The other was a Zotac Zbox (can't remember exactly which
 model though) and it was a breeze to set up (I went with XBMCbuntu rather
 than OpenElec), and it runs the TV in the living room. Pretty much on all
 the time; we never watch broadcast telly.

 Good to hear another point that the Acer Revo works fine. I did the
 research so I know about the sound fiddles but it has been solved.
 I've bookmarked some blogs/forum posts where they list the config file
 changes needed.

 FWIW I have one of these as my XBMC machine, plugged in over HDMI and
 also using the optical out to my AV amplifier.

 Audio out on either/both of these just work using the newest openelec
 build or generic xbmc on top of another distro (although I've stuck with
 openelec now, it's a single-purpose box)

 what are these supposed audio problems? I've never had any.

 [snip]
 At home I do run a separate file-server for the media (the XBMC boxes has
 little SSDs to keep them quiet), and a shared SQL server for the app
 database,

 ditto, MySQL and NFS on an HP microserver for me, streamed over 300M
 powerline adapters. Getting the external DB up and running in openelec
 requires a bit of cmdline-fu but that's not particularly difficult and
 there are entries on the XBMC wiki on how to achieve it.

 Works

 Stuart


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Re: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

[Imran Chaudhry]

I got mine from eBay. I paid ~£120 for an Acer Revo 3610 with 2G RAM
and a 320G HDD + Windows 7 license and new Logitech wireless
keyboard/touchpad. Obviously a risk buying private but check the
seller feedback carefully.

They seem to go for between £75 and £120 depending on what is bundled with it.

For a bargain try and track one which ends during the working day
rather than a Sunday afternoon.

On 12 May 2014 18:31, Ally Biggs bluechr...@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
 Hey Imran where is a good place to pick one up? For a good price

 Sent from my Windows Phone
 
 From: Imran Chaudhry
 Sent: ‎12/‎05/‎2014 06:14 PM

 To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List
 Subject: Re: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

 Hi Stuart,

 I think Michael Pavling has the Revo 3600 which does not have the
 optical out - there is an config change needed to get menu sounds I
 think.

 I ended up getting a Revo 3610 - which sounds like what you have. This
 does have optical out. It was really easy to set-up with OpenElec.
 Everything just worked - even my RC6 Microsoft Media Center remote
 all works. Wireless Logitech keyboard just works. Standby/resume just
 works.

 The hardest bit was replacing the HDD, Acer really don't want you to
 open these things. I had to pry it open with a screwdriver and the
 help of some YouTube videos. It's quick even with a spinning rust HDD
 so I don't think an SSD will gain me much.

 Anyway, it's early days with it but just wanted to report that all is
 well so far. The Acer Revo 36x0 seems like an ideal, HD-capable and
 relatively cheap XBMC appliance like the old XBox was.

 By the way, did you choose NFS because it gives better streaming
 performance than Samba?


 On 28 April 2014 08:14, Stuart Sears stu...@sjsears.com wrote:
 On 27/04/14 10:25, Imran Chaudhry wrote:
 Hi Michael,

 Replies inline:
 [snip]
 At home I've got a couple of XBMC machines set up, both Atom boards.
 One's
 an Acer Aspire Revo - it's okay, but was a little fiddly to get all the
 audio configured. The other was a Zotac Zbox (can't remember exactly
 which
 model though) and it was a breeze to set up (I went with XBMCbuntu
 rather
 than OpenElec), and it runs the TV in the living room. Pretty much on
 all
 the time; we never watch broadcast telly.

 Good to hear another point that the Acer Revo works fine. I did the
 research so I know about the sound fiddles but it has been solved.
 I've bookmarked some blogs/forum posts where they list the config file
 changes needed.

 FWIW I have one of these as my XBMC machine, plugged in over HDMI and
 also using the optical out to my AV amplifier.

 Audio out on either/both of these just work using the newest openelec
 build or generic xbmc on top of another distro (although I've stuck with
 openelec now, it's a single-purpose box)

 what are these supposed audio problems? I've never had any.

 [snip]
 At home I do run a separate file-server for the media (the XBMC boxes
 has
 little SSDs to keep them quiet), and a shared SQL server for the app
 database,

 ditto, MySQL and NFS on an HP microserver for me, streamed over 300M
 powerline adapters. Getting the external DB up and running in openelec
 requires a bit of cmdline-fu but that's not particularly difficult and
 there are entries on the XBMC wiki on how to achieve it.

 Works

 Stuart


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Re: [Hampshire] Disk copy/duplication for upgrade.

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Andy,

If you have a desktop PC with at least two SATA connections then I'd do this:

0. Burn a copy of SysRescueCD or use any Live CD Linux distro (CD or USB fine)
1. Attach old laptop HDD and new laptop HDD to desktop PC motherboard
2. Boot with SysRescueCD or Live distro
3. use cfdisk to double-check which HDD is which (eg. confirm sizes by
inspecting cfdisk /dev/sda)
4. Assuming old HDD is /dev/sda, then dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=4M
5. Go make a tea /coffee as this can take hours

The commands should be run as root. It was copy everything at block
level so GRUB, MBR etc is handled.

If your new HDD is an SDD I think that the dd method is not optimal
for some reason, but don't quote me on that. I've done this several
times for laptops and desktop PCs.


On 5 May 2014 15:27, Andy Random andy.ran...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi,

 Any suggestions on the best/current tools for duplicating a HD?

 I have a Win7 laptop that I want to upgrade the disk in it so I can dual
 boot it with Linux.

 I have a replacement disk, but want to duplicate the exiting one onto the
 new drive.

 I've used Clonezilla before to do this kind of thing on a desktop where I
 can have both drives connected at once, but I'm not sure the best way to do
 this on a laptop where only one disk can be connected at a time.

 Any suggestions?

   Andy

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Re: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hmm, I did a bit of research on that and it seems like FastEtherNet
will cope fine:
http://superuser.com/questions/434532/what-data-transfer-rates-are-needed-or-streaming-hd-1080p-or-720p-video-or-stan

The WD media player I had was fed network via a powerline adapter and
seemed to stream HD content just fine after a small delay. Same for my
Humax FreeView box that does BBC iPlayer HD.

However I think when we move to a 4k video world then I might be in trouble :)


On 27 April 2014 10:35, Michael Pavling pavl...@gmail.com wrote:
 If you do go the route of having a central media server, gigabit ethernet
 has proved to be essential due to increasing file sizes of HD content :-/



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Re: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Michael,

Replies inline:

On 26 April 2014 09:19, Michael Pavling pavl...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 22 April 2014 20:09, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm after decent hardware to run XBMC on, I've already tried
 OpenElec/Raspberry Pi but was not satisfied with it. I've bought a WD
 Live Media Player which I am similarly not 100% happy with.


 I've run it on a Pi, and it just wasn't quite fast enough to give a nice
 response on menu transitions for everyday use (though I'm happy to take a Pi
 and hard-drive on holiday with me rather than a DVD player and stack of
 discs).

Same and same - the redeeming feature of the RPi is that as a media
center I could whack in a 32Gb microsd card and have a portable movie
jukebox when I visited friends/family. It's just that transferring
that media is a big pain. scp is very slow for some reason so I had to
manually remove that card and use it in a SD card adapter.


 At home I've got a couple of XBMC machines set up, both Atom boards. One's
 an Acer Aspire Revo - it's okay, but was a little fiddly to get all the
 audio configured. The other was a Zotac Zbox (can't remember exactly which
 model though) and it was a breeze to set up (I went with XBMCbuntu rather
 than OpenElec), and it runs the TV in the living room. Pretty much on all
 the time; we never watch broadcast telly.

Good to hear another point that the Acer Revo works fine. I did the
research so I know about the sound fiddles but it has been solved.
I've bookmarked some blogs/forum posts where they list the config file
changes needed.

 I've got a remote (full size) keyboard to manage it if I need to (or SSH for
 fiddly stuff!), but most of the time I just use the XBMC remote control app
 on my Android phone or the house iPad.

I'll definitely try the official XBMC android app. In my view it'll be
everyone in the house and guests using it potentially and so remote is
a must (easier and more obvious). I have 3 spare remotes from
various projects - I have earmarked the Microsoft Media Center remote
for this one.


