Re: PDF FAQ
Adam and Ingo, hello. On 2014 Aug 16, at 22:20, Ingo Schwarze schwa...@usta.de wrote: Adam Thompson wrote on Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 03:27:46PM -0500: On 14-08-16 01:01 PM, Norman Gray wrote: To do this, I took the HTML versions of the FAQ sections, and normalised them into regular XHTML (which makes them processable into other forms). With that done, it was straightforward to transform the result into both HTML for presentation, and into LaTeX for further transformation into PDF. This depends on the xsltproc package, and obviously on LaTeX. [...] It would be pretty straightforward to generate a .txt FAQ from these same sources (via *roff). Regarding the OP's mail, TL;DR (and too complicated). OK: * I tidied up/normalised the existing HTML * ... so it was easy to transform it to consistent HTML for presentation, with generated ToC * ...and easy to generate a version intended for print This was originally in the service of the suggestion that a printable version would be a thing that the project could potentially sell alongside CDs, to raise money. I believe work on doclifter(1) and docbook2mdoc(1) is already in consideration, That would be me. Docbook is a reasonable suggestion, and intended for this sort of thing, but it's a _big_ DTD, so rather a heavyweight solution, and would create a dependency on the external Docbook stylesheets. The FAQ isn't structurally complicated enough to really warrant Docbook -- an HTML subset is the right tool for this job, and a couple of simple stylesheets do all the transformation that's required. And it would require an upconversion step, as you point out. Whereas the text already exists as HTML., and now as XHTML. If not, I certainly don't think it's worth the time to change it by hand. Well no, some scripting support is certainly required unless you are *very* bored. But that shouldn't be too hard to write. Indeed, and I've just written that. (This particular conversion was done by using TagSoup to convert the text to XML, and then some emacs regexp-replace to do the remaining tidyups. Slightly tedious, but a one-time task.). All the best, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
Nick, hello. On 2014 Aug 17, at 11:02, Nick Holland n...@holland-consulting.net wrote: I used to generate PDF files of the FAQ. I stopped this a few years ago, when I decided that the use of PDF files was not to be encouraged in any way, shape or form. Adobe writes crap code and does what they can to push it onto as many computers as they can. It has become a popular place to find zero-day exploits permitting undetected entry into corporate computer systems. And looking at how people use PDF files, it just isn't needed. Well yes, but those are problems with Adobe's dreadful reader, not with the (standardised) format itself. It's for this reason that no-one should use Adobe's reader if they can possibly help it. But there are other PDF implementations. You also need to look at the license of the FAQ and website material -- most of it is released just under standard copyright, so any redistribution requires the permission of the copyright holder. But I'm not planning to distribute anything. The temporary URL I posted was to demo the results of the suggestion I was making. To be clear, I'm proposing that the XHTML version of the FAQ text would potentially be usable as the master version, and used to generate HTML and any other formats that were desirable (such as a PDF, or a text version via *roff). All the best, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
Mihai, hello. On 2014 Aug 17, at 09:50, Mihai Popescu mih...@gmail.com wrote: To OP: I presume you're addressing me? and yet you are asking for more and try to suggest crazy things. No, I'm not asking for more. I'm offering code, and a mildly reorganised FAQ source text which would incidentally make it easier to maintain in future. So, you saying that you want a paperback instead of CDs is writting out of boring. No, I'm not saying I want a paperback. I'll spell this out again: It has been claimed that some people would buy a printed text who would not buy CDs (this was originally Worik Stanton's suggestion, and I think it's plausible). If such an artefact can be produced and distributed trivially easily (I think I have demonstrated the first part of that, and that sites like lulu.com support the second), then that means more money for the OpenBSD project. Your little project must be maintained also, Thank you for your kind condescension. FAQ is a changing information, it needs another resources and maintainers. Indeed, and the easier that task is, the better. Best wishes, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
