March 2004 - Roundtable

Fwd: Re: [RndTbl] "cannot stat /dev/cdrom" error message and problem
by Mel Seder 28 Mar '04

28 Mar '04

My son came over deleted the cdrom from fstab and when we rebooted the computer something wrote the line into fstab and the computer booted with no error. Go figure that one out? Anyways it works now :-) --- "Michael J. Dikkema" <mjd(a)moot.ca> wrote: > From: "Michael J. Dikkema" <mjd(a)moot.ca> > To: Mel Seder <melseder(a)yahoo.com> > CC: roundtable <roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca> > Subject: Re: [RndTbl] "cannot stat /dev/cdrom" error message and > problem > Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 14:19:35 -0600 (CST) > > > > The following is the contents of my /etc/fstab. > > > > When my computer boots I get the message "cannot stat /dev/cdrom" > and > > the cdrom is not useable. My cdrom1 has been broken for sometime > now. > > I have removed some spaces because of wordwrap in yahoo mail. > > Either the symlink to /dev/hd? is missing, or the device is not > recognized > by linux anymore. (dead?) > > Check dmesg for funny things regarding the device, and ls -l > /dev/cdrom > would help too. > > --- > Michael J. Dikkema, CCNP, CCIP > mjd(a)moot.ca > > > _______________________________________________ > Roundtable mailing list > Roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca > http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable ===== The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

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"cannot stat /dev/cdrom" error message and problem
by Mel Seder 28 Mar '04

28 Mar '04

The following is the contents of my /etc/fstab. When my computer boots I get the message "cannot stat /dev/cdrom" and the cdrom is not useable. My cdrom1 has been broken for sometime now. I have removed some spaces because of wordwrap in yahoo mail. LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1 LABEL=/boot1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2 none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 /dev/hdb3 swap swap defaults 0 0 # /dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0 /dev/hda5 /mnt/data vfat auto,user,rw,gid=vfatusers,umask=002 0 0 /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash auto noauto,owner,kudzu,rw 0 0 5 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0 It was working fine yesterday. Can anyone tell me what might be wrong? ===== The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

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Dissertation Research Survey (fwd)
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 25 Mar '04

25 Mar '04

Anyone interested in helping this guy with his research, please feel free to complete the survey on Free and Open Source Softwae at the web site he indicates. Don't be put off by the legalese on the the initial disclaimer page - the actual survey page seems rather innocuous. -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <001a01c4129b$6a41e230$47954c0c@frank> From: "Franklin Valier" <f.valier(a)worldnet.att.net> To: <info(a)muug.mb.ca> Subject: Dissertation Research Survey Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 14:00:17 -0500 Dear LUG Administrator, Would you be interested in helping me obtain some of the perceptions about Free Software or Open Source Software. I am conducting an dissertation survey as a requirement for a doctoral degree in Information Technology Management. If you click on the link below it will take you to a survey developed for electronic research in this field. http://www.appilistic.com/form-magic/GPL_Survey/Research_Entry.html. If this meets with your approval would be interested in passing this on this request to your list members via e-mail so that I can reach as many respondents as possible? I appreciate the time you take to review this request. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Thank you. LUG Authorization Code: LU2126XP Best Wishes, Frank M. Valier f.valier(a)worldnet.att.net

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Darwin x86 6.6.2
by millward 25 Mar '04

25 Mar '04

Has anyone installed Darwin x86 6.6.2 on a IDE hard drive? I downloaded the iso but the install text sounds rather discouraging. A failed install isn't my main concern though. Is it easy to get rid off if I don't like it? I'm not keen on those licences, but I'd like to see what it does, or doesn't do. Any information would be welcome.

