February 2006 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

what does a good e-mail client need ?
by Gavin Denby 27 May '06

27 May '06

I was reading the cnet article on the need for a mail client to push forward DESKTOP LINUX *E-mail will be the most significant factor governing the uptake of Linux on the desktop, according to a new study. * The Desktop Linux Client Survey 2005, released this week by the Open Source Development Labs, found that the lack of a powerful e-mail application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop. Full story here: http://news.com.com/E-mail+crucial+to+future+of+desktop+Linux/2100-7344_3-5… What I wondered was what does an enterprise e-mail client do that's different from my thunderbird. Is it just the calender? is it notes. I have tried, and hated outlook, probably as I use just e-mail and dont like the complexity of all the other things, but what would happen in an enterprise situation. If you understand this article, can you explain what the novell and mozilla offerings will mean, and will this be the outlook killer. What does outlook do that so vital? Is this another case of its not the same, or are we really missing out on something? any enterprise experince that can help a tech like me understand this ? Is there a really good app for this, could something be done to solve this. After all e-mail is the number 1 app for the net, search is 2 and then web surfing. 2 and 3 are fine, are we missing the boat on 1? I thinks its sufficiently linux related. do we have the Guru's in the lug that could solve this?

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Acceptable use of the WLUG Mailing List
by Meeting Reminder bot 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

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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Last nights meeting
by Craig Box 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Thanks to Peter Bryant for an excellent meeting last night about his Linux VPS company, Rimu Hosting. If you're interested in buying (root!) access to a virtual private server, check out http://www.rimuhosting.com/. Before the meeting, I ran a video demonstrating Xgl, Novell's 3D-accelerated desktop technology. We talked briefly about this and Red Hat's upcoming technology, AIGLX. If you're interested, there is a good article that explains the difference between the approaches: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/newsletters/accelerated_x/index_p1.html The video I showed is at http://pubcrawler.org/2006/02/23/jaw-dropping-xgl-demo/. Be aware it's a 50Mb download, modem users! Regards, Craig

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WLUG meeting is tonight
by Meeting Reminder Bono 26 Feb '06

26 Feb '06

Aye, kiddies. It's everyone's favourite proto-Eirishman, Paul Hewson. When I'm not busy wailing and modelling sunglasses, I like to save the world. And what greater way to do that than through Free Software. So I encourage you all to come to WLUG's meeting tonight. And buy my albums. Synopsis: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Our guest for February is Peter Bryant from RimuHosting, a VirtualPrivateServer company based in Cambridge, New Zealand (http://www.wlug.org.nz/NewZealand) Peter's talk will hopefully touch on: * the history of RimuHosting * using virtualisation (http://www.wlug.org.nz/VirtualPrivateServer) on http://www.wlug.org.nz/Linux * his experience as an employer of http://www.wlug.org.nz/Linux staff * running an international business from NZ (Please add other points if you would like Peter to touch on them; if you are Peter, please feel free to edit the list to reflect what you want to talk about!) As usual, there will be a Q&A session at the end, followed by refreshments. Location is TW.2.07 (http://www.wlug.org.nz/TW) at the University of Waikato. Meeting will start at 7:30pm. * About Rimu Hosting: http://rimuhosting.com/support/aboutrh.jsp

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Re: [wlug] Modem dropping
by David Bowen 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

> It used to work OK but is now taking 3 + attempts to connect. > Anyone have any ideas. Try this as your /etc/ppp/options - works for me with that modem === cut here === lock noauth defaultroute ipcp-max-configure 65 ipcp-accept-local ipcp-accept-remote idle 600 === cut here === Cheers John Thanks John I put that in on Thursday morning and tried it three times during the day. It connected first time every time. I typed out a reply and got called away in the middle of it. Came back a few minutes later and went to send it.... but it had dropped the line again. This time it would not connect again. Sounds like it was having trouble negotiating protocols. I have a speaker on the phone line as part of my job is fixing modems to component level. These ones aren't plug in! No involvement on software level! I had tried another modem in before when I had the problem of not connecting and had no joy, then the hard drive gave up. Went from tap tap to get it to start spinning at times to suddenly can't find /dev/HDD... during use. Might be worth swapping the modem again when I get time. " If you want to try Ubuntu, I wrote a script to get this modem set up under it which you may find handy. Of course, I make no guarantees regarding my scripting abilities... Regards, Bnonn " Thanks Bnonn I got the modem working under Breezy already. It was well written up on the Ubuntu wiki. I also got it working on the updated kernel, I just have to figure out how to stop it from connecting during boot, about the time in the sequence it says " Setting the clock to ntp Ubuntu... it starts to dial, before log in! Then asks for password to disconnect :-) Thanks anyway I will keep playing with it and see what hapens Regards David Bowen

