Re: [SLUG] Disabling HDMI sound

2015-12-03 Thread Nick Andrew
On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 10:28:44PM +1100, Patrick Elliott-Brennan wrote:
> I have found another possible solution here:
> http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/
> 
> Which suggests, under Linux kernel parameters
> 
> Option: radeon.audio
> Value:: 0,1
> Default Value: 0
> Explanation: Disable/enable HDMI audio
> 
> My question is: what *do* I do with this? I'm assuming I need to
> add/remove something *somwhere* but...where/what?

Edit /etc/modprobe.d/radeon.conf

options radeon audio=1

Note that my "modinfo -p radeon" shows an additional option -1 for audio:

audio:Audio enable (-1 = auto, 0 = disable, 1 = enable) (int)

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Recommendations for Australian Based VPS

2015-03-24 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 09:15:55AM +1000, Rick Phillips wrote:
> I will be moving my premises to a new site but have to wait until
> construction is completed.  My premises are sold and under contract
> so I need to find a temporary home for my services.  A VPS is
> probably the best option right now and so I am looking for
> recommendations.

I've had good experiences with MammothVPS  http://www.mammoth.net.au/

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Email line length

2014-07-10 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 11:30:20AM +1000, pe...@chubb.wattle.id.au wrote:
>I'm seeing more and more emails
>that have incredibly long lines.

I'm confused. You mean a single LF-terminated line is used for the whole 
paragraph? Like this (112 characters)?

>I can of course word-wrap, but that breaks quoting,

I'm using mutt, and the lines wrap around on the terminal but when I quote them 
there's only a single '> ' used, which is quite alright. I usually follow the 
sender's style and so if I'm quoting a substantial chunk of text from a single 
line then I need only one '> ' anyway.

>I'm assuming this is a Windows and Mac thing.  Is there any setting
>I can get the senders to tweak that will label emails as
>`format=flowed'? 

Asking senders to change the way they email is usually fruitless.

I find it's generally more of a problem for Windows users receiving my email,
where I put in the line breaks myself (such as this paragraph). Their mail
clients automatically flow the lines together to fit their terminal width,
which may not be what I want if I'm pre-formatting the text, such as a
list:

  - a
  - b
  - c

I'm told their clients turn off auto flowing if a line starts with at least 3
spaces, so to prevent them seeing "-a -b -c" I will do this:

   - a
   - b
   - c

Or even this:

  - a

  - b

  - c

Given the wide variety of ways mail clients display and create email messages,
desired formatting could be preserved by marking up the message with HTML, but
on the other hand HTML email as it's usually used is extremely evil and forget
I even mentioned it.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] 20 years of using Linux at home

2013-04-05 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Apr 05, 2013 at 09:46:39PM +1100, Martin Visser wrote:
> Well today pretty much marks 20 years since I've used Linux at home.

You're an early adopter :-)

I started using Linux on 19th June 1993. I've added a reminder into my
calendar to celebrate the anniversary.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] newbie to writing programs

2013-01-18 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 05:57:09PM +1100, Chris Barnes wrote:
> What i mean is if the parent forked at the line
> pid = fork();
> Then the child would begin executing at the next instruction. In this case
> If(pid > 0){ exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); }

Both parent and child resume/start executing at the next instruction, which
is the if() test. The child gets a return value of 0 from fork() whereas the
parent gets a non-zero positive value. So in the parent, pid > 0 whereas
in the child, pid = 0. All other variables (all memory contents) are
identical between the parent and the child.

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Re: [SLUG] Managing software across a cluster

2012-08-14 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 11:45:07AM +1000, Steven Tucker wrote:
> thanks for the suggestions, they were awesome.
> Since writing that email Puppet has been suggested to me as well,
> though I will go look into all the suggestions.

Another vote for puppet. The more you use it, the more useful
it gets.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] date sorting on second last string

2012-08-05 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 09:12:14AM +1000, li...@sbt.net.au wrote:
> how could I date order sort on penultimate string to end up with date
> ordered ?
> 
> Job  1978924 (8)  Ttt  Pp 20-11-2012  Notes
> Job  1923886  Ccc  Pl 31-08-2012  Notes

That kind of thing is much easier done if dates are represented
in the international standard format, ISO8601 ... -mm-dd

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Re: [SLUG] Re: Android-based smartphones - any drawbacks ?

2012-02-05 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Feb 06, 2012 at 09:34:22AM +0800, James Linder wrote:
> If I choose to use windows then the only and remote moral issue is MS
> use the money I fed them to wreck havoc on the world.

I think you just proved Patrick's point. By continuing to pay money to
MS, you are in part responsible for the use to which you know they put
that money - which is to continue to lock users inside an MS ecosystem
to the maximum extent possible. Software patents and restricted copy
and use rights deprive users of freedom. Users may not be aware of this
lost freedom, but that doesn't mean it's valueless.

> if we loose track of the ball and even start to believe that freedom is a 
> moral issue. 

You think freedom is not a moral issue? Sorry, but freedom is the epitome
of a moral issue. Rights, responsibilities, privileges, power, choice,
liberty, coercion and contract are all important issues in the world of
software and the Internet as they are in the physical world. We're
developing new things pretty rapidly and it is important for future
generations that we get the governance model right; we don't want to
end up with the Internet equivalent of a theocracy or feudal system.

> Certainly if you try to argue with the PM linux for every kid because Windoze 
> is immoral you are going to find your self ignored.

If that was a once-only argument you may be right, but it takes time
to raise awareness and a lot of effort to explain why putting yourself,
say, at the mercy of Microsoft's or some other company's EULA is
ultimately harmful.

> While this thread drifts OT the basic issue is tremendously important for us 
> as a group.

So ... back to the important questions of whether Android or IOS runs
more apps?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Multifunction printers vs dedicated sheet-feed scanners?

2011-09-05 Thread Nick Andrew
The dedicated scanners could be expected to be faster and more robust,
maybe higher quality too. The scan quality on our cheap multifunction is
not as good as that of my dedicated (but non-multi-feed) Epson scanner.

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Re: [SLUG] Multifunction printers vs dedicated sheet-feed scanners?

2011-09-05 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 04:00:26PM +1000, Jon Jermey wrote:
> My question is this: given that my printer cost $79, and a dedicated  
> sheet-feed scanner costs $400 and up, am I going to get a better success  
> rate if I purchase one of those rather than just buying a new cheap  
> printer?

I have only a cheap multifunction printer/scanner too, but it is pretty
good for scanning multi-page documents, as long as the paper is flat
and the right size. So I can't answer your question with experience of
dedicated scanners.

It occurred to me though, for $79 to buy another cheap printer you
can confirm if the other printer's mechanism is worn out, and worst
case is you use that new cheap printer until it also wears out.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] non-root users cant use network

2011-08-29 Thread Nick Andrew
Your problem is here:

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 08:52:42PM +1000, Chris Barnes wrote:
> socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_IP) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
> write(2, "failed: Permission denied.\n", 27) = 27
> 

My wget trace here shows:

socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_IP) = 3
connect(3, {sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(80), 
sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, 16) = 0
write(2, "connected.\n", 11)= 11

Your problem is definitely in the kernel, and not locales (which is just
message printing). But just why the kernel is refusing to create a TCP
socket for you is a mystery.

Can you send the contents of /proc/net/dev please.

Is there a way you can find out what kernel capabilities your process has?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] non-root users cant use network

2011-08-28 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 01:06:34PM +1000, Chris Barnes wrote:
> cpbarnes@netbook:~$ ping 127.0.0.1
> socket: Permission denied
> cpbarnes@netbook:~$ wget http://127.0.0.1/
> Connecting to 127.0.0.1:80... failed: Permission denied.

Interesting.

Try "strace wget http://127.0.0.1/"; and see which system calls are failing.

