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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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RE: [wlug] FW: Novell CHOICE Roadshow
by David Nicholls 27 Jul '05

27 Jul '05

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. Cheers... david -----Original Message----- From: Craig Box [mailto:craig(a)dubculture.co.nz] Subject: [wlug] FW: Novell CHOICE Roadshow (originally from nzlug mailing list) Hello fellow NZLugers! The Novell Choice Linux Roadshow is starting this week and on the following dates we are in the following cities. Please register for free for the event with Kristi kwildish(a)novell.com. 28th July Christchurch 2nd August Wellington 10th August Auckland The Agenda: Morning 8:30-9:00 Registration with Tea/Coffee/Muffins 9:00 - 9:15 Introduction to event and positioning of CHOICE - Matthew Christie, Country Manager of Novell 9:15 - 9:45 Novell Linux Desktop, Workgroup Linux and Management - Novell, Andreas Girardet 9:45-10:15 The Data Centre and LINUX - David Woolford Oracle 10:15-10:45 Linux Reference Architecture - Buddika Aluwihare, HP 10:45- 11:00 The Cathedral and the Bizarre. Why Linux has become such an interest. - David Woolford Oracle 11:00-11:15 The Open Source Community. What is it and how to get involved - Andreas Girardet Novell 11:15-11:45 How to Adopt Linux- what, where and how to start! - OSS 11:45 - noon Close of event - Matthew Christie 1:00-2:00 Hands on workshops begin. 50 people split in 2 groups. Desktop in one room, Oracle in another Regards, Andreas Girardet Consulting Architect Novell, Inc.

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"Bus Error" when running apt-get, and how it went away.
by Glyn Webster 26 Jul '05

26 Jul '05

At the last meeting I told some friendly people I had problems with 'synaptic', 'aptitude', and 'apt-get' all crashing with a "Bus Error" on my Ubuntu installation. They all began to work again after I ran 'dselect'; I assume 'dselect' somehow repaired the package database while updating it. Yay: a grave bug in the APT package management system has been hidden away until Next Time! :-) I mention this because the friendly people (whose names I'm sorry I can't remember) said to describe my problem again on the mailing list. -- Glyn Webster ~ Simplicity Himself.

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FW: Novell CHOICE Roadshow
by Craig Box 26 Jul '05

26 Jul '05

(originally from nzlug mailing list) Hello fellow NZLugers! The Novell Choice Linux Roadshow is starting this week and on the following dates we are in the following cities. Please register for free for the event with Kristi kwildish(a)novell.com. 28th July Christchurch 2nd August Wellington 10th August Auckland The Agenda: Morning 8:30-9:00 Registration with Tea/Coffee/Muffins 9:00 - 9:15 Introduction to event and positioning of CHOICE - Matthew Christie, Country Manager of Novell 9:15 - 9:45 Novell Linux Desktop, Workgroup Linux and Management - Novell, Andreas Girardet 9:45-10:15 The Data Centre and LINUX - David Woolford Oracle 10:15-10:45 Linux Reference Architecture - Buddika Aluwihare, HP 10:45- 11:00 The Cathedral and the Bizarre. Why Linux has become such an interest. - David Woolford Oracle 11:00-11:15 The Open Source Community. What is it and how to get involved - Andreas Girardet Novell 11:15-11:45 How to Adopt Linux- what, where and how to start! - OSS 11:45 - noon Close of event - Matthew Christie 1:00-2:00 Hands on workshops begin. 50 people split in 2 groups. Desktop in one room, Oracle in another Regards, Andreas Girardet Consulting Architect Novell, Inc., the leading provider of information solutions http://www.novell.com My phonenumbers: NZ Mobile: 0064-027-645-9827 NZ Landline: 0064-09-3081402 Germany: 0049-0180-16666-269-609 USA (WA): 001-360-488-0966 USA (NY): 001-347-952-3413 UK: 0044-087-04902877 UK: 0044-087-09315298 Italy: 0039-02-303127527 Austria: 0043-0720-503393

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WLUG and NZLUG tentative position
by Greig McGill 26 Jul '05

