[Hampshire] Wordpress Page hit counter

[Stephen Davies via Hampshire]

Has anyone had any success in getting one of these plugins to work? I've 
tried a few and so far none has worked.


Ok, this is not strictly Linux but the server that runs my Wordpress 
site uses CentOS.


Stephen Davies


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Re: [Hampshire] HDDs and UUID

[Stephen Davies via Hampshire]

What make of enclosure are you buying?

Anyway, I have taken Raid-1 drives from a QNAP Nas and mounted them 
successfully in a USB Enclosure.


Going the other way, I'd not even mount the drive readonly until I have 
checked to see if utilities such as 'gparted' can read the partition table.


HDD's are pretty cheap these days. I'd probably not risk any issues but 
buy a new HDD of the same or larger capacity and once the drive was 
partitioned, formatted and mounted, I would simply do a cp -av {source} 
{Destination}

Then my original drive is now a backup.

Just a few things to consider.

I've been doing a lot of this sort of thing recently when I've been 
sorting out my Photo Archive (2.7Tb, 120K+ images)


Stephen D


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[Hampshire] HTTPS Certificate problem

[Stephen Davies via Hampshire]

Along with the general move to using HTTPS I configured my webserver to 
allow HTTPS connections.


However one of my users reported this error.

The certificate is not trusted because it is self-signed. The 
certificate is only valid for bonzo.lan The certificate expired on 21 
January 2017 at 13:51. The current time is 1 February 2017 at 20:49. 
Error code: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER



Some expert guidance on how I can resolve this would be most welcome. 
The system was built just over a year ago hence the certificate expiry. 
As it said, the cert currently in use is self signed but as yet I've not 
explicitly done anything regarding certs in the webserver.


Thanks,
 Stephen Davies.




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[Hampshire] Fwd: TNMOC Members: Brian's Aviva thing

[Stephen Davies via Hampshire]

An appeal from the TNMOC. all you need to do is vote.

If you have never been, I strongly suggest that you go and see for yourself.
I worked of some of the kit they have working back in the day.
Bletchley Park Trust is adjacent. You have to go through BPT to get to 
the Car Park and the TNMOC.
Going to both places makes a nice day out. Bletchley railway station is 
not far away either.


Stephen D


 Forwarded Message 
Subject:TNMOC Members: Brian's Aviva thing
Date:   Fri, 4 Nov 2016 12:33:10 + (GMT)
From:   Mike Kelly 
To: 	stephen.dav...@ultraconsulting.co.uk 





 


 TNMOC Member e-mail


   Brian's Aviva thing

4 November 2016

To all TNMOC Club members,

Please see below an appeal from Brian Aldous (our archivist). This is an 
opportunity for the museum to gain some valuable funding but it needs 
the support of all of us if we are to succeed. Please take the time to 
vote for this important project. Voting is open until 18th November.


You will need to create an Aviva account to vote. It's easy to do and 
you don't need to give any personal details other than your e-mail 
address. You'll then get ten votes to "spend" on Brian's project. Please 
do it now.


Thank you!

John Linford
Chairman.

Brian writes:

As an Aviva (formerly known as Norwich Union) customer, I was made aware 
of their Community Funding scheme with awards of up to £25,000 to 
support Community projects. I decided to submit an application for an 
award to enable the digital scanning of the remaining 25-years of the 
Computer Weekly archive.


With Victoria's assistance I managed to tick all the right boxes to fit 
the scheme's application criteria and my submission was accepted.


All submissions now in the public domain, and the winners will be judged 
according to the number of votes they receive. Voting is open until 18th 
November. My submission, which speaks for itself, can be seen at 
https://community-fund.aviva.co.uk/voting/project/view/16-706.


Could I please ask you all to cast some votes in favour of this project. 
Could I also please ask all relevant representatives to pass this e-mail 
on to TNMoC Members, CCS Members and, of course, colleagues, friends and 
family.


For the curious who want to know more about the scheme and submission 
criteria, the link is http://www.aviva.co.uk/good-thinking/community-fund/.


Best wishes

Brian



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[Hampshire] WEE recycling

[Stephen Davies]

It seems that every local authority is doing it differently. (Sigh) No 
joined up thinking then...


Up North (of Hampshire that is) Rushmoor have started taking all types 
of Batteries (not car ones). You put them in a placcy bag on top of the 
Blue recyclable bin when it is out for collection.
also there is a place on the A287 between Farnham and Odiham (just past 
the Esso garage) that will take everything IT related for free.
Some stores (even though they have a legal obligation to) get a bit iffy 
about taking things that they don't sell themselves.


on the subject of recycling, if anyone wants a Sun E-450 I have one 
going fore free. If not it will go for recycling in a few weeks.


Stephen Davies


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[Hampshire] Debian 8 on Viglen MPC

[Stephen Davies]

Have you thought about running a Live Distro such as Knoppix on the System?

I fixed a problem with an old Dell a few weeks ago by doing this very thing.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Fwd: TNMOC: Take part in the App-a-thon Guinness World Record Attempt

[Stephen Davies]

FYI



 Original Message 
Subject:TNMOC: Take part in the App-a-thon Guinness World Record Attempt
Date:   Mon, 1 Jun 2015 14:25:39 + (GMT)
From:   Mike Kelly members...@tnmoc.org
To: 	stephen.dav...@ultraconsulting.co.uk 
stephen.dav...@ultraconsulting.co.uk




TNMOC: Take part in the App-a-thon Guinness World Record Attempt

*Take part in the App-a-thon Guinness World Record Attempt*

**

*at The National Museum of Computing on 13 June 2015*

**

1 June 2015

The National Museum of Computing is partnering BCSWomen to be a venue in 
the App-a-thon Guinness World Record attempt on Saturday 13 June 2015 
from 10am to 4pm.


The family fun day event, which is open to all, will be held at many 
venues across the UK. It aims to create a new world record and encourage 
girls to consider a career in IT. At each of the venues, participants 
will learn from women teachers how to build Android apps and there will 
be talks, activities and hands-on coding.


Anyone can register now for their free place on this world record 
attempt, see: http://www.bcs.org/content/conEvent/9365


Jill Clarke, a TNMOC volunteer, member of BCSWomen and leader of the 
event at TNMOC, said: ?This is a great way for everyone to learn about 
what goes into the making of an app, a feature of computing that most 
people use every day. We hope lots of people, especially families and 
girls from Milton Keynes and surrounding areas, will sign up to take 
part in the App-a-thon Guinness World Record attempt at The National 
Museum of Computing, the historic home of Colossus.?


Please see 
http://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/take-part-app-thon-guinness-world-record 
for the full news release.




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[Hampshire] Tips on enabling HTTPS in httpd.conf

[Stephen Davies]

I'm finally getting around to enabling HTTPS on my little webserver.
It runs APACHe with three VirtualHosts.

I've configured my Router to forward https request (port 443) to my 
webserver but all I get back is the default web page.
This is nothing more than a placeholder page and not one of the virtual 
hosts.

Any pointers as to how to do it would be most welcome.

Stephen Davies

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Re: [Hampshire] UK digital skills report

[Stephen Davies]

Writing Software is IMHO just the proverbial tip of the Iceberg.

Let me put some of what I'm going to say into some sort of context.

I've spent the better part of my working life (now at 46years) doing 
what is called Systems Integration.
Basically making stuff work together. There is a software development 
component but it is more of a means to an end.
At the moment I work in a role that is to make Airport Terminals work. I 
Interface the core Airport Management System computer to everything else.
Flight Information Displays, Check-in Counters, Baggage systems, the 
Computers that guide Aircraft onto a stand, Billing Systems and a whole 
lot more.


The software I write is just part of the solution. Knowing how to 
'speak' and understand all sorts of weird (IATA Type B , AFTN Messages 
etc) and wonderful protocols
(Not everything is XML!) plus WebServices and Databases (and SAP). These 
are bits of the glue that make it all work end-to-end.

That make your flight leave on time with your bags in the hold below you.

So what is the problem?

No one taught me all this stuff. There are no University Courses or real 
'how to Text Books' on the subject.


The job description does not fit into tidy little boxes. Some employers 
and especially recruitment agencies just can't grok that you know all 
this stuff.

You are the Jack of All trades.

Importantly, there are seemingly very few young people who are 
interested in this sort of career.
If you are good at it, you can be a techie all your life and get a 
decent Salary.


I'm 61 going on 62. I'm going to retire in ??? Well sometime in the next 
42 Months. Who is going to replace me?


Do we need people like me?

IMHO is that yes we do. Systems are becoming ever more complicated and 
integrated.


Writing a Bash script, a bit of 'C' is part of my job but a very very 
small part.
i take the 'Dreams' of the Architects and make something tangible and 
workable out of them.


But who is going to replace me when I hang up my Software toolkit?

I see no programmes out there that will even begin to skill up my 
replacements. That is a problem that no one is even remotely trying to 
solve.


