[SLUG] Linux video editors - any good ?
I need to edit and format videos for uploading to UTube, on Linux, preferably using a free program (no budget !). I last tried this on Linux a few years ago and encountered so many bugs and limitations with Kino, Kdenlive and LIVES that I gave up and used a cheap proprietary Windows program. Is there any fully-usable free Linux editor yet ? thanks Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Android-based smartphones - any drawbacks
Thanks for all the serious feedback, esp. Voytek for battery life discussion and list of sysadmin apps, also Edwin. Sounds like something like Galaxy Nexus with Cyanogen will allow me to seriously experiment - I learned Linux by repairing messes I had made of my system by customizations mixing stock distro with Linux from scratch. Android seems to offer what I do with Linux - mix and match best of breed / what works best apps, as Patrick mentions with Browsers, customise config options etc. i.e. personalising my OS. I'm in a similar position to what Ken mentions re doctors needing an IPhone if they want to use the MIMS app, but apparently medicos are buying Androids nevertheless - libraries I support will be developing an IPhone app to access their catalog... maybe I can get an Android version going. If I was 30 years younger then Marghanita's evidence would have been crucial. Rod On 02/09/12 17:00, Patrick Elliott-Brennan wrote: Rod wrote: I originally asked whether there was any important functionality that Android-based phones lacked compared to the competition, and whether they struggled with any file formats. I then added that this appeared to me to be an issue of available apps and requested confirmation or otherwise of this assumption - the inference I intended was that I assumed that any such issues would not be a function of the operating systems themselves but rather a function of what apps had been written and what they could do. Rather than actually address the questions posters responded with clumsy sarcasm, recast the questions in terms of their pet hobbyhorses and wandered off into moral philosophy. Closest we got was some facts about techniques for extending battery life, which is important and relevant, but I still don't know how Android compares in this area to the competition. Rod Fair enough, Rod. Drifting off the subject... From what I know of those with iPhones (I don't have one, I've got a Samsung Galaxy S2)) , when we compare phones there's little different in the way of applications and thus general, everyday user functionality. I think, as Ken commented, there can be circumstances in which something is only available for iOS (MIMS, as Ken mentioned). The friends who have iPhone 4's have complained about battery life but in many ways this is the consequence of these devices have such a large range of capabilities (web browsing, applications for games and sites, taking photos, listening to music or watching movies etc). For examle, the S2 really needs something like Juice Defender to improve it's battery life, which is not great when compared to my Nokia N95. I can get more than 24 hours if I stop all the automatic synching and endless search for wireless networks. My N95 would give me a couple of days. I would imagine it would come down to whether there was a specific capability you wanted or needed. For example, my Nokia N8 took the best photos and video of any mobile phone out there. There is daylight between it and the next on the list...take your choice. Given your comment in relation to hardware/OS v applications, I'm not aware of any statistics in relation to people jailbreaking their iPhones but my understanding is that people do so because of the limitations of the OS as installed. People also mod Android phones (eg. Cyanogen mods) to provide options which don't exist with the stock install. I've not explored this in any detail so am of no use :) My experience of the browser on stock iPhones is that it's pretty much dreadful. Highly inflexible and difficult to navigate. My theory about the rise of apps in the iOS world is that the dreadful browser on the iPhone has meant that you really do need a separate app to make accessing information or services an imperative. On my Android phone I have a few different browsers (Tor, Firefox, stock, Dolphin and Opera mini) which generally all work well, but on ocassions each has something or does something better than one of the others. For instance, the Blogger app is not as good as using a browser (eg. Firefox) which has been set to 'desktop' mode. Similary, the Google+ app is quite good but it doesn't render .gif's if someone has used them as part of a post. I know this is not a particulary technical reply, but I hope it helps all the same. Regards, Patrick -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Android-based smartphones - any drawbacks ?
On 02/06/12 17:41, Nick Andrew wrote: On Mon, Feb 06, 2012 at 09:34:22AM +0800, James Linder wrote: SNIP While this thread drifts OT the basic issue is tremendously important for us as a group. So ... back to the important questions of whether Android or IOS runs more apps? Nick. I originally asked whether there was any important functionality that Android-based phones lacked compared to the competition, and whether they struggled with any file formats. I then added that this appeared to me to be an issue of available apps and requested confirmation or otherwise of this assumption - the inference I intended was that I assumed that any such issues would not be a function of the operating systems themselves but rather a function of what apps had been written and what they could do. Rather than actually address the questions posters responded with clumsy sarcasm, recast the questions in terms of their pet hobbyhorses and wandered off into moral philosophy. Closest we got was some facts about techniques for extending battery life, which is important and relevant, but I still don't know how Android compares in this area to the competition. Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Android-based smartphones - any drawbacks ?
On 02/04/12 12:32, James Linder wrote: I do not think FOSS vx proprietary software is a moral issue, it is a fettish. Now if others care about your fettish then kewl, and if they are pragmatic in any form words of disapproval are discourteous. Sadly, people these days don't care ... ouch! James-- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html I learned many years ago that I would win no converts to my own personal fetish of vegetarianism by attacking them or even being mildly forceful - in fact, the opposite occurs - when people discover that I am a vegetarian indirectly without my adding any value judgment or opinion, many ask for more information such as benefits and even my views on associated morality. I can leave them to change their own minds if they choose. Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Android-based smartphones - any drawbacks ?
I need to have a smartphone as part of my job needs me to be be able to use and be familiar with all the new social media communications tools. Initial research indicates that Android-based phones have the highest market share and are best value for money. And of course I like Linux. Are there any things they can't do or can't connect to/interface with, which other proprietary systems can ? Any serious comparison documents I can study ? thanks Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Android-based smartphones - any drawbacks ?
Thanks for all the feedback - Galaxy Nexus sounds like a contender. I think it comes down to the range of apps available for the OS, correct ? So are there important apps for IPHone and Windows Phone that Android lacks or doesn't have apps that can provide equivalent functionality ? Clunkiness doesn't bother me so long as the function is possible. Also, are there any commonly-used file formats that Android apps struggle with ? thanks Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Android-based smartphones - any drawbacks ?
I'm not at the cutting edge, I just need to have a smartphone that can do most things and is open-source without participating in holy wars. Can you clarify your comments ? thanks Rod On 02/03/12 14:30, Zenaan Harkness wrote: The most important app to me is that Libre app. Called Freedom or something... not sure what others call it sometimes. If you so insist on a self-centered reason: there's that big brouhaha what, just December or something (can someone remember the name please)? about that key-logging binary blob in the heart of _every_ iOS _and_ android device?!! Seriously, have we already forgotten?! At least with Android/mostly-libre you can go and install your own OS, eg Cyanogen-mod etc. By all means feel free to include that binary blob... What absolutely befuddles my mind, and so saddens my heart, is that we, those who are supposedly somewhat informed in respect of the computing world, don't remember such abominations to all decency, to rights, to common sense, to respect and honour and integrity, barely a month after it bloody happened!@! FFS! Seems we really, actually, don't care. If it shiny, glossy, easy, nice, we in soma happy place, yeah government look after me very well, nice shiny gold cage I in with yummy swipe interface Please note my very royal use of the word we. As RMS said so many years ago, am I prepared to sacrifice some (these days such a very firetruckin little!) convenience, shiny-new-ness, etc, to gain freedom? Am I prepared to do a little extra work, suffer a little extra frustration, to get the kind of freedom my kids would be proud of when the day comes they understand such things, and ask me about why our world is the way it is? D: Here's a present son... S: How does it work dad? D: Just download the source son, and check it out. Might take you a few days... S: What can I do with it dad? D: Whatever you are able to son, just don't stop the next guy from doing what he wants too! To echo so many before us - the only real protection of our freedom, is the love/care/seeking of freedom by the people. That's us. That's you. That's me. Live your rights. Live freedom. Live it or lose it... ...or perhaps a greater range of apps available for the OS is what it really comes down to, correct? Zen On 2012-02-03, Rod Butcherrbutc...@hyenainternet.com wrote: Thanks for all the feedback - Galaxy Nexus sounds like a contender. I think it comes down to the range of apps available for the OS, correct ? So are there important apps for IPHone and Windows Phone that Android lacks or doesn't have apps that can provide equivalent functionality ? Clunkiness doesn't bother me so long as the function is possible. Also, are there any commonly-used file formats that Android apps struggle with ? thanks Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Alternatives to Gnome3
On 11/23/11 21:09, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: elliott-brennan wrote: Keep looking, Erik, I'm curious as to what you finally settle on and why. I seem to have settled on XMonad. I chose it is because it's highly configurable and hackable. I also chose it because its written in Haskell, a language I already know and like. In fact, even XMonad's configuration is done by writing Haskell code. Although XMonad is known as tiling window manager it actually can be configured as a (somewhat primitive) regular WM with over lapping windows and window title bars etc. I am also currently running with gnome-session and gnome-panel (Debian testing/unstable offers an Xmonad with gnome3-fallback option) to provide somewhere for the network manager applet to live. I hope in the near term to ditch as much as possible of the rest of the Gnome because the gnome-fallback stuff is likely to disappear. I also hope to hack/configure XMonad a little more so that it gets a little more gloss and a few more of the features of Gnome2. Erik Does this mean you see Gnome as dying ? I have had the feeling for a while that the community supporting it has dropped below a sustainable level. Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Alternatives to Gnome3
Quoting James Linder j...@tigger.ws: On 14/11/2011, at 9:00 AM, slug-requ...@slug.org.au wrote: The problem here is that with Gnome3 (and they started this attitude in Gnome2), they make it very difficult to do things any way other than the default. I work in tech support, doing a lot of phone support for non-technical users. Let me tell you, and I feel this with all my heart: that's a feature, not a bug. Which may be true for the great unwashed mass, but methinks 'dona toucha da buttons' is (clearly it IS) not the paradigm that suits us (generic) So I venture 'non technical users' is not applicable, and so I fret I would be much more understanding if a less microsoft/apple approach was taken that said 'Here be all the things we have done, help yourself ...' http://wiki.somewhere James-- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html Dunno if I would call my users, back in the world of credit card admin, inquiries, account setup etc, as unwashed masses... but unit managers had pretty tight demands on consistent look and feel, intuitive but complete functionality, yadda yadda - needed to work for power data entry users rusted on to screens they could work with eyes closed, and for the unit manager who might have to use it once a year... but the unit manager and team leader were god, and screens had to be and remain exactly as they had agreed with IT - every button key must keep working as specified. stay in the same place etc. Nothing to do with being dumbed down, but all to do with service levels productivity. Clunky ? Yes. Bulletproof ? Yes. Fast in the hands of an experienced operator ? Yes. Usable by novice if necessary ? Yes. I don't see how Gnome 3 being forced on folks who never asked for it meets above realworld rules. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: Unit - (was [SLUG] Ubuntu 11.10)
Me too.. worrying new trend in Linux - wreck the old reliable user interface that folks have rusted onto, without asking them their opinion, force them to adapt to better interfaces with superior funtionality, usability etc... the old interface is rumoured to still be possible, but nobody has managed to do it... this happens with commercial software for financial reasons which should not apply to opensource. Rod On 10/20/11 16:55, elliott-brennan wrote: Ken Foskey Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:35:51 +1100 Wrote to Jeremy Visser Can someone run through Unity at Slug in detail as a talk. This new interface certainly needs a sales pitch for me. I switched without problems from KDE to Gnome, Windows XP to Windows 7 so why do I need help to work with Unity yet it is 'better'. A very good idea, Ken. Anyone interested - in presenting that is? We could do a remote presentation if you can't make it to the meeting itself. Regards, Patrick -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Cheap Linux/Windows wireless home networking options ?
Good point - I would lean how to build configure a really cheap Linux WAP, but this knowledge would be useless in the workplace, apart from ancillary Linux networking skills I would pick up. The suggestions of various people to find a cheap 2/hand serious WAP and learn with that makes sense, if I am to get employable skills out of the exercise... thanks for all the feedback, I will report back when I have something working. Rod On 10/14/11 08:14, Jeremy Visser wrote: On 13/10/2011, at 22:14, Rod Butcher wrote: My budget for this is tiny, $100 max for the whole setup, as it's only for training, and I don't want to acquire hardware I will have no use for afterward... I don't get it. If the end goal is training, why would you train yourself on an approach that nobody in the real world uses, and will be of almost zero value to you when it comes to configuring some actual hardware? All wireless access points you will find in the wild are done in hardware. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Cheap Linux/Windows wireless home networking options ?
My budget for this is tiny, $100 max for the whole setup, as it's only for training, and I don't want to acquire hardware I will have no use for afterward... So I'm trying to get specific info on whether it is possible to configure a Linux PC with a cheap 80211g/n PCI card to provide a reasonably full-featured WAP - user/computer credential validation, data encryption, network and Internet access. It's fairly simple to configure multiple Ethernet network cards on a Linux box to provide routing and Internet access (iptables NAT)... I had assumed a similar software solution should be possible for wifi-based LAN. ?? thanks Rod On 10/13/11 10:48, Ken Wilson wrote: I have seen them at Reverse Garbage in Addison Rd Marrickville, where whole computing setups have been discarded including routers, their price is always not much. Ken On 12/10/11 22:17, Heracles wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 12/10/11 21:29, Rod Butcher wrote: Sounds like my best option is just to use a cheap PCI wireless card as a WAP - can I do that ? - and use the PC as the router. Does this sound right ? My question then is, if serious businesses use expensive standalone programmable devices to provide WAPs, rather than the $100 routers at my local PC shop, how realistic is the setup I will be training on ? I will be configuring the PC as the router, along with security, encryption, iptables etc... how closely do the skills involved relate to those involved in a realword business setup ? thanks Rod Depends upon the situation. It could be a worthwhile exercise to get a cheap second hand CISCO router, as one of my students did, and learn with that. A relatively new one should be quite cheap and will give you skills in their scripting. Heracles -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk6Vdy4ACgkQybPcBAs9CE8PygCgqp0TLrxxBJYuBROmhj5CP2DO HKYAnRznIS5Gdym34KCNO8X+Qd6SUwLW =h/SR -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Cheap Linux/Windows wireless home networking options ?