My guess is bad permissions on /dev, /sys or /proc. Backup guesses are:
something to do with selinux, out of memory, bad capabilities, or some
important module not loaded!

Nick.

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Re: [SLUG] Text to HTML?

2011-08-28 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 10:04:01AM +1000, DaZZa wrote:
> I'm looking for something that can take a text file and convert it
> into HTML, possible with some highlighting.

Markdown?

markdown < file.txt > file.html

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Re: [SLUG] Addressbook and Calendar apps

2011-08-25 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 12:19:54PM +1000, Peter Chubb wrote:
> >>>>> "Nick" == Nick Andrew  writes:
> Nick> Text file, kaddressbook, Google Calendar.
> 
> Thanks Nick.  Can you synchronise these across handheld, laptop and
> desktop?

The google calendar's available on my android phone and on any
web browser. Kaddressbook is only on my desktop but actually I
don't use it much, I just use the dialing directory on my GSM phone.
The GSM phone is for cheap outbound calls; the Android phone is for
cheap Internet access.

Big Text file is on my desktop but it's in a git repository so if I need
to edit it on my laptop I will just pull the latest commits. Or I will
just ssh into my server through 3G.

> Can you use them offline?

I'm almost never offline, and when I am, I'm not in a position to work
on my TODO list, as this primarily requires me being online. I'm online
when working; online on the train. When I'm driving I can't really work
on my todo list, but if I'm otherwise away from computers I can remember
enough of the day's plan to function adequately.

> How do you get your TODOs to link
> to your calendar and addressbook?  (for instance:  TODO: by
> 30/sep/2011, visit Accountant with tax details)

If I had scheduled a meeting with my accountant for a particular date/time
I'd put that into Google Calendar. Google sends me SMS notices 30 minutes
before an event starts but if I need more notice I'll tell google to send
additional SMSs sometimes up to 24 hours in advance.

The work required to prepare the tax details can be done anytime in
advance so my Big Text File containing all my TODOs for everything
has got a daily breakdown area where I plan my days ahead. I also mark
them as complete when they're done (a 'c' in column 1) so the file also
keeps a record of what I did on each day. I delete the old days occasionally
but keeping the file in a git repository means I can retrieve old versions 
later.

I have a vim style file for the todolist which highlights headings,
completed items and in-progress items. It's fairly easy to arrange
tasks into whatever sequence I like; I can organise them by project,
date or in some other way.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Addressbook and Calendar apps

2011-08-25 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 10:13:09AM +1000, Peter Chubb wrote:
> what are people using for TODO, address book and calendar

Text file, kaddressbook, Google Calendar.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] script help with unexpected token/variable

2011-08-21 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 09:55:34AM +1100, Voytek Eymont wrote:
> # archmail aa.com.au
> /usr/local/bin/archmail: line 19: syntax error near unexpected token `sudo'
> /usr/local/bin/archmail: line 19: `  sudo -u#5000  archivemail -d90 $j '
> 
> script:
> --
> # cat /usr/local/bin/archmail
> #!

It looks like your script is missing a correct shebang line.

Try:

   #!/bin/bash

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] search and replace multiple files?

2011-08-01 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Aug 02, 2011 at 02:24:47PM +1000, Sonia Hamilton wrote:
> * Nick Andrew  [2011-08-02 12:23:43 +1000]:
> > On Tue, Aug 02, 2011 at 10:29:44AM +1000, Sonia Hamilton wrote:
> > > For example, I want to replace "def fubar" with "def snafu" across 50
> > > files.
> > 
> > perl -p -i -e 's/def fubar/def snafu/g' *
> 
> I said: "PS I know about sed, and how to edit multiple files in vim
> [1]." Supplying a perl recipe therefore isn't very useful. Perhaps I
> should've said "ditto for ruby, perl, python, ...".

I know you know about sed but I don't know you know how to edit multiple
files in-place in a single command in perl. sed is a pain to edit files
in-place as it has to write to a temp file and then typically rename that
temp file to replace the original file.

> > If you are not using SCM (or git in particular), then you should be.
> 
> http://soniahamilton.wordpress.com/tag/git/

Nice site.

> Again, not the question I was asking...

I don't know how to get your editor to do it and "leave only changed files
open". I suppose it's possible using vim macros but it's not something I
have spent any time learning. I know you know how to edit multiple files
in vim but this is one of the more trivial features of the editor and I
don't know that you know anything about vim macros or have any desire to
learn what is probably a pretty complicated solution for a problem which
can be solved easily with two steps.

I would myself have done the refactoring exactly how I showed it, and
let git keep track of what files have changed.

If it's a problem with leaving the editor open with only changed files,
then I can suggest something like this:

  vim -o $(git status --porcelain | awk ' /^ M/ { print $2 } ')

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Re: [SLUG] search and replace multiple files?

2011-08-01 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Aug 02, 2011 at 10:29:44AM +1000, Sonia Hamilton wrote:
> For example, I want to replace "def fubar" with "def snafu" across 50
> files.

perl -p -i -e 's/def fubar/def snafu/g' *

> I then want to close all the files that didn't have changes, so I
> can investigate the changed files in more detail (yes, I'm refactoring).

git diff

If you are not using SCM (or git in particular), then you should be.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Bash Script: Spaces in file names

2011-07-13 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 07:15:33AM +1000, Nigel Allen wrote:
> I have started to write a bash script whoise first  task is to find out  
> if a file exists.
>
> A typical path for this file would be:
>
> /home//Maildir/.MyPlans.125
>
> when I run the script I get a "no such file or directory" but when I run  
> the ls command from the command line it works fine.

The script has to quote the variable when it is used inside the script,
e.g.

if [ -f "$1" ] then
echo "File $1 exists"
fi

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] KDE gui package manger in Debian

2011-06-30 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 10:55:18PM +1000, David Lyon wrote:
> he's a boy.. apt-get is a boys toy really..

You're saying apt-get isn't a suitable tool for girls?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] The 'nanny state' and freedom of choice

2011-06-28 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:05:32AM +1000, david wrote:
> 
> Some years ago in NSW, children of Jehovah's Witnesses were denied blood  
> transfusions by their parents because of religious beliefs. The state  
> introduced legislation and stepped in to make such children wards of the  
> state if their lives were at risk.
>
> What right has the state to deny to a child eternity in the presence of  
> the Lord for the sake of a few years of earthly life?
> 

This is an easy one. There is absolutely no evidence that the JW's
notions about blood transfusions are in any way true, however there is
well established evidence that death will occur in certain situations
when a blood transfusion is refused. Children are not the property of
their parents, and it is not a parent's prerogative to put a child's life
at risk for their illogical and unevidenced beliefs. Young children are
not competent to make their own decision on such matters; therefore it
is the responsibility of the state in its role to protect the general
well-being of its citizens, to step in and protect the child from its
own parents.

This is established law. NSW baby Gloria Thomas died in agony from an easily
treated eczema condition as her parents treated her using homeopathy
against doctors' advice. Parents Thomas Sam and Manju Sam have been
jailed for manslaughter by gross criminal negligence.

In USA baby Alayna Wyland suffered an abnormal growth around her left
eye which the parents tried to treat with prayer - and nothing else.
The parents have now been convicted of felony criminal mistreatment.