Stephen D








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Re: [Hampshire] ISP Filtering

[Stephen Davies]

Well SKY have responded. Here is their response

Dear Customer

Thank you for your email. I understand your concern about the blocked 
website.


I would request you to contact your Broadband service provider and they 
will be able to assist you further.


I hope this information has helped with your enquiry. If you require any 
further assistance, you can reply to my email.


To help us improve our service, please take a few seconds to answer the 
question on the following link: http://bit.ly/sky-email


Kind regards

*

Sky Help Centre

http://www.sky.com

As I feared, they are trying to pass the buck. If someone can enlighten 
me as to why my ISP can help remove a block that SKY has applied, then I 
would be grateful.

It looks like I will have to revert to OFCOM.

Stephen Davies



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[Hampshire] ISP Filtering

[Stephen Davies]

There were a lot of posts on the Interwebs about the fact that most 
people are not using the mandatory [redacted] filters at the ISP's.


Some of the commenters complained that the likes of Talk-Talk were 
blocking their wordpress blogs for no good reason other than the fact 
that they were running Wordpress.


I checked my  blog via
https://www.blocked.org.uk

and found that Sky were blocking it. I have requested that the block is 
removed or at least they explain why it is blocked.
If they decline to unblock it then I'll have good really ammo to fire at 
them the next time someone tries to get me to sign up for Sky.


If you have a wordpress blog then you might like to check that it is not 
being blocked by an ISP.


Regards,
  Stephen D

PS, just updated the MacMini that runs the blog to CentOS 7. I'm really 
glad that I don't install a GUI on this box. Long live Gnome 2!


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Re: [Hampshire] ISP Filtering

[Stephen Davies]

Martin,
   Like you I use OpenDNS instead of my ISP's DNS, but that wasn't the 
point of my post.


If you have your own website then you should check to see if any of the 
Major UK ISP's are blocking it.

I found that SKY is blocking my Wordpress Blog.
So far they have not responded to my request to get it unblocked.

If they are blocking it then they have to have a reason. It can't be 
because their crawlers have read the content of my site because they are 
all blocked and from the logs, I can't see any SKY domain looking at my 
site to determine its contents.


While I agree with the objectives of stopping children from accessing 
the nastier side of the internet, blocking sites that are nothing more 
than a BLOG simply because a blog could contain bad stuff just ain't on 
IMHO. My site contains nothing more than a load of stories that I have 
written over the years. So why block it.


From what I've read, I am far from the only Blog owner that has this 
happen.


Stephen D


 Original Message 
Subject:Re: [Hampshire] ISP Filtering
Date:   Wed, 23 Jul 2014 17:55:51 +0100
From:   Martin N marti...@bluebottle.com
To: 	stephen.dav...@ultraconsulting.co.uk, Hampshire LUG Discussion List 
hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk




Hello,

At 14:42 23/07/2014, you wrote:

There were a lot of posts on the Interwebs about the fact that most
people are not using the mandatory [redacted] filters at the ISP's.

Some of the commenters complained that the likes of Talk-Talk were
blocking their wordpress blogs for no good reason other than the
fact that they were running Wordpress.


Apparently according to NNSquad email I got, only talktalk got above
10% of people to sign up.
The rest were like 4 or 5%

I assume OpenDNS gets around these blocks.

Martin

New NSA Slogan:
We work to ensure your safety.
Don't Worry We Have Your Back[door] 




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Re: [Hampshire] Raspberry PI and Solar chargers

[Stephen Davies]

If the PI can't to a multi hour timer then it seems to me that you need 
to front end it with a good old


7555 Timer Circuit.

Remember them?

Google for 755 Timer Circuits.  Very easy to make. One IC, a bit of 
Veroboard and a few discrete components and a Relay, to handle the PI 
switch on/off



Stephen D

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Re: [Hampshire] Lacie Backup Disks

[Stephen Davies]

I had a few of these series disks and they all went belly up within 
weeks of the warranty expiring.
Samsung didn't want to know about the problems and in the end I decided 
to junk them( re-cycled).

It also meant that Samsung is on my 'do not buy' list.

My advice would be to replace them ASAP.

Stephen D

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Re: [Hampshire] HantsLug Facebook was Hampshire Digest, Vol 86, Issue 11

[Stephen Davies]

I am sure that I am not alone here in making the decision that I will 
never ever setup an account on Facebook or Twitter (or any other so 
called Social media site).

Those two domains are on my router blacklist.

A very good friend of mine was 'cyber-bullied' to such an extent that 
they nearly took their own life. Neither site did anything about it 
because they were an adult.


By all means go ahead and publicise the LUG on FB etc but please do not 
make them the main condiuit of information about the LUG.


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[Hampshire] CentOS DOJO in Aldershot this F5riday

[Stephen Davies]

   CentOS Dojo and Barbecue at Aldershot, UK, Friday 12th July 2013, 9:30am


http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Dojo/Aldershot2013

Cost £15.00 including a 'T' Shirt.

The location is within walking distance of where we used to meet in 
Aldershot (10 mins) but there is free parking in the area of the location.

I'll be there.

Stephen Davies

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Re: [Hampshire] (OT) NAS and USB3 connections

[Stephen Davies]

On 2013-04-22 13:00, hampshire-requ...@mailman.lug.org.uk wrote:

On 21 April 2013 17:34, Peter B. pet...@gmail.com 
mailto:pet...@gmail.com wrote:


   As far as I know usb 2.0 maxes out at 30mbps usb 3.0 100mbps for
   local data transfer.

I think you're confusing things here. USB2 runs at up to 480Mbps raw 
line speed, and USB3 runs at up to 5Gbps.



--
Daniel Llewellyn

That's as maybe. However USB relies upon a whole heap of CPU Processing 
to move anything. This is done do keep the costs down. Firewire on the 
otherhand does DMA and uses a whole lot less CPU.
As someone who wrote their first Device Driver before Microsoft existed 
(for a PDP-11/45 in 1976) Serial I/O using devices such as a UART is 
really-sllooo. DMA is much faster and neater. Sadly in these X86 
times there are lots of devices that do I/O character by character or 
byte-by-byte and not using DMA.


Getting the quoted max speeds for USB is very much 'pie-in-the-sky'.

As others have said, I'd use the LAN to mode data to/from my NAS. The 
USB connection is much slower than the LAN.


Stephen D

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[Hampshire] re Windows 8 + Dual Booting

[Stephen Davies]

We were idly browsing some in PC World today and it became apparent 
that they were all shipping with Windows 8. 


Sean,
  Shame on you. No one in their right mind does that. :)

Take the time to go to Novatech and see what they have to offer.

Stephen D
{Currently at the new Airport in Amman, Jordan making sure everything is 
working properly}




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Re: [Hampshire] Digital SLR recommendations

[Stephen Davies]

The Nikon D3200 will do pretty well everything your daughter wants.

As for wanting a DSLR to do video, perhaps some people don't understand 
how far DSLR Video has come these days.


The 2nd Unit of the TV show Dexter uses Nikon D800's rather than a Sony 
or Red video camera. I use my D800 to take video from time to time and 
the full HD output is pretty impressive.


Stephen Davies


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Re: [Hampshire] Christmas Lecture

[Stephen Davies]

I'd like to go to both but at the moment I'm stuck(not literally) in the 
basement of the new Airport in Amman so I can't commit to the meal which 
is a shame as I'm in agreement with Alan in that I'd like to socialise 
with fellow LUG members after the lecture
Perhaps there could be an 'alternative meal' for those who can't commit 
to the bookable meal?


Stephen Davies
{now back to arguing over SNMP Traps and alarms, pah!}

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Re: [Hampshire] Hampshire Digest, Vol 72, Issue 15

[Stephen Davies]

I have a big enough garden for a BBQ and have hosted one before. Sadly I 
live at the wrong end of the county (Aldershot) for most members.
However the invitaion for one next year is there if there are any takers 
(and work travel commitements permitting)


Stephen Davies
{Currently in the basement of the new airport terminal in Amman, Jordan 
struggling with SNMP polling and generating alerts from changing values}



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Re: [Hampshire] Deciding SNMP MIB files in Linux

[Stephen Davies]

Chris,
  I think you have had a better experience with SNMP than I am 
currently having.

You asked about the 'can of worms' relating to Polling for SNMP Traps.

The IPTV devices we are polling sometimes don't even respond within 30 
seconds. Nasty.
The 5 servers are supposed to respond with the same data. They don't. 
Why? They are running  different firmware and the supplier is very very 
very reluctant to make them identical.
Another SNMP emitter has been configured incorrectly. To get it fixed, a 
guy will have to come from Bahrain. He will remove the unit and then 
ship it to India where sometime in the next month they might possibly 
correct the problem, ship it back and we can try again.



Not a happy bunny especially as it is the weekend here and I'm stuck in 
the basement of the airport wearing ear defenders trying to keep the 
incessant fire alarms from slowly driving me mad.