What I found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessAccessPoint and http://www.su-root.eu/computing/turn-your-linux-computer-in-a-wireless-access-point-using-hostapd (but not at http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com) is what seems to be the clincher : the chipset of the PCI or USB wireless NIC needs to support Master mode. Now my task appears to be to chaseup chip specs for the cheap NICS available to me ! I will report back when I have it all working. cheers Rod On 10/13/11 23:28, Kevin Shackleton wrote: Rod, Seems to me that pages like: http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/wiki/index.php/Quick_HOWTO_:_Ch13_:_Linux_Wireless_Networking make it fairly plain that with the right card you will get a PC-based AP working hang the extra bits like iptables off it. Which is an achievement in itself - I've never done it. Others have commented that you might be better off focusing on specific other solutions like Cisco, but a) many on-ground examples you might come across would not be Cisco-based so you'll have to manage somehow else and b) if you go to e.g. Cisco, you will only learn that skill-set. So I'm all for starting out as you are suggesting. Then maybe look at an AP modified with Tomato. Then see if you can find a secondhand Cisco e.g. 1xxx or 2xxx series if you come into the funding - I would not bother with the basic 800 series devices because they are made in hardware-specific models rather than having plug-in hardware bits. hth Kevin On 13 October 2011 19:14, Rod Butcher rbutc...@hyenainternet.com mailto:rbutc...@hyenainternet.com wrote: My budget for this is tiny, $100 max for the whole setup, as it's only for training, and I don't want to acquire hardware I will have no use for afterward... So I'm trying to get specific info on whether it is possible to configure a Linux PC with a cheap 80211g/n PCI card to provide a reasonably full-featured WAP - user/computer credential validation, data encryption, network and Internet access. It's fairly simple to configure multiple Ethernet network cards on a Linux box to provide routing and Internet access (iptables NAT)... I had assumed a similar software solution should be possible for wifi-based LAN. ?? thanks Rod On 10/13/11 10:48, Ken Wilson wrote: I have seen them at Reverse Garbage in Addison Rd Marrickville, where whole computing setups have been discarded including routers, their price is always not much. Ken On 12/10/11 22:17, Heracles wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 12/10/11 21:29, Rod Butcher wrote: Sounds like my best option is just to use a cheap PCI wireless card as a WAP - can I do that ? - and use the PC as the router. Does this sound right ? My question then is, if serious businesses use expensive standalone programmable devices to provide WAPs, rather than the $100 routers at my local PC shop, how realistic is the setup I will be training on ? I will be configuring the PC as the router, along with security, encryption, iptables etc... how closely do the skills involved relate to those involved in a realword business setup ? thanks Rod Depends upon the situation. It could be a worthwhile exercise to get a cheap second hand CISCO router, as one of my students did, and learn with that. A relatively new one should be quite cheap and will give you skills in their scripting. Heracles -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk6Vdy4ACgkQybPcBA__s9CE8PygCgqp0TLrxxBJYuBROmhj5C__P2DO HKYAnRznIS5Gdym34KCNO8X+__Qd6SUwLW =h/SR -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/__mailinglists.html http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Cheap Linux/Windows wireless home networking options ?
Sounds like my best option is just to use a cheap PCI wireless card as a WAP - can I do that ? - and use the PC as the router. Does this sound right ? My question then is, if serious businesses use expensive standalone programmable devices to provide WAPs, rather than the $100 routers at my local PC shop, how realistic is the setup I will be training on ? I will be configuring the PC as the router, along with security, encryption, iptables etc... how closely do the skills involved relate to those involved in a realword business setup ? thanks Rod On 10/12/11 17:05, Kevin Shackleton wrote: Rod, for my money a standalone AP is the way to go because it's always on and low power. But if you want to practice with iptables and other security bits and pieces you won't find enough flexibility in a basic AP or one with DD-WRT or Tomato installed; really you must use a PC unless you have the money (e.g. $2000 second-hand) to buy a real router. Cheers, Kevin On 12 October 2011 13:06, Rod Butcher rbutc...@hyenainternet.com mailto:rbutc...@hyenainternet.com wrote: I need to set up a wireless home network, essentially for training myself on networking. It needs to support a couple of Linux and Windows servers and clients such as laptops. Do I need a wireless router, or can I just plug a cheap PCI card into the server that will host the network ? Can anybody recommend cheap Linux-compatible solutions available in Sydney ? thanks Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/__mailinglists.html http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Cheap Linux/Windows wireless home networking options ?
I need to set up a wireless home network, essentially for training myself on networking. It needs to support a couple of Linux and Windows servers and clients such as laptops. Do I need a wireless router, or can I just plug a cheap PCI card into the server that will host the network ? Can anybody recommend cheap Linux-compatible solutions available in Sydney ? thanks Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Which Virtualisation, and why?
The only downside I've found with KVM is its need for processor virtualisation features. I use a cheap laptop without the feature, that I need to keep a load of virtual images on, and for these VirtualBox works great - I use these images for support and portability purposes rather than production data crunching. Are the benefits of KVM related to its production throughput capabilities ? RedHat to me looks to be pushing it as part of branding - it needs flagship technologies to differentiate itself. Any pointers to articles on the subject ? thanks Rod On 01/10/11 21:03, Dean Hamstead wrote: Hi David All the linux big boys are moving fast to KVM. Redhat and IBM have abandoned Xen completely, making it an out of kernel patch set maintained by Citrix and perhaps code from Oracle. Youll find that Debian has also elected to discontinue Xen in the next release. Virtualbox is still nice for desktop quasi-trivial virtualisation. (Im sure someone objects to that, and has taken it to a huge scale...) KVM is still the only in kernel hypervisor (if thats what it is, which it sort of isnt). VMware is free as in beer. At my telco of employ, we are using KVM extensively. Im of the opinion is the most sane design, gives you the most control and follows the unix way of re-using existing components to the nth degree. Chances are its already installed on your reasonably recent release distribution of choice. Dean On 10/01/11 20:57, david wrote: I've migrated a server to virtualbox for the purpose of experimentation (namely, to resolve upgrade issues going from Ubuntu 8.04 to 10.04). I used MondoArchive to clone the hardware server onto a Virtualbox virtual server. All good so far. I'm thinking of building future servers within virtual environments - ie: the server built as a solitary virtual machine within its host. I'm hoping that will make future upgrades, migration and back-up easier. I currently run 3 public servers, none of which are heavily loaded. What virtualisation solutions would people suggest? and is there any reason this is not a good idea? thanks.. David. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Value of Red Hat certification ?
I had consider that - my plan is to actually train myself to be vendor-neutral i.e. familiarise myself with the major distros RHEL, Suze, Ubuntu so that I can administer them all, but to add the RHEL specialisation on top of that, mainly because RHEL is apparently viewed as Number 1 - but I think somebody who can only make a single distro work is pretty useless. I think Red Hat certification will inevitably include a degree of advertising/brainwashing to try to get people to do things there way purely to differentiate their brand, but I'm old enough to see through Fudd. How do employers view this - do they assume that serious admins make sure they are familiar with multiple distroes, and see RHEL certification as a bonus (i..e. the person knows More), or do they assume that Red Hat cert means a person knows Less ? thanks Rod On 05/01/11 12:22, onlyjob wrote: Why Get a Vendor/Distribution *Neutral* Linux Certification? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaGjgdYB1vI -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Value of Red Hat certification ?
Thanks for the feedback folks. My attitude is what one of the posts in the lopsa discussion thread referred to : Actually I can't recall an interview where someone said, I have little experience but I hope these certs will give me a chance to earn that experience. I want to use the cert to get an entry-level position, and build on it from there. Is this a reasonable battle-plan ? Sercond - I agree the official RedHat courses are expensive and am looking around for cheaper alternatives for acquiring the knowhow to pass the RedHat test. I can walk into Dymocks etc and get MCSE selfstudy courses 6 inches thick, is similar for REDHAT available ? thanks Rod On 04/01/11 10:04, Aleksey Tsalolikhin wrote: Hi, Rod. You may find this lopsa-discuss thread of use: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@lists.lopsa.org/msg00097.html Good luck with your career! Aleksey (Unix/Linux sys admin) On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 11:35 PM, Rod Butcher rbutc...@hyenainternet.com wrote: I have a background in mainframe computer programming on IBM systems but want to move out of programming into Linux support. I've rolled my own linux kernnal apps for a few years and have a fair idea of how Linux works, but only in a home-use environment. So - I'm considering getting some proper qualifications and am considering couses : Red Hat System Adminstrator + Network Security Adminstration + Certified Engineer. Total cost = $AU 9100. Any opinions out there about how good an approcah this is - can I get a better return on my retraining investment ? thanks Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Value of Red Hat certification ?
I have a background in mainframe computer programming on IBM systems but want to move out of programming into Linux support. I've rolled my own linux kernnal apps for a few years and have a fair idea of how Linux works, but only in a home-use environment. So - I'm considering getting some proper qualifications and am considering couses : Red Hat System Adminstrator + Network Security Adminstration + Certified Engineer. Total cost = $AU 9100. Any opinions out there about how good an approcah this is - can I get a better return on my retraining investment ? thanks Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Auntie excludes us
James Dumay wrote: XUL is Mozilla only (open source lockin anyone?) Its bullshit that people think that this sort of stuff needs to be done in flv - embedding an mpeg stream is easy enough todo in HTML. This reminds me of the problems St George Bank had using Java applets and acres of bad javascript to allow online banking. After thousands of complaints they dropped the Java applet and javascript and reverted to (gasp) html forms. No more problems or complaints. The pattern seems to be that internet platform incompatibilities arise with unnecessary levels of complexity. Good old right click to download mp3 file is all that anybody wants/needs. Rod Rod James On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 5:04 PM, Rev Simon Rumble [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This one time, at band camp, James Purser wrote: With regard to your query regarding a Linux version - due to the technical requirements of ABC Now we have been unable to find a robust and secure tool for making the Flash based code into a stable Linux version at this time. Translation: We made a technology decision without reference to portability. You pay the price. We are keeping an eye on developments in this area and hope to bring a Linux version to you as soon as practicable. XULRunner, anyone?!?!? -- Rev Simon Rumble [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.rumble.net The Tourist Engineer Just because you're on holiday, doesn't mean you're not a geek. http://engineer.openguides.org/ A 'critic' is a man (or woman) who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men (and women). There is logic in this; he is unbiased - he hates all creative people equally. - Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Auntie excludes us
Bruce Bruen wrote: On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 08:30:33 pm Rod Butcher wrote: This reminds me of the problems St George Bank had using Java applets and acres of bad javascript to allow online banking. After thousands of complaints they dropped the Java applet and javascript and reverted to (gasp) html forms. No more problems or complaints. The pattern seems to be that internet platform incompatibilities arise with unnecessary levels of complexity. Good old right click to download mp3 file is all that anybody wants/needs. Rod Rod snip Acid3 anyone? [url]http://acid3.acidtests.org/[/url] Uh... konqueror segfault... firefox 51/100 Rod -- - http://distributedcomputing.info - find out how to make your pc work for the community -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] do I need /dev/snd for ALSA, if so how to create it ?
I found out that udev is now required to correctly setup /dev for all
devices, including sound cards. Apparently it doesn't startup correctly
on boot, so I've added udevstart to my logon script and all devices are
now correctly setup. ALSA now works.
Rod
On Wed, 2008-03-05 at 15:48 +1100, Rod Butcher wrote:
greetings from sunny Northmead. Apologies if this is a duplicate, but I
didn't receive a copy of my first sending.
I've cruised along with a 2.6.18 kernel that I compiled myself, for a
while now, on a Gigabtye board with NVidia NForce 430 southbridge, AMD
Athlon X2 cpu. For various reasons I've had to upgrade to the 2.6.24.3
kernel, so I compiled it with Mandrake's 4.02 gcc compiler. No problems,
up and running with X OK. But no ALSA sound now.
Research indicates the builtin sound chip is MCP51 High Definition
Audio, ALC880 codec, requiring snd-hda-intel driver. That is included as
a module, and I also included the codec in the kernel build. I can load
snd-hda-intel OK, it shows up in lsmod along with soundcore, snd, etc :-
bash-3.00# lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_hda_intel 321700 0
sg 35352 0
snd_hwdep 8584 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_seq_dummy 3524 0
snd_seq_midi_event 7616 0
snd_seq55392 2 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 7508 2 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq
snd_pcm80776 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 21640 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 8848 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd57128 7
snd_hda_intel,snd_hwdep,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 7328 1 snd
But ALSA can't detect the sound card. All apps return error messages
saying device not found. E.g. :
bash-3.00#aplay --list-devices
aplay: device_list:207: no soundcards found...
bash-3.00# alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or
directory
Yet the device shows up in /proc :-
bash-3.00# cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xf510 irq 22
So my question is : where does ALSA look for the sound card ? What is it
expecting to find that is wrong or missing ? I have found doco that
takes for granted that if it shows up in ?proc/Asound/cards then ALSA
will find it, no explanations of what it means if it can't.
I've tried gdb with aplayer and get this, which is followed by the error
message :-
Breakpoint 3, snd_card_load1 (card=0) at cards.c:47
47 sprintf(control, SND_FILE_CONTROL, card);
(gdb) n
49 open_dev = snd_open_device(control, O_RDONLY);
(gdb) n
51 if (open_dev 0) {
(gdb) n
53 sprintf(aload, SND_FILE_LOAD, card);
(gdb) print control
$7 = /dev/snd/controlC0, '\0' repeats 11 times
I have no /dev/snd ... is this the problem ? I've tried setting it up
with makedev, but that just returns
bash-3.00# cat /dev/snd/controlC0
cat: /dev/snd/controlC0: No such device
even though it appears as a file.
