Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu Server and Wordpress

[Benjie Gillam]

Personally, I'd install it straight from Wordpress. I see no advantage to
installing it from the Ubuntu repository, and when you later update your
Ubuntu to the next LTS I would guess that it's likely to corrupt your
Wordpress install with a different version to what you're running, or leave
around security vulnerabilities that Wordpress' own updater would have
deleted.

Keep in mind that you need to update Wordpress very often as there's new
security holes found in it very frequently :(

Installing Wordpress is pretty easy - just follow these instructions:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Install

If
you need any help with Wordpress just shoot me an email, I've done a lot of
professional Wordpress and Wordpress MU installs

Cheers,

Benjie.

On 1 December 2010 17:46, Tim  wrote:

>
> I have a web server running Ubuntu LTS 10.04, I want to install wordpress
> on the
> server and noticed that there is a version ooof wordpress in the ubuntu
> software centre. This version is a couple of version behind the current
> (and
> ubuntu don't offer updates for wordpress)
>
> The question is has anybody installed wordpress from ubuntu and then
> upgraded it
> with the wordpress updates, any problems??
>
> Tim
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu Server and Wordpress

[Benjie Gillam]

I'd also move your wp-config.php file up a directory (../) i.e. out of the
webroot and create a shadow in it's place (). This means if you
accidentally misconfigure your webserver to serve up PHP files as text/plain
then no-one can see your database username/password. And ensure it's not
world readable if you're on a shared host.

Benjie.

On 1 December 2010 18:33, Chris Dennis  wrote:

> On 01/12/10 17:54, Benjie Gillam wrote:
>
>> Personally, I'd install it straight from Wordpress. I see no advantage
>> to installing it from the Ubuntu repository, and when you later update
>> your Ubuntu to the next LTS I would guess that it's likely to corrupt
>> your Wordpress install with a different version to what you're running,
>> or leave around security vulnerabilities that Wordpress' own updater
>> would have deleted.
>>
>> Keep in mind that you need to update Wordpress very often as there's new
>> security holes found in it very frequently :(
>>
>> Installing�Wordpress�is pretty easy - just follow these
>> instructions:�
>> http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Install
>>
>
> I'd agree with that.  Installing WordPress the Debian/Ubuntu way results in
> configuration files scattered around in the 'standard' places such as /etc
> and /usr/share.  That makes it difficult to then move the site to another
> computer or upload it to a hosting service.
>
> Do it the non-repo way.
>
> cheers
>
> Chris
> --
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> Fordingbridge, Hampshire, UK
>
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Re: [Hampshire] [ADMIN] Saturday Meeting

[Benjie Gillam]

I was intending on coming for the first time. :)

Benjie.

On 3 December 2010 15:08, Clive Woodfine  wrote:

> On 3 December 2010 14:11, Ashwin  wrote:
>
>>
>> I was planning to go to uni tomorrow morning anyway so unless they have
>> locked us out, I will be able to host the meeting. I will check downstairs
>> at the main entrance around 10:30 or so but anyone who arrives early can
>> reach me on 023 8059 2422 or 07950638260.
>>
>> If we are indeed locked out of the building I will try to get an email to
>> the list. and save everybody the journey.
>>
>> Ashwin
>>
>
> Before Ashwin goes this would it be a good idea to ask who is going first?
> I unfortunately shall not be coming due to a minor op. on my leg.
>
> Clive Woodfine
>
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Re: [Hampshire] EXIM

[Benjie Gillam]

Thx for the links, it seems Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is not vulnerable :)

On 13 December 2010 08:14, Anton Piatek  wrote:

> On 12 December 2010 22:04, Adam John Trickett 
> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > If you have an exposed server running Exim it's worth checking for
> updates
> > after a recent security flaw is being exploited in the wild.
> >
> > See Steve's blog for the links and comments.
> >
> > http://blog.steve.org.uk/the_remote_root_hole_in_exim4_is_painful.html
>
> Debian security advisory: http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2131
> Ubuntu security advisory: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-1032-1
>
> It looks like a pretty serious exploit, so if you run Exim, do upgrade
> ASAP.
>
> Anton
> --
> Anton Piatek
> email: an...@piatek.co.uk
> blog/photos:http://www.strangeparty.com
> pgp: [74B1FA37](http://www.strangeparty.com/anton.asc)
> fingerprint: 7401 96D3 E037 2F8F 5965  A358 4046 71FD 74B1 FA37
>
> No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a
> significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
>
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Re: [Hampshire] VirutaHosts with Differnet Outbound IPs

[Benjie Gillam]

A potential solution would be to run two different apaches, each bound to an
individual IP address explicitly (with the Listen configuration option)?

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/bind.html

Benjie.

On 16 December 2010 13:34, Keir Whitlock  wrote:

> Hi Guys,
>
> I have a question that I have that is troubling me, and wondered if anyone
> would be able to offer any suggestions etc. The problem maybe an easy fix or
> it might be impossible I dont know.
>
> Basically I have a server with an IP mounted on eth0 and another IP in the
> same subnet on eth0:0.
>
> I also have two IP based apache virtualhosts, one for each IP.
>
> Within each vhost, there is a proxypass to the same offsite location.
>
> What I need to happen is, if you hit vhost1 the offsite location sees it
> come from the IP on eth0; and if you hit vhost2 the offsite location sees it
> come from IP on eth0:0.
>
> At present all the traffic appears to come form the primary IP which made
> sense. And the requirement before was to go to two different offsite IPs, so
> I was going to use iptables with a SNAT rule, which worked. But now the
> requirement has changed to the same offsite IP, I'm thinking this may not be
> possible.
>
> Any advice is welcome, and thank you in advance.
>
> Regards
> Keir Whitlock
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Interesting DNS problem

[Benjie Gillam]

You could use Amazon AWS' Route 53 DNS hosting and use the APIs to update
the domain name directly, that way you can update the root record to be an A
record pointing to the dynamic IP and instead of the dyndns script have a
route53 script which updates Amazon's nameservers.

http://aws.amazon.com/route53/

It's not free though: $1/mo plus $0.50 for
every million requests. So probably less than £10/year for a very low
traffic server.

But to be perfectly honest, I'd take your solution, Adrian, and have a
friendly host redirect for example.com:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* http://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]


Cheers,

Benjie.
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Re: [Hampshire] Cable coverage

[Benjie Gillam]

The UK post code database is out there on the net, you just have to look :)
I'd guess a name for the 2009 post code database might be along the lines of
uk-post-code-2009? And perhaps, due to size, it might be bz2 compressed...?

Benjie.

On 9 January 2011 00:36, Vic  wrote:

>
> > I think the problem you will have will be associating geographical
> > locations with post codes. The post office charges a nice fee for this
> > information, and therefore it is not readily available.
>
>
> The Post Office are not the only people to have that database.
>
> I've found querying Google to be very successful in the past. It doesn't
> cost anything, and seems to be very accurate. You can get lat/long for any
> given postcode, and I've done it from both perl and PHP. It does require a
> sign-up, which is tied to a particular domain.
>
> Vic.
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Cable coverage

[Benjie Gillam]

What I would do, I think, is have a map (e.g. google map), click on a
location and say "is their cable here?". It would then find the nearest
postcode to that lat/lng and query VirginMedia.com to see if cable is in
that area. I did this manually when I was house hunting recently, looked up
in the region of 100 post codes (manually) and didn't have any issues; but I
wouldn't be happy just querying the entire postcode DB against VM. If the
response is negative you might want to auto query a few points around where
you click - e.g. a half mile away in a number of directions - to see if this
is just one street that doesn't have cable.

I found that a lot of SO16 seems to have cable, but didn't find any cable in
SO17 or SO18.

Replace POSTCODE_HERE below with the postcode (don't forget the space)

curl -s -d "standaloneChecker=true&PostcodeCheckerURL=
allyours.virginmedia.com&postcode=POSTCODE_HERE" "
http://shop.virginmedia.com/check-your-postcode/"; | grep "Virgin National
broadband area" > /dev/null
SUCCESS=$?
if [ "$SUCCESS" == "0" ]; then
echo "No broadband here";
else
echo "Possibly broadband here?";
fi;

Cheers,

Benjie


On 9 January 2011 11:40, Rob Malpass  wrote:

>
>
> > -Original Message-
> > From: hampshire-boun...@mailman.lug.org.uk [mailto:hampshire-
> > boun...@mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Lisi
> > Sent: 09 January 2011 11:08
> > To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List
> > Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Cable coverage
> >
> > It hadn't occurred to me that he wanted it for commercial purposes!
> >
> I don't!   I want to know which area is the best bet in terms of cable TV
> (and therefore broadband) coverage.
>
> Thanks for everyone's replies and a postcode to long/lat database would be
> of some use - but what I was really after is the method by which I could
> investigate the result for each postcode in the UK to see whether it was a
> yes or no as regards cable coverage.
>
> Is it possible to repeatedly query a web database armed with a complete
> list
> of (in this case) postcodes?
>
> Cheers
> Rob
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] [sort-of-OT] Advice for (geeky) broadband provider

[Benjie Gillam]

I'm with Virgin Media (Upper Shirley), here's my stats: [1] 50.61 down, 1.63
up, 18ms ping.

It's worth pointing out that
VM are already rolling out 100Mb (and are even testing 200Mb in some places)
and they're also increasing the upload rate (50Mb down will get 5Mb up
instead of current 1.6, 100Mb down will get 10Mb up). They're a pain in the
ass from the point of customer service ([2] -- they didn't even believe I
already had cable, despite demonstrating it! Took 2 weeks to get an engineer
out to "fit" it.) but the technician was fast and knowledgeable and I've not
had any issues. They don't have static IPs, BUT your IP doesn't change much
(hasn't changed for me except when I manually performed a DHCP release from
the router). The service itself is great, but from what I've heard if you
have problems then Flying Spaghetti Monster help you! :)

It's a fibre backbone to the street "cabinet", and then copper cable from
there to the home. Seems to work well - having a 100 metre copper cable is
nowhere near as bad as a 3-8km one!

[1] http://www.speedtest.net/result/1109498167.png
[2] http://www.benjiegillam.com/2010/10/dear-virgin-media/

Benjie.

On 13 January 2011 12:08, Peter Collins  wrote:

> I wonder if people realise what advertised Fibre really is a lot of the
> time. correct me if I'm wrong but as I understand it, a good percentage of
> the time the Fibre is only from the cabinet in the street:
>
> Virgin's service is fibre based to cabinets, as long as you are a cable
> customer, they use DOCSIS for both Broadband and TV services which is a
> copper cable from home to the cabinet and then a fibre "backbone".
>
> If you all not a cable customer then you will on Virgins LLU package.
>
> **The 40Mb BT infinity is based on a similar solution although not DOCSIS,
> however it is still a "copper" cable going from home to cabinet -
> fibre-to-the-cabinet (FFTC).
>
> However around 25% of BT's network will be able to get 100MB connection
> which is fibre-to-the-home (FTTH).
>
> I remember reading somewhere that BT will offer a minimum download speed
> 15Mb on the 40Mb package, whereas Virgin's customers got an average of
> around 47.5Mb when on the 50Mb package.
>
> Rgds
>
> Peter.
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Domestic ADSL ISPs

[Benjie Gillam]

I second Eclipse - I was with them for years when I had ADSL. I had their
top deal (£30/mo) and was frequently downloading 120GB+/mo (no, not illegal
file-sharing, all legitimate data for work!). It was 50GB limit during the
daytime, unlimited overnight. I'd still be with them now if I hadn't moved
to a cabled area. I'm with Virgin Media now - 5MB upload makes such a
difference to my work-flow (I work from home). 50MB download is great, but
it's the upload I really notice. Virgin customer support is pretty terrible
though. With Eclipse I never needed to call support, despite moving house 3
times!
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Re: [Hampshire] Video processing library recommendations

[Benjie Gillam]

You could use ffmpeg to turn the movie into jpgs, process the jpgs and then
convert back again:

http://www.ffmpeg.org/faq.html#SEC15
http://www.ffmpeg.org/faq.html#SEC14

Would use a lot of disk space I guess, but you could process the videos 100
frames at a time or whatever?

I think mencoder lets you do similar (-vo png?) for a wider range of video
formats (I note you said an AVI but didn't specify the video codec - I think
AVI is just a container format?)

Cheers,

Benjie.

On 6 April 2011 16:26, Chris Smith  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Can anyone point me at a simple library that allows me to do basic image
> manipulation of video frames?  Basically I just want something that
> takes an AVI file, feeds me the pixel data frame-by-frame, lets me
> manipulate the pixels and stuffs the modified frame back into an AVI
> file (the same, or a different file).  I don't care about audio -- any
> audio data can be preserved or lost, I care not a jot.  C, C++ and
> Python are my preferred languages, but I'm not that hung up on them.
>
> I've had a quick look at OpenCV, but it seems a bit complex for my basic
> needs.
>
> Thanks,
> Chris
> --
> Chris Smith 
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Setting up ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 in Debian

[Benjie Gillam]

You probably want to fully uninstall the existing drivers before installing
the new ones. You may also want to run fglrxconfig (or whatever it's called)
to autogenerate an xorg.conf file (you shouldn't need to, but if it's not
working...)

Can you:

$ sudo modprobe fglrx

?

Running

$ glxinfo | grep dir

should give you

direct rendering: yes

if the driver is installed properly.

If you like, you can send me your /var/log/Xorg.* log files and your
/etc/X11/xorg.conf (if it exists) and I'll try and give you a hand
diagnosing the issue.

Cheers,

Benjie.
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Re: [Hampshire] Setting up ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 in Debian

[Benjie Gillam]

Try installing the debhelper package:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-testing/2003/07/msg00027.html

You may need to install extra software too, but we can figure that out step by 
step if you can't find a list somewhere.

Cheers,

Benjie.

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On 6 May 2011, at 20:40, Robin Wilson  wrote:

> dh_testdir: Command not found


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Re: [Hampshire] When is it necessary to reboot

[Benjie Gillam]

I think it tends to be easier to tell the user to reboot than to log out and
back in again. Or even "killall nautilus". I generally just get my parents
to reboot - they're more familiar with that process.

As for kernel upgrades, I'd review the changelog and see if the issues fixed
affect you. e.g. if it's an NFS vulernerability patch and you use NFS then
it's worth rebooting. If you don't then probably not worth it. If it's a
local exploit and you trust everyone with physical access to the computer
then don't bother... Play it by ear basically.

Benjie.

On 9 May 2011 09:12, john lewis  wrote:

> Running Debian sid means the I get fairly frequent kernel updates,
> mostly 'point' upgrades.
>
> I'm reluctant to reboot un-necessarily but do reboot when it is a major
> change (like when it went from 2.6.37 to 2.6.38) but should I also
> reboot on the more minor upgrades?
>
> Incidentally I was surprised a few days back to have a message pop up
> telling me I needed to reboot to complete a software update. No idea
> what that was about and I ignored it ;-)
>
> --
> John Lewis
> using Debian sid
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Networking for Dummies

[Benjie Gillam]

Eclipse used to do multiple IP addresses, I don't know if your ISP does. If
so, you could do this with 3 devices: ADSL router and 2x ethernet routers,
then you set up 2x standard NAT one on each IP address. That'll safely
separate the networks.

Benjie.

On 9 May 2011 16:43, Vic  wrote:

>
> > If you connect the 'internet'
> > side to the ADSL router you effectively put anything connected directly
> to
> > the
> > ADSL router into a sort of DMZ (sort of since it is still firewalled as
> > normal,
> > so not really a proper DMZ) with a separate IP address range that is
> > firewalled
> > off from the rest of the network by the cable router.
>
> Errr - I'm not so sure about that.
>
> What is behind the cable router has the usual NAT blackhole, but what is
> hanging off the ADSL router is entirely unprotected from what is behind
> the cable router.
>
> So if the untrusted box is the one behind the cable router, all the
> trusted boxes are still subject to attack from the "problem" box. And that
> box has essentially unfettered Internet access, so it has no protection
> from PEBKAC either.
>
> You could, of course, have it the other way round - but that means
> reconfiguring everything currently on the network, means that those boxes
> will have to deal with double-NAT (which may or may not be a problem), and
> still offers no firewall filtering for the hostile box.
>
> So I don't think I agree with you...
>
> Vic.
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] HERE files and output redirection

[Benjie Gillam]

I think you want:

mpirun -np 6 ./laplace < HERE | tail -n 1 > output

You can add brackets to make it clearer:

((mpirun -np 6 ./laplace < HERE) | tail -n 1) > output

Hope this helps?

Benjie.


