Re: [Dorset] New laptop

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On Tue, 20 Sept 2022 at 18:14, Hugh Frater  wrote:
>
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2022 at 18:26, Peter Merchant 
> wrote:
>
> > A friend of mine is wanting a new laptop and asked if I would post his
> > request here - Yes he uses Linux.
> >
> > Does anybody know of a good source for him?

I've always seen refurbished Thinkpads come up whenever this is
discussed. I had a new X1 Carbon at my previous job and it was a
lovely machine: everything worked well on it with Linux. When I wanted
a Linux laptop recently I looked at them and there's a big range of
specs, conditions and prices. In the end I splurged on a new XPS 13
though.

> FWIW I’ve never had much luck getting fingerprint readers to work on my
> laptops when dual booting  - the current Machine (asus g14) is no
> exception. Everything else works fine though.

I do remember the fingerprint sensor as being the only thing that
wouldn't work on the Thinkpad initially. I think it would read with
Linux but you needed Windows to train it. At some point that changed
and I got it working properly.

> > I've looked at Linux built laptops including Dell and all seem to be
> > overpriced compared to popular Windows orientated companies.

I think it's a case of "you get what you pay for" to some extent but
the machines that are sold as supporting Linux like Dells and
Thinkpads do tend to be aimed at software devs and therefore in a
price bracket alongside Macs. It would be nice if more of the
mid-range machines were also sold as Linux compatible (since many of
them are to a large extent).

The XPS was £1100 but it's a top spec little machine. Definitely the
most I ever spent on a laptop (or any other computer come to that) but
I can't fault it.

The only thing I haven't tried to set up yet is the fingerprint
sensor! But that's pure laziness (I found I rarely used it)

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Re: [Dorset] OT: Keeping costs down

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I heard this discussed on the radio recently. Using the kettle to boil
water is faster, but using gas is much cheaper.

Electricity, even before the current hikes, usually worked out more
expensive for a given amount of energy than other sources like gas, oil,
solid fuel etc. LPG like Calor is the most expensive after electricity.

Obviously prices move around for all of these but this has held true every
time I've looked into it.

Example analysis I found
https://nottenergy.com/resources/energy-cost-comparison/

On Mon, 29 Aug 2022, 09:33 Peter Merchant, 
wrote:

> I was curious, so I took the water from the kettle and put it in a pot on
> the stove. It was very close to 500ml.
>
> Watching the gas meter while it boiled it used 0.014 m(cubed) of gas,
> which converted to 0.15788Kwh and at my current rate of 7.123p/Kwh cost me
> 1.1.25p to boil up.
>
> Unfortunately I can't see my electricity meter easily to see what it costs
> me to boil that amount in the kettle or by Microwave. Does anybody have
> that facility?  And also there is always other electricity being used.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Peter
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] removing spaces in file names

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I'm hesitant to suggest something in case it wipes your root disk and
kills your cat, but if you're happy to accept a bunch of disclaimers then

find . -name "* "" -type f -delete

should do what you want.

On Thu, 2 Dec 2021 at 15:11, PeterMerchant 
wrote:

> On 30/11/2021 15:42, PeterMerchant wrote:
> > I thought that my backup software Freefilesync was not backing up files
> with spaces in the names, so I found online a solution that changed all the
> spaces to -.
> >
> > find . -name "* *" -type f | rename 's/ /-/g'^C
> >
> > Now I have just checked my backup and discovered that files with spaces
> in them were copied, so my backup so contains two copies of many files
> >
> > 'file-1' and 'file 1'.
> >
> >
> > Can someone advise me of a script like the above that I can run on my
> backup disk to remove the files with spaces in the names?
> >
> > I expect to hear you shout "NOT A GOOD IDEA"  but I'll take the
> responsibility for the results, even if I have to clean off the backup and
> start from new.
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Peter
> >
> >
> I have not got it right.  I tried
>
>   find . -name "* *" -type f | rm *.* -v
>
> and it removed all files with extensions, but not the files without
> extensions, with no concern over whether there were spaces or not..
>
> removed '1841 census Jane burkey.jpg'
> removed '1841-census-Jane-burkey.jpg'
> removed '1841 census John Burkey (10).pdf'
> removed '1841-census-John-Burkey-(10).pdf'
>
> ls gives: (partly)
>
> '1783 Baptism Richard Burkey' 1789-Baptism-Thomas-Burkey-2 '2015
> Burkeys in Grays 192-com' 'Len Burkey'
>   1783-Baptism-Richard-Burkey '1824 Baptism Jane Burkey 2'
> 2015-Burkeys-in-Grays-192-comLen-Burkey
> '1783 Baptism Richard Burkey-2'   1824-Baptism-Jane-Burkey-2 'Ancestry
> Burkey trees'   Messages
>
> P.
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Chromium no Longer Stores Passwords on Kubuntu

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Is it potentially related to this?

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/01/chromium-sync-google-api-removed

It's not clear to me whether this would break local password storage or not.



On Fri, 4 Jun 2021, 09:38 Terry Coles,  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Anyone else noticed this?  I upgraded to Kubuntu 21.04 a few days ago and
> now
> Chromium doesn't store passwords.  The offer is made, and clcking OK is
> accepted, but opening 'Settings - Passwords' shows that no passwords have
> been
> stored.
>
> If like most of the denizens of the Internet, I used one set of
> credentials
> for every site on the planet, this would be less of a pain, but I don't.
> I
> have a different username and (very long) password for each site.  KWallet
> isn't integrated with Chromium, so it's a pain to have to manually copy
> the
> credentials from the wallet to the site every time I go there.
>
> I've checked on Launchpad and couldn't see anything relevant.
>
> Anyone got any ideas?
>
> --
>
>
>
> Terry Coles
>
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] OSS Gantt Chart sw

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Whenever I needed something like this, I always went for Taskjuggler (
https://taskjuggler.org/ ). It definitely has quite a steep learning curve
but it's very powerful. That said, I am most definitely not a professional
project manager (or even a decent amateur one).

The fact that it had no GUI and you express all the data and constraints in
a DSL appealed to my way of thinking.

On Fri, 26 Mar 2021, 17:17 Terry Coles,  wrote:

> On Friday, 26 March 2021 15:58:41 GMT Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:
> > I just found some cool cross-platform and excellent Gantt chart
> > software, which you can find at:
>
> Being an ex Project Manager I couldn't resist downloading this.  It seems
> to
> work and it's pretty easy to use, but I wouldn't want to try to manage a
> big
> project with it.
>
> Things I would seriously miss are:
>
> * The ability to enter Task Durations in hours and not just days.
> * The ability to give resources a Work Calendar so that their availability
> is
> defined across the project and not just for 'days off'.  (By this I mean
> how
> many hours per week they work.)
> * The ability to allocate a resource to a Task based on the above work
> calendar.
>
> I'm sure there are lots of other things that maybe other PMs would like to
> see
> but the above matches my workflow which was:
>
> * Estimate each activity in hours and then enter the task duration in
> hours.
> * Allocate the Resources.
> * The tool then sets the elapsed time in days. weeks or months based on
> the
> Resource Calendars.
>
> The tool therefore provides a prediction of the end date that takes into
> account the availability of all the resources as well as the work required.
>
> Picky I know, but my Projects were not noted for overrunning.  (I did get
> a
> 'talking to' once for coming in early.  :-)  )
>
> I know I could pay my $5 and ask for the above, but I no longer have a
> real
> need for a Project Management Tool.
>
> --
>
>
>
> Terry Coles
>
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Discovering unfamiliar utilities

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

You reminded me that a few days ago I listed the files in a core package on
a server (looking for a missing utility) and saw a few things in the list
that I didn't immediately recognise. I thought at the time, "That would be
a good way to learn about utilities that I don't know exist".

The downside is that it's system-dependant, and you have to know or guess
the names of the important packages.

On my system, anything called "*utils" is likely to be worth looking into.

#~ pacman -Q | grep "utils"
binutils 2.32-2
bluez-utils 5.50-6
bridge-utils 1.6-3
ca-certificates-utils 20181109-1
cifs-utils 6.8-2
coreutils 8.31-1
desktop-file-utils 0.23+4+g92af410-1
diffutils 3.7-1
exfat-utils 1.3.0-1
findutils 4.6.0-4
inetutils 1.9.4-7
iputils 20180629.f6aac8d-4
jfsutils 1.1.15-6
keyutils 1.6-1
pciutils 3.6.2-1
pcmciautils 018-8
python-docutils 0.14-2
sg3_utils 1.44-1
sysfsutils 2.1.0-10
usbutils 010-1
v4l-utils 1.16.6-1
xdg-utils 1.1.3-3
xorg-font-utils 7.6-5
xorg-xkbutils 1.0.4-3

#~ pacman -Ql binutils | grep /bin/
binutils /usr/bin/
binutils /usr/bin/addr2line
binutils /usr/bin/ar
binutils /usr/bin/as
binutils /usr/bin/c++filt
binutils /usr/bin/dwp
binutils /usr/bin/elfedit
binutils /usr/bin/gprof
binutils /usr/bin/ld
binutils /usr/bin/ld.bfd
binutils /usr/bin/ld.gold
binutils /usr/bin/nm
binutils /usr/bin/objcopy
binutils /usr/bin/objdump
binutils /usr/bin/ranlib
binutils /usr/bin/readelf
binutils /usr/bin/size
binutils /usr/bin/strings
binutils /usr/bin/strip

On Fri, 5 Jul 2019 at 12:14, Patrick Wigmore  wrote:

> On Thu, 04 Jul 2019 10:37:35 +0100, Bob Dunlop wrote:
> > nvi
> >textdata bss dec hex filename
> >   270612048 256   2936572b5 /usr/bin/nvi
> >  442019   18688 144  460851   70833 /usr/lib64/libvi.so.0
> >  430302   176282552  450482   6dfb2 /lib64/libncursesw.so.6
>
> This type of output was not something I was familiar with. I can see
> that size(1) produces output in this format, given a list of object
> files, but what method did you use to produce the list of files,
> excluding common operating system libraries?
>
> More generally, this highlighted to me a gap in my knowledge about how
> to discover utilities that fill a particular need without first
> knowing their names. I had already forgotten the route I took to
> discovering size(1) within minutes of discovering it. It began with a
> web search for the column headings in the output and ended with some
> poking around on the local system.
>
> I discovered ldd(1) in a similarly poorly remembered fashion, but it's
> clearly not the whole solution.
>
> I was inspired to read man(1)'s manual page and to belatedly try out
> man -k and man -K. However, it is difficult to devise keywords that
> are specific enough to select the right manual pages and generic
> enough to appear in their short descriptions.
>
> For example, the short description of size(1) does not make any
> mention of object files:
>
> $ man -f size
> size (1) - list section sizes and total size.
>
> Even if it did mention object files, that would need to be the
> terminology that came to mind if I wanted to find size(1) using:
>
> $ apropos -a object size
>
> (It seems to me that man -k has no direct equivalent to the -a option
> of apropos.)
>
> So, I still feel in want of a good categorised summary of well-known
> commands, or at least a search technique that can expand my search to
> include conceptually-related terms.
>
> Patrick
>
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Re: [Dorset] Very slow Desktop startup problem

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

You could try using systemd-analyze [1] to see how the boot time breaks
down.

[1]
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Improving_performance/Boot_process#Using_systemd-analyze

On Sun, 30 Jun 2019 at 18:46, C Wills  wrote:

> Hi All
>
> My wife's desktop PC running Mint 18.10 takes a very long time in
> starting approx 4-5mins, (it used to start in less than 1min). It's also
> slow in 'logging in' and if trying to copy pictures from a USB stick to
> her /Pictures/ folder it takes ages at each operation.
> It would appear that something is happening in start up that loops round
> and hogs memory.
>
> How can I find out what's happening during the start up process please?
>
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Re: [Dorset] Password manager

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Hi!

You don't say whether you need it on mobile devices too. I'd say a password
manger is pretty useless without that, but YMMV.

For cloud hosted ones, the obvious ones are LastPass, 1Password and
BitWarden. I've used the first two at various jobs and they are decent. The
latter I've not tried but it is open source, which is appealing.

I've also used gopass at work, which I liked. It uses git, so you can use
GitHub or a self-hosted git repository. It's not for the non-technical, but
has a good feature set and odd very Unix-y.

On Thu, 24 Jan 2019, 21:25 Tim 
> Evening all
>
> I am considering setting up a password manager for all the family
> password (all your eggs in one basket??)
>
> It will need to be cross platform (Windows and Linux), I can not make my
> mind up if I want to keep the database on my own NAS or host it in a
> cloud situation (all your eggs in one basket and letting somebody else
> look after it??) which would be useful for some password away from home
>
> Would be interested to hear other peoples thoughts view and if you use a
> password manager which one do you use and why?
>
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Tim H
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Visual basic on Linux

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I used to run a Windows 10 VM on KVM/Qemu on a Linux desktop with a fairly
slow CPU (dual core i5, but an old one) and it was actually very fast and
usable, although I never really fired up anything like Visual Studio since
that's a huge beast anyway. As always fast disk and plenty of RAM helps a
lot.

