Re: [Hampshire] JOB | Permanent Linux Systems Administrator (Singapore)
Hi Richard, On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 09:13:32AM +0100, Richard Bensley wrote: > > How quickly the years fly by. It seems you learnt nothing > > It's a two way road it seems. I have been recruited from a mailing list in > the past. And I shall continue to network with and employ professionals > using public resources. Especially when said resources are related to > software developed and driven by people and communities, but also companies. Could you have a look at the previous thread linked from 2009? The problem we had in the past was that James flooded the list with the same ads over and over. At the same time he was posting the exact same things to multiple other LUG lists. It just began to annoy people and I'm trying to head that off again. Unfortunately we can't rely on recruitment consultants like James to be good actors with this sort of thing. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] disk types and layout on a new box
Hi Adam, On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 08:58:10AM +0100, Dr A. J. Trickett wrote: > I've pretty much decided to get a flash drive as the root file system, my > preferred "bidder" are currently building with Intel 335 drives. I'm not sure > exactly what combination and mix to go for. > > I don't think the 180 GB drive is large enough on it's own, so I could get a > pair of them and then LVM them together and put a single ext4 over the two. I know you say later in the thread that you backup all your important stuff, but for me, the lost productivity involved in a disk failure is worth a lot more than the cost of the disk itself. The problem with using LVM to concatenate two drives together for more space is that you've doubled the chance of a failure. SSDs aren't particularly more reliable than conventional HDDs, and the HDD is usually the first thing to break. http://www.zdnet.com/ssd-infant-mortality-ii-703945/ http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923-9.html It's all a few years old, and I've plenty of anecdotes of people who've "never seen an SSD failure", but personally I am not yet prepared to believe they are any more reliable. Nor any less. When a physical volume in LVM disappears, the physical extents that were on it are obviously no longer available. Depending on the LVM allocation policy in use probably some logical volumes would then have parts or their entirety missing. The system won't even let you activate a volume group that has physical volumes missing, although you can override this if you tell it that you really know what you are doing. That would allow you to still use the logical volumes that didn't have bits missing. You're in a bit of an awkward situation here because you want: - Tons of storage - Performance - Reliability and you haven't got the cash for all three. There isn't going to be a single correct answer, and there are a variety of trade-offs you can make depending on what your priorities are. I will try to think up what is bound to be an incomplete list. My own preferred answer though would be something like this: - Two SSDs in my desktop in a RAID-1, mass storage in a separate device with some sort of RAID configuration, and a decent backup regime. I don't consider that over the top in the home. HP Microservers are back on cash back offer and make great fairly low energy consumption networked storage devices. There's a bunch of other cheap dedicated NAS devices that are suitable for home and small office use as well. The advantages of having the mass storage in a separate device is that it makes it a lot easier to manage. If disks die you can replace them without downtime. If it's not performing well enough you can add disks. Even SSDs when that starts to make sense. You'll probably upgrade your desktop machines a lot more often than the file server, because the file server doesn't need much grunt. No need to keep redesigning how the storage will work with each desktop upgrade. But it's not for everyone, it's inevitably more complicated and expensive. So let's say the file server is a no-go. It's got to all be in the desktop. - Two SSDs and two HDDs in two separate RAID-1s Each SSD should be big enough for your OS and whatever other performance storage you feel you need. Potentially that could be quite small - your OS should easily fit in about 2G without you trying hard. I fit Debian wheezy on a 512M CF card in one of my devices without doing anything special, but admittedly it has only vi for an editor and I even removed the less command. ;-) Mirror the HDDs as well for redundancy (if using Linux software RAID consider RAID-10 for the HDDs - it works with only two devices and performs better than RAID-1. Stick to RAID-1 for the SSDs though because that RAID level supports TRIM/discard). If you can afford two small SSDs then I think you could try stretching to two SSDs plus two bigger HDDs, because HDDs are really cheap. Can't afford two SSDs? - One SSD, two HDDs There's really no excuse to not have two HDDs. Again put your OS and performance stuff on the SSD, put the "bulk" stuff on the HDD mirror. Even more important than normal to have good backups. If you have decided to have a desktop with some SSD storage and some HDD storage in it, regardless of whether they're mirrored or not it's now a case of working out where to put the data and how to make the smaller SSD storage speed up the larger HDD storage. Linux has a bunch of interesting options for caching slow storage with faster storage. - ZFS on Linux ZFS is going places in the Linux world. Ubuntu and Debian have packages for it now (though don't expect to be able to call up Mark Shuttleworth at 3am and ask him to assign some minions to fix it or anything, like). But at least no more downloading kernel source from a strange web site and having to build it yourself. ZFS suppo
Re: [Hampshire] JOB | Permanent Linux Systems Administrator (Singapore)
Hi James, On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 09:07:23AM +0100, jamesbto...@hushmail.com wrote: > Hello, I am working with an employer that is looking to hire a permanent > Linux system administrator.. How quickly the years fly by. It seems you learnt nothing since 2009 when you decided to repetitively post job ads to this list and got very stroppy when politely asked not to: http://www.hantslug.org.uk/lurker/message/20090428.054246.d26a353a.en.html#hampshire Last time you started funnelling all your job ads onto this list (and many other UK LUG lists), you were asked to try to restrict it to the linuxjobs list instead. Rather than have the exact same thing happen again (check out the size of the above linked thread tree!), could you consider just posting this to linuxjobs? I don't see it posted there yet. Here's the details of that list: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/linuxjobs Your post would definitely be welcome there. Last time you were asked to do this you gave us some guff about how you prefer to target people that aren't actually actively looking for jobs, and how you aren't a recruitment agent you're just this independent guy trying to go his own way etc etc. If you do decide to try that again then I don't think the outcome will be any different now than it was in 2009. Cheers, Andy PS Back in 2009 when I emailed you about list etiquette you took it upon yourself to start personally emailing me job ads and then following them up several times asking why I was not responding to you. Let's try to head that off this time by me making clear right now that I am not interested in any job ads being sent to me personally, so please don't. Thanks! -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Using the host file
Hi Tim, On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 06:39:23PM +0100, Tim wrote: > How can I check that the web browser is accessing the web site via > the changes I made in the host file and not using the old > settings? You could run tcpdump to view your outbound port 80 traffic. # tcpdump -vpn 'dst port 80' or if you're only interested in packets to 1.1.1.1: # tcpdump -vpn 'dst host 1.1.1.1' If you are more used to graphical application then you may prefer Wireshark. The interface may be more daunting than the fairly simple tcpdump though.. I have noticed that web browsers tend to cache DNS lookups quite aggressively so perhaps you just need to restart it, clear the cache, use a different browser, or a different browser profile etc. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Apache expertise required
Hi Chris, On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 05:32:23PM +0100, Chris Dennis wrote: > It may be that it doesn't have enough RAM (300MB) for Apache to run > WordPress properly. Or perhaps I just haven't configured things > right. I bumped the memory up a bit to 480MiB BTW. Sorry I can't offer any more just now. You'll need to shut it down and boot it again (*NOT* reboot) to see the extra RAM. If you have never touched the Apache settings then you are probably running the whole virtual machine out of memory. Look at how big an individual Apache child is in terms of resident memory: $ ps -C apache2 -O rss PID RSS S TTY TIME COMMAND 1464 25084 S ?00:00:04 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start 2733 26320 S ?00:00:04 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start 3752 23492 S ?00:00:03 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start 4116 26448 S ?00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start 14938 6544 S ?00:00:50 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start 32282 28560 S ?00:00:14 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start So, ignoring the 6544 outlier, that's about 26MiB on average. Next look at how you've configured Apache with regard to the MPM in use. If you've never changed this then the default prefork MPM is probably in use, and you'll find something like this in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf (Debian): # prefork MPM # StartServers: number of server processes to start # MinSpareServers: minimum number of server processes which are kept spare # MaxSpareServers: maximum number of server processes which are kept spare # MaxClients: maximum number of server processes allowed to start # MaxRequestsPerChild: maximum number of requests a server process serves StartServers 2 MinSpareServers 1 MaxSpareServers 5 MaxClients 10 MaxRequestsPerChild 0 It's MaxClients you're most interested in. 10 times 26MiB is 260MiB so that's how much resident memory you'll need. If your MaxClients were set to a common default like 256 and your RSS was 15MiB then you're looking at 3.8GiB RAM at peak usage. If Apache's usage of memory pushes the system into swap then everything will get very slow very quickly. You may end up having to reboot the VM. So it is better to scale back the MaxClients to the point where that is not possible. That does not, however, make your web serving any faster. It just stops the host from dying. To make Apache scale further the simplest way is to allow it to run more processes at once, so that means either more RAM or smaller processes. You may be able to shrink your typical Apache process by disabling unneeded modules. "ls /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/" on Debian shows you what's there. Some of these will be essential for what you want to do. Once you've gone as far with that as you can reasonably go, and once you're sure it's not some unrelated software or an application problem, the next scaling step is normally to put a lightweight reverse proxy in front of Apache. Popular reverse proxies are Nginx and Lighttpd. They accept the client connections, generally aggressively cache and answer from there where possible, refer back to an app server backend (Apache+Wordpress) only when necessary. You try to make sure that all static content is being cached so Apache never gets consulted for images, css etc. There are tons of guides on fronting Apache with Nginx or Lighttpd for this purpose. Once you go as far as you can with that, consider serving static assets from a CDN, and having Wordpress drop the site down to a static version of itself once load gets too high. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] (OT) NAS and USB3 connections
Hello, On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 04:30:06PM +0100, Chris Dennis wrote: > On 22/04/13 14:44, Andy Smith wrote: > >And yet I would still choose storage over a 1Gig Ethernet as opposed > >to over USB3. > > Why? :) > > There seems to be a lot of aversion on this list to USB-connected > hard drives. What are the advantages of Ethernet-connected ones? Every USB storage device I've ever used, including on USB3, has been slow and unreliable regardless of the theoretical limits of a USB bus. Take the USB2 480Mbit/s theoretical performance: have you EVER got 60MByte/etc to a USB disk, even as a streaming read? And then try it for random writes, and compare that to SATA-II doing same. Like the popular Meatloaf song goes, I'll use USB for keyboard and mice and wifi adapters and and.. but I won't use USB for storage Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] (OT) NAS and USB3 connections
Hello, On Sun, Apr 21, 2013 at 05:38:55PM +0100, Daniel Llewellyn wrote: > On 21 April 2013 17:34, Peter B. wrote: > > As far as I know usb 2.0 maxes out at 30mbps usb 3.0 100mbps for local > > data transfer. > > > I think you're confusing things here. USB2 runs at up to 480Mbps raw line > speed, and USB3 runs at up to 5Gbps. And yet I would still choose storage over a 1Gig Ethernet as opposed to over USB3. Well OK, I'd *choose* 100G Ethernet or Infiniband or whatever, but YKWIM. :) Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting > I'd be interested to hear any (even two word) reviews of their sofas… Provides seating. — Andy Davidson signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] (OT) NAS and USB3 connections
Hi Martin, On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 09:00:15PM +0100, Martin N wrote: > Like this NAS: > http://www.dabs.com/products/zyxel-nsa325-2-bay-power-plus-nas-diskless--1-6ghz-cpu--7Z67.html?src=2 > > The USB connections though i mentioned as being used to get data on > to the internal HDs > so I am wondering if it would not work for some reason and i would be > stuck with the slower > RJ45? I don't know, but you should expect USB (even USB3) to be slower than Ethernet. I personally would not use USB storage for anything but a temporary data transfer situation. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Windows 8 + Dual Booting
On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 12:36:25AM +0100, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: > In 2005, advance intelligence from the business > world… > 2.Removal of user choice, back to manufacturer control… > 3.Western nations' military were to dry-run the process… > This trend is what I'm signalling. UBUNTU has partially adopted the > chimaera… Your dried frog pills are over there. Please don't forget to take them again. -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Tmux - the terminal multiplexer
Hi Benjie, On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 10:09:58AM +0100, Benjie Gillam wrote: > If anyone would be interested in hearing about how I use tmux then I'd be > happy to write something up? I am more interested in why you choose tmux over screen. I use screen and am pretty happy with it, but have never tried tmux, so I wonder what I am missing. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] USB memory stick corrupted