And so it goes on.
Stephen Davies

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Re: [Hampshire] Deciding SNMP MIB files in Linux

[Stephen Davies]

Ah, someone facing the same issues as I am. SNMP is as far as I'm 
concerned a dogs breakfast. If you have multiple Mibs in a file just 
watchout as the MIB standard allows you to put the trap definitions 
anywhere in the mib (AFAIK). Thus you could have no idea about what 
traps relate to what MIB.
Some devices don't emit traps. You have to Poll them and that opens up 
another huge can of worms.


After a few days of banging my head against the QAIA Airport brick wall, 
I gave up trying to decipher some of the Mibs and traps using Linux and 
have installed a trial version of TrapVision on a Windows machine. Now I 
can see a lot of what is supposed to happen. You can also use it to 
generate traps that can be sent into your Linux system for processing.


I'd rather be interpreting IATA Type-B messages any day.

Stephen Davies


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Re: [Hampshire] Netbook Batteries

[Stephen Davies]

Laptop Batteries are very hit and miss.

My corporate HP Elitebook is 5 months old and the battery is knackered. 
I get barely 15 minutes of power out of it. HP support say that this is 
normal. The whole lappy is being replaced next month with a 17in screen 
version. I can only hope that the battery is a whole ot better than the 
Elitebook.
On the otherhand, my 2007 Macbook Pro (17in) is still on its original 
battery and even with the upgraded RAM(8Gb) and HDD (1Tb) I get 3 hours 
of life out of it.
My old netbook (MSI WInd) battey barely lasted a month. I sent the whole 
thing back and battled with the supplier to get my money back.
My ancient Dell Inspiron 8600 still holds its charge and that is with 
its original battery.

You pays your money and takes your choice.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] My 2p on the GUI 'Wars'

[Stephen Davies]

As a professional software developer who has been writing programms 
since the days of Card Decks, George 3 , SOFOR and paper tape, I find 
this latest craze on desktops (Gnome 3, Unity  Windows 8) rather 
depressing.


(Ignoring the 'touchy feely' of touchscreens that everyone seems to rave 
ove these days)
If they had been around at the birth of GUI/Windowing systems I would 
have understood them.
Now IMHO, this searching and every icon on the desktop idea is frankly 
so silly, it beggars belief.


In 'no' work mode, I use (like most people ) a set of apps that number 
no more than say 10. Email, Web, Skype, Bittorrent etc
I could live with the methodology of the new interfaces if I could have 
the old menus for those times that I need something out of the ordinary 
and have ho idea of the executable or icon but I know it belongs in a 
group associated with a product. A hice hierarcihial tree structure. 
Very Logical.


In work mode the standard set of apps I use goes up considerably. Not 
all are 'installed via traditional installers in order to save time, I 
use (on windows Quick Launch (yes you can get it back even on Windows 
7/Server 2008) and the Gnome 2 launchpad.
One click of the mouse and The app starts. Now what could be more 
logical or simpler than that? Yet the GUI - Those who must be obeyed 
Overlords have deemed that I am no longer fit to have this nice easy to 
use facility. It is almost as if they are telling me that I'm about to 
be pensioned off so I am only fit to use a Fisher Price Interface.


Yes, many of you are thinking that I'm a grumpy old man. That is 
probably true but IMHO, these designers have taken something that wasn't 
totally broker and made it only fit for the great trashcan in the sky.


I know I'm fighting a losing battle and very soon you won't be able to 
buy a new computer without one or other of these 'Tellytubby' interfaces 
or even remove what the manufacturer has installed for you without fear 
of a knock at the door from the IP Police (my name is not winston smith) 
but I know one this:-
1) I will never buy a computer that forces me to use Windows 
8/Windows-RT Windows 7/Server 2008 will be the last offereings from 
Microsoft that I ever use.
2) I will never use a computer that has Unity or Gnome 3 configured as 
the primary Interface unless I can configure it to use something a bit 
saner and more logical.


A plague on all their houses.

Stephen D



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[Hampshire] Kit for disposal

[Stephen Davies]

I have TWO PPC Mac Mini's for disposal

1) 512Mb Ram, 80Gb HDD
2) 1Gb Ram, 80Gb HDD

Both work fine. They were running Fedora 10 but being foolish, I tried 
to install something more moder. i.e. Debian 6.0.6. It installed but 
won't boot due to problems in the install. Someone who is more literate 
with Debian would no doubt have to problem sorting it out.


They are free to a good home. Collect from Aldershot.

Stephen D

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Re: [Hampshire] Kit for disposal

[Stephen Davies]

Both Mini's have been snapped up. Thanks.

Stephen D

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[Hampshire] Motherboard(s) for Sale

[Stephen Davies]

ASUS P5NE
  Complete with an intel Q6600 Quad core CPU, Huge Heatsink and 8Gb 
DDR2 RAM


£50.00

Also

ASUS M4A87TD Motherboard for an AMD CPU (No CPU, No RAM)
£15.00

Both are in working order.
If you are interested then email me off line.

Stephen Davies
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Re: [Hampshire] The Cookie Law

[Stephen Davies]

As I understand it, the law only applies to

 Tracking Cookies.

Session Cookies are outside the legislation.

Again, AFAIK, if you don't have links to the vast number of tracking 
sites on your website then you don't have anything to worry about.
There are sites that go bonkers with these embedded links. The hightest 
number I have counted for one site is 34 different tracking sites 
embedded on one front page.
Obviously if you are generating revenue with hits etc then you have to 
do some work on your site.


I could be wrong but I did some research when the legislation was first 
announced.


Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] The Cookie Law

[Stephen Davies]

I just installed an addon for Firefox that allows me to view the cookies 
for a site.


I checked against a pure Wordpress (no links to other sites) site anf I 
can see 5 cookies.


Three are wordpress session cookies (I did login)
Two are timer cookies that will expire after 24 hours, i.e. when the 
session will automatically log me out.


Now lets look at say www.msnbc.com

12 cookies plus a plethora of tracking sites.
One of the cookies expires on 31 Dec 5000Yes in the year 5000 - This 
is called TOptOut

There are some others that expire in 2032.called jt_num, jt_uuid
Another expires in 2021 called TZM

These AFAIK, break the UK Law.

There is info on the TOptOut cookie here
http://info.evidon.com/companies/microsoft-adcenter


Stephen D

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Re: [Hampshire] Hampshire Digest, Vol 67, Issue 2

[Stephen Davies]

I have a couple of nicely configured servers running in my home office 
at the moment.


No 1:  AMD 6 core Bulldozer underclocked plus a stonking great Zalman 
Heatsink. I run 4-6 VMWare VM's on this at a time

   Big Case Fans
   Fanless Graphics card.

No 2: Intel i7 Quad core 32Gb Ram again with a big Heatsink, case fans etc.
It is running a simulation of the Airport Database and external systems 
for LAX (Los Angeles) Terminal 6 at the moment. 8VM's, 3 different 
databases and around 10% CPU loading.


I recently bought a Case with lots of sound absorbing material built-in. 
This made a big difference. I can't remember the make but I got it from 
Novatech.
Big Fans make less noise. You need less RPM to move the same volume of 
air. Less RPM means less fan blade tip speed which means less noise. Get 
ones with decent bearings as well. Saving a few quid here is really only 
a short term saving.
Get a s big a CPU Heatsink as you can. Beware that some may fould the 
Ram slots especially if you use ram sticks that are a bit taller than 
normal.


Despite their power these systems are a whole lot quieter than any OOTB 
systems I've ever had.


Alternatively, you could always invest in some noice canceling headphones!

Stephen D









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Re: [Hampshire] Hampshire Digest, Vol 67, Issue 2

[Stephen Davies]

Ally,
Have I overclocked it? nope. The stock CPU speed is perfectly adequate.
The demands on the systems are more related to RAM than CPU.
The actual data rates aren't all that high.
There are peaks though. These are mainly when the flight schedules for 
the next day are loaded. Then it goes up to 50% for around 10 mins. This 
is a far cry from a benchmark I did last week in san diego. There we 
loaded 2 years of flights in one go. The CPU fans really did their job then.


Stephen D
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Re: [Hampshire] Novatech - Ubuntu good news?

[Stephen Davies]

I've always found the staff at Novatech very techincally aware.
I was in the Reading Store recently sorting out a case and cooler for my 
Vmware ESXi server.
I got lots of help making sure that the bits I bought were going to fit 
together (Heatsink not too tall).
I now have a 6 core AMD based rig with 32Gb of Ram + 9Tb of disk running 
8-10 Virtual machines.


Jacqui is right, they might have answered as they did because you have 
to remember that the MS Offices are less than half a mile away as the 
crow flies.


Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] CS Degree Courses (was Re: Linux Answers)

[Stephen Davies]

I was a student from 1972-75. Yes, that was a few decades ago honestly.
I did Mechanical Engineering (Instrumentation  Control). Part of my 
course was shared with the Computer Science degree course.

I wrote my first program in Sept 72.