To the OP - do you know what they are going to be asked to do with VB? Is
it desktop (Winforms) stuff, or web stuff, or basic algorithms that could
be pure CLI? It does make a difference since AFAIK Dotnet Core supports
VB.NET language and is cross-platform, but I don't think it supports VB.NET
for quite a lot of things like MVC. Webforms and Winforms are not supported
in Dotnet Core at all. I don't think Mono supports WInforms either for any
language, which is why mono applications always used to use GTK+.

It may be worth trying to ask what alternatives there are. If .NET is a
requirement, C# is going to be a lot easier to support cross-platform .
VB.NET is pretty dead anyway, so it's a real dead-end.

From a cross-platform point of view, Mono is being retired in favour of
Dotnet Core but it will take a while.

As an alternative, what about https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/
if you really can't avoid Windows?

On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 at 11:16, Terry Coles  wrote:

> On Thursday, 13 September 2018 09:45:10 BST t...@ls83.eclipse.co.uk wrote:
> > Well, that's a real revelation. Looking at the service host processes
> > under the Windows task manager, there are a bunch of update processes.
> > After 15 minutes or so these are done and the machine becomes usable -
> > thanks!
>
> I have a similar experience with W10 on my Dell Optiplex (Core i7, 3.4
> Ghz, 8
> Gb of RAM).
>
> I only need it to do updates on my Garmin Satnav and view Solar PV
> generation
> from my eLink Energy Monitor, but unfortunately those (somewhat) niche
> industries don't appear to know about OSs other than Windows and Mac (even
> though their devices are almost certainly already running Linux).
>
> I f they wrote that Apps using web-based tools then they could be used on
> any
> device.  As it is, people with tablets and phones and no PC are stuffed.
>
> --
>
>
>
> Terry Coles
>
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Chromebook

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

The web app works fine. I've used it often on the Chromebook. Even the OSX
app seems to be the web app packaged as an desktop app since it looks
identical.

On Wed, 15 Aug 2018 at 17:08, Terry Coles  wrote:

> Try again, this time to the list instead of Peter...
>
> On Wednesday, 15 August 2018 16:27:06 BST PeterMerchant via dorset wrote:
> > Hi All, this message directed mostly towards terry, but I welcome input
> > from Others.
>
> I no longer have a Chromebook, but we helped a friend to buy one recently.
>
> > My sister-in-law is coming to visit, and has been complaining about her
> > useless computer. Her son (wise man) has advised her to not get a
> > windows computer, but to opt for a Chromebook. I see Acer Chromebooks at
> > Argos for £229. The one niggle I have about what she wants it for is to
> > use What's App, which generally requires a mobile phone number, but if
> > she has been doing it on her W$ machine it must be possible.
>
> I've just tried to install WhatsApp on our friends ACer R11, but there
> isn't a
> ChromeOS App or Extension, although there are helper type tools.
>
> As Natalie mentioned there is a web app, but I haven't got a WhatsApp
> account
> so I couldn't test it.  If the App needs installing, then see the previous
> Para.
>
> > Q: Is this the best place to get a Chromebook? or would you recommend
> > somewhere else?
>
> Our friend got his from Currys.  Prices seem much odf a muchness.
>
> --
>
>
>
> Terry Coles
>
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Links from 2018-05-01's Pub Meet.

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

We've been using gopass as a team at work which is a compatible extension
of pass, written in Go.

https://github.com/justwatchcom/gopass

The documentation is not the greatest, but it supports shared password
stores using git (which is nice), meaning you're not reliant on a 3rd party
if you want the "team" features that others e.g. LastPass offer. It uses
git for you own password store too automatically. There is also a browser
extension and a mobile app.

Not as slick as LastPass but a nice alternative if you want FOSS that is
not dependent on a 3rd party holding your data.

On 3 May 2018 at 10:53, Sam Davis  wrote:

> I have been using Pass on both Linux and Android for ~2 months now and it
> have had no issues so far, would recommend.
>
> Sam
>
> On 3 May 2018 at 09:59, Tim Waugh  wrote:
>
> > I mentioned LastPass, yes.
> >
> > Not mentioned, because I forgot to: 'Pass: The Standard Unix Password
> > Manager' at https://www.passwordstore.org/
> >
> > Tim.
> > */
> >
> >
> > On 2 May 2018 at 19:27, PeterMerchant via dorset <
> > dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On 02/05/18 12:12, PeterMerchant via dorset wrote:
> > >
> > >> and Keepass https://keepass.info/
> > >>
> > >> P.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Sorry, That is Not it. I was looking to install it and found both
> > keepass
> > > and keypass, But I think the one that we discussed was lastpass?
> > >
> > > Am I correct?
> > >
> > > P.
> > >
> > >
> > > --
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> > >
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> > >
> > --
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> >
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Re: [Dorset] Keep being logged out

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I seem to remember there was a change of the default acceleration method in
the Intel driver a while back (on Arch) to SNA which caused some problems
on old Intel laptops for me. I definitely have one with 915 graphics, and I
think it was affected (it's retired now so I can't check).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/intel_graphics#SNA_issues

Perhaps this change has recently appeared in the Debian world too?

On 30 June 2017 at 10:05, Ralph Corderoy  wrote:

> Hi Tim,
>
> > Jun 26 16:01:28 lunar1 kernel: drm/i915: Resetting chip after gpu hang
> > Jun 26 16:01:38 lunar1 kernel: drm/i915: Resetting chip after gpu hang
> > Jun 26 16:01:38 lunar1 org.a11y.atspi.Registry[2747]: XIO:  fatal IO
> > error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":0"
> > Jun 26 16:01:38 lunar1 org.a11y.atspi.Registry[2747]:   after 9703
> > requests (9703 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
> > Jun 26 16:01:38 lunar1 polkitd(authority=local)[791]: Unregistered
> > Authentication Agent for unix-session:499 (system bus name :1.388,
> > object path /org/gnome/PolicyKit1/Authenticati
> >
> > I am using an Intel onboard graphics, so does this look like a Graphics
> > issue?
>
> Starting to.  Look for other drm/i915 mentions and see if they correlate
> with your X session ending?
>
> Have you always had this problem with SolydX EE on that machine?  If
> not, were any relevant packages upgraded around the time it began?
>
> Cheers, Ralph.
>
> --
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Re: [Dorset] nginx Setup / Configuration

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 20 February 2017 at 09:39, Terry Coles  wrote:

> On Sunday, 19 February 2017 21:55:52 GMT Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > AKA Apache does some brain-damaged DWIM that just digs a deeper hole
> > when the magic isn't apparent.  :-)
> > http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/DWIM.html
>
> :-)
>
> This comes under the heading of the road to good intentions
>
>
It is possible to get nginx to match catch insensitively if you need to.
You have to use a case-insensitive regex match.

nginx location selection algorithm is a little hard to grok at first, but
it's OK once you get used to it.

There's a good, clear description at
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/understanding-nginx-server-and-location-block-selection-algorithms
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Re: [Dorset] nginx Setup / Configuration

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Hi Terry. It's probably file permissions. Check what user the nginx server
runs as, and make sure they have access to the files. They will need rx
permission at least to every directory down to them from / as well, I
believe.

To check, switch to root then do:

 sudo -i -u nginx

(Replace nginx with the actual user name)

Then make sure you can read one of the files.

If you can't get a shell that way, try:

sudo -u nginx bash


On 18 Feb 2017 5:14 pm, "Terry Coles"  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Back in August we had some discussion about setting up a webserver to run
> in a walled
> garden (literally :-) ) at the Wimborne Model Town.  As a proof of
> concept, I created two
> simple pages (Audio Guide and Kiddies Quiz, see below) and put them onto a
> Raspberry Pi
> running nginx.  At the time they worked perfectly when I connected the Pi
> to a Wireless AP
> mounted on a pole in the corner of the site.  (I was able to use both
> functions from my
> phone.)
>
> Since then, we've pretty much concentrated on the bells project and I've
> only picked this
> up again in the last few days.  The problem is, that I can't get access to
> the two pages
> anymore ;-(  I can connect to the nginx landing page at the root of the
> server, but anything
> else gives me an error 403 (do not have permission to view the page).
>
> Quite a few things have changed since then and I confess that I never
> tested the original
> SD Card before I copied it and went through a full upgrade + installation
> of the code for
> the UPS Pico that we are using.
>
> The problem seems to come down to the fact that I can no longer access the
> content that
> I've copied into the html directory at /var/www.  Worse, I've just plugged
> the original SD
> Card into my old Pi 2 (not the Pi 3 we are using for the WMT) and I'm
> getting the same
> problem.
>
> The only other thing that has changed since then is the router (I'm not
> even trying to
> access the Pi from an independent AP yet), but since I can get to the
> nginx landing page, I
> can't see that that is relevant.
>
> Any ideas what could be going on here?
>
> The latest pages are working on my website at:
>
> http://hadrian-way.co.uk/Audio_Guide/audio_guide.html
>
> and
>
> http://hadrian-way.co.uk/Kiddies_Quiz/index.html[1]
>
> --
>
>
>
> Terry Coles
>
> 
> [1] http://hadrian-way.co.uk/Kiddies_Quiz/index.html
> --
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Re: [Dorset] Links from Last Night's Pub Meet.

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Isn't backwards compatibility great? Reminds me of this oddity that still
exists in Windows
http://superuser.com/questions/613313/why-cant-we-make-con-prn-null-folder-in-windows

On 8 February 2017 at 12:06, Ralph Corderoy  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> One main thing;  poking about an NTFS filesystem mounted with ntfs-3g on
> a Linux laptop using FUSE.  Many of the files showed a link count of
> two, that second field from `ls -l', but there was no second occurrence
> of the file's inode number on the filesystem.
>
> ntfs-3g's support forum has an explanation.
> http://tuxera.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=858&p=
> 3383&hilit=link+count+2&sid=fa22e085b9df90934edc125c1bcf70bb#p3383
> A short 8.3 name is present, but not returned by readdir(3) so can't be
> found.  It can be accessed by name, e.g. FOOBAR~1.TXT, if you guess
> correctly.  Short names aren't created for new files.
>
> We did think it might be this, but the deception doesn't persist to the
> inode-count output of `stat -f'.  That showed a lot less inodes used
> than the sum of all the link counts for all the filesystem's contents.
>
> If on Windows, there also seems to be a `fsutil 8dot3name' command to
> manipulate the 8.3 name;  that would presumably lower the displayed
> count in Linux to one confirming it's the cause.
> https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff621566%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
>
> Cheers, Ralph.
>
> --
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Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

This thread is a little depressing because at work I was given a brand new
15" MacBook Pro on arrival which is very lovely I suppose, but I hate it.
It seems that installing Linux on it (other than in a VM) is not allowed,
and besides I get the impression it won't work very well. It seems that
many people have Dell's with Linux, usually self installed over Windows. I
was thinking of asking if I could swap for a Dell, and the
developer edition ones are the obvious choices. However, the more you look
at them the more you see the potential problems. I hate the idea of buying
a Windows one and taking pot luck on Linux to run well on it but that may
be no worse.

On Wednesday, 5 October 2016,  wrote:

> Hi Terry
>
> On 05/10/16 10:46, Terry Coles wrote:
>
>> So the message here is, no matter how good the reviews are (and they are
>> good), don't be tempted into buying a Linux Laptop from Dell.  They are
>> not
>> providing anything like the same level of support that a Windows user
>> gets,
>> but they charge a premium price.  It is a nice laptop, but I'd have been
>> better off by the Windows one and dual-booting that.
>>
>> That's interesting. Looked long and hard at the XPS13 Developer Edition
> but in the end settled for Asus UX305 which is quite a bit cheaper. Comes
> with Windows but Ubuntu 16.04 has gone straight on these (UX305FA and the
> more recent UX305CA with HDPI screen) with no problem. Nice machines. Of
> course also no support for Linux, but at least not paying for it.
>
> Cheers
>
> Tim
>
>
> --
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Re: [Dorset] How do I? with Skype, Spotify, and Gkrellm

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On Sunday, 15 May 2016, Peter Merchant  wrote:

> On Kubuntu 16.04, before I upgraded, then I hit the X  on Skype or
> Spotify, they would minimize to an icon on the status bar.


> After my upgrade, only Skype still performs the same. Spotify on the X
> terminates. It is a new version of Spotify I think (1.0.28.89)
>
> Has anyone else encountered this?
>

This was a change Spotify made some time back I think, because I saw the
same change on Arch after one of Spotify's updates a few months back.