There may be many ways in which AU is a nanny state; you chose a
particularly poor example to rest your case.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] IPv6 using ufw on Debian stable

2011-06-07 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Jun 07, 2011 at 12:47:05PM +1000, Simon Rumble wrote:
> To Action  From
> -- --  
> 22/tcp (OpenSSH)   ALLOW INAnywhere
> 25/tcp (SMTP)  ALLOW INAnywhere
> 80/tcp (WWW)   ALLOW INAnywhere
> 25/tcp (Postfix)   ALLOW INAnywhere
> 587/tcp (Postfix Submission) ALLOW INAnywhere
> 22/tcp (OpenSSH (v6))  ALLOW INAnywhere (v6)
> 25/tcp (SMTP (v6)) ALLOW INAnywhere (v6)
> 80/tcp (WWW (v6))  ALLOW INAnywhere (v6)
> 25/tcp (Postfix (v6))  ALLOW INAnywhere (v6)
> 587/tcp (Postfix Submission (v6)) ALLOW INAnywhere (v6)

There's no ICMP6 in that list, which is why your ping responses were
blocked.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] IPv6 using ufw on Debian stable

2011-06-06 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Jun 07, 2011 at 12:03:50PM +1000, Simon Rumble wrote:
> Jun  7 11:56:23 stout kernel: [UFW AUDIT INVALID] IN=eth0 OUT=
> MAC=f2:3c:91:96:7e:df:c8:4c:75:f5:c4:ff:86:dd
> SRC=2001:4860:4002:0802::::1012
> DST=2600:3c00:::f03c:91ff:fe96:7edf LEN=104 TC=0 HOPLIMIT=55
> FLOWLBL=0 PROTO=ICMPv6 TYPE=129 CODE=0 ID=25190 SEQ=1

I guess it just means the firewall is blocking incoming ipv6 traffic.
The firewall allowed your outbound packet through, but not the inbound
response.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Tape Backups and Scripting

2011-06-06 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 06:25:29PM +1000, Rick Phillips wrote:
> You will see from the
> script below that I have listed a number of folders which I need to back
> up (literally the whole drive) with a few things like /tmp and /proc
> missing for obvious reasons.  When I do a "list" of the files on the
> tape at the completion of the backup, it only ever displays as far as
> the "sys" folder with nothing after it (/var & /virtual).

You need to exclude /sys for the same reason you exclude /proc - it is
a filesystem constructed from kernel memory, not disk blocks. The list
is maybe hanging in /sys because it's treating them like regular files
(e.g. if you try to backup /dev/zero it will read zeroes forever and
never complete).

Look for an option to limit a backup within the specified filesystem, or
not cross filesystem boundaries. In tar, the appropriate option is 
--one-file-system.
In other system tools the option may also be called -x or -xdev.

Oh, and using amanda or bacula will have benefits such as incremental
dumps or multiple filesystems.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] How to do a Custom Print Processor in Linux ?

2011-05-10 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:53:00AM +1000, David Lyon wrote:
> Its
> all good until electrical contractors come and disconnect cables from the
> hub, and
> then the network goes, and it all breaks and users complain.

It doesn't sound like a software problem.

> Now I want to move the rendering of text files to a Linux server (some
> stable ones
> exist here) and hoping to do the same in Linux.

Would it be possible to run the DOS software in a virtual machine under linux?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Re: Virus Scanner

2011-04-03 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Apr 04, 2011 at 06:46:36AM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> Morgan Storey wrote:
> > I think it is going to come back and bite the Linux community if we go
> > via the line that we are immune to viruses,
> 
> Unfortunately, the alternative, virus scanners that look for
> particular virus signatures is nothing more than security
> theatre.

I agree. What would a virus scanner look for anyway, if there
are no extant viruses on linux systems?

> Firstly, inew viruses can be written so fast that the virus
> detection engines have absolutely no way of keep up.

I don't think this is a strong argument. Windows viruses have lifetimes in
decades (if not forever). Statistically speaking, a given computer is very
unlikely to be infected by a young virus which cannot yet be detected by
a virus scanner. Much more likely that a computer will come into contact
with many well known viruses long after the viruses became prevalent.

> The *only* 100% safe way to guard against viruses to fix all the
> security holes that viruses exploit. That means better coding 
> practices.

Don't execute incoming data as code. That's rule #1, learned by hard knocks
as Windows systems happily executed auto-run files, email attachments,
word macros, PostScript documents, and so on.  Unfortunately we forgot
rule #1 with the invention of JavaScript and Flash. Your browser is now
happily executing untrusted third party code in your account.

That leads to rule #2 - defense-in-depth. The only hope we have to
survive this untrusted and potentially malicious code being executed by
our browsers is to implement sandboxes, language-level restrictions and
strict limits on authorization.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Log for timed out SSH connections

2011-03-20 Thread Nick Andrew
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 10:44:23PM -0700, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 21:41, Simon Males  wrote:
> 
> > We have just switched Internet connections (from ADSL2 to [SH/B]DSL)
> > and I'm finding that SSH connections to the Internet are timing out.
> 
> I bet whatever device is doing NAT or firewalling on the outside of
> your network is dropping the "idle" connection; turning on TCP or
> protocol level keep-alive messages in SSH will probably solve your
> problem.

I concur with the above.

If you can, setup an ipv6 tunnel or vpn is another option which will
give you more control over the traffic between the two endpoints.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Debian 6

2011-03-20 Thread Nick Andrew
> >> I have installed Ubuntu 10.10, Fedora core 14 and SuSE 11.3 and all of
> >> them detected and were able to use both my ethernet card (built in
> >> gigabit) and my Linksys wireless card (as rt61 PCI) with me only having
> >> to supply the encryption key.

Tried installing firmware-realtek ?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Capturing high school graduates for Linux?

2011-03-08 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Mar 08, 2011 at 07:28:12PM +1100, Mike Lx wrote:
> Hi, I usually just lurk here, but I have to reply to this.
> I'm a year 10 student who got his craptop last year, and I hate to be a
> killjoy, but these things are _hard_ to do absolutely anything with,
> [...]

So, no VMware or VirtualBox possible, at least without finding a writeable
directory in %PATH% or whatever Windows calls it, right?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Linux for seniors?

2011-03-06 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 02:06:04PM +1100, Sonia Hamilton wrote:
> I'm investigating Linux for seniors, wondering if anyone has any
> pointers. 

Maybe Jon Jermey's book, Bitten by the Penguin:

http://www.learnubuntu.com.au/

I have a contact in a senior computer-using group out in Western Sydney.
I don't know how active they are with using linux but my contact who is
retired has installed and used it a few times by himself, and I think
he's not the only one.

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Re: [SLUG] spelunkers of the world ...

2011-02-18 Thread Nick Andrew
Did you notice that pins 5,6,7,8 are all soldered together? I think
that rules out the chips being triacs, but my searches for 441 and
44108 turned up nothing likely.

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Re: [SLUG] spelunkers of the world ...

2011-02-17 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 01:36:58PM +0800, James wrote:
> My kingdom to anyone who can id the parts U15 and U16
> 
> They are marked '44108' 'SA1' 'W97k'
> http://tigger.ws/downloads/img_1329.jpg

SST441 N-Channel JFET Monolithic Dual - calogic corporation ?

Maybe a compatible chip from a different manufacturer?

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Re: [SLUG] Which Virtualisation, and why?

2011-01-10 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 08:57:14PM +1100, david wrote:
> What virtualisation solutions would people suggest?

OpenVZ ...

  - lightweight
  - flexible resource limits
  - linux based (i.e. containers and process isolation, not machine emulation)
  - uses host filesystem, which helps with
  - dynamic resizeable rootfs
  - minimal functional installs from around 300 megs on disk
  - can live-migrate across hosts with some constraints
  - can create, install and start a new VM in under 1 minute.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Upgrading OS RAID

2011-01-09 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 09:05:53AM +1100, Kyle wrote:
> 3. It's been a while since I delved into h'ware etc. So SATA II disks  
> will simply plug into, and function correctly, SATA plugs, yes or no? Or  
> are we now at a stage where I also have to worry about whether or not  
> the m'board will actually support the disks I want to put in?

I think the worst that can happen in this respect is your motherboard
limits the drive interface to a slower speed than the drive supports,
i.e. a 3 G/s capable drive will perform transfers at 1.5 G/s. This may
or may not have a noticeable impact on performance.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Upgrading OS RAID

2011-01-09 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:42:43AM +1100, Kyle wrote:
>  My goal is to replace ALL the current 500GB disks with all new 1TB  
> disks into a new RAID 1 array and yet maintain the entire machine's  
> installation and configuration.