Theo, hello. On 2014 Aug 17, at 18:09, Theo de Raadt dera...@cvs.openbsd.org wrote: Noone is going to bother setting up sales for something that can be trivially reproduced. But that's the odd thing about the Python Reference Manual I linked to [1]. It's identical to the downloadable version of the same document, and either people don't realise this, or else they do but want the paper thing anyway. I've no idea what its sales are, but the existence of reviews on that page indicates that they're non-zero. Of course, the python community is both larger than, and different from, the OpenBSD one, so this is no more than an existence proof. However the same 'they can just download it' argument can also be applied to the distribution CDs, and folk are encouraged to buy them, and do, for various reasons. It's certainly true, though, that there'd be an effort trade-off to calculate. All I'm adding is that if that trade-off _were_ deemed to be worth it, then generating the PDF, and HTML, is trivial. All the best, Norman [1] http://www.amazon.com/Python-Language-Reference-Manual/dp/1906966141/ -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
Greetings. Some way up this thread, I said: On 2014 Aug 14, at 11:21, Norman Gray nor...@astro.gla.ac.uk wrote: On 2014 Aug 14, at 01:10, Worik Stanton worik.stan...@gmail.com wrote: Suggestion: Package the release notes, FAQ and some other documentation into a PDF and sell that at the same price as the CD, from the same place. I'd buy that. It would be better quality than the (often) crap O'Reilly sell, and I buy that. This is potentially quite a good idea. The T-shirts and CDs exist because (a) some people find them useful in themselves, and (b) some people prefer or find it more convenient to buy a physical thing they don't intend to use, as a means of making an indirect donation to the project. This of course is discussed at length in the rest of this thread. There's precedent for such a physical book being sellable. The Python Reference Manual [1] is a dead-tree version of the language and library description also available for free at [2]. There's clearly some story about the various reasons why people buy that, but it's clear that at least some do. I have considered doing so myself -- a paper document is superior to an on-screen one in some circumstances -- but in the end found it more convenient to print out selected sections of the downloaded PDF. Places like lulu.com will put a PDF on paper for you and sell/ship the result. I've no idea of the economic details of that, or alternatives to lulu, but such services do exist. I'm not making any promises here, but given mild encouragement I'd be very willing to take a look at how complicated it would be to turn the existing text or texts into a readable PDF (I've done this sort of thing before, and could probably do it fairly efficiently). After posting that, I received some ... non-discouragement off-list, and that's enough for me. At http://nxg.me.uk/temp/openbsd-faq-suggestion/ you will find, for your delectation and delight: * A PDF of sections 1--5 of the FAQ; * An HTML version of this; * A tarball containing the source of the scripts which generate these from XML originals. The idea of the PDF is that it's something which could potentially be sold on dead trees (which might be useful/attractive for the reasons above). To do this, I took the HTML versions of the FAQ sections, and normalised them into regular XHTML (which makes them processable into other forms). With that done, it was straightforward to transform the result into both HTML for presentation, and into LaTeX for further transformation into PDF. This depends on the xsltproc package, and obviously on LaTeX. The HTML target does things like adding in consistent structuring, generating tables of contents, ensuring that internal cross-references are consistent, and so on. The results should be identical in content, and pretty similar in appearance, to the online versions. The normalisation of the contents consisted in large part of regularising away various bits of cruft used for layout (for example blockquote and table elements (eek!) around pre, which are fiddly to manage and are inevitably inconsistent across the document), making ... and '...' consistent, and a couple of other things discussed in the README in the tarball. The README also contains some notes on the lightweight structuring added to the source files. It would be pretty straightforward to generate a .txt FAQ from these same sources (via *roff). The results here aren't very pretty -- and obviously I've only done the first five sections -- but they're respectable and should show the idea. Even if the PDF idea isn't taken up, this is potentially an alternative way to generate the HTML files, in contrast to hand-editing disconnected .html files. I like the idea of the 'Good Idea Fairy'! This one comes with product. Best wishes, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: Donations to OpenBSD