I've not managed to find a setting to bring the tray icon back.
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Re: [Dorset] Compiling 'wiringpi' on the Raspberry Pi running PiCore

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 15 February 2016 at 20:52, Tim Allen  wrote:

> Hi Ralph
>
> On 15/02/16 17:13, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
>
>>
>> All the cool kids, and VSpike, are using it on the #dorset IRC channel.
>>
>> Ah the clincher ;) Who's VSpike?
>

Lo, it is I! Been using Arch on many machines for many years, very happy
with it.
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Re: [Dorset] Using DD to write image file for R-pi problems

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

If you send a SIGUSR1 to dd it will spit out some  progress information.
Note that on OSX and BSD its SIGINFO ... USR1 will kill it. Don't ask me
how I know this.
On 11 Feb 2016 7:49 p.m., "Neil Stone"  wrote:

> Another interesting tool I have come across recently is dcfldd. Use it the
> same as dd but also has forensic capabilities and, helpfully, progress
> indication.
> On 11 Feb 2016 17:56, "Terry Coles"  wrote:
>
> > On Thursday 11 February 2016 17:26:07 Neil Stone wrote:
> > > Dump the image to the device root /dev/sdb not sdb1
> >
> > Also, you shouldn't need to create a partition on the SD Card, because dd
> > will
> > do a sector by sector copy.
> >
> > See
> >
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/
> > linux.md for a detailed guide.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Terry Coles
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
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Re: [Dorset] Next Meeting - One Week Tonight

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 3 November 2015 at 19:16, Natalie Masse 
wrote:

>  I need to stay in to
> look after little one in case she wakes up and needs resettling...
>
>
I read that as "in case she wakes up and needs resetting" which I thought
was a brilliant geek's eye view of the process :)
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Re: [Dorset] Copying directories between discs

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Hi Clive-

I find with commands like Rsync I remember recipes and use them all the
time.

I used to use *rsync -avcz *for everything ...
-a includes -r so you don't need both
-v gives you more output.
-c makes it checksum the files rather than looking only at file size and
datestamp, so is safer but a lot slower. Optional, depending on
circumstance. Perhaps use the first time if repairing a broken copy,
otherwise don't bother.
-z compresses the data over the wire, only useful over the network and
probably slows things down if not

So often -av is a better, faster choice.

I also now often add -HAX after a few "mishaps" ...
-H include hard links
-A include ACLS (extended file permissions)
-X include xattrs

These generally do no harm and occasionally will be essential.

So, in your case *rsync -avHAX* might be appropriate.

One more gotcha... in the source spec for rsync, the trailing / or lack of
it is significant

So:
*rsync -avHAX sda3/home sdb4/home *will copy the home directory itself to
sdb4/home/home
*rsync -avHAX sda3/home/ sdb4/home *will copy the *contents* of the home
directory to sdb4/home

I expect the latter is what you want.

Doing it from a live disk is guaranteed safe, so is preferable. Otherwise,
you can boot in single user or rescue mode and repeat the rsync command a
few times to catch any differences that happen during the first pass.

Good luck!



On 21 July 2015 at 11:51, C Wills  wrote:

> Please can anyone confirm the following statement as I've not used rsync
> before.
>
> sudo rsync -r -a sda3/home sdb4/home
>
> I'm trying to copy the Home folder (on sda3) containing 2 users onto
> another disc (sdb4) mounted in the same computer (ie not remote).  I want
> to keep all permissions on all files in all directories and sub-directories.
> I think the -r ensures all files are copied, and -a keeps the attributes
> (ownerships ect)
> Partitions are already made on both discs but sdb is not normally mounted
> at start-up.
>
> Reason is a partial upgrade of the operating system which is on sda1 of
> the first disc.
> Will using rsync take long to move 52Gb of data? (1 or 2 hrs?)
> Is it safe to do this while sda is mounted or should I do it from a live
> disc?
>
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Re: [Dorset] (Yet another) OT: Replacing Sony Vaio Keyboard

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I've done a couple of Dell laptops using YouTube videos, and while it's
fiddly and a bit nerve-racking, it's not too bad. My advice would be to
search YouTube for a video for her exact model of laptop that shows how to
change the keyboard.

Failing that, the only repair place I've used that's vaguely local is
http://www.rapidpcs.co.uk/ who were pretty good (I think the recommendation
came from the LUG originally).

On 2 July 2015 at 13:59, Terry Coles  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Sorry for another OT, but I'm not sure how to proceed with this problem.
>
> My daughter has a 2 1/2 year old Sony Vaio SVT131B11M laptop with a faulty
> keyboard.  The problem is that five of the keys don't work; this has
> happened
> progressively over the last few months, so I suspect that more will go
> soon.
> I'm not very impressed, because this model has a touch screen and so she
> only
> uses the keyboard occasionally.  I've tried blowing out the faulty keys
> with
> compressed air but no go.
>
> Does anyone have experience of changing Sony Vaio keyboards?  Are there any
> gotchas?  I don't mind doing it but wouldn't attempt it if it isn't
> straightforward.
>
> Alternatively does anyone know of a better method of cleaning the keys
> (assuming that's what the problem is)?  Finally, as a last resort,  would
> anyone recommend a local repairer?
>
> --
>
> Terry Coles
>
>
>
> --
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Re: [Dorset] Dealing with dynamic IP addresses

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 21 May 2015 at 11:42, Graeme Gemmill  wrote:

>
> So: is there a way to make ggemmill.ddns.net equivalent to
> share.gemmill.name?
>

Hi Graeme.

It should just be a case of setting share.gemmill.name as a CNAME to
ggemmill.ddns.net.

There may be an advanced DNS editor in 1 & 1 that allows this. Note that in
DNS terms the "." on the end of the target is important, although their web
editor (assuming that is how it's done) may add this for you.
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[Dorset] Links from the meeting 2015-05-05

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Hi-

I came late, but this is what I remember.

When I arrived Tim was showing https://extensions.gnome.org/ which I'd not
seen before. Archlinux users will need to use Firefox since the latest
version of Chrome doesn't work with it. The Arch Wiki appears to suggest
installing extensions via a package anyway.

CPKS was singing the praises of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_68 as
well as questioning Golang's decisions to do away with assignments as
expressions and pre-/post-increment operators. There's a FAQ on this
https://golang.org/doc/faq#inc_dec which is consistent with Go's
opinionated design.

In a discussion about weird languages I mentioned TECO (Text/Tape Editor
and COrrector), an editor with a built-in language which looks like line
noise. For example:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TECO_%28text_editor%29#Example_3

It's notable because a set of "Editor MACroS" written in TECO evolved into
Emacs.

I also mentioned the dwm window manager, http://dwm.suckless.org/ which is
written in C and is customized by editing the config.h file and
recompiling. Add-ons are supplied as source patches (
http://dwm.suckless.org/patches/ )

Tim and I were talking about our HP Microservers, ( e.g.
http://www.ebuyer.com/517760-hp-proliant-gen8-g1610t-microserver-712317-421
). We're both using WD Red drives.

Mine runs FreeNAS ( http://www.freenas.org/ ) and his runs Fedora Server (
https://getfedora.org/en/server/ ). FreeNAS uses BSD Jails to run plugins
in isolated containers. Tim is using Docker to do the same. We both
currently use Plex ( https://plex.tv/ ) but I was mentioning an alternative
that I want to try, formerly known as MediaBrowser and now named Emby (
http://emby.media/ ).

There was also a passing discussion about Android Open Source and the
ability to run Android apps on other platforms. I'll just throw in these:-

http://www.cyanogenmod.org/
https://f-droid.org/
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Re: [Dorset] Next Meeting - One Week Tonight

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I should be there in about 30 mins if anyone is still there.

On Tuesday, 5 May 2015, Terry Coles  wrote:

> On Tuesday 28 Apr 2015 17:12:55 Terry Coles wrote:
> > The next meeting is just one week away.  See
> > http://dorset.lug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=meetings:pub#the_broadway[1]
>
> It's tonight!
>
> > See you there!
>
> --
>
> Terry Coles
>
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Kubuntu 15.04 - The Good and the Bad

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 25 Apr 2015 11:52, "Tim"  wrote:
>
> On 25/04/15 09:17, Terry Coles wrote:
>>
>> Well actually it's the bad mostly.  This distro is the first Kubuntu
flavour to
>> use KDE 5 with the QT 5 framework.
>>
>> I thought I'd learned my lesson about upgrading Kubuntu too early, but
recent
>> tech press articles appeared to indicate that their weren't too many
problems.
>> So I applied the upgrade when it was offered yesterday morning.

>>
> It always make me wonder when you see the pre release report giving the
next up and coming release a glowing reports and then when it is released
there is nothing but bad news.

I expect it's nothing more than the fact that more prerelease testing will
happen in VMs than anything else, and most reviewers will use a VM (and
more importantly a clean install) to try it out.
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Re: [Dorset] Remote Desktop to a Raspberry Pi

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

That's possibly true. The machine I connect in to normally uses dwm, but
I've never got that working. I tend to install and use LXDE for remote
sessions. That seems to work fine.

On 20 April 2015 at 14:22, TimA  wrote:

> Hi John
>
> On 20/04/15 13:14, John Carlyle-Clarke wrote:
>
>> Using the RDP server on Linux doesn't really gain you much over VNC (other
>> than making it easier for Windows clients to connect). The best thing
>> about
>> RDP on Windows is that it hooks the graphics layer to send drawing
>> primitives and instructions instead of just updating rectangles of pixels,
>> which is very efficient. It has several levels of protocol though, and the
>> lowest is pretty much VNC (remote framebuffer). The smarter versions of
>> the
>> protocol have never been implemented on Linux and so the RDP server just
>> wraps VNC and tells the client to fall back to the lowest protocol level.
>>
>>  That's very interesting. I'd noted that xrdp relied on VNC for the
> backend and that had pushed it back to "must try this one day" status. The
> only test I'd run in the past was RDP client to Windows XP, and your
> description explains the impressive speed.
>
>  I agree that remote X11 is very useful but I've always found that it works
>> best for simple (dare I say old fashioned?) X11 apps like xterm and worst
>> for graphically complex things like browsers. It's just about usable over
>> a
>> good WAN connection for simple jobs but seems to be very sensitive to
>> latency, and the effect is multiplied for complex applications.
>>
>> One tool that I've found to work very well is x2go. I'm not sure if it's
>> available for the Pi but I've used it quite a lot on desktop machines.
>> There's a Windows client which works well too.
>>
>> http://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php
>>
>> It's not faultless. Not all features seem to work perfectly, but it's
>> pretty good.
>>
>>
> I see that uses NX - will definitely be giving it a try. But it looks like
> nxagent needs a major rewrite to stay compatible with modern desktops.
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Tim
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Remote Desktop to a Raspberry Pi

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Using the RDP server on Linux doesn't really gain you much over VNC (other
than making it easier for Windows clients to connect). The best thing about
RDP on Windows is that it hooks the graphics layer to send drawing
primitives and instructions instead of just updating rectangles of pixels,
which is very efficient. It has several levels of protocol though, and the
lowest is pretty much VNC (remote framebuffer). The smarter versions of the
protocol have never been implemented on Linux and so the RDP server just
wraps VNC and tells the client to fall back to the lowest protocol level.

I agree that remote X11 is very useful but I've always found that it works
best for simple (dare I say old fashioned?) X11 apps like xterm and worst
for graphically complex things like browsers. It's just about usable over a
good WAN connection for simple jobs but seems to be very sensitive to
latency, and the effect is multiplied for complex applications.

One tool that I've found to work very well is x2go. I'm not sure if it's
available for the Pi but I've used it quite a lot on desktop machines.
There's a Windows client which works well too.

http://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php

It's not faultless. Not all features seem to work perfectly, but it's
pretty good.

On 19 April 2015 at 10:54, Ralph Corderoy  wrote:

> Hi Terry,
>
> > I fixed my problem by completely removing xrdp from the Pi (including
> > a purge) and re-installing it.
>
> That seems to match http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1314336 and
> the bugs it links to.  Something about whether xrdp pulls in vnc4server,
> bad, or tightvncserver, good.
>
> There should also be /var/log/sesman.* or similar that would hopefully
> give more details than that dreary `error - problem connecting' in the
> GUI.
>
> WRT xrdp's and sesman's status, if you find a process ID then you can
> list what IPv4 interfaces and sockets they are listening on, e.g.
> perhaps it's only loopback.  Here's an example with part of Postfix,
> showing it listening for incoming SMTP connections only on the loopback
> interface.
>
> $ sudo lsof -a -p `pidof master` -i 4
> COMMAND  PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
> master  1304 root   12u  IPv4   8665  0t0  TCP
> localhost.localdomain:smtp (LISTEN)
> $
>
> Not the problem this time as a re-install wouldn't have helped.  The
> purge removed /etc configuration files;  perhaps there was something
> there amiss.
>
> Cheers, Ralph.
>
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Re: [Dorset] Job Ads on the List.

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I've had dealings with Hays in the past, both as a candidate and while
looking for candidates and although generally recruitment agencies have a
bad reputation for good reasons, I found Hays the best of the lot that I'd
dealt with. I agree with the principle of keeping job ads off the list
though - there are more appropriate places for them.

On 18 April 2015 at 11:13, Ralph Corderoy  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The list got a polite email from a Bournemouth recruiter that fills
> Linux positions.  I'm guessing the list doesn't particuarly want job ads
> here?  (If you're interested in UK Linux jobs then
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/linuxjobs is one place to
> subscribe;  that's where I'm going to tell him to post.)  He asked that
> his details be passed on, and since he asked nicely, here they are.  Not
> planning on making a habit of it!
>
> > Joshua Charlesworth
> > Associate Consultant IT Public services
> >
> > HAYS Recruiting experts worldwide
> >
> > Waverly House, Ground floor
> > 115-119 Holdenhurst Road
> > Bournemouth
> > BH8 8DY
> >
> > M: +44 (0)7540257188
> > T: +44 (0)1202 048614
> >
> > E. [1]joshua.charleswo...@hays.com
> >
> > hays.co.uk
>
> Cheers, Ralph.
>
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Re: [Dorset] How do I find out the file system type?