So - why no /dev/snd, do I really need it for ALSA, and why was it
automagically there for my old kernel ? Any doco around on this that
goes into nuts and bolts ? Further reading seems to indicate that udev
now seys up /dev system, so does this mean my udev is broken ? It worked
OK for my 2.6.18 kernel - apart from my USB printer, for which I had to
use mknod to setup /dev/lp0. I tried mknod to create /dev/snd, but no
luck.
thanks
Rod
--
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Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] do I need /dev/snd for ALSA, if so how to create it ?
greetings from sunny Northmead !
I've cruised along with a 2.6.18 kernel that I compiled myself, for a
while now, on a Gigabtye board with NVidia NForce 430 southbridge, AMD
Athlon X2 cpu. For various reasons I've had to upgrade to the 2.6.24.3
kernel, so I compiled it with Mandrake's 4.02 gcc compiler. No problems,
up and running with X OK. But no ALSA sound now.
Research indicates the builtin sound chip is MCP51 High Definition
Audio, ALC880 codec, requiring snd-hda-intel driver. That is included as
a module, and I also included the codec in the kernel build. I can load
snd-hda-intel OK, it shows up in lsmod along with soundcore, snd, etc :-
bash-3.00# lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_hda_intel 321700 0
sg 35352 0
snd_hwdep 8584 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_seq_dummy 3524 0
snd_seq_midi_event 7616 0
snd_seq55392 2 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 7508 2 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq
snd_pcm80776 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 21640 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 8848 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd57128 7
snd_hda_intel,snd_hwdep,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 7328 1 snd
But ALSA can't detect the sound card. All apps return error messages
saying device not found. E.g. :
bash-3.00#aplay --list-devices
aplay: device_list:207: no soundcards found...
bash-3.00# alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or
directory
Yet the device shows up in /proc :-
bash-3.00# cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xf510 irq 22
So my question is : where does ALSA look for the sound card ? What is it
expecting to find that is wrong or missing ? I have found doco that
takes for granted that if it shows up in ?proc/Asound/cards then ALSA
will find it, no explanations of what it means if it can't.
I've tried gdb with aplayer and get this, which is followed by the error
message :-
Breakpoint 3, snd_card_load1 (card=0) at cards.c:47
47 sprintf(control, SND_FILE_CONTROL, card);
(gdb) n
49 open_dev = snd_open_device(control, O_RDONLY);
(gdb) n
51 if (open_dev 0) {
(gdb) n
53 sprintf(aload, SND_FILE_LOAD, card);
(gdb) print control
$7 = /dev/snd/controlC0, '\0' repeats 11 times
I have no /dev/snd ... is this the problem ? I've tried setting it up
with makedev, but that just returns
bash-3.00# cat /dev/snd/controlC0
cat: /dev/snd/controlC0: No such device
even though it appears as a file.
So - why no /dev/snd, do I really need it for ALSA, and why was it
automagically there for my old kernel ? Any doco around on this that
goes into nuts and bolts ?
thanks
Rod
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] do I need /dev/snd for ALSA, if so how to create it ?
greetings from sunny Northmead. Apologies if this is a duplicate, but I
didn't receive a copy of my first sending.
I've cruised along with a 2.6.18 kernel that I compiled myself, for a
while now, on a Gigabtye board with NVidia NForce 430 southbridge, AMD
Athlon X2 cpu. For various reasons I've had to upgrade to the 2.6.24.3
kernel, so I compiled it with Mandrake's 4.02 gcc compiler. No problems,
up and running with X OK. But no ALSA sound now.
Research indicates the builtin sound chip is MCP51 High Definition
Audio, ALC880 codec, requiring snd-hda-intel driver. That is included as
a module, and I also included the codec in the kernel build. I can load
snd-hda-intel OK, it shows up in lsmod along with soundcore, snd, etc :-
bash-3.00# lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_hda_intel 321700 0
sg 35352 0
snd_hwdep 8584 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_seq_dummy 3524 0
snd_seq_midi_event 7616 0
snd_seq55392 2 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 7508 2 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq
snd_pcm80776 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 21640 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 8848 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd57128 7
snd_hda_intel,snd_hwdep,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 7328 1 snd
But ALSA can't detect the sound card. All apps return error messages
saying device not found. E.g. :
bash-3.00#aplay --list-devices
aplay: device_list:207: no soundcards found...
bash-3.00# alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or
directory
Yet the device shows up in /proc :-
bash-3.00# cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xf510 irq 22
So my question is : where does ALSA look for the sound card ? What is it
expecting to find that is wrong or missing ? I have found doco that
takes for granted that if it shows up in ?proc/Asound/cards then ALSA
will find it, no explanations of what it means if it can't.
I've tried gdb with aplayer and get this, which is followed by the error
message :-
Breakpoint 3, snd_card_load1 (card=0) at cards.c:47
47 sprintf(control, SND_FILE_CONTROL, card);
(gdb) n
49 open_dev = snd_open_device(control, O_RDONLY);
(gdb) n
51 if (open_dev 0) {
(gdb) n
53 sprintf(aload, SND_FILE_LOAD, card);
(gdb) print control
$7 = /dev/snd/controlC0, '\0' repeats 11 times
I have no /dev/snd ... is this the problem ? I've tried setting it up
with makedev, but that just returns
bash-3.00# cat /dev/snd/controlC0
cat: /dev/snd/controlC0: No such device
even though it appears as a file.
So - why no /dev/snd, do I really need it for ALSA, and why was it
automagically there for my old kernel ? Any doco around on this that
goes into nuts and bolts ? Further reading seems to indicate that udev
now seys up /dev system, so does this mean my udev is broken ? It worked
OK for my 2.6.18 kernel - apart from my USB printer, for which I had to
use mknod to setup /dev/lp0. I tried mknod to create /dev/snd, but no
luck.
thanks
Rod
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] How do I mount an audio Cd ?
While I appreciate there is some technical issue involved here, as a PC user I expect a tool (like e.g. ls, nautilus or whatever) that professes to give me a list of files on a storage medium, to do this for all storage media - and to me an audio cd is just that, with one or more files or tracks or whatever on it. In this case I presume it would be trivial to incorporate whatever voodoo cdparanoia uses and make ls display the fact that there is an audio file called xyz on the cd I just loaded. Any mount command would presumably be doing something quite different than what is done for e.g. vfat, but to the user it's all the same. What I'm getting at is, it's what it means to the user that matters, not what's going on behind the scenes. MS grasped this brilliantly. cheers Rod On Sun, 2005-03-13 at 12:25 +1100, Benno wrote: On Sun Mar 13, 2005 at 01:32:58 +1000, QuantumG wrote: Jeff Waugh wrote: Windows is lying a little bit, to give you a nicer interface. Audio CDs are not like data CDs, and cannot be mounted. From a purely philosophical point of view, what would be a good reason for not have a kernel module that mounts audio CDs by interpreting the red book format? Well if you have the philosophy of 'only do it in the kernel if you *have* to', then there is no reason to put it in the kernel, as has already been proven it is able to be done quite well at user level. Seems kind of silly to have code at the application level doing this low level interpretation. From my p.o.v it seems silly to have thi kind of code in the kernel when clearly it can be done just as well at user-level. Benno -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: How do I mount an audio Cd ?
1. In what sense am I not listening to what people are telling me ? Who said anything about using standard guis like nautilus to display audio files ? The discussion to date was about whether the necessary functionality to directly read audio fioles should be in the kernel or user space, if I understand correctly, and various standalone utilities were recommended to access the audio cd contents as files. 2.I was not annoyed about anything until you piped up with your sarcasm. I didn't actually suggest any method.. I was exprssing my opinion that the typical user expected consistency despite the fact that behind the scenes different things may actually be happening. 3·Until now I wasn't aware of a dir command. I tried as you suggested dir d: and it returned dir: d\:: No such file or directory. man says dir lists directory contents. If I can't mount the cd as a directory how does the command list its contents ? So.. if you really want to help be constructive, otherwise keep quiet. I have no time for petty nitpicking. Rod On Sun, 2005-03-13 at 16:09 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 04:01:49PM +1100, Rod Butcher wrote: What I'm getting at is, it's what it means to the user that matters, not what's going on behind the scenes. MS grasped this brilliantly. You're not listening to what the people are telling you. There *is* magic in the relevant GUI applications to do what you want to do -- get a list of tracks on a CD as wav files. This is precisely what Windows gives you, as well. You appear to be annoyed because people are telling you that your suggested method isn't optimal. Yet you're saying it's [...] not what's going on behind the scenes that matters. And as far as not being able to ls /cdrom and get a list of tracks, I'd suggest you try dir d: sometime and see how far you get. - Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] [Fwd: How do I mount an audio Cd ?]
As usual, right after posting I discovered that cdparanoia allows me to transfer an audio file to disk as wav. Rod Forwarded Message From: Rod Butcher [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: slug@slug.org.au Subject: How do I mount an audio Cd ? Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 20:35:34 +1100 I have some audio cds I need to edit. How can I mount them so I can open the audio track in an audio editor, or at least copy the track to .wav ? I get /dev/cdrom: Input/output error mount: /dev/cdrom: can't read superblock if I try to mount it On windows I used to be able to see the audio tracks as files in the file browser. thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] How do I mount an audio Cd ?
I have some audio cds I need to edit. How can I mount them so I can open the audio track in an audio editor, or at least copy the track to .wav ? I get /dev/cdrom: Input/output error mount: /dev/cdrom: can't read superblock if I try to mount it On windows I used to be able to see the audio tracks as files in the file browser. thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] security different on vfat compared to ext ?
One last question before I give up. ls -l on the webserver directory shows :- drwxr--r-- 10 root root 8192 Mar 2 15:35 Webserver/ and all its contents. I undestand this to mean that the owner, owner's group and others have read access. Experimentatation shows tis not to be the case - I logged on as apache and another user and did not have read access. Does this mean that the second and third rs are spurious in the case of vfat ? If so, this clears up a mystery for me and makes sense of what people have said : that vfat only knows about its owner, nothing else, hence only the owner, hence creator, can even read it. Correct ? thanks to you all for your patience Rod Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Peter Chubb wrote: Rod == Rod Butcher [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Rod Apache runs as uid gid 72, so I changed fstab to :- /dev/hdh1 Rod /Win2k vfat defaults,umask=002,uid=72,gid=72 0 0 and remounted Rod /Win2k. Still no dice, Apache wouldn't read it. ??? I added Do an ls -l on the mounted partition to make sure that the permissions on the files are OK. Check /etc/apache/httpd.conf to make sure thay Apache runs as uid72 when it accesses things. It'll have lines like User www-data Group www-data -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] security different on vfat compared to ext ?
Hello sluggers, I've moved an Apache intranet I run on my home office from an ext3 to a vfat partition. I did this by copying the DocumentRoot using nautilus and changing the conf files. Apache now returns You don't have permission to access /bookmarks.htm on this server to the browser. I don't have this problem if I copy the webserver directory to another ext3 partition - seemingly proving that I'm changing the necessary conf info. So - is there something different about ext and vfat security, necessitating some more sophisticated directory copy process ? Thanks Rod Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] security different on vfat compared to ext ?
Apache runs as uid gid 72, so I changed fstab to :- /dev/hdh1 /Win2k vfat defaults,umask=002,uid=72,gid=72 0 0 and remounted /Win2k. Still no dice, Apache wouldn't read it. ??? I added apache to root user group (yeah, I know... just as a test) but still didn't work - I thought that if apache was in the root group it should gain all the access priviliges of root ? Reason I'm using vfat is I want to be able to fall back immediately to Win2k dualbooted if something goes wrong with Linux... hence I've put email, working .docs etc on this common partition. Is there a better way ? I hadn't intended to get bogged down with security issues... thanks Rod Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Shaun Butler wrote: Phil Scarratt wrote: Michael Lake wrote: Rod Butcher wrote: Hello sluggers, I've moved an Apache intranet I run on my home office from an ext3 to a vfat partition. I did this by copying the DocumentRoot using nautilus and changing the conf files. Apache now returns You don't have permission to access /bookmarks.htm on this server to the browser. I don't have this problem if I copy the webserver directory to another ext3 partition - seemingly proving that I'm changing the necessary conf info. So - is there something different about ext and vfat security, necessitating some more sophisticated directory copy process ? Surely there would be permissions problems as vfat does not have the ownership or permissions that unix files do. What happens if as root you su to whatever user apache runs as and then try to read the vfat files? If you find that apache cant read the files then you have found the error. If it can read them then look at the conf file again maybe. Mike I believe it would depend on the permissions set when mounting the vfat partition. You would need specify extra options for who gets read/write access in fstab I think... Fil Fil is correct. If you HAD to use a VFAT partition to store web files for Apache, then you could ensure appropriate permissions are set for files on that VFAT partition by adding options at the end of your mounting statement in /etc/fstab: /dev/hdb1 /mnt/data vfatdefaults,umask=002,uid=500,gid=100 0 0 The uid and gid specify the user and group ownerships and the umask sets the octal permissions of files on that partition hth Shaun -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Stupidest law of the year candidate!