On 16 May 2011 17:35, Robin Wilson  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have the following code in a batch script:
>
> mpirun -np 6 ./laplace < 100
> 100
> 100
> 0.01
> 100
> 3
> 2
> 1
> END
> | tail -n 1 > output
>
> What I want it to do is to use the HERE file as input to the mpirun
> command, and then pipe the output  of the mpirun command to the tail
> command. However, I think the HERE file and tail output things are getting
> confused.
>
> Any ideas on how should I write this so that it does what I want?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Robin
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Re: [Hampshire] Sharing printers with OS X from CUPS

[Benjie Gillam]

Here's your issue:

# Only listen for connections from the local machine.
Listen localhost:631

Change it to:

Listen 192.168.0.X:631

Where X completes your (hopefully fixed?) LAN IP address.

Cheers,

Benjie.

On 18 May 2011 22:11, Robin Wilson  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Is there anyone on this list with particular experience in sharing printers
> from CUPS, particularly with OS X machines but also to Windows clients? I'm
> trying to set up printer sharing on my home server, and it isn't going very
> well. I've got printing working fine on the server itself, but I can't seem
> to access the printer from anywhere else. I'm not entirely sure what to
> check, and the various guides on the internet all seem to say different
> things - and the things they do say don't seem to help hugely.
>
> I've pasted the relevant sections of various config files below:
>
> /etc/samba/smb.conf:
>
> ## Printing ##
>
> # If you want to automatically load your printer list rather
> # than setting them up individually then you'll need this
>   load printers = yes
>
> # lpr(ng) printing. You may wish to override the location of the
> # printcap file
> ;   printing = bsd
> ;   printcap name = /etc/printcap
>
> # CUPS printing.  See also the cupsaddsmb(8) manpage in the
> # cupsys-client package.
>   printing = cups
>   printcap name = cups
>
> and
>
> [printers]
>   comment = All Printers
>   browseable = yes
>   path = /var/spool/samba
>   use client driver = yes
>   printable = yes
>   guest ok = no
>   read only = yes
>   create mask = 0700
>
> [ColourLaser]
>  comment = ColourLaser
>  browseable = yes
>  printable = yes
>  path = /var/spool/samba
>  public = yes
>  guest ok = yes
>  printer admin = printer_username,root
>
> # Windows clients look for this share name as a source of downloadable
> # printer drivers
> [print$]
>   comment = Printer Drivers
>   path = /var/lib/samba/printers
>   browseable = yes
>   read only = yes
>   guest ok = no
>
>
> /etc/cups/cupsd.conf:
>
> # Log general information in error_log - change "warn" to "debug"
> # for troubleshooting...
> LogLevel warn
>
> # Deactivate CUPS' internal logrotating, as we provide a better one,
> especially
> # LogLevel debug2 gets usable now
> MaxLogSize 0
>
> # Administrator user group...
> SystemGroup lpadmin
>
>
> # Only listen for connections from the local machine.
> Listen localhost:631
> Listen /var/run/cups/cups.sock
>
> # Show shared printers on the local network.
> Browsing On
> BrowseOrder allow,deny
> BrowseAllow all
> BrowseLocalProtocols CUPS dnssd
>
> # Default authentication type, when authentication is required...
> DefaultAuthType Basic
>
> # Restrict access to the server...
> 
>  Order deny,allow
>  Deny from all
>  Allow From 192.168.0.*
> 
>
> # Restrict access to the admin pages...
> 
>  Order deny,allow
>  AuthType Basic
> AuthClass System
> Allow From 192.168.0.*
>
> 
>
> # Restrict access to configuration files...
> 
>  AuthType Default
>  Require user @SYSTEM
>  Order allow,deny
> 
>
> # Set the default printer/job policies...
> 
>  # Job-related operations must be done by the owner or an administrator...
>   Set-Job-Attributes Create-Job-Subscription Renew-Subscription
> Cancel-Subscription Get-Notifications Reprocess-Job Cancel-Current-Job
> Suspend-Current-Job Resume-Job CUPS-Move-Job CUPS-Get-Document>
>Require user @OWNER @SYSTEM
>Order deny,allow
>  
>
>  # All administration operations require an administrator to
> authenticate...
>   CUPS-Delete-Class CUPS-Set-Default CUPS-Get-Devices>
>AuthType Default
>Require user @SYSTEM
>Order deny,allow
>  
>
>  # All printer operations require a printer operator to authenticate...
>   Pause-Printer-After-Current-Job Hold-New-Jobs Release-Held-New-Jobs
> Deactivate-Printer Activate-Printer Restart-Printer Shutdown-Printer
> Startup-Printer Promote-Job Schedule-Job-After CUPS-Accept-Jobs
> CUPS-Reject-Jobs>
>AuthType Default
>Require user @SYSTEM
>Order deny,allow
>  
>
>  # Only the owner or an administrator can cancel or authenticate a job...
>  
>Require user @OWNER @SYSTEM
>Order deny,allow
>  
>
>  
>Order deny,allow
>  
> 
>
> # Set the authenticated printer/job policies...
> 
>  # Job-related operations must be done by the owner or an administrator...
>  
>AuthType Default
>Order deny,allow
>  
>
>   Set-Job-Attributes Create-Job-Subscription Renew-Subscription
> Cancel-Subscription Get-Notifications Reprocess-Job Cancel-Current-Job
> Suspend-Current-Job Resume-Job CUPS-Move-Job CUPS-Get-Document>
>AuthType Default
>Require user @OWNER @SYSTEM
>Order deny,allow
>  
>
>  # All administration operations require an administrator to
> authenticate...
>   CUPS-Delete-Class CUPS-Set-Default>
>AuthType Default
>Require user @SYSTEM
>Order deny,allow
>  
>
>  # All printer operations require a printer operator to authenticate...
>   Pause-Printer-After-Current-Job Hold-New-Jobs Release-Held-New-Jobs
> Deac

Re: [Hampshire] Home network cabling

[Benjie Gillam]

You could also run the cable through pipes outside, fit a junction box to
the outside wall of your house.

I'd use a switch in room A (they're very cheap and relatively power
efficient) and just have one cable from central hub. Allows for better
future expansion too.

If speed isn't an issue then you could look into using HomePlug adaptors -
works fine for my parent's iPlayer on Freesat box.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug (they can be quite fast in the right
circumstances, but I'd definitely opt for cat5e in my bandwidth hungry and
latency sensitive household).

Cheers,

Benjie.
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Re: [Hampshire] [OT} weird web behaviour

[Benjie Gillam]

What's the result for one of the faulty websites of

$ dig 

On the command line, when connected without DHCP? (Terminal.app under Mac, I 
think)

DHCP issues the IP adresses even if they are fixed IPs, unless you configure 
each computer manually (rather than configuring them via the router) and it's 
DHCP that tells them the DNS servers. If you're configuring all this manually 
on each machine then I think you may be a little mad ;)

Cheers,

B

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On 15 Jun 2011, at 22:25, Mike Burrows  wrote:

> Hi Folks.
> Connecting a Mac Book to my home wireless network. The IPs of all the clients 
> are static and the ISP DNS Servers are configured "in all the right places". 
> However... a select few websites will not load unless DHCP is enabled (for 
> the LAN) on the router just downstream of the cable modem (I'm in the US) and 
> the mac book uses DHCP to obtain its IP address.
> 
> Why is this, anybody know?
> 
> TIA
> Mike
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] confused ssh newbie

[Benjie Gillam]

Can you ssh -p  from another computer/device on your LAN? (You may need
to use your internal IP address to do so.) If so then you at least know SSH
is working. If not, then I'd use netcat.

 is an unprivileged port (>1024) so if you shut down sshd you should be
able to run

nc -v -l -p 


on the server. Then from another computer/device run

nc -v [your ip] 


Anything you type into one should show up on the other after pressing return
(netcat is line buffered). If it doesn't then the debugging info netcat
outputs may be useful in diagnosing your issue.

What is the output of the following command with sshd running?

sudo netstat -pant


Kind regards,

Benjie.

On 23 June 2011 16:50, Mike Burrows  wrote:

> On 6/23/11 12:01 AM, Bob Dunlop wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 22 at 11:18, Mike Burrows wrote:
>> ...
>>
>>> ssh -p  testerm...@some.dyndns.org
>
> I get an error that the connection was reset by peer and I cannot ssh
> in.
>
 ...
>>
>>> - use the shell script mentioned before i get this error:
>>>
>>> nodename nor servname provided, or not known
>>>
>> The nature of the error has changed completely.
>> What shell script ?  I've not seen it mentioned before ?
>> Is it not handling the ssh parameters correctly ?
>>
>>  yes.. sorry Bob :( I guess I got myself muddled. The latest error is what
> I get after I change the port in ssh_config and the port forwarding in the
> router. Using the
>
> shh -p  testermike@..
>
> is the above the correct syntax for a non standard port?
>
> The answer to your other question is no (i think:) the server did have
> guard dog running but I thought it was disabled. I will check. That said
> wouldn't it block the successful port 22 logins as well? The only other
> "firewall" is the NAT functionality in the linksys router. Again that lets
> port 22 through.
>
> Thanks again
> Mike
>
>
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>
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Re: [Hampshire] confused ssh newbie

[Benjie Gillam]

> 
> I'm no expert, but shouldn't that be `nc -vl ` to set up a listener?
> I don't think you can use -p with -l.
> 

Correct, my appologies.

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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Strange Shell Prompt.

[Benjie Gillam]

My guess is that his iPad used your IP address beforehand and requested
'johnrs-ipad' be it's hostname during the DHCP request a while back. When
your MacBook did a DHCP request, the server recycled the old iPad record
without properly cleaning it first.

Benjie.

On 5 July 2011 15:28, Mike Burrows  wrote:

> Hello folks.
> I am connecting to the LAN at work from my macbook. When I open a terminal
> i get this message:
>
> Last login: Tue Jul  5 09:19:23 on ttys000
> johnrs-ipad:~ testermike$
>
> We do have a John R at work and he does have an ipad. However I can't
> understand why its reporting my macbook as his ipad.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> TIA
> Mike
>
> --
> Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk
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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Network Query

[Benjie Gillam]

My suspicion is that powerline is dropping or corruping a bunch of packets and 
so you have a high retransmission rate clogging up your network port.

My other suggestion is what Keith said - perhaps there is a bottleneck 
somewhere else on your system.

Cheers,

Benjie

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Re: [Hampshire] Laptop batteries

[Benjie Gillam]

Most laptops in my experience work without a battery so long as the mains
charger is connected - if yours doesn't then I fear it might be the
motherboard that has failed.

Kind regards,

Benjie.

On 26 July 2011 14:40, Alan Pope  wrote:

> On 26 July 2011 14:36, Adam John Trickett 
> wrote:
> > I see lots of places offering replacement batteries for £50-60, I've just
> never
> > heard of any of them and don't know if they are reliable.
> >
>
> I have bought from http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/power_biz/ before. Reliable.
>
> Al.
>
> --
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>
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Re: [Hampshire] ls -l

[Benjie Gillam]

One of the great things about screen is you can set it up as the remote command 
for when you SSH into a box, so you always continue where you left off (very 
useful if you're connecting from your phone or from anywhere over a 
3G/EDGE/GPRS/packet radio/... network). Also you can set up a configuration so 
that certain screen numbers run certain commands straight away. I've even used 
screen to run server software I'm developing before it's ready to properly 
daemonize - better than having to tail a log file - you can use terminal 
control characters (is that what they're called?) to better output what's going 
on without giving you information overload.

I highly recommend that you do not "sudo su" or "su" from inside screen and 
then disconnect... quite a security issue...

On 24 Aug 2011, at 19:39, Tony Wood wrote:

> :-D
> Tony Wood
> (from Linux Netbook)
> 
> On 24/08/11 16:06, Freaky Clown wrote:
>> apparently some people use a "mouse" to click stuff... it will never catch 
>> on!
>> 
>> On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 3:56 PM, Tony Wood  wrote:
>>> OK, I'll buy it:  what's>clickety>> 
>>> Tony Wood
>>> (from Linux Netbook)
>>> 
>>> On 24/08/11 15:02, Vic wrote:
> One of the great (and sometimes surprising
> and sometimes even annoying) things about this technology is it keeps on
> coming up with new tool and ways to do stuff.
 I'm usually caught out mid-way through a rant about how $tool would be
 excellent if only it did $thing.
 
 "What, like this>clickety<", someone will say...
 
 Vic.
 
 
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>>> --
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>>> 
>> --
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>> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] New Member

[Benjie Gillam]

Apologies for the OT response, but I wanted to point out the following two 
meets you may be interested in:

If you're into Arduino or any form of hardware hacking/modding then you may 
enjoy SoutHACKton our local attempt to create a hackspace, next meeting is on 
Wednesday 7th, details: 
http://southackton.org.uk/2011/09/01/next-meeting-september-7th/

If you're into talking about tech and gadgets in a pub, then you'll probably 
enjoy SoTech, next meeting is on Monday, details can be found in the calendar 
widget on the right:
http://sotech.org.uk/wordpress/

Cheers,

Benjie.

(Moderators: let me know if this is not appreciated and I shall refrain from 
'advertising' in future!)

On 2 Sep 2011, at 19:57, James Bensley wrote:

> Hi Luggers,
> 
> I'm new to HantsLUG and am thinking of showing my face tomorrow if I
> can, to say hello. Just wanted to introduce me self and see what goes
> on here. I'm a happy member of ALUG (Anglian-LUG) as Norwich is my
> home town, but I have 10 fingers and 10 toes (including thumbs etc) so
> don't worry. I'm a network engineer recently moved to Southampton.
> 
> I thoroughly enjoyed attending ALUG meetings as they are in a pub, so
> it was always a good social time and people always brought kit to
> dazzle you after a few cold ones which is fun (normally Arduinos) :D
> 
> So what's HantsLUG like, do you guys ever have socials and go to the
> pub? Or pub after a meeting? [1] Also where is the "Red Hat
> Farnborough" location of the meet tomorrow as the link on the wiki is
> broken?
> 
> Thanks for reading, and hopefully see you soon!
> 
> 
> 
> [1] At this point I think I may be giving the wrong impression like
> I'm a regular boozer, I'm not! I just find the pub to have a good laid
> back atmosphere were people aren't afraid to voice crazy ideas they
> have about running Linux on calculator and running with said idea :D
> 
> -- 
> James.
> http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/
> 
> --
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Re: [Hampshire] DDoS survival strategies

[Benjie Gillam]

Other issues with this approach:
- Proxies would route lots of traffic through few IP addresses
- Large campus networks (e.g. universities) sometimes use single outbound IP 
addresses
- If you export APIs, these may be being polled too frequently accidentally
- External services which fetch from/aggregate your site
- Extremely large DDoS with low per-client connections would not be detected
- It might not be clear why your server is responding to some people but not 
others 2 years down the line

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.]

One of the risks of DDoS is that it can tie down your servers/max out your disk 
space/break replication/overload network disk bandwidth/cause other issues 
which may take hours or days to resolve afterwards. One way to deal with this 
is to have a 'panic button' script which you can hit and it forwards all 
requests to a static copy of your site hosted on a large CDN such as Amazon S3. 
Purchases wouldn't go through this way, though, it just helps your servers to 
not become overwhelmed and break. 

Cheers,

Benjie.

On 5 Sep 2011, at 16:58, James Bensley wrote:

> Hi Damian,
> 
> I like your script for pulling out IPs and counting their entries,
> works just fine on my dev machine, but I don't see how it could be
> practically used. Looking at the number of times alone one IP has
> accesses your site is not a good measurement of being DDoS'ed. It just
> means someone loves your site.
> 
> I guess it would be obvious if you have say 1000 hits a day total
> aggregate on average, and you see one single IP access your site
> 10,000 in the last ten minutes. Before that can happen though you need
> to add some date functionality in there otherwise the data is
> meaningless; you have nothing to reference it against, presumably it
> needs to be at least 'hits per IP over X time period'.
> 
> Also, I think if your script passed those IPs to iptables as rules
> that would be awesome! In fact now that I think about it, maybe you
> could just do this all in IP tables without a script?
> 
> /sbin/iptables -N HTTPHITS
> /sbin/iptables -A HTTPHITS -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport
> 80 -m recent --set --name HTTP --rsource
> /sbin/iptables -A HTTPHITS -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport
> 80 -m recent --update --seconds 180 --hitcount 1000 --name HTTP
> --rsource -j DROP
> 
> So these rules will essentials drop traffic from an IP that has
> already made 1000 requests to your server within the last 3 minutes,
> something like that perhaps? Like your script though, just going on
> numbers of hits is a dangerous method.
> 
> If you run high traffic sites though (or low for that matter) the
> first give away for the (D)DoS is (IMO) going to be (as you would
> expect from a DoS) the sudden peak in number of open connections, CPU
> utilisation, memory utilisation,  increased network throughput,
> increased drive I/O. A sudden spike in your load anywhere in fact,
> such as on your DB servers, or front end servers, load balancers, edge
> routers blah blah blah. So, graph everything all the time, set up
> alerts and you should be OK (YMMV!).
> 
> Regarding your other points. My first port of call would be my
> upstream connectivity provider, I would get them to black whole the
> traffic, if you aren't dropping it with automatic IP tables rules that
> is :) Most providers support communities when you directly peer with
> them through BGP and have black-wholing communities etc so there is
> scope to work with your upstream provider.
> 
>> What general growing problems do systems engineers face in the future?
> Regarding what exactly? Security, or infrastructure, or both?
> 
>> Will IPv6reduce DDoS attack success or enhance the attacker's tool kits?
> I don't think IPv6 gives any extra powers to those wishing to DoS, it
> just puts a different spin on it. For example, IP blacklists and
> firewall tables are going to become massive! Manufacturers are going
> to be under pressure to forward at 100Mbps, 1Gbps, 10Gbps and 100Gbps
> with giant caching tables/routing tables. For your firewall devices,
> comparing a list of millions of blocked IPv6 addresses against every
> flow passing through in a few milliseconds to maintain a high
> throughout rate is going to require some seriously fast technology!
> 
>> Can we reassure customers that they will not lose business to DDoS
>> without investing large amounts capital in security technologies?
> Yes and no :) IMO, very careful and meticulous planning and mitigation
> can prevent a high percentage of (D)DoS attacks or stamp them 

Re: [Hampshire] DDoS survival strategies

[Benjie Gillam]

Sorry, I did 1 million in one calculation and 1 trillion in the other - it 
would take 10^25 years to scan IPv6 at 1 million addresses per second, but only 
72 minutes in IPv4. This does not take into consideration reserved or 
un-routable IP addresses or other factors like how feasible scanning 1million 
IP addresses per second is...