Hi Roger, On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 07:18:07PM +, Roger Munford wrote: > I cannot format the disk What happens when you do try to create a filesystem on the USB device? What exact command are you typing? Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Friday Fun Question
Hello, On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 01:07:09PM +, Sean Gibbins wrote: > I didn't think so Leshy, but before criticising the (so far) > excellent novel that it cropped up in, I just wanted to check with > some folks who I knew would have the answer to hand. It's annoying when that sort of thing happens isn't it. :) I'm reading a techno-thriller just now where almost everything has so far been plausible. There was just this one part where it said something like, "the drives have been wiped but the FBI can still reassemble the data anyway." Except in the real world it's not believed possible that they or anyone else can. http://computer-forensics.sans.org/blog/2009/01/15/overwriting-hard-drive-data/ It's little things like that which irritate but I suspect it happens to everyone with these sorts of domain-specific nerdy knowledge. My girlfriend's father is really into trains and many a time we've been sitting watching Portillo's Great Train Journeys when he'd exclaim, "that's the wrong livery!" or "that line doesn't go through that station!" after they have cheated and used some footage of a different train in the middle of a piece as filler. :) How does one become a proof-reader for techno-thrillers? Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting > I'd be interested to hear any (even two word) reviews of their sofas… Provides seating. — Andy Davidson signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
Hello, On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 07:54:17PM +, Tim Brocklehurst wrote: > However, there is good mileage in what we do at the moment, which is to use a > COTS machine (laptop, desktop or whatever) and download the software we wish > to use as a package, which you then install and run. This avoids the reliance > on a potentially iffy internet connection for most of the time. I agree with you that there is a trade-off, but I just wanted to point out that compared to devices like a Chromebook, anything you can build is neither "C" nor "OTS". The shelves that devices like Chromebooks are off of are in supermarkets. The shelves that you're talking about are specialist suppliers like Ebuyer and Scan. We as computing enthusiasts and professionals need to be careful about falling into the trap of not considering the needs of normal people. Normal people are extremely well-served by very cheap tablet devices and cloud computing, and this is only going to become more the case. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Meeting Talks
Hello, On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 12:19:22PM +, Chris Dennis wrote: > Automatic account creation will not be re-enabled, because we get > dozens of spammers/bots logging in and causing havoc. Please contact > me at webmas...@hantslug.org.uk if you want an account on the wiki > and/or the new Wordpress website. Fair enough if this is the way it has to be, but I would note that this is extremely hostile to newcomers, who will likely never request an account form a human for a variety of reasons. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Promoting LUG meets via social networking
Hi Ally, On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 03:15:13PM +, Ally Biggs wrote: > This is why I haven't attended any meets as I know I would be out of my > depth. Or talks would be given on subjects I'm not interested In and would be > bored senseless. Conversely I think that many people (myself included) are put off from doing presentations because they feel they aren't expert enough in any area to pitch something of interest. I'm not sure what the answer is. > A making the transition from windows to Linux workshop would be very popular > covering areas such as installation. Beginners guide to the Cli, package > management etc. I do think that the rest of the LUG needs to know there is a demand for this sort of thing at the time that the meetings are being planned, so that we have time to plan a talk or a round table or whatever. This does rely on newbies speaking up (at least on a wiki page or similar) when the meetings are being planned. Traditionally this does not happen. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Promoting LUG meets via social networking
On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 09:31:45AM +, Lisi wrote: > You misunderstand me, Andy. I myself would benefit from fairly basic talks > and generally find those I attend pretty much above my head. But it is my > perception that most of you are considerably more knowledgeable than I am. I > am also very conscious that in some locations everyone is in the same room > and an inaccessible talk can be very boring. Then I am baffled as to why you would claim that nobody needs beginner talks when you yourself find existing talks go above your head. Why are you so scared of asking for what you want that you would even go so far as to say there can be nobody else like you? I think that is highly unlikely. > Since my perception is that most of you are above my head, I also think that > having the talks too basic could drive people away. If we find a way of > attracting more total beginners, then obviously that balance would change. > > Are we perhaps meaning something different by "complete beginner"?? The same evening that you sent your email that said, "I would have thought that talks for the complete beginner would have a very limited audience at LUG meetings" you were, over on Surrey LUG, explaining to someone how to save the buffer in nano. Not knowing how to save a buffer in nano strikes me as "complete beginner". So between you and them, there's two, and I tend to think from the level of expertise demonstrated in most threads on LUGs that you and they are more the norm than you realise. Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Promoting LUG meets via social networking
Hi Lisi, On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 11:48:08PM +, Lisi wrote: > On Sunday 27 January 2013 18:23:13 Robert Longstaff wrote: > > Consequently, I think it would be great if people are prepared to do > > intro talks on the subject (maybe advertise in advance so newbies > > specifically come to that meeting) but I wouldn't want to make that the > > main focus as the more expert users would likely drift away and take > > their knowledge with them. > > I would have though that talks for the complete beginner would have a very > limited audience at LUG meetings, where the majority of people present are > experienced users. I'm struggling to find a polite way to say this but I don't feel that a majority of the thread starters here are experienced Linux users (from the post content) at all, and I also feel that there will be lurkers who are put off from posting questions because of the technical nature of posts they see. So I am not sure that even very basic talks should be discouraged. Everyone starts somewhere. Do bear in mind that experts are more able to go off and find conferences and communities more befitting their level of expertise anyway. (Hey, it's FOSDEM this weekend!) > So far there has been a good mix of talks and levels. This seems to me to be > a much better idea. No one has proposed focusing exclusively on beginner talks. Robert specifically spoke AGAINST focusing on such. "A good mix of talks" does mean SOME beginner stuff. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting > The optimum programming team size is 1. Has Jurassic Park taught us nothing? — pfilandr -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Suggestions for MySQL connectivity
Hi Roger, On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 10:06:33PM +, Roger Munford wrote: > The "support" told me that it was a wicked thing to do a huge > security risk. Not having been involved in software for several > years, I am willing to believe that it could have become a problem, > but is it such a risk that nobody will offer direct connections. If using a shared install of MySQL, i.e. there's one MySQL install and each customer has a login, then exposing the MySQL port to the Internet will risk a brute force dictionary attack gaining access to an account. From there, bad things can occur that affect other customers. There is always going to be a compromise between cheaper shared hosting which is inflexible because it has to serve many people's needs, versus more expensive dedicated hosting that can be configured exactly how you would like. If you have SSH access than as others have mentioned you may be able to do an SSH tunnel, then the MySQL connection would appear to be coming from the local host. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Devopsdays London
Hello, On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 09:52:46AM +, Stephen Nelson-Smith wrote: > I think many of you already know about it, but just to be sure I > thought I'd shout it out here. Definitely worth attending if you can! I don't know anything about it. Money is quite tight right now so I don't know if I should spend £120. Show of hands of who intends to go? Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Boot times, fsck and large disks
Hi Leo, On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 10:08:16AM +, Leo wrote: > My headless server can take a long time to boot if it decides it > needs to fsck the large data disks at boot. In order to enable me to > log on sooner I was thinking of disabling the auto option in fstab > for them, and adding a script that mounts them in the background > during boot. I was wondering if anyone else had come across a similar > problem, and if there was a better way of solving it? You would be better off disabling the automatic fsck that happens based on time or mount count, and doing fsck yourself at a time that suits. For ext2/3/4 that would be: # tune2fs -c 0 -i 0 /dev/blah Either that or switching to a filesystem with a quicker fsck, such as xfs or zfs. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Dropbox alternative
Hello, On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 12:47:55PM +, Simon Whitehead wrote: > Isnt this a job for FTP for example Filezilla?? Only if you live in 1996. :) SFTP or FTP-SSL arguably more acceptable, though what people tend to want from "cloud storage" is good OS and mobile device integration. They want to be able to just drop files into a folder or make a change to a file and know it will be distributed out without them having to trigger that. I wouldn't say that SFTP provides that. Yes you can lash something together using scripts and inotify. This is not what most cloud storage users are thinking of. Unison is a bit better because it will satisfy the encryption angle and has pretty good merging support, i.e. if file has changed on both sides it will do its best to resolve that without having to ask you which version you want to keep. Still not really there from the usability angle, given user expectations. I have made no recommendation because I don't currently use cloud storage. Unison and rsync do fit my needs right now. Not so for the OP I feel. git-annex looks interesting. Owncloud and Tahoe-LAFS also interesting projects. Using Tahoe-LAFS you can store your stuff on multiple different clouds, secure in the knowledge that none of them can access it. Again, user interface will be the stumbling block here still. Disaster planning fans should bear in mind that multiple storage clouds are backed onto lower level providers such as Amazon S3, e.g. both UbuntuOne and Dropbox are on S3. So if S3 is crippled, so are at least two major storage clouds that some people may think are independent. Shared fate; no longer just for romance novels. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Communications Data Bill
Hello, On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 07:55:06PM +, Tim Brocklehurst wrote: > I can't wait until GCHQ realises exactly how much e-mail traffic > there is! Even if GCHQ somehow does not read all UK Internet traffic, the American NSA does. This isn't a tinfoil hat comment; they really do, there have been court cases about it. So if you send an email that ends up going through equipment located in the US (like if you emailed someone using gmail…), they probably read it. https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/faq "…the NSA is intercepting and analyzing millions of ordinary Americans' communications, with the help of the country's largest phone and Internet companies. EFF has brought two lawsuits to stop this illegal surveillance. In 2012, three NSA whistleblowers came forward to confirm Mr. Klein’s evidence, as well as other information about the warrantless surveillance." In light of that, it seems a little naive to assume that any other government would not do the same if they thought they could get away with it. So just assume that multiple governments read all the emails you send - it might be easier. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Communications Data Bill
Hello, On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 07:31:42PM +, Peter Collins wrote: > Having seen how openly vocal people will be about such topics (Ubuntu > Spy), I was wondering how many people have concerns over the > Communications Data Bill and what they have done to vocalise the opinions? I attended a workshop with ORG, and then had a meeting with my MP to brief her on the matter. She seemed pretty shocked at the ramifications, though did not follow through with any action of her own as far as I can see. I didn't feel there was much more I could personally do at that point. > I have to admit I don't like the idea of it and hadn't signed any > petitions, however, and I'm sure some of you will be aware, I just found > this: > > http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/32400 I'm not really aware of any epetition having had any useful real-world effect. Personally I think the time would be better spent informing your MP of your concerns. If you aren't confident in expressing yourself, ORG will train you. They will train you to articulate the issues in your own words, so it doesn't sound like a cut-and-paste platform. For me that didn't appear to have any useful real-world effect either, but I still think it has more chance of being acted upon, and ORG think so too. This is quite weighty technical stuff and you can imagine most MPs' eyes glazing over as they start to read a petition about it. MPs are just normal people, with no particular technical interest. They need to hear from their constituents in a sane and rational manner to know that it is an issue that affects real people. > Also how would this effect SSL? Assuming you mean "affect" :-) , the Home Office has been asked how they intend to get around the fact that SSL scuppers their plans and that most major sites are moving to SSL-only connections. Their answer was along the lines of, "we are confident we will still be able to get the information we need" but they didn't go into any details. There are a few ways that SSL can be broken, but they all tend to be very noticeable. It is possible that a manufacturer of SSL Man-in-the-Middle devices (as used by enterprises and repressive governments, as sold by big companies like Cisco and Blue Coat) has cosied up to the Home Office and told them "yeah, we can intercept that no problem!" without going into the details. It basically boils down to either - the government forcing a UK-based SSL certificate authority to issue them a bogus root certificate, which would be noticed and be commercial suicide for that company. Or; - the government making it illegal to operate a browser without their own trusted certificate in, which would be noticed and worked around and would simultaneously make UK an international laughing stock, cause fear and uncertainty amongst banking institutions and other privacy-conscious entities, etc. etc. So, the reality of either of these is fairly unpalatable and I would still be reasonably confident in the efficacy of SSL for some time to come (not that there *aren't* many flaws in how SSL works, both technically and as a business model). Not to be complacent, but the lib dems have been real heroes on the CDB issue and it seems like the bill may be on its last legs. I generally find Zoe O'Connell posts on the subject to be quite informative. http://www.complicity.co.uk/blog/tag/interception-modernisation-programme/ On Twitter, look for stuff posted by Julian Huppert (LibDems), Tom Watson (Labour) and Zoe as well.. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu spy program