26 Jul '05

Waikato Linux Users Group Inc. Interim Statement on National Linux Body ======================================================================= Tue, 26 July 2005 During this year discussion has intensified around the creation of a national Linux body in New Zealand. WLUG committee members have been involved in this discussion and WLUG has shown its commitment to the ideal of a national linux body by offering to host an "NZLUG Theme" into the WLUG Wiki. WLUG envisages a national Linux organisation for New Zealand which would be very closely modelled on the successful Linux Australia. In particular such an organisation would have the following broad goals: - Support, resource and promote local LUGs - Provide national co-ordination services (speaker organisation, etc) - Provide hosting for LUGs where required - Provide financial support - Partner with organisations like NZOSS to advocate and educate the community (and particularly Government) on the benefits of Linux and OSS. - Partner with organisations like Linux AU to support and enhance the LCA conference. The national organisation would not perform the functions of a LUG itself, instead it would: - Provide a central location where users could be connected to their local LUG - Provide co-ordination and communication between individual LUGs - Undertake national initiatives supported by all LUGs - Aggregate LUG opinion and present a unified voice to the Government and other industry groups. The WLUG committee intends to meet this Friday (July 29) to discuss this issue further and to formulate WLUG's definitive position on this subject. We look forward to working with other members of the New Zealand Linux community in trying to create a national Linux organisation. Please direct all submissions on this matter to secretary(a)wlug.org.nz before midday on the 29th of July. -- Greig McGill President Waikato Linux Users Group Inc.

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RE: [wlug] Setting up and learning MySQL
by David Nicholls 26 Jul '05

26 Jul '05

Hi rod, I suggest you go here ( http://dev.mysql.com/doc/ ) and check out the different forms of documentation - one even has user comments. You can also download tarballed html and PDFs etc. I myself have found this site extremely helpful in the past. There are other sites around dealing with mysql and they should be easy to find, by the official site is pretty good. Cheers... david -----Original Message----- From: Roderick Aldridge [mailto:rod-a(a)hnpl.net] Subject: Re: [wlug] Setting up and learning MySQL James Clark wrote: > On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 12:59:13AM +1200, Roderick Aldridge wrote: > >>Do you just run the install script (as root?) ---snip--- > > Cheers, > James. > I installed mysql and mysql-client using synaptic but I see I didn't install the documentation, which I have since done. However it seems to be an info version of what I read on the mysql website. This looks to be just what is needed for an expert, but leaves me uncertain as to what has already been done by synaptic and what I need to do to achieve what I want. For example the installation section of the info manual says: ---snip--- I think synaptic has done most or all of that and I that should go on to post-installation setup and testing, but how do you tell? There is no sign of mysql on my user menu. Do I need to add rod to the mysql user group? Rod

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Ubuntu apt widget and name issue(Hoary 5.04)
by jaytee＠clear.net.nz 25 Jul '05

25 Jul '05

When I run update-manager as root I get "(synaptic:7648): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_destroy: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done" It did however down load a small update for Mozilla. If I try to run it (or anything else) from the gui I am asked for a password by the widget. My root pass and my user pass does not work (even Gandhalf is no good) I think this last issue is unrelated, on boot I get "ror: temporary unable to resolve name" Any help on this would be welcome Regards John

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Setting up and learning MySQL
by Roderick Aldridge 25 Jul '05

25 Jul '05

I have installed MySQL on Ubuntu but have not initialised anything yet. I want to learn it well enough to set up a simple database for my audio collection and also a simple database for work. Neither will be on-line or need high security. What is the easiest way to initialise it? Do you just run the install script (as root?) shell> cd mysql_installation_directory shell> ./scripts/mysql_install_db shell> ./bin/safe_mysqld --user=mysql & or shell> ./bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql & if you are running MySQL 4.x. and continuing? I want to set it up for user rod to be able to experiment easily without ruining everything. Also what and tutorial GUI would you reccommend for my purposes? I see the python front-end was also installed along with MySQL and I have installed mysqlcc. Any pointers greatly appreciated Roderick Aldridge

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WLUG Meeting is tonight
by Meeting Reminder bot 24 Jul '05

24 Jul '05

The WLUG meeting is this evening ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ! WLUG Meeting - 25 July 2005 Location: University of Waikato, http://www.wlug.org.nz/LitB Time: 7pm Denise Tyrer-Harding of Pipers (http://www.pipers.co.nz/) is scheduled to speak to the WLUG about IntellectualProperty within New Zealand. Denise is a highly regarded IntellectualProperty lawyer and we look forward to what she has to say.