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I find newer Windows systems will only work with xfreerdp instead of the
rdesktop ( http://www.rdesktop.org/ ) program I've always used, unless you
specifically modify their security settings.

On 11 March 2015 at 15:13, Andrew  wrote:

> On 10/03/2015 22:29, Tim wrote:
>
>> *The reason I am doing this is that these terminal are Linux based and
>> they have a built in RDP client, I am having issue with running RDP on my
>> PC so I was hoping to glean some info from one of these terminals.
>>
>
> In case it is relevant, I have been using Remmina for RDP for quite a
> while now. At some point, something changed and now I find I have to set
> Security to "RDP", rather than "Negotiate" in order for it to work.
>
> --
>
> Andrew.
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] How do I find out the file system type?

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Is it definitely Linux? It's not BSD and a UFS file system is it?

I can't remember but if you point "file" at a block device does it attempt
to guess the FS?

On Monday, 9 March 2015, Tim  wrote:

> I have a Linux based thin terminal which uses a 1gb Compact Flash card as
> a hard disk. I want to look at the software on the compact flash card but
> the file type is not recognised
>
> Model: Generic USB CF Reader (scsi)
> Disk /dev/sdd: 1021MB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> Partition Table: msdos
> Disk Flags:
>
> Number  Start  End Size  Type File system  Flags
>  1 32.3kB  1021MB  1021MB  primary boot
>
> If I plug it into my Debian box, it does not mount, it is picked up by
> gparted and as unknown partition. If I plug it into my Windows PC it just
> asks if I want to format the card.
>
> Any suggestion on how I can find out the file system so I can read the
> card??
>
> Regards
>
> Tim
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] USB Mic works in Skype but not in anything else!

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Hi Terry.

If an application is using pulseaudio and is using an input device like a
microphone, it will appear in the "Recording" tab of pavucontrol. In there,
you should be able to change which input device it uses. Try making a Skype
Test Call while watching that tab in pavucontrol and you'll see what I mean.

I'm not familiar with Tox, but a quick search to find out if it used
pulseaudio lead me to https://github.com/Tox/toxic/issues/148 which
suggests that Tox uses OpenAL and has its own methods to select inputs.


On 23 November 2014 at 16:11, Terry Coles  wrote:

> On Sunday 23 Nov 2014 15:00:47 John Carlyle-Clarke wrote:
> > Your system probably uses pulseaudio, so you might be better with the
> > pavucontrol program since that's the mixer that comes with Pulseaudio.
>
> That took me a bit further forward; in the 'Input Devices' tab of the
> pavucontrol program, I can see the USB Mic levels changing as I speak, so I
> know that a bit more works than I did before.
>
> I still can't get the audio to another piece of software on the computer,
> other than Skype.
>
> Can anyone think what other utility or kernel module might be needed to
> route
> the incoming stream from the USB Mic to compatible communication programs
> on
> the machine?
>
> --
>
> Terry Coles
>
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] USB Mic works in Skype but not in anything else!

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Hi Terry.

On 23 November 2014 at 13:38, Terry Coles  wrote:
>
> The Tox suite of IM Clients would seem ideal, given my bandwidth issue with
> the latest version of Skype, but at the moment I can only use a poor
> quality
> boom Mic, when I have a perfectly good USB Mic.
>
>
Your system probably uses pulseaudio, so you might be better with the
pavucontrol program since that's the mixer that comes with Pulseaudio.

John
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Re: [Dorset] This Could be Big! MS has Open Sourced .NET

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Also, in case more proof is needed.

http://news.microsoft.com/2014/11/12/microsoft-takes-net-open-source-and-cross-platform-adds-new-development-capabilities-with-visual-studio-2015-net-2015-and-visual-studio-online/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/

dotnet

/archive/2014/11/12/net-core-is-open-

source.aspx


http://www.omnisharp.net/

It's not entirely clear, but it looks like they're planning to merge the
Mono and .NET runtimes. That could be interesting - I wonder if that means
tech like Mono.Cecil will find its way into mainstream .NET?

On 13 November 2014 08:39, Peter Merchant  wrote:

> On 12/11/14 17:29, Terry Coles wrote:
>
>> Apparently its true see http://www.geekwire.com/2014/
>> net-visual-studio-microsoft-open-source-cross-platform/.  There is also
>> Linux Support.
>>
>> In other news porcine aviation has been developed.
>>
>>  How many places does it have to be reported before it is accepted as
> truth?
> http://www.infoworld.com/article/2846450/microsoft-net/
> microsoft-open-sources-server-side-net-launches-visual-
> studio-2015-preview.html
>
> P.
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Rogue browser overwriting my desktop

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I saw some really bad features like this a while ago in Chrome, but I
waited a while and it got better again. I'm running Arch, so due to rolling
updates you can often just "wait out" bugs and they go away again!

I think it's to do with new GPU accelerated rendering tricks, which can
expose buggy graphics drivers. Or it's buggy code in Chrome :) Either way,
tuning things in chrome://flags will probably help, if you can work out
which knobs to twiddle.

On 25 September 2014 13:10, Victor Churchill 
wrote:

> On 25 September 2014 12:28, Ralph Corderoy  wrote:
>
> >
> > Is there compositing being used, perhaps just for the popups?  When did
> > this start going wrong?
> >
>
> To be honest I don't know whether compositing is being used I'd imagine
> not, as this is running a fairly low level environment.
> It just started today - this time; I have not noticed it for quite a while
> but I do recollect having had the same thing happen way back over many
> years on different systems.
>
> >
> > > The screen artefacts persist over Ctrl-Alt-F1/7, and over going into
> > > Display and Desktop settings and changing background and resolution
> > > and rotation.
> >
> > Have you tried a "switch user" so you get a new X server running a login
> > manager, then log in as yourself so it switches back to the other one.
>
> The new X server may initialise the graphics sufficiently to fix things.
> >
>
> Did not try that; I did try hibernating and waking to see if it was a non
> persistent memory effect but that did not help. A colleague suggested
> closing all applications, and I was reluctant to do that (did not want toi
> lose my shell and emacs sessions :) and did not think it would help; but I
> did close down Chrome and the other GUI aplications (Calibre, PDF reader,
> OpenOffice); was left with a desktop that still looked like something from
> an art exhibition, and then after thirty seconds' whirring the white/grey
> blocks disapperared one by one and my desktop was restored!
>
> So apparently one of the apps (I suspect Chrome) was using the desktop
> management library incorrectly (or it was buggy) and having an effect
> outside its own scope - but recoverably.
>
> My uptime remains :)
>
> cheers
>
> victor
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Re: [Dorset] How can I reproduce the properties of Windows "Shared Documents" directory in Linux?

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Either of the previous suggestions sound good, but here's how I've always
done it.

(1) Ensure the users you want to share the directory have membership of an
additional common group. One Debian systems like Ubuntu, each user e.g.
john gets a group with the same name ("john") as their primary group. Check
the groups you're in already by typing "groups" at a shell. "users" would
be a good option, assuming it exists. If you're not in this group, do this
to add the user "jd":-

usermod -aG users jd

(2) Change the default umask to 002 as Ralph described.

(3) For the shared directory, do:-
cd /shared
chgrp -R users *
chmod -R g+w *
find -type d chmod g+s

This makes all the files have the group "users" and be group writeable. It
then sets the group setuid bit on the directories, which has a special
meaning in this case. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setuid#setuid_and_setgid_on_directories

It means instead of files being created with the creating user's primary
group (which is the normal behaviour), they will inherit the parent's group
ID. So, the "users" group membership will apply to all files created there.
Combined with the umask, this means all members of "users" can read and
write all files there.

To be honest, it's not a bad idea to put the step (3) commands in a cron
job too as Ralph suggested, just to fix up any problems (usually caused by
doing stuff in there as root via sudo). Belt and braces!



On 25 August 2014 15:02, Neil Stone  wrote:

> On 08/25/14 14:32, JD wrote:
> > I'm on Ubuntu 14.04.  I want to convert my wife & myself from Windows
> > XP.  I think I can do almost everything to reproduce our accounts but
> > I can't create the equivalent of Shared Documents.
> >
> > This directory, in Windows, appears to contain objects that are owned
> > by nobody but everybody has read/write/create/delete permission on all
> > the files and directories in it.
> >
> > In Ubuntu I can't get rid of the ownership by an individual user and
> > the consequent permissions.
> >
> > I've tried to use Ubuntu's Public directory in my account but I can't
> > get it to retain the read/write permission for Others.  In my wife's
> > account sharing Public is prohibited even though I've made her an
> > administrator and therefore a member of sudo and sambashare.
> >
> > I've created /home/shared and made it usable by all but, of course,
> > items put in there retain their owners permissions.
> >
> > I guess that setting umask to an extreme value (is that 000 or 777?)
> > would do it but with enormous overkill!
> >
> > Please help to get my wife away from Windows!!! - preferably without
> > her noticing!
> >
> > Regards,
> > John
> >
>
> I would ensure that all users are primarily a member of the 'users'
> group and ensure that the umask set allows all 'users' members rw perms
> (umask 007)
>
>
> https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/brian/entry/every_possible_unix_linux_umask_mode_plus_scripts_to_generate_these_lists15?lang=en
>
>
> HTH
>
> Neil
>
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Re: [Dorset] Should of done a backup - Q1

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I was meaning to buy one of those HP Microservers for myself, since we have
two at work and they are great units. I kept procrastinating, and suddenly
they seemed to vanish from everywhere. The only ones I could find were
either stupidly expensive, or second hand (which I'd rather avoid if
possible).

Have you got a link to a source of them at a reasonable price? If so, I
want to snap one up right away!



On 15 August 2014 08:29, Paul Stenning  wrote:

> I have a HP Microserver - excellent little unit!  :)
>
> They come with a single 250GB SATA hard disk and have four bays so you can
> add up to three more.  Mine runs CentOS 6.5 very well, used for storage and
> as a development web server.
>
> The great thing is that, unlike a NAS, I have control of the software and
> configuration.
>
> I paid just over £100 for mine, second hand on eBay.  It looked like new
> and the SMART values on the hard disk suggest it had had under 200 hours
> use.
>
> Paul.
>
>
>
> On 15/08/2014 07:49, Tim Allen wrote:
>
>> Hi Peter
>>
>> On 14/08/14 20:24, Peter Merchant wrote:
>>
>>> On 13/08/14 17:17, Tim wrote:
>>>  > I had a Lacie single disk (500gb) nas but for the last few days I have
>>>  > not been able to contact it. I have rebooted it several time via
>>>  > turning it on and off but that made no difference, there is a blue
>>>  > light that come on and occasionally flickers (which is normal). I have
>>>  > tried to access via Linux and Windows, windows has Lacie disk manager
>>>  > program but that claims there are no disks.
>>>  >
>>>  >
>>>   > Tim >
>>>
>>> This raises the question:- that's two Lacie drives that have failed in
>>> our LUG population, Are they any good, or is there a better unit?
>>>
>>>
>> One option is an HP Microserver. Up to now they'd done a £100 cashback
>> twice a year (next one due Sept-Oct), meaning they come in at around
>> £100, although I see now priced at £114+VAT anyway, so the days of the
>> cashback may be over. Then stick your favourite distro on it and install
>> Samba to provide a CIFS server, along with whatever else (BIND9, DHCP3 etc)
>> and any external USB disks you want.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Tim
>>
>>
>>
>>
> --
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Re: [Dorset] Has something changed with Debian Desktops?

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Yep, I took David W's advice and installed MATE on a new Debian VM, and I
haven't regretted it.
On 14 Jul 2014 18:26, "David Wilkinson"  wrote:

> +1 for MATE, Run it on all my newer builds.
>
> On 14/07/14 16:58, StarLion wrote:
>
>> MATE is also an alternative that I believe is in the official repositories
>> now - it's a fork of Gnome 2 and is effectively identical but for names
>> (Due to licensing restrictions, I believe).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Google Chrome + Java = No workie

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Stupid auto correct. For Kibbutz read Linux.
On 29 Jun 2014 01:19, j...@wormdrive.net wrote:

Hi Tim.

This is certainly my experience, and also my understanding of the situation.

Does anyone know if Chromium on Kibbutz ships the Pepper Flash? Because
Flash seems to work there for me, and I thought the Pepper Flash was only
shipped with Chrome, so I don't get why. Definitely no Java though.

John
On 28 Jun 2014 21:25, "Tim"  wrote:


Anybody seen anything about Chrome no longer supporting Java? I have
problems getting Java working in Google Chrome and I came across this

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/qPiZkcLwFFk

If I read it right Chrome will no longer work with Java, anybody know?

Tim

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Re: [Dorset] Google Chrome + Java = No workie

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Hi Tim.

This is certainly my experience, and also my understanding of the situation.

Does anyone know if Chromium on Kibbutz ships the Pepper Flash? Because
Flash seems to work there for me, and I thought the Pepper Flash was only
shipped with Chrome, so I don't get why. Definitely no Java though.