Naturally, this wasn't at a University but a Polytechnic. Funnily 
enough, I was classed as a mature student as I had worked for 4 years 
after leaving school at 15.

Those were the days.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] A good rant about how illogical computers are

[Stephen Davies]

http://www.geekwire.com/2011/rip-andy-rooney-classic-bill-gates-rant

Watch the 60Minutes video. He lays the blame right at Bill Gates.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] [OT] NASs (Leo)

[Stephen Davies]

I use a pair of QNAP Nas devices. Under the hood, they run a stripped 
down Linux.
You can buy diskless units and add drives as you see fit. Mine are in a 
Raid-1 and a Raid-5 configs.


Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Refurbished Lenovo laptop 4 by 3 screen

[Stephen Davies]

On 20/09/2011 13:00, hampshire-requ...@mailman.lug.org.uk wrote:


Thats a 16:10 which is my reserve buy i guess since the 4:3 screens 
seem to be rare.


Pretty expensive at £399 though, I was hoping for more £200 to £300 
price really. 
Since when is 1600:1200 a 16:10 ratio?   I know I'm getting old but if 
you divide both sides by 400 what do you get?


I have a T43p with this screen. Very nice indeed. Theses screens were 
the top of the line option for the T43p  T60 models. AFAIK, they were 
built to order hence the higher price for this one. Well worth it.
I've just bought a 1920:1200 24in Dell monitor. Stunning even though it 
is not an ips display. It has DVI(2) VGA, HDMI(2)  Even Display Port  
S-Video input. cost a bit though but If you are going to be sitting in 
front of it for hours then you really shouldn't skimp on a monitor.


Stephen D




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Re: [Hampshire] Refurbished Lenovo laptop 4 by 3 screen

[Stephen Davies]

There are variants of the T43p and T60p that has 1600x1200 screens. 
Could that be what you are looking for?


I don't like these vertically thin and wide displays. The lack of 
Vertical Pixels is a real PITA with most IDE's.


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IBM-ThinkPad-T43p-Pentium-M-2-26GHz-1GB-XP-CoA-No-HDD-/150660797335?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EHhash=item2314155397

This is on sale until 1930tonight and it's in Aldershot (no me btw) The 
current highest bid is £26.00


This one (T60p)
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/15-LENOVO-ThinkPad-T60p-ATI-FireGL-1600x1200-UXGA-res-/270807798606?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EHhash=item3f0d67134e
Is currently standing at £399 but it does have the 1600x1200 screen and 
it is in W. Sussex


Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Good Old SCSI

[Stephen Davies]

Oh Dear.

SCSI is actually alive and well just that you don't know it. Many modern 
Disk protocols are command queued just like SCSI.


That said, for the Amateur, SCSI is a potential nightmare.

There is more than one flavour of SCSI.
{From memory, I used to maintain SCSI drivers in the late 1980's}
Standard
Wide
Differential single Ended (Active  Passive)
Differential double Ended
Wide Differential
SCA
etc

Then there is the plethora of different connectors (grrr SUN, you are 
the pits here).  These are Professional bits of kit so unless you can 
pick them up really cheap don't bother. The cost of an Active 
Differential Terminator would make the £16.99 that PC World can charge 
for a 1m USB Cable pale into insignificance.


So, my advice to you is

Don't bother unless you can get a complete working rig.

Stephen D



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[Hampshire] [OT] BT Broadband?!

[Stephen Davies]

I've just moved to FTTC with Plus-Net.  They are an independent part of 
BT but their support etc is all UK based.


The OpenReach guy turned up right on time and after introducing himself 
he went off to the Cabinet to set up that end.
After an hour he returned and replaced the BT Socket and checked the 
phone. With all that working, he did a line test and got 39.9Mbits 
steady from the exchange.
PlutNet had sent me a Netgear Wireless Router. We connected it up to the 
modem, I changed the username/password and I was online.


Initially I was still running at 4Mbits. I logged a support call and 
half an hour later my Download capacity and line speed went up.
Soon I was getting 24Mbits.  After a week, I can download files at a 
steady 4.2Mbytes/second. (Approx 35Mbits or so)


The line has been rock solid so far.

Am I pleased with the service? you bet. (grin)

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Gallery software

[Stephen Davies]

As a long term Gallery user ( customiser), I thought that I should 
throw in my 2p worth.


Gallery 2.
  The latest version is 2.3.
  If it isn't in your distro's repository the tarball is easily 
downloadable from the Gallery site.
  V2.3 is the last major release of the V2.x codebase.  AFAIK, only 
bugfixes from now on.


Gallery 3
  This is a major revision of the gallery software.
   Again if V3 is not in your repo the gallery site will provide all 
you need.
   The UI for V3 is quite different from V2. Some people have switched 
back to V2.

   You can import many V2 customisations right into V3.

For those who don't know.
Gallery is a php app (set of scripts) that sit on top of a database. I 
prefer MySql.

It is easily managed via the admin web pages once installed.
Many ISP's and Hosting companies provide Gallery in their packages.
It can be extensively customised. Some of the examples are beautiful and 
don't look like photo galleries at all.


Stephen D




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[Hampshire] This Weeks BBC Click

[Stephen Davies]

This might be worth doing. There is a decent bit about Linux  Open 
Source in Brazil. Sir Tim B-L appears as well. There is also a few words 
from John (Maddog) Hall. I met him a few times in my time at Dec.


Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Job Opportunity - J2EE - Reading

[Stephen Davies]

If you are a J2EE whizz and looking for a change then there are a number 
of positions available in Reading.


 J2EE using JBOSS + RHEL platforms in an agile environment.
 Experience of JSON, SAP, Oracle  MySql a plus.
 Good Salary + company benefits
 less than 5 mins from Reading Station.

If you are interested please contact me off-line.

Stephen Davies

PS, I work there and am not a recruiter or recruitment agency.


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Re: [Hampshire] Something to Download and Enjoy

[Stephen Davies]

Ouch,
 I'm truly sorry for opening such a hornets nest by using what I 
thought was the correct term GNU/Linux.


Ok, I've given myself a slap on the wrist and spent half an hour on the 
naughty step.


Come on guys/gals, lighten up please.
The work that PJ and the hundreds if not thousands of  Groklawians have 
done since 2003 to stop the likes of SCO is surely to be celebrated and 
not an excuse for slagging each other off.
The replies to this thread are enought to send any possible Linux (using 
the general term here) converts back to the Dark Side (Windows)


This has made me decide to stop and think again before posting anything 
else that mentions the 'L' word. It is just not worth it.


Stephen D (aka Complex_number on Groklaw)



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[Hampshire] Something to Download and Enjoy

[Stephen Davies]

to all HantsLug,
 Many of you may well have heard of Groklaw. (http://www.groklaw.net)
At least two of HantsLug members are regular contibutors. I'm one and 
'Vic' is another.


If you are a contributor like us then you will probably know of the 
award that PJ and Groklaw has just received

from the EFF.
Due to death threats that PJ has received in the past from people about 
the SCO case, she didn't attend in person but sent a video.

The .mov or .ogg format of the video is there in the site to download.

A site like Groklaw brings a totally new dimension to Open Source as PJ 
states in the video. It shows that it goes far beyond lines of 'C' (or 
any other language you prefer) code and all that GNU/Linux represents.


Stephen Davies.


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[Hampshire] DSL Upgrade woes

[Stephen Davies]

As it seems to be the season for DSL/ISP problems, I thought I'd share 
some with you lot out there.


I'm with PlusNet on a Pro Package (no throttling etc) non LLU and for 
the last 2.5years everything has been hunky dory.
Last month I got an email about them upgrading my line. Fair enough I 
thought. I'm 2.3km from the Aldershot Exchange and up to now, I was 
getting 4-5Mbits steady.
The line gets upgraded and the woes start. The line can get incoming 
requests (for the AFCC Picture Gallery) no problems but can I get out? 
Pings  traceroute work find but after a while, they just go off into 
nothingness. So I start investigating.


Firstly, I run a Netgear  DG834G V3 Non Wireless Router. I've had it for 
getting on for 4 years. So I upgraded the firmware. no improvement.
Digging a bit deeper, I find a technote describing exactly my problems. 
The DG834G V3 does not like ADSL2+. End of.


I saved the config and replaced it with an V4 device. After uploading 
the config (yeah, I have VPN's and lots of firewall rules) it synced 
fine and was rock steady.

But could I get to the AFCC website? Nope. No a chance.
Back to the Netgear website to find that the latest firmware (Sigh) 
fixes a problem with local loopback. I've configured the firewall to 
only accept the DynDns FQDN and not the Ip Address for connections. So, 
I'm putting out a HTTP request to a FQDN that points at itself.
The logs say 'firewall rule matched' but wireshark sees nowt coming out 
of the router. Upgraded the Firmware and reloaded the configs and all if 
fine once more.
My speed had gradually crept up to 6224kbps so I'm reasonable happy 
given the distance from the exchange.