It's a common requirement. The hardest bit is getting the boot
sequence right as several components are involved: MBR, Grub/LILO,
initramfs and filesystem UUIDs.

> I.e. If it were as simple as;
>
> 1. as suggested by Menno - install disks separately; create new RAID 1  
> with appropriate /boot & /

If you're not using LVM then I suggest starting. The main benefits are
the ability to add/delete/resize logical volumes, often on the fly; it's
much more flexible than fixed partition tables.

When you want to upgrade in future you can add a new physical volume
(i.e. raid set) to an existing LVM volume group and move your filesystems
from one physical volume to another while the system is running.

> 2. Copy entire contents of old RAID1 /boot and / to new RAID

If /etc/fstab references filesystem UUIDs, then update the new copy to
new UUIDs.

> 3. remove old RAID, replace old for new.
> 4. Perhaps some bios fiddling and presto new disks.

I don't suppose you have an EFI bios?

PCs ... so primitive; we're still hobbled by 1980s era standards.

> But somewhere in there I've got to transfer the system onto the new  
> RAID. Just haven't figured out how yet. Plus any other gotchas I don't  
> yet know about.

At least if you drop it into single-user mode then a reliable copy of
the current root filesystem can be made. It's not necessary to boot from
a rescue disk (CD/USB) although that might have menus to help you with setup.

I found the most reliable transfer is a pair of tar commands:

cd / && tar -c --one-file-system -f - . | (cd /new_rootdir && tar xpf - 
)

'cp' has problems copying sockets / named pipes and I almost always want
to limit any recursive operation to the same filesystem because I don't
want to copy /proc by mistake.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] linked in - please block

2010-12-13 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 09:51:56AM +1100, Nigel Allen wrote:
> I have already complained to linkedin - not received a response yet.

I'm not sure how linkedin can know that slug@slug.org.au is a mailing
list and not an individual's email address.

Presumably the slug list should reject email from non-subscribers, or
alternately send a confirm request to the sender (which will eliminate
automated emails like linkedin).

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Shell math/BASH question

2010-10-18 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 09:00:16AM +1100, DaZZa wrote:
> The results from the third party software query are assigned as
> variables in the script and converted into round numbers as below
> 
> free='/'
> total=''

Course they're not numbers if they look like '2.47T' or '25.40G'.

Do "df -k -P -T" and grab the size & available as 3rd and 5th
values on each output line; they're integers and high enough
resolution for most purposes.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] zchroot: feedback on first program (bash script) to publish - quick question

2010-10-13 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 07:59:03PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> *) Should I post zchroot here, plain or zipped?
> It is 551 lines, zenlib.sh is 157, and zchroot.conf is 66 lines.

Maybe upload it somewhere and post a URL ?

It sounds interesting.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Banning non Australian IP's from Aussie ecommerce site

2010-10-10 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 16:31, justin randell  wrote:

> unless there's some really good reason not to, i'd strongly advise
> securing your ssh so that it's public-key only. i've seen too many
> places that rely on limiting the amount of ssh attempts get hacked to
> put any faith in that method any more.

Don't discount defense in depth. Hostile IP addresses found by ssh
rate-limiting can be blocked from all ports. It doesn't preclude use of
keys instead of passwords.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Telstra Doing Good

2010-10-10 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 04:31:36PM +1030, David Lloyd wrote:
> Well, considering they're one of the big three companies supporting it the 
> effort, the service does give a sensible response, many people have noticed 
> this (i.e. PEOPLE) whom I personally trust not ALL to have fallen for 
> something villainous. Plus, whatever we might think of Telstra, I'm fairly 
> certain they'd act on something that was phoney in the interests of their own 
> reputation.

I didn't see any causal connection between www.ideasforgood.com.au and Telstra.
www.ideasforgood.com.au is registered to "DROGA5 AUSTRALIA PTY LTD", not 
Telstra,
and hosted on Bulletproof Networks, not Telstra. However, searching Telstra's
website shows a press release dated today:


http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/media-centre/announcements/send-an-sms-to-help-connect-remote-aussie-kids-with-their-future.xml

So it's legit.

I wouldn't trust association ("telstra promotes OLPC so this must be legit"),
popularity ("my friends are smart enough to not get ripped off") or Telstra's
ability to protect its reputation as sufficient evidence of the veracity of
that site. On the face it smells like a scam - kinda like that Bill Gates'
Money chain letter, or at least a stunt, as it is asking the reader to do
something useless to indirectly support a good cause. And then I remembered,
Telstra gets revenue from every SMS sent from their network, probably also
for every cross-network SMS received. The revenue from those SMSs will offset
the cost of supplying OLPC laptops, perhaps up to 25% of the hardware cost.

And if the promotion is very successful it will reach its 500-laptop limit
and the SMSs will continue to come in; potentially paying for all of the
promotional costs.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Telstra Doing Good

2010-10-10 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 08:03:33AM +1100, Ashley Maher wrote:
> "For every 100 text messages, we?ll give an XO laptop to a child who
> needs it, up to 500 laptops.
> 
> Text the word ?LAPTOP? to 044 SUPPORT (0447 877 678)*"
> http://www.ideasforgood.com.au/category/future/one-laptop-per-child.html

Interesting idea. How do we know this is legitimately from Telstra?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Unrecogniseable disks.

2010-10-10 Thread Nick Andrew
On Sat, Oct 09, 2010 at 03:39:55PM +1100, wbenn...@turing.une.edu.au wrote:
> I used a DVD reader to transfer some video cassettes to disc. (All
> legitimate, since you ask; a simple format transfer.)
> 
> Or that's what I thought. I wanted to look at the intros so I could enter
> the details in the school's library system.

You may be better off writing AVI files (or similar - MPEG-4, OGG etc) rather
than DVD format due to the complexity of DVDs and difficulty of ensuring
that you have written a standards-compliant one.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] change to linux and google chrome

2010-10-07 Thread Nick Andrew
G'day Bob,

On Fri, Oct 08, 2010 at 11:10:06AM +1100, Bob Peterson wrote:
> I am new to slug, can you do the following, I have a note book with
> XP, can I remove microsoft and change to linux and use google chrome
> as the browser, if so, how would I get information to do so.

First you should obtain a distro (e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora) on a device (e.g.
CD or USB drive). Boot from the device and follow its installation
process to wipe out XP and install itself on your disk drive. Once you
have linux installed and connected to the Net you can download Chrome
browser and install it.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Auto Reboot ADSL modem ??

2010-10-04 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 10:33:08AM +1100, gonzo01 wrote:
> I am aware that my system can be set to auto-ping my connection on at a  
> predetermined interval which is fine for just ensuring that my  
> connection stays alive, and the modem can be rebooted via a script if  
> the ping fails. However, if the system is working fine and downloading  
> at max speed, the chances are that the ping will fail due to lack of  
> band-width, which would then cause an unnecessary reboot of the modem.

You could increase the timeout interval in the ping program; you could
send several packets (and only decide the link is down if no replies
are received); you could combine ping and counting the received bytes
on the interface (if no responses received and no bytes received on the
interface). Also PPP itself (assuming you are using ppp) can check that
the other end of the connection is alive - and if not, will exit which
would remove the default route.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Accounting and business software

2010-09-19 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 10:31:35AM +1000, Ben Donohue wrote:
> -- strange --- I type it in google and I keep getting "did you mean  
> LAMB" instead of LSMB accounting? Anyway I can't find it in the first 
> page.
>
> Clicking on the second page google switches to searching for "LAMB  
> accounting" in the search field. Huh? Bug in google? Same thing happens  
> in google chrome.

I think your google must be buggy. My google does the right thing.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] USB Wireless Inet under Linux.

