Re: [Hampshire] Home router with DMZ - any suggestions

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi,

Just to clarify, you get 2 Gig download speeds over a RJ45 Gig-E connection?
Is that using a 10Gbps cable or a 2.5Gbps ethernet cable.
You won't be able to get 2 Gig download over a 1G Ethernet cable.
I am asking because you will need to get a device/router with the
correct physical connection and speed.

Kind Regards

James


On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 15:45, A. J. Trickett via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> In the near future I'm hoping to get FTTP. The roll out in France
> is fibre to the actual house with a single RG45 Gig-E connection
> from the media converter.
>
> For my money I get:
> 2 Gig download speeds
> 1 Gig upload speeds
> 1 x IPv4 address
> 1 x IPv6 block
> No transfer cap
>

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Re: [Hampshire] Large Backup for long term storage

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi,

I just use HDDs. I make at least 2 copies of everything, and keep an
index of what has been stored on each HDD. So I know what to redo if a
disk fails.
I then integrity check the disks every few years.
After 5 years, I refresh the data. Add a new HDD, and transfer all the
data over to it. This ensures that all the data has had at least one
full write cycle every 5 years.
I figure that no media will last forever, and thus ensure that no
backups are older than 5 years.
I also tend to add extra hash files to the backup, for example
sha512sum of the files, so I can detect any bit-flips.

Kind Regards

James



On Tue, 6 Apr 2021 at 12:23, rmluglist2--- via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
>
>
> I’ll spare you all the detail but I need to backup 16Tb to some sort of 
> archive – i.e. unlikely to ever need it in a hurry.   I know 16Tb is a lot 
> for a “home” situation but I can’t find anything reasonable.  Can anyone tell 
> me if there’s an option I’m missing:
>
>
>
> I’ve looked at:
>
> * HDD (the cheapest and most fragile)
>
> * Tape (the dearest but prone to mechanical failure) and
>
> * Cloud (privacy issues and would mean an ongoing cost as well as a dreadful 
> time to upload (16Tb over a 16MBps upload is no joke – and would mean a lot 
> of checksums to make sure it was all ok once uploaded).
>
>
>
> What I need to know is if I’ve missed an “obvious” solution?   Is SD card 
> reliable for long term storage.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> R
>
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Re: [Hampshire] 8% Packet loss due to ethernet cable

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 12:09, rmluglist2--- via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
> I’ve been experiencing some network issues I’ve never seen before (in 20 
> years of (admittedly home LAN) experience).   One of my machines was showing 
> 8% packet loss when pinging the same site as another machine on the same hub 
> at the same time which was reporting 0%.   This proves it had to be a local 
> fault and sure enough – swapping the 8% machine’s cable for a new one 
> resulted in 0% loss.
>
> What I find odd though is why not 0% or 100%?   Surely the wires inside the 
> cable can only break – it wasn’t as if the cable was being moved around – it 
> was stationary.  To lose one packet every 12 or so seems very odd for a cable 
> issue.
>

This can be any number of things.
I have seen intermittent faults on cables that are not moved around.
Or Link lights saying everything is OK, but no packets passing.
As you say, 8% packet loss seems strange, why no 0% or 100%.
You do not say what spec cable and whether you were expecting
10Mbps/100Mbps or 1000Mbps
1000Mbps cable has 8 wires in it. It uses all 8 wires for 1000.
If one of the wires is broken, it might fall back to 100 or 10Mbps.
If you were sending a lot of data across the link, you might start to
see packet loss due to congestion if you were only getting 100Mbps
when you expected 1000Mbps.

Ethernet cable testers are not expensive. You could find out what was
wrong with the cable if you are interested.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Laptop

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

HI.

Listing what he currently has is very helpful.
As others have said, you could just update the RAM in the laptop to 16GB,
and that would probably be enough.
If you wish to buy a new laptop, I would choose one with 16GB RAM (or more)
and about 512GB NVME SSD (fast disk).
The CPU speed is probably not going to make much difference for MATLAB,
because the disk will be the limiting factor.
The GPU is probably not important, but if you ever wish to install Linux on
it, I would avoid NVIDIA GPUs.
Go for AMD or Intel graphics on the laptop.

Kind Regards

James








On Wed, 27 Jan 2021 at 10:06, Owain via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> Thanks both for giving me some ideas to work with - I'll see what J-Lo do.
>
> He currently has a Lenovo ideapad 510, which has a i3 processor (2.3GHz)
> and 4G ram.  Having spoken to him more the problem seems to be not just
> with matlab, though the way he's using that is memory intensive, as it
> reports using 70ish % of memory even just with Firefox (2 tabs open) and
> the task manager running.  I know it would run much faster with Linux but
> that's not an option at present.  The Surface Pro looks nice but a little
> pricey, so if anyone has a suggestion of something a bit cheaper I would be
> grateful.
>
>
> Owain
> On 26/01/2021 17:26, Marc Loftus via Hampshire wrote:
>
> I use a Microsoft Surface Pro 7. I got the i7 processor and 16G of ram. I
> use it to run some memory intensive programs and run virtual box with
> several vagrant VMs running Ansible with a 3tier application stack.
>
> What has he currently got and where are the bottle neck? Is Matlab
> memory/processor/IO intensive?
>
> On Tue, 26 Jan 2021, 16:22 Roger Munford via Hampshire, <
> hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> It may sound a bit old fashioned but you could try John Lewis. At least
>> in the recent past they did train their sales staff.
>>
>> They may not thank me for suggesting this but we have had excellent
>> service from Rocket Repairs in Southampton. I would recommend them
>> highly for their repair service but they might be happy to advise based
>> on their experience.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Roger
>>
>>
>>
>> On 26/01/2021 14:53, Owain via Hampshire wrote:
>> > Afternoon.
>> >
>> > I wonder if anyone could give me some advice?  My son is in the last
>> > leg of his chemistry degree and finding that his laptop is not up to
>> > the statistically heavy Matlab calculations he has to do, so he wants
>> > a higher spec laptop.  In the past I have used PC World and the like
>> > with both of my sons and been amazed with the disappointing performance.
>> >
>> > So where is a good place to go to have knowledgeable but
>> > non-patronising service?  He wants a Windows machine, but I am hoping
>> > to inherit the old one myself, and install a grown-up operating system
>> > on it.
>> >
>> > Thanks for any tips
>> >
>> > Owain
>> >
>> > https://tantmusic.com
>> >
>> >
>>
>> --
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>> --
>
>
> --
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Re: [Hampshire] Rails 101

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi,

When purchasing a new server, the rails are normally a cost extra, but
everyone ticks that option because one always needs rails otherwise it
is difficult to install the server.
So, the rails come with the server and not the cabinet.
But, for second hand hardware, they are probably sold separately.
I don't know what the second hand price is for rails.

Kind Regards

James



On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 at 13:24, rmluglist2--- via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
>
>
> Keeping this as short as possible: Do rackmount server rails “come with” the 
> server or with the cabinet?   I need to upgrade my cluster and one of the key 
> issues I’ve faced (forced as I am to buy 2nd hand hardware) is that they 
> seldom come with rails.   My main supplier (www.bargainhardware.co.uk) often 
> tell me that the low end servers that I tend to buy often don’t come with 
> rails.
>
>
>
> Buying rails seems to add greatly to the cost of the server e.g. server=£120, 
> rails=£50.   Am I missing something?   Clearly I’m not going to buy a higher 
> specced machine than I need just for the rails but I seldom seem to see 
> servers on ebay with rails.
>
>
>
> I guess a simpler question is: Does anyone know a supplier of 2nd hand 
> rackmount servers who supply rails for all machines – not just the higher end 
> ones?
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> R
>
> --
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Re: [Hampshire] General advice sought

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi,

For monitoring stuff around the house, like heating, I have found
"openhab"  openhab.org   to be very good.
It is open source, and you can write your own data collection plugins.
So you should be able to modify your existing data collection programs
to interface to openhab.
It has nice looking web interfaces, and also a mobile app.

I have previously tried domogik.
https://github.com/domogik/domogik
But I found domogik rather unstable.
openhab has been very stable and useful.

I have not tried other home automation systems.

Kind Regards

James

On Fri, 1 Jan 2021 at 13:33, Roger Munford via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> It is customary at this time to wish everybody a happy new year. However
> it is probably more appropriate to wish you all good luck in the future.
>
> I haven't had a question [n years and now two have popped up at the same
> time.
>
> The first is advice on programming. I have programmed everything in C
> but would be interested to know if there are any advantages in adopting
> another language.
>
> I have a couple of projects to do with household monitoring running on
> raspberry pis and I have done enough to get them working but I would now
> like to make them more robust.
>
> The first is a central heating monitor. I have a vaillant boiler and
> some years ago bought a windows programme plus a hardware dongle which
> monitors the communication between boiler and controller (ebus). By
> experimentation and research I found the necessary commands so that I
> can get information such as room temperature and programmer times and
> can change the heating programme details remotely. This wasn't as useful
> as I thought because I discovered that I was working from home and
> everyday was pretty well the same as any other day.
>
> My system consisted of two parts which communicated by using shared
> memory. The first part consisted of the bus monitor which synchronised
> with the bus and read every packet. Some data came randomly such as
> current room temperature and when that was received the shared memory
> was updated. Other data such as programme times were only sent after a
> request so the monitor would have to send those as well. Temperature
> data was stored on Mariadb. I had hoped at one stage to make it
> inteklligent so the boiler was only activated when necessay, not just
> follow the timer.
>
> The second part is a webserver and I used PHP to create a web page with
> the controls on and communicate with shared memory. When a control is
> changed, a flag is set and the monitor sends the commands to the boiler
> controller to get the required data.
> It all works but is there a better way of organising it.? It runs on
> plain Raspbian but is there a better OS more suited to these sort of
> apps. should I be looking at Ubuntu core for safety and upgradeabilty?
>
> I have some other monitoring projects which are gathering data. I
> monitor my electricity consumption, solar generation and car charging
> (modbus) and plan to monitor individual room temperatures (one wire) and
> water consumption and rain water harvesting usage pulse (counting).  I
> am interested in doing more home automation. Would it be worth getting a
> home automation package and could they be configured to work with these
> disparate functions?
>
> The second major query has arisen because my local community formed a a
> whatsapp group during the covid crisis which was very successful. Two
> groups are emerging. Those that want to support the natural environment
> and those that want to tackle social problems in our area. I know first
> hand some people involved in long established groups in both of these
> areas but their activities are not well known and I think that we need a
> couple of websites that people could refer to. Could anybody recommend a
> solution which would involve cheap hosting, ability to register details
> and easy administration. It might even be a sort of dating app. Those
> offering help and those organisations who may need it.
>
> Thanks for your time, I would be grateful for any comments.
>
> Good luck in the New year.
>
> Regards
>
> Roger
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Compiling old source

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi,

I got elkulator compiled and working
> PRINT "HELLO"
HELLO


It required a fair bit of editing to get it working.
The main problem was getting it to recognize the allegro4.x is installed.
Download:
https://github.com/liballeg/allegro5/releases/download/v4-2-3-1/allegro-4.2.3.1.tar.gz
The only thing you need from the tar file is allegro.m4.
copy the allegro.m4  file into the elkulator folder in a new sub directory
in ./m4/allegro.m4
in the elkulator directory run
aclocal -I m4
mv configure configure.old
autoconf
This should re-generate your "configure" script.
./configure
If it fails looking for install-sh.
rm install-sh depcomp missing compile COPYING INSTALL
autoreconf -vi
then try ./configure again.

I also found that ./src/uef.c needed editing:
--- t3/src/uef.c 2010-07-17 09:15:23.0 +0100
+++ src/uef.c 2020-10-15 21:44:01.283483882 +0100
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@

 int tapelcount,tapellatch,pps;
 int intone=0;
-gzFile *uef;
+gzFile uef;
 int cswena;

 int inchunk=0,chunkid=0,chunklen=0;
@@ -256,6 +256,6 @@
 if (uef)
  {
gzclose(uef);
- uef=(gzFile *)NULL;
+ uef=(gzFile )NULL;
  }
 }

Tell me if this helped.