My only gripe was that It would have been nice to have known in advance 
that my router would not work with ADSL2+ and then I could have had time 
to get something like a Draytek Vigor but I needed a replacement in a 
hurry and I could get a netgear the next day for less than £50.00. For 
some reason everywhere I looked had draytek's on back order.


so, if you DSL line is connected to an exchange that has or is going to 
have the BT 21CN upgrade AND your ISP tells you that your line is going 
to be upgraded you might like to check that your router can handle ADSL2+.

If you buy a Netgear DB834G V4 then you must upgrade the firmware.

Have fun
 Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] 3g Dongles

[Stephen Davies]

In defense of 3, their offer of £15.00 for 15Gb per month is pretty hard 
to refuse. I'm using it with both OS/X  Fedora 13 Beta without issue. I 
use it in the mornings on the train from Ash into Reading and apart from 
the 'dead zone' south of Crowthorne, it is rock solid.
 From my 6th floor office in the Centre of Reading it works better then 
other 3g networks especially Vodafone. Probably less contention.
Yesterday, I downloaded 2.8Gb of software with no errors.

Coverage (As the TV adverts say) does vary according to your location.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] worst distro name (was - Hmmm.....)

[Stephen Davies]

Well Done MikeD


Yep, it is PDP-11 Machine Code. For the uninitiated, it is in Octal

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] worst distro name (was - Hmmm.....)

[Stephen Davies]

At least VMS meant something.

Virtual Memory System

Before that (on PDP-11's) there was

RSTS - Resource Time Sharing System
RT-11 - Real time 1.5kb Kernel!
RSX (-11A -11B -11C -11D -11M -11S -11M/Plus) - Resource Sharing 
eXecutive (IIRC)
Very few outside of DEC would have come upon -11A, B or C.
-11S was a memory only O/S. You could load it from DecTape

Then on Dec-10/20's there was TOPS
Can't remember what that one was.

Quiz for those old enough to remember.
12704
00100
12703
00200
60304

What is the answer (in Decimal Please) and how could it be simplified.



W

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[Hampshire] For sale - Intel Motherboard Q6600 CPU

[Stephen Davies]

For sale,
 Gigabyte ga-965-s3 Motherboard
 Intel Q6600 Quad Core CPU + CPU Fan
 4Gb DDR2 Ram.
Taken out of a system that was upgraded. All in working order.

Anyone interested contact me off-line please.
Will be available at the next meeting for collection, or from my home in 
Aldershot.

Stephen D

.

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[Hampshire] Novell vs SCO - The Jury is in

[Stephen Davies]

For those who haven't been following the case, after some SEVEN yes 
SEVEN years, a jury has said that the Unix Copyrights didn't transfer to 
SCO
as part of the sale in 1995.

This means that the scam that SCO dreamed up to charge every Linux user 
$695 per year licensing is a dead duck.

Groklaw is as usual covering the verdict.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100330152829622

Next up, is SCO going into Chapter 7 and somehow the resolution of the 
SCO vs IBM suit as well as the RedHat vs SCO suit.

Stephen D
aka, complex_number on Groklaw.


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[Hampshire] Whatever happened to programming?

[Stephen Davies]

There is an interesting discussion on /. with the above topic.

http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1573922

as someone who started out using Punched Cards  Paper Tape (but I bow 
down in age to John Lewis)
and who has programmed in Fortran, Algol, Coral 66, Basic, Ada, Cobol, 
Java, C, Pascal, HTML, CSS  etc., plus a whole shed load of machine code
  embedded software (e.g. ITV Teletext Service Oracle's Subtitling 
Keyboard) many of the comments about the dumbing down, the use of 
frameworks and the like really ring a lot of bells.

Let me give you an example.

There was this project that wanted to put a real time battlefield 
intelligence data system. It was to be all written
 in Coral-66. The underlying machine code generated by the compiler was 
really crap. If you think that moden software is bloated then please 
thing again.
 Not only was the code crap but there was so much of it that all sorts 
of tricks had to be employed to even get it to link.
Then we had to produce a version of the code that had to run on a 
diskless system. Boy did that give me a headache.
In the end, I re-wrote all the low level functions directly in 
assembler. This made the code faster (20X) and smaller (10% of the 
original).

This was all in 1977/78. Rewind to today and frankly there is so much 
obfuscation and framework usage that the size of apps has just gone out 
of the window. I see production code that is 'just cobbled' together. If 
it works then use it and god help the poor guys who have to come along 
and maintain it.

When I was contracting I was offered a very lucrative support contract. 
It ticked all the boxes. Work from home, maintain the system, good money 
etc. When I did my due diligence on the actual code, my already grey 
hair went white. A 10yr old could have done better. It was just a 
complete mis-mash of cobbled together 'stuff'.
When I asked about their regression testing, I was met with blank 
stares. This System was at the literal heart of their business. IF it 
fell in a heap for more than a day they would be liable to some serious 
fines. Needless to say, I politely declined the contract. When the asked 
me why, I replied, Because your core system is frankly unmaintainable. 
It had also been written by a team of wrote programmers in Bangalore.
But hey, who am I to complain. I'm just a unemployed 'grumpy old man'. 
Modern systems are fast enough to handle all this 
crap/bloat/obfuscation/framworks aren't they? Well, Intel is certainly 
not complaining are they?

As one /. post states, Programmers are a dime a dozen but good 
programmers are worth their weight in gold.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Upgrading from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.x.x LTS when, it ships

[Stephen Davies]

Watch out for the changes in php causing some existing software to 
suddenly generate zillions of error messages.
Certain things have been depreciated and unless the aplication software 
you are using to have been upgraded
 to support the new version of php you are going to his problems.
This caught me out with Gallery V2.x

I'm in the process of migrating all my customisations into the new one 
just so that every call does not generate 50+ lines of verbage about the 
use of depreciated calls. There are also changes to be made to php.ini 
to use the old date format. There are quite a few rants on various web 
forums about the lack of backwards compatibility in the latest major php 
release for old versions.

Stephen D
{now I'll expect to get lots of flack saying I should use more recent 
versions of my apps. Sorry, when you have a lot of valid customisations, 
moving them to a new version and thouroughly testing it takes a lot of 
time. My time. At the moment, this is not something I really want to 
spend hours doing}


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[Hampshire] httpd default/catchall Virtual hosts

[Stephen Davies]

Here's the scenario

A number of Domains have been defined using DYNdns. They all point at 
one IP address.
At that address is a Netgear Router that is configured to port forward 
all port 80 requests to the Linux Server where the http server is running.

The httpd.conf on that server is configured with virtual hosts for each 
of the Domains setup in DynDNS. Ok. Everything works.

What I'm struggling with is defining a Virtual host that will act as the 
default/catchall destination. For example for the myriad of port 
scanners etc that will just use the IP address and see what responds. I 
want to send them a 404 or something similar back, essentially telling 
them to P**s off.

I still want to allow requests for tools like phpMyAdmin to be allowed 
through from the local subnet (eg 10.10.2.*) when requested by
http://10.10.2.10/phpMyAdmin
I'll probably change the app name for phpMyAdmin though when this gets 
into production.


Any suggestions most useful.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] httpd default/catchall Virtual hosts

[Stephen Davies]

Stuart,
 Thanks for the lowdown.

I agree that there is lots in the docs and especially your point in 
knowing what you are looking for

The default bit was hard to find. But now I know what it is, I'll 
document it on my Wiki.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Apache virtual hosts

[Stephen Davies]

Can anyone recommend a good reference/step-by-step guide for setting up 
the httpd.conf file so that virtual hosts work properly.

I've done this a few times in the past but more by luck than judgement, 
I have gotten it to work. Now I really need to understand it once and 
for all and then document it properly.

The thing I'm trying to do is setup a server where I have seperate urls 
for the following

wordpress
joomla
gallery2
general web site

phpmyadmin must also work. using http://localhost/phpMyAdmin;

In the testing environment, I have created the DNS names in DynDns that 
all point to external facing IP address which get routed to the Linux
server where all this will be hosted.


The problems I'm having is that I can get to the server via a name such 
as myblog.homelinux.org but all I get is the default homepage even 
though I have used the DocumentRoot inside the VirtualHost option.
This is all being added to an existing  live site so I want to test it 
all on another machine first.

Here is the relevant bits of the httpd.conf
(I'm using port 60163 for testing through my router)

NameVirtualHost *:60163

VirtualHost *:60163
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
/VirtualHost

VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:60163
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ServerName  localhost
/VirtualHost

VirtualHost myblog.homelinux.org:60163

DocumentRoot  /data1/myblog/
ServerName myblog.homelinux.org
/VirtualHost

etc

I can get at the myblog by specifying the myblog at the end of the url. 
It appears therefore that the DocumentRoot stuff is not working.

Any Ideas?

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Recommendations for a Window Capture Utility anyone?

[Stephen Davies]

I'm looking for a screen capture utility that can capture just a visible 
window.
There are several around BUT (and this seems to be the show stopper)


It must run on SLES and RHEL

I have a big training doc to write and I don't fancy editing some 100+ 
images
just to remove all the bits I don't want.
On Windows(boo hiss) I use HyperSnap. It's this sort of functionality I 
would like to have.