It's worth mentioning that 10^25 years is roughly 10^15 times as long as the 
estimated age of the universe, assuming you subscribe to modern science.

On 5 Sep 2011, at 17:24, Benjie Gillam wrote:

> Other issues with this approach:
> - Proxies would route lots of traffic through few IP addresses
> - Large campus networks (e.g. universities) sometimes use single outbound IP 
> addresses
> - If you export APIs, these may be being polled too frequently accidentally
> - External services which fetch from/aggregate your site
> - Extremely large DDoS with low per-client connections would not be detected
> - It might not be clear why your server is responding to some people but not 
> others 2 years down the line
> 
> 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.]
> 
> One of the risks of DDoS is that it can tie down your servers/max out your 
> disk space/break replication/overload network disk bandwidth/cause other 
> issues which may take hours or days to resolve afterwards. One way to deal 
> with this is to have a 'panic button' script which you can hit and it 
> forwards all requests to a static copy of your site hosted on a large CDN 
> such as Amazon S3. Purchases wouldn't go through this way, though, it just 
> helps your servers to not become overwhelmed and break. 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Benjie.
> 
> On 5 Sep 2011, at 16:58, James Bensley wrote:
> 
>> Hi Damian,
>> 
>> I like your script for pulling out IPs and counting their entries,
>> works just fine on my dev machine, but I don't see how it could be
>> practically used. Looking at the number of times alone one IP has
>> accesses your site is not a good measurement of being DDoS'ed. It just
>> means someone loves your site.
>> 
>> I guess it would be obvious if you have say 1000 hits a day total
>> aggregate on average, and you see one single IP access your site
>> 10,000 in the last ten minutes. Before that can happen though you need
>> to add some date functionality in there otherwise the data is
>> meaningless; you have nothing to reference it against, presumably it
>> needs to be at least 'hits per IP over X time period'.
>> 
>> Also, I think if your script passed those IPs to iptables as rules
>> that would be awesome! In fact now that I think about it, maybe you
>> could just do this all in IP tables without a script?
>> 
>> /sbin/iptables -N HTTPHITS
>> /sbin/iptables -A HTTPHITS -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport
>> 80 -m recent --set --name HTTP --rsource
>> /sbin/iptables -A HTTPHITS -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport
>> 80 -m recent --update --seconds 180 --hitcount 1000 --name HTTP
>> --rsource -j DROP
>> 
>> So these rules will essentials drop traffic from an IP that has
>> already made 1000 requests to your server within the last 3 minutes,
>> something like that perhaps? Like your script though, just going on
>> numbers of hits is a dangerous method.
>> 
>> If you run high traffic sites though (or low for that matter) the
>> first give away for the (D)DoS is (IMO) going to be (as you would
>> expect from a DoS) the sudden peak in number of open connections, CPU
>> utilisation, memory utilisation,  increased network throughput,
>> increased drive I/O. A sudden spike in your load anywhere in fact,
>> such as on your DB servers, or front end servers, load balancers, edge
>> routers blah blah blah. So, graph everything all the time, set up
>> alerts and you should be OK (YMMV!).
>> 
>> Regarding your other points. My first port of call would be my
>> upstream connectivity provider, I would get them to black whole the
>> traffic, if you aren't dropping it with automatic IP tables rules that
>> is :) Most providers support communities when you directly peer with
>> them through BGP and have black-wholing communities etc so there is
>> scope to work with your upst

Re: [Hampshire] vsftpd confusion

[Benjie Gillam]

There's a _very_ good chance that I'm wrong, but do you have to chmod +t (?) 
the directory?

$ man sticky

Cheers,

Benjie.


On 9 Sep 2011, at 09:15, Vic wrote:

> 
 So per the advice chmodded them to 777.
> 
> It's *almost* universally true that any advice telling you to 777
> something is wrong.
> 
> Vic.
> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] extracting phrases from a file.

[Benjie Gillam]

Or, alternatively, open it into a decent web browser and type this into the 
JavaScript console:

var as = document.getElementsByTagName('a'); var hrefs=[]; for (var i = 0, l = 
as.length; i Hi.
> 
> I have a large file that contains snips of http pages.
> Each line is like this:
> some junk.
> 
> I want extract the "some url" bits. I.e. Remove the href.
> You can probably do this quite easily in perl.
> Are there any nice short programs to do this?
> Is it easier to do in some other language?
> 
> Kind Regards
> 
> James
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Data Destruction

[Benjie Gillam]

I'm not sure the TrueCrypt solution will work. Normally when you create a 
filesystem/partition, the tools write out the minimum data they can - generally 
the partition layout in the MBR and the file allocation table at the beginning 
of the disk (and in a number of backup places throughout the disk in the case 
of ext3/ReiserFS/any decent modern filesystem). Formatting your drive rarely 
overwrites all of the data on the drive, it just leaves the file data intact 
and marks those regions as 'unallocated' so that the system doesn't get 
confused.

TrueCrypt /might/ overwrite the whole drive, but I certainly wouldn't take it 
for granted - it's intended to protect the data contained within the new 
filesystem, not the data that was there beforehand. Generally you can tell by 
how long it takes to format the drive - assuming a sustained average write 
speed of 150MB/s it would take almost 4 hours to fully overwrite a 2TB drive - 
with encryption this is likely to take even longer.

You could of course create the TrueCrypt partition and then fill it up 100% 
with whatever data you want, e.g. dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/truecrype/file, but 
this would still leave one piece of data on the drive - your TrueCrypt password 
- so be sure to set this to something you don't use for anything else ;)

I doubt anyone has the resources to use an electron microscope to partially 
recover some of the data from your drive for teh lulz, so unless you have 
something serious to hide I'd suggest that just overwriting the drive with 
zeros using dd is perfectly sufficient - this should erase the MBR and 
partition layout too, not just the data on the partitions. If I was really 
worried then I would then smash the drive with a lump hammer to necessitate 
physical recovery. You are talking about a semi-modern HDD - not a 256MB one - 
right?

Cheers,

Benjie.

PS: A quick glance at the TrueCrypt 'beginners tutorial' has this note 
(relating to creating a filesystem in a file):

IMPORTANT: Note that TrueCrypt will not encrypt any existing files (when 
creating a TrueCrypt file container). If you select an existing file in this 
step, it will be overwritten and replaced by the newly created volume (so the 
overwritten file will be lost, not encrypted). You will be able to encrypt 
existing files (later on) by moving them to the TrueCrypt volume that we are 
creating now.*




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Re: [Hampshire] Data Destruction

[Benjie Gillam]

On 7 Oct 2011, at 09:05, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> 
> If you really have to erase all trace of the data, you should really
> have thought about that before writing it to the HD.
> Normal practice now is to use whole disk encryption.
> Then, to erase the whole disk, just erase the key.


That's a valid solution, but not a hugely secure one: since the layout of the 
filesystem is quite predictable in places you can use this knowledge of the 
crypted data to help you break the encryption, the only requirement is time. 
Other weaknesses include key backups and weak passwords. There's also high 
resource attack methods round the corner such as quantum computers which should 
be able to decrypt most encryption very quickly. Or even GPU farms which are 
easily rentable on Amazon's EC2 by the hour, here's some software you might use 
to break the encryption using these:
http://www.elcomsoft.com/edpr.html

Personally, I'd "dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda" even though I have full disk 
encryption enabled, you never know what's round the corner. If I was really 
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Re: [Hampshire] Data Destruction

[Benjie Gillam]

On 7 Oct 2011, at 10:30, Alan Pope wrote:
> Use DBAN and get on with your life :D

Get on with your life after the many hours it takes to run... 

Assuming you're not intending to reuse or redistribute it, and that you have or 
can borrow a sledgehammer: sledgehammer it and get on with your life, it's not 
just faster, but cheaper and easier too, and better for the environment... and 
more fun! :D 
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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu and Intel H61 chipset

[Benjie Gillam]

On 13 Oct 2011, at 10:28, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> After replacing the paste and cleaning the heat sink/fan, the PC ran
> OK for another year or two until the motherboard truely failed, so a
> replaced the PC.

I did similar 2 weekends back (used TIM cleaner to remove the old CPU/Heatsink 
paste and added Arctic Silver 5 in it's place) and the idle processor 
temperature in the BIOS has dropped by 15oC (!!) The computer no longer 
restarts without someone requesting it do so :)
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Re: [Hampshire] Max OS HD image

[Benjie Gillam]

I've had a lot of luck with TestDisk[1] in the past (mostly for recovering 
images from flash memory cards where the user has accidentally done delete all 
instead of delete!), but it doesn't claim to support recovering files from HFS+ 
filesystems. Personally, I'd give it a go anyway and see what it's like. 
There's many other file recovery tools out there but I can't vouch for them 
personally.

You can install hfsutils and mount hfs+ disks under Linux quite easily. You'll 
need something along the lines of the following to mount it:

mount -o loop -t hfs image.dd /mnt/

It might be 'hfsplus' that you need.

Cheers,

Benjie.

[1] http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk


On 24 Oct 2011, at 14:57, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have a friend who has messed up and re-installed a factory default
> Mac OS X and therefore lost all their photos.
> I have offered to help.
> I will be taking a sector exact copy of the Mac OS X hard disk. (using dd)
> What tools are there available in Linux to read this Mac OS X disk
> image and maybe recover a picture or two?
> 
> Essentually, I will be doing a scan of the un-used sectors of the
> disk, as all the allocated sectors will just contain the Mac OS X
> files.
> Fortunately, I only have to recover .JPG files. I am not interested in
> any music or other videos they might have had.
> I am a little concerned that the Mac OS also supports compressiong at
> the filesystem level, so that might cause problems.
> 
> Kind Regards
> 
> James
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Max OS HD image

[Benjie Gillam]

TestDisk does exactly that - it scans the whole disk looking for pieces of data 
that look like they were JPG images (or whatever you're searching for - it has 
a bunch of prebuilt filters) - which is why I recommended it. However different 
filesystems lay out files in different places - e.g. at multiples of 512bytes 
or other such things, but TestDisk might not have the rules for HFS+. I suspect 
it will do its best nonetheless, which is why I suggested it. 

I've used TestDisk against both raw devices and dd images of devices before - 
it should do what you want without having to mount the image. The mount command 
was just in case you needed it, I'm sorry it confused my post.

Cheers,

Benjie.

On 24 Oct 2011, at 22:12, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> The problem is I am not interested in the mounting of the device.
> What the user has done is this:
> 1) Had a working system with all their pictures on it.
> 2) Put in the Mac OS X setup disk.
> 3) setup disk formats the system. equivalent of mkfs
> 4) setup disk installs OS files.
> 
> I want to get at the pictures, which means I wish to examine any parts
> of the disk that have managed to escape the mkfs and the install of OS
> files. So, essentially scan free space.
> 
> I am expecting that I will have to write my own recovery program, but
> just wanted to check here first.
> 
> Kind Regards
> 
> James


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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Big IMAP accounts

[Benjie Gillam]

Mailgun.net may be of interest, plus as a bonus you can do all sorts of funky 
API based things with your email.

Disclaimer: I have not used them for personal email hosting, only mail sending.

Disclosure: They're a fellow YCombinator company (same batch)


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Re: [Hampshire] Help please - Rusty on building a PC

[Benjie Gillam]

Graphics card power, perhaps? 2x3

Do they have any lettering?

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Re: [Hampshire] Samsung N145+ netbook (battery life)

[Benjie Gillam]

Had the same issue with an Eee a few years ago, sent it back and the 
replacement worked fine. In fact it still does, I was using it only yesterday!

Benjie
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[Hampshire] mdadm/RAID0 issues after Ubuntu upgrade 8.04 > 11.10

[Benjie Gillam]

Hi all,

I installed Ubuntu for my parents many many moons ago. I had upgraded it as
far as Hardy and then I left it. Recently they've been complaining that
certain websites aren't working (due to flash being too old) and their
printers drivers not being fully reliable. "No problem," thinks I, I'll
just update to 11.10. I have done so, and Unity issues aside (I've
installed GNOME Classic for them now) it's gone well...

EXCEPT the computer only boots roughly 1 time in 3 (no obvious pattern).
The issue, I've found, is due to their RAID0 /home partition not
initialising correctly sometimes (sometimes it's "degraded mode", sometimes
no message at all, it just locks up). I've had a good poke around and it
seems that it doesn't work when /dev/sdb is detected as /dev/sdf instead. I
know this in itself isn't a bug, but it seems to be what is causing the
issue. I was expecting it to Just Work (TM) since it does for all the other
boxes that I have RAID on. I thought the persistent superblock should stop
this issue from happening, but autodetection seems to be failing early
during boot.

I've added relevant data to the bottom of the email to rule out some common
issues/confirm what I've done/point out an obvious issue I may have
overlooked...

For autodetection I require, according to
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html#toc7.2
1) Autodetection in the kernel [I have stock Ubuntu 11.10 kernel - perhaps
this is missing/missing from the initrd]
2) Persistent-superblock [mdadm claims this to be the case - see below]
3) 0xFD partition types [fdisk claims this to be the case]

>From /var/log/syslog (or /var/log/messages) we get:
Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.251290] md: bind
Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.290692] md: bind
Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.293935] bio: create slab 
at 1
Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.294070] md/raid1:md0: active
with 2 out of 2 mirrors
Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.294097] md0: detected capacity
change from 0 to 151846780928
Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.296464]  md0: unknown partition
table

This suggests to me that auto-detection is not occurring, so installing
something (kernel modules/settings/app/whatever) and then doing
"update-initramfs
-u" should presumably fix this issue, but I've not much longer to solve it
before I leave to go back home tomorrow. Any ideas would be greatly
appreciated.

Further details follow.

I hope you're all having a great Christmas! Happy New Year!

Cheers,

Benjie.


/ is not RAID (why bother, just replace)
/home is RAID0 (custom set up via mdadm about 4 years ago)
Two equal sized drives.
The RAID, once it's running, is absolutely fine. It's just detection that
fails.


$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x

   Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *  6316000739 8000338+  83  Linux
/dev/sda216000740   312576704   148287982+   5  Extended
/dev/sda516000803   312576704   148287951   fd  Linux RAID
autodetect


$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000aa89b

   Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1  63 4000184 261   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb216000801   312576704   1482879525  Extended
/dev/sdb516000803   312576704   148287951   fd  Linux RAID
autodetect


$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5]
[raid4] [raid10]
md0 : active raid1 sda5[0] sdb5[1]
  148287872 blocks [2/2] [UU]

unused devices: 


$ sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
Version : 0.90
  Creation Time : Fri Nov 16 12:01:45 2007
 Raid Level : raid1
 Array Size : 148287872 (141.42 GiB 151.85 GB)
  Used Dev Size : 148287872 (141.42 GiB 151.85 GB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
Persistence : Superblock is persistent

Update Time : Mon Dec 26 21:06:17 2011
  State : clean
 Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

   UUID : f0a0371d:12376ea7:4c4ad349:bc95e7b8
 Events : 0.436

Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
   0   850  active sync   /dev/sda5
   1   8   211  active sync   /dev/sdb5
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Re: [Hampshire] mdadm/RAID0 issues after Ubuntu upgrade 8.04 > 11.10

[Benjie Gillam]

Sorry, I meant RAID1 - the 0 of md0 must have confused me in my slightly
inebriated state last night :-$

This morning the computer booted first time with the second drive detected
as /dev/sdf so that obviously isn't the issue...

Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
   0   850  active sync   /dev/sda5
   1   8   851  active sync   /dev/sdf5

So I'm none the wiser. :-/

Benjie.

On 26 December 2011 21:33, Benjie Gillam  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I installed Ubuntu for my parents many many moons ago. I had upgraded it
> as far as Hardy and then I left it. Recently they've been complaining that
> certain websites aren't working (due to flash being too old) and their
> printers drivers not being fully reliable. "No problem," thinks I, I'll
> just update to 11.10. I have done so, and Unity issues aside (I've
> installed GNOME Classic for them now) it's gone well...
>
> EXCEPT the computer only boots roughly 1 time in 3 (no obvious pattern).
> The issue, I've found, is due to their RAID0 /home partition not
> initialising correctly sometimes (sometimes it's "degraded mode", sometimes
> no message at all, it just locks up). I've had a good poke around and it
> seems that it doesn't work when /dev/sdb is detected as /dev/sdf instead. I
> know this in itself isn't a bug, but it seems to be what is causing the
> issue. I was expecting it to Just Work (TM) since it does for all the other
> boxes that I have RAID on. I thought the persistent superblock should stop
> this issue from happening, but autodetection seems to be failing early
> during boot.
>
> I've added relevant data to the bottom of the email to rule out some
> common issues/confirm what I've done/point out an obvious issue I may have
> overlooked...
>
> For autodetection I require, according to
> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html#toc7.2
> 1) Autodetection in the kernel [I have stock Ubuntu 11.10 kernel - perhaps
> this is missing/missing from the initrd]
> 2) Persistent-superblock [mdadm claims this to be the case - see below]
> 3) 0xFD partition types [fdisk claims this to be the case]
>
> From /var/log/syslog (or /var/log/messages) we get:
> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.251290] md: bind
> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.290692] md: bind
> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.293935] bio: create slab
>  at 1
> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.294070] md/raid1:md0: active
> with 2 out of 2 mirrors
> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.294097] md0: detected capacity
> change from 0 to 151846780928
> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.296464]  md0: unknown partition
> table
>
> This suggests to me that auto-detection is not occurring, so installing
> something (kernel modules/settings/app/whatever) and then doing 
> "update-initramfs
> -u" should presumably fix this issue, but I've not much longer to solve
> it before I leave to go back home tomorrow. Any ideas would be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Further details follow.
>
> I hope you're all having a great Christmas! Happy New Year!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Benjie.
>
>
> / is not RAID (why bother, just replace)
> /home is RAID0 (custom set up via mdadm about 4 years ago)
> Two equal sized drives.
> The RAID, once it's running, is absolutely fine. It's just detection that
> fails.
>
>
> $ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
> Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
> Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x
>
>Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1   *  6316000739 8000338+  83  Linux
> /dev/sda216000740   312576704   148287982+   5  Extended
> /dev/sda516000803   312576704   148287951   fd  Linux RAID
> autodetect
>
>
> $ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb
> Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
> Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x000aa89b
>
>Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sdb1  63 4000184 261   82  Linux swap /
> Solaris
> /dev/sdb216000801   312576704   1482879525  Extended
> /dev/sdb516000803   312576704   148287951   fd  Linux RAID
> autodetect

Re: [Hampshire] mdadm/RAID0 issues after Ubuntu upgrade 8.04 > 11.10

[Benjie Gillam]

After many reboots, I've found the issue:

Dec 27 08:34:56 ann-desktop kernel: [3.806330] md: bind

* it runs /scripts/local-premount here, BEFORE sda5 is bound to the
multi-disk array, and thus triggers a drop to busybox shell *

Dec 27 08:34:56 ann-desktop kernel: [3.857986] md: bind
Dec 27 08:34:56 ann-desktop kernel: [3.860152] bio: create slab 
at 1
Dec 27 08:34:56 ann-desktop kernel: [3.860331] md/raid1:md0: active
with 2 out of 2 mirrors
Dec 27 08:34:56 ann-desktop kernel: [3.860431] md0: detected capacity
change from 0 to 151846780928

* at this point, md0 is fully set up, but the script ran beforehand so
thinks it isn't *


So all I need now is to find out how to make local-premount wait for
/dev/sda and /dev/sdf. (My guess is if it detects sdf first then it assumes
that sda has already been detected and thus advances too early. That or it
just takes too long sometimes.)

...

After much searching it seems the safest fix is to add rootdelay=2 to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/defaults/grub and then run sudo
update-grub...

Wish me luck!

Benjie.


On 27 December 2011 07:52, Benjie Gillam  wrote:

> Sorry, I meant RAID1 - the 0 of md0 must have confused me in my slightly
> inebriated state last night :-$
>
> This morning the computer booted first time with the second drive detected
> as /dev/sdf so that obviously isn't the issue...
>
> Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
>0   850  active sync   /dev/sda5
>1   8   851  active sync   /dev/sdf5
>
> So I'm none the wiser. :-/
>
> Benjie.
>
> On 26 December 2011 21:33, Benjie Gillam  wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I installed Ubuntu for my parents many many moons ago. I had upgraded it
>> as far as Hardy and then I left it. Recently they've been complaining that
>> certain websites aren't working (due to flash being too old) and their
>> printers drivers not being fully reliable. "No problem," thinks I, I'll
>> just update to 11.10. I have done so, and Unity issues aside (I've
>> installed GNOME Classic for them now) it's gone well...
>>
>> EXCEPT the computer only boots roughly 1 time in 3 (no obvious pattern).
>> The issue, I've found, is due to their RAID0 /home partition not
>> initialising correctly sometimes (sometimes it's "degraded mode", sometimes
>> no message at all, it just locks up). I've had a good poke around and it
>> seems that it doesn't work when /dev/sdb is detected as /dev/sdf instead. I
>> know this in itself isn't a bug, but it seems to be what is causing the
>> issue. I was expecting it to Just Work (TM) since it does for all the other
>> boxes that I have RAID on. I thought the persistent superblock should stop
>> this issue from happening, but autodetection seems to be failing early
>> during boot.
>>
>> I've added relevant data to the bottom of the email to rule out some
>> common issues/confirm what I've done/point out an obvious issue I may have
>> overlooked...
>>
>> For autodetection I require, according to
>> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html#toc7.2
>> 1) Autodetection in the kernel [I have stock Ubuntu 11.10 kernel -
>> perhaps this is missing/missing from the initrd]
>> 2) Persistent-superblock [mdadm claims this to be the case - see below]
>> 3) 0xFD partition types [fdisk claims this to be the case]
>>
>> From /var/log/syslog (or /var/log/messages) we get:
>> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.251290] md: bind
>> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.290692] md: bind
>> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.293935] bio: create slab
>>  at 1
>> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.294070] md/raid1:md0: active
>> with 2 out of 2 mirrors
>> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.294097] md0: detected capacity
>> change from 0 to 151846780928
>> Dec 26 09:12:15 ann-desktop kernel: [3.296464]  md0: unknown
>> partition table
>>
>> This suggests to me that auto-detection is not occurring, so installing
>> something (kernel modules/settings/app/whatever) and then doing 
>> "update-initramfs
>> -u" should presumably fix this issue, but I've not much longer to solve
>> it before I leave to go back home tomorrow. Any ideas would be greatly
>> appreciated.
>>
>> Further details follow.
>>
>> I hope you're all having a great Christmas! Happy New Year!
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Benjie.
>>
>>
>> / is not RAID (why bother, just replace)
>> /home is RAID0 (custom set up via md

Re: [Hampshire] mdadm/RAID0 issues after Ubuntu upgrade 8.04 > 11.10

[Benjie Gillam]

Thanks Keith, I'll try it. The rootdelay solution didn't work, but adding

sleep 5

to the middle of /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-premount/mdadm
and then running

update-initramfs -u

Seems to have worked (no failures since, but it's not reliable to reproduce
so it could be fluke).

(Just documenting all this in case someone else needs it - sorry for the
barrage of emails!)

I'll revert my fix and try your solution now since yours is more likely to
be a long term solution, if it works! :)

Cheers,

Benjie.


On 27 December 2011 09:47, Keith Edmunds  wrote:

> Try:
>
># dpkg-reconfigure mdadm
> --
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> get what they want" - Zig Ziglar.
>
> Who did you help today?
>
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Re: [Hampshire] VDSL equipment

[Benjie Gillam]

On 5 Jan 2012, at 06:01, Mike Austin wrote:
> I have a TIVO box connected to my Virgin Cable installation.  It is very
> good, but I have yet to crack controlling it using my slingbox.  I spent
> nine years living in Cyprus, so obtaining UK TV was a challenge - I
> installed a 4.2 metre dish on our building but had the backup of using my UK
> based slingbox when the signal faded.
> 
> I am off to the ski slopes shortly, and access my slingbox from Switzerland
> as most hotels have limited UK TV.
> I can access it from my Galaxy S11.

Hi Mike,

I'm not sure if it helps with your slingbox situation, but the Tivo has a very 
simple (and reliable) network remote control protocol - just enable it from 
your Tivo settings and then telnet to your tivo on TCP port 31339 and issue 
"IRCODE SELECT". 

This even allows you to put the tivo to sleep and wake it from sleep.

Available IRCODEs include:

TIVO|STANDBY|INFO|GUIDE|TEXT|WINDOW|SUBTITLE|UP|LEFT|RIGHT|DOWN|SELECT|THUMBSUP|THUMBSDOWN|CHANNELUP|CHANNELDOWN|NOWSHOWING|RECORD|SLOW|PLAY|PAUSE|REVERSE|FORWARD|STOP|REPLAY|ADVANCE|ACTION_A|ACTION_B|ACTION_C|ACTION_D

The Tivo uses \r as line terminator, so interactive netcat doesn't work with 
the tivo and interactive telnet generally only works with the first command 
unless you leave enough of a gap between commands to cancel the \n (commands 
can time out). Very simple to write a script to control it though, or you could 
chain an end-of-line converter script.

Cheers,

Benjie.
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Re: [Hampshire] Help! I'm buying a laptop.

[Benjie Gillam]

My wife had an eMachines PC many years ago that was very unstable - USB/sound 
only working periodically. Unsurprisingly in hindsight a few months later the 
PSU blew up and took out the motherboard, RAM and CPU with it. HDD survived, 
thankfully! I wouldn't trust them again after that.

Benjie.


On 12 Jan 2012, at 17:15, Full Circle Podcast wrote:

> For what it's worth, everyone I know who's bought either E-Systems or 
> E-Machines branded kit (laptops and desktops) has had reliability troubles. 
> 
> Bargain bucket pricing means bargain bucket build quality.
> 
> RC
> 
> On 12 January 2012 02:18, Michael Daffin  wrote:
> These days I don't think it makes much difference, for general computing, 
> which you go for... unless you have something that needs a more beefy 
> computer (like gaming, image/video editing). But either way it mostly depends 
> on what you want out of it.
> 
> I will say that one of the most important things when deciding is what 
> manufacture made it ^^ but both Toshiba and ASUS I have found very reliable.
> 
> Also, think carefully about fully replacing your desktop entirely :) both 
> have a 15" screen, which can be quite small if your use to larger and the 
> keyboard and mice can get annoying for intense use (though this is down to 
> personal preference, its just something to make note of). 
> 
> Personally I like having a very powerful desktop (which are generally have a 
> better cost to performance ratio and easier to upgrade) and a low spec'd 
> laptop for when I cannot use my desktop (which is quite often). One hidden 
> advantage of not relying on a laptop is that its not a huge loss (assuming 
> its all back up properly) when it gets damaged/lost/stolen, which laptops 
> have a tendency to do more often then desktops.
> 
> And as for benchmarking, it highly depends on what you want to do as 
> different computer will come out top on different benchmarks... I find they 
> are only useful if your looking at a particular aspect (ie you want to know 
> how good it is for doing X and only really X).
> 
> Just for comparison, I have a ASUS 1018p 10" netbook [1] as my mobile 
> computer, and find it is capable of doing just about everything I need it to 
> when away from my desktop. This includes programming and compiling, even 
> running the occasional virtual machine. The only think I found it lacking in 
> is its graphical capability which is more then made up for by it being small, 
> light-weight and having large battery life. But then this is what I generally 
> want I want from a laptop.
> 
> But what ever you decide to do, make sure its if from a trusted manufacture, 
> can do what you need it to and you cannot really go wrong :)
> 
> Michael Daffin.
> 
> [1] http://uk.asus.com/Eee/Eee_PC/Eee_PC_1018P/
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Rgds
> RC
> 
> Robin Catling
> Full Circle Podcast
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] ntpd vs. ptpd

[Benjie Gillam]

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On 27 Jan 2012, at 19:42, Anton Piatek  wrote:

> Could you be any more blunt about this?
> 
> Anton
> -
> Anton Piatek 
> (sent from my phone, please excuse any typos)
> email: an...@piatek.co.uk
> blog/photos: http://www.strangeparty.com 
> pgp: [74B1FA37] (http:// www.strangeparty.com/anton.asc)
> 
> No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a 
> significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
> 
> On Jan 25, 2012 3:39 PM, "Vic"  wrote:
> 
> > I thought that only worked when transmitted over a serial link, i.e. ATM
> > or DVB.
> 
> You thought wrong.
> 
> > It is not so effective on packet based links such as Ethernet.
> 
> All headend distribution systems these days are Ethernet-based. It is
> incredibly effective.
> 
> > I have never heard of those timestamps being used to synchronize
> > multiple endpoints.
> 
> I'm sure there are many thing in the Universe of which you have not heard.
> This does not mean they do not exist.
> 
> > I have only ever seen them used to do synchronization within each
> > device in the chain.
> 
> This leaves us with one of two possible situations :-
> 
>  - Timestamps aren't used in this way
>  - You are not omniscient.
> 
> Given that I've worked on these systems for quite a few years, I know
> which one I believe to be true.
> 
> Vic.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Steam game problem with half life 2.

[Benjie Gillam]

I have steam on my Mac and PC; I'd be happy to help if you email me off-list. 
It's a shame Steam haven't got their Linux port up and running yet. They only 
added Mac in the last year or two!

Here's their suggested way of running it under Linux:

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux



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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] SSD specs

[Benjie Gillam]

On 13 Feb 2012, at 11:20, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> Yes, there is that, but if you write to the whole disk once, and then
> write to the whole disk a second time, you will be 100% sure that you
> have hit each actual flash sector at least twice, even if wear
> leveling is used.

Actually I believe a lot of them are over-provisioned (i.e. have extra space 
that's used when the first lot wears out), so you're unlikely to hit 100% of 
the sectors until quite a bit of the originally provisioned space is detected 
as worn out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_amplification#Over-provisioning

According to Wikipedia (and it's referenced PDF) most are guaranteed to 
withstand 100,000 program-erase cycles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Memory_wear

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Re: [Hampshire] Network speeds for diskless system

[Benjie Gillam]

Assuming you've got a relatively modest hard drive in your upstairs computer 
(not solid state/etc!), gigabit attached RAID should increase your performance 
over your local hard drive. I did similar to you a few years ago[1] and my 
wife's PC's file access times decreased massively - that was my 6-disk SATA2 
RAID vs her old IDE133 drive though. 

The advantages of having the RAID speed/extra layer of caching will normally 
out-weight the advantages of having a local disk unless you have a 
super-high-performance disk.

According to Wikipedia[2]:
As of 2010, a typical 7200 rpm desktop hard drive has a sustained 
"disk-to-buffer" data transfer rate up to 1030 Mbits/sec.

I heartily encourage you to go forwards with this endeavour.

Cheers,

Benjie.



[1]: 
http://www.benjiegillam.com/2008/04/how-i-converted-my-4-disk-raid5-into-6-disk-super-storage/
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive#Data_transfer_rate

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Re: [Hampshire] Network speeds for diskless system

[Benjie Gillam]

On 14 Feb 2012, at 16:50, Benjie Gillam wrote:
> Assuming you've got a relatively modest hard drive in your upstairs computer 
> (not solid state/etc!), gigabit attached RAID should increase your 
> performance over your local hard drive. I did similar to you a few years 
> ago[1] and my wife's PC's file access times decreased massively - that was my 
> 6-disk SATA2 RAID vs her old IDE133 drive though. 

*Correction: my RAID was SATA1 not SATA2.

> 
> The advantages of having the RAID speed/extra layer of caching will normally 
> out-weight the advantages of having a local disk unless you have a 
> super-high-performance disk.

Heavy concurrent random access was much faster due to reads being spread over 6 
(faster) disks being read in parallel, but I would expect sustained transfer 
rate to be similar in speed to a single decent SATA1 disk. So really it depends 
what you're working with.