Hi Lisi, On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 08:59:51PM +, Lisi wrote: > On Tuesday 11 December 2012 18:53:37 Anton Piatek wrote: > > Not sure if I got the url right via mobile phone but there's a post from an > > ex-canonical emoyee about this: > > https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z132szwbruiozdntp22iiziggr24tzlwg0 > >4?cbp=104mhlwf5d4ys&spath=/app/basic/109365858706205035322/posts&sparm=cbp%3 > >Dix7bz3mtvnnl%26force%3D1%26partnerid%3Dt1&force=1&partnerid=t1 > > Has anyone else managed to get this? If so, could he or she share the secret? Managed to "get" it? If you mean "read the text," I don't personally think it was worth the time spent reading it, but it was: This might be breaking the contractual obligations I have with my previous employment at Canonical Ltd. But let me lift the veil anyway... Having been intimately involved with pretty much all aspects of the "Shopping lens" aka "More Suggestions" aka "ZOMG WTF keylogging spyware!!!1" I can reveal unto you - there is no conspiracy, no evil plan. Sorry. Canonical is really only up to making an honest buck. Wow - what a relief to get it off my shoulders. #ThereIsNoConspiracy #MoveAlongNothingToSeeHere So pretty much content-free once you've removed the bleating and exclamation marks. Cheers, Andy PS I use Ubuntu and don't care about the shopping lens either way, so I'm not saying this because I have an axe to grind. It just didn't appear to advance the "debate" any further in my opinion. -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Equality Act 2010 compliance
Hi Chris, On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 04:04:25PM +, Chris Dennis wrote: > One of my website clients has just received the email which is pasted > below. I'm pretty sure that it's a scam -- they're just trying to > scare people into using their 'intercrm' product. Regardless of whether they were right or not, I would never buy services as a result of UCE (spam). > Does anyone know of a compliance-checker for websites? Or just a > simple list of rules? (The websightassist.org site mentioned in the > email below advertises a checker, but given their aggressive > marketing, I'm reluctant to try it in case they then start targeting > me with similar emails.) Agreed. If you are concerned that your web site is not accessible enough, since the act says: These have been produced in partnership with the British Chambers of Commerce, Citizens Advice, acas, and the Equality and Diversity Forum, to support implementation of the act. I would have thought you could ask any of these for advice on what needs to be done, rather than asking a company with a product to peddle. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] 8TB Cloud
On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 11:23:53AM -, Rob Malpass wrote: > 1) Is SATA still the bus of choice? According to Novatech, there is now > "Serial attached SCSI". I don't think any of my mobos have this bus, and > indeed it seems the drives sizes here are a lot smaller than I need - but is > there anything pushing this over SATA? Not really. SAS drives tend to be of higher reliability, have longer warranties and are more commonly found in enterprise form factors like 2.5" platters and 10 or 15kRPM spindle speeds. But they cost a fortune compared to consumer SATA drives. Hard to imagine building a cheap home server with SAS. > 2) Presumably I need a stronger power supply. If there are 4 hdds and 1 > DVD drive - what sort of wattage should I be looking at? It's not just wattage, it's also what it can supply on each of the lines. > 3) If, expense notwithstanding for the moment, I did this as 4*2TB external > USB hard drives, I've had trouble sharing these with Ubuntu before now. > For some reason they're mounted under /media under a strange (and seemingly > random) string of characters (which change every time the server is > restarted) such that permanent shortcuts from other devices on the network > wouldn't work and would need to be re-established each time I connect. Has > anyone worked around this? > > Any constructive suggestions very welcome. I truly mean this to be constructive: the idea of building a home server out of bits of repurposed old tat that you're not sure is up to the job, and USB external drives, instead of spending sub-£150 on an HP Microserver, gives me the shivers. Four hot swap drive bays, modern hardware, good form factor, excellent construction, pretty quiet, looks quite stylish. I'm sorry if this didn't come across as constructive, it just doesn't strike me as a practical alternative to me. Unless it's the case that you really enjoy troubleshooting old hardware and stuff that is not known to work together, for the sake for ~£150 I would avoid it like the plague. The power savings on a Microserver vs the PSU out of "an old tower" alone probably pays it back in a couple of years. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] OT: broadband router with DNS....
Hello, On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 04:24:17PM +, c...@spamcop.net wrote: > But for something as central to the reliability of the network (and a > network used by a few very non-technical people), I was hoping to > avoid non-standard firmware. To be honest I would trust OpenWRT on a compatible device more than the native firmware as supplied by the likes of D-link and Netgear. However I would still rather run LAN services on a separate box from the router, which could still be cost effective with something like an HP Microserver. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Replacement server recomendations
Hi Michael, On Mon, Nov 05, 2012 at 12:53:22AM +, Michael James Daffin wrote: > My server has recently died (it has been on its last legs for a while now) > and I am looking for a replacement. I think that the motherboard has gone > so basically looking for a complete replacement (other then the hard disk > drives that is). > > I don't mind a motherboard/cpu/ram bundle or a completed units as long as > it meets the basic requirements below. I was looking into home/small > business servers, but a desktop that matches the requirements would also do. > > My price range is around *£200-400* With that low a budget I don't think you will beat an HP Microserver. They are still available with £100 cashback. The base model costs only around £190+VAT so this works out incredible value for money. > *Basic Requirements:* > >- 4+ SATA ports The Microserver has four 3.5" hot swap SATA bays plus you can fit one more 3.5" SATA drive above that in the place where the optical drive is meant to go, if you use a 5.25" bracket. It also has an eSATA port on the motherboard though I have heard that without a BIOS update this doesn't support port multipliers, i.e. you can only attach one disk to it. The base model comes with a single 250G SATA disk. >- Max of 8GB+ ram The Microserver only has two RAM slots, so it will go to 2x8G of DDR3 ECC. It does come with 1x2G so if going to more than 2x2G you'd have to remove that. >- Processor capable of virtualisation It's an AMD Turion II Neo at 1.3GHz or 1.5GHz (depending on whether you get the N36L or the N40L model). These are not fast CPUs, but they are low power, 64-bit and support virtualisation. >- Gigabit network port Yeah it has one. tg3 driver. > *Features that would be nice to have:* > >- USB 3.0 ports (or a PCIe slot to plug the one I have in) Four USB on the front, two on the back, one internal. They are all USB 2.0 though. >- Integrated graphics card Good enough for VGA, yes.. >- 6+ SATA ports Only has five SATA ports internally and one eSATA. >- Hot swap hdd bays/Easy way to remove the drives For four of them yes. >- Quite (it sits in our living room next to the tv) The chassis has one big fan, so that goes pretty slowly. I haven't found it particularly noisy. I think 6 SATA drives will be noisier. >- Low power (it is on all the time) The CPU has a TDP of about 15W. > I am very flexible with everything listed but the basic requirements (it > must have them) listed above. If you need more than four hot swap disks then I think a Microserver plus an eSATA disk enclosure will be cheaper and better than most single devices you could buy. The build quality of the Microserver itself is very good, allowing you to take the whole thing apart without tools. In terms of PCIe, it also has: 1 x PCI Express x16 (half-height / half length slot) 1 x PCI Express x1 (half-height / half length slot) So maybe that would get you USB3.0 and/or more eSATA. More info: http://n40l.wikia.com/wiki/HP_MicroServer_N40L_Wiki Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [Admin]Observations, improvements and initiatives
Hi Tim, On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 07:36:49PM +0100, Tim Brocklehurst wrote: > I'll apologise in advance for this rather lengthy e-mail, but I think it's > important that I outline a few observations and ideas I have. No need to apologise; it's great to see that you are enthusiastic and have so many ideas. :) > If you want to discuss the following points, please reply to this e-mail with > the subject line specified. As someone who very rarely attends a LUG meeting I'm not sure I should comment, but if I were to comment on multiple of your points would you prefer that it be done so in separate emails, one per point? Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] "Gnome 2 is dead" (Was Re: Ubuntu Unity - Dash - context lists)
Hi Ally, On Mon, Oct 01, 2012 at 11:20:06PM +0100, Ally Biggs wrote: > Haven't the old gnome devs created mate? Ah yes, that's the one that is the fork. I've seen a few people disparage it as having too few developers, but they might be Gnome 3 fanboys I suppose.. Are people seeing that as a project with a future then? Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
[Hampshire] "Gnome 2 is dead" (Was Re: Ubuntu Unity - Dash - context lists)
Hello, On Mon, Oct 01, 2012 at 10:47:25PM +0100, Vic wrote: > > > GNOME 2 is dead. > > ...And looking remarkably sprightly on my Fedora 16 laptop... But it is the case that upstream is not developing it anymore, isn't it? Also I have seen the fork of Gnome "classic" (I forget its name now) derided on the debian-devel list as being "generated by sed", as in they ran sed over the Gnome code base to rename everything to their new name, but without having any actual developers to carry the project on. From all of that I was under the impression that "sticking with Gnome Classic" was not really a long-term option, it would be either Unity, Gnome 3 or a completely different desktop environment. Is this not the case? Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu Unity
Hello, On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 08:20:56AM +0100, john lewis wrote: > Apple have always adopted the attitude that their way of doing things > is the only way and make it very difficult if not impossible to > reconfigure the look of their OS. Is that now the route Canonical > are going to follow? > > I am biased towards Debian as you all know and make no apologies for > promoting the "Debian Way" Very much the paramilitary wing of the Debian Republican Army.. > A large majority of HantsLUG members were Debian users a few years > back but for some reason chose to go with the new kid on the > block. And they are wrong and you will keep on about it until they change back? :) Luckily since Debian and other distributions do exist, users still have plenty of choice and the situation isn't really comparable to Apple. It is in fact very easy to run Linux and all applications that are made for Linux without using Unity or Ubuntu. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] London Perl Workshop 2012
Hello, On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 11:04:27AM +0100, Dr A. J. Trickett wrote: > May be of interest to some. > > Subject: London Perl Workshop 2012 I usually try to make it. Anyone else here going? Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Correction - was:Re: [OT] Southampton Hackerspace Survey
Hi Lisi, On Sun, Sep 09, 2012 at 04:03:54PM +0100, hants...@googlemail.com wrote: > I protested because Benjie seemed to me to be aiming at poaching > members from another fledgeling group. I don't find the time to attend hacker spaces very often¹, mostly because I'm not really into making physical things and I'm an inconvenient distance from all of them. I do find them very interesting projects though so I do follow the fortunes of many of them, including the established London and Reading ones, and the Surrey/Hampshire effort. Something I have noticed is the recurrent theme of new groups and projects starting up near to more established ones and this causing some people to be concerned about draining of interest from "their" project to the newer one. I have seen this happen at all of the hacker space projects I follow, sometimes more than once. I don't think it is anything to be concerned about in practice. Here's why. Hacker/maker spaces are still a pretty fringe interest. The number of people interested in such things is very small in any given geographical region. I suggest this means that all persons interested in such projects will find out about all local examples and attend all of them that they reasonably can. They then stick with whichever project best fits their needs. There is very little risk of people becoming aware of Project A and then somehow remaining unaware of similar local Project B. Hackspaces are quite social and people talk about things that are going on. In actual fact I suggest it *helps* to raise awareness for both projects and "poaching" of members is impossible. I do agree that it is probably inadvisable for two fledgling hacker spaces to try to start up close to each other, because the chances are that neither of them will get enough income to actually get a permanent space. The answer there is for them to merge into one project. This is obvious though, and I've not seen it happen in practice that two startup groups persist in being geographically close to the detriment of each other. It's so hard to afford a permanent space that people give up and join the larger effort if it's at all feasible for them.It works itself out to the goal of having a hacker space in the vicinity, it's just that it might not end up being "your" hacker space. In the specific case of Southampton and the proposed SHH locations, they're actually really quite far apart anyway. If you look at Dominic's analysis of the mid-point of existing SHH members: http://is.gd/pPBXw2 (the green 'M') you can see it's really a fair distance from Southampton. There's only two or three persons near Southampton. Without them, the mid-point would be even further away. It wouldn't be sensible to merge those projects. You would have to agree that existence of both is justified in terms of geography. So in summary: IF the locations are close enough together that hackers and makers in Hampshire could attend both, then very quickly they will all find out about both and one project will become the clear success, leaving the other to join it or founder. If the area was ever going to end up with a hacker space, it does end up with a hacker space. IF the locations are far enough apart that their independent existences are justified, this is a non-issue. If either place was ever going to get a hack space, it ends up getting a hacker space. Either way it is a non-issue for the projects concerned, in my opinion. Now, on an *individual* basis, it's going to be unfortunate if your local and personally convenient hacker space project fails to gain traction because some other project started up and people liked that one more. This is an individual concern though. To satisfy such an individual need, it's asking that the other people who prefer the other project have their individual needs sacrificed in favour of yours. It is an understandable thing to feel personally aggrieved over something like that, but there is no justification for bringing "the project" into it. Ultimately it would be better if the energy were spent in trying to make your own local effort better so that it attracts more people, as opposed to spending it trying to tell other people that their desires are wrong. Chances are that since human interaction is exponential, the buzz generated from the other project will actually help raise awareness also in people who are better placed for your own project. As regards the individual projects of Southampton and SHH, I personally am too far from either of them, living on the Surrey/Middlesex border as I do, so have no personal stake in either. Cheers, Andy ¹ I'm a paid up member of London Hackspace but have been to it twice in 2012 so far, for example. signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Anyone after a job