John
On 28 Jun 2014 21:25, "Tim"  wrote:

>
> Anybody seen anything about Chrome no longer supporting Java? I have
> problems getting Java working in Google Chrome and I came across this
>
> https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/qPiZkcLwFFk
>
> If I read it right Chrome will no longer work with Java, anybody know?
>
> Tim
>
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Re: [Dorset] Old Servers

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

Hi all-

Three servers gone, these still remaining. At least one decent 1850 in
there.

Dell Poweredge 1850 [3YMQ32J] - marked as "OK"
Dell Poweredge SC1425 [4WRLH1J] - marked as "Failed"
Supermicro server, based on Supermicro p4dp8-g2 - no RAM.
Dell Poweredge 850 [45SR02J] - marked as "Failed"
Dell Poweredge SC1425 [44NQM1J] - marked as "Failed"
Dell Poweredge 2850 [GJNX32J] - marked as "Possibly OK"
Dell Poweredge 850 [8BT822J] - marked as "Failed"
Dell Poweredge 1850 [BDHS32J] - unknown state
"Evolution" 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.40GHz (4 cores, no 64-bit) 2GB ECC
RAM, 1.2TB across 5 disks (working)
Dell Poweredge 2850 [G2XG42J] - marked as "Failed"
Dell PowerEdge 2950 [FWNJL2J] - Disk or HW RAID fault

You can find the original config on the Dell site by going to e.g.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/product-support/servicetag/3YMQ32J/configuration

Just modify the URL with the service tag you want.

Let me know if you want them ... Freecycle next!


On 19 June 2014 12:03, John Carlyle-Clarke  wrote:

> As promised, here's the list of land-fill...
>
> Dell Poweredge SC1425 [4WRLH1J] - marked as "Failed"
> Supermicro server, based on Supermicro p4dp8-g2 - no RAM.
> Dell Poweredge 850 [45SR02J] - marked as "Failed"
> Dell Poweredge 1850 [3YMQ32J] - marked as "OK"
> Dell Poweredge SC1425 [44NQM1J] - marked as "Failed"
> Dell Poweredge 2850 [GJNX32J] - marked as "Possibly OK"
> Dell Poweredge 850 [8BT822J] - marked as "Failed"
> Dell Poweredge 1850 [BDHS32J] - unknown state
> Dell Poweredge 2850 [6Y5LY1J] - worked when last tested
> "Evolution" 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.40GHz (4 cores, no 64-bit) 2GB ECC
> RAM, 1.2TB across 5 disks (working)
> Dell Poweredge 2850 [G2XG42J] - marked as "Failed"
> Dell PowerEdge 1850 [2GKR32J] - working
> Dell PowerEdge 2950 [FWNJL2J] - Disk or HW RAID fault
> Dell PowerEdge 2950 [DWNJL2J] - working
>
> If anyone wants any, it's all free to collect from Salisbury. Unlikely to
> be of any interest to the target audience, but quite a few will have
> Windows Server OEM Licenses attached (mostly 2003 R2).
>
> Probably best to reply off-list.
>
>
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[Dorset] Old Servers

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

As promised, here's the list of land-fill...

Dell Poweredge SC1425 [4WRLH1J] - marked as "Failed"
Supermicro server, based on Supermicro p4dp8-g2 - no RAM.
Dell Poweredge 850 [45SR02J] - marked as "Failed"
Dell Poweredge 1850 [3YMQ32J] - marked as "OK"
Dell Poweredge SC1425 [44NQM1J] - marked as "Failed"
Dell Poweredge 2850 [GJNX32J] - marked as "Possibly OK"
Dell Poweredge 850 [8BT822J] - marked as "Failed"
Dell Poweredge 1850 [BDHS32J] - unknown state
Dell Poweredge 2850 [6Y5LY1J] - worked when last tested
"Evolution" 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.40GHz (4 cores, no 64-bit) 2GB ECC
RAM, 1.2TB across 5 disks (working)
Dell Poweredge 2850 [G2XG42J] - marked as "Failed"
Dell PowerEdge 1850 [2GKR32J] - working
Dell PowerEdge 2950 [FWNJL2J] - Disk or HW RAID fault
Dell PowerEdge 2950 [DWNJL2J] - working

If anyone wants any, it's all free to collect from Salisbury. Unlikely to
be of any interest to the target audience, but quite a few will have
Windows Server OEM Licenses attached (mostly 2003 R2).

Probably best to reply off-list.
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Re: [Dorset] Xubuntu, what should I do

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I have what is technically known as a crapload of old servers here, all
looking for homes. I don't know for sure which work and which don't, but if
anyone is interested I can get together a rough list? All free to good
homes (or AndrewM).


On 12 June 2014 08:41, TimA  wrote:

> Hi Tim
>
>
> On 11/06/14 22:28, Tim wrote:
>
>>
>> I used to run Debian a while ago with KDE 2 & 3 and then came back and
>> tried Debian and XFCE  4.8 but I keep finding Debian to be to prim and
>> proper (it must be open and free, while agree in principle but not to
>> the extreme that Debian does), I found that Debian twin sisters
>> (Buntu's, Mepis, Debian Mint, and now Solydxk etc.) are more fun to play
>> with.
>>
>>  So long as you include the non-free and contrib repositories in your
> sources.list that shouldn't be an issue.
>
>
>  Glad to hear the old server is still going, was that the Dell server??
>>
>
> No it's the big black Supermicro with a pair of Xeons.
>
>
>
>> If anybody is interested I have 3 HP rack mount server coming up soon,
>> drop me an email if you are interested.
>>
>
> I'd be interested in one if available. I'm thinking of retiring my 1989
> Northpoint after 25 years of continuous service.
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
> Tim
>
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] Equivalent to Belarc Advisor

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

There's also "lsblk" for block devices. "apt-get -u upgrade" will show
upgradeable packages, but you can get more info from "aptitude" (the curses
interface) since that will show security updates separately, and will also
give you the change lists.

By the way, on Windows you can get quite a lot of this information by
typing "systeminfo" at the command line.


On 12 June 2014 09:03, Peter Merchant  wrote:

> On 12/06/14 01:15, Paul Tansom wrote:
>
>> ** Keith Edmunds  [2014-06-11 19:17]:
>>
>>> Maybe you should describe want you want to achieve. I've no idea what
>>> Belarc Advisor does.
>>>
>> ** end quote [Keith Edmunds]
>>
>> I was thinking much the same thing. I have used Belarc Advisor once to
>> try and
>> work out a chipset so I could track down a driver iirc. It gives quite a
>> bit of
>> information, but I have a feeling I ended up booting Linux in order to
>> get the
>> info I needed in the end.
>>
>> There are plenty of tools to get similar info, but I'm not sure there is a
>> single one that does the lot. Depending what you are looking for you may
>> like
>> to look at one or more of the following as a starting point:
>>
>> dpkg -l (to list packages installed on a .deb based system, not sure off
>> hand
>>of the .rpm equivalent)
>> lsmod (for the loaded modules)
>> lshw (for hardware details)
>> lsusb (usb hardware)
>> lspci (pci hardware)
>> lscpu (cpu info)
>> dmidecode (memory info)
>>
>> There are others, but these are pretty standard on Debian/Ubuntu based
>> distros.
>>
>>  Thanks Paul,
>
> I usually use Belarc Advisor when I start to look at someone's computer,
> because they don't always know what they have. It gives a seven page file
> of the hardware and software condition of the computer, including the state
> of patches. .
> If I combine the outputs of what Paul suggests, I should get close enough
> for a linux machine, I guess.
>
> Here's a sample: ( Not formatted nicely)
> Operating System
> Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (build 2600)
> Install Language: English (United States)
> System Locale: English (United States)
> Installed: 09/03/2010 16:10:00
>
> Processor1.80 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64
> 128 kilobyte primary memory cache
> 512 kilobyte secondary memory cache
> 64-bit ready
> Not hyper-threaded
> new USB Storage Use in past 30 Days (mouse over last used for details)
> Supra DC 5900, s/n 100, rev 1.00
> Kingston DT 101 G2, s/n
> 001CC0EC33B0BB91070C0043, rev PMAP
> Seagate Desktop, s/n 2GHLQ4ZA, rev 0130
> ARCHOS A70S, s/n
> A70-5D540002-9FFC-0163B990-05022017,
> rev 
> Kindle Internal Storage, s/n B023170124470WL8,
> Last Used
> 11/01/201409/01/201406:48:17*
> 08:43:52*
> 06/01/201406/01/201411:49:27*
> 08:56:37*
> 03/01/201416:38:39*
> System Model
> WinFast 6150M2MA FAB2.0
> Enclosure Type: Desktop
>
> Main Circuit BoardBoard: WinFast 6150M2MA
> FAB2.0
> Bus Clock: 201 megahertz
> BIOS: Phoenix Technologies,
> LTD 686W1D24 11/02/2007
> new Hosted Virtual Machines
> (mouse over name for details)
> None discovered
> ...
>
> Users (mouse over user name for details)
> local user accounts last logon
> Peter Merchant 16/01/201407:07:25
> local system accounts never
> Administrator 15/01/2014
> Guest never
> HelpAssistant never
> SUPPORT_388945a0
>
> (admin)
> (admin)
> Marks a disabled account;
> Marks a locked account
>
> Controllers
> Standard floppy disk controller
> NVIDIA nForce 430/410 Serial ATA Controller (2x)
> Primary IDE Channel [Controller]
> Secondary IDE Channel [Controller]
> Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
> Bus Adapters
> Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller
> Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller
> Virus Protection [Back to Top]
> COMODO Antivirus Version 6.0
> Virus Definitions Version Up To Date
> Realtime File Scanning On
> Communications new – connection speed & status
> ↑ NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller
> primary IP Address:
> 192.168.1.10 / 28
> Gateway:
> 192.168.1.1
> Physical Address:
> 00:1C:25:35:BD:1C
> ...
> Missing Microsoft Security Hotfixes [Back to Top]
> Q2538242 - Important (details...) These required security hotfixes were
> not found installed
> (using the 01/14/2014 Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary
> Q2596843 - Important (details...) with definitions version 2014.1.15.3).
> Note: Security
> benchmarks require that Critical and Important severity
> Q2687499 - Critical (details...) security hotfixes must be installed.
>
> ..
>
> and more.
>
> Cheers,
>
>
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Re: [Dorset] [OT] BT Line Quality

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 08:21:44PM +, Ken Adams wrote:
> Long time ago in the days of Fidonet, I had to ask BT to change a
> particular setting on my line to improve connections on the modem.
> 
> I find I am in the same situation again. Unfortunately I cannot
> remember what setting I need to get changed and who to call and ask
> to get it changed.
> 
> Anyone out there know what the heck I'm on about.

Could it be http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/interleaving.htm perhaps?


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Re: [Dorset] android tablets

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 02/01/14 20:31, John Carlyle-Clarke wrote:

http://jolla.com/
Nokia created Maemo, a Linux for phones based on Debian and shipped it 
on some devices. Intel were working on Moblin (Fedora based), for 
small computing appliances. The two were combined to create MeeGo, 
although Intel later quit the project. When Nokia dropped this after 
signing up with MS, they open sourced most of it. It was picked up by 
Jolla to create Sailfish OS, now shipping.



http://www.jollausers.com/2014/01/jolla-outsells-iphone-5s-and-5c-in-finland/

A rather timely item from the front page of Hacker News.
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Re: [Dorset] android tablets

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 26/12/13 19:02, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
Well, more labour for them, mainly. And that takes time during which 
competitors are shipping multiple products as hardware continues to 
improve. And the end result of their own non-Android OS would be a 
reduced ecosystem for customers, e.g. no access to a big established 
pool of apps that could run. See 
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/ for an example of what you're 
suggesting except it's not done by a hardware manufacturer.


"Many men have tried.. ."
"Did they try and fail?"
"They tried and died..."

In the Linux-based mobile OS arena there are also:-

http://jolla.com/
Nokia created Maemo, a Linux for phones based on Debian and shipped it 
on some devices. Intel were working on Moblin (Fedora based), for small 
computing appliances. The two were combined to create MeeGo, although 
Intel later quit the project. When Nokia dropped this after signing up 
with MS, they open sourced most of it. It was picked up by Jolla to 
create Sailfish OS, now shipping.


http://www.openwebosproject.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS
Thismore likely to end up on smart TV's and the like, although it was 
originally created by Palm for phones. For a long time it was called 
Access Linux Project (ALP), and was finally released as WebOS. The few 
people who had the phones that I met loved the OS, but it was let down 
by slightly below par hardware and a lack of apps. Palm went bust and 
were  bought by HP who had no real idea what to do with any of it. They 
sold the OS to LG.


http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page
This was released on a few phones a few years back, but I believe it's 
now dead.


http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/ubuntu-for-android
http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet
Canonical's efforts. I don't think they've reached commercially produced 
hardware yet but I might be wrong.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen
LiMO (Linux Mobile) was created in 2007 to unite various efforts by 
manufacturers to develop Linux-based systems for phones. It was renamed 
to Tizen a couple of years back. It's mostly driven by Samsung, I believe.







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Re: [Dorset] Hola

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 22/09/13 15:20, Neil Stone wrote:

I can tell plenty... spent many years toying with Linux before going
professional with it, I tend to revolve around Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo
for myself. I have helped out on a few projects over the years, FreePBX
is just one of them.


Hi Neil.

