Re: Unable to boot
On Tue 13 Jan 2009 10:04:53 NZDT +1300, David Merriman wrote: Yes, it's certainly easy enough to reinstall if necessary; I was just hoping to avoid that since it's a pain having to reinstall all the apps, etc., but I suspect I may have to do it anyway. Rubbish. (excuse me) If you borked your boot loader, you never have to reinstall the whole shebang. You will however have to reinstall the boot loader. I believe the BIOS will boot from the first disk/partition which has the active flag set, that might not be the first disk in the list, so it is possible to create grub failures by swapping disks around. With /etc/fstab it is possible to mount filesystems by ID instead of device name, but I doubt grub can do likewise. Keep in mind that there is only one MBR in the box, and all the distros want to write on it. Last one wins. :) If you do this kind of setup you'll have to synchronise your grub configs among the distros a tiny wee bit. Most importantly you'll have to pick one distro which does the booting of all of them. Into that one's menu.lst you need to add entries to boot the other distros. If you can't boot *any* distro any more, you'll have to unpack your rescue system. Which one doesn't matter. If you use SUSE, the closest is on every install CD/DVD. These rescue systems vary in ballast and features, but they all do the very basics, which is create a chroot environment, enter that, reinstall grub. I've posted how to do that many times in the past, but 2 things have changed. Apart from /proc, you also need /sys, and /dev. Instead of mounting, which you couldn't do with /dev anyway, you use mount --bind. That's then: mount /dev/... /mnt #repeat above if you also need to mount /boot mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev chroot /mnt bash --login # fix grub here exit umount /mnt/* /mnt On SUSE you find the commands used to install grub originally in /etc/grub.conf, so you can reinstall grub simply with grub /etc/grub.conf If other distros aren't as smart you're on your own with the grub manual. Obviously that /etc/grub.conf is correct for the disk configuration at the time you installed that distro. Modify as needed. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
Re: Unable to boot [SOLVED]
Bingo, that was the problem ! It's been a while since I looked at the BIOS, and I'd forgotten that setting was in there. It *had* swapped them round. I reset it, and all is now sweetness and light :) Many thanks for all the suggestions, guys. David On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Col c...@paradise.net.nz wrote: My bios has a setting Hard disk boot priority, that it likes to reset automatically when I play around with drives. You might want to check that first. Cheers Col.
help with mencoder/kino
Hi all, I wish to create an avi file which kino will fully recognise. the following code mencoder -o ./intro2.avi -noidx -ovc copy -oac copy -audiofile ./trambell5sec.wav ./intro002.avi creates intro2.avi which plays correctly with mplayer and xine but the sound portion does not reproduce in kino. Both the avi and wave files are 5 seconds long mencoder reports Video stream: 28800.000 kbit/s (360 B/s) size: 1800 bytes 5.000 secs 125 frames Audio stream: 352.800 kbit/s (44100 B/s) size: 220500 bytes 5.000 secs Kino reports Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Any ideas welcome TIA Barry
Re: help with mencoder/kino
On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:42:16 Barry Marchant wrote: mencoder reports Video stream: 28800.000 kbit/s (360 B/s) size: 1800 bytes 5.000 secs 125 frames Audio stream: 352.800 kbit/s (44100 B/s) size: 220500 bytes 5.000 secs Kino reports Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Any ideas welcome Kino is fairly specific to DV video (ie, video from Digital Video Cameras). One thing about the audio in DV is that it is not 44100 Hz, but is 48000 Hz (16bit @ 48kHz). Try using a higher sampling rate for the audio. Barry Hope this helps. Regards Lee Begg
Re: help with mencoder/kino
On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Lee Begg l...@paradise.net.nz wrote: On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:42:16 Barry Marchant wrote: mencoder reports Video stream: 28800.000 kbit/s (360 B/s) size: 1800 bytes 5.000 secs 125 frames Audio stream: 352.800 kbit/s (44100 B/s) size: 220500 bytes 5.000 secs Kino reports Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Any ideas welcome Kino is fairly specific to DV video (ie, video from Digital Video Cameras). One thing about the audio in DV is that it is not 44100 Hz, but is 48000 Hz (16bit @ 48kHz). Try using a higher sampling rate for the audio. Barry Hope this helps. Regards Lee Begg What he said, but also kino converts on import of .avi file. How about importing the original avi into kino and then adding the sound file as soudtrack, and let kino do the muxing?