Hi Chris, On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 11:47:38AM +0100, chris wrote: > Is anyone on the list currently looking for a new job? The job is > great, with a lot of challenges. The pay will be good, with an > excellent benefits package. You might consider posting this to linuxjobs: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/linuxjobs In my experience the best posts include location and salary expectations in the subject line, and a decent job spec in the body. I've also started tweeting sensible posts from there (plus other suitable ones I find) from: https://twitter.com/UnixJobsUK Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Flash Player on Linux
Hi Ian, On Fri, Jul 06, 2012 at 12:14:21AM +0100, Ian wrote: > Id agree. Silverlight was short lived. Yet sadly still the only way to use Netflix or LoveFilm in the browser. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting You dont have to be illiterate to use the Internet, but it help's. -- Mike Bristow signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Hi Sean, On Tue, Jul 03, 2012 at 07:30:23AM +0100, Sean Gibbins wrote: > On 02/07/12 17:42, Andy Smith wrote: > >If you look at Gnome 3, it's all different to Gnome 2 also. I would > >say that this is a dramatic change forced upon almost all Linux > >desktop users. > > Change isn't the problem Andy, on the contrary I welcome it, it's the > pace of change and the accompanying lack of choice in this particular > instance. Unity first came to my attention in October 2010. I didn't like the idea or look of it, and felt sure I was going to hate it. At this time my desktop and laptop were both running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (so Gnome 2). I watched with dismay as everything else changed to Gnome 3. I felt sure I would not get along with that. As 2010 became 2011 became 2012 I started feeling a little bit of pressure to upgrade. Some of the apps I used could really do with an update by this time and they weren't going to get it on 10.04 LTS. I still hadn't tried out either Unity or Gnome 3 personally, just read other people's rants about them. Ubuntu 12.04 was released and I decided that I really should at least give Unity an honest try. I thought, "I'm probably going to hate this, and if I do then I'll just have to give Debian / Gnome 3 a try. Then if I hate that I'll look at Debian and another environment." I had 18 months to make that decision and if I was willing to stick with 10.04 LTS I could have stretched it out several more years. I really can't see this as being a swift change. Things were a little difficult at first with Unity. It really isn't suited to having many different windows of the same application open. A big way of working for me previously was to have many (40+) terminal windows open. I'd have a separate .desktop file for each one and then a menu of them on the top menu bar. I'd have the title bar of each terminal (I prefer rxvt-unicode rather than gnome-terminal) show the host name and path, so by clicking on the application in the bottom task bar I'd see a pop up of all the current terminal windows, sorted alphabetically. The first hurdle was that after launching one gnome-terminal, clicking it again would just bring that to the foreground. There didn't really seem to be a way to add a menu or extra launchers with different properties. There's a long-standing Launchpad bug about this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/705007 Perhaps you recognise some of the names within it. I imagine that this bug will never get "fixed" since it conflicts entirely with how Ubuntu want to do things. This was actually such a deal-breaker for me that I didn't even try to install 12.04 until I thought there was a workaround. The SSH search lens: http://strugglers.net/~andy/blog/2012/05/05/ssh-launchers-for-ubuntu-unity/ So, okay, now I hit and type part of the name of whatever I want to connect to and the icon appears; it works. Still a few rough edges as mentioned, but I have adapted to this way of working and actually find it faster than my menu arrangement. I can usually do it without taking my hands off the keyboard. Next issue, still in this area: how to handle these masses of terminal windows? See, + cycles through the windows like you'd expect, but it's coalesced every terminal into one terminal entry on this list. Once on one you can +` to cycle through each of those, or leave it where it is for a second and it will start doing that. But if you have 40 of them then it's *really* tedious to find the one you want. Also the thumbnail image is next to useless because every single one is an unreadable shrunken black square. I tried working that way for about a day but then gave up. It was driving me nuts. It would have been easy at this point to get exasperated with certain individuals within the Ubuntu community who were happy to tell me that I was "doing it wrong" and that I should be running just one terminal with tmux or screen to multiplex out all the other connections. Or one gnome-terminal with tabs for each host. I didn't want either of those things; I wanted one window per host, and to run screen in each one. I wanted to be able to put two windows next to each other, without having to faff with detaching tabs. I wanted to use rxvt-unicode, not gnome-terminal. Luckily the compiz "scale text filter plugin" came to the rescue. As regular compiz users will know, hitting +w will sort of zoom out and show all your windows at once on the screen. You get to click on one to bring it to the foreground, the same as if you had done + to select it. That's the scale plugin. On the face of it, this wasn't much better because I still got 40 black squares that were largely indistinguishable from each other. However, with the "scale text filter plugin" enabled you can start
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Hi Sean, On Mon, Jul 02, 2012 at 03:32:32PM +0100, Sean Gibbins wrote: > My personal feeling is that this was an ideological change that was > thrust upon Ubuntu users, If you look at Gnome 3, it's all different to Gnome 2 also. I would say that this is a dramatic change forced upon almost all Linux desktop users. I feel we are actually coming into a more exciting time for the Linux desktop, which will have inevitable casualties. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Hi Leszek, Please can you trim your quotes a little? There was no need to quote the full previous message (78 lines). It just means that everyone has to scroll through it to reach your text which is then hard to tell which bits (if any) you are actually replying to. On Mon, Jul 02, 2012 at 12:54:08AM +0100, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: > Trouble is, we slightly longer users in time, are some of the key > recommenders of a distro to new entrants I've been using Linux as my main desktop since 1995 and I have no hesitation recommending Unity to new users. I also now use Unity myself. > If a desktop cripples established ease-of-use, forcing a completely > different operational design on us, we're not going to want to recommend > the same elevated learning curve to others If I felt it crippled ease of use, I wouldn't be using it myself. It is Different. Different is not automatically wrong. It is possible to disagree. It is okay for you (or anyone else) to not like it. > I've no special preferences ( Debian/Ubuntu/derivatives ), but simply > will hafta travel the road of max. power-user configurability so that > the real work ( whatever that may be for self, or others ), can still go > on getting done, with a minimum of heartache I feel I am still able to do real work (I work in IT) with the minimum of heartache. Otherwise I am capable of using something else. My ways of working *have* had to change. They would have had to change whatever the case, because my only real choices were Unity or Gnome 3. > Restoring user selection of choice of desktop at bootup, would be a > prime contribution .. ( if it's there, I don't see it ) As an experienced Linux user you can install a bewildering range of desktop environments. It does not automatically follow that Ubuntu needs to devote resources to supporting every single choice available to you. You don't have to take that personally. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Hello, On Sun, Jul 01, 2012 at 02:22:58AM +0100, Full Circle Podcast wrote: > > I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. > > We couldn't possibly comment. But then again, if you're Canonical's Product > Strategy Manager, you are kind of obliged to eat your own dog food. This was not a very constructive post. Please can you try to be less needlessly offensive when posting here. Thanks, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [OT] ISP level of tech support
Hi Rob, On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 06:32:27PM +0100, Rob Malpass wrote: > Slightly ot but something we all have to do at some point... I ask in all > honesty - could / should any ISP have been able to do more for me in my > situation? *Could* they do more? Yes. *Should* they do more? Trickier question. I'm with Zen too, chosen years ago because of their reputation for clue. They cost a little bit more than the average because of that. To be honest in all those years I've never really found it demonstrated to a great degree that they are so amazing at support. I've never really had huge problems with them (or I'd have moved), only minor issues or a day of outage caused by a problem only BT could fix. It's just that my experiences with their support have been much like yours. Left wanting very slightly more. The thing is that really snappy support people do cost a lot to provide. Most people agree that AAISP's support is really great. But look at their prices. So if someone were to say to me, "I know I have a problematic phone line and need an ISP that's going to go to fight for me with BT instead of one that will just do the equivalent of a shoulder shrug and pass the buck after having taken my money." or, "It's absolutely imperative that if there are ever any problems with my DSL then I can just pick up the phone and get straight through to a smart person who is both eager to solve my problem and technically adept enough to talk details with me." then I probably would not recommend Zen particularly. I'd probably recommend AAISP and then they'd look at the price and pick someone else cheaper anyway. Just like I did. *Should* they do more? Arguably not since it's a bit better than the pack of others. I haven't left over it yet. I just could not sing their praises really. They don't put complete droolers on the phone lines. They don't traffic shape. They don't outright lie to you on the billboard, TV and phone. They don't send out ads in brown envelopes that look important until you see they're addressed to Occupier. They aren't yet big enough to have attracted a court order for blocking problematic sites. There is still a fair bit to recommend. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] rsync 101
Hi Rob, On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 06:04:16PM +0100, Rob Malpass wrote: > Running grsync in the usual way means I > end up with > > /foo/bar/1987/fred (which is correct) > > but I also end up with > > /foo/bar/fred (which is now a duplicate - and can be > deleted) > > > > What I want grsync to do is ensure B is a direct copy of A. rsync will not delete things on the destination unless you allow it to by specifying --delete. I assume there's some way to specify rsync options with grsync, but I'm afraid I've never used it. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "The electric guitar - like making love - is much improved by a little feedback, completely ruined by too much." -- The League Against Tedium signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [Surrey] Aldershot Hackspace?
Hi Dominic, On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 04:36:11PM +0100, Dominic Rodriguez wrote: > I prefer Andy's idea - Yeah I understand of the costs but even so I think > we should be able to pay what we want to a minimum. Just to clarify, that is not my idea, just the way that most established hackspaces I am aware of work.. :) When London Hackspace first proposed offering their full facilities to those paying only £5/month, I was initially quite vocally opposed as Hackspace Foundation Ltd at the time was running at a deficit and would have been bankrupt in ~5 months. I felt they should be only offering the most basic things at £5, and demanding the full £20 at least for everything. However, I was very pleased to be proven totally wrong - the increased buzz about the new space brought in new members and they were very soon able to expand into the neighbouring unit. The £5 minimum proved to be a good move to bring in new members. On the other hand, you have to appreciate that getting something like this off the ground is really hard - LH had been going a few years before they got their existing decent premises. They used to meet in a pub basement, and then got free access to a drafty loft elsewhere. For all that time they weren't taking subscriptions, only donations. At the start they relied on a few members paying well over the average, in order to get things kickstarted. And (a lot like a LUG I suppose) it will always need a few people putting in way more effort than everyone else to keep it going. So at the start it probably is going to need a few very dedicated people willing to "subscribe" to something that doesn't really yet exist and put in a lot of time, in order to bring it into existence. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [Surrey] Aldershot Hackspace?