I think such illegal stuff together with copyright violation indicates we have to face up to the regulation of the Internet like any other news or communication media. A web or news hoster has the same status as printing press, and somebody in Oz browsing illegal website content hosted in xyzland is in pretty much the same position as somebody who ordered naughty books through the mail years ago. Hence, firstly, the onus will fall on hosting services to vet the content of the sites they host to avoid risk of prosecution, secondly commmunication channel will need vetting, thirdly the browser/newsreader will need some sort of filter. One way out I can envisage is requiring a compulsory rating to get a website published, i.e. formalising the voluntary system already in existence, having police regularly inspect the website for rating abuse... the whole system as we know it could slow down to a crawl, and lose its current anarchic status, leaving only the mass-media feelgood crap on the new legal web : What moronicity do you want to enhance your download experience with today ?. Rod On Thu, 2005-02-24 at 08:34 +0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Basically, it makes Australian ISP's liable for $55000 fines if their service can be USED to access child pornography and they don't report it to the federal police. Furrfu! If I was running an ISP, I'd just report the entire internet and be done with it. *Any* internet connection can be used to access child porn if you know where to look. As abhorrent as I find the concept of child pornography, this just has to be the stupidest law of the year. You might as well fine Telstra or Optus because child pornographers can talk to each other, if they know the right number! If you read further it doesn't seem as bad. I think the article is probably poorly written. Other new sources I've heard (JJJ radio), suggests that it if they are made aware of a particular site carrying child-porn, and do not restrict access to that. Of course, there is a bit of a problem here, how can they check it? Since that is also illegal. And who would make them aware of the child porn? Because then you would have had to access the porn in the first place. So yeah, OK, it is stupid ;) A whole act of parliment forever defeated by ssh port forwarding !!! James -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] FC Boot problem
And about the storm incident - how common is it to use surge protectors here? I I've been running my home office pc from a bottom-of-the range ($300 in 2000, i.e. not cheap) APC ups unit, protects against power surges and allows clean shutdown if the battery goes flat because of a prolonged outage (millisecond outages seem to occur frequently, would otherwise cause a reboot). The real problem is the monitor, not enough juice to provide 100 watts to a 17 crt for very long, as last Saturday. Any recommendations of a low-wattage monitor that isn't financially crippling ? thanks Rod On Wed, 2005-02-23 at 14:06 +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, How about running mkswap on the swap partition? It's not like you will lose critical data from doing this, right? And about the storm incident - how common is it to use surge protectors here? I found them in almost all the stores which sell electrical stuff, could get a bit pricy (up to 180$) but seems to worth any cent, isn't it? Cheers, --Amos On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 13:40:43 +1100, Simon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, I am having some trouble with one FC3 server, when it was re-booted after being physically relocated the boot sequence hangs at 'starting swap space' and stays there until i do CTRL-C on the keyboard, sometimes a number of times. It has been re-booted a couple of times and does this every time. It then seems to have some services not started which may be because of what I hjave to do on the keyboard. There are no errors displayed when shutting down or booting, it never gives the message about running repairs on the HDD. It was originally shut down cleanly, but it has been through a couple of storm inspired blackouts lately, one of which took out the power supply on the ADSL modem. Any clues appreciated Simon Bryan IT Manager OLMC LMB 14 North Parramatta [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel: fax: mobile: 96833300 98901466 0414238002 Add me to your address book...Want a signature like this? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- Your email is protected by Mailshell -- To block spam or change delivery options: http://www.mailshell.com/control.html?a=balatsrial4tlprafm_jqupsjnpz1k Wouldn't you rather have amos.shapira.com as your personal domain? http://rd.mailshell.com/ad465 Earn up to $3 for each of your friends who signs up with Mailshell! http://rd.mailshell.com/sp5 -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] libtool problem ?
Hello sluggers, can anybody tell me what would cause libtool to create a .la file with __LIBGL_PATH__/libGL.la in it instead of /usr/X121R6/lib ? I thought such values were internal system variables. Glibc, faulty build script, macro, ??? A pointer in the right direction would help ! thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] list of distros
I think in a capitalist system, all these leeches are in fact contributing something, they're filling the user-friendliness niche, i.e. they've turned Linux from a geek hobby into a system useable by the techophobe public. Competition enforces the best will prevail. This frees up the developers to concentrate on developing. The first post included :- Xandros was able to recognise all other ditributions on my hard discs and give them a place on the boot selection screen. So that's what they're charging for, some added value. Before these leeches came around you'ld get messages like ookelfoo could not load flugelbar.so, invalid vorplethreep and your box would freeze up. cheers Rod On Fri, 2005-02-18 at 13:18 +1000, QuantumG wrote: Dean Hamstead wrote: sorry, i just didnt like the tone of the email. im 100% debian and bsd Wow, I'm being chastised for things I *didn't* say now. Cool. Yes, as I understand it Xandros doesn't not participate in the open source community. They just leech what they can get, add value and try to sell it. No, there's no *requirement* that they participate in the community. I just wanted to know if I had this right. It's really hard to tell if Xandros gives anything back and I was wondering if anyone knew if they do. Obviously when choosing to pay for a linux distribution I'd like to know things like this so I can factor it into my decision making process. If there is a choice between two equally good, equally priced linux distributions and I know that one of them actually contributes something to the community and the other is just a leech I'd probably go with the one that contributes something to the community. But that wasn't the point of my inquiry, I just wanted to know if I had my facts straight or not. Trent -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] C newbie seeks directions
Hello Sluggers, I'm having to teach myself some C so I can deal with debugging problems with C modules used by perl (my primary interest is the perl scripts, but I'm tired of feeling helpless when C programs won't build or just die). I've found an online university course tutorial which covers basic data types, operators, functions, prototyping, structures, pointers, malloc :- http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/ It's dated 1999. Should this be enough, any major changes since then, any recommended tutorials out there ? Also - am I OK just working with a text editor like Gedit, or do I really need to use some API to do things properly ? Recommended newbie-friendly C mailing lists ? Anything else I should study to do this properly ? - I'm finding things like foo.xs which are used to generate foo.c for instance, so is there some tutorial on typical methods used for generating C sources modules ? thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] C newbie seeks directions
I'm confused by what you mean here. An application programming interface (API) has little to do with a text editor. d'uh... I meant IDE or programmers workbench. thanks for responding Benno, James, Trent . cheers Rod On Thu, 2005-02-17 at 14:39 +1100, Benno wrote: On Thu Feb 17, 2005 at 14:32:14 +1100, Rod Butcher wrote: Hello Sluggers, I'm having to teach myself some C so I can deal with debugging problems with C modules used by perl (my primary interest is the perl scripts, but I'm tired of feeling helpless when C programs won't build or just die). I've found an online university course tutorial which covers basic data types, operators, functions, prototyping, structures, pointers, malloc :- http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/ It's dated 1999. Should this be enough, any major changes since then, any recommended tutorials out there ? That will be fine. Unlike all these new languages C hasn't really changed much. The latest spec was in 1999, however justa bout any tutorial out there will be ok. Also - am I OK just working with a text editor like Gedit, or do I really need to use some API to do things properly ? I'm confused by what you mean here. An application programming interface (API) has little to do with a text editor. But basically the answer is yes, any text editor is fine for writing C, however i would recommend an editor that does syntax hilighting. (E.g: emacs, vim, nedit, thousands of others). Recommended newbie-friendly C mailing lists ? There are plently of C coders on this mailing list who would be happy answering questions. Anything else I should study to do this properly ? - I'm finding things like foo.xs which are used to generate foo.c for instance, so is there some tutorial on typical methods used for generating C sources modules ? I'm not sure what a .xs file is, generally you don't generate .c files, you write them. Benno -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Timezone and Daylight Savings Time
Quoting from Lawlink : Standard time in New South Wales (known as Eastern Standard Time)... Daylight saving begins at 2 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on the last Sunday in October... Therefore, at 2 a.m. standard time on the last Sunday in October clocks are put forward one hour- the time then becomes 3 a.m. summer time.. Maybe we should call it New South Wales Summer Daylight Saving Time or NSWSDST so we know we're not on Queensland Curtain Fading Time. Rod On Tue, 2005-02-01 at 14:36 +1100, Jesus M. Salvo Jr. wrote: Christopher JS Vance wrote: On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 01:43:11PM +1100, Jesus M. Salvo Jr. wrote: When I run the 'date' command while we are in daylight savings time, it says: Tue Feb 1 13:35:07 EST 2005 1) Why is it EST ? Shouldn't it be EDT or AEDT ? S for Summer. We don't do Daylight Time here. Huh ? What do you mean we don't do daylight time here in NSW ? http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/crd.nsf/pages/time2 There are no legal or universal abbreviations for timezones in Australia. I've also seen EASST and EADT. In some places, I think it's also called L (or K in Queensland, right now...). http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/au/edt.html And someone in Norway knows something that Australian governments and people don't? 2) Anyone know how to change the output of date so that it shows the GMT offset instead ? Check the manual pages date(1) or strftime(3) if you have them. Depends on your OS. I know that you can format the output of the date command. What I was after was having the _default_ ( that is, no options ) output of date to display GMT offset instead of EST. -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] revovery of deleted file ?
Hello gurus, can somebody tell me how to recover a deleted file ? I created a .doc file using Openoffice, saved it... Openoffice got killed, when I restarted it it automatically recovered the file but then I closed Openoffice as I didn't want to edit the file further... the file then seems to have been deleted. So.. can I recover such a deleted file ? thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Linux and SATA drives - any particular problems?
Hi Patrick, the SATA problem only started from kernel 2.6.8 onwards. Mandrake 10 shipped with 2.6.3 which works fine with SATA (I personally ran this combination with no probs - SATA HD, Mandrake 10, 2.6.3.7 kernel, Gigabyte m/b with Via chipset). However - I had problems with 2 different Seagate Sata (they started going to sleep after a few months... could be an issue with their power save feature)... no problems with Western Digital. cheers Rod On Sat, 2005-01-29 at 07:45 +1100, Elliott-Brennan wrote: Hi all, I'm considering upgrading to a newer computer. I've noticed some people having problems installing on SATA drives and so am looking for some advice. I've noticed that many of them are now being offered with SATA HDDs and am wondering about the status of SATA with Linux in general and Mandrake 10.0 Official specifically? (Man 10.1 isn't playing nice with the scanner I got working under 10.0 - thanks Darren - and so I'm presently sticking with 10.0) Are there any specific issues in relation to particular types of motherboards, SATA drives (and Man 10.0)? Are there some mobo/SATA combos to avoid/ aim for? Thanks. -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] St George Internet Banking
I can confirm that Firefox 1 + Sun Java 1.5 + the ?bhjs=0 doodad at the end of the redirect URL works OK without any spoofing now, I've just completed a transaction. How about we together approach StGeorge and :- 1. Thank them for getting it to work (well almost) - hey, everybody likes praise. 2. Tell them all they now need to do is fixup the problem requiring the ?bhjs=0 doodad... should only cost them say 3 manweeks. We could even give them the full solution. 3. Recommend they add Galeon Firefox 1 + Sun Java 1.5 on Linux to their list of Supported Platforms / Clients listed on the website, and in future continue to support at least this combination. Rod Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel John Clarke wrote: On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 11:13:43 +1100, Mary Gardiner wrote: Note for people tracking this: I tend to try and keep up with the latest developments at http://puzzling.org/computing/help/banking I've read reports that it doesn't work with Galeon, and after trying many times I was starting to believe them ... but today, I finally got it to work with Galeon 1.2.11 (RH 7.3). It needs: - Sun Java 1.5.0 (jre-1.5.0_01-fcs). Sun j2re-1.4.2_06-fcs (or any other 1.4.x) doesn't work. Blackdown Java doesn't work. If you have an earlier version of Java installed, you must restart your browser after installing 1.5.0. - Go to https://ibank.stgeorge.com.au/html/redirect.asp?bhjs=0. No user agent spoofing is necessary (good, because Galeon won't do it). - Cookies (expire at end of session, accept from current server only), pop-ups, Java and Javascript must all be enabled. Cheers, John -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] St George Internet Banking
Indeed, I checked again and It now works with Firefox 1, Sun Java 1.5.. no spoofing or suffixes at the end of the redirect URL needed. As I said my previous message, we could approach StGeorge as group and get them to commit to supporting this combination officially. Rod Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Marek Wawrzyczny wrote: Hi, I am using St George internet banking on Gentoo Linux Firefox 1.0 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041116 Firefox/1.0). It works perfectly for me, no workarounds, no agent spoofing, simply following the site's links. I was unable to use internet banking until I compiled and installed Sun's JDK 1.5.0 (I do a bit of coding, I'm sure the JRE would work too). I also seem to remember to had to link the java plugin manually and I had a problem where the Mozilla Java plugin had to be compiled using a similar version of c compiler (gcc) as the browser (I think). I cannot remember the exact details of the problem or the solution unfortunately, but a search on Google may yield something. The key was to search for a Mozilla Java problem as opposed to a Firefox Java problem. I hope this helps someone out there. Cheers, Marek Wawrzyczny On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:13, Mary Gardiner wrote: Note for people tracking this: I tend to try and keep up with the latest developments at http://puzzling.org/computing/help/banking -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: FIXED: Debian 2.6.8 kernel not loading device drivers for / (Re: [SLUG] /dev/console not found)
Sounds like you've made some great progress on the 2.6.8 Sata front.. I'm a Mandrake muppet and don't have /etc/mkinitrd/modules... can you suggest what this might be called in Madrake / Redhat-speak ? Can you attach a copy of the file ? thanks Rod (who is still stuck with the sata-ide kludge) Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Mary Gardiner wrote: A followup on my problem with putting Debian's build of the 2.6.8 kernel on a machine whose root partition is on a SATA drive (Silicon Image SATA controller)... more for the benefit of the archives than anything else. First a brief recap since my original message [1] was a month ago: I tried to upgrade a system running kernel 2.6.3 (Debian build, with an initrd) to Debian's build of 2.6.8. I was getting this error: pivot_root: No such file or directory /sbin/init: 424: cannot open dev/console: No such file Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init! Eventually the consensus was tha the initrd mustn't be loading the appropriate driver for my SATA drive before attempting to pivot_root to my root partition, hence causing the kernel to panic. Anyway, after a bunch of mucking around I finally got it to work like this: 1. As per [2], edit /etc/mkinitrd/modules to contain a line with the name of the driver it should use for the drive containing the root partition. In the case of the Silicon Image controller there is a choice of drivers: - sata_sil, the libata driver that makes the drive behave like a scsi device. I believe this is the preferred driver now. - siimage, the old driver that makes it behave like an ide device. I haven't actually tested this one in 2.6.8, although I was using it in 2.6.3 2. Reinstall the kernel package (I believe this is just the easiest way of getting it to build a new initrd with the right module included). 2a. If you went with sata_sil above, make sure you fix your bootloader to point at /dev/sdaX as the root partition rather than /dev/hdeX before rebooting 3. Reboot into new kernel I found this out after quite a bit of mucking around with initrds and cramfs which I won't bother you with. I do hope I never need that arcane knowledge again. :) -Mary [1] http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug/2004/12/msg00083.html [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2005/01/msg00342.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] where do xyz-config scripts get created ?