2010-09-01 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Sep 02, 2010 at 03:06:29PM +1000, Steve Lindsay wrote:
> We're using a bunch of Huawei E160E and E169 USB modems from Virgin on
> some embedded systems that work fine with Linux (a minimal Ubuntu
> install). Purchased in the last month or two so I assume they are
> relatively current.

Is that Virgin Prepaid?

Do they get an RFC1918 private network address, or a routable address?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Using a DNS with Dynamic IP

2010-08-29 Thread Nick Andrew
On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 12:07:00PM +0800, james wrote:
> of interest how do you deal with all the non-ipv6 sites, the fact that your 
> isp issues you with an ipv4 address and all the complications.

I don't run servers open to the public from my home connection. IPv6 is
there so I can connect into my home network from outside (because I use
IPv6 outside, too).

For public servers there are plenty of reasonably priced services including
virtual server, web hosting, Amazon EC2, dedicated server, colocation
etc etc. And those are only some of the self-managed infrastructure options.
You can get free blogs, free forums, for code hosting there's SourceForge
and Google Code and Github and Gitorious (and more).

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Using a DNS with Dynamic IP

2010-08-28 Thread Nick Andrew
On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 10:31:43AM +0800, james wrote:
> An ISP that gives you a static IP eg http://amnet.net.au is IMHO the only way 
> to go. All other options are heartache.

I just use IPv6 because a registered tunnel comes with between 2^64 and 2^80
static addresses.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Weird X/Gnome issue

2010-07-29 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 08:23:49PM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> I have grepped $HOME/.gconf/ $HOME/.gnome2/ and $HOME/.gnome2_private/
> for the string "1024" and found nothing display related.

Can you strace your Window Manager to find out what files it reads?

I know it could take a long time to figure out...

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Reply-to address on SLUG posts

2010-07-27 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 03:13:38PM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> I am on a well over 50 mailing lists, some of which can have
> high volumes (the kernel mailing list can peak at over 50 emails
> an hour). Having that torrent end up in my inbox is completely out
> of the question as I also receive emails directly to me that need
> to be acted on at relatively short notice.

Contrarily, I filter my kernel mailing list messages into their own
mailbox and I welcome being CCed on the rare occasion where lkml
messages involve me, cause otherwise I'd miss them or at least not
see them in a timely manner.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Multiple server roles on one box

2010-07-27 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 04:04:05PM +1000, Ben Donohue wrote:
> I'm looking at the possibility of consolidating some servers for a client.
>
> If an internal box with DNS and squid were combined, would this be a  
> security risk... as in risky way above normal?

Try OpenVZ and run your applications in separate containers.

> How about a DNS, squid and web server with multiple name based virtual  
> domains on the same box?

I certainly wouldn't put virtual web servers on the same logical box as
DNS and Squid.

> Is doing the above really dangerous on a fully patched and up to date  
> system?

What's the worst that can happen?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] today's scary thought

2010-07-15 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 12:31:42PM +1000, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> Also, lots of different apps, so I might well end up with multiple
> solutions.

This seems likely. Databases have different consistency requirements
to people.

> A good distributed POSIX FS with replication, eventual
> consistency, some sensible conflict resolution model, and data center
> awareness would have been easy enough to use though.

Conflict resolution is the problem. The less of that you want, the more
synchronous your filesystem has to become - or expose more non-POSIX
filesystem behaviour to applications.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] today's scary thought

2010-07-15 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 04:14:38PM +1000, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> Sadly, I can't right now advise a better solution than these, however, since
> it is the main problem I face in trying to bridge two data-centers and provide
> coherent and sensible file access.

Try GlusterFS with mirroring and preference for the local filesystem.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Adaptec RAID problems

2010-07-14 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 05:53:13AM +0800, Robert Barnett wrote:
> Thanks for your persistence Ben,
> I reduced the size of the array to a 2Gb RAID 1 and experienced the same 
> problem.
> 
> I've worked out that I can load more recent firmware using a more recent 
> version of Sun Common Array Manager. The firmware 
> load failed in RHEL so I'll have to wait until Sun has sorted that out.

How about try Software RAID?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Perl Regular expression help

2010-07-14 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 01:27:13PM +1000, Peter Rundle wrote:
> I don't really understand how the [^&] followed by the * works but it does.

"any character which is not an ampersand" repeated zero or more times.

So it matches

()
()&
(a)
(a)&
(aaa...)
(aaa...)&

Where the stuff inside () is what's being matched. The matched part stops
at the first & or the end of the string. It's greedy so it matches as long
a string as possible.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] LVM

2010-06-16 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 02:06:32PM +0800, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> You won't be able to. If you configured them up as a stripe (ie, no mirroring)
> with interleaving every x megabytes on each disk, you'll basically end up
> with a virtual hard disk with "holes" evenly spread out across 1/3rd of
> the image. I don't know of any (easy) tools to recover from that.

If configured with striping (which I expect is improbable) then the data
will have holes through it and is probably unrecoverable.

However if configured with linear mapping (append) then it is
possible to make the volume group active by using the --partial flag
to vgchange:

   -P | --partial
  When  set, the tools will do their best to provide access to 
volume groups that are
  only partially available.  Where part of a logical volume is 
missing,  /dev/ioerror
  will  be  substituted,  and  you could use dmsetup (8) to set 
this up to return I/O
  errors when accessed, or create it as a large block device of 
nulls.  Metadata  may
  not  be  changed  with  this option. To insert a replacement 
physical volume of the
  same or large size use pvcreate -u to set the uuid to match the  
original  followed
  by vgcfgrestore (8).

If I was doing it then I'd do what the last sentence said: get a block
device of the exact same size as the lost one; use pvcreate -u to add
the LVM PV metadata and set the uuid to match; vgcfgrestore;
"vgchange -a y $VGNAME" to make the volume group active, then run fsck
on all filesystems.

If the VG was separated into several filesystems then any wholly on the
last two disks should be perfect; anything wholly on the first disk
is lost, and anything which straddles both may be unrecoverable or
partially recoverable (e.g. through use of e2fsck and a backup superblock).

Now if ZFS were used instead of ext2/ext3, then the filesystem should
be able to tell which particular files are OK, due to the data checksum.

> I can think of what I'd write to try and recover -something- but it'd
> involve writing a whole lot of rather hairy looking filesystem-scraping
> code. I'm sure there are tools to do this kind of partial data recovery
> but they're bound to be -very- expensive.

Or you could just run 'debugfs'.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] LVM

2010-06-14 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 11:14:38AM +0800, james wrote:
> The stuff  below is interesting and a reference, but this highlights my 
> favourite rant: Seagate's 'ATA more than an interface' says multiple disks in 
> a machine *will* result in a higher failure rate, maybe much higher.

Due to heat, or what? That paper seems to concern itself primarily with the
differences between PS (personal storage) drives and ES (enterprise storage),
in order to justify why the SCSI drives have so much higher cost per bit.

The only mention I could see about multiple disks affecting failure rate
was "A high density server rack with many disc drives grouped close together
may experience much higher temperatures than a single drive mounted in a
desktop computer". Nothing about whether multiple disks in a machine affect
failure rate for any reason other than high temperature (which is usually
controlled in server environments).

> So raid is a less worse option than LVM. Heed the advice in slug talks about 
> backup (Sorry Sonia and Margurite, I don't remember who presented them)

Yes.

> It is possible, but not likely that *every* file on your disks is distributed 
> over all 3 disks, so worst cast is that you lost 1/3 of every file you have.

Only if the Logical Volume is defined with striping (the -i argument to 
lvcreate).

Rule #1 is always ... make backups.

After that:

- RAID1 can reduce the impact of a single-drive failure

- RAID5 will increase the impact of failures

- When combining multiple disks into a large Volume Group (VG), it is possible 
to
create Logical Volumes within the VG so that they do not span physical devices.
That way, if a disk dies (or 2, in a RAID1 setup) the entire VG contents will 
not
be lost, only those filesystems on the failing devices. Hence it is a good idea
to make multiple filesystems sized according to need.