 At home I do run a separate file-server for the media (the XBMC boxes has
 little SSDs to keep them quiet), and a shared SQL server for the app
 database, but I set one up for a friend that just ran on a dedicated Zbox
 with a 3GB usb drive and he has no complaints.

Sounds good, and a small SSD will be the way to go for me. I don't
like storing media locally if I can help it. I repurposed the RPi into
a NAS which seems to be working just fine.

Interesting you mention the Zotac Zbox. I asked some former Acer Revo
owners on what hardware they would use these days, the reply was:
Lenovo IdeaCentre A190, the new Asus Vivo VM40B or a Zotac Zbox.

Thanks

Sidenote: I've found Amazon Answers as a good resource for asking
questions about products you're interesting in buying. I got multiple
good responses within a few days.

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Re: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for that - sounds like they are doing a Raspberry Pi with
their device. It's interesting learning about new hardware projects
like this.

That being said I won't be a guinea pig for this and OpenElec :) I'm
really sensitive to stupid little things not working like menu
sounds/clicks which was missing from the Raspberry Pi build. I'd
rather have something thats been out a few years and that people have
tried OpenElec on.

After some research I've decided to go for an Acer Revo 3600 which
according to users on the OpenElec forums runs pretty well with most
of the stuff I care about working. It is an Ion-based board which has
very good support.

I'll give a follow up once I have it all configured.

Thanks


On 23 April 2014 09:59, Peter Collins hampshire@mail-box.me.uk wrote:
 Hi Imran


 On 22 April 2014 20:09, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:


 I'm after decent hardware to run XBMC on, I've already tried
 OpenElec/Raspberry Pi but was not satisfied with it. I've bought a WD
 Live Media Player which I am similarly not 100% happy with.

 My requirements are:

 * must have power on/off via remote
 * must be small footprint
 * menu click sounds
 * quick response with no lag between button press and on-screen menu
 * able to play hi-def including 1080p via HDMI
 * remote that is easy to configure
 * at least one USB port
 * optical digital audio out nice but not essential


 I have also been looking for such a device which would fit nicely in the
 family lounge but wont cost a fortune and have just come across this device:

 http://cubox-i.com/table/

 According to the manufacturer the CuBox-i4Pro is ideal and comes with the IR
 transmitter and receiver. It also includes Optical S/PDIFAudio Out

 If you plunge in and try one I would be interested to hear your feedback.

 Rgds

 Peter.
 @tripleclones


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Re: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Anton, which remote app do you recommend? I did a quick search on
Google Play and see a few of them.

Thank

On 23 April 2014 10:16, Anton Piatek an...@piatek.co.uk wrote:
 Fwiw I use an Intel atom ion board with xbmc and the xbmc remote app on my
 phone to control it

 Anton
 --
 Anton Piatek
 http://www.strangeparty.com

 No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a
 significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

 On 23 Apr 2014 10:00, Peter Collins hampshire@mail-box.me.uk wrote:

 Hi Imran


 On 22 April 2014 20:09, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:


 I'm after decent hardware to run XBMC on, I've already tried
 OpenElec/Raspberry Pi but was not satisfied with it. I've bought a WD
 Live Media Player which I am similarly not 100% happy with.

 My requirements are:

 * must have power on/off via remote
 * must be small footprint
 * menu click sounds
 * quick response with no lag between button press and on-screen menu
 * able to play hi-def including 1080p via HDMI
 * remote that is easy to configure
 * at least one USB port
 * optical digital audio out nice but not essential


 I have also been looking for such a device which would fit nicely in the
 family lounge but wont cost a fortune and have just come across this device:

 http://cubox-i.com/table/

 According to the manufacturer the CuBox-i4Pro is ideal and comes with the
 IR transmitter and receiver. It also includes Optical S/PDIFAudio Out

 If you plunge in and try one I would be interested to hear your feedback.

 Rgds

 Peter.
 @tripleclones


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[Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi All,

I'm putting my Xbox systems slowly out to pasture as we move to a hi-def world.

I'm after decent hardware to run XBMC on, I've already tried
OpenElec/Raspberry Pi but was not satisfied with it. I've bought a WD
Live Media Player which I am similarly not 100% happy with.

My requirements are:

* must have power on/off via remote
* must be small footprint
* menu click sounds
* quick response with no lag between button press and on-screen menu
* able to play hi-def including 1080p via HDMI
* remote that is easy to configure
* at least one USB port
* optical digital audio out nice but not essential

Do any of you run XBMC on such hardware?

I've seen a bewildering array of low-cost devices on eBay based on
Android but there seem to be umpteen million variations so it looks
like a minefield to me.

Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Thanks Ally, I'll consider that but I'd prefer something ready made even if
I had to mod/jailbreak it.

Another requirement:
* fast startup and shutdown
On 22 Apr 2014 20:23, Ally Biggs bluechr...@hotmail.co.uk wrote:

  Build a mini ITX rig put in a i3 doesn't have to be the latest and
 greatest revision wise. Get yourself 4 gig of DDR_3 and a mid range
 graphics card. That way if you get bored of XBMC you can reuse it as a
 server you can get a few decent mini ITX cases that can house a few 2.5
 drives. I like the Bit Fenix ones myself. You can get a remote off eBay for
 peanuts ;)

 Sent from my Windows Phone
  --
 From: Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com
 Sent: ‎22/‎04/‎2014 08:11 PM
 To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk
 Subject: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

  Hi All,

 I'm putting my Xbox systems slowly out to pasture as we move to a hi-def
 world.

 I'm after decent hardware to run XBMC on, I've already tried
 OpenElec/Raspberry Pi but was not satisfied with it. I've bought a WD
 Live Media Player which I am similarly not 100% happy with.

 My requirements are:

 * must have power on/off via remote
 * must be small footprint
 * menu click sounds
 * quick response with no lag between button press and on-screen menu
 * able to play hi-def including 1080p via HDMI
 * remote that is easy to configure
 * at least one USB port
 * optical digital audio out nice but not essential

 Do any of you run XBMC on such hardware?

 I've seen a bewildering array of low-cost devices on eBay based on
 Android but there seem to be umpteen million variations so it looks
 like a minefield to me.

 Thanks!

 --
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Re: [Hampshire] NASs

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Chris,

I like budget/DIY solutions so I'd recommend either:

* FreeNAS http://www.freenas.org/
* Run Debian etc on low-power/cheap PC/SheevaPlug/Raspberry PI - and
attach large cheap multi-Tb USB HDDs

Paid for, I hear QNAP or Drobo are good. Drobo tends to be more
high-end I think.

Depending on what you're doing - look at Dropbox also.

On 30 January 2014 09:33, DAWE C the-labyri...@ntlworld.com wrote:
 I would like a NAS at home, on which I can store lots of files and have them
 accessible from both Limux and Widnows.  (I am trying to avoid the mistake I
 made w few years ago, when I got a network disc which needed a driver to
 access, so was only available from certain versions of Widnows!).

 Any recommendations from people?

 Chris

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Re: [Hampshire] Terminal screen saver

[Imran Chaudhry]

+1 for serial console.

I found this useful when I had my NSLU2/Slug and SheevaPlug and had to
disagnose bootloader issues etc. I used a tool called minicom to make
the connection.

You might also want to enable some of the boot logs which I think are
disabled by default in Debian.

You can buy PCI serial port cards if your hardware has none.


On 2 January 2014 09:40, Paul Freeman p...@noc4.net wrote:

 Happy New Year all!

 Leo, I believe there is a linux kernel parameter which will do what you
 require:

 consoleblank=   [KNL] The console blank (screen saver) timeout in
 seconds. Defaults to 10*60 = 10mins. A value of 0
 disables the blank timer. [1]


 [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt

 there is always the option of using the serial console to catch any messages
 if your client  server machines have serial available!



 On 2014-01-01 22:55, Leo wrote:

 Happy New Year one and all!

 The ssh connection to my server died earlier so I decided to plug a
 monitor in to see if anything showed up. However the terminal had
 entered a screen saver mode so there was nothing displayed. Does
 anyone know how to disable this as googling only seems to throw up
 stuff related to X windows.

