- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Amazon's e-book reader runs Linux
by Ian McDonald 21 Nov '07

21 Nov '07

http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/11/20/linux-on-amazons-kindl… -- Web1: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Web2: http://www.jandi.co.nz Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz

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Wireless networking problem
by Leslie Katz 21 Nov '07

21 Nov '07

My wife has as a wireless access point an Apple Airport Express that she uses with her Mac. It's set up with WPA for security. I'm am trying to use the thing as well, but am having difficulties. I have 2 laptops with wireless cards, one running Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005 and one running Damn Small Linux 4. Generally speaking, the Windows laptop connects automatically to the wap when I boot it up. With the Linux laptop, it's very much hit and miss (with more misses than hits). When the Linux laptop is connecting, I first use wpa_supplicant to connect to the wap, followed by pump to configure the interface and all is well. When the Linux laptop isn't connecting, wpa_supplicant doesn't work and when I scan for waps using iwlist, I get a list of neighbours' unsecured waps, but no reference to the Airport Express. I can have the two laptops sitting side by side, the Windows one happily using the wap, while the Linux one isn't even aware of its existence. I'd be very grateful for any suggestions as to what to do to get the Linux laptop finding the wap reliably. Failing that, I'd be very grateful for a pointer to some site where I'm likely to get help with my problem. Thanks for reading this, Leslie -- Visit http://stumblng.tumblr.com An Australian lawyer's tumblelog about things (some legal, most not) you might otherwise have missed

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Re: [wlug] [nzlug] Laptops sans OS possible:
by Craig Box 19 Nov '07

19 Nov '07

On the subject of cheap Linux laptops, OLPC are currently running a "give one, get one" scheme: http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/give-one-get-one.php. The gist is pay $400US, give one laptop to a developing nation, and get one for yourself. I believe this may be the only way members of the public can get one of these machines, at least initially. Unfortunately it's only available in the USA and Canada. If anyone is interested, I am in Canada at present, and would be happy to deliver one or two on behalf of people in NZ. I'll be back there in early Jan, which should hopefully be just after delivery. Please contact me off-list and I'll see what I can do. Craig

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

18 Nov '07

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week from today: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7:30pm, TW.2.05 (http://www.wlug.org.nz/TW) 3D desktops.. compiz-fusion and Xgl?

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Asus Eee laptop
by Ian McDonald 16 Nov '07

16 Nov '07

You might have seen this selling for $599 at Dickies. It runs Linux and a good review at Ars Technica here: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/eee-pc-review.ars/1 My take on this device is that it's not as innovative as the OLPC and it isn't fully featured enough. Better to buy a second hand or cheap laptop. -- Web1: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Web2: http://www.jandi.co.nz Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz

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Progress of open source java from sun
by Ian McDonald 15 Nov '07

15 Nov '07

Interesting article here: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2216978,00.asp -- Web1: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Web2: http://www.jandi.co.nz Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz

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Upcoming WLUG committee meeting (1 week today)
by Meeting Reminder bot 11 Nov '07

11 Nov '07

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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- # Previous Minutes # Treasurers report # Correspondence # Matters # Server status # General business ---- CommitteeMeetingTopics

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linkedin group
by Bruce Kingsbury 11 Nov '07

11 Nov '07

If you're a member of linkedin I went ahead and set up a WLUG group which you're all welcome to go ahead and join. (If you're not someone I already know, mention when you apply how you're involved with WLUG so I have some idea of who's who.) http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/37683/4AC20543ECA9 There's also an NZOSS group on linkedin which you might be interested in..