Any ideas?

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Recommendations for a Window Capture Utility anyone?

[Stephen Davies]

Hugo,
 Thanks for the info.

I've got scrot running on RHEL 4  5 after finding the dependencies. 
I've yet to try SLES though.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Microsoft has run out of SUSE Vouchers

[Stephen Davies]

SD Times is reporting that Microsoft has exhausted its supply of SUSE 
Vouchers.


http://www.bz-news.com/t.do?id=4182032:12279109

The article quotes
A total of 475 customers have used an unspecified number of coupons, 
according to Microsoft. Customers redeem the coupons for a single- or 
multi-year subscription for upgrades, updates and technical support from 
Novell.

475 customers cost them $240 million? That is some cost of sale. I would 
have thought that the customer numbers should have been in the thousands 
not hundreds.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Ubuntu Changing default Search Enging to Yahoo

[Stephen Davies]

Groklaw is reporting that as a result of a revenue sharing deal the 
default search engine for FFox in future Ubuntu releases will be changed 
to Yahoo.
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=displaysid=20100126135326412title=Ubuntu+switches+default+search+engine+to+yahootype=articleorder=hideanonymous=0pid=815475#c815497

I am with another HantsLug member in being slightly sceptical of this. I 
wonder what would happen the day after Microsoft takes over Yahoo?

Steve D


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[Hampshire] Some more dumb journalism?

[Stephen Davies]

If you go here
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/10-scripts-to-create-your-own-linux-distribution-665247

the second command is for 'UCK'.

AAAGGHHH

Why couldn't they use what little brain cells they have left and call it

 10-scripts-to-create-your-own-Ubuntu-based-distro

Oh silly me.
For journo's,  Ubuntu === Linux.

Sorry for that but I've spent the last 3hrs fixing a Ubuntu system that 
had for some reason its root filesystem 110% full.
Yeah, I know that I should have booted the DVD but it wouldn't boot. My 
removable one was 20+ miles away so I had to try to get something 
bootable on a USB stick. You know that dent you have on the wall next to 
your desk? Well the one at this clients is an awful lot bigger. And no, 
they didn't keep their backups up to date, and no they wouldn't let me 
take the system off site and finally, it had to be fixed by 11:00pm 
tonight as their US operation would automatically FTP a whole bunch of 
files over. That was the cause of the problem. 18+Months of daily FTP 
operations and no one did a purge!

End Rant.

Steve D
PS, It was fixed but I've got to go back tomorrow to explain to their MD 
that their IT guys should be fired.


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[Hampshire] Rawtherapee released under GPL3

[Stephen Davies]

The latest Alpha release of Rawtherapee had been release under a GPL V3 
license.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/RawTherapee-3-0-Alpha-1-released-under-GPL-license-896214.html

The author hopes that other developers will step in and help develope a 
more user friendly GUI.


It is nice to see a great bit of software being released like this. I've 
used it since V1.x and find it a great RAW image processor.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] NAS devices and MTU

[Stephen Davies]

Re Auto negociation.

The situation was this.

System 1 - Windows Server 2003 with Websphere App Server
System 2 - Windows Server 2003 plus SQL Server 2000

Apps on System 1 were doing DB selects  inserts on the DB located on 
System 2
When we turned off Auto-Negociation on BOTH system Network INterfaces 
the throughput went up by 60%
I came to the conclusion that every operation was being auto-negociated 
as system 1 uses a connection pool that is opened when the Appserver 
starts working.

I stand willing to be corrected but I'd like to know where the huge 
performance improvement came from if it isn't working like I assumed.

I didn't have any opportunity to run the system with a tool like 
Wireshark running at the same time as this was on a customer site and 
wouldn't let me loose with wireshark for obvious security reasons.

Happy New Year

 Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Tactical Nuclear Penguin

[Stephen Davies]

The ultimate pressy for the ultimate linux geek?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/north_east/8380412.stm

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu ( Other) users beware

[Stephen Davies]

Taking the route of defending yourself when sued takes a huge bucketload 
of money especially when it is a company the size of Microsoft on the 
other end.

IMHO, until there is some form of escalating financial penalty for using 
patents like this, the whole 'mobius strip' of lining the already deep  
bulging pockets of Lawyers will continue.



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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu ( Other) users beware

[Stephen Davies]

Stuart

 Did HAL say this in 2001?

I'm sorry Dave, you can't do that

I totally agree that whichever thing that are trying to get ownership of 
it is a pretty silly patent and yes there is lots of prior art. Sadly 
only those with mega deep pockets would even attempt to try to prove 
them otherwise.
I would like someone to stick their head above the parapet and say It 
looks like I'm using your patent. So Sue Me! Hardly likely to happem 
though.

Stephen D


 

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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu ( Other) users beware

[Stephen Davies]

Thanks Victor.

 The mists of time confused me somewhat but I was nearly there.

From  several other soutced it appears that Packagekit is also in the 
firing line with this patent. I really do hope that SCOTUS see the light 
and chuck this along with every other software paten into the great bit 
bucket in the sky. Somehow, the squadron of pigs that I'll see flying 
over the RH office in Farnborough tomorrow when I go shopping will be 
more likely.

Sigh.
  Stephen D



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Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu ( Other) users beware

[Stephen Davies]

Sorry,
 I meant to say POLICYKIT rather than PackageKit.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Ubuntu ( Other) users beware

[Stephen Davies]

Microsoft has patented 'sudo'

Arrgghhh! WTF? etc etc etc

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2009094923390

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Internet addresses set for change

[Stephen Davies]

Keith Edmunds wrote

I was giving presentations in the early nineties about a kind of
networking that set out to achieve broadly the same goals as IPv6


I was doing that around that time as well. The networking I was talking 
about was that lovely beast called Decnet Phase IV.
Those were the days. Yeltsin sitting on a tank in Moscow while I talked 
at a University there about something as boring as Networking.

Stephen D



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Re: [Hampshire] Internet addresses set for change

[Stephen Davies]

IMHO, the issue is if the DNS bits in whatever device it is can handle 
strings in UTF-8 or UTF-16 OR UTF-8 with UTF-16 command  switches(ie 
where you can indicate a UTF-16 or UTF-8 set of charactes withing a string.

Then you have the move to IPV6 and I'm sure there is going to be a lot 
of kit made redundant by these changes in the next few years.

Interesting times ahead methinks

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Bad Karma

[Stephen Davies]

Sean,
 Whats with this my bad. We are NOT AMERICANS...

Steve D


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[Hampshire] Linux Virus Infections

[Stephen Davies]

/. has a posting about how Linux can be infected with virii when using Wine.

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1417177

Seems that it not easy to do but is possible nevertheless.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Xorg is hungry today...

[Stephen Davies]

.deb Hell ??? wtf?

We all know that it is only rpm's that give you hell!
(Now where's the 'only pulling your leg emocion?')

I for one have not had an 'rpm dependency hell' for well over three years.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] iPod + Linux

[Stephen Davies]

Sean,
 If the ipod touch is using V3 firmware, you are going to be out of 
luck. AFAIK, V3 firmware  Linux is a real no-no.

 Steve, using the wonders of the interweb from Rodez, France


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[Hampshire] Open Source Camera!

[Stephen Davies]

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august31/levoy-opensource-camera-090109.html

Enjoy.

Unfortunately, it uses Canon lenses so I won't be getting one.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Printers

[Stephen Davies]

I've used several Kyocera FS series printers from Linux.
I currently use a Samsung CL350 Colour Laser and an Epson 2100 Inkjet.

As an aside, the Linux Cups driver for the 2100 has more features that 
the one shipped with OS/X which is ironic as Apple is the Cups 
maintainer. I can print panoramas 5ft long on 8in wide paper from Linux 
whereas both Windows  OSX fail miserable.

I'd avoid Lexmark printers though. The (AFAIK) specifically do not 
support any operation from Linux even if it is over a LAN.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Introductions

[Stephen Davies]

Tim,
Welcome to the Lug.

An Emacs users eh?
bows deeply to superior being

Working on Smoothwall?
I expect that you might get asked to speak to the Lug on it at some 
point in the future.
If they'd release an eeeBox sized system with TWO Nics's I would buy one 
in a shot and probably run Smoothwall on it.

Glad to have you around.

Stephen D
{Fedora User}



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[Hampshire] IPV4 : 700 days and counting ?

[Stephen Davies]

This announcement by Roaring Penguin
http://linuxpr.com/releases/11567.html

had a bit that got me thinking.

It states that the IPV4 address base will be exhausted in 700 days and 
that we should (by default) move to IPV6

That is all well and good but how many people reading this are actively 
using IPV6 (not just leaving if on by default but configuring things 
like ip6tables.conf, dhcp etc)
How many are using an ISP that provided an IPV6 enabled connection?
If so what ADSL modem do you use?
If you don't use IPV6 then what are your plans to move to it (at least 
for external connections)?