Greetings. On 2014 Aug 14, at 01:10, Worik Stanton worik.stan...@gmail.com wrote: Suggestion: Package the release notes, FAQ and some other documentation into a PDF and sell that at the same price as the CD, from the same place. I'd buy that. It would be better quality than the (often) crap O'Reilly sell, and I buy that. This is potentially quite a good idea. The T-shirts and CDs exist because (a) some people find them useful in themselves, and (b) some people prefer or find it more convenient to buy a physical thing they don't intend to use, as a means of making an indirect donation to the project. This of course is discussed at length in the rest of this thread. There's precedent for such a physical book being sellable. The Python Reference Manual [1] is a dead-tree version of the language and library description also available for free at [2]. There's clearly some story about the various reasons why people buy that, but it's clear that at least some do. I have considered doing so myself -- a paper document is superior to an on-screen one in some circumstances -- but in the end found it more convenient to print out selected sections of the downloaded PDF. Places like lulu.com will put a PDF on paper for you and sell/ship the result. I've no idea of the economic details of that, or alternatives to lulu, but such services do exist. I'm not making any promises here, but given mild encouragement I'd be very willing to take a look at how complicated it would be to turn the existing text or texts into a readable PDF (I've done this sort of thing before, and could probably do it fairly efficiently). However it's not obvious to me where the source of the FAQ is. The HTML is at [3] and there's a plain-text version at [4], but I presume these are generated from some other common source. The latter says that The FAQ is available in text form in the pub/OpenBSD/doc directory from many FTP mirrors, but I wasn't able to turn that into an actual URL, or a location on http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/. All the best, Norman [1] http://www.amazon.com/Python-Language-Reference-Manual/dp/1906966141/ [2] https://docs.python.org/3/download.html [3] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/index.html [4] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/obsd-faq.txt -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: [OT] Commonwealth Games Ceremonies
Craig, hello. On 2014 Jul 22, at 13:17, Craig R. Skinner skin...@britvault.co.uk wrote: Last night at a dress reversal of the 2014 Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony, I thrilled to walk my New Zealand flag in to the packed stadium of 71 nations from the British Empire!!! Welcome to Glasgow! (I should probably confess that the weather isn't _always_ quite as good as this...) Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: immutable-ish version control repo?
Greetings On 18 Jul 2014, at 03:27, Adam Thompson athom...@athompso.net wrote: rcs - trivial to change the past (also not distributed, and NFS is undesirable). cvs - reasonably easy to change the past, usually. svn - definitely possible (AFAIK) to change the past. bzr - unknown hg - unknown git - unknown everything else - unknown I've only played briefly with Fossil (which has already been mentioned), but it makes a particular virtue of immutability. Mercurial makes changing history hard but not impossible, and not undetectably, Changing other than the last commit requires an SVN-style dump and reload, so this appears to match your requirement to avoid other than determined/expert changers. Git seems to want to let it all hang out, and lets lots be changed/'fixed' retrospectively. This is fine until someone gets hurt (also, Git has a UI which appears to have been designed by a committee of rabid monkeys, which I myself feel is a downside). With experience of CVS, SVN, Mercurial and Git, I'd choose Mercurial any time I had a choice. Best wishes, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk
Re: SUMMARY: Install 5.4 onto netbook... almost