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Skype 2.0 beta for Linux: finally supports video calls!
by Peter Reutemann 08 Nov '07

08 Nov '07

Skype 2.0 beta for Linux finally supports video calls (has been in the Windoze version for ages): http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/linux/beta/ If you prefer an open-source SIP client instead, have a look here: http://www.openwengo.org/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ +64 (7) 838-4466 Ext. 5174

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Fedora 8 released
by Ian McDonald 08 Nov '07

08 Nov '07

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071108-an-old-hat-with-new-tricks-fe… -- Web1: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Web2: http://www.jandi.co.nz Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz

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RedHat 5.1 - with better virtualisation
by Ian McDonald 08 Nov '07

08 Nov '07

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9497257030.html -- Web1: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Web2: http://www.jandi.co.nz Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz

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PulseAudio
by Ian McDonald 02 Nov '07

02 Nov '07

The sound server PulseAudio is a relative newcomer to the Linux audio arena, but since it has been selected as the default setup in the next releases of at least two major distributions (Fedora and Ubuntu), it's probably time to start looking into it More at: http://www.linux.com/feature/119926 -- Web1: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Web2: http://www.jandi.co.nz Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz

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WLUG Fixit Meeting is today!
by Meeting Reminder bot 02 Nov '07

02 Nov '07

A reminder, the WLUG Fixit Meeting is today. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday November 3rd, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm We will be holding our SaturdayWorkshop at Te Whanau Pūtahi (http://zoomin.co.nz/nz/hamilton/enderley/-te+whanau+ptahi/?place/full_map) the community church at the end of Oxford Street. We'll have the usual tables, power, various ISO's, Internet, coffee and light lunch, etc.

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WLUG Fixit Meeting tomorrow
by Meeting Reminder bot 01 Nov '07

01 Nov '07

A reminder; the WLUG Fixit Meeting is tomorrow. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday November 3rd, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm We will be holding our SaturdayWorkshop at Te Whanau Pūtahi (http://zoomin.co.nz/nz/hamilton/enderley/-te+whanau+ptahi/?place/full_map) the community church at the end of Oxford Street. We'll have the usual tables, power, various ISO's, Internet, coffee and light lunch, etc.

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REMINDER: workshop on Saturday
by Bruce Kingsbury 01 Nov '07

01 Nov '07

Saturday November 3rd, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm We will be holding our SaturdayWorkshop at Te Whanau Pūtahi, the community church at the end of Oxford Street. We'll have the usual tables, power, various ISO's, Internet, coffee and light lunch, etc. http://wlug.org.nz/SaturdayWorkshop.2007-11-03

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Follow-up to Monday night Gaming meeting
by Bruce Kingsbury 30 Oct '07

30 Oct '07

A lot of people asked me after the meeting for various web addresses of software mentioned, so I've added links for everything that was discussed (and some that I intended to discuss, but didn't get to) on the meeting page. http://wlug.org.nz/MeetingTopics.2007-10-29 Plus a brief summary of everything.

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ODF group abandons ODF!
by Ian McDonald 30 Oct '07

30 Oct '07

This one is a little bizarre! http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/9793D43B77C420EECC257384001906D0 -- Web1: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Web2: http://www.jandi.co.nz Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting tonight!
by Meeting Reminder Bot 28 Oct '07

28 Oct '07

There's a WLUG meeting tonight: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7:30pm, TW.2.05 (http://www.wlug.org.nz/TW) Linux gaming: James and Bruce will present some Games that run on Linux, either natively or under Windows compatibility wrappers like Wine.

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Kernel Killer
by elroy 28 Oct '07