I visited a pretty 'with it' company yesterday and I was surprised that 
they have just about ditched IPV4 internally.

They have one subnet left for those 'old' devices (HP Printers plus the 
odd Windows system). Everything else uses IPV6.
 
Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] pcworld southampton linux

[Stephen Davies]

Pavithran,
 Welcome to the joys of shopping at a branch of PC-World or other DSG 
Intnl group store (Dixons, Currys)
your experience is not that uncommon.
Even when they had some eeeBook 701's with Linux on them, the 
employees(from my experience) promoted the Windows alternatives. The 
quote about not being able to download anything is also (again from my 
own experience) not unheard of either.

There are other places to shop. IMHO, PC-World is the store of last 
resort and I will only enter one with gritted teeth. I vowed  never to 
enter one ever again after the insisted that I provide a valid name  
address for a cash purchase.

 Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] [ADMIN] August Meeting - Farnborough

[Stephen Davies]

Ahh that delight of England, Farnborough

Ok, I jest.

The main attraction as has been mentioned is the historic link with 
Aviation.
However there is a gem that gets overlooked 99.99% of the time.
This gem of a place is Farnborough Abbey.

www.farnboroughabbey.org

The resting place of Emperor Napoleon III of France, his wife  son. A 
small Benedictine Monastery right in the heart of Farnborough.
Open 3-4 on Saturdays for guided tours and they also sell the most 
wonderful free range eggs.
Also open 1st Sunday in the month at 3pm for Organ Recitals. They have 
one of the finest church organs in the country and people come from all 
over the world to play it.

There, and you all thought Farnborough was a boring place.
As for Aldershot... censored

Stephen D
Only joking.
 

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Re: [Hampshire] Hantslug gallery update

[Stephen Davies]

If the software being used is Gallery V1 then it can be upgraded to V2.
AFAIK, V1 is not being actively developed any more

I used Gallery 2 when constructing the Aldershot  Farnham Camera Club 
site. I was able to customize the software quite easily to give me the 
finish we required.

I you want to see what it looks like then visit.

http://steved.homelinux.org/gallery2

As an aside, this is served from an eeeBox B204 running Fedora 11 that 
sits on the shelf in my office.

Steved D


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Re: [Hampshire] Hantslug gallery update

[Stephen Davies]

James,
 Can you email me a screenshot showing how it fails to render. I have 
viewed that page using 3.5.1 and it seems ok.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Waiting for ATI Radeon drivers for the latest kernel?

[Stephen Davies]

According to Phoronix 
(http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=categoryitem=Display%20Drivers) 
the 2.6.31 kernel will have all the code to give decent graphic 
performance on Radeon Graphics devices OOTB.

I've been waiting for one such driver for my eeeBox that has a Radoen HD 
card. Until the system gets decent video acceleration
 the system can't display 1080p video without juttering.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] What do you think?

[Stephen Davies]

Fellow Lug members, I would welcome comments on the following.

The Linux Application Developers Quandary or is it really a Nightmare


Linux distributions such as Ubuntu are making great strides in removing 
the need to do even quite advanced configuration operations via the 
command line and utilities like ‘vi’ (and even ‘emacs’ for those so 
inclined). Some would like to banish the bash command terminal to the 
same prominence the DOS Command window has on Windows Systems. i.e. 
buried away in All Programs-Accessories along with Windows Explorer, 
Notepad and Calculator to name but a few.

That is all fine and dandy for the majority of key/core applications 
that are already included in a distributions repository. In the case of 
someone starting out to develop a new application that needs both a 
daemon that uses one or more configuration files and an application 
controller(to edit the configuration files) do they:-
1) Develop a command line only controller for V1.00
2) Develop a GUI only controller for V1.00
3) Both of the above
4) Non of the above and rely on users being able to use vi/emacs etc

With application complexity increasing and the number of configurable 
parameters or even command line switches and options the task facing 
anyone who wants to develop a viable front-end for the application is 
considerable and forever increasing.

Consider the following two cases.

Properties files, manual edits and CVS

Properties files (or as the used to be called ‘ini files’) are in my 
opinion are real PITA. That said, they are a million times better than 
the Windows Registry.
As everything in Linux/Unix is a file and the majority of these files 
are plain text there is a great temptation to edit them manually 
especially if you are remotely logged into the system over a slow 
connection and using the GUI is not practicable.
Once you have done that there is a danger that the changes you make will 
not be picked up by the GUI application. This particularly applies to 
comments. Nice and helpful as they are, how many GUI’s distributed in a 
standard Linux Distro today can handle comments.
It is good practice to comment any changes so that the next person who 
comes along to fix the problem you edit has just caused can know who did 
what, when  why to the file. Yep, the version history strikes back. How 
many GUI’s give you the opportunity to add a new bit oh version history 
to the file? Not many I’d be willing to guess.
Then comes CVS (or something similar). We all know that it is good 
practice to use CVS/SVN/git or some commercial package to store those 
ultra critical files in so that when your system goes down in a heap of 
flames (it does happen) you can pull everything out of your Source 
Control System and deploy it on the new system knowing that it is the 
latest version.
Some of these systems add comments into the file showing the checkin 
date/time  user. This is great for auditing purposes but we are back to 
the problem, how does the GUI handle comments. Again, the answer is not 
very well.

Command line option applicability

With some applications that have a plethora of command line options the 
is often some which will not work together or worse still, are ignored 
completely if they are placed after another option of the command line.

How is the GUI Developer going to easily, reliably code up the rules for 
the GUI so that the application has a better then 50/50 chance of doing 
what the user wants when if gets kicked off?
Estimating the number of test cases to ensure that the test coverage 
could be a daunting operation and without a decent tool to actually do 
the manual application of GUI operation it could be almost impossible. 
Note, I have not even considered the coding of the GUI at this stage.
Just writing down the rules will probably show up actual inconsistencies 
in the documentation (assuming there is something more than a ‘man’ 
page) and how the application actually works. Adding an AI rules engine 
may be the only way to go for some complex applications.

One company I work with has done this for one of their applications 
already so it is not just some crystal ball gazing. The costs of 
maintaining the GUP have since dropped by more than 50% and from that 
experience, they are considering doing it for more applications. Note, 
this is not anything you will find buried in dome Debian repository 
somewhere and will cost you more money than most LUG users will earn in 
a year.



If we take the two cases outlined above it is not hard to see that many 
projects have made the decision (either consciously or not) to take the 
easy way out and not handle comments etc or dynamically edit the options 
presented on the GUI if they would make the execution of the command fail.

Clearly this is not ideal practice and it is going to take a sea change 
in attitude by developers to achieve this even on a small percentage of 
key application in Linux but if the goal of doing away 

[Hampshire] Linkedin was Re: Microsoft beats Google to be named UK's best,

[Stephen Davies]

I saw the reference in the previous thread to the fact that it is

almose de-regeur that you had a Linkedin profile

I had one for a short while but after seeing the details of who I was 
linked to, I soon deleted it.
It was not because I didn't want to be linked with these people but it 
was purely for security.

In my opinon, the sort of data that is used by LinkedIn presents a great 
opportunity for Identity Theft. As someone who has had their identity 
stolen (ok, it was 1973) I am aware of the risks. This is also the 
reason I don't use any social networking sites such as Facebook etc.

Do any LUG Memger have similar reservations about sires like LinkedIn or 
am I being overly paranoid?

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Karmic RAT Party

[Stephen Davies]

Vic,
 Who needs or even cares about Ubuntu when there is Beer available 
especially Real Ale?

 ;-) 


Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Stallman on why Mono should be avoided

[Stephen Davies]

Various sites (including /.) have linked to an article written by RMS titled

Why free software shouldn't depend on Mono or C sharp

http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono

It makes (IMHO) good reading and is why I have removed all traces of if 
from my systems.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Fedora 11 eeeBox B206

[Stephen Davies]

I have had the chance to try out Fedora 11 with the second generation 
eeeBox hardware.

The first generation eeeBox had numerous problems with various Linux 
Distros especially with 'X' due to the graphics Hardware.

The second generation uses an ATI Radeon GPU instead of the Intel one 
and this time things are very different.

The B206 comes with a wireless KB  Mouse  as well as an IR Remote 
Control which makes it very suitable for a media centre. The ATI GPU has 
a HDMI output and is supposed to be able to decode HD TV streams whereas 
the old version (B202) could not.
The OOTB package includes XP-HOME (Sigh) but is useful to make sure 
everything works prior to installing Linux.

I booted the Fedora 11 X86 DVD off of a DVD drive connected to one of 
the 4 USB ports on the box. The usual Anaconda boot process started off. 
This was a big difference to Fedora 10 release on a B202 due to the GPU 
problems mentioned above. The install process was identical to 
installing Fedora on any other system. I partitioned the 160Gb HDD 
manually using a mixture of EXT3  EXT4 filesystems. The actual software 
installation took approx 30mins following a 'custom' selection. If I had 
used the netinstall and a remote HTTP source for the options, this would 
have been a lot less (I did a recent install with almost identical 
package selections in 14mins).