- Make multiple types of backups: backup to HDD (on a different server), offsite
backup, Internet backup, incremental backups, DVD backups, external HDDs are 
dirt
cheap these days.

- Separate data according to importance and increase the redundancy level for 
the
most important data. Data which is unimportant or can be recreated need not be
backed up at all. Precious data might have multiple backups to onsite, offsite
and write-once media.

Nick.

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Re: [SLUG] LVM

2010-06-14 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 06:14:15PM +1000, Gerald C.Catling wrote:
> I was wondering if any of you Guru's could suggest a method of getting any 
> remaing data from the LVM drives, that is drive 2 and 3, that are left.
> I have tried rebuilding the set, wg0, but the system want to reformat the 
> drive wg0, just created. Is this formatting going to format the real drives 
> and rather that just the LVM component?

Before doing anything else, take a backup of the contents of the drives.
Work on the backup if possible - e.g. buy a 1.5T external drive and copy
the data before touching anything.

LVM can bring up a volume group with one or more devices missing if it
knows the existing allocation of Physical Extents. Ext2/Ext3 keeps
copies of superblocks at various places within the filesystem so it
is possible to recover a corrupted superblock, which may help you to
obtain data from the remaining good disks.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] 500 node mesh network for Parramatta

2010-06-10 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 11:08:59AM +1000, Richard Hayes wrote:
> Hardware:  Donated WRT54s or Refurbished PCs with Linux
> Cheap wireless cards with large antenna (7db gain) or Cantenna??

Cantenna is directional I think; you'd want omnidirectional for client
access and directional only for connecting to an uplink.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Error in Time() command

2010-05-26 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 08:04:45AM +1000, Martin Visser wrote:
> Risking totally going off-topic but analog thermistors are so old-school!
> ;-)

I bought a couple of LM335A (?) at the same time, but I figured I'd
get it working as well as possible with the basic thermistor to start.

> Check out the DS18B20. Same size as transistor (TO-220) but is digitally
> (one-wire serial) connected. No need for all that analog stuff and
> curve-fitting. These are uniquely address, thus polled if need be (dozens on
> the one bus) and can be metres from the microcontroller. (Well I have one on
> the end of 30 metre roll of alarm cable). Sure a few bucks versus a few
> cents, but wow.

It's on my TODO list.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Error in Time() command

2010-05-26 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 05:52:59PM +1000, Martin Visser wrote:
> Pretty much based on the knowledge that the MCU program counter is clocked
> on a 16MHz crystal (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock 
> they
> are generally good for 6 parts per million for standard grade crystals,
> whatever that is).

Ok, that's reasonably accurate.

> If you program it using a standard loop to read inputs, calculate and write
> out to say a LCD display, you should have a loop-length of known number of
> CPU cycles. (This is quite possible with a microcontroller as everything is
> in memory and as long you aren't waiting for random DMA interrupts should be
> quite feasible. A general purpose CPU running a mega operating system with
> lots of peripherals would make this task pretty much impossible).

That's what I was thinking - apart from wanting to be sure that the timebase
is sufficiently accurate.

> Another option is to use the built-in timer/counters (one 8 bit and one 16
> bit are available) on the AVR ATmega MCU. Again clocked against the same
> crystal, and using a configurable frequency divider mechanism.

The arduino language/library includes a millis() function which returns the
number of msec of uptime; it's a 32-bit unsigned counter so it overflows
after 49.7 days. There's also a microsecond counter with a 4 or 8 uS
resolution depending on the CPU clock speed.

> And finally there are various dedicated real-time chips, such as DS1307,
> which combined with a crystal (usually 32.768KHz) can be easily interfaced
> if needed. These chips tend to be human-scale timers so you might have to
> count lots of repetitions of your loop under test and do the maths to get an
> average loop time (possibly limiting its usefulness).

Depending of course on the timescales being measured either the milli- or
microsecond counter should be adequate. Reasons for looping several times
would be "the counter resolution isn't high enough" and "the program being
tested takes a varying time to run". If run on a desktop operating
system, there's a lot of activity going on in the background so looping
many times and taking an average is, I think, a necessity.

I have an Arduino which I'll be using for temperature monitoring among
other things. While running the Thermistor2 program I noticed the reported
temperature jumped around almost at random. I did some analysis and a lot
of that "noise" is coming from the ADC itself: I wired it up to fixed value
resistor dividers (instead of a resistor and thermistor) and monitored
the ADC value twice a second for several days.

It turns out the ADC value is approximately Normally distributed with a
standard deviation of about 0.7 x LSB. From what I have read this is out
of spec and it may be due to noise in the input voltage (USB powered)
and can also be reduced by adding a capacitor to the circuit (which I
haven't done).

I modified the code to take 10 readings at a time and average them; this
reduces the standard deviation considerably. So I'm looking forward to
hooking it back up to the thermistor and running the revised temperature
program. It should show better than 0.1 degree C precision, however it
will still need to be calibrated to be at all accurate.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Error in Time() command

2010-05-25 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 01:53:27PM +1000, Martin Visser wrote:
> (And if you don't have a scope or freq. meter) a suitably programmed Arduino
> or similar microcontroller could do this fairly easily for you - probably
> with better than 0.01% precision.

How do we know the Arduino is so precise? :-)

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Open source POS software and MYOB - also: ATO new system

2010-05-18 Thread Nick Andrew
On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 11:52:21AM +1000, david wrote:
> While on the subject, does anyone know anything about the ATO's new  
> consumer tax system interface?

Their main page is http://www.sbr.gov.au/

They use something called XBRL which is apparently a huge XML schema for
reporting information about a business. I sent them email to register;
haven't heard back yet.

They have a schema viewer at:


https://taxonomy-collaboration.sbr.abs.gov.au/yeti/resources/yeti-gwt/Yeti.jsp#tax~(id~11*v~744)!net~(a~141*l~43)!lang~(code~en)!rg~(rg~13*p~7)

Funky URL. I wonder if it is a turing-complete language?

With thousands of schema elements, what I really need is a guide to which
elements are important and which are not.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Fwd: Club History

2010-04-21 Thread Nick Andrew
Sorry for the delay replying :-)

On Fri, 26 May 2006 21:59:29 -0700, Lindsay Holmwood writes:

>Although i'm familiar with the past few years of SLUG history, would
>some of the old timers care to help me out with the following email?

>>-- Forwarded message --
>>From: Steve Demeo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Date: May 27, 2006 4:29 AM
>>Subject: Club history
>>
>>I have heard it rumored that one of the first Linux User Groups in
>>the world was founded in Australia.
>>
>>I understand that the Sydney Linux User Group (SLUG) was established
>>in 1993 only 2 years after Linus Torvalds originally created the Linux
>>operating system.
>>
>>Would you have any information with regard to whether SLUG was the first LUG?
>>If not the first where in the rankings would you guess it would be placed?
>>If not would you have an indication of which global LUG's may have
>>established earlier that SLUG?

The inaugural SLUG meeting (which I attended) was held on Friday 30th July 1993
at Softway in Chippendale. Here's a copy of the announcement email:

In  chr...@sour.sw.oz.au (Christopher Fraser) 
writes:

>SLUG (Sydney Linux Users Group) inaugural meeting is to be held on
>Friday 30th July at the premises of:

>   Softway Pty Ltd
>   Level 2
>   79 Myrtle St
>   Chippendale

>The meeting will commence at around 6:15pm, but please try and arrive by
>6:00pm. It should be a fairly informal meeting. We're planning on having a few
>short presentations on recent news/developments, R3000 board project, etc.
>If you'd you have any other suggestions or would like to volunteer to
>present something, then we'd love to hear from you.

