July 2005 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Interesting article on software patents
by Craig Box 01 Aug '05

01 Aug '05

Following the presentation from Denise Tyrer-Harding from Pipers on Monday, I thought some of you might be interested in reading an article from the New York Times on software patents: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/business/yourmoney/31digi.html?pagewanted… (If you're one of those people who care about online registration, try using 'cypherpunk' as the username and password. Or bouncing through Google. Or adding &referrer=something to the end of the URL. Or using bugmenot.com I don't know, I signed up.) Craig

1 0

Fedora, RPM, and repositories.
by Oliver Jones 31 Jul '05

31 Jul '05

Hi Folks. I've recently upgraded from FC3 to FC4 on my laptop and I'd like to ask about others experiences with RPMs and the different repositories out there. Personally I think the whole Fedora repository thing is getting a little messy. At the moment I'm just using the FC, Fedora Extras, Livna.org, nRRPMS-mono and JPackage repositories because they are all "compatible" with each other. However there are a number of other repositories out there like Dag Weirs, Dries, ATrpms etc that have lots of neat stuff but tend to be fairly incompatible with FC+FE. Ie, they duplicate packages found in Core or Extras. I'd be interested to hear about how others are dealing with repo incompatibility issues when using Fedora. I'd also like to hear about any advocacy or repository merging stuff that is going on that anyone knows about. Regards

2 2

Philip Hazel's Exim talk at WLUG
by Craig Box 31 Jul '05

31 Jul '05

Hi everyone, On the 1st of February we were happy to have Philip Hazel, author of Exim and PCRE, present to WLUG (see http://www.wlug.org.nz/MeetingTopics.2005-02-01 for the writeup). The meeting was videoed and was then encoded by R2 in Wellington. You can find it with the NZNOG talks at http://www.r2.co.nz/20050203/, else a direct link is at http://www.r2.co.nz/20050203/p-hazel.asx. Be warned, the entire talk comes in at about 650mb. If anyone is interested I might be able to get a couple of copies on CD at the next meeting. With the win32 codecs (w32codecs package from Marillat on Ubuntu) you can play this stream with mplayer. Regards, Craig

3 3

Acceptable use of the WLUG Mailing List
by Meeting Reminder bot 31 Jul '05

31 Jul '05

The WLUG Mailing List is the discussion-list extension of the Waikato Linux Users Group (Incorporated). As such, we expect members of this list to adhere to the principles espoused in the official WLUG Charter[1], in particular, Rule 6, which covers the activities on this mailing list. While this is an Acceptable Use Policy, the WLUG Committee do recognise the need for informal discussion among list members, and draconian administration is not the goal here. Please keep in mind, however, that your comments to this list do represent the WLUG, and while it is good to be seen as an organisation with a sense of humour, some comments may do major harm to our credibility as a serious advocate of GNU/Linux and all things Free Software/ Open Source related. List discussion should * be honest * accentuate the positive, without hyperbole or blatant misrepresentation * maintain a reasonable level of spelling and grammar * not indulge in ad hominem attacks * not continue inflammatory or abusive threads * not be unprofessional or petty, especially with respect to the names of other software companies * not promote or denigrate political, cultural, or religious views * not indulge in marketing or advertising, other than on a private sale basis, or advertising of jobs - which may be announced once only * not reproduce copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder * not defame any person or organisation Posters who consistently violate these guidelines will be dealt with at the discretion of the List Maintainer. If you feel you have been unfairly dealt with, you have recourse to any member of the WLUG Committee[2]. Certain mailing list etiquette should also be maintained: * please use only plain text (not HTML) * reply inline or below when quoting, rather than on top * trim quotes (don't reply quoting a 10 page message with a single line of reply) If you have any questions, start reading at http://www.gweep.ca/~edmonds/usenet/ml-etiquette.html. These points have been established over a long time on this list. If you want to question them, please do it off list. As list users, use your discretion when pulling people up over etiquette - please reply off list, and if there is a serious breach, the list administrator will probably have dealt with it off-list already. [1] http://www.wlug.org.nz/WlugCharter [2] http://www.wlug.org.nz/WlugCommittee

1 0

RE: [wlug] Ubuntu apt widget and name issue(Hoary 5.04)
by jaytee＠clear.net.nz 29 Jul '05