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Internet Annoyances Needed for New Book (fwd)
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 19 Mar '04

19 Mar '04

Hi folks. I thought some of you might be interested in this message I got from O'Reilly & Associates, requesting input for a new book they're working on, in their "Annoyances" series. Feel free to contact them if you have something useful to contribute... -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609 -----------------Forwarded message----------------- From: Marsee Heon <marsee(a)oreilly.com> To: gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca Subject: Internet Annoyances Needed for New Book Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 10:30:33 -0800 Dear User Group Leader: Thanks for the great response to our call, over the last month or two, for annoyances, gripes, and complaints about Excel and PC hardware. The email we got was very useful and a lot of your members not only sent annoyances, but fixes! As always, many thanks for the input. This time around, we have yet another book in the wings--this one focusing on Internet annoyances. Some of the annoying areas: Email (and spam), connecting to the Net (via dialup, DSL, cable, configuration and all that), wireless annoyances (from WiFi hassles to hotspots to fiddling with WEP), web sites (namely creating, hosting, and maintaining your own web site), browsing and browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, and others), AOL, instant messaging, using search sites, security annoyances, and of course, shopping and auctions. Got Internet gripes/annoyances/kvetches? Send 'em our way by having your members email me (marsee(a)oreilly.com) with "Internet Annoyance" in the subject line and we'll put our author on the job. As thanks for sharing, we'll make sure to get copies of "Internet Annoyances" sent to your group shortly after publication. --Marsee *** An example: Pictureless Pages Predicament THE ANNOYANCE: There are some great pictures available on the Web, but certain pictures don't appear on web pages I visit. Instead I see a red X or a funny little icon where the picture is supposed to be. THE FIX: Several circumstances can keep pictures from appearing: * There's a logjam at the web server or somewhere along the miles of wires between the web server and your browser. Try refreshing the page (press F5 or click the Refresh button on the toolbar). But you probably already tried that. * Something's wrong with the web server. The picture might not be on the server, or the programmer who created the web page might have put in the wrong path to the picture. * Internet Explorer may be configured so that it doesn't show pictures, a common setup for those with slow dialup connections who don't want to waste time downloading pictures. (If this option is set, you can selectively display pictures by right-clicking the X or the icon and choosing Show Picture.) To undo this setting in Internet Explorer, choose Tools-->Internet Options. Click the Advanced tab, and in the Multimedia section, check the Show Pictures box to make your pictures appear. * An invalid value in the Windows Registry is preventing pictures from appearing. It's an easy fix, even for those who are squeamish about poking around in the Registry. (Before you mess around with the Registry, back it up as per the instructions in the sidebar on page 47.) Select Start-->Run, type in regedit, and hit Enter. In Registry Editor, navigate to \HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.gif. In the right pane, click the Content Type item; its value should be image/gif. Then check \HKEY_CLASSES_ ROOT\.jpg; Content Type should be set to image/jpg or image/jpeg. For more information about this fix, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 307239. ***

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SATA drives, nVidia GeForce, supported by FC1?
by Gilles Detillieux 13 Mar '04

13 Mar '04

Hi, folks. One of our colleagues wants to put together a fairly sup'ed up PC to run our Linux based data capture and analysis software. He is planning on getting a Dell Optiplex GX270 Small MiniTower system (he's very keen on getting it from Dell), with a 120 GB SATA hard drive. Does anyone on this list have any experience with using SATA hard drives under Linux? I'd like him to use Fedora Core 1, as Red Hat's flavour of Linux is what I'm used to supporting (and our software is RPM packaged for Red Hat). I also think he might need to stick to the 2.4 kernel, as the driver for the A/D card we use hasn't (to my knowledge) ever been tested on anything but 2.2 and 2.4 kernels, so I'm a bit dubious about it working well with 2.6 for at least the next while. What I've read so far about SATA support on Linux, which isn't much, led me to believe not many SATA controllers are supported yet, and that SATA support seems to be in the 2.6 kernel. Has anyone tried SATA drives and do they work with 2.4? I've recommended he stick to standard ATA unless I hear of some success stories with SATA. A somewhat unrelated question: he was going to get this PC with an nVidia GeForce 4MX (with DVI & VGA outputs). I've never used this card (or any nVidia card for that matter - we tend to stick with ATI most of the time), so I was wondering if anyone knows if it plays well with FC1. I did a bit of quick googling this afternoon, but got somewhat mixed stories with some folks complaining of nVidia's drivers breaking after a kernel update, while some posts suggested no special drivers were needed for FC1. I'm not quite sure they were all talking about the same card though. Any words of wisdom? Thanks, Gilles -- Gilles R. Detillieux E-mail: <grdetil(a)scrc.umanitoba.ca> Spinal Cord Research Centre WWW: http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/ Dept. Physiology, U. of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3E 3J7 (Canada)