Hello, On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 03:13:48PM +0100, Jan Henkins wrote: > On 11/05/12 14:40, Freaky Clown wrote: > >Anyway a few of us folks are looking at a possibility of a Hackspace > >based in aldershot - working on the basis that membership would be > >about £20/month to start with how many people would be genuinely up for > >joining? I am nowhere near Aldershot but once you've got a location, if you need a web presence then BitFolk will be happy to provide you with a VPS for free, as we already do for: - London Hackspace - HAC:Manchester - fizzPOP (Birmingham) - Reading Hackspace - One more that's still setting up and doesn't want to be named yet > Just in case people balk at the £20 per month idea, that is what the > London Hackspace needs in order to exist. Rent in London is probably a lot higher than rent in Aldershot though. London Hackspace's expenses are hinted at here: http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Budget I am not sure that a large industrial unit¹ in Aldershot is going to cost anywhere near £3,750/month. But like London Hackspace, I recommend saying "the hackspace needs an average of £x per member to survive. We ask that you pay what you think the space is worth to you, to a minimum of £5/month". That way you get free money from all the people who like the idea but couldn't justify £20/month or whatever. Cheers, Andy ¹ LH has two units next to each other. -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] An introduction, a blag and well a bit of general chit chat
Hi, On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 10:28:53AM +, Bryn Jones wrote: > I failed miserably to reply off list Welcome to the list. Next time the subject of having the list set Reply-To comes up, please consider voting for "do not set Reply-To". Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Quick question
Hello, On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 09:20:12AM +, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: > apt-file search ssl-cert-snakeoil.key > might have found it, but it does not. > > apt-file does not appear to be as useful as it used to be. It's because ssl-cert-snakeoil.key is a generated file, created by make-ssl-cert on the install of the ssl-cert package. apt-file has never indexed such files, to my knowledge. I'm not sure if there is a good way of working out this sort of thing, since the only place I can find ssl-cert-snakeoil.key referenced is in the post-install script of the ssl-cert package (/var/lib/dpkg/info/ssl-cert.postinst). Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Quick question
On Wed, Mar 07, 2012 at 11:15:50PM +, Leo wrote: > Can anyone with an ubuntu install tell me the owner and group of: > /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key $ sudo stat /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key File: `/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key' Size: 887 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file Device: fb01h/64257dInode: 262977 Links: 1 Access: (0640/-rw-r-) Uid: (0/root) Gid: ( 106/ssl-cert) Access: 2010-10-14 13:20:02.370681001 +0100 Modify: 2010-07-27 04:35:54.961966857 +0100 Change: 2010-07-27 04:35:54.981965139 +0100 Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] backup migrations
Hello, On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 09:34:06PM +, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: > I have looked at rsnapshot. > It uses hardlinks, so if I need to copy the backup data itself, I will > have to find a special copy program that preserves hard links. GNU cp, GNU tar, rsync, … > I am sure they exist, but not found an answer on google yet. I know > how to handle copy softlnks, just not hardlinks yet. You don't have to do anything special unless you want to preserve the hardlink. i.e. if you used tar or cp or rsync to backup your backup but forgot to make them preserve hardlinks, you'd still have a functioning backup but it would be many times bigger as it would contain multiple copies of each file. So not the end of the world if you did forget. > The final requirement I have is to be able to select a file, and see > the dates when it changed. $ ls -ilh */clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 8635494 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 250 2012-02-24 08:00 daily.0/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 8635924 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 249 2012-02-23 07:59 daily.1/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 8635927 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 248 2012-02-22 08:14 daily.2/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 8635849 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 246 2012-02-21 07:58 daily.3/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 8635723 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 245 2012-02-20 07:35 daily.4/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 8635560 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 249 2012-02-19 07:57 daily.5/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 8635520 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 248 2012-02-18 08:15 daily.6/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 1859665 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 229 2012-01-02 07:43 monthly.0/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 8636046 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 247 2012-02-13 07:35 weekly.0/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 8635793 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 250 2012-02-06 07:39 weekly.1/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 1859634 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 246 2012-01-30 07:35 weekly.2/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat 1859659 -rw-r- 1 1002 1002 246 2012-01-23 07:40 weekly.3/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat Versions that are the same would have identical inode number (first number). All these are different so every instance is a unique file. $ ls -ilh */clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299529 -rw--- 5 1002 1002 5.0K 2012-02-19 23:02 daily.0/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299529 -rw--- 5 1002 1002 5.0K 2012-02-19 23:02 daily.1/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299529 -rw--- 5 1002 1002 5.0K 2012-02-19 23:02 daily.2/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299529 -rw--- 5 1002 1002 5.0K 2012-02-19 23:02 daily.3/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299529 -rw--- 5 1002 1002 5.0K 2012-02-19 23:02 daily.4/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299539 -rw--- 6 1002 1002 4.8K 2012-01-12 16:18 daily.5/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299539 -rw--- 6 1002 1002 4.8K 2012-01-12 16:18 daily.6/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299524 -rw--- 1 1002 1002 4.8K 2011-12-28 09:54 monthly.0/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299539 -rw--- 6 1002 1002 4.8K 2012-01-12 16:18 weekly.0/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299539 -rw--- 6 1002 1002 4.8K 2012-01-12 16:18 weekly.1/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299539 -rw--- 6 1002 1002 4.8K 2012-01-12 16:18 weekly.2/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo 8299539 -rw--- 6 1002 1002 4.8K 2012-01-12 16:18 weekly.3/clamps.bitfolk.com/home/minecraft/.viminfo There's actually only three different files there. IMHO disadvantages of rsnapshot: - Very shonky do-it-yourself approach to scheduling of backup runs. You trigger them from cron; if they overrun it can get very confusing. Other backup systems have fancier scheduling facilities. - Can only use hardlinks within the backup space of one host, for same path. So for example two instances of /home/minecraft/minecraft/world/level.dat on clamps.bitfolk.com that are identical would be hardlinked, but if that same content was elsewhere on that same host, or elsewhere on another host, it wouldn't be hardlinked. Other backup systems (like backuppc) can deduplicate on a per-file basis regardless of where the file is. - Will break a hardlink even on a metadata change. For example if you change ownership or permissions of a file then you'll get two copies stored even if the contents are identical. Other backup systems (like backuppc) store the metadata separately from the content and handle this. - Any time a file changes a complete copy of both versions is stored, not diffs. This is inherent to the hardlink design c
Re: [Hampshire] simh - problem with libpcap.a
Hi Rob, On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 05:54:57PM -, Rob Malpass wrote: > I've gone into synaptic and installed everything I can see for libpcap but > the file still hasn't appeared. This is the right procedure isn't it? > What should my next move be? I've never understood libraries and > dependencies on Linux - that's why I switched from Slackware to Ubuntu a few > years back. There is a simh package in synaptic but this hasn't installed > the file either. On Debian: $ apt-file search libpcap.a libpcap0.8-dev: /usr/lib/libpcap.a Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [Job] Linux Web/Networking Developer, Portsmouth
Hi Nick, On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 12:05:09AM +, Nick Chalk wrote: > My current employer is looking for a Linux Developer to help out > with Web / Amazon EC2 / Network coding. May I repost this to linuxjobs?: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/linuxjobs Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting You dont have to be illiterate to use the Internet, but it help's. -- Mike Bristow signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] IP address translation
Hello, On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 08:44:15PM +, Michael James Daffin wrote: > Would it not just be easier to give the computers the 158... addresses (via > dhcp or staticly)? Very common to have to do NAT like this when communicating between two networks which use the same ranges of RFC1918 addresses themselves. e.g. two unrelated companies use 192.168.12.0/24 internally, then one company buys the other and wants to merge network. Machines can't talk to each other, don't want to renumber the lot. So NAT them both and talk to different addresses. Or you have to VPN into a remote network and use 192.168.12.34 but you already use 192.168.12.0/24 on your own network. It is horrible. But it works. And you'll see it more and more. Short story is that no you can't always use whatever IP addresses you like when you're trying to inter-operate with existing networks that couldn't use globally unique addresses due to either address starvation or debatable belief that using private IPs is more secure. Roll on IPv6. :) Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] "Big" storage
Hi Leo, On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 12:26:54AM +, Leo wrote: > As a counter, I would not advise RAID for this (assuming we're talking about > RAID1 or better, rather than RAID0). It will protect against hdd failure but > that's all. If the time to restore the service (e.g. by rebuilding the server and reloading data from backups) after replacing a dead disk is worth more than the disk capacity lost to RAID then you are better off using RAID. For most people they are better off using RAID. If my home file server died it would take me at least a couple of hours to rebuild it. I'd rather spend a small fraction of its disk space to not have that problem, and that's a pretty trivial service. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Linux mailing lists
Hi Rob, On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 03:05:27PM -, Rob Malpass wrote: > Is anyone having problems with any other Linux mailing lists at the moment? > I'm subscribed to several (via another email account - not the one from > which I'm sending this) and I noticed I haven't had any messages from (for > example) Sydney, New Zealand, Manchester, Coventry or Northampton for > several days. Some groups are quieter than others but certainly this is > unusual for Sydney and particularly New Zealand. Of these I am only on the Northampton list but I do not read it often enough to have spotted this trend. > Having checked the websites which allow access to these lists' archives, it > seems there have been no messages since Friday. I've even tried to > register a new email address with the Sydney to see if the problem was at my > end - but seemingly not. Could just be quiet at Christmas time? A number of technical lists I am on have had a noticeably lower posting volume the last week or so. Perhaps they will pick up once everyone's finished being frantic and have settled in for their post-Christmas relaxation[1]? :) Cheers, Andy [1] One of those would be nice, I must ask Santa for one. signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Database design for an address book
Hi Chris, Thanks for taking a look. On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 09:54:54AM +, Chris Smith wrote: > On 18/12/2011 21:06, Andy Smith wrote: > > An address will at its simplest be a name and an entry name, so the > > user can distinguish different addresses from each other without > > having to read all the details, e.g. "Me (Work)". > > How is this going to be used and by whom? Is it just a PIM tool for the > user or will others be able to query it -- you mention 'emergency > contact' below, which implies query by others? It's for a company to contact its customers in ways that the customers want to be contacted. So they can have some contacts who deal with billing, others who deal with technical queries about the service, and so on. > What about scale: how many users do you expect? More than 100, less than 10,000. I would expect there to be an average of between 1 and 2 contacts per user. The vast majority of users will have a single contact that is used for every purpose. There will be an occasional user who requires separate contacts for billing, etc. > > The point is, it won't be possible to enumerate all possible address > > details that could ever be useful, so they can't be columns of a > > database table. > > > > The different purposes might be things like: > > > > - billing > > - emergency contact > > - technical contact > > > > Each purpose would have different address details that were > > required. For example, "billing" might require at least an email > > address and postal address while "emergency contact" might require > > at least a mobile phone number and email address. The applications > > will have to enforce that. > > Required by whom? The service provider is going to have certain minimum requirements for contact. For example, a billing contact will need to have an email address (for delivery of emailed invoices), a postal address (for delivery of posted invoices, and to track them down if they don't pay). So it is the service provider who will set the minimum requirements and the apps will have to enforce this. I can imagine that the user may add a mobile phone number or a jabber id to the billing contact and then *optionally* the system could warn them about billing stuff via those means also. For example, they might get a courtesy SMS or jabber notification if their service is about to be suspended for non-payment. There are actual feature requests by the users for this functionality, so I'm confident I am not getting excited and imagining it. :-) However, all that "send an SMS, try their Jabber" fluff is of less importance than the mere functionality of having multiple contacts with email and postal addresses. So that must come first and the other stuff later. I just want to leave the way open for it. > Please don't confuse what *you* consider required > information with what the *user* considers to be required. If you do, > you'll end up with subverted entries, e.g. a normal entry with a > nickname 'Emergency contact' and no phone number or, worse, an emergency > contact with a bogus phone number. The app will have to enforce the minimums like an emergency contact always having a phone number. Ultimately users can't be forced to keep contact details up to date or accurate, but at the moment the existing user database has merely a single email address and a single postal address. When the user really needs to be contacted by the service provider it would be nice to be able to try a few other supplied email addresses and phone numbers, especially if the user has indicated that they are emergency contacts. The next step after that is often suspending the service... > I am consistently irritated by online shops that insist on a phone > number 'in case something goes wrong with your order'. I don't want > them to phone me, ever. Not under any circumstances. They have my > email address (begrudgingly, but that's another rant) and that is > sufficient. This is already a strictly "no phone calls" operation, but unfortunately people often don't read their email or they use email providers who are happy to accept the mail for delivery and then send it to /dev/null. People can get upset when their service is suspended due to non-payment and then they later discover that 6 weeks of late payment reminders and final warnings were dropped on the floor by their email provider. Yes, this is not the service provider's fault. Yes, this is the user's fault, especially if they then continue using the same email provider. However, chasing non-payment is a loss-making activity and having to suspend someone's service can be taken very personally. If it could be fixe
[Hampshire] Database design for an address book
Hello,
I thinking about adding an address book to an already-existing set
of applications and am just wondering about the best database design
for it. I don't do this sort of thing often and I'd like to hear
others' opinions.