 Also, what do you do when you can't ssh in to a headless box? Is it
 just a case of hard reboot and check the logs?

 Regards,
 Leo



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Re: [Hampshire] NAS permissions

[Imran Chaudhry]

Might be reaching here but did you pass a password to Gnome Connect
to Server or was it a anonymous browse login?

If you supply a password to the sudo mount –t smbfs options does it work then?

On 1 January 2014 11:54, Rob Malpass li...@getiton.myzen.co.uk wrote:
 Hi all



 Happy New Year – my first post for a while.



 I’m having a bit of trouble setting permissions properly to mount a NAS
 device as read write for a given user.   It’s a brand new QNAP TS-412 and
 seems to be a little Linux box with a nice graphical UI.   Surprise,
 surprise, connect via Windows and I can move, read and write with no user or
 permssions problems.



 If I then do:



 sudo mount –t smbfs //sharename /mnt/abcd –o user=fred



 then I can get read access to the mount point – but neither



 sudo uname –a  test

 or

 uname –a  test



 in /mnt/abcd produce anything other than permission denied.



 I’ve never been too hot on umask and permissions but a quick ls –l /mnt
 gives:



 drwxr-xr-x  1 root root0 Dec 22 14:51 abcd



 and even



 chmod a+w /mnt/abcd doesn’t make a difference.   It must be something easy –
 because if I connect to it via gnome “Connect to Server” – no worries – full
 rw access.



 Can anyone help please? – this is driving me nuts.



 Cheers

 Rob


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[Hampshire] Android app to stream video content over Samba/CIFS?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi All,

Hope this is not too off-topic (it does involve Android and a Linux
server so...).

Can anyone recommend an app that will allow me to watch a video file
using VLC on my Android phone, where the video file is on my Samba LAN
server?

I'd tried a few apps and while they allow me to browse my Samba share,
once I select a file it proceeds to download the video to my phone. Or
it might be that I need to set-up a file association or something to
VLC first?

Thank

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Re: [Hampshire] Android app to stream video content over Samba/CIFS?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Yep, I use several Xbox XBMCs on my LAN to stream video content over
Samba. I want to do the same on my Android phone.

On 19 December 2013 18:23, Michael Daffin james1...@gmail.com wrote:
 No, samba can stream media raw, it is normally the client not supporting it
 that is the issue.

 On 19 Dec 2013 17:51, Joseph Bennie j...@lincore.com wrote:



 On 19 Dec 2013, at 17:41, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:

  Hi All,
 
  Hope this is not too off-topic (it does involve Android and a Linux
  server so...).
 
  Can anyone recommend an app that will allow me to watch a video file
  using VLC on my Android phone, where the video file is on my Samba LAN
  server?

 I think you need firefly  (or its current fork) running on your linux box,
 its a streaming media server biased on the airplay protocols.

 you can find out more on wikipedia under Firefly_Media_Server

 
  I'd tried a few apps and while they allow me to browse my Samba share,
  once I select a file it proceeds to download the video to my phone. Or
  it might be that I need to set-up a file association or something to
  VLC first?
 
  Thank
 
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Re: [Hampshire] Android app to stream video content over Samba/CIFS?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Brilliant, thanks very much Jan - ES File Explorer was just the thing
I was looking for and just works.

On 19 December 2013 19:04, Jan Henkins j...@henkins.za.net wrote:
 Hello,

 I just checked on my Android phone, when I browse a Samba share with ES File 
 Explorer, the movie file definitely streams whether I view it with VLC or any 
 other viewer I have tried.

 Regards,
 Jan Henkins

 Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:

Yep, I use several Xbox XBMCs on my LAN to stream video content over
Samba. I want to do the same on my Android phone.

On 19 December 2013 18:23, Michael Daffin james1...@gmail.com wrote:
 No, samba can stream media raw, it is normally the client not supporting it
 that is the issue.

 On 19 Dec 2013 17:51, Joseph Bennie j...@lincore.com wrote:



 On 19 Dec 2013, at 17:41, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:

  Hi All,
 
  Hope this is not too off-topic (it does involve Android and a Linux
  server so...).
 
  Can anyone recommend an app that will allow me to watch a video file
  using VLC on my Android phone, where the video file is on my Samba LAN
  server?

 I think you need firefly  (or its current fork) running on your linux box,
 its a streaming media server biased on the airplay protocols.

 you can find out more on wikipedia under Firefly_Media_Server

 
  I'd tried a few apps and while they allow me to browse my Samba share,
  once I select a file it proceeds to download the video to my phone. Or
  it might be that I need to set-up a file association or something to
  VLC first?
 
  Thank
 
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[Hampshire] Currently unreadable (pending) sectors

[Imran Chaudhry]

I've been getting these mails once daily for the last week - is my USB
HDD on the way out? I have not seen any difference from a user point
of view.

It is a WD Element 1TB model, can't be more than 2 years old I think.
It is also a media server HDD and is on all the time, spinning up and
down when needed. The host is Debian 7.2

===
This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:

   host name: foo
  DNS domain: bar.net
  NIS domain: (none)

The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon:

Device: /dev/sdc [SAT], 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors


For details see host's SYSLOG.

You can also use the smartctl utility for further investigation.
The original email about this issue was sent at Wed Nov  6 09:53:32 2013 GMT
Another email message will be sent in 24 hours if the problem persists.
===

I don't see any errors logged though:

# smartctl -i /dev/sdc
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-linux-3.2.0-4-686-pae] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Caviar Green
Device Model: WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0
Serial Number:WD-WCAV5N483757
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2057ae091
Firmware Version: 01.00A01
User Capacity:1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Size:  512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:Fri Nov 15 18:08:31 2013 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

# smartctl -l error /dev/sdc
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-linux-3.2.0-4-686-pae] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

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[Hampshire] mp3 players and playlist sync with MTP - anyone got this working?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi,

Has anyone got MTP mode working with their mp3 players under Linux?

I'm trying to sync a playlist stored in Clementine [0] with my Sansa
Clip+ under Debian Wheezy. And failing miserably.

I've already asked on the Clementine support group about this [1] but
no response yet.

I am new to MTP under Linux and was curious if anyone has found
success with it. Sync with the Clip+ works as expected if I use
Windows Media Player 11.

In theory it should all work, the software I'm using supports it. I
feel I'm missing some libraries or some such.

Thanks!

[0] http://www.clementine-player.org/
[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/clementine-player/tpNUx9JXWD4

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[Hampshire] Anyone using their Raspberry Pi as a carputer?

[Imran Chaudhry]

So I got given a Raspberry Pi at that XBMC Fest thing a few weeks back
(they were giving them out free, I got one with a ton of extra
accessories).

I have tried XBMC and Debian on it and it does a fair job of both,
however I already have those covered with other devices.

I want to explore using the Raspberry Pi as something in the car, a
carputer. I am envisioning attaching a smallish LCD screen+speakers
where it can play movies, take a USB key to play music, display Google
Maps, show pictures etc. Has anyone done this with their Pi?

Thanks

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Re: [Hampshire] Recommendations sought for system upgrade

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Peter,

It all depends on your use-case and budget. If it was me, I would do
one of two things:

a) buy just a new Linux-friendly base unit from somewhere that will
supply without Windows. Somewhere like Novatech can do this for £200
I think.

or (what I do)

b) buy a quality case and just upgrade the motherboard (and other
components) every 5 years or so. I've done this for the last 15 years
or so with an Antec Sonata ATX case.

The Debian version you're using has not been maintained in a while but
I would guess you were pretty happy using it anyway.

As you have limited internet access I would advise you to get hold of
the Debian DVD set for your new PC. If you cannot download it from
anywhere then I'll offer to burn them for you and mail them out.

Yes, you could run both harddrives side by side in your new system
by mounting the old drive in the new Debian and copying your data
across. However considering the vintage of your current PC it might be
an IDE HDD in which case you may not be able to connect it to the new
one. In that case it might be best to copy your existing data via a
USB HDD.

Old software + new hardware normally works OK. Old hardware and new
software is in my experience where you get problems (would the latest
browers, YouTube and iPlayer work efficiently on that older PC?). You
should be fine here if you upgrade but I would recommend you upgrade
Debian and then re-install whatever you were using to their latest
versions.