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WLUG Meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder bot 24 Jul '05

24 Jul '05

The WLUG meeting is on Monday ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ! WLUG Meeting - 25 July 2005 Location: University of Waikato, http://www.wlug.org.nz/LitB Time: 7pm Denise Tyrer-Harding of Pipers (http://www.pipers.co.nz/) is scheduled to speak to the WLUG about IntellectualProperty within New Zealand. Denise is a highly regarded IntellectualProperty lawyer and we look forward to what she has to say.

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WLUG Meeting is one week away
by Meeting Reminder bot 17 Jul '05

17 Jul '05

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week today. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ! WLUG Meeting - 25 July 2005 Denise Tyrer-Harding of Pipers (http://www.pipers.co.nz/) is scheduled to speak to the WLUG about IntellectualProperty within New Zealand. Denise is a highly regarded IntellectualProperty lawyer and we look forward to what she has to say.

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Installing OOo beta on Ubuntu
by Graham Lauder 15 Jul '05

15 Jul '05

Need a little help here for an rpm centric user I put the latest OOo beta in my Ubuntu box and ran alien with -i to convert and install Everything seemed to go swimmingly . All files in the right place and installation exactly as would expect. However, the executable: soffice, won't run. I ran ls -la and soffice permissions read: --------- interesting Anyway I'm definitely a deb newbie, so I'm scratching my head a bit. Anyone else used Alien to get OOo 1.9.113 running on Ubuntu or would have a suggestion what to try. I also did a simple conversion from rpm to deb. Would that be a better way to go rather using Alien to do the install. And having said that what's the install procedure. man install is of course no bloody use at all. ;) Cheers Yo

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Exim 4 and vm-pop3d
by Michael Honeyfield 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

Is there anyone here that has working knowledge of Exim 4 with virtual domains using vm-pop3d ? Cheers Mike

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New MythTV music player on the way - something to help hack on?
by Craig Box 13 Jul '05

13 Jul '05

One of the complaints we have about MythTV is that the music player is very unintuitive. Have a brief read of the thread http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-dev/2005-July/038011.html where some discussion is underway about a replacement that is a frontend/backend system, using the DAAP protocol (http://daap.sourceforge.net/) that ITunes uses. http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/browser/trunk/mfd - backend http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/browser/trunk/mfe - frontend When I get home I'm very interested in having a look at this and it might pay to look at helping this project rather than doing anything with MythMusic. Craig

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SATA RAID cards
by Bnonn 13 Jul '05

13 Jul '05

Hi guys I'm looking for a 2-port SATA RAID 1 card, which I'll be installing into a P3 1 GHz to make up a wee webserver running Ubuntu. I currently have my eye on the Adaptec 1210SA or the Promise FastTrak TX2200/TX4200 cards. Both of these appear to have Linux driver support, although the websites only list specific distros so I suspect they're binary drivers only. Does anyone know of any thorny issues I should be aware of? I've done some searching and couldn't find anything conclusive either way. I don't want to spend too much on the card, but I'm willing to pay a little more for a card which is known to work (I couldn't find a list of supported RAID controller cards for Ubuntu; if anyone can point me in the right direction I'd be appreciative). If anyone has any other cards they know work and can recommend, I'd be pleased to hear from them. Regards Bnonn

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Upcoming WLUG committee meeting (1 week today)
by Meeting Reminder bot 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

As per the WLUG charter, please note that there is a WLUG executive committee meeting one week from today. If you wish to get an item on the agenda for this meeting, please email it to secretary(a)wlug.org.nz. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WLUG Committee Meeting To have something added to the agenda for this meeting, please email secretary @ wlug.org.nz. Provisional agenda: # Minutes from previous meeting # Matters arising # Correspondence # Treasurers report # General business

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