> 
> According to Wikipedia[2]:
>   As of 2010, a typical 7200 rpm desktop hard drive has a sustained 
> "disk-to-buffer" data transfer rate up to 1030 Mbits/sec.
> 
> I heartily encourage you to go forwards with this endeavour.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Benjie.
> 
> 
> 
> [1]: 
> http://www.benjiegillam.com/2008/04/how-i-converted-my-4-disk-raid5-into-6-disk-super-storage/
> [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive#Data_transfer_rate
> 

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[Hampshire] SQLite3

[Benjie Gillam]

Hey all,

I recently started experimenting with the Amazon Linux AMI (on AWS/EC2) - it's 
a CentOS based distribution. Unfortunately it has sqlite 3.6.20 and I need 
3.7.4+ for FTS4 features. What's my best bet - download and compile the latest 
source? Nab a more up to date package from Fedora?

Cheers,

Benjie.


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Re: [Hampshire] SQLite3

[Benjie Gillam]

Thanks Jan,

That's what I thought, I was just hoping that SQLite3 was simple enough and 
Fedora/Redhat/whatever were similar enough to CentOS that it wouldn't cause 
conflicts/dependency issues if I imported the RPM. I'll have to spawn a cloned 
AMI to do the build on then, don't want to clutter this one with build 
tools/logs/etc. Oh well :)

What I was really hoping was that someone would say "Oh, you just need to 
install it from the [name of repository] CentOS repository " :-)

Cheers,

Benjie.

On 22 Mar 2012, at 18:07, Jan Henkins wrote:

> Hello Benji,
> 
> On Thu, March 22, 2012 15:25, Benjie Gillam wrote:
>> Hey all,
>> 
>> 
>> I recently started experimenting with the Amazon Linux AMI (on AWS/EC2) -
>> it's a CentOS based distribution. Unfortunately it has sqlite 3.6.20 and
>> I need 3.7.4+ for FTS4 features. What's my best bet - download and
>> compile the latest source? Nab a more up to date package from Fedora?
> 
> Compiling from source might be an idea, especially if you do it from a
> source RPM. Then again, you might find a nice updated one in the EPEL
> repository, so that would most certainly be worth checking out. Please do
> not install Fedora RPM's directly onto the system, it will most certainly
> break stuff.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Jan Henkins
> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Is my HDD on the way out?

[Benjie Gillam]

Check out smartmontools[1] (specifically the `smartctl` binary) to access your 
hard drives S.M.A.R.T.[2] information - if that reports errors then it's likely 
your drive is failing.

Posts such as this one suggest that it may be another iffy SATA cable:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1075205

Cheers,

Benjie.

[1]: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

On 24 Mar 2012, at 20:53, Imran Chaudhry wrote:

> Is my HDD on the way out? I recently observed errors such as those in 
> screenshot here, it seems to happen intermittently:
> 
> http://db.tt/QEQa7Pxj
> 
> As it is a relatively new HDD, I replaced the SATA cable just to be sure and 
> months passed with no errors until the above which happened about week ago. 
> 
> I performed a long SMART self-test which passed with no errors reported. The 
> SMART log also listed no errors.
> 
> -- 
> GPG Key fingerprint = B323 477E F6AB 4181 9C65  F637 BC5F 7FCC 9CC9 CC7F
> 
> “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” 
> - Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
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Re: [Hampshire] Quiet and cool PC running?

[Benjie Gillam]

For anyone using thin clients, I've had great success with FreeNX in the past - 
it puts VNC to shame.

http://nomachine.com/

It's basically X over SSH, only the X protocol is compressed up to 1000x in 
places. It's truly impressive, e.g watching YouTube (with sound) over 2 ADSL 
connections.

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On 2 May 2012, at 08:20, Bob Dunlop  wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, May 01 at 10:17, Imran Chaudhry wrote:
> ...
>> of fitting an aftermarket CPU cooler, has anyone got any experience with
>> the Zalman type fan such as this:
>> http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=164
>> Do they really make a difference?
> 
> That'll help, then go after the fans in the graphics card, PSU
> Hard drives...
> 
> Once you start, you clear one thing and then hear the next.
> 
> I can recommend http://www.quietpc.com/home if you've got money but don't
> underestimate what can be achieved with simpler DIY measures.
> 
> Install and configure lm_sensors if it's not already there, then checkout
> the fancontrol scripts.  Perhaps you can slow some of your existing fans.
> 
> Use hdparm to turn off harddrives when idle, anything that saves power
> also reduces heat and the need for excessive fan speed.
> 
> Bitumen pads on the side panels of a tower case to stop them resonating
> can have a lot more effect than you would think.  You can buy special PC
> pads, or chop up some from the motor factors.
> 
> If the fans face on to a hard surface (wall) put some carpet, an old jumper
> or a cat in the way to kill the sound reflection.
> 
> 
> Ultimately have to agree with others. Use a silent low power machine where
> you are working and put the noisy grunt machine out the way somewhere.
> 
> -- 
>Bob Dunlop
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Acer Revo 3600 + Xubuntu 12.04 + Panasonic Viera 32" TV

[Benjie Gillam]

For my TV (an LG) I had to change the aspect ratio setting to "Just Scan", 
which I could do from the quick menu. There was also a setting in the ATI 
Control Panel that came with the proprietary fglrx (or whatever it's called) 
drivers called "overscan" which I had to drop from 10(%?) to 0. Then it worked 
like a charm, and these settings only affected that single HDMI port.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Benjie.

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Brain Bakery Ltd. and GymFu Ltd have registered address: 7 Duck Island Lane 
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On 8 Jun 2012, at 22:40, Sean Gibbins  wrote:

> On 08/06/12 21:00, Michael Pavling wrote:
>> Are you using the VGA or HDMI connection to your telly?
> 
> HDMI Michael, and it seems that, according to the TV manual, the instructions 
> for altering the horizontal and vertical position of the desktop only apply 
> to VGA connections unfortunately.
> 
> I think I might be able to get by with that by right-clicking on the desktop 
> to access the application menus from there, and I know a couple of guys at 
> work who use similar setups so I will quiz them on Monday if they are around.
> 
> Sean
> 
> -- 
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> 
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> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Support for touchscreens

[Benjie Gillam]

That was my first thought too, but I'm not sure how you'd go about remotely 
administering an iPad - I guess you could jailbreak it and install a VNC server 
of some kind. For remote administration I suspect Linux'd be a better bet. 

That being said, what do you really need to administer? Buttons on iPad are 
big, clear and most importantly for someone not so computer-literate the 
interface across most apps on the platform is very consistent. They only have 
one hardware button they need to worry about. There's all sorts of very well 
implemented assistive technologies in the iPad, too.

Benjie.


On 21 Jun 2012, at 11:01, Alan Pope wrote:

> On 21/06/12 10:54, Kevin Safford wrote:
>> Can anyone with experience in this area offer advice on hardware
>> and best distro - or indeed an alternative approach?
> 
> Gut reaction says "iPad". :S
> 
> Cheers,
> -- 
> Alan Pope


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Re: [Hampshire] Google Chrome and a kermel oops

[Benjie Gillam]

The newest Macs Airs are apparently suffering from this (or a similar) bug too 
- it's something to do with a Chrome graphics leak and the Intel drivers. (If 
this is related, which it sounds like it might be.)

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/google_chrome_crashes_on_macbook_air_pushes_update/

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On 30 Jun 2012, at 12:57, "Dr A. J. Trickett"  wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Has anyone else noticed that Google Chrome (release) can cause a kernel oops 
> and pretty much bring a box down?
> 
> My dad's box crashed on him this week and running Google Chrome now causes an 
> oops and X grinds to a halt and eventually the box needs a cold restart. He 
> has an Intel i915 graphics driver loaded when the oops happens.
> 
> Iceweasel is perfectly okay.
> 
> A quick Google suggests that the sandboxing may be an issue, but starting it 
> with sandbox disabled prevents a crash but then Chrome just sits around doing 
> nothing at all.
> 
> I've told him to use Iceweasel until further notice. I'll keep an eye on the 
> updated and see if one fixes it.
> 
> -- 
> Adam Trickett
> Overton, HANTS, UK
> 
> When a Microsoft product is the lesser of two evils, you know for
> sure that there's something fishy going on.
>-- anon
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Re: [Hampshire] Flash Player on Linux

[Benjie Gillam]

I've heard Chrome will be maintaining the Linux version of Flash. Good
riddance, I say.

Here's my thoughts on Flash/plugins, if you're interested:

http://www.benjiegillam.com/2012/02/a-plugin-free-web/

Cheers,

Benjie


On 2 July 2012 21:03, Chris Dennis  wrote:

> Hello Folks
>
> I've just noticed this on the Adobe web page (http://get.adobe.com/**
> flashplayer/?promoid=BUIGP
> ):
>
>   NOTE: Adobe Flash Player 11.2 will be the last version to target
>   Linux as a supported platform. Adobe will continue to provide
>   security backports to Flash Player 11.2 for Linux.
>
> Is this a problem?  Are we better off without Flash Player?  What will
> replace it -- HTML5?
>
> cheers
>
> Chris
> --
> Chris Dennis  cgden...@btinternet.com
> Fordingbridge, Hampshire, UK
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] re skype

[Benjie Gillam]

I used to restart it every few weeks when it got unstable, but didn't use it 
for VoIP much (just chat). (Ubuntu, various generations.)

On 7 Jul 2012, at 20:50, Bryn Jones  wrote:

> I'm running 2.2 and have never had any 'exciting' issues. Runs fine for days 
> under Mint 12.
> 
> Note I don't use it intensely, just forget to shut it down :)
> 
> Bryn
> 
> On 07/07/12 19:54, john wrote:
>> Hi All
>> 
>> I have used skype on linux (Ubuntu) for some time now.  I have used the beta
>> 2.2 and the skype 4.  I find I cannot use it for more than 18 minutes or so
>> before I have to close it done and restart.
>> 
>> People who use it on windows machines claim they can get more than an hour's
>> usage with no problem.
>> 
>> Is it my system or is it a linux problem.
>> 
>> John Eayrs
>> 
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> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] re skype

[Benjie Gillam]

Sounds like an issue with the webcam/driver to me - I used to have one years 
ago that'd do something similar. Try a different webcam?

On 9 Jul 2012, at 07:35, Keith Edmunds  wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 02:51:42 +0100, j...@jesoftware.freeserve.co.uk said:
> 
>> To restore the video link with good video and good sound I have to
>> excite skype
> 
> I can only imagine how you do that...
> -- 
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> 
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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] BT Vision and two routers

[Benjie Gillam]

It might be worth having a read of

http://linux-ip.net/html/adv-multi-internet.html

and the like. It talks of "split[ting] traffic arbitrarily across multiple ISPs 
for reasons like failover and to accommodate greater aggregate bandwidth than 
would be available on a single uplink." 

You might want to route all your network traffic via a single computer (running 
Linux, of course) which would act as DHCP server, and then this box routes it 
out via one of the routers. It would be able to intelligently filter all BT 
Vision traffic and only route that via the BT router, for example. Of course 
your single computer might need 3 ethernet ports unless you can configure your 
routers to use static IPs and not act as DHCP; or replace one or both routers 
with USB modems. (You can get USB<->ethernet adaptors too.)

Benjie.

On 24 Aug 2012, at 09:53, Dr A. J. Trickett wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Aug 2012 at 07:40:12AM +0100, li...@getiton.myzen.co.uk wrote:
>> Hi all
>> 
>> This is a bit convoluted and a bit techie but please bear with 
>> me.  My question boils down to: Can a BT vision box find the BT 
>> Home hub it needs if there is another router on the same LAN and 
>> that other router is not part of the btinternet network?
> 
> I think your basic problem is that you can't have two DHCP servers 
> or routers on the same subnet at the same time. If they are on 
> separate subnets and there is a router between them this it may 
> work, but even then you would need to add a route so that the two 
> routers know that the other subnet can be reached via the new 
> third router.
> 
> I maybe wrong but I would be tempted to keep the networks separate 
> from each other, but if you need to combine them then you could 
> use a single Linux box to act as a router, taking all input from 
> router A into one ethernet port, all input from router B into a 
> second ethernet port and all the rest of your network being 
> connected to a third port on the box. Linux should be able to 
> "bind" the two network together.
> 
> 
>> For various reasons, I've been trying to build a home network that has a 
>> backup if one of our broadband connections fails.   As such, we have two 
>> phone lines and a different broadband connection down each - therefore two 
>> routers: one btinternet, one zen.
>> 
>> A mate gave me a free BT vision box yesterday and said all I needed to do 
>> was plug it in and, providing I have bt total broadband (which I do), all 
>> would be well - not so.   When I plugged it all in, it didn't work (error 
>> code C03 fwiw which is some sort of connection problem from googling) but my 
>> first suspicion was that it had picked up the zen router not the bt home hub 
>> - which was exactly what had happened.   Having quickly separated the two, I 
>> got it 
>> connected directly to the bt home hub and indeed it picked up its IP address 
>> from there - but still wouldn't go any further (error C03 again).   It turns 
>> out that I need to subscribe to BT Vision (so my mate was wrong!) which I 
>> don't mind at ?4 per month but without (presumably? disabling dhcp server on 
>> the zen router) I can't force the bt vision+ box to "find" the bt home hub 
>> as it doesn't seem
>> to have a manual IP configuration.   Unless, that is, the bt vision+ box is 
>> clever enough to find the bt home hub in another way.   The fact that my 
>> first test last night saw it pickup an ip address from my zen router makes 
>> me think the vision box expects only one router on the network and
>> that router has to be the bt home hub.
>> 
>> Anybody know anything on this one?
>> 
>> In principle, I don't mind disbaling dhcp on the zen router - I think I know 
>> how to get most devices to have static ip addresses and gateways (ps3, ipad, 
>> laptops) but not sure about things like kindles.   The minor issue might be 
>> that zen is Fibre so disabling dhcp on the zen router would mean the only 
>> dhcp server would be on the bt homehub - which is a slower connection (and 
>> I'm not paying for
>> two fibre connections - you can take single point of failure too far!!).
>> 
>> Sorry I've waffled a bit - couldn't really see how to explain any more 
>> quickly.
>> 
>> Cheers
>> Rob
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
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> 
> -- 
> Adam Trickett
> Overton, HANTS, UK
> 
> I never really understood how there could be things that would
> drive you insane just because you knew them until I ran into Windows. 
>   -- anon
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Backups with Amazon Glacier

[Benjie Gillam]

I would like to know the same. Personally I use s3cmd to sync my photos to s3. 
Amazon have said that they will be adding s3 <--> glacier support soon so you 
could use s3 for a full current revision and glacier for point in time backups. 
This'd be very expensive though with s3 costing 12.5 times glacier. Slightly 
cheaper is the reduced redundancy store, bit still...

My current plan is to just do a few big tar files of various subjects 
(Documents/Photos/Development/etc), encrypt and upload once a month. In between 
times could use tar's incremental features, though I have no experience with 
them.

http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Incremental-Dumps.html

--
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Founder: FitFu.com, GymFu.com



Brain Bakery Ltd. and GymFu Ltd have registered address: 7 Duck Island Lane 
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respectively

On 24 Aug 2012, at 17:37, Anton Piatek  wrote:

> Has anyone had a good look at Glacier? http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/
> At $0.011 per GB/month to store data, and quite low transfer fees, it looks 
> like a great way to backup large volumes such as all my raw digital photos.
> 
> What I am not clear on is whether it is geared to backing up 15k files, or if 
> I need to work out some form of archive of them. If I need to build up a 
> small number of large archives, is there good software available to help me 
> track what has already been archived and uploaded, and what is new/changed 
> and therefore needs to be built into a new archive. Given the pricing, actual 
> diffs probably arent that worthwhile so long as I can get it all back again 
> in the end.
> 
> Anton
> 
> -
> Anton Piatek 
> email: an...@piatek.co.uk 
> blog/photos: http://www.strangeparty.com 
> gpg: [74B1FA37] (http:// www.strangeparty.com/anton.asc)
> 
> No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a 
> significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
> 
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[Hampshire] [OT] Southampton Hackerspace Survey

[Benjie Gillam]

Apologies for the cross-post but I'm aware that there are a number of people on 
this list who are into hacking/making/tinkering. 

We're trying to get a Southampton Hacker/Makerspace off the ground, so we're 
about to start talks with Southampton University regarding potential early 
support. If you like making, modding or tinkering (be that software, hardware, 
textiles, Art, ...), could you take between 20 seconds and 3 minutes out to 
fill in our survey? Only the first 2 questions are required.

http://southackton.org.uk/2012/09/07/southackton-survey-2012/

If you know anyone else who would be interested, please forward the survey on 
to them!