28 Oct '07

Has anyone seen this before? I'm pretty sure I know what it is :-) How I did it: Select ~4,000 image files in file manager (to delete) - but with 'Show As Thumbnail' selected - managed to kill an E6300 (Dual-Core 1.86GHz w/2GB RAM and 2GB SWAP). Questions: ========== a) Is this a case of the kernel running out of physical AND virtual memory? b) I have a SWAP file size of " cat /proc/swaps Filename Type Size Used Priority /dev/sdb2 partition 3903784 0 -1 " Should be ~4GB - but 'top' was only showing 2GB in-use/useable - should I have split the 4GB into 2x 2GB SWAP partitions for GNU/Linux to utilise it all? c) Can anyone explain in nice laymans terms the correct use of the 'Alt + SysReq' and 'Alt + S' and 'Alt + U' and 'Alt + B' key sequence (I used this to (I think) tell the machine to safely shut down). Cheers, Elroy. > [ 5756.653718] passkey-agent invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x201d2, order=0, oomkilladj=0 > [ 5756.653741] [<c015a915>] out_of_memory+0x175/0x1b0 > [ 5756.653759] [<c015c364>] __alloc_pages+0x2e4/0x340 > [ 5756.653770] [<c015db69>] __do_page_cache_readahead+0x109/0x250 > [ 5756.653781] [<c02ed622>] io_schedule+0x22/0x30 > [ 5756.653787] [<c02ed8cb>] __wait_on_bit_lock+0x5b/0x70 > [ 5756.653790] [<c01570d0>] sync_page+0x0/0x40 > [ 5756.653799] [<c01570b3>] __lock_page+0x73/0x80 > [ 5756.653809] [<c0159b13>] filemap_nopage+0x2c3/0x3a0 > [ 5756.653820] [<c01643ea>] __handle_mm_fault+0x14a/0xa40 > [ 5756.653825] [<c0102236>] __switch_to+0xc6/0x1f0 > [ 5756.653842] [<c02f0658>] do_page_fault+0x128/0x600 > [ 5756.653854] [<c02f0530>] do_page_fault+0x0/0x600 > [ 5756.653859] [<c02eed0c>] error_code+0x7c/0x90 > [ 5756.653872] ======================= > [ 5756.653873] Mem-info: > [ 5756.653875] DMA per-cpu: > [ 5756.653877] CPU 0: Hot: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Cold: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 > [ 5756.653880] CPU 1: Hot: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Cold: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 > [ 5756.653882] Normal per-cpu: > [ 5756.653884] CPU 0: Hot: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 38 Cold: hi: 62, btch: 15 usd: 60 > [ 5756.653887] CPU 1: Hot: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 59 Cold: hi: 62, btch: 15 usd: 61 > [ 5756.653888] HighMem per-cpu: > [ 5756.653890] CPU 0: Hot: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 143 Cold: hi: 62, btch: 15 usd: 45 > [ 5756.653893] CPU 1: Hot: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 121 Cold: hi: 62, btch: 15 usd: 23 > [ 5756.653897] Active:247244 inactive:246390 dirty:0 writeback:0 unstable:0 free:12228 slab:5093 mapped:650 pagetables:2205 > [ 5756.653901] DMA free:8128kB min:68kB low:84kB high:100kB active:600kB inactive:708kB present:16256kB pages_scanned:2015 all_unreclaimable? yes > [ 5756.653903] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 873 2015 > [ 5756.653908] Normal free:40296kB min:3744kB low:4680kB high:5616kB active:408760kB inactive:407108kB present:894080kB pages_scanned:1419965 all_unreclaimable? yes > [ 5756.653911] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 9139 > [ 5756.653915] HighMem free:488kB min:512kB low:1736kB high:2960kB active:579616kB inactive:577744kB present:1169800kB pages_scanned:1908817 all_unreclaimable? yes > [ 5756.653918] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 0 > [ 5756.653920] DMA: 2*4kB 49*8kB 61*16kB 29*32kB 13*64kB 5*128kB 5*256kB 0*512kB 1*1024kB 1*2048kB 0*4096kB = 8128kB > [ 5756.653928] Normal: 32*4kB 23*8kB 13*16kB 17*32kB 91*64kB 5*128kB 2*256kB 7*512kB 14*1024kB 5*2048kB 1*4096kB = 40296kB > [ 5756.653936] HighMem: 8*4kB 9*8kB 0*16kB 0*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 0*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 488kB > [ 5756.653945] Swap cache: add 1476597, delete 1476597, find 120489/168440, race 4+39 > [ 5756.653947] Free swap = 0kB > [ 5756.653948] Total swap = 3903784kB > [ 5756.653950] Free swap: 0kB > [ 5756.658573] 524128 pages of RAM > [ 5756.658575] 294752 pages of HIGHMEM > [ 5756.658576] 5910 reserved pages > [ 5756.658577] 3523 pages shared > [ 5756.658579] 0 pages swap cached > [ 5756.658580] 0 pages dirty > [ 5756.658581] 0 pages writeback > [ 5756.658582] 650 pages mapped > [ 5756.658584] 5093 pages slab > [ 5756.658585] 2205 pages pagetables

