August 2012 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

MATE and gnome-keyring
by Peter Reutemann 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

Hi there Running a MATE session, you might encounter warning messages like this in your terminal when, for instance, updating via subversion: WARNING: gnome-keyring:: couldn't connect to: /tmp/keyring-*****/pkcs11 Apparently, gnome-keyring is only started if a session manager is started that supports this. E.g., running the MATE session manager on my Linux Mint Cinnamon install generates this error message, since "MATE" is not listed in the "OnlyShowIn" key of the "/etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop" config file. Just add "MATE" to the value of the "OnlyShowIn" key, e.g.: OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;MATE Original source: http://laslow.net/2012/05/06/gnome-keyring-issues-in-ubuntu-12-04/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Discovering and Monitoring Hardware in Linux
by Peter Reutemann 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

Handy overview in this article. "Nothing ever need be a mystery on Linux as it has a large number of excellent utilities for discovering hardware and monitoring hardware health. Here are a handful of good tools for spotting possible hard drive failure, displaying hardware information and monitoring temperatures, fans, voltages, email, music players and more." -- source: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/620416-discovering-and-monitoring-hard… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Is MySQL Slowly Turning Closed Source?
by Peter Reutemann 18 Aug '12

18 Aug '12

"Sergei from MariaDB speculated on some changes within MySQL 5.5.27. It seems new testcases aren't included with MySQL any more, which leaves developers depending on it in the cold. 'Does this mean that test cases are no longer open source? Oracle did not reply to my question. But indeed, there is evidence that this guess is true. For example, this commit mail shows that new test cases, indeed, go in this "internal" directory, which is not included in the MySQL source distribution.' On a similar note, updates for the version history on Launchpad are not being updated anymore. What is Oracle's plan here? And is alienating the developer community just not seen as a problem at Oracle?" -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/08/18/0152237/is-mysql-slowly-turni… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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(no subject)
by Bruce Kingsbury 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

We're starting to prepare for software freedom day which will be held on Sept 15th at Te Whare o Te Ata, 60a Sare Cres. Progress so far; We have a venue (not huge but I think it'll do) wireless internet, a VOIP PABX, 8 reasonable machines running Linux. And I have two small volunteers who will take turns wearing the penguin suit and handing out CDs and chocolate fish to visitors. For the inside space, I'd like to have tables set up where people can show interesting things they're using Linux for. If anyone has something specific they'd like to demo, get back to me and I'll set a table aside. I'd also like to print off A4 or A3 posters about some of the more polished bits of free software such as OOo/LibOO, VLC, Gimp, etc and put those up around the room. We need an A5 flyer done as soon as possible, and I can arrange to have this delivered with the community newsletter to a couple of thousand houses around the area.

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Nokia Researcher Puts Firefox OS On Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

"Mozilla's mobile phone operating system only exists in an early beta form, but Oleg Romashin, a researcher at Nokia, has already got it working on the Raspberry Pi and posted video to prove it. We don't think this indicates any alternate strategy for Nokia if Windows Phone doesn't pan out, but it does show that Firefox OS is portable, and the Pi is capable, and both can be played with — which will please both Mozilla and the Raspberry Pi Foundation. And the Firefox OS work in progress is available for download." -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/08/16/1237214/nokia-researcher-puts… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux Is a Lemon On the Retina MacBook Pro
by Peter Reutemann 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

"It turns out that Linux doesn't work too well on the Apple Retina MacBook Pro. Among the problems are needing special boot parameters to simply boot the Linux kernel, graphics drivers not working, no hybrid graphics support, WiFi requiring special firmware, Thunderbolt troubles, GNOME/Unity/KDE not being optimized for retina displays, and other snafus, including 20% greater power consumption with Linux over OS X. According to Michael Larabel, it will likely not be until early next year when most of the problems are ironed out for a clean 'out of the box' Linux experience on the Retina MacBook Pro." -- source: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/08/16/1741235/linux-is-a-lemon-on-the-re… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Debian celebrates its 19th birthday
by Peter Reutemann 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

Only a day late, so happy belated birthday! "Today, Debian celebrates its 19th birthday. To commemorate the occasion, parties have been organised all around the globe and users traditionally bake cakes to bring to these events." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1668366 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Mounting a USB drive without hotplugging or logging in
by mailinglist 16 Aug '12

16 Aug '12

Hello all, I've got a mythtv set up on a pc. It got a 40G drive which I'm finding a bit limiting. I figured I'd just plug in an external USB drive, have it mount on boot up, and configure mythtv to use a directory on it as part of its storage area. Well, its becoming a frustrating exercise. As a user logged in, I can hotplug it and read and write to but anything else either doesn't work or will only ever mount the drive read only. I've tried 1) editing fstab (result read only despite specifying rw) 2) pydsm (result read only despite specifying rw) 3) Some scripts using udev rules. (can't find the drive) The system used lightdm as the window manager and Thunar is available as a GUI file manager. Underlying system is Mythbuntu updated to Precise Penguin Any clues? Or scripts known to work? Cheers, Chris

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Calligra 2.5 released
by Peter Reutemann 16 Aug '12

16 Aug '12

"In the second stable release of the KDE-oriented office suite, Calligra has now been updated to version 2.5 with, among other changes, enhancements to the spreadsheet, word processor, database and painting components". -- source: http://h-online.com/-1666586 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The OggBox Project
by Peter Reutemann 15 Aug '12

15 Aug '12

Not strictly speaking Linux, but with all those little hackable boxes around, I thought this worth mentioning: "The OggBox is a simple, hackable open hardware music player. It's a pocket sized device, about the size of a smart phone which can play or record open formats to or from an SD card. It will support Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and WAV files, but has only been tested on Ogg so far. The hardware was designed in KiCAD and all the files are available to download and use (CC-BY-SA)." --source: http://www.nathandumont.com/node/269 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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