We're happy AsteriskNOW (which of course bundles FreePBX) users at my 
company. I'd always been interested in Asterisk before but never had a 
chance to play with it. There's nothing like inheriting a couple of 
Asterisk servers, then having the disk crash on one and finding there 
are no backups, to force you to get up to speed rapidly.


The whole stack is amazing impressive, and really showcases some of the 
best of free software.


John


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Re: [Dorset] HP Microserver offer

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 10/09/13 11:45, Tim Allen wrote:

Hi

Anyone looking for a small server may be interested in

http://www.hp.com/uk/focus

With the cashback deal comes in at around £100. I've just installed
Debian Wheezy on one - seems fine.

Tim



We bought one of these from Ebuyer at work. They'd used cheap LG NAS 
boxes before, and I wanted something a bit better, so we got one of 
those, put 4 x 2TB WD Red disks in it. We run FreeNAS off a USB drive 
from the internal USB slot, and run ZFS on the disks. Apart from the 
first USB drive failing (it was a cheap one), we've had no problems and 
it's a really awesome box.


Actually, we've since bought another one...


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Re: [Dorset] Hi from pissed off Windows user in Weymouth - wanting to change

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I'm a bit late to this! Lots of great advice already, but I'll stick my 
oar in anyway.


On 20/03/13 15:43, David Smith wrote:


1. Is this the right way to go and if so what distribution would you
recommend? Should I buy DVDs or download?


I'd suggest downloading. As others have said, you can burn to CD or use 
USB sticks. Most distros now have a "live" variant. I recommend making 
good use of these. Firstly, it lets you get a look at the distro before 
you commit to it. Secondly, it lets you test if your hardware works well 
with that distro.


Generally now if a piece of hardware works with one, it will work with 
most of them since most distros use an unmodified kernel.


Remember, they are all free so go crazy! If time permits, try out a few. 
It's /reasonably/ easy to switch later. (If you get asked when you 
actually come to install something, try to choose a separate partition 
for /home - it will make switching distro or upgrading much easier).




2. Is it simple to find say printer drivers that run under Linux?


I've found it to be easier than XP. http://www.openprinting.org/printers 
might help too.



3. Do I need antivirus software? (MACs now do) Any other security
software essential?


No.


5. Does Linux have the equivalent of DOS batch files?


The nice thing about Linux is that most distros come with a number of 
programming languages installed already. As Ralph and others said you 
get a default shell which is very powerful and choice of a few others if 
you don't like that one. You probably also get Python and Perl installed 
by default. FreePascal is available. You can also get C#, lua, ruby and 
pretty much anything else you can think of!



FYI I run the following software at present:
Open Office


Most Linux distros have switched to Libre Office now, a fork of Open 
Office but you will find it very familiar.



Foxit pdf reader


There are several PDF readers avaible.

Firefox
Tbird.

Available and possibly installed already.


Free Pascal

Available

A couple of other interesting things about Linux distros; firstly, after 
install you get a fairly complete suite of applications already 
installed (depending on the distro) so there's no need to look for 
browsers, office suites, PDF readers and the like. Secondly, most 
distros use some type of software repository from which your system can 
fetch software to install. Depending on the distro, the choice can be 
vast or fairly limited. Most mainstream distros have enough choice for 
anyone.


One more thought - why not get a live CD and try it out on your current 
desktop? Or, try one of the "portable" lightweight distros that is meant 
to run from a memory stick, like Puppy. Just for fun. Remember it's 
free, so you can just have fun and play with it. It's like having the 
keys to a sweet shop! :) It might get you a functional machine to go and 
look at all the other links people have given you ;)


In addition to the distros suggested (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Fedora) 
you could consider one of the Linux Mint variants (the XFCE one is 
nice). There's also OpenSuse and Mageia. All of these are very competent 
and decent distros.


Have fun!

John



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Re: [Dorset] opensource projects

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

i have an oreilly book called unserstanding the linux kernel which i
find too difficult, can anyone recommend an entry level book?


Also http://learnpythonthehardway.org/



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Re: [Dorset] opensource projects

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 16/02/13 15:44, Nicky Scopes wrote:

i have considered programming in the past, i know html which is easy and i 
bought a book from pcworld which teaches you how to use microsoft visual studio 
and program visual basic on windows through a GUI interface.
but i wouldnt know where to start on linux , can anyone tell me would i be 
working from the command line which can be tedious or is linux programming done 
on an integrated development environment like visual studio?
i have an oreilly book called unserstanding the linux kernel which i find too 
difficult, can anyone recommend an entry level book?


Why not start playing on http://www.codecademy.com/ ?


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Re: [Dorset] Alan Cox is Going!

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 24/01/13 22:39, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

John Carlyle-Clarke was having trouble downloading it too recently, so
#dorset was saying.


And once I downloaded it, it wouldn't boot in VirtualBox, so I gave up.


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Re: [Dorset] volunteer work

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 16/01/13 23:44, Keith Edmunds wrote:

On Wed, 16 Jan 2013 23:38:38 + (GMT), nrts...@yahoo.co.uk said:


i have wanted to get an IT job for a while but i need experience, do you
think that if i approached some of the companies listed on this lugs
website that this would be helpful.


Offer to work for a charity; offer to work for a company for the cost of
travelling to their premises; make sure you come across as 100% intent on
working in IT. Find the right organisation - it may take some time - and
your passion will convince them to take a chance on you.

Other advice: learn to write decent English. Capital letters, full stops,
etc. Don't skip this part. No experience and good communication skills
coupled with passion means you will get lucky sooner or later. No
experience and a "can't be arsed with grammar" attitude will make it a lot
harder.



In addition to what Keith suggested, why not get involved in an open 
source project? You don't say what your skills are, but you can 
contribute even if coding is not your thing.


Building up a decent Github or Stack Exchange profile would be 
worthwhile too.


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Re: [Dorset] X through ssh mystery

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 09/11/12 00:58, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

To tell the Firefox you've started not to do that use -no-remote AIUI.
However, don't let it try and use the same profile as another running
Firefox and profiles aren't designed to cope.  Instead, give it another
profile name with -P.  -ProfileManager lets you create a new one.


I'm sure you realized this, but it's perhaps worth pointing out that if 
you are running a version locally and version remotely on your local X, 
-no-remote would be safe to use unless you are doing something really 
bizarre with mounting shared user profiles over the network.


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Re: [Dorset] X through ssh mystery

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 08/11/12 14:19, Tim Allen wrote:


I've noticed for some time something which baffles me with X forwarding
over ssh and using Firefox (Iceweasel in Debian).

I can open a remote Iceweasel session, served up locally, in the normal
way:

localmachine$ ssh -X remotemachine iceweasel

However, if I already have a local iceweasel session running, the above
command just opens another local iceweasel session. What am I missing here?

Debian Squeeze on both machines. This is specific only to Iceweasel (as
far as I know). Nothing immediate leaping out at me with -v or -vv.



Curious isn't it? Thunderbird is the same, and Firefox too IIRC. It must 
detect the other session via the X server somehow.


I haven't tried it, but might this help?

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Run_multiple_copies_of_Thunderbird_at_the_same_time#Making_Thunderbird_behave_differently


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Re: [Dorset] Best starter programming language

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 15/09/12 13:22, cawi...@talktalk.net wrote:


My 12 year old grandson has asked 'Which is the best Programming
Language to learn?' - over to you all!!



Python is a great starter language as Ralph said, but since it's good to 
have a few options, I'd suggest that you also look at Scratch [1] and 
BYOB [2]. I've only tried BYOB, and I can say that while it seems very 
simple, it smuggles in some solid programming ideas and can reach quite 
advanced concepts (first class lists and functions, for example).


Another thing I've heard described as being a good way to lead people 
into concepts of programming is "If This Then That", or IFTTT as it's 
often known [3]. How appealing that is depends on whether he's old 
enough to have or be allowed accounts on various online services, and if 
he's interested in them.



[1] http://scratch.mit.edu/
[2] http://byob.berkeley.edu/
[3] https://ifttt.com/


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Re: [Dorset] ext2-3-4 on Win

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 07/07/12 21:17, StarLion wrote:

For various reasons, I'm trying to access an EXT3 partition from Windows. I
know of several ways, the most notable of which being the ext2 IFS
(Link),
but the IFS and most other solutions don't seem to work too well on Windows
7. Running the remaining options under 64-bit Win only seems to make things
worse.


Hi!

Ext2 IFS /does/ work in Windows 7, but there's a trick you need to know. 
You need to use the Windows compatibility settings for the program's 
installer when you run it, and set it to be compatible with Windows 
Vista SP2. For some mysterious reason, this does the trick. I couldn't 
swear it works on 64 bit ... can't recall if I tried this. I think it 
will be OK though.


John


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Re: [Dorset] laptop won't boot from USB stick...

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 26/06/12 11:12, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi Victor,


1. regenerated the USB Stick using $ sudo dd if=linuxmint-yadyayda.iso
of=/dev/sdc bs=4M ; same appearance and same behaviour

I think the "Startup Disk Creator" programs may do more than this for
you, so probably best off sticking to their output.

Cheers, Ralph.


Agreed. I think some ISOs can be dd's directly to a memory stick, but 
I've never really investigate the why and how of it. When I need this, I 
always use unetbootin.


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Re: [Dorset] How to delete an e-mail account in Thuderbird

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

I have an old e-mail account that I wish to delete which is setup in
Thunderbird (13.0.1). The account has been pretty dormant for over a
years so I am not interested in keeping the e-mail. Trouble is I can't
find anyway of deleting the account. Checking on the web and most result
are for windows based Thunderbird's or say I should not delete the
account as I will loose all the e-mails.

If anybody has done this could you please let me know how.



Hi Tim-

Edit -> Account Settings

Select the account in the treeview on the left hand side.

Undernet that is drop down titled "Account Actions". Select "Remove 
Account".


John

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Re: [Dorset] Seeking LAMP and mail host

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 04/06/12 16:50, John Palmer wrote:


I am looking for a reasonably reliable LAMP host for a small (<10MB but
growing) personal website devoted to archaeology, and for my and my
wife's mail (POP and SMTP).

Does anyone have experience of WiserHosting, based in Totnes?  Or other
suggestions ?



Hi John-

I can recommend Bytemark. I found their service to be very good.

John

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Re: [Dorset] Download problem - Please help!

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 12/04/12 23:20, Ralph Corderoy wrote:


Thanks for your help - I am determined to get the hang of Linux and
>  would like to make much more use of the terminal screen too.



I learnt this decades ago so not a lot of point me referring you to what
I used.  I've had a bit of a look and came up with
http://linuxcommand.org/   It seems fairly easy going to cover the
basics.  I also see a more complete book version is available, including
for free download as a PDF,http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php, but I'd
start with the site and see if it suits you first.


There's also http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/book/ which may or may 
not appeal in terms of level and style.



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Re: [Dorset] Programming languages

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 07/04/12 10:18, Peter Merchant wrote:

While you are relaxing:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/hello-world-programming-languages-quiz-188874


I got 10 right, but should have got 12, as I got two wrong on languages
that I used to use. (I'm not telling you which or how long I used those
languages as I'm too embarrassed).

Peter M

That was fun :) I got 15 out of 20. I swapped Perl and PHP, and FORTRAN 
and COBOL. I also mistook Scala for Objective C.



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Re: [Dorset] Mail user agent, recommendation?

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 06/03/12 19:57, John Palmer wrote:

Can anyone recommend a MUA for Linux which (preferably) uses mbox files
and (most important) will ask the user for confirmation before sending
any message ?   Currently on Evolution, but think it "could do better".


I think mutt meets your requirements, does it not?


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Re: [Dorset] GNU screen

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 02/12/11 16:09, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi John,


You can also share a screen session from two places (screen -x).

This can be handy for two people to share the same terminal, e.g. one
watches what the other's doing.


Yeah, I've used it for that, but a question came up at work the other 
day - can this be done between different user accounts?


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Re: [Dorset] GNU screen

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 02/12/11 13:43, Tim Allen wrote:

Hi

I'm often discovering nifty utilities that I'm embarrassed not to have 
known about years ago. This week it's GNU screen:


http://www.gnu.org/s/screen/

Although I haven't really used it, you could also look at tmux which is 
a more modern utility that does much the same.  I think the main selling 
point of tmux is that it's much, much easier to configure.  screen is 
pretty gnarly, but then again byobu makes it cuddly enough that I've 
never felt the need.




Really useful console window manager, particularly useful for having 
multiple terminals open on a remote machine, especially as if you lose 
connection, you can reattach exactly where you left off. Or set a long 
process running at work, log out and reattach at home.


More info at

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/34
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/9/16838/14935

I felt embarrassed when, having used screen for years, I discovered 
features I'd never known about.  For example, it can be a pretty 
passable serial terminal program.  You can also share a screen session 
from two places (screen -x).  You can fit the session to the active 
window with C-A F.  It also has the ability to do split windows.  
There's probably more I've yet to find too!




Cheers

Tim





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Re: [Dorset] Ubuntu 11.04 / 11.10

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 25/11/11 15:22, Simon Iremonger (lugs) wrote:

Lubuntu has a nice lightweight environment and now works
   well in 11.10.


I haven't tried it, but installing it to try out should be as simple as 
installing the "lubuntu-core" package from your package manager of choice.