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WLUG members
by Simon Green 28 Oct '07

28 Oct '07

Hi all, For those that are WLUG members, this is a friendly reminder that your 2007-08 subs are now due. There are three easy payment methods: 1) Bring $20 cash or a cheque to the WLUG meeting tomorrow night. You will be issued with a receipt 2) Pay via Internet banking, or at an ASB branch. Please make sure your login name or real name is used as a reference. The WLUG bank account number is available at https://secure.wlug.org.nz/join.html 3) Send a cheque to WLUG, PO Box 21051, Hamilton 3249. Make sure that your user name is on the back of the cheque. Reminder notices will be sent out in a fortnight for current members who have not paid. If you are not a member of WLUG, now is an excellent time to think about joining. It is only $20 per year, and you'll be supporting a good cause. Benefits of membership as well as information on how you can sign up can be found at: https://secure.wlug.org.nz/join.html And finally for those that have already paid their 2007-08 membership, thank you very much Simon Green WLUG Membership Manager membership(a)wlug.org.nz

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The Vampire resurrects itself from the stake plunged into it
by Ian McDonald 25 Oct '07

25 Oct '07

Well we thought that SCO had died with it's bankruptcy protection but it appears the Linux side hasn't. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7753951114.html Note that any new owners will have any more lucnk I think. -- Web1: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Web2: http://www.jandi.co.nz Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder Bot 25 Oct '07

25 Oct '07

There's a Waikato Linux Users Group meeting on Monday: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7:30pm, TW.2.05 (http://www.wlug.org.nz/TW) Linux gaming: James and Bruce will present some Games that run on Linux, either natively or under Windows compatibility wrappers like Wine.

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Mounting an image
by Chris O'Halloran 25 Oct '07

25 Oct '07

Two weeks ago, I discovered my harddrive was dead. The bios won't even detect it :( I tried to restore my backups onto another computer from a couple of tar.gz files on a USB drive only to find errors when gunzipping them. :(. I can get about 1/3 files off.) However, I notice that somehow I made an image of the whole harddrive (12 partitions) and it stored on my USB drive too as /kubuntu/dev/hda I tried doing the mount /media/disk/kubuntu/dev/hda -o loop /mnt/hda (after making /mnt/hda first) but it (not unsuprisingly) can't figure out the partitions.of find a file system. There were all ext2 or ext3 from memory Is there a way I can mount this image? Do I need the partition tables? would ubuntu dapper have made a copy and put them anywhere? I have /etc and /var from the disk too. This /dev/hda is about 25G so I am wondering if I have a suitable image. And maybe I can recoved the photos etc. Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions. Cheers Chris

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Email training system
by Michael McDonald 25 Oct '07

25 Oct '07

Does anyone know of a email server, preferably free, that can be used in a training environment? Current requirements are POP3 and SMTP access. All email is to be confined to a single domain (the classroom - not registered) and access to the (external) Internet should be blocked. It appears there could be a fair amount of work in setting up "standard"software for this limited task, but I would prefer something that most people would find simple to install to maintain. Michael

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Gimp 2.4
by Ian McDonald 24 Oct '07

24 Oct '07

Nice features and screenshots here: http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/10/23/gimp-24-preview/ -- Web1: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Web2: http://www.jandi.co.nz Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz

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