Kind Regards

James



On Wed, 14 Oct 2020 at 15:30, Rob via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> Hi all
>
>
>
> I’m trying to compile a very old source file (see
> http://elkulator.acornelectron.co.uk/) on Bionic Beaver and having little
> luck.   I’ve not been into the source itself but the README suggests I need
> 4 libraries:
>
>
>
> Allegro 4.x
>
> OpenAL
>
> ALut
>
> Zlib
>
>
>
> I’ve not (yet) researched whether or not these have forked into other
> projects because what I really need to know is whether (for example)
>
>
>
> Apt-get install liballegro-dev
>
>
>
> (or whatever allegro is now called) is all I need to satisfy the first
> requirement or do I need to tell the compiler the library’s there in some
> other way?   Or will it find it for itself?   I don’t really want to dig
> into the source itself (and no – there is no binary package before anyone
> asks) but am I going to be forced to?
>
>
>
> As you can tell, I’ve never been too hot on C libraries – well not these
> libraries anyway!
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> R
> --
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Re: [Hampshire] web browser recommendation

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On Mon, 11 May 2020 at 12:42, Peter Alefounder via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> I am trying to get an up to date web browser for a laptop
> running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. So far I have tried Opera:
> opera-stable_68.0.3618.63_amd64.deb
> for which I get the message
> Dependency is not satisfiable: libgbm1 (>= 17.1.0~rc2)
>
> and Google Chrome
> google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
> for which I get the message:
>
> The package is of bad quality
> The installation of a package which violates the quality standards isn't 
> allowed.
> This could cause serious problems on your computer. Please contact the person
> or organisation who provided this package file and include the details 
> beneath.
> Lintian check results for [...]google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
> no entry control.tar.gz in archive
> /bon/tar: Child returned status 1
> /bin/tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
>
> Any ideas on what else I could try? I am reluctant to update my
> existing Chromium and Firefox unless there is some way to keep
> the existing versions as well as I know they work, although
> facebook tells me they won't be supported for much longer.
>

Well, you could upgrade 14.04 to a newer version  ;-)
Alternatives:
1) Use chroot and install the newer OS in chroot.
2) Install newer browser in VM.
3) Install newer browser in Docker. (Docker images work on any Linux
kernel version, so your kernel can be ancient and it will still work)
4) Manually compile/install all the newer libs needed by the latest browsers.
Linux handles versioning of libs well, so you can have two versions of
libgdm1 installed at the same time.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Detect USB or SATA drive

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 10:12, Rob Malpass via Hampshire
 wrote:
> I have about 6 drives connected to my media server.   2 are inside the case 
> connected by SATA (1 is the OS (Xenial) and the other is media).   Then there 
> are 4 connected externally (in one 4 bay das jbod).
>

You could try:
hdparm -i /dev/sda   (Change sda for each device)
This will give output like:
Model=M4-CT512M4SSD1, FwRev=070H, SerialNo=12310911C3A4

You could then look at the actual HDD to see which serial number each on is.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Is root mounted twice

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On Sat, 4 Apr 2020 at 14:19, Mike Burrows via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> Hello Folks.
>
> Its been many years since I have posted to this list. (i wonder if Hugo
> is still around). I do however still subscribe and follow the threads
> with interest from far off Alabama. Keep up the good work and stay safe.
>
> I have a quick question. My rpi is giving me root is full errors and
> wont accept configuration edits. This is the output from df:
>
> pi@raspi ~ $ df -h
> Filesystem  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> rootfs  3.5G  3.1G  194M  95% /
> /dev/root   3.5G  3.1G  194M  95% /
> devtmpfs460M  4.0K  460M   1% /dev
> tmpfs93M  284K   93M   1% /run
> tmpfs   5.0M 0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
> tmpfs   186M 0  186M   0% /run/shm
> /dev/mmcblk0p1   56M   20M   37M  35% /boot
> tmpfs   186M 0  186M   0% /tmp
>
> its an 8 gig card.
>

This is most likely a faulty 8 gig card.
If you search through the kernel logs, you will probably see error
messages mentioning "cannot read block X" etc.
I have even seen systems that are very unstable, no errors in the
logs, but replacing the SD card fixed the problem.

In general, when you see the errors you are seeing, it is likely to
have mounted the device read-only, which it why you cannot edit it.
SSD and flash disks etc. have a common failure mode, where they go
read-only when they fail.

8 gig card is cheap to replace. Try that.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] file transfer, Android to Ubuntu

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On Fri, 3 Apr 2020 at 23:35, Peter Alefounder via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> I have a laptop running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I find that I can transfer
> photos from an Android phone connected by a USB cable using the file
> browser. They are in
>
> XT1032/DCIM/Camera
>
> However, csv files in
>
> XT1032/Download
>
> are listed but can not be moved. I get an error message:
> Error getting file: -6: Not Supported
>

Hi,

Mobile phones are sometimes quite locked down, meaning that while you
can transfer files from one folder, you will not be able to from
another.
If you install android app "sshd droid" on the phone, you can then ssh
to the phone, and see which files are readable and while are not.
If they are readable, then you can also install rsync, and then use
that to copy files to/from the phone.
sshd also works over the USB cable, if you configure your phone for
usb tethering. It then looks like a network interface on the laptop.
Another useful tool is android app "connectbot".  This lets you start
a local command line console with the phone.

I use rsync to backup my phone. It can only backup a few of the
folders, but luckily they are the pictures I take, which is all it
need.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu and i386

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi,

I seems they have thought better of it after all.
We still need that 32bit goodness!

http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Ubuntu-Takes-A-U-Turn-with-32-Bit-Support

Kind Regards

James





On Wed, 19 Jun 2019 at 12:30, James Courtier-Dutton 
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have heard that Ubuntu is dropping i386.
>
> Does this mean 32bit programs will stop running. A lot of wine games are
> still 32bit so that could be a problem for some.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Jamed
>
>
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[Hampshire] Ubuntu and i386

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi,

I have heard that Ubuntu is dropping i386.

Does this mean 32bit programs will stop running. A lot of wine games are
still 32bit so that could be a problem for some.

Kind regards

Jamed
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Re: [Hampshire] Grouping Files for backup

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi,
 Tar already has such a feature. A long time ago, it would have needed to
spread data across backup tapes.
look at the man page for tag for something like --multi-volume.

Kind Regards

James


On Wed, 29 May 2019 at 12:12, Rob Malpass via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> Hi all
>
>
>
> I’ve never been a bash script expert (to say the least!) but I need a
> clever script (I assume that’s the easiest way but please say if not) that
> can turn 120 files (amounting to 2Tb of data) into 40 files of <=50Gb for
> an archiving project I’m about to embark on.   Can anyone help / give me
> some pointers?
>
>
>
> I can guarantee none of the files are over 50Gb in size.   So it’s a
> question of something like:
>
> Create an empty archive (call it n.tar.gz)
>
> Repeat
>
> Find next (uncompressed) file
>
> Compress it to tmp.tar.gz
>
> If size of tmp.tar.gz < (50Gb – current size of n.tar.gz) then
>
> Append tmp.tar.gz to n.tar.gz
>
> Else
>
> Close n.tar.gz
>
> Alert me so I can write n.tar.gz to MD
>
> Create next empty archive ((n+1).tar.gz)
>
> Add tmp.tar.gz to (n+1).tar.gz
>
> End If
>
> Until all files have been compressed
>
>
>
> The end product should be 40 files called n.tar.gz (where 0
>
>
> Any (constructive!) ideas very welcome.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] 9-pin dot matrix printing - golden oldie

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

> What I want to do is get it to print native characters instead of treating
> everything as graphics.   I have it printing “graphics” fine via CUPS but
> it’s printing everything (even lines of code) as graphics – so it’s very
> slow.
>
>
>
> And for the curious – no – I’m not having this replace my modern printer –
> but I hate to see working tech binned – and besides which I have a box of
> untouched fanfold paper in the loft.
>
>
>
Hi,

You will probably need to find an option for text mode, or use a generic
character printer driver. I forget what the driver name is called.
You will probably need to power cycle the printer to get it out of graphics
mode.

James
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Re: [Hampshire] On the scroung: Working 20-120Gb IDE HDD

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2019 at 12:25, Rob Malpass via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> Hi all
>
>
>
> I’m trying to resurrect an old Sun machine but struggling to find a (3.5”
> IDE) hdd small enough (120Gb the limit apparently).   I’m loathe to buy one
> off ebay (you just never know) despite their being very cheap.
>
>
>
> Does anyone have such a drive they *know* is working they’d be prepared
> to send to me for free?   Obviously I’ll pay postage.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> R
>

First of all, thank you for describing the problem you have. "Trying to
resurrect an old Sun machine". It lets people offer other solutions than
the one you might have been thinking of.
I don't have any old HDD IDE drives, but things to think about:
1) You can get IDE to SATA converters.  This will give you more options.
I.e. IDE or SATA disks.
2) SSD do still come in smaller than 120Gb sizes.
3) The 120GB limit is just what the machine can access. You can put larger
HDD in, they just won't be able to be fully used.
4) Sun Machines work just fine net-booting.
Thinking outside the box a bit, you can configure a Raspberry Pi as a
net-boot server, put it in a box, and you will have a solution the same
size as a 3.5 IDE HDD.


Kind Regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] VGA to HDMI in low res modes (Clever Video box required)

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On Sat, 26 Jan 2019 at 12:28, Rob Malpass via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> *From:* Hampshire [mailto:hampshire-boun...@mailman.lug.org.uk] *On
> Behalf Of *James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire
> *Sent:* 25 January 2019 23:54
> *To:* Hampshire LUG Discussion List
> *Cc:* James Courtier-Dutton
> *Subject:* Re: [Hampshire] VGA to HDMI in low res modes (Clever Video box
> required)
>
>
>
>
>
> >Another option, is to find an old graphics card that does DVI, and
> install it in the old PCs.
>
>
>
> Said machines all have onboard graphics so not an option.
>
>
>
>
Have you ever tried it?
When you plug a graphics card in, it will automatically disable the on
board one.
What type of expansion slots do the old PCs have?  PCI, AGP or what?

Kind Regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] Document Management Systems

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 at 11:27, Roger Munford via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I am on the local residents association committee which generates a
> quite a bit of documentation through its various activities and there is
> a paper archive stretching back to the 30's.
>
> It has been suggested that we should digitise it. At the same time most
> of the current documentation is held as emails and attachments so I
> thought it would make sense to see if there was a document management
> system which would suit our needs or standards to follow.
>
> I was wondering if anybody had similar experience and had any advice to
> offer.
>
>
The trick to any document management system is storing it in such a way
that you can actually find what you want again.
If you can turn the document into text, you can use Elastic search to index
it so that you can search for documents much like google does.

The first step is to digitally scan all the paper with a high quality
scanner.
This then at least protects the paper archive from fire and damage.
Once you have everything digitally you probably also want to tag it as you
go.
For example, if the document is multiple pages, you would want to store
them grouped together, and not individually scanned pages.
So, giving them sensible filenames is normally a good start.
It would be a pain to end up with lots of page 2s, and lots of page1s, but
not actually knowing which went with which.

Then you can decide what to do with them.
Maybe OCR them into text, that can then be indexed in Elastic Search. This
will make finding the documents you need easier.

Kind Regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] [Golden Oldies] Solaris Boot Order

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 17 August 2018 at 13:09, Rob Malpass via Hampshire
 wrote:
> Hi all
>
>
>
> Does anyone know how (without a serial link or proper Sun keyboard) to
> interrupt the boot process on a Sun Blade 150 (openboot)?
>

Ah, so you are looking for the Stop-A  key on a non-Sun usb keyboard.
There is a key combination that works, but I don't remember exactly what it is.
When connected to the serial port, it is sending a "break" signal that does it.
I would try using the Left-CTRL, Right-CTRL or ALT or ALT-GR in place
of the STOP key.

Kind Regards

James

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

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

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.
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Re: [Hampshire] Software RAID1 install problems

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 19 May 2018 at 14:38, Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire
 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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Re: [Hampshire] libgtk-1.2.so.0

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 14 May 2018 at 12:18, Peter Alefounder via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
>> It is not actively developed any more, so might be difficult to get going.
>> Do you really have to use moonlight?
>
> Good question. The capability I am looking for is to create a 3d object
> and tile an image on to the surface thereof.
>

There are multiple Linux tools that can do that.
A popular one is "blender"

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Re: [Hampshire] libgtk-1.2.so.0

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 11 May 2018 at 16:34, Peter Alefounder via Hampshire
 wrote:
> I am trying to use an old program called moonlight. I get the message:
> error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared
> object file: No such file or directory
>
> I can't find libgtk-1.2.so.0 anywhere - is it still available? I would
> need a 64 bit AMD version.
>

You could try installing an old 32bit version in a chroot shell, or a VM.
Is that moonlight, as in the open source version of microsoft silverlight?
It is not actively developed any more, so might be difficult to get going.
Do you really have to use moonlight?

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Windows problem

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 13 Jan 2018 17:09, "Roger Munford via Hampshire" <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

Sorry to sully the content of the list with a windows problem but somebody
could be well versed in this sort of thing and it may be a trivial solution.

I will also try and make it up next week with an interesting invitation to
the list.

Years ago I wrote an Epos programme which runs on the pos version of
Windows XP and has worked for years until last week.

I think that the permissions have been changed. I traced the fault back to
Windows being unable to create a temporary file.

When I try to copy a file with windows explorer I get  "This security ID
may not be assigned as the owner of this object".

The PC is part of a windows domain and l think the user logs in as
administrator.


Hi,

This could be down to a windows policy change.

There are policy settings that prevent using a global temp folder and
enforce the temp folder being created in the user's home folder.

It might be better to change your program's behaviour so that any files it
needs to create are put in the user's home folder.

Kind regards

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

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 25 July 2017 at 16:03, Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire
 wrote:
>
> 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?
>

The Linux graphics system is in two parts.
The Linux kernel part, and then the X and OpenGL parts.
You can have all the X and OpenGL drivers you like installed. The one
that wins and gets loaded is the one that matches the Linux Kernel
part.
So, your easiest way to switch between graphics drivers is to
"blacklist" the kernel modules you don't like, leaving the one you
wish to use loading when the Linux kernel starts.
So, I think a quick google for "blacklist" and "ATI Radeon"  should
give you what you need.

"lsmod" will tell you which kernel module is currently loaded and
being used, so you can check if the blacklist has worked or not.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu libncurses5

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi

Try doing
ldd filename

And post the output here.
Where filename is your app.

James


On 1 Jun 2017 12:20, "Peter Alefounder via Hampshire" <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> I have recently acquired a laptop running Ubuntu.
>
> There is a specific text editor that I would like to have working
> on it (I have it on my Debian desktop system). When I try to use
> it on the laptop, I get this:
>
> error while loading shared libraries: libncurses.so.5: cannot open
> shared object file: No such file or directory
>
> I have tried installing libncurses5, which is supposed to include
> libncurses.so.5, by downloading the package, moving it to
> /var/cache/apt/archives/ and then using apt-get install (apt-get
> was not able to find it for itself). However, apt-get gave the
> message:
>
> libncurses5 is already the newest version
>
> I don't know what else to try. Any ideas on how to solve this,
> please?
>
> Peter Alefounder.
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] USB devices power down

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 29 May 2017 14:33, "Rob Malpass via Hampshire" <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

Hi all



When “should” a USB device (an Icybox JBOD 4 bay DAS in this case) power
down?   Most (ymmv) USB devices (keyboards, mice etc) are powered from the
host if they’re not powered from a powered hub.   Last night, in response
to the recent samba vulnerability [1], I patched then powered down my media
server.   I left it off overnight as I was too tired to do any sort of
testing.