Re: help with mencoder/kino
Have you tried Avidmux or mix? this will take AVI, DVD, CD video, SCD video and reencode it to another format. No Sorry i tell a lie it's DeeVeeDee. Avidmux or mix allows you to edit the video clip. HTH. dave. - Original Message Follows - On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Lee Begg l...@paradise.net.nz wrote: On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:42:16 Barry Marchant wrote: mencoder reports Video stream: 28800.000 kbit/s (360 B/s) size: 1800 bytes 5.000 secs 125 frames Audio stream: 352.800 kbit/s (44100 B/s) size: 220500 bytes 5.000 secs Kino reports Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Any ideas welcome Kino is fairly specific to DV video (ie, video from Digital Video Cameras). One thing about the audio in DV is that it is not 44100 Hz, but is 48000 Hz (16bit @ 48kHz). Try using a higher sampling rate for the audio. Barry Hope this helps. Regards Lee Begg What he said, but also kino converts on import of .avi file. How about importing the original avi into kino and then adding the sound file as soudtrack, and let kino do the muxing?
Re: OT: Christchurch bus info
Eliot Blennerhassett wrote: Recalling that there was some bemoaning of the lack of linux support for bus information in chch, I stumbled across this just now: http://arcgis.ecan.govt.nz/Beta/Metro/wheresmybus.aspx (From here http://ecangisbeta.wordpress.com/) Works well with Epiphany -- back on topic === This email, including any attachments, is only for the intended addressee. It is subject to copyright, is confidential and may be the subject of legal or other privilege, none of which is waived or lost by reason of this transmission. If the receiver is not the intended addressee, please accept our apologies, notify us by return, delete all copies and perform no other act on the email. Unfortunately, we cannot warrant that the email has not been altered or corrupted during transmission. ===
/var/spool/mail/$USER file locking under Ubuntu
I am busy setting up an automatic mail retrieval system at home. It will collect email from a number of different remote POP mailboxes and deliver it to the appropriate local users. getmail seems to fit the bill, and I have a system up and running to do just that -- it collects email and puts it into the appropriate /var/spool/mail/$USER mbox file. Now, getmail allows for two different types of file locking for the /var/spool/mail/$USER file: flock and lockf. flock uses a lock file, while lockf uses fcntl locking, which I gather is some internal kernel feature. Also, the getmail manual [1] warns that other programs using the mbox file must use the same type of locking, to prevent them from accessing the file simultaneously and causing corruption. It encourages you to ask the system administrator what type of file locking the system uses. I AM the system administrator and I don't know what type of file locking it uses. I have not been able to discover the answer with a number of Google searches. Can anyone suggest a search string, or just tell me what type of mbox file locking Ubuntu Intrepid uses for mbox files in /var/spool/mail? An alternative suggested by getmail is to deliver mail to Maildirs instead of mboxes. However, neither Evolution or Thunderbird can retrieve mail from Maildirs into their own internal format, although Evolution can access a Maildir store. So I would prefer that getmail delivered to the /var/spool/mail mboxes. A third alternative is just to hope that the mail client, getmail and any other mail generators (I know that anacron occasionally sends email to the system administrator) never access the mbox simultaneously, and if they do, that Someone Else has already thought about the problem and that the getmail default (lockf) is correct. Stephen Irons [1] http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/configuration.html === This email, including any attachments, is only for the intended addressee. It is subject to copyright, is confidential and may be the subject of legal or other privilege, none of which is waived or lost by reason of this transmission. If the receiver is not the intended addressee, please accept our apologies, notify us by return, delete all copies and perform no other act on the email. Unfortunately, we cannot warrant that the email has not been altered or corrupted during transmission. ===
Re: /var/spool/mail/$USER file locking under Ubuntu
On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Stephen Irons stephen.ir...@tait.co.nz wrote: I am busy setting up an automatic mail retrieval system at home. It will collect email from a number of different remote POP mailboxes and deliver it to the appropriate local users. getmail seems to fit the bill, and I have a system up and running to do just that -- it collects email and puts it into the appropriate /var/spool/mail/$USER mbox file. Now, getmail allows for two different types of file locking for the /var/spool/mail/$USER file: flock and lockf. flock uses a lock file, while lockf uses fcntl locking, which I gather is some internal kernel feature. Also, the getmail manual [1] warns that other programs using the mbox file must use the same type of locking, to prevent them from accessing the file simultaneously and causing corruption. It encourages you to ask the system administrator what type of file locking the system uses. I AM the system administrator and I don't know what type of file locking it uses. I have not been able to discover the answer with a number of Google searches. Can anyone suggest a search string, or just tell me what type of mbox file locking Ubuntu Intrepid uses for mbox files in /var/spool/mail? An alternative suggested by getmail is to deliver mail to Maildirs instead of mboxes. However, neither Evolution or Thunderbird can retrieve mail from Maildirs into their own internal format, although Evolution can access a Maildir store. So I would prefer that getmail delivered to the /var/spool/mail mboxes. A third alternative is just to hope that the mail client, getmail and any other mail generators (I know that anacron occasionally sends email to the system administrator) never access the mbox simultaneously, and if they do, that Someone Else has already thought about the problem and that the getmail default (lockf) is correct. Stephen Irons My approach (which doesn't answer your question, but avoids locking issues) is to: 1. deliver to maildirs (I use fetchmail, but your choice is valid too) 2. install a imap server that also access maildir (dovecot is good) 3. get your clients to access the imap store (all support imap). This way you get a central mail store that is accessible from any computer in any client and which gives a consistent view - ie you haven't got some mail in thunderbird on machine X, some in Evolution on machine Y etc. It is also easy to add a webmail service. Its also easier to back up your mail (its all stored on one machine). mbox gets very slow if you store a lot of mail in it. Its basically one big file that represents the whole folder. maildir is superior in many ways! I have run my own small (but with large folders, I am a hoarder) email server for many years and the above approach grew out of frustrations at previous iterations.