>If you have any questions regarding SLUG or the meeting, please contact either
>myself or Robert Thomas:

>   Robert Thomas (rtho...@sequent.com)
>   Christopher Fraser (chr...@sw.oz.au)

>I'm just coordinating the meeting, Robert is the one who oragnised SLUG. I will
>be away until the 19th, so urgent correspondence should be directed to
>Robert. If you intend attending, then please send me a brief email message
>so I can get an idea of numbers.

>Thanks,

>Christopher Fraser.

>How to get to Softway
>-

>   * If you're walking from Central Railway, head down Broadway and
> turn left at Abercrombie St (it's about a 10 minute walk).
>
>   * If you're catching a Broadway/Parramatta Road bus, alight opposite the
> CUB brewery and walk up Abercrombie St.

>   * If you're driving, approach either by Cleveland St, or take the
> first left after Abercrombie St from Broadway.

>  The following map may (or may not) help:
>
>  (to central)
>
>   UTS  | |(to regent st)
>   _| |
>   _  ||   |   |   |
>| |  CUB   |   | Cleveland St ---> |
>| | Brewery|   |   |   |
>   _| | ... ___|   |___|   |__
>
>   WattleAbercrombie St. (one way <-- )
>   ___  ... ___ ___ __
>  \   ||   | Pub   |  ||   |
>   \  ||   |   |  ||   |
>| ||   |_  |  |
>| ||   | | | <-- Dangar Pl
>|< Broadway|   | Softway | |  |
>| ||   |_| |  |   (to city rd)
>| ||   |   |  |
>| ||  < Myrtle St  |  |
>| ||   |___|  |___
>| ||______
>| | ... __//Wiley St   |  |
>| /
>|   ... _/NOT TO SCALE
>| |
>

>--
>Cheers,
>--
>Christopher Fraser  ``Remember what happened last time?''
>chr...@sw.oz.au

Love that ASCII art. This is what people did in the days before Google Maps :-)

SLUG was not the first. The Boise Linux User Group beat us by 3 months,

http://idahopcug.apcug.org/linuxSIG.html

and they don't say they were the first, just the oldest one in Idaho.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Net send for linux

2010-04-05 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Apr 05, 2010 at 11:37:18PM +1000, Daryl Thompson wrote:
> Is there a Linux equivalent network messaging command like 'NET SEND' in
> windows
> That is i want to be able to send messages to all and individual
> computers on the local network.

You want to send messages to computers on your LAN or you want to send
messages to people using computers on your LAN?

People using computers can run an Instant Messaging client which listens
for Bonjour / Avahi messages over the LAN and so you can chat with them.

Alternately regarding the Windows Messenger service, Wikipedia says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_service

Messenger Service port to linux:

http://www.littleigloo.org/software_002.php3

Although it seems not too useful: the Messenger Service was provided
in only certain versions of Windows: from WfWG 3.1 to Windows ME, but
never Windows NT based systems. It was disabled by default in XP SP2
due to rampant spamming over the internet, and has been removed from
Vista and Windows Server 2008!

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Re: Time Pedantry

2010-04-02 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 01:33:03PM +1100, Jake Anderson wrote:
> We should all just use unix timestamp for all date/time communications  
> and be done with it.

Pity that unix time_t ignores leap seconds :-)

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] SLUG Membership decline

2010-04-01 Thread Nick Andrew
On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 08:14:03AM +1100, jon wrote:
> I don't know if this is the place to raise this, but as a new member I  
> can think of two things that might help:

It's good. It's been weighing on my mind too.

> 1. Make it possible to obtain and renew membership online -- or even by  
> snailmail -- rather than having to physically attend a meeting (right  
> now, for instance, I'm not a member because I don't get into town when  
> the meetings are on).

Absolutely. I think membership should be completely automated, online.
No handling of cash, no hand-writing receipts. It's an efficiency
thing, and it's often more convenient to pay money online.

> 2. Take advantage of the increasing interest in Linux on the desktop by  
> setting up an Applications SIG and/or focussing on applications at some  
> events.

Sure.

My 2c: I think that the first duty of a LUG is to promote use of Linux.
So I'd like to see events for interested non-users, installfests and
other promotional activities.

> ---
> Australia's leading Linux applications trainer.  
> http://www.learnubuntu.com.au

Plus mutually beneficial co-operation with related organisations.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Surveillance camera in car

2010-04-01 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 08:53:30PM +1100, Jim Donovan wrote:
> Having been the target of a road-rage attack recently (driver behind chucked 
> a rock at me) I can see the value of having front and rear cameras recording. 
> They're actually pretty affordable these days (see 
> http://www.etronixmart.com/vosonic-gv6330-vehicle-safeguard-night-vision-car-video-camera-p-516.html?osCsid=a075cabb7bdc23a203f9e79fbc0dcc78
>  ). However I was thinking of something more durable:

[...]

> The TS-7250 looks suitable 
> (http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7250) but 
> the only cameras I've found have composite video output e.g. Jaycar's QC3491.

Interesting idea. You could get some tips from Jon Oxer at
http://www.geekmyride.org/

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Re: Time Pedantry

2010-04-01 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 06:25:46PM +1100, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> > None of this would be a problem if we'd just switch to decimal time in a
> > single timezone and call it a day.
> 
> Actually, we would still have to deal with the changing length of the day, and
> with the increasing difference between our stellar and earth-based times. :)

Indeed. The Earth's rotational period does vary slightly (effect of
earthquakes notwithstanding). One reason time is hard to deal with
sensibly is our insistence on synchronising it to the mean solar day.

Nick.
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Re: Why so snooty? Re: [SLUG] Which bank doesn't use Linux servers?

2010-04-01 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 05:47:37PM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 03:27:23PM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > > Not sure what Linux has to do with this -- there's far more going on
> > > (with dates and times especially) in a complex stack of software than
> > > just the OS.  Consider the amount of legacy software and multi-system
> > > integration involved in a bank's computing environment.
> > 
> > I see it more like "software superstition". Bad things might happen - we
> > don't know, we won't (or can't) test it, and we won't (or can't) fix it.
> > 
> > > Sorry dudes, but this just sounds like Open Source snootiness from the
> > > small end of town.
> > 
> > I want my bank to run on logic, not voodoo.
> 
> ... and you say this with broad knowledge of the many and varied systems in
> place? There may just be an entirely sensible reason why one or more pieces
> of the system, at this point in its evolution, requires hand-holding or no
> external access during a DST changeover.

The bank either knows that their system won't work during the DST changeover,
or they suspect that it won't work. I suspect it's the latter, but either
situation is a worry.

DST changeover is predictable. Well, it's predictable that it will happen
at some time, but the changeover date itself varies according to the whim
of politicians. The bank should have expected DST, and built their systems
to cope when it changes.

On the other hand, if they don't know that something will break and just
suspect it, that's a worry because the bank should understand very deeply
how their systems work, to achieve maximum reliability.

On the third hand, hearing about how they can't manage a simple DNS change,
getting DST right is probably the least of their worries.

> "Whee, Linux!" is not an answer if
> it's an application problem - and that's being polite. "Whee, Linux!" might
> not be a useful answer for plenty of other reasons.

Yep, and I never said it was.

Nick.
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Re: Why so snooty? Re: [SLUG] Which bank doesn't use Linux servers?

2010-03-31 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 03:27:23PM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> Not sure what Linux has to do with this -- there's far more going on (with
> dates and times especially) in a complex stack of software than just the OS.
> Consider the amount of legacy software and multi-system integration involved
> in a bank's computing environment.

I see it more like "software superstition". Bad things might happen - we don't
know, we won't (or can't) test it, and we won't (or can't) fix it.

> Sorry dudes, but this just sounds like Open Source snootiness from the small
> end of town.

I want my bank to run on logic, not voodoo.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Which bank doesn't use Linux servers?