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Linux keyboard
by Craig Box 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

http://www.cherrycorp.com/english/cymotion-line/cymotion-line_master_lin ux.htm Craig

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WLUG Meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder bot 23 Feb '06

23 Feb '06

The WLUG meeting is on Monday ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Our guest for February is Peter Bryant from RimuHosting, a VirtualPrivateServer company based in Cambridge, New Zealand (http://www.wlug.org.nz/NewZealand) Peter's talk will hopefully touch on: * the history of RimuHosting * using virtualisation (http://www.wlug.org.nz/VirtualPrivateServer) on http://www.wlug.org.nz/Linux * his experience as an employer of http://www.wlug.org.nz/Linux staff * running an international business from NZ (Please add other points if you would like Peter to touch on them; if you are Peter, please feel free to edit the list to reflect what you want to talk about!) As usual, there will be a Q&A session at the end, followed by refreshments. Location is TW.2.07 (http://www.wlug.org.nz/TW) at the University of Waikato. Meeting will start at 7:30pm. * About Rimu Hosting: http://rimuhosting.com/support/aboutrh.jsp

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The Digital Dream.
by Oliver Jones 23 Feb '06

23 Feb '06

Does anyone have a copy of The Digital Dream on file? Craig? If so, please email me. Thanks.

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Text encoding
by Bnonn 23 Feb '06

23 Feb '06

Hi everyone. I have created a large text file which is essentially a concatenated bunch of emails. I simply selected the emails in Evolution with shift-click, and went "Save As". I can open the file fine in nano, or I can cat it without problems. It has a lot of useless crap markup, but that's to be expected. However, I'm completely unable to open it in gedit; I just get the error that gedit couldn't determine the correct character encoding. I've tried manually selecting all the various UTF and Western encodings without luck; the only one that will open at all is UTF-16, which renders the file as a lot of Japanese-looking text. Any ideas? Regards, Bnonn

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Modem dropping
by David Bowen 21 Feb '06

21 Feb '06

Hi I am having a problem with the modem dropping while connecting to the net. (ihug) This is an Intel 536 modem on Mandrake 10.1 It dials, says expecting connect, then, starting pppd, and a few seconds later the modem drops the line, and some seconds later a dialogue box comes up and says Kpppd daemon died unexpectedly error 17 Kppd manual says that error 17 is a to do with loop back detected so the following part of the log would seem to be relevant. Feb 21 18:16:25 localhost pppd[21220]: Serial line is looped back. Feb 21 18:16:25 localhost pppd[21220]: sent [LCP TermReq id=0xb "Loopback detected"] Feb 21 18:16:25 localhost pppd[21220]: rcvd [LCP TermReq id=0xb "Loopback detected"] Feb 21 18:16:25 localhost pppd[21220]: sent [LCP TermAck id=0xb] Feb 21 18:16:26 localhost pppd[21220]: rcvd [LCP TermAck id=0xb] Feb 21 18:16:26 localhost pppd[21220]: Connection terminated. Feb 21 18:16:26 localhost pppd[21220]: Exit. It used to work OK but is now taking 3 + attempts to connect. Anyone have any ideas. I could try Ubuntu, Just installed that at home, Suse on this would one be my other option :-)

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WLUG meeting is one week away
by Meeting Reminder bot 19 Feb '06