Requirements:
Assume there's an already-existing table of users.
Each user should be able to define multiple addresses. Let's call
their collection of addresses their address book.
An address will at its simplest be a name and an entry name, so the
user can distinguish different addresses from each other without
having to read all the details, e.g. "Me (Work)".
Depending on the purpose the individual address entry will be put
to, it may also require further details like:
- email address
- postal address
- company name
- landline number
- mobile phone number
- Jabber id
- Twitter username
- Blog URI
The point is, it won't be possible to enumerate all possible address
details that could ever be useful, so they can't be columns of a
database table.
The different purposes might be things like:
- billing
- emergency contact
- technical contact
Each purpose would have different address details that were
required. For example, "billing" might require at least an email
address and postal address while "emergency contact" might require
at least a mobile phone number and email address. The applications
will have to enforce that.
The list of valid purposes ("billing, "technical", ...) and valid
details ("email", "landline", "mobile", "twitter", ...) need not be
editable by the user. They can be limited to what the applications
support.
Each user should be able to have multiple address entries of the
same purpose, so for example it would be valid to have two entries
marked as "billing" (they'd both get copies of invoices).
I'm thinking something like this:
..
|addr_book |
++
|id Primary key |
|user_id Foreign key to the users table |
`'
..
|ab_entry|
++
|id Primary key |
|ab_id Foreign key to addr_book table |
|nameName of the person this entry relates to|
|nicknameNickname for the entry, e.g. "Me (Work)"|
`'
..
|abe_detail |
++
|id Primary key |
|abe_id Foreign key to the ab_entry table |
|typeType of detail, e.g. "landline", "mobile", "jabber" |
|dataThe actual contact data, e.g. "0123 456 7890", |
|"b...@example.com", ... |
`'
..
|addr_purpose|
++
|id Primary key |
|abe_id Foreign key to ab_entry table |
|purpose Purpose of this entry, e.g. "billing", "technical", |
|... |
`'
So, to get every address book entry for a given user:
SELECT ab_entry.id, ab_entry.name, ab_entry.nickname
FROM addr_book, ab_entry
WHERE addr_book.id=ab_entry.ab_id
AND addr_book.user_id = $some_user
To get the email address of every billing contact for a user:
SELECT ab_entry.name, abe_detail.data
FROM addr_book, ab_entry, abe_detail, addr_purpose
WHERE addr_book.id=ab_entry.ab_id
AND ab_entry.id=abe_detail.abe_id
AND ab_entry.id=addr_purpose.abe_id
AND addr_purpose.purpose="billing"
AND abe_detail.type="email"
AND addr_book.user_id=$some_user
What do you think?
In some ways this seems excessive - I mean, there's a four way join
there, just to get a list of email addresses.
In other ways it seems like not quite enough; I've skated over
abe_detail.type and addr_purpose.purpose being textual in nature.
They're going to have to be short strings used by the applications
and the longer human-readable version ("A landline phone number",
"Postal/ZIP code", "Technical contact", ...) is going to have to
come from somewhere.
There is a temptation for ext
Re: [Hampshire] Linux printer recommendations.
Hi Clive, On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 05:54:54PM +, Clive Woodfine wrote: > My HP Photosmart 3300 All-in-One series has given up with "Ink system > failure" warning error code oxc18a0401. I have searched for this but > none of the solutions have worked. The printer is quite old so it is > time for a new one. My requirement is for wireless, Photocopying, > reasonable Photo printing and running costs. When I look at the > manufacturers compatible with Linux each seems to make hundreds so > recommendations would be greatly welcomed. How many photos / colour jobs do you print? I ask because I am of the belief that a decent photo printer will be very expensive to run, so if you do it rarely you would be better off printing at a shop and get a cheap laser. I have a HP laserjet MFP 1120n. Doesn't have wifi. I'm sure there's an option that does. It was cheap and I'm very happy with it. Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [ADMIN] December Meeting and AGM
Hi, On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 04:50:28PM +, Adam John Trickett wrote: > Chris Denis and Damian Brasher volunteered them selves and Ian Brazier is > willing remain Treasurer. I am therefore asking them if they are willing > to remain standing and asking for additional volunteers to complete the > committee. Do any of the volunteers require seconding, or can that be dispensed with? Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Error with apt-get upgrade on Debian
Hi Robin, On Sun, Nov 06, 2011 at 02:14:43PM +, Robin Wilson wrote: > The following packages will be upgraded: > mplayer > 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. > 231 not fully installed or removed. > Need to get 0 B/6,280 kB of archives. > After this operation, 8,012 kB of additional disk space will be used. > Do you want to continue [Y/n]? > > It says that 231 packages are not fully installed or removed, which suggests > to me that the upgrade process failed half way through. The thing is - I > can't find out how to get it to restart again, and how to install/remove the > 231 packages that need dealing with? All of my google searches are turning up > forum posts that are either very old, or don't help at all. It normally carries on to complete the outstanding actions after it does the upgrade of mplayer. Does it not do that for you? Can you post the full output after you say "Y" to the above? apt-get dist-upgrade may be necessary, but show us what happens with the above first.. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Data Destruction
Hello, On Thu, Oct 06, 2011 at 09:41:04PM +0100, Ian Grody wrote: > Most software recovery will have problems recovering data after doing a > simple zeroing of a drive. Truecrypt does this prior to filling with random > data and further xeroing after would give most hardware recoveries problems. Indeed, it's been demonstrated that just writing over the whole drive once will give any professional data recovery company severe problems: http://hostjury.com/blog/view/195/the-great-zero-challenge-remains-unaccepted Anything beyond that is almost getting into tin foil head gear territory[1]. So DBAN or this Truecrypt plan seem more than sufficient. I dispose of around 4-6 hard drives per year at the moment and it's a bit of a hassle doing this. Still it means that the drives can be reused by good causes, otherwise I'd probably just take a hammer to them to be honest. Cheers, Andy [1] If you're concerned about a three letter agency diverting a significant portion of their resources into reconstructing your data, I don't think we are qualified to advise you. :-) -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] lurker archive broken
Hello, On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 04:38:26PM +, Andy Smith wrote: > Still seems broken. I've no idea what's wrong but I've some > experience with lurker so if someone wants me to have a look, get in > touch.. I think I've fixed it. This email will be archived if I have. Incidentally in the process of trying to fix it, I thought I'd broken it, and re-imported the mbox on lug.org.uk. That means that if you've ever had cause to ask The People in Charge to remove a mail from the web archive, you may want to check I didn't just re-import it. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "It is I, Simon Quinlank. The chief conductor on the bus that is called hobby." -- Simon Quinlank signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] lurker archive broken
On Thu, Sep 08, 2011 at 01:59:49PM +0100, Tony Whitmore wrote: > On 08.09.2011 13:55, Andy Smith wrote: >> Not sure if whoever looks after it is aware, but >> http://www.hantslug.org.uk/lurker/list/hampshire.en.html seems a >> little broken (many links give an error) and isn't up to date.. > > Yeah, I just spotted that too, I suspect for the same reason. Still seems broken. I've no idea what's wrong but I've some experience with lurker so if someone wants me to have a look, get in touch.. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Www.kernel.org down
On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 12:17:19PM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: > Does anyone know how long this will be down for? Until they have fully audited it after the security compromise I imagine. You wouldn't want them to rush! Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
[Hampshire] lurker archive broken
Hi, Not sure if whoever looks after it is aware, but http://www.hantslug.org.uk/lurker/list/hampshire.en.html seems a little broken (many links give an error) and isn't up to date.. Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] DDoS survival strategies
On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 04:11:39PM +0100, Damian L Brasher wrote: > As a sys admin, depending on the scope of your responsibilities, it is > sometimes necessary to diagnose DDoS - distributed denial of service - > attacks and attempt resolve them. The episode of the podcast linked from http://twitpic.com/6h0l3s may be relevant to your interest. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting Q. How many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb? A. Only one - who gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem to an earlier joke. signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] DDoS survival strategies
Hi Benjie, On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 05:24:51PM +0100, Benjie Gillam wrote: > One thing to mention with IPv6 is that the namespace is /FAR/ larger than > IPv4 (10^29 times as big, roughly), so internet wide scans will no longer be > feasible based solely on incrementing IP addresses (they could filter it down > by only the assigned IP addresses though, but that's still a pretty large > namespace). [At 1 American trillion (10^12) addresses per second it would > take ~10^19 years to scan the entire namespace, vs just 72 minutes for IPv4.] You still have to publish addresses of hosts in the DNS and places like that. I don't believe scanning will die out with IPv6, it will just need to be more focused. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "It is I, Simon Quinlank. The chief conductor on the bus that is called hobby." -- Simon Quinlank signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] DDoS survival strategies
Hello, On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 04:11:39PM +0100, Damian L Brasher wrote: > What general growing problems do systems engineers face in the future? I think that there are a lot more options for scaling these days, but the challenges are also different. As ever we must do more with less, which means actively working with other disciplines instead of treating it as an "us and them" situation. So that would be the "devops" movement - developers and operators need to understand each other and work together better if decent scaling is to be achieved, as it has to be done at both the application and system layer. "Cloud" is not something to be afraid of, but not something to be complacent about either. There is going to be a balance between owning your own hardware platform versus renting bits of someone else's platform as a service. > Will IPv6reduce DDoS attack success or enhance the attacker's tool kits? There are a couple of new abuse angles with IPv6 but I expect that the old favourite of massive amounts of small UDP packets from a botnet will remain the big killer for many years to come, whether over IPv4 or v6. > Can we reassure customers that they will not lose business to DDoS > without investing large amounts capital in security technologies? No. If someone wants to DDoS you out of existence, you better have a lot of money to mitigate it. It doesn't have to be capital expenditure since there are plenty of "DDoS mitigation as a service" providers out there, but I don't think you intended to make the distinction between capex and revex. It's really expensive either way. > What do you think? - is DDoS a global or local problem; or both? It is local to this Internet (I don't understand the question). Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Loss of computer or Smartphone
Hi Mike, On Sun, Sep 04, 2011 at 09:43:53AM +0100, Mike Austin wrote: > Those of you concerned about loss of a computer or Smartphone should visit > > http://preyproject.com/download I've been thinking about this, but the difficulty is that I kind of want to continue using full disk encryption. Expecting a thief to know how to log in to Linux is already a bit unlikely, before you even add the encryption. I'm thinking it's more likely that they would know how to wipe the SSD and install Windows, or just sell it as-is down the pub. What do people do to ensure that Prey can be run even while using full disk encryption? I was thinking it would be nice if dm-crypt would have a password timeout so that e.g. after 30 seconds it boots into something else. Even then, the trouble is I'd have to install a minimal Linux environment on the alternate boot just to be confident that it gets online, webcam works, etc. This sounds like a lot of work. I don't really want to start only encrypting certain directories (e.g. /home); I don't trust *myself* to never put sensitive info outside these directories, so if I was in charge of desktop support at a larger company I would certainly never trust employees to do the right thing in this regard. Maybe it comes down to how paranoid you are. It's just that dm-crypt works really nicely these days so it's hard to justify not using it on mobile devices. It would be interesting if the BIOS could do all the stuff that Prey does! Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] ls -l
On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 12:08:21AM +0530, pavithran wrote: > One cool thing which screen allows is to log on irc forever ! Also one of the worst things it allows us to log on irc forever ! Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] error competition
Hi Daniel, On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 01:01:17PM +0100, Daniel Llewellyn wrote: > how about this one that I have actually performed myself: > > rm -rf .* > > the scenario was I wanted to delete all folders in a subtree including > folders beginning with a dot (.) to hide them from a normal ls > listing. instead it deleted everything in the subtree .. AND > everything in the supertree (../ then ../../ then ../../../ all the > way up to / and then following back down again into every subdirectory > of /) Are you sure? Was this not Linux? "rm" on Linux doesn't recurse through ..: $ cd /tmp/ $ mkdir -vp foo/bar/baz mkdir: created directory `foo' mkdir: created directory `foo/bar' mkdir: created directory `foo/bar/baz' $ cd foo/bar/baz $ rm -rv .* rm: cannot remove directory `.' rm: cannot remove directory `..' Also on the topic of disasters, if anyone has not seen this gem it's worth a read: http://lug.wsu.edu/node/414 of course these days you would expect a quicker disaster recovery without needing to sacrifice a goat with a black candle like this.. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting freecycle is for dating single mothers signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Problems with the gllug.