Moss, hello. On 2014 Apr 14, at 08:05, Maurice McCarthy m...@mythic-beasts.com wrote: Though I've only been using OpenBSD for about a year and, from reading your posts, I'm clearly no where as competent as yourself, may I ask if you have downloaded the necessary firmware for the athn ethernet card? Ah, an interesting point. No, I didn't download any firmware for the card -- it Just Worked. If, as you suggest, this is to some extent unexpected, it's possibly explained by the machine having had Windows on it before: it _might_ be (I'm not sure I've necessarily convinced myself of the logic here) that this had ensured there were up-to-date drivers, in a way that wouldn't have been true if I'd installed OpenBSD onto the 'raw' machine. Best wishes, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: SUMMARY: Install 5.4 onto netbook... almost
Moss, hello. On 2014 Apr 16, at 14:17, Maurice McCarthy m...@sphinx.mythic-beasts.com wrote: Ah so your ethernet is now working then! Yes? If so then good. I'd thought that one problem was that you could not connect to the internet using the netbook. The install script does download any firmware it finds necessary but, of course, if you needed to install ethernet firmware to do that then there is a self-defeating loop. Maybe your Macbook has the same card? I was having difficulty connecting initially, because of the choice/lack of drivers on the floppy5x.fs images (if I recall correctly). Booting the install CD on the MacMini meant that I was able to create a bootable flash disk with a full install, which, in particular, did have drivers enough to support the ethernet interface at least. At that point, I didn't need a network at all, because the flash drive had the install sets on it, too, but it was necessary for installing packages later. I believe that this netbook's wireless interface is incompletely supported by OpenBSD, but I've deliberately left that unconfigured in any case. I want this to be 'the secure laptop', so if the ethernet cable's not plugged in, then I can be confident it's not on a network at all. I had vague plans to install it completely air-gapped, but that's more trouble than it's worth in my situation -- that would be for drill rather than need. I remember noticing that the MacMini seemed to have the same ethernet card manufacturer as the netbook, but that wasn't my principal concern at that point, so I can't be sure. All the best, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
SUMMARY: Install 5.4 onto netbook... almost
Greetings, all. On 2014 Apr 6, at 18:09, Norman Gray nor...@astro.gla.ac.uk wrote: I'm trying to install the released OpenBSD 5.4 onto a old-ish netbook without an optical drive. I thought I could do this via install54.iso; I can see where I need to get to, and can almost get there, but I can't find the last step. Thanks, everyone, for your various strands of advice. In the end, I installed 5.4 onto the netbook by booting a Mac Mini (the only optical drive I have available) from a burned install54.iso image, using that to install OpenBSD onto a flash drive, and then copy the install sets onto the flash drive, and then booting the netbook from the flash drive. This specific route was first suggested, in that particular form, by Brett Mahar, but there a fair bit of overlap between the various suggestions, and I've learned a lot. For your edification and delight, I've included the dmesg output below (and also sent it to dm...@openbsd.org, of course). This route does allow the install to happen without the netbook ever being connected to a network. But when it comes time to add other packages atop the base, it'd clearly be possible, but a pain in the neck, to do that without a network. I used 5.4 rather than 5.5-current, because when it came to add packages it turned out that (if I'm reading the runes correctly) the 'python' package within 5.5-current requires /usr/lib/libssl.so.20.0, but 5.5-current installs /usr/lib/libssl.so.21.0. I did try installing OpenBSD into a Virtualbox instance hosted on OS X (as Martin Brandenburg suggested). That mostly worked, but I seemed unable to mount the flash drive on the virtual machine, even after being sure (as Martin noted) to eject the device from the OS X side beforehand. I didn't investigate where the problem really was. Again: close, but not quite, and I moved on to booting the Mini from the CD. Below are more detailed instructions (aka brain-dump), for the benefit of anyone going the same route. Boot the Mac Mini (or whatever) from the install CD, with the flash drive in place. The install process will let you select the flash drive as a target. After that's finished: # mkdir -p /mnt/5.4/i386 # cd /mnt/5.4/i386 # ftp http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/OpenBSD/5.4/i386/SHA256 ...and so on, including each of the INSTALL.i386, bsd* and *.tgz files # halt (or whatever mirror you prefer). If you do this right after installing from the CD, the