After rebooting the Anaconda? First Boot process took over and after 
setting up a user and the time, the Fedora Login screen was presented. 
As with Fedora 10, root login is disabled (something I don't like) so I 
logged in as the use I created in the first boot process and was 
presented with a familiar Gnome screen. Something else I don't like is 
that even though ipconfig reports that both eth0 and wlan0 are 
configured you are not connected to the local LAN. You have to enable 
this via an icon on the desktop. eth0 came up straight away. I only had 
to enter the WEP key for wlan0 and then I was connected to my wireless 
network. This is a once only exercise but I find it frustrating anyway 
that at least for eth0, it is not enabled automatically.

I moved a MySQL db over from another (Centos) system and started the 
service and everything worked. Infact everything on the B206 seems to 
have worked with Fedora 11 right from the word go. A big thumbs up here 
with one reservation.
The supplied ATI driver won't run compiz and at the moment there is no 
proprietary driver available on rpmfusion at the moment. This is very 
much a 'nice to have but not essential'.

what's next?

I'm going to try to use it as a media centre. I'll install myth TV with 
a DVB-T USB tuner and see what happens but that is for another day.

I have installed Fedora 11 into a couple of VM's and again had no real 
issues. A PPC Mac mini install was just the same. Everything working OOTB.

Conclusion:-
 This is (As far as my limited testing goes) a pretty good release OOTB.
 
Stephen D




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[Hampshire] 10 reasons why Linux is better than Windows Vice Versa

[Stephen Davies]

10 reasons why linux is best
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=528


now for
10 reasons why Windows is best.
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=556

This second post is a bit of ramble. One moment he is talking about 
servers then he is talking about OpenOffice
then again I can't remember the last time had to recompile a kernel but 
I know that if I had to I could.


I know the HantsLug team would support the 'Linux is best option' but 
surely there are some better arguments out there?

Stephen D

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Re: [Hampshire] Drobo

[Stephen Davies]

I use TWO different NAS and neither of them are Drobo's.

My favourite is the QNAP T209. This is a 2 drive unit that sits out in 
my garage.
I have two 1Tb drives in Raid 1. Underneath, the device runs Linux and 
can support even MySql  PHP. I chose to use Raid 1 as the drives are 
formatted ext3 so if the device goes belly up, I can take the drives and 
used them in a linux system thus avoiding can chance of data loss.
The other using is also a QNAP but this time a 4 drive unit with 4x 1Tb 
drives in two Raid 1 arrays.

I was monitoring the CPU  Drive temp when all the snow was around last 
month. The lowest CPU temp was 18C.

I looked at building my own unit but in the end, I felt that the OOTB 
functionality of these units swayed the day.
The only downside was the fairly noisy fans that are shipped with the 
units. I replaced them with ones that are virtually silent and also have 
a higher volumetric flow. It is a pity that on bits of kit like this 
they scrimp on something like a £10.00 fan.

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Where to buy electronics/computer stuff, online?

[Stephen Davies]

I tend to use the following places

  www.aria.co.uk

  www.ebuyer.co.uk
 
 Dabs (now owned by BT) don't seem to have competitive prices anymore

 Plus of course Novatech for things I want today. Order online  collect 
especially convenient if I'm at a customers in Pompey.

The biggest issue with buying stuff online is the delivery. Both ebuyer 
 aria seem to use the same delivery company. If I'm out when they call 
and want to collect from the depot then I have to trek over to 
Blazingspoke which is a real PITA. That said, I know to expect them to 
deliver between 2pm  4pm in Aldershot.
Aria's next day delivery has been 100% so far.

my 2p worth

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Let the Battle Commence

[Stephen Davies]

Well, Microshaft has gone and done it

http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/Microsoft_sues_TomTom_over_patents_in_case_with_Linux_subplot_40305732.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/26/microsoft_tomtom/

Right,
 time to get the beer in and settle down to watch the sparks fly

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] mkisofs boot catalogue other problems

[Stephen Davies]

Sean,
 Thanks for the pointers. It does appear that the boot.cat file is 
created as part of the operation. It is a shame that neither the man 
pages or the help pages state this fact.(well at least none of the ones 
I have read).
This whole process does seem very hit  miss and very prone to error.
There is (IMHO) scope for making this whole thing much more robust but 
as it is something that is not done at all by the majority of users.
Sigh

Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Hampshire Digest, Vol 28, Issue 21

[Stephen Davies]

re:

/2009/2/18 Stephen Davies stephen.dav...@ultraconsulting.co.uk: /

 / I've been working on a highly customised configuration based on Ubuntu.
  The eventual target is for it to be booted from a USB stick but all the
  development has been done in a vmware image.
 /
/
Interesting choice, given your firmly expressed opinions about Ubuntu
in the past.
/
Unfortunately it is not my choice...It is the customers who (bangs head 
against a brickwall)
thinks that LINUX == Ubuntu and only Ubuntu even though they run many servers 
using RHEL  SLES.

I have shown him 95% of what they want with Fedora 10 running from a USB stick, 
they have done all their setup (undocumented) in a VMWare Image and want that 
installed on a USB stick.
Sigh
Stephen D

 


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Re: [Hampshire] HDMI output from linux

[Stephen Davies]

You can get (and pretty cheaply...) DVI to HDMI cables.
This solves the problem of searching for reasonably priced graphics 
cards with a HDMI conector.
I use a 5m one to connect my Macbook to the Camera Clubs 1080p projector.

That said, the next generation of eeeBox (B204/B206) is supposedly going 
to have a HDMI connector. One of these should do very nicely as a Media 
Centre. They were announced in late November so we may start to see them 
soon. btw, they are going to have an Nvidia GPU rather than the somewhat 
problematical Intel one. I intend to get one to use at the core of my 
MediaCentre setup.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Convert VMWare files into .ISO

[Stephen Davies]

I've been working on a highly customised configuration based on Ubuntu.
The eventual target is for it to be booted from a USB stick but all the 
development has been done in a vmware image.

Has anyone any guidelines about how to take the data in the VMWare image 
files and turn it into something that I can eventually burn into a 
bootable USB.
What I'm working on is as follows:-
The configuration is aimed at a portable PORTAL gateway.
Portable == USB stick
PORTAL == runs Firefox in KIOSK mode with a homepage that points at a 
customer portal.

There are customised boot screens and none of the normal Ubuntu splash 
in Orange or progress bar.


Stephen D


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Re: [Hampshire] Does anyone know someone at Demon?

[Stephen Davies]

My Mum had this sort of issue with Talk-Talk. They wouldn't (via the 
script read from their Mumbai call centre) escalate the problem to 
Openreach even though ALL the Talk-Talk customers in her street (4+) 
were without a phone
I tried in vain to speak to a supervisor when reporting the problem.
They also expected every T-T customer to have a mobile phone where their 
calls could be diverted to (WTF?)
IN the end, I collared an OpenReach engineer who was working at the box 
near her house.
He sorted everything out within an hour.

Her phone service is now back with BT. At least their fault line is 0800 
not 0870

There seems to be some business metric in these large suppliers that 
restrict the number of calls they report onto BT. This is probably for 
fear of getting charged by BT if there is not fault.
BT have the kit and the systems to do a physical line check while you 
are on the phone reporting the fault. They have had this since CSS was 
implemented 20 years ago. I wonder if the companies that offer LLU have 
this ability?

Finally, some of these 'cheapo companies' don't care a toss about being 
reported to Ofcom. All they want is to keep sucking money from you as 
I'm having with the plonkers at Tiscali.

Stephen D


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[Hampshire] Some useful GEDIT hints

[Stephen Davies]

Todays 'MakeUseOf' (www.makeuseof.com) contains some fairly superficial 
but possibly useful tips on GEDIT plugins that may make it more useful.
I've been using it for a while now and it have become my preferred text 
editor on Linux (except when I have to use vi that is)

Also, a bit Off Topic, todays Dilbert is a bit of a classic.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-01-25/

Steve D

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[Hampshire] How to force X to init only on Screen 1

[Stephen Davies]

I've been putting together an eeeBox system for a friend. He has a nice 
23in screen which will make a great system especially as I can mount the 
little box on the back of the monitor.

The only issue I have is starting X.
The hardware under the skin is straight out of a laptop and lspci 
detects TWO displays.
Naturally, when X starts, it defaults to screen 0 which would be the 
laptop screen except that there is no
 screen. Thus, I can't see X at all.

Now with old versions of X, you could edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf but 
the newest versions of X don't use this any more.
You could also boot another distro (eg Knoppix) and copy its working 
xorg.conf to your system. We can't do that anymore.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can proceed here.
I'm a bit stuck and my friend want his new system.

I'm using Fedora 10 but I have found instances of Fedora 9 working 
perfectly on one of these nice little beasts.

Stephen D


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