Re: help with mencoder/kino
Nick Rout wrote: On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Lee Begg l...@paradise.net.nz wrote: On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:42:16 Barry Marchant wrote: mencoder reports Video stream: 28800.000 kbit/s (360 B/s) size: 1800 bytes 5.000 secs 125 frames Audio stream: 352.800 kbit/s (44100 B/s) size: 220500 bytes 5.000 secs Kino reports Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Impossible frequency?? Any ideas welcome Kino is fairly specific to DV video (ie, video from Digital Video Cameras). One thing about the audio in DV is that it is not 44100 Hz, but is 48000 Hz (16bit @ 48kHz). Try using a higher sampling rate for the audio. Barry Hope this helps. Regards Lee Begg What he said, but also kino converts on import of .avi file. How about importing the original avi into kino and then adding the sound file as soudtrack, and let kino do the muxing? Thanks Nick, problem solved, I have now learnt a lot more about the ability of kino Barry
Re: /var/spool/mail/$USER file locking under Ubuntu
On Wed, 2009-01-14 at 11:47 +1300, Nick Rout wrote: My approach (which doesn't answer your question, but avoids locking issues) is to: 1. deliver to maildirs (I use fetchmail, but your choice is valid too) 2. install a imap server that also access maildir (dovecot is good) 3. get your clients to access the imap store (all support imap). I do exactly the same thing with my mail server. Two other major advantages are that I can access email at any time via webmail or by setting up Thunderbird (or any other mail software) to access email via remote IMAP. This is immensely useful when I'm traveling - I have full email access (all past email and new email) anywhere I have my laptop or a web browser.
Re: /var/spool/mail/$USER file locking under Ubuntu
On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Stephen Irons stephen.ir...@tait.co.nz wrote: I am busy setting up an automatic mail retrieval system at home. It will collect email from a number of different remote POP mailboxes and deliver it to the appropriate local users. Well, that's three different jobs being done there -- one is to collect the mail with POP (which is easy), one is to identify the correct user to deliver to (not especially easy, depending on circumstances), and the third is to deliver the mail to local storage. I'd leave the last job, Mail Delivery, to a specialist MDA tool, such as a proper mail server like postfix. Run it so it's listening only to localhost, and tell getmail to submit the messages it has collected over SMTP to your local postfix. Then, as the others have said, don't ask postfix to use mbox, use maildir and put a IMAP server like dovecot in front of it all. If you were doing this for a single user, you'd probably just teach the front-end mail system (thunderbird, whatever) to collect from multiple accounts in the first place; so given that you're increasing your system complexity with getmail, go and do a proper job and install postfix + dovecot. -jim
Re: /var/spool/mail/$USER file locking under Ubuntu
On Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:25:04 +1300 Jim Cheetham j...@inode.co.nz wrote: On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Stephen Irons stephen.ir...@tait.co.nz wrote: I am busy setting up an automatic mail retrieval system at home. It will collect email from a number of different remote POP mailboxes and deliver it to the appropriate local users. Well, that's three different jobs being done there -- one is to collect the mail with POP (which is easy), one is to identify the correct user to deliver to (not especially easy, depending on circumstances), and the third is to deliver the mail to local storage. I'd leave the last job, Mail Delivery, to a specialist MDA tool, such as a proper mail server like postfix. Run it so it's listening only to localhost, and tell getmail to submit the messages it has collected over SMTP to your local postfix. Technically it's a Local Delivery Agent ( LDA ) tool, not MDA (: I just use procmail... it's so simple. Then, as the others have said, don't ask postfix to use mbox, use maildir and put a IMAP server like dovecot in front of it all. If you were doing this for a single user, you'd probably just teach the front-end mail system (thunderbird, whatever) to collect from multiple accounts in the first place; so given that you're increasing your system complexity with getmail, go and do a proper job and install postfix + dovecot. -jim I've now got to the stage where I only offer IMAP(+S) and web based access to my mail servers unless forced. OK it's more of a headache for the owner of the store to manage and secure, but the ability to read all my mail wherever I am outweighs that 100 fold imo. You could always install your own mail server, and get it delivered directly ( this might've been what Jim meant in his last comment ). But then you've got the added fun of spam filtering and malware detection... if you've got the interest, then it's worthwhile. For me, the acid test is being able to deliver mail reliably to an xtra address: once that works you know you've cracked it! Cheers, Steve -- Steve Holdoway st...@greengecko.co.nz