Can somebody point me to info on how xyz-config scripts get created ? I have a gimp compile wanting gimpprint-config, but the gimprint build doesn't generate it.. some developer-fu required here ? thanks Rod Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] how to get shell script to supply password ?
I need to get my shell script to login to something and then enter a password at a prompt.. i.e. unattended operation. I can't get the script to feed it the password, it always prompts me.. lets say userid=xx, password=yy xyz login xx password : at this point I want the shell script to feed it the password yy I've tried | , to no avail. Read the manpages. no dice. pointers greatfully received thanks, Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] St George Internet Banking
I treat issues like this as solution engineering - they are problems that need to be fixed, not just put aside and another way found to do the job... otherwise you end up with a pile of things that still don't work and a load of halfbaked kludgy work practices. Or to be specific, I can't change banks every six months. So, I'm still available to cooperate with any of you who want to get on StGeorge's case in an organized fashion. cheers Rod Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Stuart Guthrie wrote: I hope the just switch banks then suggestion won't apepar in every thread though. I think it is useful and important to let banks and providors know that if they are not up to scratch, they will lose business. As such, I think mentioning the 'switch' alternative is more relevant is some of the posts. Also - certainly switching banks is, for many people 'really easy' and in the case of St George much easier than getting their poxy interface working. Stu On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 15:35, Mary Gardiner wrote: On Thu, Jan 13, 2005, Stuart Guthrie wrote: But of course, who wouldn't weigh up the financial implications? I have no idea who wouldn't, but I wouldn't call such a decision really easy as you did in your initial post. Alas, these considerations mean that the latest way to use St George Internet banking with Linux may be with us for some time. I hope the just switch banks then suggestion won't apepar in every thread though. -Mary -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] StGeorge online banking Linux
Hi Ben, I installed the Sun 1.5 Java, but even with Firefox 1.0 I have to spoof as IE5 Mac, else it just dies at the redirect screen, same as Firefox 0.93. I'm happy to cooperate with you guys in a letterwriting campaign to StGeorge, perhaps we could discuss an effective approach offline. cheers Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Ben Stanley wrote: Hi Sonia + all, I think the simplest advice is to install Sun Java 1.5.0, as that seems to work from at least two browsers without user agent spoofing. That would seem to be quite usable, even if not ´supported´. However, if they change something to stop that from working, then I think we have a good cause to start a letter writing campaign. It would also be good if they would add Linux to their list of explicitly supported operating systems. Is this what you had in mind as a goal for your lobbying emails? Ben. On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 15:07, Sonia Hamilton wrote: Hi, I know this is a long running Slug thread (StGeorge online banking and their lack of support for Linux), and that you can get around it using UserAgent spoofing. But given the new warning StGeorge are putting on their site when you logon, and the latest IE6/XP/SP2 security advisory [1], a few lobbying emails to StGeorge wouldn't go astray :-) (yes, I read SlashDot [2] too...). [1] http://secunia.com/advisories/12889/ [2] http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/01/09/0737248.shtml?tid=172tid=113tid=218 -- Sonia Hamilton . Everything has been globalized except our consent George Monbiot __ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Cups print output disappearing
Sluggers, after 6 months of OK printing, print jobs now disappear into the ether... my Epson stylus parallel printer is physically OK as it works with the dualbooted Win2K. Only changes I'm aware of are that I've upgraded from Gnome 2.4 to 2.9 (I did this weeks ago but this is the first time since that I've used the printer). Amongst loads of what look like routine messages in /var/log/cups/error_log I always get the following :- [09/Jan/2005:21:25:15 +1100] Unable to convert file 0 to printable format for job 22! I [09/Jan/2005:21:25:15 +1100] Hint: Do you have ESP Ghostscript installed? Any other things to look for ? I have gnughostscript-8.01 installed.. + latest version of cups gimpprint from Mandrake 10.1... what difference should ESP Ghostscript make ? Thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] St George Internet Banking
I've just paid my rent online at StG - this week I had to spoof as I.E.5 Mac.. using Firefox 0.93. You need to prove to them that you're not a communist using FREE SOFTWARE. cheers Rod On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 23:02 +1100, Ben Stanley wrote: Hi, I had St George Internet banking working fine until just recently. I was using the user agent spoofing technique described previously on this mailing list. I last used it successfully on Wednesday 5th January 2005. I have now tried to use it on Saturday and Sunday 8th and 9th of January 2005, and I now get stuck at the ´redirecting´ page. This is the typical symptom you get if you haven´t set your user agent correctly, however I have mine set to Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530 (This is not the same string as I was using previously - but that one didn´t work either.) Perhaps there is another user agent string that I should be using? Can anyone let me know if it still works for them, or have StGeorge been less than saintly and changed their site again to block Linux more effectively? I´ve got Mozilla 1.7.3-0.2.0 (from Fedora Core 2) and Blackdown Java 1.4.2-01 installed. Thanks for any help, Ben Stanley. -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Resolved - Cups print output disappearing
I resolved this by installing ESP Ghostscript rather the standard version. All I can find is that ESP Ghostscript used to be included with CUPS in recent version, but EasySoftware, the makers of CUPS, decided to separate the two. Mysterious. Rod On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 22:04 +1100, Rod Butcher wrote: Sluggers, after 6 months of OK printing, print jobs now disappear into the ether... my Epson stylus parallel printer is physically OK as it works with the dualbooted Win2K. Only changes I'm aware of are that I've upgraded from Gnome 2.4 to 2.9 (I did this weeks ago but this is the first time since that I've used the printer). Amongst loads of what look like routine messages in /var/log/cups/error_log I always get the following :- [09/Jan/2005:21:25:15 +1100] Unable to convert file 0 to printable format for job 22! I [09/Jan/2005:21:25:15 +1100] Hint: Do you have ESP Ghostscript installed? Any other things to look for ? I have gnughostscript-8.01 installed.. + latest version of cups gimpprint from Mandrake 10.1... what difference should ESP Ghostscript make ? Thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Newline after last record ?
Is there a standard for what comes after the last record in a file, on Linux/Unix ? I find KDE does not write a newline (0A) by default whereas Gnome apps (and Mozilla) does. This could be nasty in a Perl program which typically uses chop to whip off the line feed, seems it would whip off the last data byte at the end of a KDE-created file. Or is the chop thing a dangerous lazy practice ? I suppose the question is, where do I find the Unix text file standard, if there is such a thing. thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Newline after last record ?
Thanks Ken and Matt, sounds like the last newline is a must-have. The fact that the Gnome editor forces it automatically adds to my enthusiasm for Gnome. cheers Rod On Sat, 2005-01-08 at 22:08 +1100, Ken Foskey wrote: On Sat, 2005-01-08 at 19:27 +1100, Rod Butcher wrote: Is there a standard for what comes after the last record in a file, on Linux/Unix ? I can tell you that some utilities fail to notice the last line if there is not a newline on them. I had to raise a bug report on AIX using cut because I wrote a program and forgot the linefeed and tested it perfectly under Linux failed badly under AIX. So I would call the 'standard' to have it. Vim automatically includes one when you edit the file without one. -- Ken Foskey OpenOffice.org developer -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Macquarie Uni vs StGeorge Bank logons in Linux
Thought I'd update yous on the state of play re. Macquarie Uni e-student allowing Linux logons, as compared to StGeorge Bank Internet Banking. A few months ago I couldn't logon to the uni's e-student system via Linux. I passed on the problem to the uni techos and meanwhile continued to spoof Mozilla as IE 5 XP. They've now fixed their system so I can log on with anything via Linux (no spoofing). Nice work. Compare this to StGeorge, who despite countless complaints appear to hardwire their Internet Banking to lock out Linux unless you spoof as a non-free OS (guess which). The difference between these 2 organizations ? One is to the left of Stalin, one to the right of Genghis Khan. regards Rod --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] RTA, Premier's Department and Linux
RTA are already rolling-out (okay, I'm a public servant - we're not allowed to say implementing :)a Linux-based office system in some of their locations (if my sources are right). Hi Patrick, do you know what office software (email, w/p, spreadsheet etc.) they're using ? cheers Rod On Sun, 2005-01-02 at 12:48 +1100, Elliott-Brennan wrote: For those who are not public servants and haven't heard already: it appears that Col Gellatly, the Director General of the NSW Premier's Department, is showing an interest in Linux and OpenSource software in general, whilst the RTA are already rolling-out (okay, I'm a public servant - we're not allowed to say implementing :)a Linux-based office system in some of their locations (if my sources are right). If the committee looking into this issue comes out with a positive regard/plan for OpenSource, and Gellatly is involved (he has considerable influence in the NSW Public Service) this would certainly mean big things in NSW for OpenSource. The Dpt I'm with uses Novell, and the packages that are used the great part of the time can easily be replaced with Ffox and OpenOffice. That's my good news for the New Year. Patrick -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Macquarie Uni vs StGeorge Bank logons in Linux
I believe this issue needs to be tackled at a legislative level, along the lines of trade practice. There is too much at stake for powerful companies to practise any form of self-regulation here. What gets overlooked here in Oz is that in the US, together with free-enterprise capitalism they also have some fairly sophisticated legislation to keep corporations from running the show. We've espoused the first without the protection of the latter. So - forget about complaining to banks, you'll be ignored unless you and all your mates are multi-millionaires. I cited the positive example of Macquarie uni to show that this is not a technical issue. I'm looking at tackling this thru political lobbying (Kim Beazeley and KIate Lundy were making positive noises until they were mysteriously silenced before the last election), and finding any existing legislation which may be invoked. Surely a company can't force its customers to use a particular product before it does business with them ? cheers Rod On Sun, 2005-01-02 at 12:50 +1100, Mary Gardiner wrote: On Sun, Jan 02, 2005, Elliott-Brennan wrote: I don't know that I'd EVER change banks because I had to do some extra work to access their site - though if I could not access it at all, that'd be a problem! Even in my case, where I would have to notify several different direct debitors and creditors of a new bank account it's enough of a pain: it would take two years' use or so of a good online banking site to make up the time lost switching accounts. It's not all or nothing. (If you don't like it, leave!) Continuing to use a bank's services does not somehow mean that you've invalidated your right to complain to or about them, as discussion here occasionally suggests. Being unable to take your business elsewhere does lose you some power in the commericial relationship, but not all of it. It may be worth looking at or getting involved with the Mozilla Tech Evangelism project: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tech-evangelism/ -Mary -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] swap space limit on ia32?