The post above links to the survey, it also has a map showing the locations of 
the nearest hackerspaces, confirming that a Southampton hackerspace could be 
great for everyone in the surrounding area - not just people living in 
Southampton! The post also contains Wikipedia's definition of a hackerspace, in 
case you're not familiar with the term.

Thanks, and sorry for the interruption,

Benjie.--
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Re: [Hampshire] Correction - was:Re: [OT] Southampton Hackerspace Survey

[Benjie Gillam]

Hi Lisi,

Sorry, I meant to say "London, Reading and Brighton" (London being the largest, 
I believe) - the map image in the blog post (linked from the survey) clearly 
shows Reading, so this was just an accidental transcription error on my part.

As regards Surrey and Hampshire Hackspace - like Southackton they don't yet 
have an actual hackspace, they're a group of hackers/makers who meet 
frequently. Like them, we're trying to set up a permanent hackspace, but 
neither of us yet have one (at least, according to their wiki). I've not put 
Southackton in the list of closest hackerspaces to Southampton either, as we, 
also, are not yet a hackspace - the whole point of the survey!

We sourced our data from hackerspaces.org which is the go-to wiki for 
hackerspaces across the world.

http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

Cheers,

Benjie.



On 9 Sep 2012, at 12:13, hants...@googlemail.com wrote:

> On Sunday 09 September 2012 10:22:16 Benjie Gillam wrote:
>> Apologies for the cross-post but I'm aware that there are a number of
>> people on this list who are into hacking/making/tinkering.
>> 
>> We're trying to get a Southampton Hacker/Makerspace off the ground, so
>> we're about to start talks with Southampton University regarding potential
>> early support. If you like making, modding or tinkering (be that software,
>> hardware, textiles, Art, ...), could you take between 20 seconds and 3
>> minutes out to fill in our survey? Only the first 2 questions are required.
>> 
>> http://southackton.org.uk/2012/09/07/southackton-survey-2012/
>> 
>> If you know anyone else who would be interested, please forward the survey
>> on to them!
>> 
>> The post above links to the survey, it also has a map showing the locations
>> of the nearest hackerspaces, confirming that a Southampton hackerspace
>> could be great for everyone in the surrounding area - not just people
>> living in Southampton! The post also contains Wikipedia's definition of a
>> hackerspace, in case you're not familiar with the term.
>> 
>> Thanks, and sorry for the interruption,
>> 
>> Benjie.
> 
> This sounded an interesting project, so I looked at the survey.  
> Unfortunately 
> it starts with misinformation.  
> 
> It claims that the nearest hackspaces are in Bristol and London.  This is 
> simply not true.  There is a flourishing hackspace in Reading and a very 
> healthy, though as yet homeless, new hackspace specifically called "Surrey 
> **and Hampshire** Hackspace" (my stars).  This is currently meeting in Ash 
> Vale, near Farnborough.  And there may well be others of which I am unaware.
> 
> Lisi
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Correction - was:Re: [OT] Southampton Hackerspace Survey

[Benjie Gillam]

The point of the survey is not to attract new members but instead to gauge
the level of interest for a Southampton-based hackerspace. The survey would
still be perfectly valid even if Southackton had not had any meetings or
interest before this point.

That being said, question 1 asks how many Southackton meetups you've
attended (implying, I think, that Southackton have had meetups). The survey
links to the blog[1], which has many links to further information about
Southackton as a group if you're inclined to read more. We're not a recent
group looking to "poach" members from SHH - a click on our archives page
will reveal that we've been around and having meetups since 2009, and if it
so pleased you, you would be able to read about these meetings (though not
all our documented). Our mailing list, over on Google Groups[2], has over
150 members.

I wish SHH much luck in setting up a hackerspace, the more the merrier! I
think most people involved in the setting up and running of hackerspaces
get excited when they see new hackerspaces setting up in nearby cities, as
it allows their member bases to get together for big events, they can share
technology and resources and generally do things within the hackerspace
spirit; like, for example, the Brighton Mini Maker Faire yesterday. It
concerns me that you feel there is competition between them - these are not
commercial ventures - they are not-for-profit groups ran for the betterment
of all. I think every city in the world should have a hackerspace, and I'm
concentrating on trying to set one up in Southampton, where I live.

If you feel I could have worded things better, are interested in a
Southampton hackerspace, and wish to take part in future then I encourage
you to get involved! Like most Linux developers, we don't get paid for
this, we're doing it off our own backs, and this kind of negativity can be
extremely discouraging. Interest, kind words, and constructive criticism
can however be very motivating.

Regards,

Benjie.

[1]: http://southackton.org.uk/
[2]: https://groups.google.com/group/southackton


On 9 September 2012 16:03,  wrote:

> On Sunday 09 September 2012 15:51:22 Dave Walker wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 2:18 PM,  wrote:
> > > Thanks, Benjie for your reply.
> > >
> > > On Sunday 09 September 2012 12:50:35 Benjie Gillam wrote:
> > > > As regards Surrey and Hampshire Hackspace - like Southackton they
> don't
> > >
> > > yet
> > >
> > > > have an actual hackspace, they're a group of hackers/makers who meet
> > > > frequently
> > >
> > > There has been no mention of anything to suggest that you are already
> > > meeting,
> > > let alone when and where, which are surely necessary if you are to
> > > attract new members.  SHH is already doing a small amount of hacking,
> > > although that is necessarily limited by the lack of a permanent home.
> > >
> > > It also is trying to build up its membership, which you clearly are not
> > > yet doing.  So it is more advanced than you are in the process of
> setting
> > > up.
> > >
> > > Lisi
>
> > Having not looked at hantslug list for some time, and returning to see
> the
> > traditional negativity this list provides; I remember exactly why I
> stopped
> > following it.
>
> It seems more than somewhat unfair to blame HantsLUG for what you perceive
> as
> my negativity.
>
> > Why can't there be a little more constructive help?
>
> Erm...  I filled in his survey and answered the questions as accurately
> and as
> helpfully as I could.  I protested because Benjie seemed to me to be aiming
> at poaching members from another fledgeling group.  It has regular meetings
> in a private room and is actively seeking permanent premises.   The
> omission
> of Reading seems to have been a genuine error, but he still omitted it - to
> his advantage.
>
> Any errors I made are mine alone and in no way the fault of HantsLUG.
>
> Lisi
>
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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Southampton Hackerspace Survey

[Benjie Gillam]

Hi Tim,

Sounds like you make some very interesting stuff! I'll certainly be sure to
post here again when we're having a show and tell event if you'd be
interested in presenting something you've done?

Our intention is to set up a dedicated space where members can come and go
as they please 24/7 (or as close to that as we can manage) and use any of
the resources in the space to work on their projects or collaborate with
other members. Ultimately we'd like the space to have everything you would
need to create things, for example: welders, sanders, various tools, CNC
machines, 3D printing/RepRap machines, soldering irons, sewing machines, a
darkroom, projector, computers, cables, electronic components, etc etc etc.
What we actually put in the space (if/when we get one) will depend on where
the interests of the paying members lie, how much money the space has spare
after rent/bills and what the space itself allows (e.g. ventilation, health
and safety, etc).

The space is also likely to run events such as you suggest (for members and
non-members alike), and these events are likely to focus on a wide range of
topics. It'll be a long time before we have anything comparable to
Noisebridge in San Francisco (they have the implicit advantage of being
based in tech/creator heavy San Fran after all!) but you might be
interested in having a look at their site to imagine what we might offer:

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge

Personally, I'm interested in learning to do all sorts of electrical things
(I don't know much more than my GCSE electronics taught me, and most of
that I've forgotten) - especially remote control robots and (even better)
autonomous ones.

You might consider discussing some of your projects on the SoHa mailing
list - especially the more technical parts that you think might bore
HantsLUG members ;)

Cheers,

Benjie.

On 9 September 2012 17:35, Tim Brocklehurst wrote:

> On Sunday 09 Sep 2012 10:22:16 Benjie Gillam wrote:
> > Apologies for the cross-post but I'm aware that there are a number of
> > people on this list who are into hacking/making/tinkering.
>
>
> Just thought I would respond, as I sort of feel targeted by what the
> hackerspaces are trying to do. Those who know me will be aware that I am
> interested in Linux on servers and in HPC, but also for intrumentation and
> control purposes. They will also know that I mess about with boats (model
> and
> full-size) and aircraft (model only).
>
> So you would be right in thinking that I would be interested in meeting to
> discuss ideas; in fact, that's what I do at HantsLUG meetings, I'm just a
> bit
> selective about my subject matter to avoid boring the pants of everyone in
> the
> room.
>
> Now, the small problem I have is that in order to achieve most of the
> projects
> I undertake is the multi-disciplinary nature of the stuff I do. It tends to
> involve a lot of detail in both "soft" and "hard" engineering, and a
> massive
> investment of time. A model build taking a few months is not unusual.
>
> The problem, however, is only partly time (and cost of attendance). I
> think a
> lot of us can handle a once-a-month meeting, but more often just wouldn't
> be
> possible. The real problem comes in terms of the disperate nature of tasks
> that people would be interested in undertaking. Is it going to be focussed
> on
> robotics? UAVs? UUVs? Home automation? and what tooling do you need to
> achieve
> that? For my current project, I'm on basic electronics, composites and
> computer aided design!
>
> So, I would like to make a suggestion. When a request for talks is
> published,
> think whether you could give a talk on the project you're currently doing.
> There are a lot of people on the list who can advise on (and are interested
> in) disciplines other than Linux on servers. Personally, I would like to
> see
> LUG members bring more than just "soft" topics to talks. The hackerspace
> serves a different purpose to the LUG, but not everyone might wish (or
> need) to
> join a second group.
>
> The views expressed herein are purely my own, and may not be
> representative of
> others.
>
> Tim B.
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Correction - was:Re: [OT] Southampton Hackerspace Survey

[Benjie Gillam]

Also another of Southackton's members, Adam Groves, was interviewed by Zoe
Kleinman on BBC Radio Solent in mid 2011. We've also done various other
things to try and attract attention. I didn't think it was appropriate to
promote SoutHACKton on the HantsLUG mailing list previously for fear of
being spammy - it is a Linux User Group and not a hardware hacker group
after all :)

On 9 September 2012 19:41, Tony Whitmore  wrote:

> On 09/09/12 16:54, hants...@googlemail.com wrote:
>
>> But one would need to know that it existed surely to look at its
>> website?  So I stand by the assertion that they have not made active
>> efforts
>> to increase their membership.
>>
>
> The same could be said of the LUG and many other community groups.
>
> That said, we interviewed Anton Piatek (long time HantsLUG and Southackton
> member) about the group on the Ubuntu Podcast last year:
>
> http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/**2011/09/28/s04e16-fates-**warning/
>
>
>
> --
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Re: [Hampshire] Linux on a G4 Mac Mini

[Benjie Gillam]

Are you sure you burned the CD correctly - as an image and not just adding
the ISO to the disk (you can see by viewing it in another computer - there
should be lots of files - not just one)?

You could try booting the Mac into target disk mode and mounting it to
another computer over FireWire and installing it that way?

You might be able to install it under Mac directly, after partitioning, by
using a suitably advanced VM. I'm not sure what the old Macs support but
Parallels let's me run my Boot camp partition under OSX without having to
reboot (rebooting works too - very useful!)
On 18 Sep 2012 21:12, "Sean Gibbins"  wrote:

> On 18/09/12 20:46, Jan Henkins wrote:
>
>> As far as I can tell, there is a G4 PowerPC version of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
>> available. Otherwise you could look at Debian.
>>
>
> There's a 12.04 LTS PowerPC version available too Jan.
>
> I have both that and the Debian port, but as I say lack the ability to
> boot off of the CD/DVD drive, which fails to respond when I press c at the
> boot noise (as most guides seems state it should), and simply boots into
> the installed OS instead. The boot media is readable once I am up and
> running in OS X, so it seems the drive is at least partially functional.
>
> Thanks for the links and advice from all who responded thus far - I can
> see I have a lot more reading to do and the desired quick fix (Ellen
> returns to uni in a couple of days) is not likely to be forthcoming!
>
> Sean
>
> --
> music, film, comics, books, rants and drivel:
>
> www.funkygibbins.me.uk
>
>
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Re: [Hampshire] Build woes

[Benjie Gillam]

You've probably sorted this by now, but I normally just reset the CMOS when 
this happens - saves inserting gfx, booting, ejecting gfx, booting, swearing at 
it still not working. 

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Re: [Hampshire] [ADMIN][IMP-HACK]

[Benjie Gillam]

On 18 Oct 2012, at 08:48, Anton Piatek wrote:
> We could perhaps try and combine any of the meetups where there are
> overlaps - Southackton recently had a hack day and there would have
> been space for people to turn up and talk about linux hacking rather
> than just robotics and 3d printers.

There was a fair bit of software hacking going on as well - e.g. one of the 
groups was working on the server side of SotonBus[1], another on unrelated 
iPhone app programming - not to mention that devices like Arduino use the GCC 
toolchain - so I think there could easily be overlap. 

I'm planning on running a programming event via SoutHACKton in the next couple 
of months, and everyone knows the best IDE is *nix... Just gotta find somewhere 
willing to host us with a decent internet connection...

[1]: https://twitter.com/sotonbus

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Re: [Hampshire] upnp

[Benjie Gillam]

I've used 

http://www.tvmobili.com/

before - it's cross platform. It is not open source and I don't fully trust it 
so ran it under a separate user account but it seems to work.

Not sure on a FLOSS alternative - I think DLNA has license fees?

B.

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On 24 Oct 2012, at 18:35, Anton Piatek  wrote:

> Any dlna experience on linux? I wondered about their relationship, sadly my 
> tv isn't networked.
> 
> Anton 
> -- 
> Anton Piatek 
> (sent from my phone, please excuse any typos) 
> http://www.strangeparty.com
> 
> No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a 
> significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
> 
> On Oct 24, 2012 6:28 PM, "Benjie Gillam"  wrote:
>> You might want to look at DLNA too (it's built on top of UPnP) - thats where 
>> renderer/server/controller/etc are defined and often helps solve these 
>> issues I've found.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Benjie
>> 
>> --
>> Sent from my iPhone, so please forgive spelling/brevity.
>> 
>> www.BenjieGillam.com
>> Founder: FitFu.com, GymFu.com
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Brain Bakery Ltd. and GymFu Ltd have registered address: 7 Duck Island Lane 
>> BH24 3AA. Registered in England and Wales, Company Numbers: 5849251 and 
>> 7022440 respectively
>> 
>> On 24 Oct 2012, at 16:32, Anton Piatek  wrote:
>> 
>>> I have been playing with upnp lately and by using media tomb on my linux 
>>> box I can make all audio, video and pictures available on my phone and 
>>> tablet, which is cool. Unfortunately (unsurprisingly?) Microsoft buggered 
>>> up the upnp protocol on the xbox so it can't find media. 
>>> My phone also has a upnp server, so I can share files from there too. It 
>>> also appears that upnp allows ayback to another device, which sounds cool.
>>> 
>>> This brings me to my question. Is there any linux software that cab be a 
>>> upnp playback target or renderer so that I can use my phone to browse media 
>>> (stored on my phone, tablet or pc) and have the playback happen on my linux 
>>> pc which is connected to my tv and hifi?
>>> 
>>> Anton 
>>> -- 
>>> Anton Piatek 
>>> (sent from my phone, please excuse any typos) 
>>> http://www.strangeparty.com
>>> 
>>> No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a 
>>> significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
>>> 
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[Hampshire] Raspberry Pi/Linux/Home Automation - EVE Kickstarter

[Benjie Gillam]

Kickstarter for a control-everything-wireless board (backpack/shield) for the 
RasPi - may be of interest?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ciseco/eve-alpha-raspberry-pi-wireless-development-hardwa

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2344

If you like Raspberry Pis and you're interested in home automation or remote 
control then this could be a great addition for you. I've gone for the 
"Pre-built EVE alpha" which has both a 868MHz and 443MHz radio onboard, and I'm 
planning to use it for controlling my LightwaveRF devices initially, and expand 
in future to other devices too.

Cheers,

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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu Unity

[Benjie Gillam]

A few more data points:

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

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

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

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

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On 8 Nov 2012, at 22:37, Gordon Scott  wrote:

> 
> It isn't just me.
> 
> I've been trying to warm to Unity and had pretty much given up.
> 
> I'd set-up my wife's account in Unity to see how a less computer-savvy person 
> gets on with the interface.
> She does just mail, web, and very occasional WP, so nothing special.
> 
> Today she rebelled and declared it 'stupid'.
> 
> For her also, menus on the screen top-bar were so counter-intuitive that she 
> thought they'd been removed.
> 
> So now, for the moment at least, we've both reverted to Gnome.
> 
> Personally I'll likely now switch to an fvwm set-up, which I always 
> preferred, only having changed to Gnome to 'go with the flow'.
> 
> Sorry Alan, but we both strongly dislike Unity.
> 
> Gordon.
> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] DVB Tuners

[Benjie Gillam]

I had a MythTV system set up with 4 tuners for a long time. Unfortunately I've 
had to move to cable/TiVo now which means better TV but terrible interface (in 
comparison to MythTV). Worked fine in Ringwood, Gosport and various locations 
in Soton.