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Re: [Dorset] Capturing bootup messages

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 25/11/11 09:31, Tim Allen wrote:


I'm in the process of upgrading a Debian box to Squeeze, and on startup
it is hanging while loading modules/drivers (2.6.32). Problem is, the
start of the problem has flown off the screen before I can see it.
Nothing written to /var/log/dmesg at all. C-s/C-q no help. Is there a
way of stepping though or paging a startup?



Sometimes, Scroll Lock will work! If you still have that key...

Otherwise, the serial terminal is a good idea.



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Re: [Dorset] Wireless Version of Wireshark; Android is Linux?

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 20/11/11 09:39, Peter Merchant wrote:


Second, I want to know if it really is the tablet, so am considering
putting wireshark on the laptop. It looks like a standard package, but
though there is an 'Airpcap' driver for Windows versions, I don't know
whether it will work on wireless under linux.



Yes, it works very well.  I've used it successfully. You may need to set 
your wireless card to "monitor" mode to make it work, or you may find it 
just works anyway.


In some ways, it's better that using it on a wire, because you see all 
the network traffic.  If your network is encrypted, you can give 
wireshark the key and it will decrypt packets on the fly too.




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Re: [Dorset] Terminal that can do ANSII

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 12/10/11 17:48, Terry Coles wrote:

I'm sure he would have tried that.  I may have been guitly of oversimplfying
the question; I think he might be trying to talk to another device over a
serial link, just as you would have done with a VT 100.  Can you use gnome-
terminal or xterm to do that?



You can use GNU screen running on a terminal emulator of your choice to 
do that, and it works very well.



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Re: [Dorset] Locking down physical console access

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 04/10/11 10:23, Dan Dart wrote:

I  believe some programs will stop working with a "no more ttys" error
- can you just not start the gettys but leave the ttys? Not sure I
have the correct terminology there - even don't start the login
processes?



Can you still make one of them a console?  That might help.  It would 
also you you know what was going on.



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Re: [Dorset] DLUG in LXF

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 16/09/11 16:22, Victor Churchill wrote:

On 16 September 2011 16:08, Terry Coles  wrote:


More important is the 'click-throughs', eg those who follow the link and
then
turn up for a meeting :-)



I think that is what the priesthood call 'conversions' ;-)



Depends if they ever come to a second meeting :)

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Re: [Dorset] Dell Laptop repair (urgent if possible)

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 07/09/11 13:11, Ralph Corderoy wrote:




Does anyone know of a good repairer for my Dell laptop please.  The
screen surround has cracked on the left hand side and it's difficult
to closed the lid.


IIRC, the one that others mention on this list is Rapid PCs in
Christchurch.

 http://www.rapidpcs.co.uk/services/
 http://www.rapidpcs.co.uk/contact/



+1 for RapidPcs.  They did a good job on one work laptop, and put a lot 
of time into another one with no success (motherboard dead) without 
charging for it.  Paul Hogg is your man.  Only complaint: they are hard 
to get on the phone sometimes.  Might be easier to go down there if you 
are near.



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Re: [Dorset] Linux Limitations

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 24/08/11 08:55, Peter Merchant wrote:

I still have three problems that are preventing me from getting rid of M
$.

1. I need XP  for my scanner, which is so old and odd that it is not
supported in Linux.




If I were in that position, with an A4 1200dpi scanner costing less than 
£50 I'd be tempted to buy a new one, since the money spend would soon be 
saved through not having to dual boot and maintain two OSs.


Hopefully Ralph's suggestion will avoid the problem altogether, though!


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Re: [Dorset] Location of July's Meeting.

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

As one of the few Blandford locals who attended a meeting, I can say I 
really did enjoy having them there. However, my circumstances have 
changed - my wife now works every evening, so I'm usually looking after 
the children. I quite see that it's silly for Bournemouth folk to drive 
all the way up here when they could just as well stay near home.


I hope to be able to attend some B'mth meetings at some point, and 
perhaps in the future to encourage the LUG to start the Blandford ones 
again when I'm in a position to attend regularly.


On 23/06/11 11:39, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi,

In theory it's Blandford Forum's turn in July, but given poor turn-out
there recently should be just settle on Bournemouth's The Broadway for
every month?  Would the Broadway regulars turn out so soon after the
last one?

Cheers, Ralph.




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Re: [Dorset] CUPS lpr and code pages

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 25/05/11 09:35, Tim Allen wrote:

Hi

I'm using lpr to print out files generated by an ancient DOS program. I
have a batch file that uses Cygwin OpenSSH to send to a printer:

type %1 | ssh server lpr -PLaserjet

Now the DOS program uses extended ASCII 09Ch for '£' symbols, now
printing as little rectangles.

I believe SSH is irrelevant to all this, as it should be 8-bit clean. I
can confirm this by viewing the file in a Gnome terminal (Debian
Squeeze). Again I see little rectangles under UTF8 but selecting the
IBM850 character set displays the file correctly.

So I think the question is, how can I tell CUPS lpr to use code page
850? I can't find any relevant -o options in the lpr docs. Maybe I need
to hack /usr/lib/cups/filter/textonly (I see it has Tim W's name on it!!)?



Hi Tim-

What about:-

type %1 | ssh server bash -c "cat | iconv -f IBM850 -t UTF8 | lpr 
-PLaserjet"


Best regards,

John

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Re: [Dorset] Ubuntu 11.04 file problem

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 24/05/11 11:08, CPK Smithies wrote:

Symptom: 10.10 upgraded to 11.04, now everything very slow.

My experience: on booting 11.04 off disk for the first time, I found
that my swap partition now had a different UUID. Consequently, I had a
zero-size swap.

Suggestion: the same may have happened in this case. If there's not a
lot of RAM on the machine, then a non-zero swap space may be essential
in order to run a GUI. This can be checked from the command line by
comparing the output of:

$ grep swap /etc/fstab # shows the configured UUID
$ blkid |grep swap # shows the correct UUID

If the two differ, I recommend copying the correct UUID, using

$ sudo nano /etc/fstab

to edit the config. file, and then restarting the system.

I would be interested to know if that was the problem in this case, and
if so, whether the proposed solution cured it.



The swapon command can be helpful here too.

sudo swapon -s

will show swap partitions in use.

sudo swapon -L 

will start using the partition with the specified label as a swap partition.

sudo swapon -U 

will start using the partition with the specified uuid as a swap partition.

You can also do:-

sudo swapon /dev/sda3

or similar.

As you say, to make it permanent you need to edit /etc/fstab but for 
testing the above might help.


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Re: [Dorset] Ubuntu 11.04 file problem

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 24/05/11 11:04, John Carlyle-Clarke wrote:


Just be aware that if you do this:-

cd ~
cp -a * /media/backup/myhomebackup

You will lose a lot of data, because the * won't match any file or
directory starting with a ".", and there are quite a few crucial ones in
your home directory.


Sorry, I should clarify that.  When I say "you will lose a lot of data" 
I mean that your backup will be incomplete.


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Re: [Dorset] Ubuntu 11.04 file problem

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 24/05/11 10:52, Peter wrote:

On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 20:46 +0100, Keith Edmunds wrote:

Peter, you need to use the -a switch (although there are other ways):

cp -a from-here to-here

That will copy all directories recursively.


Thanks Keith&  Tim.  I now have the latest backup on a separate hard
disk so I can start to sort out the other problems



Just be aware that if you do this:-

cd ~
cp -a * /media/backup/myhomebackup

You will lose a lot of data, because the * won't match any file or 
directory starting with a ".", and there are quite a few crucial ones in 
your home directory.


DAMHIKT

A better way to do this is:-

cd /home
cp -a $USER /media/backup

Finally, be aware that if you have symbolic links to data _outside_ your 
/home/$USER directory, that data will not be copied.  The links will be 
preserved - that is to say, the backup will contain a link to that data, 
not the actual data.



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Re: [Dorset] Help with an optical drive

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 18/05/11 12:04, StarLion wrote:

I've recently discovered my laptop's DVD drive is either
non-functional, or extremely unreliable.
It can burn CDs and DVDs, of which any Live bootable ones will work
anywhere. But trying to boot from such a disk, whether burned on this
laptop or on any other system, returns a black screen for a period
while it tries to boot, then falls back to the preinstalled bootloader
on disk.
Since I've used the same ISO image on several computers with several
burners, attempting to boot it on various computers, I can conclude
that the drive itself is the problem.
Yet it will read any non-bootable image without issue.
Since the laptop is not within warrenty, does anyone have any
suggestions to try to fix the problem short of taking the entire thing
apart?


If you boot your laptop from the harddrive, are you then able to read 
the bootable CD?


Can you run an md5sum on it and compare it the disc in another machine, 
or the original iso file?


If you can read the disc once booted, but not boot from it, perhaps it 
could be a BIOS bug rather than a hardware problem.  Are any updates 
available?



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Re: [Dorset] Mounting a lost partition

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 12/05/11 21:19, Peter Merchant wrote:

I have a little problem, and I am not getting anywhere.

In kubuntu 11 using Dolphin, I selected a partition drive called TV and
unmounted it. Since then I have not been able to see it or get it back.

TV was the label for partition sdb5.



Hi Peter..

Is /dev/sdb removable?

Can you paste the output of:-

udisks --show-info /dev/sdb5

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Re: [Dorset] Blandford Forum Pub Meeting Tonight, Wed 2011-05-04 20:00.

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 04/05/11 10:39, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi,

Bad news: some big European football match is on tonight.  Good news:
it's unlikely the affect the rarefied atmosphere of Blandford's Crown
Hotel.

 Blandford Forum Wednesday 2011-05-04 20:00  Crown Hotel
 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=meetings:pub



Sadly^WHappily I'm taking my wife out for supper on her night off. 
Therefore, I won't be there ... unless I can persuade her that the Crown 
is a great place for a meal.



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Re: [Dorset] Odd KDE almost-random lock-up issue

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 29/04/11 23:20, StarLion wrote:



> On 29/04/11, Sean wrote:

How painful would it be for you to install say XFCE or Gnome and run the
same tasks overnight? While not a conclusive test it might help you to
eliminate certain factors.



Not exactly painful as such, but I don't exactly get along too well
with either, not to mention they often seem terribly over-full of not
so useful parts that other parts insist are vital to function.
I'll give an LXDE session a try tonight, unless your thinking is that
using one of the alternative DE's power managers might solve the
issues.


Alternatively, if you have another machine, leave the suspect laptop in 
console mode, connect to it from the other machine with ssh -Y and run 
the application using the display on the spare machine.  Make sure you 
enable X11Forwarding in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.


That will surely test if the problem is caused by X or not?

Also, if you want minimal testing environment, why not twm?  Trouble is, 
if you start a KDE app under twm or lxde, it could fire up a lot KDE 
service and processes anyway, so it may not be much different.



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Re: [Dorset] CPK Smithies (prospective new member)

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 05/04/11 17:38, CPK Smithies wrote:


As regards my working life, after a decade in biometric software I'm
currently working on a new system to combat identity fraud. It's a
web-based social network solution. (Ask me about it, and/or visit
http://idangels.net .)


Hi, and welcome to the list.

I met a couple of people involved in this project at an OpenMIC session 
in Bath around September or October last year.  Can't recall their 
names, but it sounds like an interesting project!


I was in a session with them and the Microsoft Platform Evangelist guy 
where they were discussing porting things to Windows Phone 7.  I was 
just there because none of the other sessions sounded that good and I 
wanted to play with WP7 :)


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Re: [Dorset] Openoffice 3.3.0

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 16/03/11 09:50, Chris Dennis wrote:


I'm running Ubuntu 10.10.  I thought I'd try LibreOffice, so I added
this to my sources.list:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/ppa/ubuntu maverick main


Which reminds me, I spotted a neat way to add repos in Ubuntu that's 
new.  It may be old news to some, but you can do:-


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice

This will add the GPG key too.

John

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Re: [Dorset] Openoffice 3.3.0

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 16/03/11 09:00, Peter Merchant wrote:

Be careful - I downloaded and installed this a few moments ago, and now
I don't have an Office suite.

Still investigating, was in the middle of marking, I think I'll try and
revert to the old version for now.

Peter



Hi Peter-

Not sure where you got your OOo 3.3.0 from, or what distro you are 
using, but I follow the Archlinux developer list, and there was 
discussion there about replacing OOo with LibreOffice completely.  For a 
while, both have been available, but the maintainer was suggesting 
adding a "replaces" tag to the LO packages to make them remove the OOo ones.


His reasons I quote here:-

"LibreOffice has recently proved to be a solid replacement for Oracle
OpenOffice. I'm about to drop all Oracle OOo packages from our repos."

"Then there's the poor distribution support Oracle spends on the
distributions. They almost do not care about custom distribution builds
and their interest. They break the build against system libs
every now and then and it takes ages to contact the relevant devs to
fix their bugs. Development is only driven by the profit interests of
Oracle... You can put in here all the arguments the Document foundation
has given at its birth."

He goes on:-

"So don't expect any efforts to fix bugs in Oracle packages anymore. As
soon as they will break due to a .so name bump or something like this
I'll remove all the packages from our repos if nobody else is willing
to maintain them."