This morning, it wouldn’t boot to GUI and the logs were telling me it was a
USB device fault.   Turns out the Icybox (whose drives are referenced in
the server’s /etc/fstab) was off.   Powered the Icybox back up, rebooted
the server and all is well.



However the Icybox has its own power supply.   So I’m wondering why (when
it doesn’t have any settings/ drivers – the only controls on the front are
for fans) – does the unit power down?   Is there anything I can do about it
– I’ve never been too hot on low level device handling in Linux.

Over the weekend there were some amazing thunderstorms. All the linux boxes
that were not on UPS had powered off. I have them set to not automatically
power on when power is supplied. Maybe the icybox is similar.

I have to press the power button to switch them on after a power cut.

James
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Re: [Hampshire] Raspberry Pi based Air quality monitoring project

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 9 May 2017 10:20, "Roger Munford via Hampshire" <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

I have recently come across a group of postgraduate students at Southampton
University who are developing cheap RP based air quality monitors with the
intention of creating a "citizen science" network which would provide real
time AQ information alongside the very few, very accurate and very
expensive fixed monitors provided by the local authorities. This sort of
thing is going on in other cities round the world. I got interested because
I was involved in a project about 25 years ago to do the same thing but
even then cheap was several thousands of pounds.

They are hoping to encourage people to buy kits and depending on their
level of competence, put it together and start contributing to the network
which will also be showing shipping and traffic movements. Anybody who can
contribute software or hardware electrical and mechanical expertise is more
than welcome. The initial device is basically a RP with a very low cost
particulate monitor but there are other gas monitors which will be include
in the future. If anybody is interested please let me know.

They have raced ahead developing the monitor but have now reached the point
of early deployment and have come against an unexpected problem. How to
organise themselves. They are about to receive some grant funding
but need some sort of organisation to account for cash flow, insurance and
some expenses so far small but becoming significant. They want to be non
profit making and totally open source as you would expect butt hey need
advice on a structure. Any suggestions?


Hi,

I would recommend talking to the job centre. (Where you go to sign on for
the dole).

They have some nice free courses about starting your own business.
They should be able to cover all the questions you have and its free
advice!!!

Kind Regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] DAT as a backup medium

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 21 April 2017 at 15:55, Rob Malpass via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
> Is DAT still a viable backup medium if you want USB and to avoid optical
disks?
>
> I’ve got about 8Tb to backup and for various reasons don’t fancy: LTO,
BluRay, Cloud or HDD (i.e. NAS).   I know DAT’s quite old (and I might even
be forced to use DAT160 because of cost) but if it’ll do the archiving
(write once read seldom) job I have in mind for 8Tb (even if that’s a lot
of tapes) I’d be happy.
>

Hi,

You don't say how long you need the keep the data for.
I store my data (mainly old pictures) on HDD that are left offline.
About once every 5 years, I buy new HDD, spin up the old one, and make a
new copy of the data onto the new HDD.
I keep the data on at least 2 HDDs.
Even with backup tape, you still need to refresh it, buy new tapes, and
copy the old data over once in a while.
It is a myth that CD/DVD last a long time. Google says they can last 200
years.
I have found CD/DVDs can degrade after only a few years. Generally, the
plastic in them tends to degrade, which make the data on the unreadable.
They are also quite highly dependent on the CD/DVD drive that wrote them. A
CD written on one drive, might not be readable on another drive.

I quite like using HDD, because the data is locked away in quite a strong
metal case.
One thing to watch out for on backups. Make sure you keep a catalogue. I.e.
So you know which files are on which storage mediums.
Without that, if one fails, you won't know what has been lost!
I keep a list of filenames/paths/sha256sum.  So, if one is lost, I can be
fairly sure that I have the correct file to replace it from the second copy.
Unless you do this, when you come back in 5 years, you will have forgotten
where everything is.

Some data I have, that I really never wish to ever loose, I just post it to
the internet somewhere, and it never gets forgotten!!!

Kind Regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] HDDs and UUID

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 16 February 2017 at 12:21, Rob Malpass via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:
> At present, I have a (3.5” sata) drive connected to my Ubuntu machine via
one of those docking station things – I couldn’t be bothered opening up the
case at the time and as it’s only a media server, I thought no more about
it.
>
> Now I’m considering buying a 4 bay JBOD enclosure and I’d like to move
the drive into that.   At present, the drive is mounted via putting its
uuid in the /etc/fstab.   Simple question (which I know I could work out
just by swapping the drive but please humour me): if I swap the drive out
of its caddy and put it into the jbod, will it still be noticed.   The
question I’m basically asking is : Is the uuid associated with the drive
unit or the controller in the caddy?
>

Things to watch out for.
Try to backup things first.   <--- Some one told me that once.
The JBOD enclosure might "join" the disks together, so the data on your HD
might get merged with data from a neighbouring disk.
So, my advice would be that, the first time you do mount the disk, mount it
READ ONLY. If it fails to mount or appears corrupted in some way, at least
you have not destroyed it, and can place it back in the old caddy and carry
on.

The UUID refers to the actual physical DISK, and not any wires, or
containers, or port you plug it into.
So, if you move a disk from one machine to another, change ports,
containers, the UUID stays the same.

Kind Regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] How to get a laptop with Linux?

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 3 November 2016 at 17:58, Peter Alefounder via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> What is the best way to acquire a laptop running Linux these
> days? Various web searches haven't helped me much. Some sites say
> it's better to get one running Windows, then install Linux.
> However, I get the impression that it can be difficult to have
> all the hardware working properly, because of a lack of Linux
> drivers. Other web sites list various laptops with Linux, but
> they turn out to be either extremely expensive, or very low-end,
> or currently out of stock. It appears that building one is not
> feasible as, unlike desktop machines, hardware is not standard.
>
> I understand that people do have laptops running Linux, so how is
> it done? I would be grateful for any advice.
>
> Peter Alefounder.
>

Pretty much everything works in Linux now days, so the problems with
drivers should have mostly disappeared now.
If you are really caucious, get a USB stick or CD with the latest Ubuntu on
it.
Find a friend or a shop with the Laptop your are interestest in, that will
let you boot the USB Stick or CD into Ubuntu, see it actually working.
Things to check are:
1) Does it boot up and display the desktop.
2) Does the wifi work and does it see access points.
3) Note the output (take a pic of the screen with your phone) of "lspci -n"
and "lspci" and then google to check all the devices are supported.

Some manufactures do actually sell laptops with Linux on them, I think Dell
sell some, but in general, get any laptop, and then install Linux over the
top of Windows. (I removed the HDD with windows on it, and replaced it with
an SSD with Linux on for my laptop)
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Re: [Hampshire] Kitchen project

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

On 11 July 2016 at 15:39, Roger Munford via Hampshire <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> I am just about to install a new kitchen.
>
> For years I have had a mains powered radio that I switch on by clicking
> the power socket. The station or volume never change and I like the
> simplicity.
>
> However I would like to be able to listen to the bbc iplayer but I don't
> mind taking extra time for fiddling about setting it up.
>
> I haven't had time to do any research about how I achieve this but must
> cut the wiring channels for extra sockets and lights in the next day or so.
>
> I can imagine that a raspberry pi will be involved and so I am embedding a
> standard double socket box in the wall with conduit leading down to it. I
> have a false ceiling so there is plenty of space and access to power and
> ethernet.
>
> I can envisage some sort of radio which runs independently and will
> remember its last settings when powered up. The radio should also be able
> to be controlled by the raspberry pi (volume,station) and also take audio
> feed from the pi when required.
> I can also envisage a touch screen to control it but have no idea how to
> fix it to the wall.
> If anybody has done something similar and can recommend some hardware, i
> would be grateful.
>
>
I have a TV in my kitchen. That has music channels that I can switch to if
there is nothing on the TV.
Saves the need for a Radio.

Another alternative is to put speakers in the roof, and set them up so that
you can control them with your smart phone.

Anywhere I have a mains socket or a tv socket or a ethernet socket, I have
put in the wall round and not flat conduit so that I can easily re-wire the
cables if they break or technology changes. So, it is quite easy to change
a mains socket for a PoE socket if I so wish.

Kind Regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] Bluetooth repeater over ethernet?

[James Courtier-Dutton via Hampshire]

Hi.

Bluetooth has quality of service constraints that would probably break down
over longer distances, or when sent down ethernet. That is probably why you
cannot find bluetooth extenders.
The trick would be to try and extend the cable before it becomes bluetooth.
I.e. long cable -> bluetooth
Instead of bluetooth -> long cable -> bluetooth
On 12 May 2016 10:27, "Roger Munford via Hampshire" <
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

I have been looking for something that I assumed would exist but appears
not to.

A farmer friend has a solar array some distance from the house. The
inverter is housed in a steel shipping container. As part of a more complex
setup there is a controller which senses when there is excess power being
generated and will reduce the generation. A function of the controller is
the ability to switch on loads via a bluetooth signal. The loads are a
socket adapters equipped with bluetooth. The adapters are intelligent and
can tell the controller how much power is being used. This is great it
everything is within bluetooth range but in this case it is not. Ethernet
is available however.

I had hoped that there would be a pair of devices that could simply repeat
the bluetooth signal across ethernet. Has anybody heard of such a device?

Thanks

Roger


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Re: [Hampshire] IGMP protocol with BT home hubs

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

IGMP is part of the multicast protocol. Generally, it tends to be filtered,
so will not work across the internet. My guess is that the home hub does
not support it, but a normal switch should support it. If it is a smart
switch, you might need to go into the config and spacifically enable
multicast.

Kind regards

James
On 6 Mar 2016 18:42, "Roger Munford" 
wrote:

> I have a problem with a new, complex system for managing ethernet
> connected solar inverters and the problem may well be down to missing
> multicasts from a BT home hub.
>
> The German manufacturers insist there is nothing wrong but do not have any
> ideas. It is likely that there is a handful of similar setups working in
> the UK but not this one.
>
> The system consists of 3 solar inverters and a controller that is
> connected with a switch which is also connected to the local network and
> ultimately the internet. The inverters and the controller connect to the
> company server and upload data. There is a local configuration programme
> which runs on a PC and connects to each of the inverters. Everything works
> as expected network wise.
>
> The system has a "heartbeat" so that each inverter gets a message every
> second to continue. If the message does not arrive the inverter
> automatically shuts down and this is this function that is not working.
>
> Buried in the documentation I found the following:   "For the correct
> function . all network devices used must support the IGMP protocol,
> minimum
> required version 2. (IGMP V2)"
>
> I had to look up IGMP having not come across it before. I originally
> thought that the heartbeat signal comes from the controller and so only the
> switch should be required to support IGMP. I couldn't find any reference in
> the switch documentation but assumed that a brand new switch would support
> it. I tried two other switches that were to hand and had the same results.
>
> My latest thought is that the heartbeat may actually come over the
> internet from the company server. That would mean that the network router
> would have to support the IGMP protocol. The network router is an oldish BT
> home hub. This thought has just occurred and I cannot get at it to look
> because it is some miles away.
>
> For anybody that has followed what I have been trying to describe, do BT
> Home hubs support IGMP? is there something in the configuration that
> enables/disables it and is there a test that I can do to verify it?
>
> Thanks for your patience, I hope the above was relatively clear.
>
> Roger
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] NTFS and Linux

[James Courtier-Dutton]

>>
>> An aside...
>>
>> FWIW, my backup system involves an additional PC, running backupPC, in
>> the loft of my garage.
>>
>> That way the backups are done automatically and the copy is essentially
>> off site because the garage is the other side of a physical firewall.
>> Anywhere separated is better than having both copies in the same
>> building. Garden shed, friendly neighbour, even an outside tool storage
>> chest.  Linux is brilliant in that you can recycle old PCs for jobs like
>> this.  Try St. James if you have no spare PC.  I bought a low-cost ITX
>> for energy consumption reasons, but how well that really adds up with
>> embodied energy I couldn't say.
>>
>> Gordon.
>>
Hi,

I have put a PC at my parents house, so I can backup across the internet.
The PC is powered most of the time, but about once every 24 hours it
wakes, checks for new data, grabs the data, then sleeps again. It uses
the BIOS alarm to put it properly to sleep and wake it up again.
I use btrfs filesystem, and snapshots, so I can go back in time if needed.
The backup is mainly JPGs and MP4s from a video camera. I add
sha256sums to every file, so I can detect corruptions and restore the
correct file if needed.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Linux equivalent of DPAPI

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 20 Oct 2015 13:26, "Roger Munford" 
wrote:
>
> I am bringing an old desktop payment system up to date to work with the
payment providers new system and also provide a wrapper for a website which
transfers the user to their hosted payment page.
>
> The website is built on the traditional LAMP server. However the website
requires a security key which " is secret and must never be revealed to
anyone and you must ensure that the key is protected on your server by
appropriate security measures such as DPAPI"
>
> I was looking for a Linux equivalent but there does not seem to be one,
but I assume there must be a technique employed on Linux service to
accomplish the same thing.
>
> The payment service providers are a windows shop and aren't very helpful.
>
> Can anybody point me in the right direction?
>
If you are having to become PCI DSS compliant, then things become far more
difficult to get right.
It is far more that just protecting encryption keys.
Linux does have an api for storing keys securly in the kernel. Google linux
kernel key management.

In general, PCI DSS looks for separation of data at differing sensitivity
levels. In some cases, dedicated hardware is used to encrypt credit card
numbers.
In other cases, you separate up the data and store it in different places.
Eg. Credit card numbers on one server, and the rest of the data on another,
and then you look to lock down the credit card server to the max and not
run any services on it apart from the credit card access api and no web
browsers.

Kind regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] Remote access to mySQL

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Are you getting connection refused when you telnet to port 3306 ?


