December 2005 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

\"People\'s Choice Community Member of the Year\"
by LUG Roundup 10 Dec '05

10 Dec '05

Only 6 days remaining to get your entries in. \"People\'s Choice Community Member of the Year\" is open to all within the Linux community. Closing Date is 16th December at 5pm. All entries are to be sent in writing to comp.lugroundup(a)k-sit.com Entries are to be submitted in the form of 500 words or less. You either enter yourself or nominate a person you feel is deserving of the title, detailing how they have contributed to the community. *Please include Name, *Email address for the entrant, *State and *Suburb. We have 4 independant judges that will be judging each entry on merit. The winner will be notified and announced in the final episode for the year on 24th December. The winner will recieve a concession ticket to LCA2006 in Dunedin and $200 cash to assist them in getting there. Don\'t forget you will need a passport to travel to New Zealand. Cherio, Karin (aka MotherLUG) http://mirror.linux.org.au/podcasts/la-update lugroundup(a)k-sit.com

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ssh and cat problem
by Bnonn 08 Dec '05

08 Dec '05

Hi again everyone. In my continuing quest to automate absolutely everything about rebuilding one of my computers, I'm writing a script that will generate a key relationship between it and my laptop (which I use for remote backup sometimes). I'm able to create the public and private keys without problems, but when it gets to adding the public key to the laptop ("scarlet"), I run into an issue. I don't want to just copy the public key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 on scarlet, because from an aesthetic point of view, and a portability point of view, that's just nasty. If authorized_keys2 exists already, I'll overwrite it and cause myself pain. So, I instead copy the public key into my home dir on scarlet (scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub bnonn(a)scarlet:~/) However, I then want to append the contents of this key to the authorized_keys2 file in ~/.ssh/ on scarlet. Seems to me that the best way to do this is to simply cat it, since this will create the file if it doesn't already exist. I'm using the following command: ssh bnonn(a)scarlet cat ~/id_dsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 This, however, appears to have no effect at all. It doesn't return an error; it just quietly does nothing. Again, I apologize if this is again an example of my fundamental dimness, but any help would be appreciated. Regards, Bnonn

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1/packet writing for cd 2/formating flash memory stick
by stephen pearce 08 Dec '05

08 Dec '05

Hi Can anyone help me here please. 1/ How do you do incremental writing to a cdrw under linux. I have a cdrw which was formated under windows .. used the INCDFS file system according to the properties report in wondows. With this I can then write, and delete files from the cd .. within windows .. as if it was a large floppy or removable hard disk. Under Fedora Core 4 the disk mounts ok and I can read the contents at anytime .. but I cannot do the incremental writing .. I have looked up linux references to this INCDFS using google and not found anything of significance. Any pointers to making cdrw work more adeptly would be appreciated. 2/ My 64Mb and 128 MB usb memory sticks mount fine under fedora core 4 and I can delete and write to the devices .. deleting I think puts the data into a trash directory .. but when I empty trash it does not seem to free space on the device .. also .. although ".Trash" appears when you mount it in Windows .. and you can delete the files and reclaim the space there .. .Trash does not appear in the Linux FS .. even using say mc which would normerly show ".--" directories . Also formating the flash memory does not seem straight forward .. I tried mounting with fdisk and deleting all partitions, making a siingle FAT32 partition .. then using format to format it .. unsuccessfully ... are there any tricks here? Formating under windows seems straight forward. Thanks Stephen

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LUG Roundup Competition
by LUG Roundup 08 Dec '05

08 Dec '05

Hi Folks, Only 8 days left to get those entries in for the \"People\'s Choice Community Member of the Year\" award. Send your entries to me at comp.lugroundup(a)k-sit.com Cherio, Karin Purser lugroundup(a)k-sit.com http://mirror.linux.org.au/podcasts/la-update

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LUG Roundup Competition
by LUG Roundup 08 Dec '05

08 Dec '05

Hi Folks, Only 8 days left to get those entries in for the \"People\'s Choice Community Member of the Year\" award. Send your entries to me at comp.lugroundup(a)k-sit.com Cherio, Karin Purser lugroundup(a)k-sit.com http://mirror.linux.org.au/podcasts/la-update