Perhaps this indicates that you'd be better trying a LibreOffice package 
if one is available for your platform?


All the best,

John




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Re: [Dorset] DNS on an isolated (1:1) network

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 11/03/11 13:39, Terry Coles wrote:



Thanks for the suggestions to date (the overwhelming support for dnsmasq).
However, when I related this to my colleage at work he said he couldnt see why
this (or bind) was needed because when he enabled udhcpd, he found that it
maintains a list of all hosts on the network so why couldn't that be used?

I didn't get a chance to look at it this morning, so I couldn't answer him,
but I could bear to know if what he's suggesting is possible.



udhcpd is just a standard DHCP server.  All DHCP servers keep a list of 
hosts they've given leases to, either in a database or a text file. 
They have to, in order to work properly!


The issue is, how would you get it so that "ping mybox" worked?  Name 
resolution on your local machine will typically look at /etc/hosts and 
then try a DNS lookup.  This is usually slightly configurable, but I 
can't see how you'd get the name resolution to use udhcpd's list of 
leases, unless you created a script to watch it for changes and update 
/etc/hosts.


I agree that you could do something like ping $(grep mybox 
/var/lock/udhcpd/leases | awk '{print $2}') but that is a bit hacky, no? [*]


Since dnsmasq basically does this part for you (it includes a DHCP 
server and a DNS server, and it's DNS server knows about the DNS 
leases), why re-invent the wheel?


[*] I just made that up, don't try to use it.

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Re: [Dorset] DNS on an isolated (1:1) network

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 11/03/11 14:45, Chris Dennis wrote:


If it's really just two computers talking to each other, you could just
give each one a fixed IP address, e.g. 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2, and
they can talk to each other without requiring DHCP or DNS.



Same thought occurred to me too. You could also edit the hosts file [*] 
to allow name resolution to work.


[*] /etc/hosts on *nix boxes and C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts 
on Windows, IIRC, although it will be slightly different on 64 bit windows.



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Re: [Dorset] DNS on an isolated (1:1) network

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 10/03/11 18:59, Terry Coles wrote:

On Thursday 10 Mar 2011, Chris Dennis wrote:

dnsmasq[1] is relatively simple to work with, and is probably available
in your favourite distro.

[1] http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html


Thanks.  That looks like a good start.



+1 for dnsmasq.

I have configured dhcpd and bind to do DHCP, DNS and dynamic DNS updates 
before, but it was not easy.  dnsmasq, by comparison, takes about 10 
minutes to set up (and that includes the time to make a cup of tea).




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Re: [Dorset] Tonight, for One Night Only...

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 02/03/11 17:17, Terry Coles wrote:

On Wednesday 02 Mar 2011, Tim Allen wrote:

On 02/03/11 11:12, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

...is Wednesday 2011-03-02's Dorset LUG pub meet at the Crown Hotel,
Blandford Forum, 8pm.

 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=meetings:pub

If you don't know any of the usual suspects by sight, pipe up now else
you can end up spending a lonely night at the bar.  :-)


I'll be coming along.


So will I with Paul.



I hope to be there, but I'm not 100% sure.

If anyone has any unwanted ADSL USB modems that they'd like to get rid 
of (preferably known Linux compatible) I need up to two of them.  Small 
chance you'll end up taking them back home if I can't make it, obviously!


I used to have a box full of the things, but I think it's in storage.


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Re: [Dorset] Belkin wireless USB

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 19/02/11 18:09, Peter Merchant wrote:

My ZYxel wireless USB stick has been working at 16% signal strength, and
my neighbour suggested that I try a Belkin one as he had a good signal
(albeit on W7).

I borrowed a Belkin F5D7050 which is quite an old one and I get a
marvelous 42% strength. It dropped right in without any reconfiguration.
Before buying an old one I wondered if I bought a new one supporting
802.11n as well as 'b', whether it would work under Linux.

Does anyone have any experience of 802.11n devices in Linux?

Regards,

peter M.


Hi Peter-

My experience is that almost no 802.11n USB devices work in Linux, so be 
careful!


Also, be aware that sometimes two apparently identical devices, the same 
in appearance, from the same manufacturer, may actually have completely 
different chipsets in them, meaning one might work and one might not. 
Sometimes, if you're lucky, there will be a "v1" or "v2" on the small 
label on the unit to differentiate the revisions.


John

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Re: [Dorset] Nokia announcement

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 11/02/11 14:02, Terry Coles wrote:

On Friday 11 Feb 2011, Terry Coles wrote:

How are the mighty fallen!  Nokia have been the leading phone provider ever
since there were mobiles, (certainly in Europe).  They missed the boat on
Smartphones, because they stayed with Symbian, but they had a chance to
catch up with MeeGo.


Even the Beeb doubt if the marriage will work:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2011/02/is_the_nokiamicrosoft_horse_a.html


1. There are hardly any Apps yet.
2. The system uses data even when it's switched off (probably fixed now,
but T-Mobile are still arguing with MS about that).
3. The SD card can't be removed.


Just in case you doubt this, look at the comments in the above link.




c.f http://blog.cocoia.com/2011/hp-webos-event-roundup/

Another competitor enters the ring (potentially, at least) and their 
offering looks pretty good.  WebOS is based on the Linux kernel, but the 
rest is closed source as far as I know.


MeeGo also incorporates Moblin, and Intel are still supporting that 
project for now, so we may yet see it on cheaper netbooks to compete 
with Chrome OS and or WebOS.



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Re: [Dorset] Nokia announcement

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 11/02/11 13:45, Terry Coles wrote:


How are the mighty fallen!  Nokia have been the leading phone provider ever
since there were mobiles, (certainly in Europe).  They missed the boat on
Smartphones, because they stayed with Symbian, but they had a chance to catch
up with MeeGo.

Now they've hitched a ride with another lame duck, then I think the end is
inevitable.  WinMo 7 hasn't attracted much take-up and what sales figures that
have been released are actually shipments to suppliers not end-user purchases.
The fact that Nokia are now going to ship WinMo 7 phones will give the
platform a boost, but from the feedback I've seen, users are generally not
impressed.


I saw a comment somewhere along the lines of "two turkeys don't make an 
eagle".  Made me laugh.  It's hard to say who has more at stake here - 
both Nokia and MS need some good news (and I agree, I'm dubious that 
they'll get it).


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Re: [Dorset] FTP problem

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 08/02/11 12:23, Ralph Corderoy wrote:


Hi Tim,


Thanks Victor, one stage closer but not quite there, I can now
transfer a file by ftp to /var/www/myfolder but the permisson on that
folder is -rw--- (600) rather than -rw-r--r-- (644) While I can
change the permission via the  ftp client is there a way to change the
permission when the file lands in the folder automaticly??


See the local_umask configuration setting in vsftpd.conf(5);  default is
077.  Or better still use your FTP client to change the current umask on
the remote server after logging in.  That way it doesn't affect all
local users.  How to do that depends on your FTP client, but all good
ones should allow it.  If this is a regular upload you're doing, you
could script it as part of that.



You may also need to set g+x on the /var/www/myfolder and any sub 
folders to allow group members to cd into and list directories.


One easy way to do this might be to do "chmod -R g=u /var/www/myfolder"
This will set the group perms to be the same as the user perms on all 
files and directories.


You might also want to do "chmod g+s /var/www/myfolder".  (You'd also 
want to do this on any already existing subdirectories, e.g. find 
/var/www/myfolder -type d -exec chmod g+s '{}' \;


Setting the suid bit like this on directories will make files and 
directories created under that folder inherit the group ownership of the 
parent.  This can be useful is you users belong to primary groups other 
than "www" and the FTP server doesn't allow you to specify the group 
used for file creation explicitly.


This will need to be done in conjunction with umask setup Ralph mentioned.


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Re: [Dorset] Samba networking issues

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 30/01/11 13:42, Terry Coles wrote:

Hi,

My son is trying to access our Stora media server as a file server using samba
on Kubuntu 10.10.  When he first tried to access the network, the response was
that there was nothing on it, then after a while the Stora and other boxes
appeared.  I told him that this was a 'feature' of smb/cifs in that the
network takes a while to notice that a new host has joined but after that it
should be pretty much instantaneous.

He's just proved me wrong because after a crash in k3b, (I don't know why;
I've never seen k3b crash) he rebooted his machine and now he has exactly the
same delay.

Anyone any ideas why this is happening?  Networking works fine on this
computer and any others that I've connected in the past.  I don't recall if
this machine has been connected to the network ipreviously; it's relatively
new and we probably did a clean install of Kubuntu last October.



I remember a similar problem, caused by DNS issues.  The systems were 
configured to use OpenDNS, and they serve a search page for any failed 
DNS lookup.  Samba clients were using DNS as a first option.  Instead of 
a failure that would cause them to try other methods, they were trying 
to use IP address returned, which was the OpenDNS search page web server.


The fix, IIRC, was to create a /etc/samba/smb.conf file on the client 
machines and set (again from memory) the "name resolve order" paramter.


The smbclient and smbcontrol command line tools are very useful for 
debugging!


Something like "smbcontrol all debug 3" will set all daemons to a higher 
log level.  You can then tail -f the log file in one terminal and try 
"smbclient -L //somename" or "smbclient -L //192.168.1.1", using the 
actual IP of the machine you want to browse.


Best regards,

John

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Re: [Dorset] Restrictions on number of partitions

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 15/01/11 21:09, Clive A Wills wrote:

I was asked a question by my friend who is trying to install Linux on
his new PC fitted with a 2 disk Raid array (SATA disks).

Is there a restriction on the number of partitions you can have within
an 'extended' partition?

He is getting an error report when trying to make the '/Home' partition,
along the lines of 'cannot make 17th partition'.
Installation has produced the '/' and swap partitions but fails on
/Home. (Linux is on the second disk)



Hi Clive-

Under the standard (MBR) scheme, you can have up to four *primary* 
partitions.  One of these can be an *extended* partition, which can then 
contain other *logical* partitions.


The limit to the number of logical partions is OS dependant.  For 
IDE/SATA disks on Linux I'm pretty sure it's 64.


John



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Re: [Dorset] Sending Email through talktalk from Abroad.

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 12/01/11 11:13, Tim Allen wrote:

I have the same requirement and set up a home machine to be an
authenticated SMTP relay over TLS. This then forwards to the ISP
smarthost. It's quite simple to set up in Exim4 - if you want I can put
my notes up on the Wiki. You'd obviously need to keep your home machine
on 24/7 - ideal for one of those netbricks.



I tend to run at least one machine at home that's on 24/7 and that 
listens for ssh.


That way I can tunnel smtp via my home machine using:

ssh my.home.machine -L 2525:smtp.example.com:25

(Replace my.home.machine with the IP or DNS name of your home, and 
smtp.example.com with your ISP's SMTP server).


This ssh command redirects all traffic to port 2525 on your local 
machine to port 25 on your ISP's mailserver, but via your home connection.


I have an extra SMTP profile in Thunderbird that uses "localhost:2525" 
as the SMTP server.


I did (and still do) run a mailserver at home but find this method 
simpler and tend to use it more, as it only relies on opensshd.



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Re: [Dorset] Launching a graphical App from within a script

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 07/01/11 15:19, Terry Coles wrote:

On Friday 07 Jan 2011, John Carlyle-Clarke wrote:


DISPLAY=:0.0 chromium-browser


Thanks.  That works fine.

I assume that I was right about the reason it wouldn't work in a script, eg
I'm not attached to the display in the X environment at the time?



That's pretty much it.  Processes generally inherit an environment from 
the process that spawns them.  xinit or startx or {x,k,g}dm set 
"DISPLAY" and other things when starting X and launching the clients 
(usually a window manager or similar).


This means when you start a shell in your graphical session, it inherits 
DISPLAY.  Start a terminal in X and do "echo $DISPLAY" to check it.


If your shell script was started outside of X in some way (by cron, atd, 
or boot process for example) then DISPLAY will not be set.


Of course, if you have more than one X session running, or if you are 
running X remotely, then things may go a bit wonky since DISPLAY will 
need to be something else!


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Re: [Dorset] Launching a graphical App from within a script

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 07/01/11 15:04, John Carlyle-Clarke wrote:

On 07/01/11 15:02, Terry Coles wrote:

Hi,

Is there a reason why the Chromium Browser launches fine when I type

chromium-browser

in a shell, but doesn't when I put the same command into a script to
run at
boot time?




Try:-

TERMINAL=:0.0 chromium-browser




What am I talking about?

DISPLAY=:0.0 chromium-browser

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Re: [Dorset] Launching a graphical App from within a script

[John Carlyle-Clarke]

On 07/01/11 15:02, Terry Coles wrote:

Hi,

Is there a reason why the Chromium Browser launches fine when I type

chromium-browser

in a shell, but doesn't when I put the same command into a script to run at
boot time?

According to the error message, it can't find the display mode, so I'm
guessing that it works because I'm not in a true terminal when it works (it's
Aterm, which is a graphical app) and I am when the script is running.  Or is
it something else?

What do I need to do to get it to work?  I'm assuming I will need to do some
magic with xhost, etc, but some guidancce would be useful.



Try:-

TERMINAL=:0.0 chromium-browser



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Next meeting:  Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2011-01-11 20:00
Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ...  http://dorset.lug.org.uk/
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