March 2007 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Article on Beryl 0.2.0
by Ian McDonald 19 Mar '07

19 Mar '07

Ars Technica is giving an outline of Beryl including some of the new features of Beryl 0.2.0. Looks pretty cool. http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/beryl-bling.ars -- Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz WAND Network Research Group

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A Linux distro built on Python
by Ian McDonald 18 Mar '07

18 Mar '07

This is quite interesting article about Pardus: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=17508 -- Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz WAND Network Research Group

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Debian stable vs Debian testing.
by Oliver Jones 18 Mar '07

18 Mar '07

Hi Folks. I've got a box running Debian stable (sarge) but in order to get some features I've installed some packages from testing. This causes a few problems when I try and keep my box updated. Which makes me worry. Should I just give stable the boot and switch to running entirely from testing? Anyone here doing that? Any problems? Regards

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ANNOUNCE: WLUG meeting is one week away
by Meeting Reminder Bot 18 Mar '07

18 Mar '07

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week from today: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Shane Hobson from LiteUp will be speaking on the fibre network around Hamilton that they manage and are expanding. This is the network that Hamilton City Council have put in and the government has just given $3 million to. It is an open access network similar to CityLink in Wellington. The meeting will be at 7:30pm, TW.2.05 (http://www.wlug.org.nz/TW)

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Changing ext3 file system to ext2
by Leslie Katz 18 Mar '07

18 Mar '07

Hello again, Ian. Well, gparted worked as advertised on ext3 file systems. Thanks so much again for drawing it to my attention. I have some questions arising, though, if I may. Here's what the output of fdisk now shows for the relevant drive. Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux /dev/hdb2 14 1318 10482412+ 83 Linux /dev/hdb3 1319 1449 1052257+ 82 Linux swap /dev/hdb4 1450 4865 27439020 5 Extended /dev/hdb5 1450 1462 104391 83 Linux /dev/hdb6 1463 4865 27334566 83 Linux hdb1 and hdb2 are respectively my original /boot and / partitions for FC3, with hdb2 now shrunk from 35 GB to 10GB. hdb3 is my new swap partition--it's functioning and I've added it my fstab file. However, I'm not quite sure what to do now about hdb5 and hdb6. I want them respectively to serve the same function for FC6 as hdb1 and hdb2 now do for FC3. In my fstab file, the entries for hdb2 and hdb1 respectively are as follows: LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1 LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2 Do I make hdb5 bootable, label hdb5 and hdb6 respectively /bootfc6 and /fc6 and then mount them on mountpoints corresponding to their labels? Or (as often happens with Linux) am I missing some fundamental point about this? Thanks again, Leslie

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Changing ext3 file system to ext2
by Leslie Katz 18 Mar '07

18 Mar '07

Ian McDonald wrote: > It's trying to mount the filesystem as ext3 so go into the file > /etc/fstab and change references of ext3 to ext2 and try again. > > Once you've got this sorted have a look at gparted as this can resize > ext3 filesystems just fine and also comes in a boot cd: > http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php > http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173… > > Ian > Thanks for replying, Ian. After posting, I reversed in Knoppix all that I'd done to my hdb2 and my fstab and could boot up successfully in Fedora again. Given your alerting me to gparted, I've downloaded it and will now try my resizing with it instead. Thanks again, Leslie

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Changing ext3 file system to ext2
by Leslie Katz 17 Mar '07

17 Mar '07

There's a good expression used in an American judicial decision: the judge said he wouldn't "let the sideshow take over the whole circus". I think that's what I've done. I use Fedora. I want to shrink my / partition (/dev/hdb2) in order to create an extra partition on which to install a later version of Fedora. (I'm not prepared to erase my existing version until I've satisfied myself that all is well with the new one.) A book I've often used to help me said that one should use QTParted to shrink the partition. I booted up with a Knoppix live cd and tried to use the provided QTParted, but it wouldn't let me resize the partition. I went Googling and found that I couldn't use QTParted to resize a partition with an ext3 file system on it. I first had to change the file system to ext2, then resize, then change back to ext3 (if I wanted). I found on the Web a Red Hat (v 9) page called "Reverting to an ext2 File System": http://www.fis.unipr.it/pub/linux/redhat/9++/en/doc/RH-DOCS/rhl-cg-en-9/s1-… Its instructions, in summary, were, with /dev/hdb2 unmounted: #/sbin/tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/hdb2 #/sbin/e2fsck -y /dev/hdb2 # <mount /dev/hdb2> " Next, remove the .journal file at the root level of the partition by changing to the directory where it is mounted and typing: rm -f .journal". "If you permanently change the partition to ext2, remember to update the /etc/fstab file." In Knoppix, I followed the first two instructions and then ran QTParted. It showed /dev/hdb2 as having an ext2 file system. I also edited the /etc/fstab file on /dev/hdb2 to change the file system shown for /dev/hdb2 to ext2. I didn't remove the .journal file, simply because I couldn't find one, but I thought that maybe it had been automatically erased when I changed the file system to ext2. I then booted up in Fedora and got during booting up: "mounting root filesystem ext3: no journal on filesystem on hdb2 mount: error 22 mounting ext3 mount: error 2 mounting none switching to new root switchroot: mount failed: 22 umount /initrd/dev failed 2" (There was more, but that's all I copied down.) Can anyone tell me what more I should be doing than's on the Red Hat page? Thanks for reading, Leslie

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PDF editor
by Ian McDonald 14 Mar '07

14 Mar '07

This looks like a potentially useful tool once they sort out a few bugs. -- Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz WAND Network Research Group

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Fwd: Article on Microsoft's OSS Lab, Bill Hilf etc
by Ian McDonald 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

Article in light of last month's meeting. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brett Roberts Date: Mar 14, 2007 8:43 AM Subject: Article on Microsoft's OSS Lab, Bill Hilf etc To: Ian McDonald <ian.mcdonald(a)jandi.co.nz> Hi Ian, Thought you might be interested in this: http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?editorialsid=688 Cheers ........... Brett brett roberts | director of innovation | microsoft new zealand -- Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz WAND Network Research Group

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Fedora Core 7 test 2 DVD available
by Eric Light 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

Hi all, I've just recently finished downloading and burning the FC7 test 2 DVD. It wasn't particularly happy on my machine so I'm going back to Ubuntu. In the meantime, would anyone like a copy? I'm in Hillcrest, or at Uni every weekday. Cheers, - Eric

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