On 12 August 2013 18:01, Peter Alefounder p_alefoun...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

 A few days ago, my monitor power supply failed (I got a new one from
 Maplin, so no problem with that, now). Electrolytic capacitors in
 the old one were bulging a bit on top. As my computer is the same
 age (I assembled it in 2002) I thought I had better examine that as
 well. One capacitor on the main board looks a bit dodgy to me.

 So, I am thinking of upgrading my system. I would certainly want a
 new main board, and I understand that means a new processor as well.
 The existing system is an MSI K7T266 with an AMD Athlon 1800+ CPU.

 I see no need to replace existing peripherals - monitor, mouse,
 keyboard, scanner.

 The question is, can I re-use other, internal, bits? I would
 certainly want to retain the existing zip drive, but the floppy
 drive (which I have not used in years) is not important. The
 graphics board is a nVidia MSI G4MV460 and I have two 500KB memory
 cards. Is it worthwhile retaining those?

 Should I instead be thinking of a completely new computer? If so, is
 buying one with Linux already installed a good option? I do not have
 my own internet connection, so would want the system on CD or DVD.
 Software might recognise older hardware, but I suspect old software
 might not be so good with new hardware (at the moment, I have Debian
 4.01r). I presume I could install my existing hard drive alongside
 the new one, copy user files to the latter and remove the old system
 from the old drive, retaining that to use as a back-up.

 Any recommendations, opinions or warnings as to what to avoid are
 welcome.

 Peter Alefounder.

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[Hampshire] XBMC Meet Up Thingy (#XBMCHUB FEST)

[Imran Chaudhry]

Just thought folks here might be interested - and it's happening in
Southampton of all places:

http://www.xbmchub.com/forums/announcements/9937-xbmchub-fest-24th-august-poll.html

Side note: I know people like to use XBMC on the RPi, Ouya and all
manner of devices these days but I'm still rocking with the original
Xbox and upgraded all of mine this weekend to the latest stable
release: http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/2013/07/xbmc4xbox-3-3-released/

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Re: [Hampshire] Hants LUG membership

[Imran Chaudhry]

Farewell John, I could always count on you to back me up whenever I had a
whinge about Gnome 2 vs. Unity/Gnome3 etc.

Hopefully this is just a symlink to /etc/cron.yearly rather than pipe to
/dev/nulland we'll still hear from you on occasion.

--
Sent from phone. Please excuse typos and brevity.
On Jun 12, 2013 4:02 PM, john lewis zen57...@zen.co.uk wrote:

 I have reluctantly decided to cease memebrship of HantsLUG. It is
 unlikely I will be able to visit any meeting in the future and I don't
 contribute much to the mailing list either these days.

 I have enjoyed being a member and would like to say a big thank you for
 all the help I have had from too many people to be able to list over
 the years.

 I shall of course continue to be a user of Debian until such time as I
 disappear into a personal /dev/nul.

 --
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 Debian  the GeneWeb genealogical data server

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Re: [Hampshire] Admin: May Meeting

[Imran Chaudhry]

On 26 April 2013 21:33, Tim Brocklehurst t...@engineering.selfip.org wrote:
 On Friday 19 Apr 2013 22:10:20 Tim Brocklehurst wrote:
 Our next meeting is at Southampton University on 4th May, starting at 1pm;
 And we've got a few talks planned:

 This week, the Debian team annouced the release date for Wheezy. Excitingly,
 it's the weekend of the 4th/5th! Any ideas for how we can mark this momentous
 occasion?

Sadly I cannot make the meeting otherwise I'd join in the celebrations
for Wheezy.

I'd be curious to know how many of us would be sticking with Gnome 3
in the upgrade or keeping it Gnome 2-style with something like MATE.

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Re: [Hampshire] Tmux - the terminal multiplexer

[Imran Chaudhry]

Yep, tmux is indeed very useful. Especially for the busy sysadmin.

Thought I'd share my tmux.conf, theres some comments about mouse
control hiccups I've encountered, maybe it's worth upgrading to 1.8
then?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7890536/tmux.conf


On 15 April 2013 10:09, Benjie Gillam ben...@jemjie.com wrote:
 Does anyone here use tmux (as opposed to screen) for terminal multiplexing? 
 I've been using it for a few months and it's awesome - especially v1.8 which 
 was released just a couple of weeks back. I no longer use tabs/multiple 
 terminals - everything on my system goes through one single terminal window 
 via tmux sessions, windows and panes; even when I'm working locally only.

 I'm aware that screen can do some things that tmux can't - I'd love to hear 
 from anyone who uses these screen features so I can learn what I'm missing 
 out on!

 If anyone would be interested in hearing about how I use tmux then I'd be 
 happy to write something up?

 Cheers,

 Benjie.
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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Android tablet for children?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Superb reply. Many thanks for that Popey - and others.

Sadly iPad is out the budget. I considered an iPod Touch 4th Gen
(used, ~£99 with warranty) but the small screen put us off.

Know what you mean about the lack of Android support - I wanted an
earphone+mic for my Android phone recently and noticed there was
probably 80%/20% split in the supermarket for iPhone/Pod/Pad devices
versus Android. Erm, don't we hear that Android is outselling iPhone?

Yeah, lack of hardware keys and volume has been highlighted in these
things. In the end though I plumped for the Nabi 2. It's approx the
same power as the Nexus 7 and the build quality seems good. I figured
that as time goes on I can root it and turn it into a more
sophisticated device.

Thanks again for the input!


On 27 March 2013 23:09, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote:
 On 27/03/13 17:58, Imran Chaudhry wrote:

 There's a number of geek dads among us so does anyone have
 recommendations for an Android tablet for kids?


 Based on my own experience I would not recommend any Android tablets for
 kids^Wanyone. That said I have a Nexus 7 which has multiple user profiles
 and is thus used by all four of us. Clare uses it now and then (if it's
 within reach and no other computers are) for email, Facebook  web. I use it
 now and then for Netflix, web, email and the odd game.

 The kids use it for playing games, my eldest also uses it for emailing
 friends and browsing Amazon.


 I have heard the cheaper tablets have oddities such as wifi being
 impaired by a metal back cover.


 Quality is a concern. Some of the cheapo ones are real stinkers in terms of
 reliability, build, battery life, touch sensitivity and software upgrades.

 One Android specific frustration my kids (and I) have had is the soft
 buttons. It's incredibly easy to accidentally close an app, switch apps,
 back out of an app or bring up Google Now when you're in the middle of an
 intense game of some kind. This is especially apparent with young kids who
 haven't mastered finger control as much, but I've done it too mid game and
 it made me want to bury the tablet in the garden, dig it up, shoot it, burn
 it, chop it up and burn it again.


 I was going to go for a 2nd hand Nubi 2 [0] which although
 Android-based has a walled garden of apps to filter out the bad
 stuff.


 You can achieve a similar thing by installing apps for them and not giving
 them access to the play store at all. Or, you know, buy an iPad.


 I am also considering a Nexus 7 which with protective covers
 can be made more kid-friendly, my concern though is that Play store is
 more wild making it easier for the little 'uns to make in-app
 purchases and be exposed to dodgy ads.


 They can't do in app purchases if you don't put a credit card on their
 account, or give them credit in Google Play vouchers. They can of course
 install free stuff which may bombard them with adverts if you link a Google
 account to their Nexus 7 login (which you have to if you want them to have
 any apps at all).

 Having watched my two (aged 6 and 9) use the Nexus 7 I've been pretty
 appalled at nagging popups that many apps in the Google Play store use to
 get you to install other stuff. I've logged in as them on it and see a
 plethora of additional crappy apps which were 'recommended' by the apps they
 already had. There are some awful adverts too which are made to look like
 Facebook like pages or system dialogs. It's like browsing Geocities in
 Internet Explorer with no advert blocking from 10 years ago.

 Conversely I also have an iPhone and an iPad and have _no_ problem with them
 play with those whatsoever as they just don't have the same kind of nagging
 crappy apps, or if they do, we haven't found them. They also don't have the
 accidental swipe issues that Android has.