On 25 September 2015 at 10:50, Roger Munford
 wrote:
> Samuel,
>
> Thank you very much for this information. I followed it both with the
> troublesome connection and a well behaved connection and they both worked
> exactly as you described.
> this is great knowledge to have.
>
> Regards
>
> Roger
>
>
> On 24/09/15 21:44, Samuel Penn wrote:
>>
>> On Thursday 24 Sep 2015 12:58:32 Roger Munford wrote:
>>>
>>> I am having the perennial problem of connecting remotely to a MySQL
>>> database. I have no experience of administering MySQL myself and I am
>>> not confident that the person at the other end has had much either.
>>> I gave them my (fixed) ip address and received a user name and password
>>> back. I am using the MSQL workbench and have a couple of remote
>>> connections which work.
>>>
>>> Is there anything here that I may not know about or is there anything
>>> that I could suggest to my colleague.
>>
>> What happens if you telnet to port 3306 on the database machine, what
>> do you get? e.g. "telnet 20.30.40.50 3306"
>>
>> If you get a simple connection refused, then MySQL may not even be
>> listening (or it's being blocked by a firewall).
>>
>> I think MySQL is configured by default to not allow remote connections.
>> In the my.conf file (/etc/mysql/my.conf on Ubuntu) there is an option
>> for bind-address which defaults to 127.0.0.1
>>
>> This means that MySQL isn't even listening for remote connections,
>> so setting GRANT options for users and databases will have no effect.
>>
>> If they set this to 0.0.0.0 (listen on all networks), and restart MySQL,
>> then you may have more luck.
>>
>>
>> When MySQL is reachable, telnet should give you "Connected to ..." then
>> a load of garbage (you can't do anything useful over telnet, but it tells
>> you if MySQL is there or not).
>>
>>
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Alternatives to TrueCrypt?

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 14 March 2015 at 11:56, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:
 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!

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

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Re: [Hampshire] UK digital skills report

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 19 February 2015 at 12:05, Vic l...@beer.org.uk wrote:

 10 years from now
 we will simply ask a machine to write software for us

 I first heard that argument some 40 years ago. It wasn't true then, and it
 isn't true now. The reason for this is simple - code generation is a
 purely mechanical process, but defining the solution to the problem space
 requires semantic understanding, and that is the stuff of sci-fi.

 Many years ago, I was involved in writing some tools for Z. The idea was
 that a non-programmer could specify what he wanted, and then the Z
 compiler would generate the code. The project was a spectacular failure,
 because it turns out that getting that spec to be complete and accurate is
 exactly the same job as writing the code - the spec and the implementation
 can be considered synonymous. And this situation will persist until an AI
 is created that can properly *understand* a requirement. I don't know if
 we will ever get to that point - it's not just AI, it's Artificial
 Consciousness - but it won't happen in my lifetime.


I think writing software could be improved and made easier to do.
For example, at work, I am a Technical Architect / Project Manager at
the moment.
So, I might create a spreadsheet describing how one system should talk
to another, lets call it an interface spec.
I then pass it to developers and they write he code.
Occasionally they come back and ask for a clarification on this or
that, but on the whole they have enough to complete the program.

The developers were able to interpret my documents and write software from them.
I did not have to specify the threading model to be used, the message
priority model, they just selected what they thought might be the most
appropriate one based on what I told them the system had to do.
Once they had written the first working prototype, I reviewed the code
and made some changes, but I did not have to change much.
I believe that an AI could eventually do this, so long as a user also
understands the resulting code, and can review it and fix it where
needed.
I know that to get it right first time, the spec and implementation
are essentially the same, but I would prefer there to be a mis-match
between the spec and implementation with the AI making some
assumptions along the way, and then a review cycle to correct any
wrong assumptions.

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.

James

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[Hampshire] [OT] Amazon.co.uk down.

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

Its black Friday, and guess what Amazon.co.uk web site is down.

Showing the following text:

We're sorry
An error occurred when we tried to process your request.
We're working on the problem and expect to resolve it shortly. Please
note that if you were trying to place an order, it will not have been
processed at this time. Please try again later.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

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Re: [Hampshire] Code base and Emergency Data Laws

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 16 July 2014 20:21, Damian L Brasher l...@interlinux.org.uk wrote:
 Hi

 Emergency data laws, when I upload new code to open source game codebase
 i.e. file bombs.c will it trigger an alert? I recently updated and added
 quite a lot of new code to
 http://sourceforge.net/p/dspaceinvadors/code/HEAD/tree/dsi/

 I sent some of the below to my local (Labour) MP asking about the effect
 on the Data Protection Act and Safeguarding consumers. I received a
 prompt and authentic response - but no detail other than available
 on-line. There is very little detail. House of Commons is about to enter
 summer recess.

 I hope others do the same and send a letter or email to their MP with
 technical or other concerns.

 After all, the changed EU directive that triggered these Emergency Data
 Laws, retracted privatised data retention.

 --- snip ---

 I believe the emergency data retention and investigation powers,
 internet data laws (DRIP) are unfair to consumers. The two areas of
 greatest concern are Data Protection and Safeguarding.

 Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) - Part IV Exemptions, Section 28
 ---

 DRIP, as it stands in context with DPA, will surely effectively render
 itemised phone usage information, currently readily available,
 inaccessible to consumers - the data will be kept in the interest of
 national security.

 If access to phone usage is retained, will access to internet browsing
 meta data, email meta data be allowed (by default non exempt)?

 Safeguarding consumers against side effects of DRIP
 ---

 How will users protect themselves against faulty data? Identity mix-ups
 by ISP staff is [very] common. [think of moving house]


Hi,

I have a friend who is in the Police and they explained to me what DRIP/RIPA is.
1) There are no triggers.
2) Police make a request to the phone company with a search key of say
phone number. They can then get a report of all the calls that user
has made within a small time period. They can also obtain details of
where the phone was used during that time period. There are various
other request types they can make, all listed in the RIPA documents.
Also only a select few police people are allowed to make such
requests. These are ones with the rank superintendent. Normally
these requests also need to be supported by court authorizations.
3) DRIP is much the same as RIPA, and RIPA has been around since at
least the year 2000.
4) The requests are definitely aimed at being of use to police
investigating a crime. For example, they can search by a fraudulent
bank account number. If that bank account number paid a phone bill,
they can then obtain the phone number of that phone, and then request
the location of that phone.

If you are particularly interested in what they can ask for, google
for RDHI (Retained Data Handover Interface) , it is an ETSI standard
and lists all the request types used by RIPA.

Summary: I don't think anything has changed since the year 2000.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Code base and Emergency Data Laws

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 17 July 2014 13:16, Damian L Brasher l...@interlinux.org.uk wrote:
 On Thu, 2014-07-17 at 09:07 +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
 Hi,

 I have a friend who is in the Police and they explained to me what DRIP/RIPA 
 is.
 1) There are no triggers.
 2) Police make a request to the phone company with a search key of say
 phone number. They can then get a report of all the calls that user
 has made within a small time period. They can also obtain details of
 where the phone was used during that time period. There are various
 other request types they can make, all listed in the RIPA documents.
 Also only a select few police people are allowed to make such
 requests. These are ones with the rank superintendent. Normally
 these requests also need to be supported by court authorizations.
 3) DRIP is much the same as RIPA, and RIPA has been around since at
 least the year 2000.
 4) The requests are definitely aimed at being of use to police
 investigating a crime. For example, they can search by a fraudulent
 bank account number. If that bank account number paid a phone bill,
 they can then obtain the phone number of that phone, and then request
 the location of that phone.

 If you are particularly interested in what they can ask for, google
 for RDHI (Retained Data Handover Interface) , it is an ETSI standard
 and lists all the request types used by RIPA.

 Summary: I don't think anything has changed since the year 2000.

 Thank you for sharing James. Without question, the police need some
 data. Clearly, DRIP is not fully understood from multiple perspectives.
 Echoing the House of Lords concerns yesterday, there has not been enough
 time for discussion.

 In my opinion, discussion is essential. Critically, international
 communities will take DRIP headlines at face value (or dig deeper) and
 won't feel as confident working with the UK. One of the worst headlines,
 is the speed at which the legislation is being pushed through
 parliament.

 Many long-term effects are, or seem to be, left in lap of the gods.


According to police friend, I think one of the things that forced the
government to push through the DRIP quickly was that some service
providers were going to delete their entire retained history within a
short period, days or weeks away, and this was going to cause a few
extremely important serious criminal cases to have to be dropped. The
police would have been very upset if after months of hard work and
millions of tax payer's money was going to be wasted as a result of
having to drop the cases.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] C development

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 26 June 2014 08:22, Damian L Brasher l...@interlinux.org.uk wrote:

 Roger, James, do either of you use Doxygen, or similar? Can you
 recommend an efficient way to use such a tool?

 I want to maintain some documentation; graphical visualisation to
 present the C code base structure and runtime flow.

 Thank you
 Damian


Damian,

I have not used such a tool. Doxygen is useful to document each
function, but relies on the developer to add it.
I don't think doxygen can present pretty graphs of C code base and runtime flow.
I am sure there must be some tools that work with CLANG/LLVM to do
what you want.
The runtime flow is probably called the control flow graph or CFG.
Also, tools that manipulate, graph the Abstract Syntax Tree or AST
might also help.
So, google for those terms and you should find something.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] C development

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 13 June 2014 06:55, James Courtier-Dutton james.dut...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 12 June 2014 18:56, Roger Munford rogermunf...@parussoftware.co.uk wrote:
 100 years ago I wrote a data logging programme for DOS which ran on a Sharp
 pocket PC. It was written in C and assembler. I now have a need for this
 programme and would like to revive it for use with the Raspberry Pi.

 I haven't done anything like this for some time and would like some advice
 on current techniques to get the job done as soon as possible.

 The first thing is a suitable IDE. I have had some experience with Eclipse
 but it may be a bit heavyweight for quick results. However if extra effort
 pays off in the end it might be worth it.

 I will also need a lightweight graphics library. The original plotted data
 on the display which was done with functions like drawline(x1,y1,x2,y2) and
 writechar(x,y,char) etc. That sort of level. Having said that, the Pi has a
 lot more capability and I could use an existing display package.

 The data came from various sources, some serial and some small devices which
 were connected to the parallel port. The smallest timing period was 1 second
 and I used the timer interrupt to initiate the read commands because there
 was a lot of processing going on, updating the display and also the logger
 had a modem attached so that data could be collected remotely. Is this the
 way to go with linux or is there a better/easier technique.

 Originally I just recorded the data sequentially in a file but I was
 wondering if there was any advantage in using something like sqllite.

 I would be grateful to hear for any advice.


 Hi,

 A quick solution would be to use DOSBOX.
 It can be run on the raspberry pi and runs old DOS x86 programs
 directly. It has good support for serial ports, not used the parallel
 support, but it should be ok.

 Then, if you wish to re-implement your program natively, then some
 things I would do:
 1) You won't need assembler any more.
 2) Separate out data collection and data visualization into two
 separate programs. Maybe use a database in between, or it the data
 rates are too high, use CSV files.
 3) There are many data visualization programs already out there, you
 might not have to do any work in this area.


If you choose to use DOSBOX, http://www.dosbox.com
I have some patches that make it work better with data logging applications.
My patches make the timestamps use the linux system clock, instead of
DOS ticks which can be out by about 10 minutes each day.

If you instead choose to re-write the application, you might wish to
consider displaying the output in a web browser, ie. write a web app,
or provide the output via the REST web services protocol.
You could then display the output on a smart phone, tablet or any
other web based device.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] [Surrey] Raspberry Pi and Solar Chargers

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 9 June 2014 13:11,  li...@themilwards.biz wrote:

 Hi All
 I have recently set up one of my raspberry pis and a cheap webcam to film 
 some flowers growing on my window sill however going to plug them in last 
 night I realised the nearest plug socket is miles away.

What about mains extension lead? Like the 100Meter ones you can get at
WIckes, BQ, Homebase. etc.
It sounds to me that also having something clock triggered that could
power down the camera most of the time, power it up once every X
hours, take a picture, power down again. Unfortunately, the PI does
not have a clock like that.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] C development

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 12 June 2014 18:56, Roger Munford rogermunf...@parussoftware.co.uk wrote:
 100 years ago I wrote a data logging programme for DOS which ran on a Sharp
 pocket PC. It was written in C and assembler. I now have a need for this
 programme and would like to revive it for use with the Raspberry Pi.

 I haven't done anything like this for some time and would like some advice
 on current techniques to get the job done as soon as possible.

 The first thing is a suitable IDE. I have had some experience with Eclipse
 but it may be a bit heavyweight for quick results. However if extra effort
 pays off in the end it might be worth it.

 I will also need a lightweight graphics library. The original plotted data
 on the display which was done with functions like drawline(x1,y1,x2,y2) and
 writechar(x,y,char) etc. That sort of level. Having said that, the Pi has a
 lot more capability and I could use an existing display package.

 The data came from various sources, some serial and some small devices which
 were connected to the parallel port. The smallest timing period was 1 second
 and I used the timer interrupt to initiate the read commands because there
 was a lot of processing going on, updating the display and also the logger
 had a modem attached so that data could be collected remotely. Is this the
 way to go with linux or is there a better/easier technique.

 Originally I just recorded the data sequentially in a file but I was
 wondering if there was any advantage in using something like sqllite.

 I would be grateful to hear for any advice.


Hi,

A quick solution would be to use DOSBOX.
It can be run on the raspberry pi and runs old DOS x86 programs
directly. It has good support for serial ports, not used the parallel
support, but it should be ok.

Then, if you wish to re-implement your program natively, then some
things I would do:
1) You won't need assembler any more.
2) Separate out data collection and data visualization into two
separate programs. Maybe use a database in between, or it the data
rates are too high, use CSV files.
3) There are many data visualization programs already out there, you
might not have to do any work in this area.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] What XBMC Hardware?