network is in place, and the flash drive mounted. If (as a result of more faffing around) the network isn't up or the drive isn't mounted, then you might need one or more of # ifconfig # find your ethernet interface # dhclient interface-name To mount the flash drive: # sysctl hw.disknames # show available disks # disklabel sd0 # show the partitions on device sd0 # mount /dev/sd0a /mnt # mount partition 'a' onto /mnt Then put the flash drive into the netbook, and boot it with boot b hd0a:/bsd.rd This again boots to the install script, which lets you install onto the netbook's hard drive (finally!). Gotcha: even if you don't plan to use X on the target machine (I imagine it would be a fairly unpleasant experience), you _do_ need to select and install at least xbase54, xetc54 and xshare54 (so you might as well just install the lot!). This is because ports and packages aren't tested in the no-X configuration, and at least one of the ports I wanted to install did indeed fail to build until I went round the whole cycle again and included them in the install onto the flash drive. I also installed the OS onto an encrypted filesystem (so that there isn't necessarily a problem if this machine gets lost or stolen). There are very good instructions for doing this at http://www.bsdnow.tv/tutorials/fde. Useful things to know: 1. # sysctl hw.disknames # shows the available disks; sd0 is my hard disk 2. I configured a swap of 3MB (which is a round number slightly larger than the amount that the automatic layout decided to give to it). 3. With the devices on this hardware, I had to use # bioctl -c C -l /dev/sd0a softraid0 This reports the crypto device being sd2. Back to the installer and, as suggested, use the Whole of the crypto device (so sd2 in my case), and create a custom layout with everything in partition a. Added '/dev/sd0b none swap sw' to the end of the fstab So... Thanks again to jordon, Tomas, Martin, Stuart, Moss, Brett and Jan (and of course a modest number of EUR to the Foundation). Best wishes, Norman dmesg: OpenBSD 5.4 (GENERIC.MP) #44: Tue Jul 30 12:13:32 MDT 2013 dera...@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC.MP cpu0: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz (GenuineIntel 686-class) 1.60 GHz cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,EST,TM2,SSSE3,xTPR,PDCM,MOVBE,LAHF,PERF real mem
Re: Install 5.4 onto netbook... almost
Stuart, hello. On 2014 Apr 6, at 23:39, Stuart Henderson s...@spacehopper.org wrote: ale(4) and the USB drivers are not on the single-floppy installer that you're using, hence the lack of network and flash devices. Ah, well that explains _that_ little problem, and neatly closes off a fruitless avenue. Oh - your other method (which should work for 5.4 too) is to pxeboot. Just needs a dhcp server (see mdoc.su/o/pxeboot for details) and tftp serving the pxeboot and bsd.rd files. But wouldn't that require a working network adapter? Since the wireless adapter in this netbook isn't supported by OpenBSD, and as you explain the wired interface isn't supported on the floppy.fs installer, doesn't this rule out a pxeboot? (or am I getting myself terribly confused?) Thanks! Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: Install 5.4 onto netbook... almost
Brett, hello. On 2014 Apr 7, at 12:36, Brett Mahar br...@coiloptic.org wrote: Maybe I missed some of the posts but instead of all these crazy convoluted methods, just install to a usb drive on a regular computer (ie one with a cd rom) then boot ramdisk (bsd.rd) on your netbook, explanations at: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#flashmemLive and slightly more complicated: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=articlesid=20140225072408 That route would indeed work (I quoted both of those links in my original email), but both require a pre-existing OpenBSD installation in order to create the bootable full install on the flash drive. That pre-existing installation is what I don't have. It sounds as if the best next step is to install 5.5-current onto a virtual machine, either Virtualbox or Qemu (thanks, Moss), which will allow me to go this route. I imagine that that will be quite a quick solution, once I start. It's tantalising that the other routes I described seemed to bring me s close to the promised land, prevented only by single final barriers. Somewhat educational barriers, yes, but still insuperable; so it's not time wasted. Thanks, all. I'll report back when I clear time to have a go at this. Best wishes, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Install 5.4 onto netbook... almost
] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#Boot386 [4] http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=articlesid=20140225072408 [5] http://blog.breeno.net/2014/02/creating-flexible-openbsd-usb-installer.html [6] https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man8/bless.8.html -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: Install 5.4 onto netbook... almost
Martin, hello. On 2014 Apr 6, at 22:21, mar...@martinbrandenburg.com (Martin Brandenburg) wrote: Assuming you are somewhat experienced with OpenBSD, setting up a bootable USB with install sets isn't hard. Among BSDs, I'm familiar with Solaris (a long while ago), OS X and FreeBSD, but this is my first time giving OpenBSD a spin. It's a pity I'm doing it with suboptimal hardware. And you'll be good to go. Thanks. But you need OpenBSD to run that, as you already know. If the MacBook you're using is x86, you'll be able to run VirtualBox and do it from there. The trick is to eject the USB drive from disk utility so you can attach it as a USB device to VirtualBox. That's an interesting plan, and thanks for the gotcha. I'll give that a try, though perhaps not tonight. Since you can boot floppy.fs, it _might_ be possible to run mount_cd9660 on a partition containing the ISO image. My problem there is that I can't get the image onto the netbook's disk, because I seem to be unable to see the flash drive with the image burned to it. That's a bit of a puzzle. With two flash drives plugged in (containing floppy.fs and install55), the boot sequence reports hd0, hd1 and hd2, as expected, but sysctl reports only rd0 and wd0, and there's nothing likely in /dev. I'm wondering if this blasted machine is even more broken than I now think it is. I have also done your plan e before. If you're really worried you can disconnect the hard drive before trying it. It's interesting to know that this is possible. Thanks for your help. All the best, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: Install 5.4 onto netbook... almost
Tomas, hello. Thanks for your advice. Devs and list need to see your dmesg output for sure (it can be posted somewhere as screenshots via link) I've put the dmesg output at * http://nxg.me.uk/temp/dmesg-screenshot-5.4-1.jpg * http://nxg.me.uk/temp/dmesg-screenshot-5.4-2.jpg * http://nxg.me.uk/temp/dmesg-screenshot-5.4-3.jpg A pretty desperate set of screenshots -- photos of the screen! Those are temporary URIs. On 2014 Apr 6, at 20:59, Tomas Bodzar tomas.bod...@gmail.com wrote: Problem 0 is that the boot fails to detect networking hardware. I understand that the wireless interface doesn't work on this machine with OpenBSD, but that the wired one should work [2]. ATT specs page is pretty crap (sounds like ATT :-)), but that type of netbook was known under different model name as well which is AO531h. Here are some much better details Thanks. One would have thought that the real place to find these would be at acer.com, of course, but no, they don't acknowledge the thing ever existed. (not sure why you were looking for fxp driver in dmesg). Just guessing, really. It's one of the network interfaces illustrated in the relevant bit of http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html All of that is anyway showing path for you. Install -current i386 on it, not old OpenBSD 5.4 release I downloaded 5.4 because it's the highest-numbered version listed in the mirror at http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/pub/OpenBSD/ , and 5.4 is the one mentioned at http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html. I tend to think of snapshots as bleeding-edge things, but if the current snapshot is the preferred new download for OpenBSD, I'll note that for next time. However the wired interface _isn't_ detected, and the installation script goes straight from 'System hostname?' to 'DNS domain name?' even though it's plugged in to an ethernet network which is offering DHCP services. I can't see anything in the dmesg that's relevant (no 'fxp' or 'vlan'). I'm reasonably confident the network is behaving as it should, but it's _possible_, though unlikely, that the wired interface is simply broken (the machine's previous owner only ever used it wireless). Hmm: still doesn't work. I'm now starting to wonder if network interface is actually broken. They're generally rather robust, and there's no obvious damage. However the tell-tale light flickers on at power-up, and stays off thereafter, so that, plus the reassurance that this _should_ work with this release, makes me think of hardware brokenness as the next most likely thing. Damn. I'll reply to Martin's Brandenburg's message separately. Thanks for your help. All the best, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