 There are also minimal accessories for Android tablets, even the officially
 blessed by Google Nexus branded ones. It's 5 months since the Nexus 10
 came out and there's still no official cover for it. I visited a phone shop
 last week and the Nexus 4 had exactly one cover. There's more choice for the
 Nexus 7, and I've got the official rubbery Asus one which is okay, but
 nowhere near as nice as the original iPad cover from ~4 years ago but cost
 the same!

 Get an iPad :)

 Cheers,
 --
 Alan Pope
 Engineering Manager

 Canonical - Product Strategy
 +44 (0) 7973 620 164
 alan.p...@canonical.com
 http://ubuntu.com/


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[Hampshire] [OT] Android tablet for children?

[Imran Chaudhry]

There's a number of geek dads among us so does anyone have
recommendations for an Android tablet for kids?

I have heard the cheaper tablets have oddities such as wifi being
impaired by a metal back cover.

I was going to go for a 2nd hand Nubi 2 [0] which although
Android-based has a walled garden of apps to filter out the bad
stuff. I am also considering a Nexus 7 which with protective covers
can be made more kid-friendly, my concern though is that Play store is
more wild making it easier for the little 'uns to make in-app
purchases and be exposed to dodgy ads.

Thanks

[0] http://www.nabitablet.com/

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Re: [Hampshire] HP Ubuntu All-in-one

[Imran Chaudhry]

Interesting and I hope it sells well to encourage other vendors to
support Ubuntu. It can only be a good thing for Linux as a whole. If
it is successful it will prove their is a market.

I think it's a landmark for the Ubuntu brand - to convince a major
hardware vendor to dedicate resources to this venture.

It's also a step towards solving bug #1:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

The non-techies I know mainly buy on brand and price, so I think this
has a shot. As some others have stated though, I perceive desktops as
getting less popular.


On 5 March 2013 20:16, Richard Bensley richardbens...@gmail.com wrote:
 HP have gone and released an all-in-one desktop, with Ubuntu 12.10!
 http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/03/hp-launch-ubuntu-all-in-one-pc-for-349


 It's £349 and available here:

 http://h20386.www2.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=ECC_BUNDLE_3836543opt=sel=PCDT

 Rich

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Re: [Hampshire] Getting someone elses mail on GMail

[Imran Chaudhry]

I also realized there is probably nothing Google can do. I will start
doing something like select message  filter these  from: domain 
send to bin

There is a chance this will be too strict but I don't think I want to
do business with a company that cannot verify email address ownership
properly. Most are from US/Canada anyhow :-)

A surprising number of the emails do not have how to unsubscribe
footers/links, maybe the laws over that side of the pond are more lax?


On 4 March 2013 17:36, James Courtier-Dutton james.dut...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 4 March 2013 17:25, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:
 As subject, I have been getting someones else's email on my Gmail
 address for some years now. I put this down not only to PEBKAC but
 also to GMail ignoring the . in email addresses.

 I have managed to curtail a lot of these after recently getting in
 touch with the car dealer who was sending me emails about my brand
 new BMW. He managed to get in touch with the miscreant - who seems to
 be another ichaudhry in Canada. I think it also helped that I
 mentioned the sensitive mails from Chase Manhattan bank, new baby
 advice newsletters, medical conferences (the other ichaudhry seems to
 be some hotshot surgeon) and suchlike I was getting on his behalf.

 Honestly, here in 2013 you would think websites and businesses had
 figured out how to verify ownership of email addresses but not so.

 However the final straw is that I'm now getting his pizza delivery
 orders (also from Canada) and I thought it's now time to do something
 about it.

 Has anyone else been in this situation and what did they do to counter
 it? I'm kind of hesitant to contact Google as I perceive no conduit
 for regular users to complain unless you're a paying customer (eg.
 Google Apps for Business).


 Same thing happens to everyone at some time.
 I keep getting invited to some social group meetings at some
 university in the USA.
 They simply mistype the email address and it gets to you instead.
 Nothing you can do about it, except try to contact the person and ask
 them to stop making mistakes in future.
 I just put them in the junk folder and move on.

 Kind Regards

 James

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[Hampshire] Getting someone elses mail on GMail

[Imran Chaudhry]

As subject, I have been getting someones else's email on my Gmail
address for some years now. I put this down not only to PEBKAC but
also to GMail ignoring the . in email addresses.

I have managed to curtail a lot of these after recently getting in
touch with the car dealer who was sending me emails about my brand
new BMW. He managed to get in touch with the miscreant - who seems to
be another ichaudhry in Canada. I think it also helped that I
mentioned the sensitive mails from Chase Manhattan bank, new baby
advice newsletters, medical conferences (the other ichaudhry seems to
be some hotshot surgeon) and suchlike I was getting on his behalf.

Honestly, here in 2013 you would think websites and businesses had
figured out how to verify ownership of email addresses but not so.

However the final straw is that I'm now getting his pizza delivery
orders (also from Canada) and I thought it's now time to do something
about it.

Has anyone else been in this situation and what did they do to counter
it? I'm kind of hesitant to contact Google as I perceive no conduit
for regular users to complain unless you're a paying customer (eg.
Google Apps for Business).

Thanks

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Re: [Hampshire] Getting 3D Acceleration/Compiz working with Debian Squeeze VirtualBox guest

[Imran Chaudhry]

It was loaded and was still slow. On resuming from saved state it was
actually non-responsive, not sure why.

I then installed Fedora 18 as a guest and with 3D acceleration
working, guest additions installed, it was still a bit slow. That was
using Gnome Shell/Gnome 3.

I gave up on getting Debian Squeeze working with Compiz under
VirtualBox. I tried lots of things (recompiled guest additions,
upgraded xserver from squeeze-backports, adding a missing symlink that
enabled the correct driver to be loaded etc).

I got to the Monty Python-esque point of using Google Translate on a
Russian forum that seemed to have the exact same situation as me. No
luck. On an Arch Linux forum thread there is mention of a known bug
with VirtualBox v4.2.6 and some users are running a patched xserver to
overcome it but I kinda ran outta steam for this problem.

It's forced me to look into Bluetile for tiling capabilities and that
might be a good thing but I miss the bling of Compiz.

I documented everything I tried so if anyone is interested I can pass
my notes over.

Thanks

On 9 February 2013 09:45, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote:
 On 08/02/13 21:55, Imran Chaudhry wrote:

 Thanks Popey. I am using the upstream VBox and upstream guest
 additions with this.

 Today I tried Ubuntu 12.10 with the same Windows host and 3D
 acceleration appears to work (although very slowly). My quick test was
 to click the desktop switcher a few times which is 3D animated.


 lsmod | grep vboxvideo

 Is the kernel module loaded? If not it will fall back to LLVM and be slow.


 Cheers,
 --
 Alan Pope
 Engineering Manager

 Canonical - Product Strategy
 +44 (0) 7973 620 164
 alan.p...@canonical.com
 http://ubuntu.com/

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Re: [Hampshire] SSD Laptop HDD as drop-in replacement?

[Imran Chaudhry]

On 11 February 2013 18:51, Daniel Llewellyn diddle...@gmail.com wrote:
 they were both OCZ Petrol, 64GB (working), and 128GB (dead)


Interesting. I have only ever owned one SSD which was a couple of
years back: an OCZ Petrol 40G  (but used from eBay). It seems to work
OK for a few weeks and then suddenly died. From the comments here they
seem to be the Maxtor of the SSD arena.

If I ever buy another you can be sure it will have a valid warranty!

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Re: [Hampshire] SSD Laptop HDD as drop-in replacement?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Tony, hijacking my own thread a little but you mentioned Netbooks...

What do you run on it and does it do it well?

I am toying with the idea of a used Netbook as lightweight, space-server
alternative to my Dell Inspiron. Something like an Acer Aspire One series
D260 or D270 (both have well supported hardware afaict). My concerns are
that it will not run even Gnome 2 well and I'll have to go with something
different like CrunchBang.

On 10 February 2013 14:19, Tony Wood tonywoo...@ntlworld.com wrote:
 They usually come with a spacer/adapter.
 Works fine in my netbook.