[James Courtier-Dutton]

I have tried a Raspberry PI as a movie playback box, and although it
can play videos fine locally, it has a very slow network port, so
playing HD over the Ethernet does not work. The reason for the slow
Ethernet is because it is USB connected inside the PI.

I use a Zotac Zbox myself for movie playback. It also acts as an access point.
One minor bad point with the Zbox, it has a fan so rare that you
cannot replace it.
The most modern Zboxes might not have this problem, but do check
before purchase.

Another option is just use a laptop with HDMI output.

When looking for a good movie playback box I would choose the
following requirements:
1) Silent
2) Have the media content across the network. Makes the box by the TV
smaller and no HDD noises.
3) Can be made to work with a smart phone remote control app via wifi,
thus not needing an infrared remote control or line of sight.
4) Gig Ethernet.
5) Fastest CPU/GPU possible while still having silence. Using GPU for
video decode/acceleration is normally less power hungry than a CPU
doing the video decode/acceleration.

Kind Regards

James






On 22 April 2014 20:09, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:
 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] LibreOffice not working over SSH for one user but not another

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On Apr 26, 2014 3:21 PM, Dr A. J. Trickett adam.trick...@iredale.net
wrote:

 Hi,

 I have a strange one for you.

 On box F the local user V can run LibreOffice (Debian stable) without
a
 problem.

 If user A SSH into the box F from W or M and runs any LibreOffice
 application back down the tunnel they work perfectly well.

 If user V tries to do the same then LibreOffice starts but after about 1
 second of any application (e.g. writer) running it vanishes without trace.
 User V has no problem running other applications on F and having them
 display on box M.

 Annoyingly nothing shows up on the command line that started LibreOffice,
 there is no horrible string of errors or anything else.

 I know that user V can connect and X forwarding is working fine.

 I know that LibreOffice is correctly working and will run over an X/SSH
tunnel
 as user A can do that between the same boxes.

 As far as I can tell there is nothing strange in the environment of user
V
 on either box (client or server).

 Any suggestions...?

Look in dmesg
It should have a line saying why the application stopped unexpectedly.
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Re: [Hampshire] Over heating CPU

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On Apr 13, 2014 8:11 PM, Dr A. J. Trickett adam.trick...@iredale.net
wrote:

 Hi,

 My 7 year old DNUK home server is prone to overheating.


 My gut feeling is that the CPU cooler paste is probably past it? And if so
 what is the best replacement alternative for a basic home server? Is there
 anything else I could consider?


Hi,

After checking the fan is running, clean it of dust. The most likely
problem is replace the thermal paste between cpu and heatsink.

It fixed an old system i once had.

James.
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Re: [Hampshire] PCI SATA controller

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 11 February 2014 22:58, Dr A. J. Trickett adam.trick...@iredale.net wrote:
 Hi,

 Before I buy a new one, does anyone have a PCI (not PCIe) bus, SATA controller
 card I could put in an old PC to allow it to take SATA hard disks instead of
 the tiny PATA disk it currently has in, that they no longer need...?

 It's not desperate but just checking.

 It goes without saying it needs to work with Linux...!


They only cost about £10 on ebay. Why not just buy one?

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Re: [Hampshire] 'Killed' response when running program from command-line

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 17 January 2014 08:56, Bob Dunlop bob.dun...@xyzzy.org.uk wrote:

 I don't know but I bet it's humungous.
 Ever since university when I was introduced to the phenomena (they actually
 used the guys work as an example of how not to do things), whenever I see
 Fortran mentioned I think Dumb physicist who knows no other way to do
 matrix maths.  Closely followed by Dumb physicist with huge N-dimensional
 arrays with only half a dozen set points and haven't they heard of sparse
 matrix calculations.

 The only thing 30 years has taught me about the Fortran rule is that Dumb
 physicist is an assumption, works just as well for Dumb chemist, Dumb
 geoscientist etc.  The assumption that Fortan will be a memory hog holds.


Fortran has some advantages when used for maths calculations. It
handles exception cases in floating point calculations that few other
languages do.
Caveat being that you can use specially designed math libraries with
other languages to achieve handling of exception cases in floating
point calculations.
fortran has methods for properly handling spare matrix, but a dumb
physicist maybe was not aware of them.
Don't get me wrong, the last time I used fortran was 20 years ago, but
I do recognize the areas where fortran can be the best tool.
As an example, the last complex mathematics algorithm I had to
implement, I did it in C with a special maths lib to ensure the
accuracy of the results.
The algorithm was taking data in from 150 data streams, doing its
calculations and producing results in real time. It was working on
streams of global positioning data, and endevouring to detect
positioning errors in the data streams.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] [ADMIN] upcoming meetings

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

I tried registering at:
http://hantslug.org.uk/wp/wp-login.php?checkemail=registered

Waited 3 minutes now, still no password emailed to me.
So, it is completely impossible to register a new user on the site.
Not much good really.

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Re: [Hampshire] [ADMIN] upcoming meetings

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 19 December 2013 16:20, James Courtier-Dutton james.dut...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi,

 I tried registering at:
 http://hantslug.org.uk/wp/wp-login.php?checkemail=registered

 Waited 3 minutes now, still no password emailed to me.
 So, it is completely impossible to register a new user on the site.
 Not much good really.

Password finally came through email.

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Re: [Hampshire] audio CDs - KDE

[James Courtier-Dutton]

I use rhythmbox for music.
It does CD import. I.e. You put an Audio CD in and it adds it to your
local music library so you can play it even after the CD is removed.



On 16 December 2013 12:26, Peter Alefounder p_alefoun...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:


 Adam Trickett adam.trick...@iredale.netsaid:
 Always used KDE on Debian and never had a problem with audio CDs.

 Thank you, Adam. I installed K3B and found that KDE now recognises
 audio CDs, and offers to open them with it. Still a mystery why
 Sound Juicer works under Gnome but not KDE, but I can manage with
 K3B. It occurs to me that Sound Juicer was installed under Gnome:
 maybe when I added KDE, it didn't get properly linked in and I
 should try re-installing it under KDE.

 Peter Alefounder.


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Re: [Hampshire] Moving to LAMP

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

I have had to do what you are trying to do in the past.
Lessons learnt:
1) Do not keep Access as the front end and MYSQL as the backend.
The MYSQL ODBC driver is bug prone and not fit for purpose.

My recommendation would be:
1) Use one of the many simple tools available that import an .MDB file
directly into MYSQL.
2) Re-write the equivalent of the Access front end as web pages or web services.

(2) is sometimes a lot of work, but the final solution is far more
maintainable and manageable.

Kind regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Recycling and old sky+ box

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Pretty sure you cannot wipe the OS and start again.
1) The OS in installed over the air.
2) I don't think anyone has managed to install a different OS, linux
or otherwise to run on it.

As a side, I do know how to plug a sky smart card and DVB card into a
Linux box and have it decode the subscribed channels.



On 28 November 2013 13:05, Edward Beckmann e...@interweave-now.co.uk wrote:
 Hi

 Can't find an answer for this in our archives and some forums seem a bit
 tight-lipped, but here goes.

 I've been given a sky+ box and would like to use it as a PVR. No intention
 to hack into restricted channels etc, just want to avoid having to download
 to laptop from get-iplayer and plug that into the TV.

 Failing that I'll just rip out the HDD and re-use.

 So, does anyone know how to nuke the existing OS and turn it into a PVR
 please? Not interested in recovering anything that has already been recorded
 onto the drive.

 Many thanks

 Ed

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Re: [Hampshire] SATA conundrum

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On Nov 27, 2013 1:34 PM, Artur Łądka arturla...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 27/11/13 12:02, Tony Whitmore wrote:

 It's a limitation of old BIOSes - look for a BIOS update that might
address the issue. If you can't find one then you might be out of luck...

 Tony

 And even if disk is not recognized by BIOS try to boot up from LiveCD/USB
and check if this new HDD is visible there. If yes, you can install grub
and /boot/ partition on separate drive which BIOS can recognize (can be USB
drive or IDE-to-CF adapter).

 Some hard drives have a jumper to set them in SATA I mode - check yours
if it is possible.


I would try this also. Even if the bios does not recognise it, if you can
get a Linux kernel booted from cd or usb, the kernel driver might recognise
it.
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Re: [Hampshire] Debian 7.1 startup problem

[James Courtier-Dutton]

My first thought due to is apparent random affect, run a memtest86+.
You should find it on your boot menu.
Run it for a few hours.



On 9 November 2013 11:46, Peter Alefounder p_alefoun...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
 I am using Debian 7.1, the x86-64 version.

 Sometimes when starting my system it gets stuck at some point, not always the
 same point. After pressing the reset button, the system boots normally. When
 I first had my computer, this problem did not arise at all. Now, it is 
 becoming
 more frequent. Most recently, fsck failed with a return code of 8, and I was
 advised to run it manually. I did: everything was clean and the system 
 restarted
 normally after shutdown -r now.

 I can't find anything I recognise as wrong in the log files. The problems may
 arise before the point at which log files are written, or it may be that I 
 don't
 know what to look for or where to look. Any ideas?

 Peter Alefounder.

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Re: [Hampshire] samsung laptop bug

[James Courtier-Dutton]

This is an old problem. You can also trigger the bug from Windows if you wish.
I believe Samsung have fixed the BIOS bug now with a firmware upgrade,
which you guessed it, can only be install from windows!
I have a Samsung laptop and just switch HDD when I need to run Linux,
and switch back when I need to upgrade the firmware.


On 1 November 2013 15:29, john j...@jesoftware.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
 Hi

 Picked this up on the net.
 Samsung Sweden to Linux User: “UEFI BIOS Bug Not Our Problem”

 http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2013/10/29/samsung-sweden-to-linux-
 user-uefi-bios-bug-not-our-problem/

 It appears that samsung laptops have a problem when you need to re-install
 your operating system which can leave you with a useless laptop.  See above
 website for details.

 John Eayrs

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Re: [Hampshire] Laptop and TV

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On Oct 27, 2013 12:56 AM, Leo li...@fractal.me.uk wrote:

 I attached my laptop to the TV earlier and it all worked fine with the TV
being correctly recognised and showing the same as the monitor. However
subsequent attempts have my laptop picking the TV as being much bigger than
it is (72 rather than 23) and the TV failing to display anything. Much
finding and greping has so far revealed no changes in /etc and nothing
useful in /var/log, or under udev directories. Can anyone offer any
pointers on where I might find how it is picking up the monitor to see what
might have changed?


The most useful log file is /var/log/Xorg.0.log.
This sounds like a monitor detection problem. Which type of cable are you
using to the monitors?
Look in the logs for EDID.
Probably just post the whole Xorg.0.log here if it fits and someone will be
able to help.
The work around for EDID problems can be tricky to get working.
James
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Re: [Hampshire] disk types and layout on a new box

[James Courtier-Dutton]

I think the only way to get an unbiased answer is to somehow compare MTBF
and AFR between HDD and SDD.
You then take into account environmental conditions and see which best suit.
For example, a Laptop is more likely to get a shock, so a SSD is better
than a HDD as it is more resistant to shock.
Shock is not a problem for desktops, the possible problem there is heat.
HDDs don't like getting too hot, so if you don't wish to have good air
flow/noisy fans etc, and SSD might be the better choice.
SSD seem generally better in adverse environmental conditions.
I have seen proof that things with moving parts are more likely to fail.
Anyone who has deployed thousands to fanless thin clients with no HDD will
know that the failure rate is far less than desktops with fans and HDDs.
So, my gut feeling is SSDs should be more reliable than HDDs.
What I have not seen is SMART stats from SSDs telling us about SSD specific
items. E.g. Some stats or values for an SSD for how many failed storage
spots there are.
I have not seen the Linux smartctl program list anything like this for
SSDs, but I have not checked the SMART standard, to see if stats for SSDs
are reported or not.

What is definitely don't like with reports of SSDs up till now, is that
they quite often go dark without any notice. I.e. You loose everything with
no warning.
That is a failure mode that is very unfortunate. I think that if
manufactures could do something to mitigate the going dark failure mode,
then at least when the SSD fails, you could still recover data from it,
much like you can do with most failure modes of a HDD.
I saw this with some USB flash sticks. Their failure more is they just
switch to read only.

Another one I saw, for a military app, was a test point on the SSD, so you
could access the flash chips directly without having to de-solder them. It
made data recovery in case of a fault a lot quicker and could be done by
non-experts. It would let you read the entire flash contents, bit-by-bit.
You then ran it through a program that contained the rules for the data
layout, and the data could be recovered easily. You could not do this with
HDDs, because you need experts to deal with the platters when recovering
data from HDDs.
I would really like to see that feature on consumer SSDs. It completely
removes the going dark failure mode.

Kind Regards

James










On 27 September 2013 13:55, Gordon Scott gor...@gscott.co.uk wrote:

 On Fri, 2013-09-27 at 13:41 +0100, Alan Pope wrote:

 
  I've seen reports of SSDs failing too. I currently have 7 from various
  manufacturers in place in different machines. Not had a single one
  fail yet. I've had my fair share of rust go bad.

 The people with the problems tend to make the most noise.
 Of course.

  I realise my anecdotal evidence is meaningless, but so long as you
  have good backups a failed SSD is about the same inconvenience as a
  failed hard disk.

 Well that's good to hear, and as it should be.

 BTW, I never meant to imply that SSDs were bad in any way, just that
 they're not necessarily as good as one might expect of solid-state.
 And they're still quite a bit more costly than rust, byte-for-byte.

 Gordon.



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Re: [Hampshire] [OT]New phone idea

[James Courtier-Dutton]

I think the problem with phoneblocks is the same reason why you don't see
laptop blocks.
Good idea in theory, but far too expensive in practice.
The technology moves ahead so quickly, the standardized blocks would be
help back by their standardized interfaces and connectors.