I still have a couple on Freecom USB sticks - you're welcome to borrow them 
(for 6+ months) if you want - they worked under a 2.4 and 2.6 kernel but I've 
not tried them for a couple of years.

No idea if they support HD; there was no Freeview HD when I used them.

I'm in Maybush, Soton if you want to collect. I'll even lend you an aerial 
splitter/booster and some cables if you want :)

Benjie


On 9 Nov 2012, at 20:52, "Dr A. J. Trickett"  wrote:

> Hi,
>  
> Every now and then I think I may get a DVB tuner for my computer. Now that 
> Hannington has been upgraded to HD I could even watch/record stuff in HD (in 
> theory) on my computer - our TV is still ye olde CRT.
>  
> The Hauppauge PCTV Systems DVB-T2 290e nanoStick HD is apparently supported 
> in Linux on 3.0 Kernel and above. It's also not so expensive on Amazon and 
> other online retailers.
>  
> Questions:
>  
> 1) Do these kind of devices actually work? is the signal strength in 
> Hampshire strong enough to get a decent picture without a proper external 
> aerial? We can see the Hannington transmitter clearly from our house and our 
> set-top DVB tuner has always claimed excellent signal strength.
>  
> 2) Other than the kernel module, what other software is required? I see that 
> both VLC and Kaffeine offer up digital TV as a video source.
>  
> 3) What kind of CPU/GPU is required to render HD video? My desktop PC is a 
> first generation AMD64 and the graphics card is a last generation basic AGP 
> graphics card, so neither are whizzy by modern standard. They can playback 
> MP4 files downloaded from the BBC fine but I wouldn't describe the playback 
> as perfect.
>  
> 4) I'm in no way attached the USB device I suggested and would welcome 
> comments about it and of alternatives.
>  
> As ever, thanks in advance.
>  
> --
> Adam Trickett
> Overton, HANTS, UK
>  
> A man is known by the books he reads.
> -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
>  
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Re: [Hampshire] Remote wipe of Linux systems

[Benjie Gillam]

http://preyproject.com/ comes to mind. 

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

For a typical thief encryption is sufficient, but if someone is determined to 
get your data you might want to add additional precautions.

I would never use a laptop without encryption these days - just the amount your 
web browser caches about you is enough to worry me about someone stealing that 
data, even if I never store passwords/etc.

Benjie.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3484859

On 14 Nov 2012, at 09:34, Victor Churchill wrote:

> 
> 
> On 14 November 2012 09:30, Michael Pavling  wrote:
> On 14 November 2012 09:25, Tony Whitmore  wrote:
> Are there any options for remote wiping Linux systems, in the case of them 
> being lost or stolen? I'm sure that some funky trigger mechanism could be set 
> up using dyndns and SSH, but I was looking for something that would scale to 
> a larger number of devices.
> 
> If you're using Linux, and are concerned for your local machine's data, it 
> would probably be better to encrypt your partitions rather than rely on some 
> tool to lock the stable door.
> 
> Encrypted partitions don't suffer from the flaws of "remote wipe" software.
> - no accidental wipes
> - no need for the machine to be online to receive a signal
> - no risk of drives being slaved to other machines
> 
> ... oh, but there is something so Evil Doctor  about a remote wipe ... 
> mwahahahaaa  :)
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Re: [Hampshire] OT: broadband router with DNS....

[Benjie Gillam]

On 21 Nov 2012, at 16:24, 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.

I had to flash one of my Virgin Media routers (a Netgear one, I think) with 
DD-WRT because it was so unstable (requiring a reboot every 1-3 weeks). DD-WRT 
was fantastically stable by comparison - it had well over 200 days uptime at 
one point... and then we had a power cut. I've since had that modem/router 
combo replaced with a SuperHub*

* they're really not that Super, believe me. If it wasn't gigabit I'd just use 
it as a modem and hook the old DD-WRT router back up.
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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Equality Act 2010 compliance

[Benjie Gillam]

On 26 Nov 2012, at 16:45, Lisi wrote:
> I can't be the only person 
> who takes one look at some websites, says well, if they don't want me, then I 
> don't want them - and surfs away without looking.

Sight issues aside, I do that to websites that overly use Flash, or require it 
to do things that HTML is quite capable of doing (e.g. pressing a 
button/drawing an image...)
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Re: [Hampshire] Communications Data Bill

[Benjie Gillam]

I think a Diffie-Hellman key exchange would mean even if you surrender your 
passwords/certificates/etc they still can't decode previously captured network 
data. Though I think it only works for "real time" communications where the key 
is destroyed after the communication has completed (e.g. SSL), so it'd protect 
you from man in the middle attacks when sending email to a trusted server, but 
it's not useful for storing said data securely.

If my understanding of the above is incorrect I would be interested to know - 
cryptography is not my strong suit.

Benjie

On 14 Dec 2012, at 15:44, Gordon Scott  wrote:

> On Fri, 2012-12-14 at 14:53 +, Lisi wrote:
>> On Friday 14 December 2012 10:28:46 Gordon Scott wrote:
>>> Maybe I'll start encrypting all my email.
>>> Then they'd just get bored and ignore it :-)
>> 
>> Or use their draconian powers (already enshrined in law?) to demand your 
>> password.  Not giving the information is a criminal offence, with a penalty 
>> of 2(?) years in prison.  It is also an absolute offence, so "I don't know" 
>> is not a defence (even if true), nor is "It isn't encrypted".  When asked 
>> for 
>> your password for a computer or its drives, you have to give the 
>> information, 
>> whether a password actually exists or not.
>> 
>> These days I say nothing in an email, if I would be distressed if what I say 
>> were to be circulated or spied on.
>> 
>> Lisi
>> 
> 
> ...which risks take the fun out of making a large file of random
> numbers, encrypting it, and sending it to a Nigerian-Scam sender, marked
> "Here's the information you need". :-)
> 
> BTW, I _was_ also joking in my earlier mail.
> I suspect sending encrypted email is pretty much a guarantee of
> generating some interest.
> 
> G.
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Communications Data Bill

[Benjie Gillam]

I think it's true. Here's an explanation:

http://www.commandlineisking.com/2009/10/wire-shark-can-decrypt-ssl-traffic.html?m=1

Particularly of interest:

It doesn't have enough information to derive the pre-master secret. It doesn't 
know about the secret keys of either party, as those are never sent across the 
network, only the public keys, and other Diffie-Hellman parameters have been 
sent across the wire. So again, it can't derive the pre-master secret and 
ultimately derive the encryption key(s).

Also, those private keys are considered ephemeral, that is they are not stored 
anywhere, so after the key exchange and the session is over they will likely 
(hopefully) be destroyed never to be used again, and, in this case you'll 
gainPerfect Forward Secrecy.

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On 14 Dec 2012, at 21:07, Peter Collins  wrote:

> On 14/12/12 16:53, Benjie Gillam wrote:
>> I think a Diffie-Hellman key exchange would mean even if you surrender your 
>> passwords/certificates/etc they still can't decode previously captured 
>> network data. Though I think it only works for "real time" communications 
>> where the key is destroyed after the communication has completed (e.g. SSL), 
>> so it'd protect you from man in the middle attacks when sending email to a 
>> trusted server, but it's not useful for storing said data securely.
>> 
> 
> If this was true then it would prove that the CDB was useless and anyone
> who was exchanging information of a sensitive nature could do so with
> much hassle.
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Communications Data Bill

[Benjie Gillam]

D-H is only one of the many methods SSL can use, generally it is used with DSA 
keys. There are modes of SSL that can be decrypted afterwards - e.g. those 
using RSA keys, and I think these are currently more common. 

Tivo has recently switched it's device APIs to using D-H SSL which is making it 
hard for me to... review the traffic. You know - for privacy reasons...

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On 14 Dec 2012, at 21:29, Anton Piatek  wrote:

> Funnily enough, this is exactly the way SSL work iirc, and is the point of 
> it...
> 
> Anton 
> -- 
> Anton Piatek 
> (sent from my phone, please excuse any typos) 
> http://www.strangeparty.com
> 
> No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a 
> significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
> 
> On 14 Dec 2012 21:07, "Peter Collins"  wrote:
>> On 14/12/12 16:53, Benjie Gillam wrote:
>> > I think a Diffie-Hellman key exchange would mean even if you surrender 
>> > your passwords/certificates/etc they still can't decode previously 
>> > captured network data. Though I think it only works for "real time" 
>> > communications where the key is destroyed after the communication has 
>> > completed (e.g. SSL), so it'd protect you from man in the middle attacks 
>> > when sending email to a trusted server, but it's not useful for storing 
>> > said data securely.
>> >
>> 
>> If this was true then it would prove that the CDB was useless and anyone
>> who was exchanging information of a sensitive nature could do so with
>> much hassle.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
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Re: [Hampshire] Best hardware for HTPC

[Benjie Gillam]

On 7 Jan 2013, at 13:11, Peter Salisbury  
wrote:

>  I find all this 'you may have bought it but we'll tell you how
> to use it' stuff SO annoying. 

With most blu-rays, DVDs and music these days you don't buy them. You license 
them.
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Re: [Hampshire] Best hardware for HTPC

[Benjie Gillam]

Sorry, my son sent this whilst I was seeing to the newborn!

I meant to say you effectively license them, with all the small print, 
restrictions, etc etc I don't think it can be said that you own them in the 
same way you own a sofa.

Benjie

On 7 Jan 2013, at 13:17, Benjie Gillam  wrote:

> On 7 Jan 2013, at 13:11, Peter Salisbury 
>  wrote:
> 
>> I find all this 'you may have bought it but we'll tell you how
>> to use it' stuff SO annoying.
> 
> With most blu-rays, DVDs and music these days you don't buy them. You license 
> them.

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Re: [Hampshire] Hostnames

[Benjie Gillam]

Try adding ".local" to the existing hostnames now to invoke mDNS/Zeroconf - 
e.g. `ping hostname2.local` . If you don't have it installed it's just a `sudo 
apt-get install avahi-daemon` or similar away. When I had a Linux DHCP server 
at home it Just Worked(TM), but that was a few years ago now. You have to 
install avahi-daemon on each linux machine, it works automatically on Macs 
(because they invented Bonjour), and on Windows it works if you install the 
Bonjour tools I think.

DHCP/bind integration is the better solution (and only requires software 
installed in one place, and only once) but zeroconf is (was) considerably 
easier. It may even already work!

On 29 Jan 2013, at 15:29, Tony Whitmore  wrote:

> Hi Leo,
> 
> On 2013-01-29 15:25, Leo wrote:
>> With the increasing number of computers I seem to be acquiring it's
>> getting a bit of a pain to manage hostnames/ips. I have an old
>> computer running debian acting as a firewall and dhcp server though.
>> So I was wondering is there some way I can get it to record the
>> hostnames of the computers it gives ips to? So that if I:
>> ping hostname2
>> from the computer called hostname1 it won't go looking on the
>> internet for hostname2 (as it currently does)?
> 
> It's totally possible to integrate DHCP and DNS. You don't mention which 
> distro, but assuming it's Ubuntu, check this out:
> 
> http://askubuntu.com/questions/162265/how-to-setup-dhcp-server-and-dynamic-dns-with-bind
> 
> The guide will probably apply to Debian too.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tony
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] HD activity

[Benjie Gillam]

iotop is great for diagnosing disk I/O :)

On 3 Feb 2013, at 19:28, "Rob Malpass"  wrote:

> Hi all
>  
> For some reason, the external drive that my media centre has all its stuff on 
> has just started working really hard.   I’m not sure whether I should be 
> worried but my **ix is very much basic so could someone help me zero in on 
> what might be causing this.
>  
> The server currently has no windows open
> Uptime reveals 0.35, 0.47 and 0.25
> Finger reveals only two users logged in (me from ssh on another box and me on 
> console)
>  
> Normally at this stage, I’d do a netstat –a and or a ps aux to find out 
> what’s using the CPU and network but having done both, I see a lot of stuff I 
> can’t interpret (for example CPU processes enclosed in square brackets) and 
> besides which, as I’m in gnome on the desktop, I’d assume these are all 
> required processes.  
>  
> What other checks should I be doing?
>  
> …and while on the subject, I need to tie down this machine’s firewall a bit 
> better.   Using ufw, I want a rule which allows any sort of access from my 
> subnet (and obviously nothing beyond) – can anyone give me the syntax?
>  
> Cheers
> Rob
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Re: [Hampshire] Raspberry Pi Questions

[Benjie Gillam]

A loaded Raspberry Pi model B sucks down about 700-750mA, or more if you've 
hooked up particularly current-hungry USB devices to it. The USB specification 
states that USB devices should demand no more than 500mA, and many computer 
sockets/hubs will automatically disconnect devices that suck down more power 
than this - especially if the device doesn't do proper USB power negotiation. 
Some cheaper USB hubs (and some more expensive ones too) don't have per-socket 
regulation so you can suck the full 2A (or whatever they provide) out of just 
one, but I would not recommend it as a long term solution - the Pi is 
notoriously unstable when it's not connected to a decent power supply. Many 
computers provide more than 500mA per socket, but this cannot be relied upon.

Some USB hubs deliberately have a high current port - these are normally 
highlighted for charging iPads and the like. Otherwise standard tablet/phone 
chargers that plug into the wall work quite well - I'd advise checking that 
these provide at least 800mA before using it. I'm using a 2.1A Nexus 7 charger 
for my RPi and it works wonderfully.

Hope this helps,

Benjie.

On 5 Feb 2013, at 10:59, "Chris. Aubrey-Smith"  wrote:

> 
> 
> On 5 February 2013 09:44, Paul Tansom  wrote:
> ** Dr A. J. Trickett  [2013-02-04 20:22]:
> > Having actually seen and photographed a Raspberry Pi I think I'm sold on the
> > idea of them. I currently have an Ethernet switch under the TV, spare power
> > and a CRT (composite TV input) though I do plan to replace it with a flat TV
> > of some sorts eventually (HDMI input).
> >
> > It seems to make sense that a RPi Model B makes sense, it would be small,
> > silent and fun - it appeals to my inner geek. I've a few questions:
> >
> > 1) Where is the best place to get one? Maplin or Farnell or RS?
> >
> > 2) What else does it need?
> >   An SD card for the OS and local storage
> >   A case
> >   A USB power supply
> >   A USB keyboard and mouse if you want to drive it directly
> ** end quote [Dr A. J. Trickett]
>  
> I've been keeping a careful check on costs: (lifted from a spreadsheet)
> 
> Raspberry Pi Costs 
> ---   
> 
> No.ItemCostNotes
> 
> 1Model 'B' Hardware Kit£33.89
> 2Pre-loaded 16Gb SD Card£13.99
> 3Wireless LAN USB Plug£9.99
> 4User Guide£9.09
> 5Case£5.65
> 6Power Supply£4.99*Could be powered via USB
> 7USB Adapter for Keyboard£0.00(From stock)
> 8HDMI Display Cable£0.00(From stock)
> 9USB Hub£0.00(From stock)
> 10Display£0.00(From stock)
> 11Keyboard (PS2 Plug)£0.00(From stock)
> 12Mouse£0.00(From stock)
> 
>  Incidentally, if you have a powered USB hub, the R-Pi doesn't need a 
> separate power supply.
> 
> I didn't really need the pre-loaded SD card, but I thought it would 'smooth 
> the way'.
> 
> The only problem I've had concerned the keyboard (one is warned about this!) 
> I didn't have a spare USB keyboard so I had to resort to one with a miniature 
> DIN plug and the adapter as listed.
> 
> I'm mightily impressed by the whole thing!
> 
> Chris
> 
> 
> Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk
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> 
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Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice

[Benjie Gillam]

The TV I bought way back in '08 runs Linux beneath the hood. I didn't know this 
until I noticed all the legal notices at the end of the instruction manual... 
I've not tried hacking into it yet, waiting until I can afford to replace it...