 Tony Wood


 On 10/02/13 14:14, Chris Dennis wrote:

 On 09/02/13 14:00, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:

 On 8 February 2013 21:50, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm thinking of buying an SSD for my Dell Inspiron 6400 when Debian
 Wheezy becomes stable and to benefit from fast bootup.

 The laptop is 2006 vintage and has a spinning rust SATA drive. Can I
 just use any SSD SATA laptop drive as a drop-in replacement or do I
 have to be careful about particular types eg SATA II/III, BIOS
 incompatibilities etc?


 I have that exact same laptop. I put a 7mm SSD in it, and it made an
 amazing difference to the speed of the laptop.
 The only thing you really need to care about with HDD to SSD
 replacement is the height of the HDD, is it 9.5 or 7mm high.
 The 6400 can fit both 7mm and 9.5mm SSD.
 I would advise that you purchase a 7mm SSD because then it is more
 lilely to fit into a new laptop when you eventually need it.
 I put a Crucial M4 7mm in mine.


 Blocks of storage in SSD drives can only be written a certain number of
 times. Is that something to worry about, or does the firmware/software
 mitigate that problem these days?

 In other words, do SSD drives last just as long as spinning disk drives
 under normal use (for some value of 'normal')?

 cheers

 Chris



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[Hampshire] SSD Laptop HDD as drop-in replacement?

[Imran Chaudhry]

I'm thinking of buying an SSD for my Dell Inspiron 6400 when Debian
Wheezy becomes stable and to benefit from fast bootup.

The laptop is 2006 vintage and has a spinning rust SATA drive. Can I
just use any SSD SATA laptop drive as a drop-in replacement or do I
have to be careful about particular types eg SATA II/III, BIOS
incompatibilities etc?

Thanks

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Re: [Hampshire] Getting 3D Acceleration/Compiz working with Debian Squeeze VirtualBox guest

[Imran Chaudhry]

Thanks Popey. I am using the upstream VBox and upstream guest
additions with this.

Today I tried Ubuntu 12.10 with the same Windows host and 3D
acceleration appears to work (although very slowly). My quick test was
to click the desktop switcher a few times which is 3D animated.

So conclusion right now is that this is something specific to that
Debian Squeeze guest.

On 7 February 2013 21:23, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote:
 On 07/02/13 17:03, Imran Chaudhry wrote:

 I'm having a spot of bother getting 3D hardware acceleration and
 Compiz working in my Debian Squeeze Virtualbox guest. Whatever I try
 it defaults to software rendering. I have obvious things set such as
 3D acceleration checked in the guest settings (Display  Video 
 Extended Features).


 I'd use VirtualBox from upstream and the guest additions from them, not from
 the repo. We recently had a few bugs fixed in upstream VBox which fix the 3D
 acceleration stuff.

 I'm using 4.2.6 here and it works with Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10. Ubuntu 13.04
 is currently broken in VirtualBox in other ways we're working on getting
 fixed

 Cheers,
 --
 Alan Pope
 Engineering Manager

 Canonical - Product Strategy
 +44 (0) 7973 620 164
 alan.p...@canonical.com
 http://ubuntu.com/

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[Hampshire] Getting 3D Acceleration/Compiz working with Debian Squeeze VirtualBox guest

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hey All,

I'm having a spot of bother getting 3D hardware acceleration and
Compiz working in my Debian Squeeze Virtualbox guest. Whatever I try
it defaults to software rendering. I have obvious things set such as
3D acceleration checked in the guest settings (Display  Video 
Extended Features).

Please can anyone assist? The net is full of people getting it to
just work with Ubuntu so I'm hopeful! I feel it's a driver missing
issues from some of the Xorg log but thought it might require some
voodoo with xrandr...

Some of my findings, version info and current situation:

###

I have Virtualbox guest additions installed which matches the host
Virtualbox version.

glxinfo:
name of display: :0.0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: Chromium
server glx version string: 1.3 Chromium

glxgears runs but not smoothly

[imran@debian ~]$ glxgears
XIO:  fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server :0.0
 after 1414 requests (1412 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

the guest video device:

[ROOT@debian ~]# lshw -C video
 *-display UNCLAIMED
  description: VGA compatible controller
  product: VirtualBox Graphics Adapter
  vendor: InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH
  physical id: 2
  bus info: pci@:00:02.0
  version: 00
  width: 32 bits
  clock: 33MHz
  capabilities: vga_controller bus_master
  configuration: latency=64
  resources: memory:e000-e7ff(prefetchable)

guest = debian squeeze

[ROOT@debian ~]# cat /etc/debian_version
6.0.6
[ROOT@debian ~]# uname -a
Linux debian 2.6.32-5-686 #1 SMP Sun Sep 23 09:49:36 UTC 2012 i686 GNU/Linux

host = windows 7 pro sp1 64-bit
virtualbox version = 4.2.6
3d acceleration enabled in guest vm config

I added the Virtual lines in my xorg.conf on recommendation from link:
https://jeremy.visser.name/2009/10/no-dri-on-x-org-with-a-radeon-check-your-virtual-size/

SubSection Display
Viewport   0 0
Depth 16
Virtual 1920 1080
EndSubSection
SubSection Display
Viewport   0 0
Depth 24
Virtual 1920 1080
EndSubSection

notice these bits in Xorg log:

(II) AIGLX: Screen 0 is not DRI2 capable
drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
drmOpenDevice: open result is 13, (OK)
drmOpenByBusid: Searching for BusID pci::00:02.0
drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
drmOpenDevice: open result is 13, (OK)
drmOpenByBusid: drmOpenMinor returns 13
drmOpenByBusid: drmGetBusid reports pci::00:02.0
(II) Next line is added to allow vboxvideo_drv.so to appear as
whitelisted driver
(II) The file referenced, is *NOT* loaded
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//ati_drv.so
(EE) AIGLX error: vboxvideo does not export required DRI extension
(EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering
(II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so
(II) GLX: Initialized DRISWRAST GL provider for screen 0

I have these Virtualbox packages installed:

[imran@debian log]$ aptitude search virtualbox | egrep '^i'
i A virtualbox-ose-guest-dkms   - x86 virtualization solution - guest additi
i A virtualbox-ose-guest-utils  - x86 virtualization solution - non-X11 gues
i   virtualbox-ose-guest-x11- x86 virtualization solution - X11 guest ut

these services are running in the guest:

imran@debian log]$ pgrep -fl VBox
885 /usr/sbin/VBoxService
3623 VBoxService
5144 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard
5153 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --display
5158 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --seamless
5162 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --draganddrop

i have these in `/etc/init.d`

vboxadd
vboxadd-service
vboxadd-x11
virtualbox-ose-guest-utils

this looks odd... no output!

[imran@debian init.d]$ ./vboxadd-x11
Usage: ./vboxadd-x11 {start|stop|restart|status}
[imran@debian init.d]$ ./vboxadd-x11 status
[imran@debian init.d]$ ./vboxadd-x11 start
[imran@debian init.d]$ ./vboxadd-x11 status
[imran@debian init.d]$

###

Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] Promoting LUG meets via social networking

[Imran Chaudhry]

 The beginners guide to MySQL was also very popular.

 Yes - MySQL per se is not for *total* beginners.  Pity I missed it. :-(

I think Tony might have meant my talk which I did years ago? There was
a huge attendance that day from several southern LUGs. Someone told me
that a few had come for my talk - no pressure! (and did I mention my
boss was in the audience?)

I never expected so many would be interested as I assumed everyone
would have that knowledge already or know how to access it easily. It
really challenged my assumptions. But I thought I would try a talk and
see what happens. Afterwards, quite a few people said they had learned
something new.

I'm thinking about an intro to Perl talk - maybe at next LUG meet
family commitments allowing.

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Re: [Hampshire] Recommendations - Windows AV

[Imran Chaudhry]

I use Avast Free which I've been running for the last few years. The
only annoyance is the scanning completed alerts which you can turn
off and you have to re-register the licence annually (takes a minute).
I switched from AVG free as it was becoming more of a resource hog.

I also use the inbuilt Windows Defender on Windows Vista. I use
Windows 8 occasionally and I noticed in that OS that the inbuilt
defender stuff seems to be much more like a typical malware checker.
There is no longer the white flag notice to choose an antivirus
program online.