On 26 September 2013 15:46, Peter B. pet...@gmail.com wrote:

 Think this has fallen over before it got on its feet.  The main phone
 manufacturers have pretty much said that they will not back this. You can
 see why they would not want to standardise their phones, competition and all
 On 14 Sep 2013 17:46, Peter Salisbury 
 peterthevi...@users.sourceforge.net wrote:

 On 14 September 2013 08:30, Tim t...@xendistar.co.uk wrote:
 
  As some of you like your non-mainstream phones thought you might be
 interested in this
 
  http://phoneblocks.com/
 
  Tim
 
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 I really like the idea but won't it end up being too heavy as the
 structural breadboard and the module boxes are all extra weight? It's
 like old cars with everything bolted to the chassis which were
 replaced by designs with a structural shell.

 Peter

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Re: [Hampshire] something like get_iplayer

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Did you copy the plugins to the ~/.get_flash_videos/plugins folder.
cp -a get-flash-videos/lib/FlashVideo/Site/* ~/.get_flash_videos/plugins

Might need to create ~/.get_flash_videos/plugins first.

I have tested it with ITV and it works.
You can add --debug at the end of the line, after the url  to find out
which plugin it is looking for.



On 10 September 2013 15:37, Alan Pope a...@popey.com wrote:

 On 10 September 2013 15:07, James Courtier-Dutton
 james.dut...@gmail.com wrote:
  I recently found something called get_flash_videos
  Get it from:
  git clone https://github.com/monsieurvideo/get-flash-videos.git
 
  It works by you going to the bbc, itv, channel4 web sites, go to their
  player or catchup sites, and then just copy the url onto the command
  line.

 Nice idea. It failed on BBC, C4 and ITV for me.

 Cheers,
 Al.

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[Hampshire] something like get_iplayer

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

I recently found something called get_flash_videos
Get it from:
git clone https://github.com/monsieurvideo/get-flash-videos.git

It works by you going to the bbc, itv, channel4 web sites, go to their
player or catchup sites, and then just copy the url onto the command
line.
It will then download the video while the internet is good, so you can then
watch it when you like later.
It seems similar to get_iplayer but works for many more sites.
For example, I might choose to do the download at night, off peak, so I can
watch it later during a peak time.

Kind Regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] something like get_iplayer

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Ok, I only tested ITV and it worked.
Just tried Channel4 and it fails. Don't know why yet.



On 10 September 2013 15:57, Alan Pope a...@popey.com wrote:

 On 10 September 2013 15:53, James Courtier-Dutton
 james.dut...@gmail.com wrote:
  Did you copy the plugins to the ~/.get_flash_videos/plugins folder.
  cp -a get-flash-videos/lib/FlashVideo/Site/* ~/.get_flash_videos/plugins
 

 Nope. Where's that documented?

 Cheers,
 Al.

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Re: [Hampshire] Recommendations sought for system upgrade

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On Aug 23, 2013 4:39 PM, Peter Alefounder p_alefoun...@yahoo.co.uk
wrote:


 Thanks to all for the ideas. I will investigate Novatech, Linux
 Questions and Ebuyer.

 Gordon Scott gor...@gscott.co.uk said:
  They say that does have a VGA D-Type. Gigabyte seem unsure .. in one
  place it says yes, in another it says no. Odd.

 Odd indeed. I'm not sure what type of VGA I have, I will look into
 that. I didn't know there was more than one.

 Mostly the worst that happens is that the graphics card works, but
  not in '3D accelerated' mode.

 My graphics card has a 3D mode, but I haven't used it for years. It
 was active under SuSE and I think it caused the system to crash
 sometimes. I have not bothered to get the 3D driver for my current
 Debian system, so I don't think I run anything that might benefit
 from having it.

 Lisi hants...@googlemail.com said:
  Your preferred supplier sounds very expensive.

 I agree! Not so much preferred as merely local, I think.

 Peter Alefounder.


If you need vga out, most DVI have a Vga output. all you need is a
connection adapter.
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Re: [Hampshire] Recommendations sought for system upgrade

[James Courtier-Dutton]

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.


I think if you specified what your budget was, it would be easier to
give advice.
Also, what do you need the PC for?
So we can judge if CPU speed, or GPU speed is most important and how
much RAM is needed.
In general, decide on how much you want to spend, and then get the
best PC for that money.

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Re: [Hampshire] Add another hard drive to the same mount point?

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 23 July 2013 20:47, Robin Wilson ro...@rtwilson.com wrote:

 Hi,

 I've got a home server, running Ubuntu, which has a large hard drive on
 which I store photos, videos, music etc, which is mounted at /files.
 Unfortunately I'm running out of space on that drive, and am just about to
 purchase an extra drive. My question is:

 Is there a way to 'combine' these drives in some way so that they
 both appear under the mount point /files, and where the data is actually
 stored is transparent?

 Obviously I could put all of my photos and music on the old drive, and all
 of my videos on the new drive, and mount them separately - but from
 previous experience I've found that gets very difficult very quickly, as
 drives fill up and you end up with categories split between drives.

 Does anyone have any ideas for how to go about this? Ideally I'd like
 whatever method it is to not require completely wiping my current drive -
 it would be possible (if I can find a friend with an empty 2Tb external
 hard drive that I can borrow), but it'd be a bit of a pain.


Google lvm. A logical volume manager.
If your existing data is already on a LVM you can expand it to fit two
disks.
If your existing data is not on LVM, you could make the new HDD use LVM,
copy all the data from the old to the new drive, and then wipe the old
drive and put LVM on it.

Kind Regards

James
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Re: [Hampshire] Slide-show generation

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 14 July 2013 15:54, Tony Whitmore t...@tonywhitmore.co.uk wrote:


 Hi all,

 I'm revisiting an old topic here, I think. But I'd like to generate a
 video file containing a slide-show of images.

 Ideally, I'd point a program at a bunch of sorted JPEGs and let it
 generate an HD video file with each image nicely cross faded into the
 other, with an 8-10 second delay.

 Does anyone know of anything that can do that? dvd-slideshow doesn't
 seem to support HD and isn't maintained AFAICT. All the actual video
 editors need me to manually click and drag each file onto the timeline -
 no mean feat when there are 500+ images.


How about
eog
in slideshow mode.

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Re: [Hampshire] Linux compatible cameras

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On Jun 16, 2013 12:35 PM, Samuel Penn s...@glendale.org.uk wrote:

 On Sunday 16 Jun 2013 10:12:52 Keith Edmunds wrote:
  I'm looking for a simple-to-use camera that is Linux compatible. It's
for
  my mum, who is in her 70s, so point, click is about as complex as it
needs
  to be. Her PC runs Linux, supported by yours truly from 165 miles away,
so
  ideally she would connect the camera to the PC with a USB cable and it
  would Just Work.
 
  Thanks

 I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX100 which just works, as well as being
 a good camera. It is recognised as a USB storage device when you plug
 it in.



Even if the camera does not work, you can always use a memory card reader.
Simply take the sd card out of the camera and put it in the sd card reader.
sd card readers are only about 10 pounds.
Even though all the cameras i have ever had are linux compatible, i just
find using a card reader easier.

James
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Re: [Hampshire] Simple Database apps

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 15 May 2013 21:44, Tim Brocklehurst t...@engineering.selfip.org wrote:
 On Wednesday 15 May 2013 20:57:47 Peter Collins wrote:
 Hi Phil

 On 15 May 2013 19:13, Philip Stubbs phi...@stuphi.co.uk wrote:
  My question is, what can I use that will be no more complicated
  than PHP/HTML, will run on Windows /Cygwin, and be available on Linux
  too? Ideally for my simple database type app,

 Also have you thought about LibreOffice Base? that would be cover on
 Windows and Linux.

 Rgds

 Peter.

 I would seriously consider running a MySQL DB (standalone, no Apache or PHP)
 and then front-ending with Access over ODBC or LibreOffice.

 I recently did an Access front-end and it wasn't too bad. I'm not saying it
 was a pleasurable experience, but I got through it without gouging my eyes
 out.

 LibreOffice Base was similar the last time I used it. It has a few nice 
 touches
 like being  able to change the DB Schema from LOB; And of course, it's cross-
 platform, so a little less lock-in.

 Both Access and LOB take a bit of learning, but they are both very capable
 packages.


Some time ago, I created an Access Database, with GUI for work, all in Access.
It worked OK, was slow and seemed to corrupt data quite often.
So, we thought we would move it over to mysql for the backend, and
still use the Access GUI.
This turned out to be a epic fail, the mysql ODBC drivers (what you
need to interface Access GUI to mysql) are buggy as hell, and
unworkable in practice.
There are all sorts of data types that they fail to convert correctly
between access and mysql. All bugs in the mysql ODBC.
So, I would strongly recommend NOT to use Access at all, ever, because
you will be struggling to move it to something else, if more than one
person starts accessing it.
Also, when cut and pasting data from Access to Excel and back again,
it silently does horrible things like truncate the fields.

In the end, I re-implemented it in PHP, Apache and mysql. It is very
easy to create simple web forms for input, search and retrieval of the
data.
I actually cheated, and just took a few of the PHP pages from some
existing open source tool like bugzilla, and modified the page layout
and behaviour to what I wanted.
Now days, you would probably use python instead, and implement a REST
interface for Machine to Machine interface for collecting the data
from its source.

So, don't re-invent the wheel, find an open source tool that does the
job say 80% and then just tweek it a bit for your needs.
I used bugzilla as a start because it already had all the database
access code for input, searches and retrieval.
The finished tool I did, with PHP, Apache and mysql is now being
accessed by over 200 people from various countries within the same
company.

Kind Regards

James

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[Hampshire] [OT] 35mm slide scanning

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

I friend on mine has a lot of old 35mm slides they wish to scan into computer.
Apparently they have a lot, so taking them into a shop to do the
scanning is too expensive.
Does anyone have any knowledge of how to do this in a simple way.
Maybe some USB attached device? What sort of quality will the scan be?

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Another Raspberry PI question.

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 5 February 2013 23:49, Tim Brocklehurst t...@engineering.selfip.org wrote:
 On Tuesday 05 Feb 2013 23:25:15 James Courtier-Dutton wrote:

 The 1 wire therm is a good idea. The fewer moving parts the better.
 With therm sensors rather than on/off at particular temp, i can make the
 heating system better. I.E. When in heating hours, heat normally, when out
 of heating hours, make sure the system does not freeze. I don't need to
 adjust the heating with a stat dial on the wall, i can use a smart phone
 app.
 I still wish to detect 240V AC because that will help with fault finding.
 The system could do analysis for me and tell me which part has failed. I
 think the ADC would be good for that.
 Example diag:
 1) Turn burner on and send heat to the HW. If the HW temp does not rise a
 bit, something is wrong in that part.
 2) If the burner is on but the HW temp is still falling. The sensor is Ok,
 but something else is faulty.
 3) If different power is sent to the diverter valve, does the orange output
 change as expected. Points to working valve or not.
 4) Measure current and volts to the pump. A pump should always draw a
 predictable amount of current when on. If not, faulty pump.

 Have a look at:

 https://github.com/TimB-
 QNA/Electronics/tree/master/RaspberryPi/InvestigationBoards/SPI_ADC

 I will add some code to read/write all the stuff on that board at some point
 (all written as it is, just not tidy!). You can adapt pretty much everything
 there for your purposes.

 Given that the DS18B20 has a unique ID per chip, you could also use them
 locally around the boiler.


Thank you very much for this.
With regards to the SPI_ADC, I like it.
As I will be doing ADC on Mains input voltage, I will be adding a
digital isolation on the SPI bus.
E.g. ti iso7241
So the ADC will be on the 240V AC side, but then the raspberry PI will
be protected by the digital isolation by having the isolation on the
link between the ADC and the PI. ADC - Isolation - SPI Bus of
PI.

This also improves the accuracy and simplicity of the ADC side, no
isolation transformers, and uses less power to measure it.

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Re: [Hampshire] APC UPS advice please

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 7 March 2013 15:24, Martin N marti...@bluebottle.com wrote:
 Hello,

 I got a new but open boxed APC backup-ups rs 800 VA UPS off ebay.

 Plugging it in there are no light when holding the power button down.
 Measuring the voltage on the terminal plugs gives me 4.7V when it outputs
 14V
 when fully charged.

 After an hours charge i get 4.8V but that could be corrosion on connectors
 or
 my cheapo multimeter.

 So if the UPS dead?
 battery dead?

 How long does the lead acid battery last in storage?

 Any advice on how i can test things further?

 thanks for your time

 Martin N


For a new UPS, the battery will arrive disconnected.

It is probably a old battery or a failed unit.
Do any lights light on the unit?
Is there any indication that power is getting to it?

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Re: [Hampshire] APC UPS advice please

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 7 March 2013 16:07, Martin N marti...@bluebottle.com wrote:

 Do any lights light on the unit?


 No lights at all which worries me.



 Is there any indication that power is getting to it?


 Yes i have connected a radio to the surge outlets which works.
 The battery outlets do not work though :(


You might have to resort to reading the manual.
There is a reset switch on the back of the unit. Have you tried pressing it?
The problem is most likely a faulty APC unit, and not a faulty
battery. (reason: no lights on unit).
The manual says this:
 If the internal battery cartridge is not
connected (see Step 1 above), the green On
Line indicator and red Replace Battery
indicators will light. The Back-UPS will also
emit a chirping sound

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Re: [Hampshire] APC UPS advice please

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 7 March 2013 16:35, Martin N marti...@bluebottle.com wrote:
 Hello,


 At 16:26 07/03/2013, you wrote:

 On 7 March 2013 16:07, Martin N marti...@bluebottle.com wrote:
 
  Do any lights light on the unit?
 
 
  No lights at all which worries me.
 
 
 
  Is there any indication that power is getting to it?
 
 
  Yes i have connected a radio to the surge outlets which works.
  The battery outlets do not work though :(
 

 You might have to resort to reading the manual.
 There is a reset switch on the back of the unit. Have you tried pressing
 it?



