- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Installfest roundup
by Craig Box 08 May '05

08 May '05

Hi everyone, Thanks to everyone who made the WLUG Installfest for 2005 a huge success. We had around 60 people attend, with about 40 maximum at any one time; slightly more than last year. Thanks to our sponsors: * CrawshawSchool, for the venue * DSE, for donating CDs, power cables and Cat5 patch cables * AlliedTelesyn, for the loan of network equipment * O'Reilly, for giveaway and new library books. Thanks also to all the committee members and helpers who gave a lot of time and energy into getting Linux going. Twelve people took advantage of our half price membership at the installfest offer and joined WLUG. We hope you're really pleased with Ubuntu as a distribution; I'm really pleased that we got it running perfectly on nearly all PCs, including two that were having serious problems with Mandrake and SUSE. [1] The network was really great. We had no major problems on the day, and we cached all the updates beforehand so that people didn't have to wait around. We did about 2gb of traffic, but about 80% of that came out of the cache, so we only actually downloaded 400mb of data (most of which will be the updates for the two AMD64 machines that we didn't have updates cached for). If anyone has any feedback (especially new people who are on the list now) please feel free to post it here. Photo galleries are linked from the http://www.wlug.org.nz/InstallFest.2005-05-07 page. Craig [1] To my knowledge, there were only two PCs that didn't leave with Ubuntu correctly set up on them. One was a very new tablet PC that couldn't boot off an external CD-ROM drive. We got the Ubuntu netinstaller and made it boot that, but the hard drive resizing facility in the installer didn't want to resize the hard drive. The other machine was a very old laptop that had a hardware fault of some sort.

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Modem Problem
by Ron Dean 08 May '05

08 May '05

Modem times out when connecting to ihug with Ubuntu but connects fine win98 below is the connection log --> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.54.0 -> Initializing modem. -> Sending: ATZ -> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 -> Modem initialized. -> Sending: ATM1L1DT087300777 -> Waiting for carrier.L1DT087300777 -> Timed out while dialing. Trying again. -> Sending: ATM1L1DT087300777 -> Waiting for carrier.CARRIERL1DT087300777 -> No Carrier! Trying again. -> Sending: ATM1L1DT087300777 -> Waiting for carrier.CARRIERL1DT087300777 -> No Carrier! Trying again. -> Maximum Attempts Exceeded..Aborting!! -> Disconnecting at Sat May 7 22:38:38 2005

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Hey ;)
by B M 05 May '05

05 May '05

B M has invited you to join hi5. By joining hi5, you will be connected to B and all of B's friends. hi5 is the place where friends meet. You can use hi5 for the following purposes: * Find old friends * Meet new people * Browse photos Join B, meet B's friends, and meet people that share your interests now! Click here: http://www.hi5.com/register/LX27G?inviteId=Y3DQI1ROI520125001w0 This invitation was sent to wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz on behalf of B M (bluemaru(a)hotmail.com) If you do not wish to receive invitations from hi5 members, click on the link below: http://www.hi5.com/friend/displayBlockInvite.do?inviteId=Y3DQI1ROI520125001…

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Sarge is frozen
by James Clark 04 May '05

04 May '05

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/05/msg00001.html Choice! James.

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got hardware/machines for sale?
by John R. McPherson 04 May '05

04 May '05

Hi everyone, we're considering setting a table or two aside at the installfest[1] this Saturday for the sale of machines and hardware. We'd like to have a couple of reasonable low-end/mid-range machines for sale that are suitable for a linux desktop in case anyone wants to buy a machine and get help with installation at the installfest. If you are interested in selling anything, please let me know (off-list!) so we have some idea of how much stuff we need to accommodate. Note that you'll have to be responsible for bringing it along, looking after it, and taking it away if it is unsold. [1] http://www.wlug.org.nz/InstallFest John McPherson

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Debian, Shorewall and dial-up
by Glenn Ramsey 02 May '05

02 May '05

Recently I changed the NAT/firewall setup scripts on my Debian box to Shorewall from ipmasp, because I couldn't figure out how to configure DNAT using ipmasq. There is problem with the Shorewall setup that I cannot find any references to, neither in the docs nor googling. This box does NAT/firewall for my small office LAN through a dial-up connection[1]. On boot as Shorewall tries to start I get messages saying: "modprobe: modprobe: can't locate module ppp0", until the script times out after 180s. After that, however it seems to work fine. The issue is that this extends the startup time by 3 minutes. I think this is because, following the "two interface setup" in the docs, I have set wait_interface="ppp0" in /etc/default/shorewall and this causes /usr/share/shorewall/wait4ifup to be executed. Since it's a dialup connection it can't find ppp0 at boot time, hence the problem. Removing the wait_interface causes the startup of Shorewall to fail. Seems like this would be a common issue and since I can't find any references to it this makes me think I have missed something fundamental in the setup. Apart from this issue the rest of the setup works fine. Ipmasq handles this situation by setting up LAN stuff at boot and then having a /etc/ppp/ip-up script to setup the external interface stuff. What is the right way to resolve this issue? The solution I'm after is the "standard, out of the box" one. This is because if I put in customised stuff I will inevitably forget about it and then wonder why it's broken next time I uprade something[2]. For now I have disabled shorewall at startup and added a script that contains only "/sbin/shorewall restart" to /etc/ppp/ip-up.d. This works but also involves customisation beyond what is described in the docs and is additional to the configuration provided by the package. Ie if I remove the shorewall package my script will not be deleted. I could just set the timeout in wait4ifup to be a smaller value, like 1sec, which would solve the problem but that seems like a hack that I shouldn't need, but it's more likely to be removed if I remove/purge the package. Glenn [1] in case you were wondering, DSL is not available where I live. [2] and it's frustrating enough dealing with the stuff that breaks all by itself when you upgrade something -- Glenn Ramsey <glenn(a)componic.co.nz> 07 8627077 http://www.componic.co.nz

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InstallFest
by Ron Dean 02 May '05

02 May '05

Hi I registed for the installfest on the Wiki but have had nothing to confirm it. So I'm wondering if I registed correctly

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Programming in bwBasic - newbie Linz
by Lindsay 02 May '05

02 May '05

I have downloaded and installed BWBasic to tinker with some older basic programming code that I know. I cant get it to run in RUN but it starts in Terminal. However, with no GUI I tell tell what I'm doing. 1) Is there away to make this more visual i.e. like GWBasic, Quick Basic? 2) Where can I find some coding instructions? (I have googled without getting anything I thought was relevant) Thanks in advance

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Debian Administration
by James Clark 02 May '05

02 May '05

www.debian-adminstration.org Good stuff on this site, a lot of it will be fairly portable. Cheers, James.

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Sausage sizzle at installfest
by Craig Box 02 May '05

02 May '05

Hi, Anyone want to run a sausage sizzle/cold drink sale at the installfest? Short notice unfortunately, but if anyone has a school or another club that wants to fundraise they would be welcome to. Alternatively if anyone wants to run a sausage sizzle for the WLUG and doesn't mind bringing a BBQ, we'll buy the sausages/bread etc.. Craig

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