2010-03-31 Thread Nick Andrew
On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 03:39:00PM +1100, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> If it was my call, I would probably do the same thing.  Way too many
> developers get simple things like "this day has no 2:30AM" or "this day has
> two 2:00AMs" wrong.

That's why Daylight Savings is fundamentally evil. Too much time data is
stored in non-canonical formats.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around

2010-03-31 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 04:47:54PM +1100, Jake Anderson wrote:
> I have one, I wouldn't class it as "good" but it seems to work.
> the "dock" style ones I've heard good things about

I have a dock style one with eSATA connectors. The eSATA interface is
good because it isn't USB-HDD, and is a lot faster than USB. The dock
also provides various SD/SIM/MicroSD sockets but they haven't yet worked
for me.

However, the dock doesn't put any airflow over the disk and so it heats
up way too hot after a few minutes. I pointed a small fan at it; kept it
at a nice stable temperature.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around

2010-03-31 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 04:42:12PM +1100, david wrote:
> Sorry for slightly hijacking the thread.. but my experience of these  
> gadgets has been universally bad (read: didn't work at all). Have they  
> improved in the last year or so?

I have one which is a rectangle with connectors on all 4 sides - one
for USB, one for SATA, one for IDE 3.5" and the last for IDE 2.5".
It works but it's not marvelous. My impression is that heavy data
transfers(*) can kill it.

(*) Like copying a large filesystem which saturates the USB bus for
many minutes.

Also doing silly things like "hdparm" can break it immediately.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around

2010-03-30 Thread Nick Andrew
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 02:18:39PM +1100, Nigel Allen wrote:
> The machine is a HP DL145 G3 which only has interfaces for 2 x hdd's.  
> The current disks are 2 x 80GB set up as /boot on /dev/sda1 and (sda2  
> plus sdb1) are pooled together to make up /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00. They  
> are running at 97% full.

Only 160 gigs, hmmm.

> I'm about to replace the 2 x 80GB drives with 2 x 1TB drives which  
> should keep the customer going for a while.
>
> Given that I can't attach all 4 hdds to the system at the same time, I   
> have plugged in a WD USB drive (1.5TB) so that we have a transfer  
> mechanism (as well as a second backup online in addition to the tape  
> backup).
>
> I would like to have the 2 new disks in a RAID-1 array to give them a  
> little redundancy.

Grub2 is good for that (1.97+whatever).

> What is the easiest way to get from where I am (2 x 80GB as /boot and a  
> log vol) to where I want to be (a pair of mirrored drives).
>
> My first thought was simpy to backup everything to the USB connected  
> drive, rip out the 2 x 80GB and replace them with the 2 x 1TB drives.  
> Set up the disks as a RAID 1 array. Do a partial install of the OS and  
> then simply copy everything back where it was.
>
> I'm sure there is a better way than this sledgehammer approach, probably  
> involving LVM but given my unfamiliarity with LVM I thought I should ask  
> first.

You can use pvmove to move the physical extents on LogVol00 from one
physical drive to another, but (1) it takes a long time and (2) you
have no redundancy while you are doing it. I've done it and sometimes
it's the best option.

Also USB connected drives are not as reliable as IDE/SATA - I have
found the interface can somehow overload and the device becomes unusable
until unplugged/replugged. So I would never use pvmove to move an active
filesystem from a directly connected disk to a USB-connected disk.

In your situation I would:

  - copy the filesystems to USB
  - format+RAID1 the two new drives how you like it on another computer
  - copy the filesystem from USB to the new drives on another computer
  - swap new drives for old
  - make the new drives boot on the target computer

This setup makes sure you always have a working system to fall back
to (the original drives) or a backup (USB 1.5T).

Also if you can't get both new drives onto another computer at one time,
you can format one drive and create a RAID1 array with a missing device;
copy your data onto one disk, and when you put both drives into the target
machine you hot-add the 2nd disk to the array and it will sync up all
your data automatically.

Finally for about $35 you can buy USB adapters for SATA + IDE so you can
plug one of your new drives into the target computer and bypass the 1.5T
backup drive.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Scribus

2010-03-29 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 04:29:05PM +1100, Heracles wrote:
> The problem occurs on both my machines but tends to only happen when I
> am using the story editor.
> I thought the laptop might be at fault at first so I ran memtest86 with
> no errors. I was surprised to have the crash repeat on my desktop system
> which is also an intel core 2 duo with 4GB running Ubuntu 9.10 (64 bit).

Sounds like a program bug then. See 
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/How_to_file_a_bug_report

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Scribus

2010-03-29 Thread Nick Andrew
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 12:42:32PM +1100, Heracles wrote:
> I am using Scribus (stable) on Ubuntu 9.10 (64bit) and it crashes so
> frequently as to be unusable. It is usually when I have the story editor
> open and try to make a change to the text.
> I am using it on my notebook which is an intel pentium dual core with
> 4GB RAM.
> Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Can you reproduce the problem? Or is it at random? If the latter, it might
be a hardware problem (i.e. bad memory).

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] On cleaning out kernels.

2010-03-29 Thread Nick Andrew
On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 08:58:15PM +1100, wbenn...@turing.une.edu.au wrote:
> The Ubuntu section is what's the matter.
> I assume the 16 and 15's are superceded kernels, ie., they can be removed.
> How is this done? I'd rather not wipe the operative kernel by mistake.

Try apt-get removing the older kernel packages?

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] ubuntu network manager dns

2010-03-28 Thread Nick Andrew
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 04:32:48PM +1100, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> Oh, cool.  Someone talked DJB into relicensing dnscache so that it can be
> distributed patched, rather than requiring the original.  That must make life
> better for folks like you who want to use it.

DJB made it Public Domain AFAIK, so I made a git repo from it and added
some of the published patches as well as my own work.

> Way back when a 256/64 kbit ADSL connection was fast and expensive, a couple
> of places I supported used software that incorporated dnscache, and had the
> ability to use DNS RBLs for inbound email.
> 
> So, it turns out that dnscache had a fixed ten second timeout for a response
> from the upstream DNS server.  If it receives a reply outside that window it
> will reject the reply; it also resends queries if they time out.

Yes, that's really nasty, but that's the exact problem I fixed recently
(i.e. about 6 months ago). The fix is that although dnscache is resending,
it should still accept late replies from the original requests it sent.

> Apparently, though, if you manage to list enough RBLs you can get in a
> situation where dnscache is sending requests, which all time out because the
> link RTT is more than ten seconds ??? just from the load of sending
> retransmitted queries.

Performance starts to degrade as soon as the average request latency
exceeds 1 second. See http://www.nick-andrew.net/ actually it is my
most recent news item (I don't update it all that often).

> Anyway, these days that is unlikely to be a problem: either the code will be
> patched to play nice, or the increase in bandwidth makes the odds of breaking
> pretty slim.

Negative unfortunately; I discovered this problem on a modern day Mobile
Broadband link ... three.com.au, to name the guilty party.

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] Ben NanoNote

2010-03-27 Thread Nick Andrew
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 04:31:46PM -0700, mark adrian bell wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> I'm writing to tell you about the Ben NanoNote open-source hackable hand held 
> computer.
> 
> http://sharism.cc/specs/

Very cute, and I thought the EEE 901 was hard to type on!

Nick.
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Re: [SLUG] ubuntu network manager dns

2010-03-27 Thread Nick Andrew
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 11:23:35AM +1100, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> FWIW, I got very sick of this years and years ago, so I took to installing the
> distribution packaged version of bind on my machine and configuring the system
> to use localhost for name resolution.

dnscache works well for that too. See http://cr.yp.to/ or http://tinydns.org/
or http://github.com/nickandrew/djbdns

> That gives a pretty solid resolver that just works(tm) anywhere, and while
> there is a tiny increase in first-access latency to sites I can't say it has
> any significant practical drawbacks.

Indeed.

Nick.
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