I don't run any kind of firewall on Linux except for the in-built one.
I see no need for one as I always use it on a home network and apart
from directory sharing I do not run public services.

I have never run any Linux anti-virus on laptop/desktop but I hear
clamav is popular.


On 20 January 2013 21:15, Ally Biggs bluechr...@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
 Avast anti virus in conjunction with malware bytes both are free never had a 
 issue :)

 Sent from my iPhone

 On 20 Jan 2013, at 16:24, Chris Dennis cgden...@btinternet.com wrote:

 On 20/01/13 12:42, Paul Stimpson wrote:
 Hi,

 I use AVG free edition. I'm happy with it and it always used to get rid
 of the stuff Norton wouldn't.

 I've always used and recommended AVG Free Edition, until yesterday when I 
 noticed that the free version no longer scans incoming emails!  So I think 
 I'm going to switch allegiance to the freen version of Avast.

 cheers

 Chris
 --
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 Fordingbridge, Hampshire, UK

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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu spy program

[Imran Chaudhry]

Thanks Anton for that welcome injection of anti-tinfoil hat serum :-)

I don't use Ubuntu but would have no problem with the shopping lens
stuff. As I understand it Canonical Ltd is expanding quickly and so
they need to think about income because - shock, horror - they are a
business and have wages and bills to pay.

On 11 December 2012 18:53, Anton Piatek an...@piatek.co.uk wrote:
 Not sure if I got the url right via mobile phone but there's a post from an
 ex-canonical emoyee about this:
 https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z132szwbruiozdntp22iiziggr24tzlwg04?cbp=104mhlwf5d4ysspath=/app/basic/109365858706205035322/postssparm=cbp%3Dix7bz3mtvnnl%26force%3D1%26partnerid%3Dt1force=1partnerid=t1

 Anton
 --
 Anton Piatek
 (sent from my phone, please excuse any typos)
 http://www.strangeparty.com

 No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a
 significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

 On 11 Dec 2012 17:53, Lisi hants...@googlemail.com wrote:

 On Tuesday 11 December 2012 17:40:25 Gordon Scott wrote:
  When I first read that I thought it was just Richard Stallman going off
  on one of his software must be free or die rants, but I followed some
  of the links and there seems to be a number of people who are convinced
  it's true. Of course one has to be cautious of things one reads in the
  media and especially on the 'Net.

 I had already heard about it, and I am pretty sure that it is true.  Some
 people feel that Canonical is justified.  And I don't like Ubuntu anyway!

 Lisi

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[Hampshire] CoderDojo Southampton?

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi All,

I've recently become aware of this CoderDojo thing from an article
in the Guardian [0]

It got me thinking on how great it would be if Southampton had one of
these. I have been reading the website and Getting started guide [1]
and it all looks doable.

For me, I'm thinking I have too many family and personal commitments
to give this a go as a mentor... but I thought I'd put it out there
just in case anyone is interested? It's something I am still thinking
about so who knows.

One challenge is lack of weekly venue perhaps, something the
Southampton Hackspace people seem to be having too [2].

Anyhow, just a thought!

[0] 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/dec/05/coderdojo-programming-kids
[1] http://coderdojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/StartingaDojoCoderDojo1.pdf
[2] http://southackton.org.uk/

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Re: [Hampshire] 8TB Cloud

[Imran Chaudhry]

Hi Rob,

What Andy said pretty much.

My 2p on a few things:

1. Go for some good branded  SATAs that give you good £/G. When I was a
sysadmin I would choose SAS for their performance and lower failure rate
(MTBF) when building pizza box servers - you don't need that robustness for
a media server.

2. not sure sorry.

3. I run a media server (Compaq SFF PC) with 2 x 2T USB2 HDDs on Debian
Squeeze. Yes they are nice and economical and fine for serving even HiDef.
They also spin down when not in use so are good on electricity use and
noise. However I will go with SATAs and a Drobo or HP miniserver when I
outgrow this. If your network is Gigabit (or will eventually be) then it
will be the disc i/o that will be the bottleneck when doing large transfers
or backups. This became a bit of a pain after a while but maybe I am just
impatient. I would still choose SATA over USB3 as I perceive the SATA
kernel drivers more battle tested.

The spurious IDs are prolly the file system IDs which are set when you
create the ext3 or 4 filesystem or RAID partition. They then keep that ID
permanently until you reformat. As mentioned, chuck them in fstab instead
of the device ID and then you can relax when doing maintenance when a HDD
needs to be replaced or you recable.

see: tree /dev/disk/by-uuid for the mappings

Hope that helps!

Sent from phone. Please excuse typos and brevity.
On Nov 25, 2012 11:24 AM, Rob Malpass li...@getiton.myzen.co.uk wrote:

 Hi all

 ** **

 I’m trying to build a PC which has 8TB of storage – to be my media
 server.   For the moment, I’m deliberately ignoring devices like
 microservers or Drobos – mostly on cost and the fact I have several towers
 with enough space to take 4*2TB drives.   I’ve not built a PC for ages so I
 have a few questions:

 ** **

 1) Is SATA still the bus of choice?   According to Novatech, there is now
 “Serial attached SCSI”.   I don’t think any of my mobos have this bus, and
 indeed it seems the drives sizes here are a lot smaller than I need – but
 is there anything pushing this over SATA?

 ** **

 2) Presumably I need a stronger power supply.   If there are 4 hdds and 1
 DVD drive – what sort of wattage should I be looking at?

 ** **

 3) If, expense notwithstanding for the moment, I did this as 4*2TB
 external USB hard drives, I’ve had trouble sharing these with Ubuntu before
 now.   For some reason they’re mounted under /media under a strange (and
 seemingly random) string of characters (which change every time the server
 is restarted) such that permanent shortcuts from other devices on the
 network wouldn’t work and would need to be re-established each time I
 connect.   Has anyone worked around this?

 ** **

 Any constructive suggestions very welcome.

 ** **

 Cheers

 Rob

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Re: [Hampshire] [ADMIN] Chairman's intro and November meeting

[Imran Chaudhry]

 I think it is important to remember that everyone can participate in the
 LUG
 to some degree (in fact, to whatever degree they wish) and I will be
 making as
 many of the new iniatives open to everyone as possible. I would
 particularly
 like to encourage people to give talks at our monthly meetings. Talks don't
 have to be long, they can be about anything linux or FOSS related, you can
 even do a talk to demonstrate a problem and ask for help. If you are
 willing
 to give a talk, just let me know and I'll make sure you get to give your
 talk.


Hi Tim,

I'm highlighting the paragraph above because I have been thinking about
that for a while. I also was going to suggest lightning talk style
format. For me, these talks make the LUG meetings more engaging and become
a talking point for further discussion.

I will try and put my money where my mouth is and whip up something for
November. I sadly could not attend the AGM for family reasons and felt bad
about it.

All the best for your term in office Mr Chairman!

Imran

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Re: [Hampshire] Gnome 2 is dead (Was Re: Ubuntu Unity - Dash - context lists)

[Imran Chaudhry]

 From all of that I was under the impression that sticking with
 Gnome Classic was not really a long-term option, it would be either
 Unity, Gnome 3 or a completely different desktop environment.


There is MATE which seems to work well but I don't like the idea of
sticking with a desktop that does not have a groundswell of support behind
it.

From my point-of-view, I'm starting to feel like if I do not move to Unity
or Gnome then I will be a 2nd class citizen (eg. are Dropbox really going
to keep Gnome 2.x in mind when maintaining their desktop app? Let alone
future services and apps from other providers). For this reason I'll
probably switch to Gnome 3 when Squeeze updates dry up or evaluate Unity
again on the next Ubuntu LTS release.

Right now I think it is Gnome 3 but I've been encouraged by reports of
users on this list in adapting to Unity so who knows which way I'll jump :-)

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Re: [Hampshire] London Perl Workshop 2012

[Imran Chaudhry]

o/

On 21 September 2012 16:40, Andy Smith a...@strugglers.net wrote:

 Hello,

 On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 11:04:27AM +0100, Dr A. J. Trickett wrote:
  May be of interest to some.
 