Hello, On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 11:29:06AM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: > Is there anyone on the Hants or Surrey list that is also a gllug > member that has observed similar problems? Yup, no mail since 26th July. I moaned about it on Google+ in 1st August but didn't really get any response. AFAIK Jason Clifford hosts it. I haven't attempted to contact him. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Backup solution - SDLT worth it?
Hello, On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 07:58:14PM +0100, Tim Brocklehurst wrote: > The real question, is whether to treat the backup as a mirror, or whether > to keep older versions of files for a period of time. There is no question for me: If you don't have historical copies, you don't have a backup. The most common data loss issues are human error and if your sync time passes before that is noticed then you don't have any backups of the data any more. No argument that most problems are quickly fixed by having an additional copy of data immediately to hand, because most problems are detected quickly. But data loss events are rare catastrophic occurrences anyway, so the argument that it will almost always be good enough is not, er, good enough. :) If you have rsync ability at both ends then this is really easy to do anyway, so it's not worth not doing it IMHO. rsnapshot, rdiff-backup, backuppc, etc. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Backup solution - SDLT worth it?
Hello, On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 01:24:10PM +0100, Mike Austin wrote: > If you have a motherboard with hardware RAID support in the BIOS, it is > easier to setup than software RAID. Friends don't let friends use fake RAID. :) Twiddling an option in a BIOS might look easier than doing Linux md, but it's a gateway to a world of pain. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Caching Debian and CentOS packages
Hi Stephen, On Mon, Jul 04, 2011 at 05:21:06AM +0100, Stephen Nelson-Smith wrote: > For Debian/Ubuntu we use apt-cacher-ng, and for CentOS we maintain > a local mirror. Looking at it again for a few new clients, I'm > leaning towards simply having a Squid/mod_cache setup that caters > for both Debian/Ubuntu and CentOS/Redhat, rather than the (rather > flakey) apt-cacher(-ng) that needs to be restarted once a month, > and the rather primitive mirroring of the entire repo. > > Has anyone got any experiences or ideas to contribute? I currently use apt-cacher. Apart from having to have one for Debian and another for Ubuntu I haven't really had any issues with it. I'm also just mirroring CentOS base for that side of things. So no, sorry, I haven't got any new ideas to contribute I'm afraid but I am interested in how you get on with squid. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] confused ssh newbie
Hi Mike, On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 09:09:25PM -0500, Mike Burrows wrote: > However, when i change the port to (changing the router of course) > and repeat using > > ssh -p testerm...@some.dyndns.org > > I get an error that the connection was reset by peer and I cannot ssh in. > > What am I not doing please? If you haven't solved it yet, try running the ssh client with -v. If that doesn't help, try running the sshd in the foreground with -d. Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Sudo question
Hi Owain, On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 07:36:12AM +0100, Owain Clarke wrote: > >> %users ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/pm-suspend >> > Thanks, Keith, but I've done this, and it still prompts for password. I > am a member of the users group. Any other ideas? Have you logged in again since you made yourself a member of the "users" group? I ask this because I've quite often created a group, put myself in it, added a group permission to sudoers, and then wondered why it doesn't work. I'd forgotten to log in again to put my current session in that group. If that doesn't work, can you show us the output of "sudo -l" please? This will list out what sudo believes your user can do. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Dual Boot using Raid 1
Hi Mike, On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 10:05:30AM +0100, Mike Austin wrote: [...] > Following an upgrade of my desktop motherboard etc, I wish to create a dual > boot system using 2 identical 1TB drives in Raid 1 (mirrored) configuration. > I believe that I cannot have XP and Ubuntu on the same master drive, but > will need to have XP on a 3rd drive. I can have 6 SATA devices on my > motherboard, so 5 HDs. > > Another problem is that I want the media files used by the XP applications > to be on the Raid drives, as a backup, on a NTFS partition. Not trying to be glib, but RAID is not a backup. This will end in tears sooner or later. Anyway, I don't dual boot and I don't use NTFS so I'm not 100% sure of my facts, but I see no reason why you can't put XP on the same disks that you put Ubuntu on. Dim memories of having to install XP first so that it didn't nuke the Linux bootloader. XP isn't going to be able to do anything with the Linux software RAID. With Linux you can also use each member of a software RAID-1 as a filesystem in its own right, if you are careful, but of course as soon as you write to it the two halves would be out of sync. I also don't know how well this will work under NTFS. Would it be worth considering a solution with a separate file server? This could be entirely Linux, easy to RAID, easy to back it up to somewhere else, can serve everything out with samba for use by Windows machines. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Networking for Dummies
Hi Rob, On Sun, May 08, 2011 at 10:08:41AM +0100, Rob Malpass wrote: > He's running one W7 machine and will be connected via cable to a hub. > > Sounds like ipcop or something similar is the way to go - though I must > admit I'm sorely tempted to get a cheap ISP and put it down our second phone > line just for him - definitely the most expedient route! Will it be though? If he destroys his computers then who has to repair them? Also once there's malware inside your network, this can cause problems. I agree with Vic's suggestions; if you have a firewall box for your own network then it should be easy to run him though this on an additional interface as well. If you don't like having two different subnets then you can make the Linux box act more like a switch (bridge the interfaces) yet still be able to firewall it. Not sure what the support for that is like in IPCop. As you say, host firewalls on everything (even just his machines) is a non-starter: too much effort to administer and risks some malware disabling it, Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "I'd be happy to buy all variations of sex to ensure I got what I wanted." -- Gary Coates (talking about cabling) signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Networking for Dummies
Hi Rob, On Sat, May 07, 2011 at 09:49:29AM +0100, Rob Malpass wrote: > What I want is to keep him isolated so he can't even see any network > devices, printers - just let him share the connection. More info needed. How will his computer(s) connect to your LAN? Direct connection to a switch? WiFi? Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] can anyone recommend a domain registrar ?
Hi Isaac, On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 01:45:22AM +0100, Isaac Close wrote: > Anyway, i'm looking for a honest and reliable registrar so that I can move a > handful of domains from my current registrar (that just ripped me off). Who were they and what did they do? > I have a few .co.uk's and these are important to my business and one .com > which i've not yet started to use but plan to soon. > > Any recommendations ? If they accept paypal that would be an advantage. Some thoughts on this from BitFolk's customers: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Domain_name_registrars Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Timestamps on photos
Hi Leo, On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 09:21:29PM +0100, Leo wrote: > Having got back from holiday I've noticed that the time on my cameras was > not set to the correct timezone, or set the same on each camera. Does > anyone know of a way of either setting a timezone in a jpeg file (i.e. in > the exif), or bulk changing the time in the pictures by a given number of > hours? Assuming you mean the time stored in the EXIF tags, I would be very surprised if your scripting language of choice doesn't have a module for reading and writing them which would allow you to read, modify and set the tag as you want. Failing that, a quick google produced this likely candidate: http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ which seems to be in Ubuntu as libimage-exiftool-perl. Haven't tried it myself. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Domestic ADSL ISPs
Hi John, On Tue, Apr 05, 2011 at 10:28:11PM +0100, john lewis wrote: > Apart from one small niggle, the fact I have to pay extra for my wife > to have a personal email address which some ISPs allow for free I > believe, I am another very happy zen customer. I would recommend not hosting your email with your broadband provider. If you do then you generally can't change provider without changing email address. You do have options if the annoyance gets bad enough! Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [IMPORTANT] Networking for this weekend's Bring a Box meeting
On Fri, Apr 01, 2011 at 12:10:10PM +0100, bryan hunt wrote: > On Fri, 2011-04-01 at 10:52 +0000, Andy Smith wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 01, 2011 at 10:16:33AM +0100, bryan hunt wrote: > > At this point I personally would just prefer if you buggered off of > > your own accord. > > OK, there's been a lot of vitriol, let's revisit my original comment. Let's not. I'm not going to fall for your trolling and I don't want to have to see mark large parts of threads read when other people fall for it either. If you have nothing useful to contribute, please stop posting. Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [IMPORTANT] Networking for this weekend's Bring a Box meeting
On Fri, Apr 01, 2011 at 10:16:33AM +0100, bryan hunt wrote: > If you (or someone you can influence) runs the list, and you (or they) > don't like my opinions, feel free to unsubscribe me. At this point I personally would just prefer if you buggered off of your own accord. Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] simple description of open source etc.