 That is the sticking out pellet like button?
 Its wobbly and loose.

Check this on how to reset it.
http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/ASTE-6Z7V3K/ASTE-6Z7V3K_R0_EN.pdf

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

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 6 March 2013 12:56, Samuel Penn s...@glendale.org.uk wrote:
 On Tue, 5 Mar 2013 20:16:49 +, 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


 Shame it's rubbish.

 20″ HD+ widescreen WLED (1600 x 900)

 Laptops are bad enough, but why did anything think that such a low
 resolution
 on a desktop was a good idea?


I agree. It seems strange that the resolution on phones is getting so
good, and the resolution on laptops and desktops is getting worse?
With your 10Mega Pixel cameras, surely you need laptop and desktop
screens being much better than they see to be right now.

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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Domestic Energy usage

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 5 March 2013 09:26, Gordon Scott gor...@gscott.co.uk wrote:
 On 04/03/2013 23:27, Dr A. J. Trickett wrote:


 Our house was built in 1936 and has a EPC rating of E and an estimated
 energy use of 314 kWh/m2/year. Last year we ran the house at an actual
 energy use of 85 kWh/m2/year. What the inspector said and what is real are
 quite different. I'm just curious if anyone else has calculated or would be
 willing to calculate and share their domestic energy footprint?


 I remember a landlord friend complaining that he'd done all the cavity wall
 and loft insulation, etc., that the authorities demanded, then when the
 inspectors came they marked the cavity wall insulation entry as presumed
 not.  They didn't even ask.


 I'm curious to see what the energy footprints are for houses of given ages
 and how they compare to the EPC if you have it. This is totally unscientific
 but I'm curious what is out there.


 I don't have an EPC.

 Detached 1911 bungalow, significantly extended in 70s and readjusted in 80s
 to make the extensions more sensible. Quite a mix of structure including
 original brick cavity walls, modern lightweight walls and timber in the
 first floor. Cavity insulation, and as much loft insulation as we could fit
 (which isn't that much), underfloor insulation. 151m^2, 213kW/m^2. That
 includes cooking and hot water all year and our hot water is on a pumped
 secondary ring main, so loses more heat than most.

 We have the room heat fairly low evenings and weekends, and just 10C at all
 other times.


I have had a EPC done when I sold my house.
The method they do it is very simple.
Count number of door and windows. Makes an extimate as to how much
insulation is there, and picks a letter.
It is an extremely rough estimate, and not worth the paper it is
written on in my view.

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Re: [Hampshire] Getting someone elses mail on GMail

[James Courtier-Dutton]

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

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 21 February 2013 10:14, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:
 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


I tried getting good video performance in a guest under kvm about 1
year ago, and it was way too slow.
I thought I would mention it, in case you thought it was worth a try too.

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Re: [Hampshire] Digital SLR recommendations

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 18 February 2013 13:02, Roger Munford
rogermunf...@parussoftware.co.uk wrote:
 My daughter wants to buy a DSLR camera and is seriously considering the
 NIKON D3100.

 The video function is quite important for her.

 Any advice?


When I was purchasing a camera, i found the web site quite useful:
http://www.dpreview.com
I suppose you have checked out which one come out best in which.co.uk

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

[James Courtier-Dutton]

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.

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Re: [Hampshire] Another Raspberry PI question.

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 5 February 2013 09:17, Bob Dunlop bob.dun...@xyzzy.org.uk wrote:
 Hi,

 On Mon, Feb 04 at 11:14, Tim Brocklehurst wrote:
 On Monday 04 Feb 2013 21:49:18 James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
 
  I have found lots of web site detailing how to drive a relay from a
  Raspberry PI, for example, turning 240V AC mains devices on and off.
  What I cannot find is how to have the PI detect if 240V is on a wire
  or not. I.e. If a 240 AC wire is powered or not?

  Done anyone know of any sort of detect 240V AC adapter for the GPIO
  of the Raspberry PI?

 I don't know of any pre-made boards/kits, so it's probably a DIY job.

 Don't think you'll find a pre-made board.  The risk to the supplier of
 DIYers plugging things together wrong outweighs the profit on something
 with so few components costing pennies.

 Actually there are a few boards out there but the suppliers are very
 careful to label them for low voltage operation only.  Working out
 which are genuine low voltage and which might be subverted for high
 voltage use is not something I'd like to go into.


 There are (at least) two ways of doing this. You can either sense voltage, in
 which case you need some form of rectifier, potential divider and buffer 
 circuit
 (possibly an optocoupler). There is some info here:

 Not possibly an optocoupler, isolation is a must not an option.  It might
 take the form of optoisolation, capacitive coupling or a good old fashioned
 isolating transformer.

 A current detector is kinda an extreme case of an isolating transformer,
 with a caviat.  It will tell you when the target device is drawing current
 (and probably need a large current to activate), not when potential volts
 are being provided.  This might actually be what you want in the case of
 monitoring a heating systems.

 Of the three voltage detectors an isolating transformer (not an auto
 transformer) converting the mains potential to a low AC voltage is
 conceptually the simplest, and probably the only one I'd suggest for
 home experimentation.

 Capacitive isolation is specialist and tricky, not one to experiment with.

 The opto isolator like the transformer is conceptually simple.  The
 circuit at [1] is good and would be safe for 110V or 230V operation.
 I'd drop the output transistor as not required to drive a RPi input.
 However the size of components, normally surface mount these days, makes
 if difficult to build a safe unit.  Mains in and low volts out with only
 a few mm clearance is not for the regular home constructor.

 [1] 
 http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/50782/ac-detection-for-microcontroller


Fortunately I am not a beginner when it comes to electronics. So I am
experienced mixing 240V and 5V on the same board.
I have a component I need to detect reliably.
It outputs about 100V AC when off and proper 230V AC when on.
It is a Honeywell V4073A, if you are interested.
This 100V AC when off is causing problems with the heating going on
at the wrong time.
So, I was thinking of making a detector for the on/off, use a
raspberry PI to detect the signal and then drive a relay to control
the boiler itself. (Just sending the boilder the call for heat
signal, not touching the boiler internal circuit board because that is
way too risky)
I then get my logging function at the same time as fixing the boiler problem.
I can then write a small android app to remote control my boiler.

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Re: [Hampshire] Another Raspberry PI question.

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On Feb 5, 2013 6:55 PM, Tim Brocklehurst t...@engineering.selfip.org
wrote:

 On Tuesday 05 Feb 2013 18:12:24 Bob Dunlop wrote:
  Anyway whilst it is possible to build isolated inputs that
  understand two or more levels and relay them through to the
  micro as an analogue signal to measure with and ADC I bet the
  setup is ticky.  I'd suggest builing two digital inputs to allow
  you to monitor white and grey directly and ignore the orange.

 Interfacing an ADC is not hard. The MAX 146 communicating over SPI is
pretty
 simple (I've done it and I'm happy to share the circuit diagram and code).

 The further question that springs to mind is do you actually have to
monitor
 AC at all? Typically, there is a number of thermostats around the house.
As I
 understand it, these are just bi-metallic switches. Do these still switch
 correctly at a lower voltage? Or can they be replaced with something like
the
 DS18B20 1 wire temperature sensor? These are cheap and simple to
interface.

 At which point your controls are the valve(s), boiler and pump.


The 1 wire therm is a good idea. The fewer moving parts the better.
With therm sensors rather than on/off at particular temp, i can make the
heating system better. I.E. When in heating hours, heat normally, when out
of heating hours, make sure the system does not freeze. I don't need to
adjust the heating with a stat dial on the wall, i can use a smart phone
app.
I still wish to detect 240V AC because that will help with fault finding.
The system could do analysis for me and tell me which part has failed. I
think the ADC would be good for that.
Example diag:
1) Turn burner on and send heat to the HW. If the HW temp does not rise a
bit, something is wrong in that part.
2) If the burner is on but the HW temp is still falling. The sensor is Ok,
but something else is faulty.
3) If different power is sent to the diverter valve, does the orange output
change as expected. Points to working valve or not.
4) Measure current and volts to the pump. A pump should always draw a
predictable amount of current when on. If not, faulty pump.
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[Hampshire] Another Raspberry PI question.

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

I have found lots of web site detailing how to drive a relay from a
Raspberry PI, for example, turning 240V AC mains devices on and off.
What I cannot find is how to have the PI detect if 240V is on a wire
or not. I.e. If a 240 AC wire is powered or not?
It is a useful function for home automation purposes.
For example, I could use it in order to make a log of when the heating
is switched on, or use existing 240V AC main light switches to provide
inputs to the Raspberry PI, and let the PI control something else as a
result.

Done anyone know of any sort of detect 240V AC adapter for the GPIO
of the Raspberry PI?

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Little job needed for TV video company - SUSE RAID.

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 1 February 2013 20:02, Tim Brocklehurst t...@engineering.selfip.org wrote:
 Hi Guys,

 Small support task (probably about 1 day, maybe 2 including backing up
 existing data) to help out a local company between Andover and Stockbridge. If
 anyone is able to help, let me know and I'll put you in touch. I have given
 the enquirer some basic details on RAID, and advised that he doesn't move to a
 windows server, as per last part of thier e-mail.

 Cheers,

 Tim B.

 Original Message below:

 To: chair...@hantslug.org.uk

 Hi Tim
 I wonder if you could help us. Do you know anyone who could configure a
 Suse RAID 5 Array on a fairly old machine so that we can increase the
 disk sizes?
 We are a small video company between Andover and  Stockbridge

 Details are -
 We have a Tyan 2892 mb in a 16 X HD server chassis. We only use it as a
 place to keep our very large video file back ups. It connects by gigabit
 ethernet to our Win 7 work stations. (We have to have Windows to run
 Adobe production software)

 It has 16 HD including a sys drive, some office data (which we can put
 anywhere else) and 12 X 750 Gig of video files in a RAID 5 array
 We want to change 6 HDs initially with 2TB HDs. At present most the data
 is already copied off.

 We had thought our one year old version of Suse and our RAID controller
 (unknown to us at present) would enable us to upgrade one disk at a time.
 Failing that we would configure two arrays, one to hold the new disks
 and one to use the rest of the existing ones.

 The Suse and server have run faultlessly for several years.We have had 2
 or 3  single failed HDs that get replaced and re-stripe/restore RAID 5
 data  with no problems.

 We cannot find a local Linux person to call on for occasional support so
 were thinking we should move to Windows - but we don`t really want to
 although we are ourselves reasonably proficient with Windows (started
 before XP now on Win 7  - 6 work station PCs.


I would be curious what people recommend as the solution.
btrfs might be good here, because it allows expansion easily

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Box on last legs

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 26 January 2013 14:30, Rob Malpass li...@getiton.myzen.co.uk wrote:
 Hi all



 My dad (an electronics engineer of 40 years experience) once told me
 “intermittent faults are a swine to fix” – and never truer words were
 spoken.   Could you all please take a look at my logic before I condemn
 certain parts of this failing box to the bin?



 2008 vintage 64-bit 4Gig RAM machine running Ubuntu 12 fine for the past
 month – 28 days uptime as my media server and no problems at all.   Today I
 switched the kvm box controlling it to control another machine (no
 disconnection, just a flick of a switch) and the box powered down!   For
 some reason whenever the bad box powers down, it needs  to be physically
 unplugged from the mains before it will come back up – this particularly
 baffles me.   Brassed off with this, I started to look into what causes
 random shutdowns (it’s not the first time it’s done this but as I say it’s
 been fine for 28 days).   I left it running for 20 minutes in BIOS to check
 the CPU temp was fine – and it was at 44 degrees C max.   Rebooted to see
 what dmesg might say but – post BIOS but before boot – it shut itself down.
 And at that point my anglo saxon became taboo for the good folks on this
 list!



 I’m now stumped and, as the machine is 2008 vintage (though good for its
 time) it might be time to upgrade – but I’m wondering which bits I can
 salvage.   I’m thinking the following are ok to reuse: case, optical drive,
 hdd whereas any of the mobo, RAM and certainly PSU could well be the trouble
 and it’s almost impossible to test which.



 Can anyone offer another diagnosis / treatment for these symptoms?   I might
 be inclined to buy a new PSU and see what happens swapping that before any
 more major surgery but is there really anything I’ve missed as regards
 seemingly random shutdowns?  Incidentally when I say shutdown – I’m talking
 immediate power down – not the OS executing a halt command.


I suspect a faulty KVM box.
Try disconnecting the KVM box entirely and boot up with a keyboard
connected directly to the problem box, and not via the KVM.

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Re: [Hampshire] Recommendations - Windows AV

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 20 January 2013 11:48, Rob Malpass li...@getiton.myzen.co.uk wrote
 …and while I’m on the subject – what do folks use on Linux machines for this
 kind of thing?


Linux can be approached quite differently from Windows with regards to viruses.
If I wish to check if something virus like is on a Linux box, I can
boot from a USB stick, and proceed to run a checksum on the kernel,
modules, and all binary files, to check that they have the same
checksum as the package that installed them.
This is the way I would check for viruses on Linux. For Virutal
machine it is also quite easy, you take a snapshot of the VM file
system and then check the snapshot on another machine. Saves having to
reboot the machine you wish to scan.
You cannot do this in Windows as the base pre-calculated checksums do not exist.
Windows also uses a patch mechanism when doing upgrades, so it is
very difficult to build up a list of all possible versions of a
pariticular binary file and have their pre-caculated checksums.

Searching for changes to the system from what it is supposed to be is
the only sure fire way of detecting zero day viruses.
You can also repair the system more easily be simply replacing the
virus infected binary files with known good ones.

The Windows virus scanner approach is really just a technically
floored approach.
In my view, a virus scanner is only really useful for identifying
which virus has infected a binary file that fails its checksum.
Another possible use for a virus scanner is for it to only scan for
viruses based on your currently installed security patches. I.e. Only
scan for virus that can actually infect your currently configured
system. This would make existing virus scanners much quicker. This
would cover the gap between virus detection, and vendor security patch
arriving.