Re: /var/spool/mail/$USER file locking under Ubuntu
On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Steve Holdoway st...@greengecko.co.nz wrote: I'd leave the last job, Mail Delivery, to a specialist MDA tool, such as a proper mail server like postfix. Run it so it's listening only to localhost, and tell getmail to submit the messages it has collected over SMTP to your local postfix. Technically it's a Local Delivery Agent ( LDA ) tool, not MDA (: I just use procmail... it's so simple. I love TLAs :-) The actual writing to disk is done by the LDA tool, which is usually not available separately from the bigger MDA ... Actually procmail is a nice suggestion: for a small fix to the original problem, getmail could just pipe messages into procmail ... You could always install your own mail server, and get it delivered directly ( this might've been what Jim meant in his last comment ). Not quite; I simply meant running postfix locally as a way to get an MDA/LDA ... but in that light, procmail is a better solution for Stephen's situation I think. Running a full mail server would effectively replace the original POP mailboxes he referred to, and I bet that means he has email addresses in other people's domains, and there's probably no way to do proper forwarding from them (even without breaking SPF!) -jim
Re: Blocking some websites!
On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Navdeep Singh Sidhu navdeepsinghsi...@gmail.com wrote: I would like your help in blocking some websites like YouTube and Bebo from our staff computer. We have an old Compaq running Ubuntu 8.10. ... What do you guys recommend. All help will be appreciated. Install a proxy, something lightweight like junkbuster or a full-featured one like squid. Configure the web browsers to use the proxy. You could then ask the proxy to block access to certain websites by name. You could also leave the Internet unrestricted, but instead pin to the wall every week a list of what websites were visited, what time they were visited, how much data was transferred, and perhaps which username was logged on at the time (if you have different names). If you put in a technical block, someone will get around it. But you might be able to use peer pressure in the workplace to prevent misuse ... and that's really what the end result should be. Or, here's a thought - deinstall the flash player instead. Unless you *need* if for real work, of course. -jim
Re: Blocking some websites!
Navdeep Singh Sidhu wrote: Hi all, I would like your help in blocking some websites like YouTube and Bebo from our staff computer. We have an old Compaq running Ubuntu 8.10. I have tried adding the websites to the /etc/hosts.deny list but nothing happens. /etc/hosts youtube.com 127.0.0.1 result is that hits to google are redirected to localhost. I searched Google and found a temporary solution, but once the pc restarts that rule doesnot work. The following is what i have tried .. * sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -d www.youtube.com -j REJECT * sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -d youtube.l.google.com -j REJECT * sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -d 208.117.236.70 -j REJECT put the commands in rc.local so they're run at start up. HTH Cheers Don What do you guys recommend. All help will be appreciated. Navdeep Sidhu -- Don Gould 31 Acheson Ave, Mairehau, Christchurch, NZ Ph +64 3 348 7235 or + 64 21 114 0699 www.thinkdesignprint.co.nz
Re: Blocking some websites!
On Wednesday 14 January 2009 20:01:49 Navdeep Singh Sidhu wrote: Hi all, I would like your help in blocking some websites like YouTube and Bebo from our staff computer. We have an old Compaq running Ubuntu 8.10. I have tried adding the websites to the /etc/hosts.deny list but nothing happens. I searched Google and found a temporary solution, but once the pc restarts that rule doesnot work. The following is what i have tried .. * sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -d www.youtube.com -j REJECT * sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -d youtube.l.google.com -j REJECT * sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -d 208.117.236.70 -j REJECT What do you guys recommend. All help will be appreciated. Use either IPCop or pfSense. Both are firewalls which can have web filters added. Also add ntop and allow whole world access to the ntop display. This allows monitoring of your entire net at the press of a button to any and everyone in the world. Works wonders in a school situation. -- With Sincerity, Christopher Sawtell