  Subject: London Perl Workshop 2012

 I usually try to make it. Anyone else here going?

 Cheers,
 Andy

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Re: [Hampshire] [JOB] Support Developer (Jobsite, Havant)

[Imran Chaudhry]

On 1 September 2012 18:25, Jacqui Caren jacqui.ca...@ntlworld.com wrote:

 On 01/09/2012 17:21, Imran Chaudhry wrote:

 Come and join an online giant in the arena of digital recruitment!


 It would help if you provided an estimated salary range.


It would be around £37k depending on experience.


 Stil at the same place!
 I spent some time on site some years ago and I can say that the jobsite
 locale, people and work environ
 is a good'un :-)


Thanks, yes it is :-)

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Re: [Hampshire] RDP from Debian to Windows 7 with dual monitors?

[Imran Chaudhry]

 Thanks for that Peter, I have installed VNC and will give it a try
 tonight. I have the free version but thats OK as I am using the VPN to
 handle encryption and basic password is fine as long as it's strong.


Just wanted to follow-up: VNC is the best solution so far. I get to see
both desktops on the two remote monitors side-by-side on one large
rectangle, where I can use a scrollbar to view the entire width. I enabled
scrolled window mode and grab all keyboard events for best reulsts
(otherwise ctrl-alt-delete to unlock Windows produces the shutdown dialog
in Debian). I used Remmina to make the connection. RealVNC have a Linux
client but not sure if that will give me any advantage.

It's just shy of perfect though: I can also start another concurrent
session and my thought was to have each session viewing each desktop.
However in the second session, I can't interact with the remote side, the
mouse pointer is stuck as a double-ended arrow.

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[Hampshire] [JOB] Support Developer (Jobsite, Havant)

[Imran Chaudhry]

Come and join an online giant in the arena of digital recruitment!

Jobsite (now called Evenbase) are looking for a Support Developer. You will
be part of a small team making sure the Jobsite family of websites is
maintained and running business-as-usual. There are varied and
interesting analysis and challenges involved. We use the renowned FogBugz
case management tool and every developer has a powerful desktop with
dual-widescreen monitors so we have excellent tools (we also have UltraEdit
licences but you can use what you are most comfortable with). The desktop
is Windows 7 and an Exchange environment but you can elect to use any
flavour of Linux as long as you can self-admin. The team is part of a wider
IT group of about 20 developers.

Examples of some of the websites:
http://www.jobsite.co.uk/
http://www.justengineers.net/
http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/jobs

We're mainly looking for someone with Perl but if you're proficient with
another popular Web-language and can self-teach yourself Perl then we still
want to hear from you. You need to have a good grasp of the elements of a
modern website eg. templates, JavaScript/HTML/CSS, databases and SQL. You
also need to have at least basic knowledge of the Linux command line, shell
scripts and utilities like grep.

This role not only calls upon good analysis and technical skills - you need
to have a good human approach as you will be interacting with users and
other developers. Good written and verbal English is essential. Having an
appreciation of typical business functions and what goes on in them is also
a plus.

The offices are situated in Langstone Technology Park in Havant (about 5
miles east of Portsmouth). The facilities are excellent with a huge car
park, on-site gym, coffee shop, resteraunt serving breakfast and lunch,
free wi-fi, rest-area and even a table-tennis table. There is a large Tesco
superstore nearby and Havant town centre has all the usual amenities. It's
easily commutable by car being just off the M27/A27. Havant rail station is
about 15 minutes walk. It is close to the coast and beautiful woodlands and
there are ample lunchtime walks available. The company also allows working
from home on occasion and we have a VPN access to workstations.

If all that sounds like something that motivates you then please contact me
direct if you are interested, thank you.

(I am only interested in hearing from potential applicants, no agents
please.)

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Re: [Hampshire] RDP from Debian to Windows 7 with dual monitors?

[Imran Chaudhry]

 Hi Imran,

 With version 7 or 7.1 multi monitor support (/multimon) was introduced,
 however it requires both the client and the server to support it, Win 7
 is fine but I suspect Remmima is only a V6 client.

 I was trying to get another feature introduced with V7 (bi-directional
 audio) working from home without much joy.

 The other problem you will have, as you have discovered, is that Win 7
 will only allow one active connection at a time due to licence
 restrictions, I have mess about with some hacks that change this, but it
 required me download some third party modified windows files., which I
 wouldn't recommend on a production system.

 Have you thought about VNC, I find it generally isn't as responsive on a
 WAN but you can tell it which screen to show. I think this would you to
 do what you want.

 Sorry it doesn't answer you problem, but hopefully enough you give you
 some ideas.


Thanks for that Peter, I have installed VNC and will give it a try tonight.
I have the free version but thats OK as I am using the VPN to handle
encryption and basic password is fine as long as it's strong.

In my previous Googling I did see mention of the patch to Windows but it
seemed a bit dodgy and I'm pretty sure the malware scanners will flag it as
a PUP.

Out of curioisity could you let me know which hack you tried though? The
one I saw was http://www.techspot.com/news/46927-story-page-2.html and from
the comments I was dubious if it would work and also if it was XP-only.
Even then I don't think it wise for me to trust applying closed-source
binaries from $random_internet_guy !

Thanks!

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Re: [Hampshire] [ADMIN] IMPORTANT PLEASE READ!

[Imran Chaudhry]

On 29 August 2012 09:09, Victor Churchill victorchurch...@gmail.com wrote:

 LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk


Just FYI, I have seen several people with this URL in sigs but the www
address does not resolve.

But http://hantslug.org.uk redirects to the wiki site.

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[Hampshire] RDP from Debian to Windows 7 with dual monitors?

[Imran Chaudhry]

I sometimes work from home and use RDP using Remmima from Debian Squeeze to
connect to my Windows 7 desktop at the office over the VPN. The trouble is
the my Win 7 desktop is dual-monitor and I have the secondary display taken
up with a Virtualbox VM running Debian in full-screen mode. When I RDP in
everything is flattened to one monitor (or one display).

What this means is that I can only view one monitor at a time from home
but I want to be able to switch between the two remote monitors easily. I
thought about opening two RDP sessions and keeping each in it's own tab on
the Remimma side. If I try and open another RDP session then as soon as I
login to the Win7 box the existing session closes.

How can I easily get at both monitors via RDP with this arrangement? It
seems there is this capability in the Windows RDP client but I could not
see anything for Linux like this.

I thought about enabling the Virtualbox VM remote display capability and
then point different RDP sessions to the host and guest but have the same
problem with the existing session being logged out.

Right now it's a pain having to switch between monitors, if I am in the
remote Debian VM what I have to do is:

- ctrl + f to get out of fullscreen
- minimize vm from virtualbox toolbar
- I now see windows desktop
- to get back to Debian desktop I click on virtual box task in the bottom
panel.

Thanks

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Re: [Hampshire] Netbook batteries

[Imran Chaudhry]

   Does anyone have any experience / horror stories / good revies / etc.?
 
  Yes, I got a horror for my Acer Aspire One.  If I remember, I'll show it
 to
  you.  A quite horrific waste of £40.  It came from somewhere in the Far
 East,
  and the internal connections do not even meet.  Desmond suggested that it
  might be worth prising the thing open and soldering the connections
 together.
  I cut my losses, but keep it as an object lesson on the side-effects of
  parsimony!!
 
  Branded batteries for me from now on.
 ** end quote [hants...@googlemail.com]

 Yes, this is what worries me about eBay!


I always go to eBay for laptop batteries and I know they are not OEM. I
always go for sellers that look established with very high feedback rating
and (most important) offer 12m warranty. I have had to use a warranty like
this once and got a replacement within a week. They are normally Chinese/HK
sellers that use (hopefully) branded cells such as Sanyo. As I understand
it, matching the cells is a tricky process which these sellers sometimes
skip QA on, hence variable quality. The batteries do not last as long as
OEM and will prolly drop to 1hr after a year or two of use but for ~£25 it
is a good price.

Your laptop that lasted 2hrs from new probably had a 6-cell battery. OEMs
normally put 6-cell batteries in by default hoping people will plump for
the more expensive 9-cell on purchase.

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