Hi Campbell, I only know (a little) about the 2.6 kernel, never heard of LIDS.. haven't seen what you describe. As I understand it, the patch to avoid using highmem for 2.6.n kernels fiddles with the split between kernel and user space, I think splitting it 2-2 gig instead of 1-3. This can have odd effects like configuring VMWare which asks what have we here ?. Personally I don't think it's worth the hassle. As you can tell, I'm no tech expert, I just needed a reliable system for editing large files of Buddhist audio talks. I'm running 2.6.10rc2 kernel with Andrew Morton's multimedia gofast patches, and Team Barry's patches which fix what the mm patches broke in nVidia and includes the no-himem patch. Result is a multipurpose system that handles multimedia editing, games and business (sometimes all at once). cheers Rod On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 15:31 +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Rod, The old limit stuff, and stuff about swap not being more than 2 x ram is out of date. You can now have virtually limitless swap space with no problems. If you have 2 fairly fast disks, best is to put half your swap space on each disk and define them in /etc/fstab as parallel i.e. with the same priority. This will allow them to be used simultaneously, thus doubling the speed. It worked great for me using 2 Sata disks with /etc/fstab as follows :- /dev/hda5 none swap sw,pri=3 0 0 /dev/hdc5 none swap sw,pri=3 0 0 Note - there is still a technical problem with physical ram - to use more than 896 meg ram you need hi-mem turned on in the kernel, which causes a small performance degradation. There is a kernel patch (with its own problem) round this if you're interested. Rod Interesting - we have noticed that this machine has problems with a major degradation in performance after it has been running for a while. Processes will just start using huge amounts of CPU and the load goes through the roof. This was on a 2.4.26 LIDS-patched kernel. We tried both selecting and deselecting 'CONFIG_HIGHIO' (I/O to high memory pages), and the same thing happens. The help file says: If you want to be able to do I/O to high memory pages, say Y. Otherwise low memory pages are used as bounce buffers causing a degrade in performance. But when we roll back to a non-LIDS, 2.4.25 kernel with no 'CONFIG_HIGHIO', it does not have the same problem. I guess it either LIDS or some change from 2.4.25 to 2.4.26. I am going to try a newer version of LIDS and a later kernel (the LIDS maintainers are unaware of any issues). This happens on a dual PIII machine which has 2GB of memory too, although less frequently as it doesn't get worked as hard. What was the problem with the kernel patch? Cheers for your thoughts, Campbell On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 13:31 +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I have read in various places that there is a swap space limit of 2GB on x86 (ia32) machines. Is this still the case? What happens if you define a swap space larger than 2GB? Will it just not address it? I have set 4GB as the swap for a machine that has 2GB of physical memory (dual Opteron running Debian Woody 3.0, 2.4.26 kernel, 32-bit), and it shows all 4GB of swap. I am moving the OS to a new set of disks and have a chance to re-define swap, so should I go for 2 x 2GB swap partitions (they're on the same spindle anyway), or should I just use 4GB, or would 2GB suffice? I have not been able to find much on the partitionong guides on the Net or in books that gives a strong indication or is up to date. Cheers for your pointers. Campbell -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Fonts broken after KDE 3.3 install
Sluggers, I compiled installed KDE 3.3.. and now find that using Gnome, my fonts are broken - by that I mean for many apps they appear inconsistently scaled - some parts of the font are too thin, others too fat, the general appearance being malnourishment. Any pointers to what I should look at to correct this ? thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Linux vs. Windows TCO Comparison
The SMH ran the story , and the online article ( http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/12/13/1102786990788.html ) appears with an ad for MS Small Business Server 2003 embedded in it. Wonder if MS asked for their money back ? Rod On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 14:16 +1100, Rick Welykochy wrote: Culled from the LINK list: --- Linux vs. Windows TCO Comparison: The Final Numbers Are In. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Australia -- 13th December, 2004 The Cybersource Linux vs. Windows TCO Comparison is back and better than ever. In April 2002, Cybersource undertook the first study contrasting the overall Total Cost of Ownership differences between Linux and open source platforms on the one hand, and Windows and Microsoft platforms on the other. We have now updated this report to accommodate the changes in both platforms. We have also extended the model to increase its relevance and accuracy. The final numbers are now in and available from: http://www.cybersource.com.au/about/linux_vs_windows_tco_comparison.pdf This study covers the average computer-usage requirements for an organisation with 250 users, over a 3 year period. The costing models include expenses such as workstations, servers, networking, IT staff, consultancy fees, Internet Service charges, file, mail and print servers, e-commerce servers, SQL and network infrastructure servers, Internet and Intranet servers, line-of-business software, desktop productivity applications, external training, printers as well as miscellaneous systems costs. We also contrast free-download Linux and paid-for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We know that Cybersource is identified as a Linux solution provider, so we made great effort to prepare a balanced and open analysis, commented Cybersource CEO, Con Zymaris. The prices used for the study, along with research methodology, vendor specifications, cost calculator tabulations and final results are all included, so that these results can be verified by others. Which is more than we can say for any of the TCO reports that Microsoft touts in its current carpet-bombing anti-Linux advertising campaign. Additionally, we made the following concessions to tip the scales in Microsoft's favour. 1) We didn't modify the model to reflect research by the Robert Frances Group which shows that Linux needed 82% fewer staff-resources. 2) We have not included the costs of malware; viruses, spyware, worms, keyloggers, adware etc. Every research point we have found suggests that this cost is essentially and predominantly a Windows platform cost, resulting in billions lost by business every year. 3) We have also not included the substantial costs which arise when systems need to be pre-emptively rebooted or worse, crash, resulting in unscheduled downtime. All our research indicates that Linux rarely if ever suffers such problems and open source platforms on the whole are extremely robust. 4) Finally, because Microsoft has claimed that introducing Linux into an environment will lead to increased reliance on external consultants, we have tripled the amount budgeted for such requirements on the Linux models. And the results make for interesting reading,' continued Zymaris. Standard Linux was 36% lower overall TCO than Microsoft's platforms and applications. Even the paid-for Red Hat Enterprise Linux managed systems were 27% lower cost than Windows. We know that many organisations and many governments around the world are looking at adopting Linux and are therefore carefully analysing the numbers. We now provide what we think are the tools for making such a decision easier. And the final numbers are indeed startling. We've given Microsoft every head-start possible but Linux's cost advantage is simply too great for most organisations to ignore, concluded Zymaris. -- _ Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services When choosing between two evils, I always like to take the one I haven't tried before. -- Mae West -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] /dev/console on
Isn't PIIX the Intel driver ? I understand you need the driver appropriate to your board / controller. In my case it's CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_VIA=y ... or have I not understood something here ? In fact, I believe my first compile included all the drivers, still no dice. thanks Rod On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 11:27 -0500, O Plameras wrote: Rod Butcher wrote: The new driver-thingie is libata. But I never got it working, even though it claimed to load Ok. I had to use the old driver to use Sata. Ran out of time and interest to pursue it further. cheers The 'libata' driver requires 'ata_piix' in kernel-2.6.9. Alone by itself, 'libata' is insufficient to make /dev/sda work. So, to get your SATA hard disk to work ensure that 'lsmod' should display amongst others: ata_piix libata used by ata_piix It both are not displayed you should say, # modprobe ata_piix This will load both 'ata_piix' and 'libata'. The ff command alone will not load both drivers. # modprobe libata -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] /dev/console on
Oscar, like Mary said, it doesn't get as far as writing log messages. It craps out when the kernel tries to read the disk. The kernel boots. Messages are displayed by sata_via correctly recognising the SATA drives and identifying them as SCSI. The problem occurs when it tries to access the system root. Messages are :- VFS - Cannot open root device sda1 or unknown-block (0,0) Please append a correct root= boot option Kernel panic - unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (0,0) thanks Rod On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 18:05 -0500, O Plameras wrote: Rod Butcher wrote: Isn't PIIX the Intel driver ? I understand you need the driver appropriate to your board / controller. In my case it's CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_VIA=y ... or have I not understood something here ? In fact, I believe my first compile included all the drivers, still no dice. My comments was in relation t yours re: libata. libata is used with the specific driver. I am assuming a few things, here. I was assuming you are examing your /var/log/messages and the output of your dmesg. Your /var/log/messages should show some lines like: snipped . Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: SCSI subsystem initialized Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: ACPI: PCI interrupt :00:1f.2[A] - GSI 18 (level, low) - IRQ 18 Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xC000 ctl 0xC402 bmdma 0xD000 irq 18 Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xC800 ctl 0xCC02 bmdma 0xD008 irq 18 Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA/133, 312579695 sectors: lba48 Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133 Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: scsi0 : ata_piix Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: ata2: SATA port has no device. Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: scsi1 : ata_piix Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: Vendor: ATA Model: ST3160827AS Rev: 3.03 Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: SCSI device sda: 312579695 512-byte hdwr sectors (160041 MB) Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back Dec 7 17:33:30 hdtv kernel: sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 sda5 sda6 Look for a line like I have above, namely: scsi0:ata_piix What do you have after scsi0 or scs1 ? That is the driver that you have to modprobe. So, say: # modprobe ata_piix And you will be on your merry way. -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Audio noise removal tool ?
Sluggers, anyone know of a good audio noise removal tool (i.e. tape hiss) ? I use Audacity for most stuff, but its noise remover leaves people sounding like Klingons. Or am I using it incorrectly ? thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] /dev/console on
The new driver-thingie is libata. But I never got it working, even though it claimed to load Ok. I had to use the old driver to use Sata. Ran out of time and interest to pursue it further. cheers Rod On Sun, 2004-12-05 at 22:39 +1100, Jamie Wilkinson wrote: This one time, at band camp, Mary Gardiner wrote: The initrd on a superficial check looked OK (ie, it's a mountable filesystem, it has /dev). I can't answer the question about whether it has the correct driver for my filesystem because Google and my offlist correspondent both indicate that the drivers for SATA controllers all changed names between 2.6.7 and 2.6.8 and hence I have very little idea of what the correct driver actually calls itself. (This is in addition to suddenly all becoming treated as SCSI devices.) Ah :( If the install process really is building only current modules into the initrd, then that may explain the problem. If so though, I'm absolutely stuck for solving it, short of building an initrd by hand. At the moment I'm reasonably sure that it is *not* loading the correct driver, because the boot sequence goes: OK, in that case your best bet is to fix the initrd by hand, which may be as easy as unzipping the image, mounting it, copying in the missing modules, and editing linuxrc, and as hard as mounting the image, copying everything somewhere else because the cramfs isn't writable, adding the modules, working out how the module loading works because linuxrc is a binary executable, and repacking the lot into a new cramfs. Hopefully it's closer to the former than the latter. My only advice is keep all your initrds in /boot until you have one that works, otherwise it'll really start to suck. I found grub was excellent for mucking around with bootloaders in this way, because I could just change the initrd at boot time without being worried about breaking the bootloader too. -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Goals
I've thought about the rpm hell bit before. I notice that some commercial apps (like Opera) seem to bundle everything required into a single tarball and say just install this. Do they achieve this by statically linking in all the required libraries, and is this what is done in Windows ? I feel that it IS asking too much of non-technical users to install x and y before installing z, especially when installation of x.0.2 gives the message conflicts with x.0.1 or requires installation of v and w. We techos tend to forgot the little glitches that occur which spell badhair day to a non-technical user. There IS QA in the Free / Opensource world. But I would agree that the Linux software install process, logical as it may seem to a computer professional, is not up to the needs of the non-technical user. my .05 c Rod On Sun, 2004-12-05 at 14:57 +1100, Rick Welykochy wrote: Matthew Palmer wrote: On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 10:55:48AM +1100, Rick Welykochy wrote: john gibbons wrote: I would like to raise the goal post for Linux software interface developers from 'intuitional' to 'bloody obvious'. I am getting some frustration off my chest after trying to download some Linux software for the first time and get it up and running. According to the directions it was easy. My question is : for whom? Welcome to a world where there is no QA, where there is no standard installation process and where your very mettle will be tested to the limit when you install FOSS. What the *hell* are you talking about? Plenty of F/OSS projects take their Quality Assurance very seriously, with regression testing, bug tracking, pre-release testing, and release planning. I think the GNOME project, for instance, would be very startled to hear that there is not QA in their development process. As for standard installation process, I can apt-get install most anything I want, and it'll do the same things every time. I can't even get MSIs to play that nicely. Mettle testing is in no way specific to F/OSS -- computers in general are what does it to you. My apologies, Matthew. Allow me to rephrase what upon second reading appears to be a rather sweeping generalisation. Welcome to a world where there are varying levels of QA in relation to installation procedures, ... etc. It would appear that john gibbons has run into an installation with very low or non-existent QA. Standard installation? Well, if you use deb, you can enjoy one form of standard installation. If you run RH, enjoy another standard. I've been through RPM hell enough times to know how wild west the installation process can become. And I've read of apt-get hell from others. Then we get into Configure; make; make install and the variations therein ... most times it works, sometimes it really don't. And finally, there is the misery of downloading a binary only to find it doesn't quite fit into your lib scheme. I think we are in agreement that this is by no means exclusive to FOSS, and that proprietary software has its share of installation fsckups. cheers rickw -- _ Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is the most reliable Windows ever. To me, this is like saying that asparagus is the most articulate vegetable ever. -- Dave Barry -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: Photoshop in Linux WAS [SLUG] Newbie -when is next slug meet?
Depends whether the app is a big part of your work/interest or just incidental. If a big part you need to have an indepth understanding and it's worth spending time developing that. If not, to be productive you need the quickest most moronic solution to the problem without caring how/why it works. An analogy is cars - you put the petrol in the hole at the back right side and the car goes. A professional driver would be interested in the whole fuel flow system in case it stopped working. In this case I had to change an email address, and I very seldom do graphics, and have no interest in them. The .png should have taken 5 minutes to replace. Kolourpaint met this requirement, there's a single screen with a big fat Transparency button on the bottom left, so I pressed it. Perhaps apps with heavy-duty functionality need 2 uis - One for moron mode with perhaps a reduced feature set (what type of background would you like today ?), but geared towards push this button to..., and another for the serious user who can justify the time investment to fully utilize the app. You can't keep blaming the user for being too lazy to learn an app, this argument was lost years ago. cheers Rod On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 08:00 +1100, Jeff Allison wrote: Dave Airlie wrote: well it's a fairly basic reaction at work, the first time you learn how to do something you don't know how to do already then it is interesting, now switching to another app and trying to do the same things just doesn't seem like the same sort of learning as you already know how to do that so it must be app that is getting in your way... so you blame the app... I've also heard that gimp becomes a lot more obvious if you use a touchpad/stylus thing... Dave. I find people don't learn how to do things they learn what button to push, so that any change from application version to OS annoys them. If they learn t how and why then they might have more chance and not need to as about the next button Jeff -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: Photoshop in Linux WAS [SLUG] Newbie -when is next slug meet?
Whatever people seem to have a chunk of experience with first more or less defines what they think is the best interface. I agree, hadn't thought of that.. I cut my teeth on Waterloo script on mainframes, and struggled to adjust to M$Word's graphical wysywig idea - I still feel comfortable with markup languages like HTML. But meanwhile back at the farm, my .png image's background remains resolutely opaque. It consists of black text on white bg. As instructed I selected layer, new layer, transparent. No dice. This can't be the full story. How/where do I tell it that listen, Gimp, whenever you see white space in this here image, I want it to be transparent. ? From memory, in PS I specified an index value for transparency. cheers Rod On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 20:22 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 06:03:35PM +1100, David wrote: On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Craige McWhirter wrote: On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 20:48 +1100, Rod Butcher wrote: Final straw was trying to set transparent background. I was presented with techno-gobbledegook. File - New - Fill Type: Transparent or in an existing image: Layer - New Layer - Layer Fill Type: Transparent I spent 10 years learning photoshop, and it took me an annoying one month to get the hang of GIMP. I kept expecting it to work EXACTLY the same as photoshop. This thread made me wonder: If people were brought up on Gnu/Linux the way most people are brought up on Windows, would they then find linux really easy, and Windows counter-intuitive and confusing? Is it simply what you learn first that defines what you find easy? I vote a resounding 'yes' on that one. Mac people say that Windows sucks, Windows people say Macs and Linux sucks, and I say Windows is a PITA and Mac OS X is not easy to use. Whatever people seem to have a chunk of experience with first more or less defines what they think is the best interface. - Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Gimp outcome
Thanks to all the folks who discussed the issues of Gimp tried to help me... unfortunately I ran out of time, ended up using kolourpaint to creat the transparent images. It has a more function-oriented ui and I found it a doddle. This was a case where I need a product to do something occasionally but not often enough to justify learning much about it - I need to be able to fire it up, do the job and get on with other stuff. IMHO a lot of desktop work is like this - the infrequency of use doesn't justify any learning curve, it has to be usable right from fireup. cheers Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: Photoshop in Linux WAS [SLUG] Newbie -when is next slug meet?