29 Jul '05

---- Original Message Follows ----- > > I have checked for case errors and tried a variety of ways > of putting the pass it simply does not work. > There are three likely outcomes after I type a > password.<enter> > 1 The widget disappears and nothing further happens. > 2 The widget returns "Failed to run < name of programme> > Child terminated with 1 status" > 3 returns a password error message (least likely) > Regards John Lets review this. Warty then Hoary 5.04 It took me a long time to get this distro installed. I think the main reason for this was that I was a bit afraid of losing my Ntfs partion (XP win with a working 54m wireless card) so I allowed the auto partion to do its thing. What happened was the install went ahead but failed right at the end because there was no / root partion. auto partition made a 8.7 gig non root ext3 and a 512 bootable swap. The way I finally overcame this error by reinstalling but choosing the "expert" mode (Yep, John the expert) I could then choose a partion with a /root I still stayed with the two partitions 8.7gig /ext3 and 512meg bootable swap. the result of this was that I got (for the first time ) a non crippled but not quite fully funtional Ubuntu laptop. the problems that I _KNOW_a little about are 1.. The last thing about the install was a message telling me to become su and run cron. I do not know what the actual message said or how to recover the message in order to read it 2.. The widgets that require a user pass word are returning "fail" with a child <n> error 3.. I have no sounds because I have not joined the correct group yet. In an attempt to get this right I have downloaded a several thousand more words to read from a number of Debian areas with a view to doing yet another, perhaps even more successfull instal. If any Wlug members would like to add some helpful comments (on or off list) I would appreciatte their input as I am determined to do this this thing at some time of my life.. Regards John

1 0

Wiki Commons licence. ATTN: Criag
by DrWho? 29 Jul '05

29 Jul '05

Got an email, I think, about approving the few mods I made to the Wiki. Can you send it again? Thanks.

2 1

Re: [wlug] Knoppix, apt
by Camster342 29 Jul '05

29 Jul '05

> > 1. Working out from my knoppix machine at work which packages it's > > going to need. 2. saving that list somehow, going home, downloading > > all of the packages at home. 3. Writing a CDRW or something with those > > packages. 4. Configuring apt on my machine at work to get all of the > > packages it needs from the CDRW, rather than the net. > I have a script setup to do this type of thing (although in reverse) > it basically consists of ... > [snip] Thanks very much! This was exactly what I needed. -- Cameron

1 0

Unsubscribed posts
by Craig Box 28 Jul '05

28 Jul '05

Oliver Jones writes: On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 09:53 +1200, Matt Brown wrote: > On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 08:16 +1200, jaytee(a)clear.net.nz wrote: > > When I run update-manager as root I get > > "(synaptic:7648): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_destroy: > > assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed > > Note that if you're running update-manager from a console window then > you can probably safely ignore these messages. They do indicate a bug in > the application but it's almost certainly non fatal and will just be a > memory leak or something. GTK is amazingly anal. Soooo many Gnome apps generate these sorts of messages. You would think that developers would get rid of them. I certainly would if I were writing GTK/Gnome software. But that is just me. But then lots of Gnome apps (even "professional" ones like Evolution) commonly crash. I love Linux, but for all the "linux is so stable" rhetoric out there, GUI apps in Linux are not always the best. Which is why more GUI apps should not be written in C/C++. More python I say. Even Java would be a good option now with the way GCJ is maturing and the Gnome/Java bindings. I would also give props to Mono as that looks pretty cool but until it is on safer legal ground I can't. Regards -- Michael Honeyfield writes: > You know, if they actually bothered coming to hamilton I'd actually go. > Seing as I use suse linux 9.2 and all as does the uni in certain areas. I have asked Andreas if the content will be made downloadable from Novell. Yes, Hamilton seems to be missed all too often. I would certainly attend also as I am a user of suse also, home and work. Mike -- Both of these people posted from an unsubscribed address. Please remember that *messages posted from an unsubscribed address are dropped on the floor* (or realistically, to my Bounces folder :) I can't recover them, I can only forward them like this. If you are likely to find yourself in this situation, feel free to subscribe as many addresses as you need as 'nomail' - they will not receive any messages but they can post them. See the link in the footer below if you need any more info. listadminnyCraig

5 4

Knoppix, apt
by Camster342 28 Jul '05

28 Jul '05

Hi people, first time poster here... Okay, this is somewhat difficult to explain, but I'll try my best. I use Knoppix 3.8.1 at work, but I cannot get good internet access (it keeps randomly cutting off downloads larger than about 500K), and I want to update/replace a couple of packages, but I know that doing this is going to require a whole lot of dependencies. First of all I want to replace OpenOffice.org with an english version (this knoppix only came with the german version). And then I want to upgrade KDE from 3.3.2 to 3.4.1. I want to do this by 1. Working out from my knoppix machine at work which packages it's going to need. 2. saving that list somehow, going home, downloading all of the packages at home. 3. Writing a CDRW or something with those packages. 4. Configuring apt on my machine at work to get all of the packages it needs from the CDRW, rather than the net. Has anyone had to something like this before? The ones that I think I need pointers on are going to be 1 and 4. Anyone know how I would go about those in particular? -- Cameron

3 2

RE: [wlug] Ubuntu apt widget and name issue(Hoary 5.04)
by jaytee＠clear.net.nz 28 Jul '05

28 Jul '05

I have checked for case errors and tried a variety of ways of putting the pass it simply does not work. There are three likely outcomes after I type a password.<enter> 1 The widget disappears and nothing further happens. 2 The widget returns "Failed to run < name of programme> Child terminated with 1 status" 3 returns a password error message (least likely) Regards John

1 0