19 Feb '06

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week today. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Our guest for February is Peter Bryant from RimuHosting, a VirtualPrivateServer company based in Cambridge, New Zealand (http://www.wlug.org.nz/NewZealand) Peter's talk will hopefully touch on: * the history of RimuHosting * using virtualisation (http://www.wlug.org.nz/VirtualPrivateServer) on http://www.wlug.org.nz/Linux * his experience as an employer of http://www.wlug.org.nz/Linux staff * running an international business from NZ (Please add other points if you would like Peter to touch on them; if you are Peter, please feel free to edit the list to reflect what you want to talk about!) As usual, there will be a Q&A session at the end, followed by refreshments. Location is TW.2.07 (http://www.wlug.org.nz/TW) at the University of Waikato. Meeting will start at 7:30pm. * About Rimu Hosting: http://rimuhosting.com/support/aboutrh.jsp

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Upcoming WLUG committee meeting (1 week today)
by Meeting Reminder bot 15 Feb '06

15 Feb '06

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 ----- CommitteeMeetingTopics

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Postfix rules.
by Oliver Jones 15 Feb '06

15 Feb '06

Hi Guys. I recently setup postfix on my new server and have configured it to be rather strict when accepting mail. It has done wonders for reducing the amount of spam the server accepts. Ie, the volume of spam I now get has dropped to nearly zero without the need for tools like SpamAssassin. However legit mail is also being rejected. With good reason though, usually the sending host has fucked up DNS entries or is identifying itself with an invalid hostname during SMTP HELO/EHLO. Anyone else here use postfix? If so what are your smtpd_*_restrictions set to? Have you had to loosen your rules to allow valid mail sources that are badly configured though? What sort of policies do you have in place? What other alternatives to "reject_unknown_client" are there? Advice, help, suggestions most certainly welcome. Regards

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Evolution Contacts
by Gun Caundle 14 Feb '06

14 Feb '06

Can anybody help me get my Evolution 'Contacts' in Ubuntu into Thunderbird which is on another PC? Cheers

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FW: Linux Management Survey Results
by Craig Box 13 Feb '06

13 Feb '06

From: Andi Mann [mailto:amann(a)enterprisemanagement.com] Sent: Tuesday, 14 February 2006 10:36 a.m. To: secretary(a)wlug.org.nz Subject: Linux Management Survey Results Hi, You might remember in November last year, I asked for assistance from you and members of the Waikato Linux Users Group for our research on the cost and effort involved in managing Linux server environments. Your members' responses to our web survey were added to a wide-ranging random telephone survey and in-depth interviews to get a vendor-neutral look at Linux system management. Well, the study is complete now, and I promised to send it to you when it was done. You can get the executive summary from OSDL's web site at http://osdl.org/newsroom/studies/EMA, and the full PDF is available at the web site of the main sponsor (Levanta) at http://www.levanta.com/linuxstudy/. Please feel free to pass these links along to your members, at your discretion. Both the summary and the full report are available free of charge. I want to thank you again for your help with collecting primary data for this study. Due to the anonymous nature of the web survey, I cannot be sure that your members contributed, but I am sure they will be interested to see the results anyway. If you have any questions or comment, please feel free to contact me. Regards, Andi Mann Senior Analyst Enterprise Management Associates.

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e ink displays
by stephen pearce 09 Feb '06

09 Feb '06

Is anyone using the Sony Librie, or Panasonic or Toshiba equivalents .. or the recently introduced Sony Reader? -- Stephen Pearce Critical Care Whangarei ph 021 390 997

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Where to buy and get good advice on computers which will operate with Ubuntu Breezy
by Ron Dean 08 Feb '06

08 Feb '06

I am considering buying a new bare bones system but wish to make sure it works. I use it mostly for Photo editing with the Gimp and some other graphics programs. Would an on board graphics or an additional Video card be a good idea. I was also considering getting 1gig ram. I wanted it to be a Linux only box. Also should I choose a 64bit system.

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ftp.nz.debian.org not updating (unstable at least)
by Ian McDonald 07 Feb '06

07 Feb '06

Folks, In case you are using this it has not been updating at present for unstable for debian at least. If you use this as your primary apt source (as I was) you might want to change your setup... Ian -- Ian McDonald http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 WAND Network Research Group University of Waikato New Zealand

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debian console issue.
by Michael J Knox 04 Feb '06

04 Feb '06

OK, I am kinda stumped. I admin a server for someone, it runs debian sarge. The guy is telling me that from within mc, he can use caps and not use caps fine, but when he drops to a console, he only gets caps, even with the caps key off. Now, I can see this thru ssh. Any ideas? Michael

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