The best virus protection is:
1) Ensure the latest security patches are installed. If a virus
scanner can detect a virus, the software supplier should also have a
security patch to fix the hole.
2) Use a good method to detect unexpected changes to files.
3) Make sure tools like apparmor are enabled, enforcing, for every
application you run, and not just in ignore mode. This reduces the
zero day virus attach surface.

The best virus management is:
1) Assume you have caught a zero day virus.
2) Make sure you have proceedures in place for detecting it, and
removing it from your systems. E.g. Automatic isolation of infected
machines so they cannot infect other machines.
3) Have the zero day virus analysed and make sure you have the needed
security in place to prevent that particular virus from infecting your
systems again.
4) From the list of all known viruses, make sure you have protection
from all of them. The problem here is no single vendor of virus
scanning/protection software has the full list.

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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] (Windows) networking bottlenecks

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 14 January 2013 22:31, Chris Dennis cgden...@btinternet.com wrote:
 Hello folks

 Sorry to mention the W word...

 A client of mine, a small business in Fordingbridge, uses various Sage
 products on Windows 7 which generate a lot of LAN traffic, and they're
 experiencing various intermittent problems.

 There's a Linux server on the network, but it seems to be Windows-to-Windows
 networking that's causing the trouble.

 Does anyone know of ways to stress-test the network to pinpoint the
 problems?

 I don't yet know if it's a hardware or software issue.

 There are all sorts of tweaks that can be applied to network card drivers,
 but I don't want to start just twiddling knobs at random (because you can
 get arrested for that).


There are all sorts of stress-test tools, but they are all very
targetted on specific tests. E.g. Load testing a web server etc.
So, not much help until you narrow down the problem a bit.
Can you be a bit more specific regarding the intermittent problems?
Also, some description regarding the network. Is it just one office,
or are there WAN links involved.
What network equipment is involved? What is the length of cable runs,
what type of network cable? etc.
Have you done any network packet traces to see what sort of packets
are carrying the lot of LAN traffic ?

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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] (Windows) networking bottlenecks

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 14 January 2013 23:08, Chris Dennis cgden...@btinternet.com wrote:
 Thanks for your reply James.  Answering your questions helps to focus on
 what the issues really are.



A bit of googling later, and it looks like Sage is just a really badly
designed app for network.
http://support.makingithappen.co.uk/guides/performance.htm

From that web page, I would look into:
1) Enabling Server side reporting.
2) Antivirus slowing things down.

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Re: [Hampshire] Best hardware for HTPC

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 7 January 2013 13:11, Peter Salisbury
peterthevi...@users.sourceforge.net wrote:

 With regard to blu-ray: if 'they' don't want me to use it then I
 won't, I find all this 'you may have bought it but we'll tell you how
 to use it' stuff SO annoying. In any case it seems like more money for
 not much improvement, especially given my increasingly fuzzy
 eye-sight!

Regarding Blu-Ray, I just find it frustrating.
MakeMKV can be used, but it uses illegal blu ray keys, so you might as
well just use illegal blu ray keys anyway. Google the VideoLan project
to find blu ray keys that permit you to play Blu-Ray.
The bit that really frustrates me, is I can purchase a legal blu-ray
player, play Blu-Rays discs in it, and then one Blu-Ray disc might
come along, and render the Blu-Ray player useless. To the point where
the player will then refuse to play all your old Blu-Ray discs.
The only fix is to hope that the blu-ray player manufacturer bothers
to release a firmware upgrade.
You then have to download and install the firmware before you can play
all your blu-ray discs again.

I don't tend to use blu-ray any more.
If you do want to use it, many different players, like videolan, myth,
xine can play them.
The videolan web site has links to the latest blu-ray keys, so it
should always keep playing all the blu-ray discs you see.






 Thanks everyone, Peter

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[Hampshire] Laptop screens

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

Which laptops have good screens.
I would like something that is greater than 720 pixels high, but still
15.6inch if possible.
Does anyone know which laptops have the best displays?
I wish to be able to read very small type on the screen, and also be
good for pictures. I do not need 3D performance.

Kind Regards

James

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Re: [Hampshire] Laptop screens

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Anything apart from apple? They are a bit too expensive.

On 10 December 2012 15:23, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote:
 On 10/12/12 14:51, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:

 Which laptops have good screens.


 Apple ones.


 I would like something that is greater than 720 pixels high, but still
 15.6inch if possible.


 http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro

 2880x1800 fits your greater than 720 pixels requirement and 15.

 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] Remote wipe of Linux systems

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 14 November 2012 09:51, Benjie Gillam ben...@jemjie.com wrote:

 I agree with encryption being a better option, but the risk is if you don't
 shut down then your encryption key is still stored in RAM (most cold boot
 RAM extraction issues have been solved by shutdown scripts in the last few
 years, I think?) and if there's a bug in your screensaver (or whatever locks
 people out when you resume from standby) then they can bypass it and get
 full access to all your data. (E.g. Google for gnome-screensaver bypass
 vulnerability or, even more worryingly, Xorg screen lockers bypass
 vulnerability [1].)


Yes, encryption makes remote wipe unnecessary.
If the remote person does not know your password, the information
stored on the laptop is a random pile of mess.

I think it would be nice to see a feature in Linux whereby the suspend
to RAM erases the disk password held in RAM, and prompts the users for
it on resume. That would help make a bit more of the data protected
while in standby.

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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu Unity

[James Courtier-Dutton]

I am starting to dislike Unity also now. It is not configurable enough.
For example, if you don't like the hidden menus, there should be a
setting to show them. Similar to the auto hide option on GNOME 2.
It should be easier to switch off features, like the dash amazon, but
on a global basis, so that when I add a new user, I don't have to go
in and switch off feature xyz again. If all I want is gedit, I don't
want it asking Amazon about it.





On 9 November 2012 07:27, Benjie Gillam ben...@jemjie.com wrote:
 A few more data points:

 My parents and uncle both find it confusing still after using it for a year. 
 The invisible menus are the biggest issue for them.

 My wife who is a programmer (so a little more tech savvy ;) dislikes it and 
 finds the window grouping to be annoying/frustrating and the tray indicators 
 to be buggy - especially with LibreOffice.

 I don't find it confusing but I prefer GNOME 2 considerably and dislike the 
 left hand tray (on widescreen you have to move your mouse further too!). I 
 also find it's considerably slows me down, and the extra space produced 
 doesn't seem necessary on my 2560x1440 monitor. I now use Mac primarily, 
 despite having been using Linux almost exclusively since 2000 (when I was 14).

 I've not heard anyone IRL singing it's praises, unlike GNOME 2.

 --
 Sent from my iPhone, so please forgive spelling/brevity.

 www.BenjieGillam.com
 Founder: FitFu.com, GymFu.com



 Brain Bakery Ltd. and GymFu Ltd have registered address: 7 Duck Island Lane 
 BH24 3AA. Registered in England and Wales, Company Numbers: 5849251 and 
 7022440 respectively

 On 8 Nov 2012, at 22:37, Gordon Scott gor...@gscott.co.uk wrote:


 It isn't just me.

 I've been trying to warm to Unity and had pretty much given up.

 I'd set-up my wife's account in Unity to see how a less computer-savvy 
 person gets on with the interface.
 She does just mail, web, and very occasional WP, so nothing special.

 Today she rebelled and declared it 'stupid'.

 For her also, menus on the screen top-bar were so counter-intuitive that she 
 thought they'd been removed.

 So now, for the moment at least, we've both reverted to Gnome.

 Personally I'll likely now switch to an fvwm set-up, which I always 
 preferred, only having changed to Gnome to 'go with the flow'.

 Sorry Alan, but we both strongly dislike Unity.

 Gordon.


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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu Unity

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 9 November 2012 11:48, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote:
 Are you aware of the HUD? You press alt then search the menu rather than
 peck through them with the mouse?


What, not use a mouseimpossible!!  ;-)

On another note, it would be useful if the HUD contained the short cut.
E.g.
Press ALT-F and it shows Save page as has a shortcut of CTRL-S
It would be nice if
ALT, savwould display CTRL-S next to the save page as HUD item.

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Re: [Hampshire] DVB Tuners

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 9 November 2012 20:52, Dr A. J. Trickett adam.trick...@iredale.net wrote:
 Hi,



 Every now and then I think I may get a DVB tuner for my computer. Now that
 Hannington has been upgraded to HD I could even watch/record stuff in HD (in
 theory) on my computer - our TV is still ye olde CRT.



 The Hauppauge PCTV Systems DVB-T2 290e nanoStick HD is apparently supported
 in Linux on 3.0 Kernel and above. It's also not so expensive on Amazon and
 other online retailers.



 Questions:



 1) Do these kind of devices actually work? is the signal strength in
 Hampshire strong enough to get a decent picture without a proper external
 aerial? We can see the Hannington transmitter clearly from our house and our
 set-top DVB tuner has always claimed excellent signal strength.

If your set-top DVB tuner is happy, the DVB card/usb should have just
as good reception.
In my house, the TV aerial is in the attic, and not up on the roof.
The TV signal works fine through the tiles of the roof. It saves me
having to climb onto the roof if anything breaks.




 2) Other than the kernel module, what other software is required? I see that
 both VLC and Kaffeine offer up digital TV as a video source.

If you want it to record programs while you are out, you really need a
program like mythtv or VDR.
VDR is probably easier to set up if you have everything on one PC.
I have a server/client setup, so I use mythtv. I have also submitted
patches to mythtv that allow you to use a DVB-S card in the PC, and
plug in a sky tv viewing card, and watch sky tv on a PC. Although I
don't use it now, because sky tv content is rubbish now days.




 3) What kind of CPU/GPU is required to render HD video? My desktop PC is a
 first generation AMD64 and the graphics card is a last generation basic AGP
 graphics card, so neither are whizzy by modern standard. They can playback
 MP4 files downloaded from the BBC fine but I wouldn't describe the playback
 as perfect.
For HD, you will need a video card that has VDPAU or similar API.
The performance bottleneck is not the CPU or your graphics card, the
bottleneck is the PCI/AGP bus. There are just too many pixels to send
over the bus with HD video. VDPAU allows you so send the compressed
video stream over the PCI/AGP bus to the graphics card, and then
expand it to pixels on the graphics card.

Your PC should be able to handle SD video though, which should be acceptable.
If you really want HD, I would go for a motherboard with PCI-Express,
and a VDPAU capable graphics card.
Both AMD and NVIDIA cards have VDPAU type features, although I think
the AMD/ATI one has a different name.





 4) I'm in no way attached the USB device I suggested and would welcome
 comments about it and of alternatives.

I use PCI or PCI-Express DVB cards, so I have no experience if the USB
version work well or not.
I am currently in the process of reverse engineering one PCI-Express
card, so that it works in Linux.

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[Hampshire] Experiences with Ubuntu 12.10

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

Someone gifted me an SSD, and this is the first time I have used one.
So, I go to install Ubuntu 12.10 on it.
I need my /boot partition to be about 1Gig for technical reasons. I am a
kernel developer, so wish to have lots of different kernels in the grub
boot menu.
So, I go into the expert menus of the Ubuntu installer, and go through
setting up the partitions I want, and then go to the Now actually install
it step, at which is gives a choice of Normal or Live.
The Normal option does nothing. It reports back an immediate fail to
install. QA lacking there me thinks.
So, I reboot, and instead go for the Basic install with manual
partitioning, at which point, the install works fine.

Install completes in about 5-10 mins. SSD certainly helping there.

Boot times are now very good. About 5-10 seconds, instead of 30-40 seconds
before.
What is not so go, there does not seem to have been any improvement in
shutdown times. I think that is the next area for these boot time addicts
to concentrate on.

At least now, if my PC gets a shock while switched on, it will not crash
the spinning HD. The SSD can handle 1500G/1ms. I also probably need a
tougher laptop, so the screen does not break or scratch when a certain 35Kg
chocolate coloured dog steps on it. :-)

Now I just need someone to invent a laptop that does not need a Air Cooling
FAN, and I would have a silent laptop.
Maybe 64bit ARM CPUs will give us that when they arrive in 2014.
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Re: [Hampshire] Multiple gateways, multiple interfaces...

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 19 October 2012 15:48, Vic l...@beer.org.uk wrote:

 Hi All.

 I've got a network problem I don't know how to solve. Hopefully, one of
 the gurus here knows the answer...

 I've got two network interfaces (one is actually virtual, but I don't
 think that matters). I want to have two IP addresses (one on each i/f),
 and have each interface be associated with itsown gateway.

 In other words, I want traffic originating from my address 1 to go via
 gateway 1, and traffic from my address 2 to go via gateway 2.

 I'm not clear on how to do this; source-based routing seems to be the
 idea, but I've not managed to make it work yet.

 Has anyone done this?


Where the packet goes depends on its destination IP address and the
local routing tables.
If there is IP address overlap on the networks attached to each
interface, you will need to implement virtual routing tables on the
local Linux host. I.e. Have one routing table for each interface and
not one shared between them. It is then not possible to route packets
from one interface to the other interface.

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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu 12.04 Server Issue

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 17 October 2012 13:29, Michael James Daffin james1...@gmail.com wrote:
 I had a similar problem a while ago, my computer would not boot past the
 POST screen after installing Linux. I eventually narrowed down the problem
 to the computer would not boot with a gpt partition table on any of the
 drives.

 One thing you might want to do is upgrade the bios.


This sounds the most likely cause to me.
gpt is a new partition format, that some older bioses might not understand.
Also, the location of the gpt information is exactly the same place
that grub normally sits.
So, installing grub might wipe the gpt partition information.
There is a way to get grub and gpt to co-exist, but I would have to
google to remind myself.

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