Final straw was trying to set transparent background. I was presented with techno-gobbledegook. I could do this sort of thing with PS 4 with no training. I need this for website graphics. M$ got rich by assuming users are idiots and building apps and install routines that idiots could follow (harking back to John Gibbons - I feel that the free / Opensource industry should cease development for 12 mths and concentrate on user-friendliness - that includes documentation, most of which states the facts but helps little.). When it comes to graphics I'm in that idiotcategory. Interesting that PS, though a professional tool, felt intuitive to me. my .05 c Rod On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 20:31 +1100, Dean Hamstead wrote: i would have to agree, i find gimp to be vastly superior. im sure there are some features photoshop has over gimp but like all applications 90% of users only use 10% of features. generally i have found adobe products to just work 'differently' most applications seem to follow a certain logic, but adobe doesnt. this could be why people spend so much money learning to use them although i do like illustrator, the Free clones are coming along ok - but still not at the level gimp is. anyone with heaps of vector math knowledge care to write a free alternative to illustrator ;) Dean Heracles wrote: Rod Butcher wrote: Hi Patrick, can you spare a minute to give me a brief overview of what's required to achieve this ? I can't stand Gimp, and would love to be able to run Photoshop (I have V 4). Amazing, I have used Photoshop V4.5, 6 and 7 but find the latest version of the GIMP much better and definitely easier to use. Oh well, each to his own I guess. Stay well and happy Heracles -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Compile tutorial
Thanks Ian, the link you provided at http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/autobook/autobook_toc.html is exactly what I was looking for. cheers Rod On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 09:48 +1100, Ian Wienand wrote: On Sun, Nov 28, 2004 at 12:27:00AM +1100, Rod Butcher wrote: Sluggers, can somebody point me to a tutorial on the various components in software building (newbie-comprehensible) :- You'll need to understand the general concept of makefiles http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html and then the best tutorial style reference is the autobook http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/autobook/autobook_toc.html There is a bit of a learning curve. I've been getting by by ./configure, make, make install but beyond that I'm lost... e.g I untarred a source package and copied latest updated source and Makefile.am files from CVS into it and then did my standard ./configure etc. dance, which leads to link errors, so I obviously don't know what I'm doing). I need to know how/why these files are generated etc. I'm not sure why you need to copy parts of a CVS tree into a source tarball; can't you just build the CVS tree? Usually there will be a script in the root directory of the CVS tree called autogen.sh or similar that will run the autoconf tools for you. You just need to ensure the tool versions you have match what the developers are using. -i [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: Photoshop in Linux WAS [SLUG] Newbie -when is next slug meet?
Hi Patrick, can you spare a minute to give me a brief overview of what's required to achieve this ? I can't stand Gimp, and would love to be able to run Photoshop (I have V 4). thanks Rod On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 12:50 +1100, Elliott-Brennan wrote: Chris is right. I've got Photoshop running in Crossover. It requires more grunt than if it's run in the other OS (not the fruit you can eat :) but that's a small price to pay (for extra RAM if necessary). It runs well on a P4 with 256M RAM in the 'other', so you need more to run it to the same level under Linux using Codeweaver. That said, it's very easy to set up. Patrick Chris said: I think CodeWeavers Crossover Office might commercially support these. Chris quote(Peter Hardy); -i'm a photographer ( webkeeper) and wondering about image manip apps using Linux-eg. does photoshop and fireworks work on linux? *Some* windows applications work under Linux using a package called WINE (http://winehq.com/). From memory, you will probably have some luck getting Photoshop to work. Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Compile tutorial
Sluggers, can somebody point me to a tutorial on the various components in software building (newbie-comprehensible) :- configure Makefile Makefile.am (automake acts on it to produce Makefile.in ?) Makefile.in automake autoconf etc. I've been getting by by ./configure, make, make install but beyond that I'm lost... e.g I untarred a source package and copied latest updated source and Makefile.am files from CVS into it and then did my standard ./configure etc. dance, which leads to link errors, so I obviously don't know what I'm doing). I need to know how/why these files are generated etc. thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] guessing compile variables from binary rpm
In the specific case you've mentioned I'd suggest that they've done something to wxWindows build flags rather than audacity though (if they've done anything. It just sounds like GTK is doing its GTK thing). Got the spec file from Mandrake source as you all suggested.. thanks ! Indeed, Mandrake have incorporated patches and applying these it works sweet. Found a similar thing with AM's kernel patches, they break NVIDIA and distros now incorporate patches to fix the patches... which indicates to me that distro vendors' real role has become to fixup incompatibility issues which the developers don't have the time or resources to worry about.. a thing which I've read that MS have spent an awful lot of effort on ... but they had to, as their source is closed. cheers, Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel ---BeginMessage--- On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 12:29:46PM +1100, Rod Butcher wrote: Sluggers, can anybody tell me how to find out what libs, compiler options etc went into building a binary in an rpm ? Specific example is, I'm trying to find out how Mandrake compiles audacity to get it to work with wxwindows and gnome themes, I can't. Given just the binary RPMs I don't know of a general way. Some code will tell you how it was built (PHP is an example that springs to mind). In general, the best thing to do is to inspect Cooker CVS and take a look at the spec file that created the RPM. There's often numerous patches as well. In the specific case you've mentioned I'd suggest that they've done something to wxWindows build flags rather than audacity though (if they've done anything. It just sounds like GTK is doing its GTK thing). James. -- Now, there are no problems only opportunities. However, this seemed to be an insurmountable opportunity. - http://www.surfare.net/~toolman/temp/diagram.html ---End Message--- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] What is libnsl ?
Hello sluggers, I'm trying to build hal (hardware abstraction layer) for Gnome's volume manager for 2.8. It comes with -lnsl not found - what is libnsl.so if it exists, or is this a script bug ? I can't get into the freedesktop.org site (where hal lives) because it's been hacked... so no info. thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Solved - libnsl
Sorry, as usual I was too hasty, googling to Syney Uni tells me I already have libnsl courtesy of glib and it's a network services library. so I need to fix the link script... and figure out why it creams my USB keyboard (broken hotplug ?). cheers Rod Email message attachment, Forwarded message - Re: [SLUG] What is libnsl ? Forwarded Message From: Darren Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Rod Butcher [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SLUG] What is libnsl ? Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:20:20 +1100 Hi Rod On Thu, 18 Nov 2004, Rod Butcher wrote: Hello sluggers, I'm trying to build hal (hardware abstraction layer) for Gnome's volume manager for 2.8. It comes with -lnsl not found - what is libnsl.so if it exists, or is this a script bug ? I can't get into the freedesktop.org site (where hal lives) because it's been hacked... so no info. thanks Rod A quick google shows that it is part of libc and is called Name Services Layer according to: http://linux.about.com/cs/linux101/g/libnsl.htm Definition: libnsl: Name services library, a library of name service calls (getpwnam, getservbyname, etc...) on SVR4 Unixes. GNU libc uses this for the NIS (YP) and NIS+ functions. -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html On my RedHat 9 and Debian boxes it lives in /usr/lib -- Darren Williams dsw AT gelato.unsw.edu.au [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.gelato.unsw.edu.au -- -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] guessing compile variables from binary rpm
Sluggers, can anybody tell me how to find out what libs, compiler options etc went into building a binary in an rpm ? Specific example is, I'm trying to find out how Mandrake compiles audacity to get it to work with wxwindows and gnome themes, I can't. thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] configure questions
Hello sluggers, I'm compiling and installing some software packages.. need some advice on confure :- 1. If I want to pick up libs and includes in /usr/local/Gnome2.8.1 before the normal default (presumable /usr/lib and /usr/include) will the following get it right ? - or is there a better way ? :- ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Gnome2.8.1 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/Gnome2.8.1/lib CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/Gnome2.8.1/include 2. Configure is demanding that I have libxml2.6.8 library installed - error message is :- checking for libxml libraries = 2.6.8... configure: error: Version 2.6.6 found. You need at least libxml2 2.6.8 for this version of libxslt whereas I have already compiled and installed package libxml2.6.8 into /usr/local/Gnome2.8.1, hence the above library concatenation question. Do I need to override this package dependency check ? I realize a smarter way is to install from Mandrake's rpms.. this is a oneoff to acquaint myself with software builds on Linux. thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] configure questions
Turns out xml2 has its own rules it plays by.. I needed to set --with-libxml-prefix=/usr/local/Gnome2.8.1 for config to pick up the xml2 configuration. cheers Rod -- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Rod Butcher 2. Configure is demanding that I have libxml2.6.8 library installed - error message is :- checking for libxml libraries = 2.6.8... configure: error: Version 2.6.6 found. You need at least libxml2 2.6.8 for this version of libxslt whereas I have already compiled and installed package libxml2.6.8 into /usr/local/Gnome2.8.1, hence the above library concatenation question. Do I need to override this package dependency check ? PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/Gnome2.8.1/lib/pkgconfig ./configure ... - Jeff -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Multiple versions of Gtk2
Sluggers, can I have multiple versions of Gtk2 on the same box, i.e. 2.2 and 2.4 ? I have Gnome 2.4 which uses Gtk2.2... I installed Gtk2.4 because I had an app which needed some of the new features. Now the Gnome theme engine is slightly broken - the fancy icons aren't displayed with all their features. Is this a problem with libpixbuf ? I suppose this is a general question about how to handle multiple versions of a library on the same box. thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Multiple versions of Gtk2
* How and where did you install GTK+ 2.4? * Explain the fancy icon features that aren't working. ;-) I useed rpm --upgrade for all the packages and dependencies. (Mandrake 10.1 packakes, version 2.4.9) Rounded corners are absent of icons, buttons, taskbar entries. Everyting is square. Very minor in itself, but I'd like to understand the concepts. I think gdk-pixbuf handles this stuff, am I right ? That's been upgraded. thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Rod Butcher Sluggers, can I have multiple versions of Gtk2 on the same box, i.e. 2.2 and 2.4 ? I have Gnome 2.4 which uses Gtk2.2... I installed Gtk2.4 because I had an app which needed some of the new features. Now the Gnome theme engine is slightly broken - the fancy icons aren't displayed with all their features. Is this a problem with libpixbuf ? I suppose this is a general question about how to handle multiple versions of a library on the same box. In the case of GTK+, the answer is interesting because GTK+ provides API and ABI backwards compatibility. So, you should be able to replace GTK+ 2.2 without breaking any applications. So, two questions: * How and where did you install GTK+ 2.4? * Explain the fancy icon features that aren't working. ;-) Thanks, - Jeff -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Multiple versions of Gtk2
I copied the old /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.2.0/engines into /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/engines and this worked a treat, but it seems like a bit of an administrative atrocity :- Many thanks cheers Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Rod Butcher Rounded corners are absent of icons, buttons, taskbar entries. Everyting is square. Very minor in itself, but I'd like to understand the concepts. I think gdk-pixbuf handles this stuff, am I right ? That's been upgraded. A-ha! No, that's your GTK+ theme engine, and the interface for those did indeed change between these GTK+ versions. You need to install the theme engine you were using previously for the version of GTK+ you're using. gdkpixbuf is the library for loading and doing basic operations on bitmap images. - Jeff -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] How to rename partitions
Hello sluggers, if I want to change the name of a drive partition from say hda1 to sda1, what do I need to do in addition to updating /etc/fstab ? If I just change fstab and try to boot a kernel using libata to access SATA drives, it can't find /dev/sda. thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] How to rename partitions
I've heard (but not confirmed) the latest 2.6 SATA drivers do live under /dev/sd* instead of /dev/hd*. You'll need to confirm the your kernel actually supports it. I'm talking about 2.6.8 and up - they default to libata which refers to SATA drives as SCSI and hence sda1 etc. so to load this kernel which wants sda*, on a system built for 2.6.7 i.e. hda*, what do I change apart from fstab ? I can bootup 2.6.10 compiled to inhibit libata, and it accepts hda* fine.. I'm using it as I speak... but this is deprecated. So.. to bootup 2.6.10 using (the recommended) libata, I believe the question is how do I rename my partitions to sda* ? Changing the grub files and fstab didn't work. I've asked this question before but still no luck. man fstab didn't help me.. I'll RTFM if I can find what FM to RT. cheers Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Keith Hopkins wrote: Rod Butcher wrote: Hello sluggers, if I want to change the name of a drive partition from say hda1 to sda1, what do I need to do in addition to updating /etc/fstab ? If I just change fstab and try to boot a kernel using libata to access SATA drives, it can't find /dev/sda. thanks Rod Hi Rod, You can't just change it for the sake of changing it. The device name is (for the most part) assigned by the driver that controls that device. Once upon a time, SATA drives fell under the /dev/hd* model. If your kernel has that set of drivers, then you are stuck with /dev/hda, /dev/hda1, etc. I've heard (but not confirmed) the latest 2.6 SATA drivers do live under /dev/sd* instead of /dev/hd*. You'll need to confirm the your kernel actually supports it. Try booting your kernel into single user mode, and looking at dmesg to see how it maps the drives. You might even manage a `fdisk -l` -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Bootup with 2.6.8 9 sorted out
Thru lots of experimenting I've discovered a few things :- 1. The messages I wanted to stop scrolling were apparently produced by initrd.img... nothing seems to stop them scrolling. I just removed initrd.img from Grub and booted directly into the kernel. I then discovered the real problem was ocurring when the kernel tried to access fstab. 2. Kernels 2.6.8 upwards seem to default to a new SCSI driver for SATA disks... it can't seem top read the fstab created by older versions i.e. with names hda, hda1 etc. 3. Compiling kernels 2.6.8 and up with the (now apparently deprecated) BLK_DEV_IDE_SATA (i.e. not using libata) gets me past this problem and performance on IDE and SATA disk reads using the old IDE interface is no worse than with 2.6.7. 4. Question :- do people need to change all SATA entries from HDA etc. to SDA to use the new libata ? I'd be really greatful if somebody with 2.6.8 or 9 could send me a copy of their fstab file, and tell me whether it was installed fresh or as an upgrade from 2.6.7. Thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Peter Hardy wrote: On Sun, 2004-10-31 at 14:15, Rod Butcher wrote: Sluggers, can you tell me how I can step thru the messages when I boot up.. i.e. thru Lilo and then the initial kernel startup... - You should be able to hit scroll lock during bootup to... well... stop scrolling. - As mentioned by others, dmesg will show you the contents of the kernel's ring buffer. Just after bootup this should show you the booting messages. It can rapidly overflow with things like firewall log messages though. - Some distributions (well, the only one I know for sure is debian and its offspring) put a copy of the dmesg output in /var/log/dmesg very early on in init's boot process. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] December meeting - Tenpin Bowling
The Cobol bowling ball would cause a data exception because the number of holes was redefined as packed decimal by an outsourcer. The Pl/1 bowling ball would disappear into an array of pointers. Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Michael Lake wrote: Grant Parnell wrote: people are away etc. I know many of you would prefer to spend new year's eve at SLUG but we (the committee) think Tenpin Bowling somewhat earlier in the month would be good. I volunteered to organise it. The idea is to have teams of programming languages for example. I guess The Java bowling ball would have an API of holes for left and right handed people and would bowl smoothly on any surface - but it would roll ever sooo slowly down the alley. The Perl ball would have 20 different ways to place your fingers in the holes. The Python ball would be coloured blue. With the C ball you have to allocate the number of holes that you want when you sign out the ball and make sure that you return the ball with the same number of holes at the end of the evening. The Fortran ball would be able to handle having an entire array of balls all send down the alley at once with a single swing. Mike -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Bootup message display
Sluggers, can you tell me how I can step thru the messages when I boot up.. i.e. thru Lilo and then the initial kernel startup... they normally flash by too fast for me to read, and I need to know what they are on a successful boot so I can compare them with the messages I get when I try to boot 2.6.9 (which is failing). thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Swap file performance tuning ?