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Adept crash- graceful resolution to debconf
by Chris O'Halloran 08 Dec '05

08 Dec '05

Having converted from Suse9.2 to Kubuntu I have appreciated the Adept front end to dpkg. However the other day, it locked up my machine so I crashed out of X and rebooted the system. However whenever I start Adept now it mentions that another process is in effect and that I need root permissions to run Adept. Having run Adept as root it still won't let me install further packages and when I try it reports debconf:DbDriver "config" /var/cache/debconf/config.dat dpkg:status database area is locked by another process dpkg run finished I assume the file "config" is locked by the aborted Adept process. I was wondering what the graceful way of resolving this problem Delete config.dat? BTW, I have been pretty impressed with Kubuntu Cheers Chris

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nvidia-glx-legacy has gone from bad to worse
by zcat 07 Dec '05

07 Dec '05

When I first upgraded to breezy I was mildly annoyed that the nvidia drivers broke, I had to install nvidia-legacy instead, and that all of the openGL stuff stopped working although the driver appeared to be loading and xorg seems to think everything is in order. Programs like glxgears would tell me I didn't have GLX. Programs like mplayer would work with "-vo xv" which was good enough most of the time so I didn't worry about it too much. Just recently I thought I would try to sort this out properly. I removed all of the 'restricted' modules and glx stuff, including config, via synaptic, then cleanly reinstalled the nvidia-legacy kernel modules and nvidia-glx-legacy package. Now glxgears exits with a segfault. Worse, so does mplayer even when I use -vo xv and even if I'm trying to play some audio-only file (or even no file at all!) Where to I even begin trying to find out what's messed up and how to fix it?!

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no audio input sources
by Jonathan Purvis 06 Dec '05

06 Dec '05

Aleisha's computer has a SoundBlaster Audigy and a fresh install of Kubuntu 5.10. When i load Audacity or any other sound recording program, no input sources are available. Where you'd expect to see "Microphone", "Line In", etc, the list is empty. If i turn up the volume on the microphone in alsamixer, i can hear it through the speakers. arecord claims to be recording, but the resulting .wav file is silent. Audio playback is fine with every program i've tried. Also on my computer with an nForce2 chipset, i can record via line in, but not microphone. This might be due to me plugging in a mono microphone plug into it and shorting something out. (Computer microphones seem to use a stero plug to provide power to the microphone.) Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Jon

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gnome equivalent of kio_fish
by Glenn Ramsey 06 Dec '05

06 Dec '05

Hi, Does anyone know if there is a gnome equivalent to KDE's kio_fish? A quick Google seems to indicate that there are some tools but no exact equivalent. Glenn -- Glenn Ramsey <glenn(a)componic.co.nz> 07 8627077 http://www.componic.co.nz

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Next meeting: Christmas Barbeque
by Craig Box 06 Dec '05

06 Dec '05

Hi everyone, The December WLUG meeting will be the annual end of year barbeque. This year the barbeque will be on Sunday 18 December, starting at around 2pm. The venue is the same as last time - Perry and Jamie's, 3 Liston Crescent. Due to the closeness to Christmas there will be no postponement if it's wet. Please check the website and mailing list before coming if you're in any way concerned about the weather. Please bring yourselves, partners [1], meat, alcohol, topics of conversation [2], and a passing interest in backyard cricket. WLUG will provide salad, bread and soft drinks as usual. You don't have to be a member to come to the barbeque, but if you aren't, it would be a really nice gesture to bring your $20 and sign up, wouldn't it? Hope to see you all there. Craig [1] Not all topics of conversation at WLUG barbeques are suitable for children. Some aren't even suitable for us. [2] Some comment was made in the last survey about some of the members being 'cliquey'. Two things are at play here; a lot of the WLUG regulars are friends outside of WLUG, and a lot of people go to barbeques and have weekends to get away from computers. Please don't expect all the topic to be about Linux. Probably, most of it will be about backyard cricket. Most of the people involved are easy to talk to, so please strike up conversations, and if there's anything that can be done to make the barbeque better, feel free to suggest it to someone who looks official.

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