On 14 Feb 2013, at 15:06, j...@osml.eu wrote:

> On 2013-02-13 17:31, Lisi wrote:
>> On Wednesday 13 February 2013 22:02:32 Alan Pope wrote:
>>> I recently (1.5 years ago) installed Ubuntu for a retired chap who had
>>> only ever used Windows. He requested it because he was sick of viruses
>>> and slow-downs of Windows. I printed out a getting started guide and
>>> allocated ~2 hours to walk him through the basics of Ubuntu.
>> 
>> When I installed and set up Linux for my husband, the original technophobe, I
>> printed out a sheet of instructions which included things like "turn it on at
>> the socket on the wall.  The socket has a red sticker on it." and "take out
>> your Wisden's and read it for a bit".  I then gave him a run through. After
>> 3 weeks, when he had not once asked for help, I commented on the fact, and he
>> said: "I don't have to.  It just works."  More recently he said: "Why do
>> people think that Linux is hard when it is so easy?"
>> 
>> Lisi
> ...and it's getting even easier, ne' the Chromebook.  (groan issues from the 
> collective group)  But it's true.  It Linux Jim, but not as we know it.  A 
> large percentage of the MS Windows using public have waken up to the fact 
> that they don't need a 8-core i7, with a 2-gig video card, and SSD, and 16 
> gigs of RAM, and a big screened retina display to browse the web and read 
> their e-mail.  The tablet boom-bubble has showed many another way.  Microsoft 
> no longer owns the end-user experience: think iPads, smartPhones, BYOD at 
> work.
> 
> ...and it's not just PCs, tablets, and phones that run Linux.  Linux! Coming 
> to a TV near you soon!  and message from Intel, Apple, and Google.  It will 
> be like the Chromebook.  Almost impossible to see the Linux bones, but still 
> Linux under the skin.  RMS will hate it.
> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Steam

[Benjie Gillam]

I believe this is due to how much Valve hate Windows 8 for gaming. And it's 
been a much requested feature for years.

I heard most if not all of Valve's own titles have been ported to Linux and 
many other games too, but it's still a tiny percentage of the total number of 
games available on Steam. 

On 15 Feb 2013, at 08:07, Sean Gibbins  wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> 
> Coming in on the periphery of the Linux vs. Microsoft desktop debate is the 
> news that Steam is now available for Linux:
> 
> http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/
> 
> 
> Now, my gaming days are long gone but I have just installed the client - and 
> will probably uninstall it later if I am honest - and that seemed to go very 
> smoothly indeed. It looks like you need to be running an nVidia graphics card 
> to get the best out of it, although that's what I have gleaned from the 
> install routine that wanted to pull in jockey and some nVidia drivers despite 
> me having and on-board ATI graphics solution.
> 
> I also note that a bunch of games I bought way back while running it on 
> Windows don't show up in my Linux catalogue, so I presume that the games 
> available to Linux users are somewhat limited at this point, but it's a start 
> I guess.
> 
> Has anybody out there installed and played anything yet?
> 
> And finally, am I right in thinking there's a bit of a kerfuffle kicking off 
> with some of the big game developers and Microsoft recently that has led some 
> of them [the developers] to threaten to go all Linux on Microsoft's 
> posterior? Maybe this is the thin end of that wedge...
> 
> Sean
> 
> -- 
> music, film, comics, books, rants and drivel:
> 
> www.funkygibbins.me.uk
> 
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] new device

[Benjie Gillam]

If you think that's cool... https://getmyo.com/

On 1 Mar 2013, at 20:45, john  wrote:

> Hi All
> 
> Just seen this.  I looks fantastic.
> 
> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415979,00.asp
> 
> I know its windows but someone out there will hack it for linux.
> 
> John Eayrs
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Free to a good home

[Benjie Gillam]

Any hardware and books that aren't wanted by others would probably be welcomed 
by Southampton Makerspace[1]; we can't promise to be a good home but it's 
better than sending them to the dump. If we can't find a use for them directly 
(for their intended purpose) then we'll try and take them apart and make use of 
their juicy innards - motors, lasers, voltage regulators, connectors, buttons, 
etc.

Plus it'd be nice for is to start a bit of a mini technical library...

We're generally not so interested in software though.

Of course offer them to HantsLUG/Freecycle members first; but if there's no 
takers (and you'll just trash it otherwise) then drop an email to 
donati...@somakeit.org.uk :)

Cheers,

Benjie.

[1]: http://somakeit.org.uk/ So Make It is a not for profit Makerspace, hosting 
both SoutHACKton (hardware hacking/electronics) and So RepRap (3D Printing), 
plus hopefully many more groups to come. We only opened 2 weeks ago!

On 13 Apr 2013, at 15:31, Paul Tansom  wrote:

> I am continuing my clearout and if anyone is interested in any of this ancient
> kit they are more than welcome. I'd prefer it to go in single lots (Mac and 
> PC)
> although the scanner could be an either or! Worded pretty much as per my
> Freecycle / Freegle post there is:
> 
> I have a selection of old PC bits to clear, mainly as parts for an enthusiast 
> I
> should imagine.
> 
> Software:
> Pagis Pro 2
> Visio 4
> Corel Draw 4
> 
> Parts:
> Dual P300 motherboard (I think!)
> Syquest Parallel port drive
> DVDs
> FDs
> ADSL wireless router
> PSU
> Mice
> PCI & AGP graphics cards
> etc.
> 
> Toshiba Satelite 1800-700
> Compaq Evo N160 (broken hinge)
> both no RAM or HD
> IBM P70 luggable (no idea if it works)
> 
> I also have an Epson SCSI flatbed scanner with slide adapter, although you 
> will
> need your own SCSI card and cable for it.
> 
> I have a selection of old (pre-OSX) Apple bits to get rid of that would suit a
> retro Mac enthusiast. I wouldn't suggest any of this is suitable for general
> use anymore.
> 
> Software:
> Apple Magic Collection
> WordPerfect
> FileMaker Pro
> Claris Works
> Claris HomePage
> Aldus PageMaker
> Norton Utilities
> Symantec AV
> MIDI Translator
> FormatterFive
> DOS Mounter 5.0
> Extreme 3D
> Freehand 7
> Illustrator 5.5
> Lemmings
> Perfect French
> 
> Odd cards nic / firewire
> CD drives
> 
> Mac SE
> Mac LC 475
> Performa 6320
> All three with keyboards and mice.
> 
> -- 
> Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/ | 023 9238 0001
> Registered in England  |  Company No: 4905028  |  Registered Office:
> Crawford House, Hambledon Road, Denmead, Waterlooville, Hants, PO7 6NU
> 
> -- 
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[Hampshire] Tmux - the terminal multiplexer

[Benjie Gillam]

Does anyone here use tmux (as opposed to screen) for terminal multiplexing? 
I've been using it for a few months and it's awesome - especially v1.8 which 
was released just a couple of weeks back. I no longer use tabs/multiple 
terminals - everything on my system goes through one single terminal window via 
tmux sessions, windows and panes; even when I'm working locally only.

I'm aware that screen can do some things that tmux can't - I'd love to hear 
from anyone who uses these screen features so I can learn what I'm missing out 
on!

If anyone would be interested in hearing about how I use tmux then I'd be happy 
to write something up?

Cheers,

Benjie.
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Re: [Hampshire] Free to a good home: back issues of Linux Format magazine with DVDs

[Benjie Gillam]

HantsLUG are welcome to set up a library at So Make It :)

Personally I think LUGs and makerspaces/hackerspaces are a really good fit with 
respect to skill and interest overlaps - I know we share a few members. I'm 
afraid we're too small (and cold!) to host any of your meetings just yet, but 
perhaps we can help you out in other ways?

Cheers,

Benjie.

On 15 Apr 2013, at 09:40, Leszek Kobiernicki 1  
wrote:

> On 15/04/13 09:35, Ian Park wrote:
>> I've been instructed by Her Who Must Be Obeyed to turn out some of my
>> accumulated computer stuff; as a starter, I'm offering a bit over 120
>> back numbers of Linux Format magazine (issues 14 and 18 - 140),
>> together with most of the DVDs (I can lay my hands easily on those for
>> issues 21 - 110, and I can probably roust out those for the later
>> issues). Clearly, posting the magazines won't make sense, but anyone
>> who'd like them is welcome to contact me off-list to arrange collection.
>> 
>> To save you asking where I live, the postcode is RG14 7JJ...
>> 
>> Ian
> Surely it would make sense, to locate this quantity of useful reference
> material, in a LUG Library ?
> 
> Could HANTS LUG create such an archival resource ?  Or, failing that,
> even donate to a local IT Dept @ a school/college Library ?
> 
> L
> --
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Tmux - the terminal multiplexer

[Benjie Gillam]

There's zoom mode, which is really good if you use a lot of splits - you
can do {prefix}z to zoom one pane up to full screen, then {prefix}z to
unzoom it again.

Also there's text reflowing now (which screen has had for ages) - if you
resize a pane then the text inside it will reflow properly. This makes
zooming much more useful!

Also mouse support is improved - there used to be an issue (at least for
me) where scrolling up a buffer worked fine, but scrolling back down would
jump to the bottom after a few clicks of the mouse wheel; but now it works
how you'd expect. (Yes, I do use the mouse for some things, sometimes!)

(Theres more changes too, but these are the ones that stuck out for me.)


On 15 April 2013 10:40, Michael O'Sullivan  wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> I've been using it for a while, it is indeed grand. What are the changes
> with v 1.8 you find so helpful?
>
> Cheers!
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> On 15 April 2013 10:09, Benjie Gillam  wrote:
>
>> Does anyone here use tmux (as opposed to screen) for terminal
>> multiplexing? I've been using it for a few months and it's awesome -
>> especially v1.8 which was released just a couple of weeks back. I no longer
>> use tabs/multiple terminals - everything on my system goes through one
>> single terminal window via tmux sessions, windows and panes; even when I'm
>> working locally only.
>>
>> I'm aware that screen can do some things that tmux can't - I'd love to
>> hear from anyone who uses these screen features so I can learn what I'm
>> missing out on!
>>
>> If anyone would be interested in hearing about how I use tmux then I'd be
>> happy to write something up?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Benjie.
>> --
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>>
>
>
> --
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Re: [Hampshire] Raspberry Pi workshop

[Benjie Gillam]

I've heard good things from a friend about this workshop (they went to the
one at Solent Uni the other day). I'm going to the one at Southampton Uni
on Thursday 25th (which is unfortunately now full) - anyone else going to
this one?


On 15 April 2013 10:50, Tony Whitmore  wrote:

> This Raspberry Pi workshop run by the BCS may be of interest to some
> members. For more info, please contact the e-mail address below.
>
> Date: Friday 3 May
> Title: Raspberry Pi: GPIO Workshop
> Presenter: Joe Dunn
> Time: 4.00pm for 4.30pm
> Venue: University of Portsmouth, Buchingham Building, room 0.07
> Organised by the IET Solent Network, in conjunction with the BCS Hampshire
> Branch and University of Portsmouth
> Due to a high level of interest, prior registration for this free workshop
> is mandatory, as only a few places remain, by e-mailing j.d...@theiet.org
> This event is free to attend for all IET, non-IET, BCS and non-BCS members.
> Learn to programme the GPIO pins on your Raspberry Pi to control external
> systems!
> A hands-on interactive workshop on how to use the GPIO pins on board the
> Raspberry Pi to control external systems.
> Bring your own Pi, power lead, laptop and network lead. SD cards will be
> provided. If you don't have a Pi, please pair up with someone who does.
>
> --
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Re: [Hampshire] Tmux - the terminal multiplexer

[Benjie Gillam]

Imran: nice. I prefer using Ctrl-s as prefix - I never use XOFF/XON
deliberately, so I don't lose a binding. Ctrl-a is very useful I find -
increment number in vim normal mode; jump to beginning of line in
bash/emacs; and other uses I forget - so I don't like overriding it. Others
I know use Ctrl-space but I use this globally in my desktop environment.

I like your 'r' binding to reload!

-

Victor, Andy and anyone else interested in tmux vs screen:

tmux splits both ways without a patch (screen may do this too now; I'm not
up to date with it) and has handy tools for rearranging the splits
('panes').

Multiple tmux clients can connect to the same tmux "server"; so two people
can share the same tmux instance but they can both view the same 'window'
or different windows. tmux will automatically resize a shared window to the
smallest of the connected screens, but will resize it back up again when
no-one else is viewing the current window. This is great for pair
programming (though I've not tried it for this); but I've used it for
setting up a Raspberry Pi server at So Make It easily with a friend - he
was configuring some things whilst I others; but we could each quickly
switch to each others windows to either work together, glean information,
or just to see what the other was doing. I've also seen people use this for
guiding newbies in the setting up of Linux/Linux software on a fresh
machine.

It's easy to move panes between windows, and even move windows between
sessions. It's easy to switch sessions. It's highly configurable. You can
give it vi-like bindings if desired.

Panes/windows can be shared across multiple sessions.

Tmux seems faster and lighter than screen to me; but this may just be my
perception.

Cheers,

Benjie.


On 15 April 2013 18:30, Andy Smith  wrote:

> 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
>
> --
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>
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEAREDAAYFAlFsOT8ACgkQIJm2TL8VSQu8GQCgsSqmGWJglXu1ku7KyY436YwO
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Re: [Hampshire] Tmux - the terminal multiplexer

[Benjie Gillam]

Tim: yes. It's heirarchical - think of this as a rough analogy:

"Sessions" in tmux can be thought of as separate terminal windows on your 
desktop.
"Windows" in tmux can be thought of as tabs in one terminal window on your 
desktop.
"Panes" in tmux are effectively splitting a single tab in your terminal into 
multiple CLIs. Each tmux window can have it's own configuration of tmux panes 
(which, as Anton points out, are persistent).

Here's a screenshot of session [0]; window 4 (of at least 17) showing 4 panes 
(by the looks of it: remote tmux (showing irssi), 2 bash prompts and a music 
player (an mpd client perhaps?)).
http://tmux.sourceforge.net/tmux5.png

More screenshots here:

http://tmux.sourceforge.net/

Hope this helps,

Benjie.

On 15 Apr 2013, at 22:01, Tim  wrote:
> A question and apologies if I over simplify this or use the wrong 
> terminology. I had never heard of tmux before this thread started, but am I 
> to assume that tmux is a command line tool which allows you to run multiple 
> terminal screens in a "window" like environment (so you can run more than one 
> terminal on a cli screen), similar to running a graphical desktop and opening 
> lots of terminals applications?
> 
> Tim
> 
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Re: [Hampshire] Tmux - the terminal multiplexer

[Benjie Gillam]

Interesting escape character; though I think backslash moves around too much 
for me personally. (I use a lot of different keyboards!)

I didn't think I was missing anything until I started really using it either! 
That's why I ask for screen features that people use that I don't; you 
generally don't know what you're missing until someone points it out. When I 
was younger I didn't think I was missing much using a heavily modified gEdit 
for coding; but now I use Vim and know the error of my ways!

I use splits all the time, mostly for running/monitoring build tasks, workers 
and test suites without either having to flick between windows/tabs or having 
to give up too much screen real-estate. Shows enough information so that you 
know it's working (or not!) without taking up too much space - plus I can zoom 
it easily with {prefix}z if I need to see more history at once and it's super 
simple to resize/rearrange/set up. 

(I've yet to learn emacs - trying to get a decent grip on Vim first! I won't 
start a flame war by asking if it's worth it...)

On 15 Apr 2013, at 22:09, Victor Churchill  wrote:

> I think this may come down to use cases and contexts. I have not made use of 
> the split-screen feature in screen and not missed it really: this may be due 
> to my desktop monitors at home being not huge (one 17", one 19") so if the 
> space is split it's not /quite/ big enough; interestingly I have just been on 
> a contract where everyone used 24 inch plus monitors and I was starting to 
> feel that with the extra space it could be useful. 
> 
> But also I tend to do a lot of work in an emacs session where it's very quick 
> and easy to split and unsplit the screen. So I just run a number of 
> full-screen bash prompt 'windows' and an emacs one with several direds and 
> files (and often a shell as well) in it in separate sub-panels. ( Oh, and 
> btw, I configured my escape character to be ctrl-backslash  :-)
> 
>  
>  
> -- 
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Re: [Hampshire] Spamalot

[Benjie Gillam]

You could make a very small plugin so only email addresses on the mailing list 
can be used to register new members; this could be combined with other 
"defences". It'd stop most of the automated Wordpress registration scripts that 
are out there; though it obviously wouldn't hold out a determined attacker 
since all they have to do is register with the mailing list to be allowed in...

http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Filter_Reference/registration_errors

Cheers,

Benjie.-- 
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[Hampshire] HantsLUG / Southampton Makerspace

[Benjie Gillam]

Hello,

I realise from the website HantsLUG hasn't met for a fair while - and we've
offered before when we were much smaller - but I just wanted to let you
know that now So Make It have moved into a larger space (~1200 sqft) you're
still welcome to meet there (no cost, though donations are welcome!).

The new space is really quite large compared to our older space, hopefully
some photos from our grand opening yesterday give a good impression of the
size:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.588087417988342.1073741853.269112773219143&type=3
(You don't need a Facebook account to view this link.)

I'm afraid I'm overwhelmed with email these days so I'm not following the
mailing list like I used to - please feel free to contact me off-list if I
seem to have missed a response!

Cheers,

Benjie.
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