Hi bryan, On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 08:08:48PM +, bryan hunt wrote: > Linux is a tinkerers OS. > > That's fine. > > I like it, you like it and they probably like it. > > Do normal people like it? > > Probably only if they suffer from severe social maladjustment. My girlfriend is a non-technical person and doesn't really know or care that the computer she uses for email, facebook, iplayer, general web browsing and the odd bit of document editing is running Ubuntu/Firefox/OOo instead of Windows 7/IE/Office. She just wants her email, facebook, iplayer, general web browsing and the odd bit of document editing to work. And they do. As such, the concept of (dis)liking it for being Linux or Windows doesn't come into it. I would consider that more representative of a "normal" person's computing demands. Of course if she wasn't using a computer owned by me then it no doubt would have come installed with Windows just like the computer at her father's place. That probably wouldn't have mattered to her though, as a casual computer user. It's entirely possible that if she had any interest in more in-depth computer usage that she might find Windows or OS X more pleasing to use. I can only assume that someone who holds such an extreme view of Linux and expresses it on a Linux mailing list has got to be trolling, and apparently succeeding; this is one of the larger threads in recent times! Well done with your "Linux is only for tinkerers and the socially retarded" bait. It was a master-stroke to wait for someone else to post about how open source is going to make them rich; c-c-c-combo! Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Basic Linux Training
Hello, On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 07:56:38AM +, Sean Gibbins wrote: > The LPIC aspect of it is not straightforward, i.e. completion of the > course doesn't appear to automatically provide you with certification, > it seems it is something you need to optionally request through CompTIA* > who are working with the OU to provide the training. My experience in 2008 was that to have an LPI qualification (or take any of their courses) you need to sign up for an LPI account, and by signing up for an LPI account you consent to their marketing policy. This enables them to share your personal information with anyone they like. As I found, when an organisation called LPI UK marketed their training material, repeatedly over a period of months, to an email address I had given to LPI (which is *not* LPI UK!) at a FOSDEM years previous, for the purposes of taking one of their exams. I wouldn't really have minded, but at the time there was no way to opt out without just not using LPI. I was advised that I'd have to opt-out individually from each of the LPI affiliates' marketing as and when. The opt-out procedure for LPI UK's offering was to exchange emails with an exceptionally rude individual called Bill Quinn who took several months to actually unsubscribe me and managed to both not apologise and to publicly call me a liar in the process. I hope they got their act together since then! Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] obfuscated code
Hello, On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 05:16:42PM +, john lewis wrote: > href="mailto:BarbaraMallyon@lewmal.co.uk">Barbara Mallyon > > I don't know what software was used to set it up, probably some windows > based gui website design tool. > > Does anyone have a clue as to how I can decode the page so I can edit? > it. The original webmaster is unavailable for the moment so cannot ask > what software he used. John asked me off-list how to add a new entry. It wasn't immediately obvious to me that he'd asked this originally, but now I read again I suppose "so I can edit" implies needing to go the other way too. I'd do something like piping what I wanted to encode through: perl -MHTML::Entities -ne 'print HTML::Entities::encode_entities_numeric($_, "\x0-\xfff"), "\n"' e.g.: $ echo -n 'mailto:a...@bitfolk.com' | perl -MHTML::Entities -ne 'print HTML::Entities::encode_entities_numeric($_, "\x0-\xfff"), "\n"' mailto:andy@bitfolk.com $ echo -n 'Andy Smith' | perl -MHTML::Entities -ne 'print HTML::Entities::encode_entities_numeric($_, "\x0-\xfff"), "\n"' Andy Smith If you're using vi/vim as an editor you can replace text with the output of a command, so if you had a line like so: mailto:a...@bitfolk.com Then going to the start of the line and typing: !$perl -MHTML::Entities -ne 'print HTML::Entities::encode_entities_numeric($_, "\x0-\xfff")' would replace the line with mailto:andy@bitfolk.com (note you get an unwanted " " on the end because it converted the newline as well) Perhaps that would be useful in not disturbing your editing flow. If you don't do this sort of thing a lot then you could just search the web for any of what must be thousands of online "convert to numeric html entities" web forms, e.g.: http://www.texaswebdevelopers.com/examples/xmlentities/xml_entities.asp Cheers, Andy -- i stopped taking my medication long ago. the ironey is it was for social anxioty disorder and now i daren't go back to the doctor to get another perscription signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] obfuscated code
Hello, On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 12:49:14PM +, bryan hunt wrote: > > Remind me never to shop in your hardware store if this is considered > > easier than a one liner in Perl (or even PHP oh god it burns)! :) > > Perhaps I misunderstand - and please forgive me if I do. But, do you > recommend he write a small program to do the translation as opposed to > just pasting it into the search-bar? I recommend he does this: perl -MHTML::Entities -ne 'print decode_entities($_)' < page.html > decoded_page.html (or "cat page.html | perl -MHTML::Entities -ne 'print decode_entities($_)' > decoded_page.html" if you find the useless use of cat a bit clearer) rather than manually copy and paste a handful of lines into a browser search bar. > From the viewpoint of commercial success, I suspect the pragmatic wins > more often than not. Well if you ever want to found a business around de-obfuscating HTML-encoded text then I hope you will consider your competitors undercutting you with the above one-liner before you have to fire all your third world workers who are busy pasting the text into browser search bars. :) Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "The electric guitar - like making love - is much improved by a little feedback, completely ruined by too much." -- The League Against Tedium signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] obfuscated code
Hello, On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 07:34:15PM +, Michael Pavling wrote: > All very nice sledgehammers but for this nut, I'd just copy the > character codes, and paste them into a browser address bar or Google > search box... Remind me never to shop in your hardware store if this is considered easier than a one liner in Perl (or even PHP oh god it burns)! :) Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] obfuscated code
On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 05:36:28PM +, Daniel Llewellyn wrote:
> if you want a quick decode you can use php:
>
> cat file_containing_html | php -r "print
> html_entity_decode(file_get_contents('php://stdin'));"
Burn him!!!
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Re: [Hampshire] obfuscated code
Hi John, On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 05:16:42PM +, john lewis wrote: > HAYWARD > href="mailto:joysgenea@shaw.ca.">Joy French href="mailto:BarbaraMallyon@lewmal.co.uk">Barbara Mallyon > > > I don't know what software was used to set it up, probably some windows > based gui website design tool. > > Does anyone have a clue as to how I can decode the page so I can edit? Pipe your page through: perl -MHTML::Entities -ne 'print decode_entities($_)' or for those of us sensible enough to be using mutt, type: | perl -MHTML::Entities -ne 'print decode_entities($_)' while viewing John's email. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting You dont have to be illiterate to use the Internet, but it help's. -- Mike Bristow signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Suggestion for low-power file server to run at home
Hello, On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 08:00:05AM +, Michael Pavling wrote: > For about the same price as the Guruplug, you can get an HP > Microserver. Apples and oranges though, so just really an idea as a > comparison: > > £200 with £100 cash-back > http://www.serversplus.com/servers/tower_servers/hp_tower_servers/633724-421 I've bought one of these too (but it's still in its box). It sounds much more suitable for the task at hand; while you *can* attach USB storage to little things like GuruPlugs, I can't really think of that as a file server. I prefer my data to be on RAID filesystems on something much closer to a real server, and the microserver fits the bill nicely. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] aliasing domains in Debian Apache2
Hi John, On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:14:31PM +, john lewis wrote: > I have successfully set up 3 virtual sites on my server startx.co.uk > > one of these is http://startx.co.uk/KingsclereHistory > > the content of this website was originally hosted elsewhere with the URL > > http://kingsclere.org.uk/ > > but the site owner wanted to give up hosting it. I have now acquired > that domain name and the relevant files which I uploaded to my VPS and > set up so it can be accessed as startx.co.uk/KingsclereHistory. > > I would like it to be possible for anyone using the original > kingsclere.org.uk URL to be automatically routed to the new URL. I would probably set up a new virtual host for kingsclere.org.uk and then redirect all requests for anything under that to http://startx.co.uk/KingsclereHistory as a permanent redirect. e.g.: RedirectMatch permanent .* http://startx.co.uk/KingsclereHistory Unless of course there is some URL structure that you wish to retain in which case you might want to redirect http://kingsclere.org.uk/foo to http://startx.co.uk/KingsclereHistory/foo or whatever. e.g. RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*) http://startx.co.uk/KingsclereHistory/$1 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_alias.html#redirectmatch Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting i've had the same watch for 15 years now. MAN AND BOY tbh Thomas the Tank Engine never dates signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [newslett...@apress.com: Apress March 2011 Newsletter]
Hi Adam, On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 02:22:31PM +, Dr A. J. Trickett wrote: > It is annoyinging when the newsletter has little or no content > that is of interest to most people on the list, but I pass it on > in the vain hope that there is something interesting in it. It wasn't all Windows-centric. I can strongly recommend the Arduino book. Michael McRoberts has helped run the Arduino courses at London Hackspace. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] ssh permission denied?
Hello,
On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 04:12:50PM +, Imran Chaudhry wrote:
> exim4 (4.69-9+lenny1) stable-security; urgency=high
>
> * Non-maintainer upload by the Security Team.
> * Fix SMTP file descriptors being leaked to processes invoked with ${run...}
> * Fix memory corruption issue in string_format(). CVE-2010-4344
> * Fix potential memory pool corruption issue in internal_lsearch_find().
>
> http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2010-4344
>
> The unattended-upgrades package is useful here so things like this are
> applied automatically (see "aptitude show unattended-upgrades").
Unattended upgrades on servers you care about? Doesn't seem wise to
me. But better than no upgrades, I grant you.
apti-cron or similar for notifying you of available updates.
Cheers,
Andy
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Re: [Hampshire] ssh permission denied?
Hello, On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 09:34:36AM +, Hugo Mills wrote: >It needn't be a single root-gaining attack: it could be a > combination of a remote non-root attack (e.g. on apache) and a local > root escalation. If this is a Debian install then the recent Exim exploit is a good candidate. I've had quite a few people caught by that and expect to find more who still haven't realised they've been compromised yet. :( Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "[Open Source is] like trying to sell human rights to China because it might lead to more effective business models." -- David Kastrup signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
[Hampshire] London Hackspace second "Arduino for Beginners" workshop
Hello, Last time I mentioned London Hackspace's Arduino for Beginners workshop a fair few people contacted me expressing dismay that they missed it. The Hackspace is now planning a second weekend workshop and it's still £100 for 2 days (£80 for members), which is fantastic value for money. See http://bit.ly/arduinoworkshop if you're interested. Places will go quickly. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Anyone stream the KT tunstall concert on Radio2 recently?
On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 12:20:37PM +, Sean Gibbins wrote: > This is (apparently... I haven't checked) an mp3 rip of the audio: > > http://www.sendspace.com/file/4cq4j4 Is the above what you were looking for? Is this it: "Jo Whiley presents a headline gig from KT Tunstall live at Abbey Road Studios in London plus live music from Louise Marshall in the Support Slot." 8pm, 16th Dec? If so then yes I have it if you still need it. Cheers, Andy signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Anyone know much about IPv6 tunnels?
Hi Vic, On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 12:20:24PM -, Vic wrote: > The bit I was missing was my local network config - the proto-41 packets > were getting to the router, but no further. > > The fix was just to tell aiccu where to put them - by using the > local_ipv4_override parameter in the config file. I put my endpoint > machine IPv4 address in there, and I suddenly have full IPv6 access. Aha! > Now all I need to do is work out what I want to do with the 10^19 > addresses I've just acquired :-) Run radvd and hand out IPv6 addresses to your LAN is a good start. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] IPV6 - was Anyone know much about IPv6 tunnels?
Hello, On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 07:33:24PM +, Chris Dennis wrote: > On the subject of IPV6... > > The end of IPV4 has been proclaimed for years, but it hasn't happened. Like a lot of scarcity issues there isn't a single day where the day before there was some, and today there's not, that being the only difference. There has been a scarcity of IPv4 for years and this has affected the development of some protocols and encouraged things like NAT. If you go to RIPE today and try to obtain IPv4 addresses then it will be a lot harder than it was 5 years ago, or even last year. You should still get the IPv4 allocation you require for your needs *today*, but you'll have to be a lot more thorough with your justification. 5 years ago you could have shown you needed 256 IPs that day and claim to expect 10-fold growth in 2 years and would have immediately got what you needed for that day plus 2 years. These are coping mechanisms for a scarcity of IPv4 resource and what you will see as time goes on is not a simple, "sorry, there's none left" but ever more painful coping mechanisms. There is a terrible thing called carrier grade NAT (CGN): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Grade_NAT You can expect that an increasing number of consumer / end user Internet connections will be behind these and all users will appear to the Internet as being behind one or a small number of IPv4 addresses. The end user would need to pay more to get a globally routable IPv4 address. > Will we run out of IPV4 addresses? Yes, the global pool will be all used up by early 2011. We're using up something like 1.5 /8s per month and there's only 2 left.[1] A few companies have voluntarily returned their large early allocations that they're no longer using, but these can never be larger than /8 each and given the above consumption rate it will make little difference. It's essentially a good will / marketing gesture by these companies. This is why nobody has bothered to try to force legacy IPv4 holders to return their unused space. > Should I start learning about IPV6? It depends. End users needn't bother since the Internet is supposed to "just work", so if you're the kind of person who's never needed to know what a netmask is for example, you probably don't need to look into IPv6. In theory one day you plug in your ADSL or cable modem and it autoconfigures IPv6. If you do networking or host network services then really yes you should have been looking at this since a couple of years ago. While in the near future there isn't going to be a time where any popular service is unavailable over IPv4, the cost (money+effort) to make services available over IPv4 is going to go up and the same services will appear over IPv6 because it's easier. Cheers, Andy [1] A /8 is CIDR notation[2] for 8 bits of network, 24 bits of hosts. So a /8 is 2^24 (16,777,216) addresses, of which the 32-bit IPv4 space can contain 2^8 (256). [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIDR#Subnet_masks -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Anyone know much about IPv6 tunnels?
Hi Vic, On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 08:10:02PM -, Vic wrote: > > You can run "aiccu test" and it might show you where the problem is. > > Not when you know as little about IPv6 as I do, you can't :-) Just run it. It's pretty verbose. Running it is part of the troubleshooting steps when reporting a problem to sixxs anyway. > > Can you ping it? > > I can't ping the PoP - but the unreachable message when I ping Google > seems to come from the PoP. At this point, I have to recognise the limit > of my knowledge in this area... ping6 should definitely work. Have you firewalled it? Don't forget that the tunnel comes through IPv4 so you'll need to allow it through your IPv4 firewall. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting > The optimum programming team size is 1. Has Jurassic Park taught us nothing? -- pfilandr signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