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VMware Offer - some background info...
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 12 Mar '04

12 Mar '04

Someone pointed out that we didn't really say what VMware was, how much it cost, etc... Oops, sorry!... Our bad! The notice in the newsletter was rather brief, only quoting the pertinent details of the original e-mail notice we got from VMware. In my last e-mail, I should have quoted the entire original offer, rather than just the newsletter's brief notice. Anyway, we had a MUUG meeting presentation on VMware some time ago, but neweer members wouldn't have been privvy to that... http://www.muug.mb.ca/meetings/99-00.html#sep Briefly, VMware is a complete virtual machine environment (with emulation at the hardware level), which permits you to run multiple guest operating systems, each in their own virtual machine. You can, for example, try out new versions of Linux as guest OS's, while still running your more stable version as the host OS. It's also got some nice features for software developers/testers to use. There are versions available for both Linux and Windows (NT/2000/XP) host OS's. There is a web site for VMware (www.vmware.com) where you can find out more, as well as obtain a free 30-day trial license and download the full- featured program. (The trial license has no restrictions other than a time limit, as far as I remember.) You can also get all the pricing information online at the VMware Store, accessible from their main web site. (Though I had trouble accessing it from my Mozilla browser, and had to resort to MS IE. Arg! YMMV.) The price is $299 US for the download distribution of VMware Workstation. A $100 US rebate does make for a significant discount on that, and may make it more attractive to some. Hope this helps clear up the confusion. -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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VMware Offer - last chance to respond!
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 11 Mar '04

11 Mar '04

In the most recent issue of MUUG Lines, we wrote... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- VMWare Offer Last chance to have your name submitted for the VMWare offer. "If you send us a list of your members' names and email addresses (with their permission!), when they support our Linux development efforts by purchasing a copy of VMware Workstation, we will send them a $100 rebate. The program for Linux group members will begin on December 22, 2003. In the next 6 weeks, we'll also be providing all registrants with a referral code. This code will both provide your colleagues with a 5% discount off of VMware Workstation and provide you with 15 VMware Points when they purchase it on our web site. Approximately every 6 weeks, we ll send you a statement of your points earned, at which point you can redeem them for various product and merchandise." If you are interested in this promotion and want us to submit your name and email to VMWare, please send us an email to vmware(a)muug.mb.ca. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To date, we've only had two responses to this request (which also ran in the January and February issues). So, on the off-chance that people are not reading the newsletter, but are actually interested in the offer, or maybe they've just been meaning to respond but needed one last nudge, here it is: This is your last chance to take advantage of this offer. We'll be collecting any additional responses we receive at the address <vmware(a)muug.mb.ca> until the end of next week, i.e. midnight on Saturday, March 20, and sending those addresses (along with the two already received) to VMware early the following week. They will then contact you with details on how to get your $100 rebate. So, if you're interested, respond now, before you forget! -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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IP Phones
by John Lange 10 Mar '04

10 Mar '04

There is an article on the Globe & Mail site today about new telephone technology (IP Phones). http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040304.gttwtelework04/… Though this article describes expensive proprietary technology from Nortel and HP it should be noted that Asterisk (the OpenSource PBX) does all of the same things described in the article and more. -- John Lange BigHostBox.com (204) 885 0872

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hard drive failures
by Ian Timshel 10 Mar '04

10 Mar '04

http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ There was some talk tonight about hard drive failures. I couldn't remember the name of the tool set I had used to solve some long standing flakiness that came down to small errors beginning to show up on some older drives. I spent countless hours blaming one thing and another before finally looking at the hardware. I tossed four old drives after I learnt some of my way around this software. As a consequence the software I was so frustrated with seems to magically have been transformed into usefulness on the new drives.. Hope this helps someone out Thanks Bill for a good presentation tonight. Ian

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