I read the Con Kolivas page.. it has the following :- Many machines now have exactly 1Gb ram and the standard memory split on i386 does not allow you to use more than 896Mb ram without enabling high memory for at least 4Gb. The problem is that this incurs an overhead whereas we can simply change this split with this patch to allow i386 architectures to use up to 1Gb ram without enabling highmem. This is configurable if HIGHMEM is disabled. Now.. I fit this category, having 1 gig ram and having to set CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y to compile 2.6.7.1 to allow usage of the full 1 gig. Anyone know what sort of overhead is involved here ? If it's significant I'll look at implementing the patch.. but it seems to me that if its such a problem-solver why isn'ty it in the stock kernel ? cheers Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Michael Chesterton wrote: Rod Butcher [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sluggers, I have 1 gig ram and 4 gig Swap on a Sata drive... performance when using memory-hogs like Sweep audio editor is great while it's using ram, but slows to a crawl once it starts using swap... not just Sweep but any app. Is this normal, or can I tune this in some way ? (I've spent my hardware budget for the next 3 years so no more ram). thanks My laptop needs to use swap, and there is a noticeable difference in performance between different kernel versions as developers have directly or indirectly changed the behaviour of swap. There's a knob which you can play with in /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, there's probably other things you can tweak, too. If you like patching and compiling your own kernels, try the con kolivas tree, http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/. It's designed to improve responsiveness on desktops. I have no idea how it will go with your work load, though, it sounds like you need to swap, and no tuning or mucking around is going to have much effect. In my case, there isn't one application that needs loads of memory, just lots of applications that need a little, so the balance of the size of filesystem cache/buffers, and what, when and how much to swap something out has an effect. . -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Linux Memory tuning
Following on the swap stufff.. can I tune my system so that my apps are assigned ram priorities .. so that if I startup a memory hog (like a multimedia editor) and it finds a lot of inactive / infrequently using apps using ram, they can be bumped out into swap so that the high priority app gets the ram rather than going straight into swap ? I could kill these other apps (like Web Browser, email, etc) but it would be better to just prioritize their call on ram. thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Linux Memory tuning
Thanks James ! I'll study up on this. cheers Rod -- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel James Gregory wrote: Please always reply to the list. On Thu, Oct 28, 2004 at 09:54:09AM +1000, Rod Butcher wrote: dunno if that's a micky-take or in-joke or actual suggestion or what.. the question I was trying to ask was - Is there an equivalent of nice for ram usage. I'm prepared to RTFM if I can find where to look. It would work, but it's a pretty nasty hack is all. LD_PRELOAD can also cause other problems, but you don't find out until you try it. The suggestion was to write a nice-equivalent for swappiness; it wouldn't be hard. Also, there's a swappiness setting somewhere in /proc. It's system-wide but it might help. HTH, James. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Multiple swap partitions update
just to let folks know that I implemented the multiple parallel swap partition idea from http://www.fiveanddime.net/ss/swap.htm as mentioned by Roger Barnes.. Sweep now goes like a rat up a drainpipe loading the input file into 1-2 gigs of swap. The /etc/fstab entries :- /dev/hdc7 none swap sw,pri=3 0 0 (both SATA drives) /dev/hda5 none swap sw,pri=3 0 0 Thans Roger others for responding. Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Swap file performance tuning ?
...Houston... uh... we have a problem.. swap file is uh.. full... sheeit, I told you to make it bigger... whoa.. watch that crater... --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Roger Barnes wrote: Reduce your SWAP to between 1 X 1 to 1 X 2 RAM. Ideally 1 X 1 RAM-to-swap. I know that's the standard recommendation one sees for creating swap partitions, but I'm intrigued as to the reasons for your suggestion. How does reducing the swap:ram ratio improve performance? I expect the kernel would be conservative about using swap irrespective of how much there is. 1:1 RAM-to-swap is not at all ideal if your applications need 2Gb of memory and you've only got 512Mb swap to go with your 512Mb RAM and the machine crashes. My understanding is that having plenty of swap space isn't a bad thing if you can spare the space and are likely to make use of it. I'd like to know whether that's a misconception that actually degrades performance, and why. Cheers, - Rog -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Swap file performance tuning ?
The stuff at http://www.fiveanddime.net/ss/swap.htm about configuring multiple parallel swap files looks promising... I have 2 SATA drives that I could put 2 gig on each... but I don't know its author, and the page is undated... so before I destroy my system I'd like to run this past yous.. (and yes, I do need all that memory). My current fstab swap setting (by the Mandrake install) :- /dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0 question - what are the defaults ? Recommended setting in the article mentioned above :- /dev/hdc5 noneswapsw,pri=30 0 /dev/hda5 noneswapsw,pri=30 0 This should cause the system to use both in parallel because they have the same priority, and apparently go like blazes. The sw,pri=3 seems OK according to man swapon, but it's dated 1995. Do these options look sane ? thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Roger Barnes wrote: Hiya Rod, 1. What's the difference between buffer-cache reads and buffered disk reads ? I have 3 disks and the figures vary.. with the cache read mb figues approx. 10 times those of the disk reads. Which figure is more important re. swap ? My understanding (which could be incorrect) is that the cached reads are testing the speed of the small bit of volatile cache on the disk (it's fast, but it's not the magnetic bit where the data lives permanently). In reality, throughput is going to be closer to the buffered disk read speed. For swap, or any purpose really, you really should benchmark something realistic and if you're that keen, you might be able to find some applications that do that. The hdparm figures are raw read speeds with and without using the disk cache respectively. For improving things in your situation, I'd suggest you just look at the buffered disk read speed, then see if that number improves with any tweaking you do. 2. Are you implying I can have multiple swap files actyive simultaneously ? Certainly. Apparently linux is reasonably clever about making good use of it too. A link that I just found with a bit of googling seems worthy of a good read ... http://www.fiveanddime.net/ss/swap.htm Cheers, - Rog . -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Banks colluding with Microsoft ?
Sluggers, I started off having to spoof my Firefox browser as Moz 1 Win98 to do St George internet banking. That stopped working so I used IE 5 Mac. That now crashes and I have to use IE6 Win XP. There is as pattern here .. and in the US i believe it would warrant antitrust / racketeering / cartel / wirefraud investigation. Anybody got any real facts on this ? regards Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Banks colluding with Microsoft ?
I used do do this stuff for various clients including the oil industry.. and managed to keep interactive websites (orders, registrations, remote website updates..) operable and bulletproof with complex javascript etc. for the current AND previous versions of IE, NS, Opera, Knoqueror, on Win, Linux, Mac... all by myself. If they didn't work they could cause a shareholderor director to ring up and give me or the oil company an earful, which was a suboptimal outcome. So I struggle to belive that these genius graduate software engineers struggle with it. Trouble is I've forgotton all the technical stuff now and do other things. I'll let it drop here. cheers Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Roger Barnes wrote: Verging on OT, so posting to chat instead ... Sluggers, I started off having to spoof my Firefox browser as Moz 1 Win98 to do St George internet banking. That stopped working so I used IE 5 Mac. That now crashes and I have to use IE6 Win XP. There is as pattern here .. and in the US i believe it would warrant antitrust / racketeering / cartel / wirefraud investigation. You better put an extra layer on that tin-foil hat. :p I'm all for a good conspiracy theory, but I think the tendency of financial institutions to block based on User-agent is a frail attempt to cover their butts by only officially supporting browsers that they have tested their site against. Net banking applications go through a heck of a lot more testing than most web sites, and reliably supporting 2-3 times as many browsers for a small fraction of users is firmly wedged in their too hard and not worth it basket. Neither the banks, nor M$ are involved with Firefox/Mozilla. Irrespective of the remote host's behaviour, your browser shouldn't be crashing. Have you filed a bug report? Keep applying the pressure by complaining about the poor service, or take it the appropriate industry ombudsman and the ACCC. - Rog . -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Swap file performance tuning ?
Sluggers, I have 1 gig ram and 4 gig Swap on a Sata drive... performance when using memory-hogs like Sweep audio editor is great while it's using ram, but slows to a crawl once it starts using swap... not just Sweep but any app. Is this normal, or can I tune this in some way ? (I've spent my hardware budget for the next 3 years so no more ram). thanks Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] St George Internet Banking
I had the same problem yesterday... eventually got in by spoofing as IE 5 Mac... using Firefox 0.9 and the Mozdev Prefbar from http://prefbar.mozdev.org/ to set the browser type. cheers Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel Mary Gardiner wrote: Hi folks, Sorry for the reappearance of this topic again. Onwards: I'm trying to use St George's Internet Banking with Mozilla Firefox 0.93 (on Ubuntu). I'm using Blackdown Java 1.4.1 and the about:plugins URL shows that Firefox knows about the Java plugin. Now, as per previous discussions on this list, I'm setting my User-Agent to Mozilla for Windows (in my case Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007). However, when I go to stgeorge.com.au and click on login, while a new page opens, it doesn't seem to load the login page, it just stays blank. Can other St George users tell me if they're experiencing problems, or if not, what their settings are? -Mary PS I'm anticipating National/Westpac/Commonwealth/someone works great, switch! replies. Thanks in advance, but I'm currently overseas, and not in a position to switch my bank accounts around. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Keyboard error with X.org server
I compiled installed X.org 6.8.1 as per the instructions. On reboot I get a X6.8.1 failure message 'Failed to load module Keyboard '. I included keyboard and mouse in the XInputdrivers #include in host.def. Any pointers ? thanks Rod -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Fixed - Keyboard problem with X.org 6.8.1
Seems the keyboard module starts with k in X.org, whereas with XFree86 it must have started with K. So I just edited XF86Config and Hey Presto - Linux graphics that are now as good as or better than windows. Marvellous. Rod --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] USB Flight yoke recommendation ?
I'm looking at getting a basic USB flight yoke to use with FlightGear flight simulator. Any recommendations - I have 2.6.7 kernel - presumably I'd need to recompile it to include the appropriate driver, or are they generic ? thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] moving /usr partition
I need to move my /usr partition from one hd to another... any suggestions as to best practice here ? thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Sharing SATA disk
I'm running 2.6.7 kernel with low-latency patches for audio file processing. It seems to me that when 2 separate apps are writing to the SATA hard disk (e.g. copy contents from IDE CDRom and 56k internet file download) the CD file copy slows to a crawl - i.e. the total time taken to write data is far more than just the sum of the 2 processes). Is this a consequence of low-latency patches ? Internet download at 56k won't be writing very fast to the disk, and copy from a CDROM on the separate IDE channel should only take a few seconds rather than minutes for 650 meg. ??? thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Fellowes CDLabels on Linux ?
Anybody know of a linux equiv. of the Fellowes Neato CD label printing program, or a port ? I have a set of labels in its proprietary format... drat. It's the only carryover from Windows I still have, and it doesn't warrant me bothering with wine, vmware, plex86 etc. Failing that, any open-source format I should convert them to ? thanks Rod -- --- Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
