October 2005 - Roundtable

Making a DVD with opensource
by Montana Quiring 10 Nov '05

10 Nov '05

Hello, Someone asked about creating a DVD using Linux. I'm not going to be at the next MUUG (going to Chicago) but I thought I would share this URL that I've recently tried and found works very well: http://www.wlug.org/files/howto_dvd_talk/HOWTO_MAKE_DVD -Montana Quiring

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IT Lounge info (fwd)
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 05 Nov '05

05 Nov '05

Just passing this along, FYI... -- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Mitch Tulloch" <mktulloch(a)mtit.com> Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:10:44 -0600 Subject: [Board] IT Lounge info Hi, please let your MUUG membership know about our bi-weekly gathering for IT professionals here in Winnipeg, see http://itlounge.blogspot.com/ for more info. Thanks!! Cheers, Mitch Tulloch MVP - Windows Server ======================================= website: http://www.mtit.com my blog: http://itreader.net ***This message is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no rights***

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Re: [RndTbl] wintv PVR 150 cards $99 at futureshop this week
by Kevin McGregor 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

If you'd like two tuners, check out www.ncix.com for the PVR-500 (now works with MythTV) for $175: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=F25260&vpn=1081&manufacture=HAUP… Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------010302010500050704060308" --------------010302010500050704060308 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit While it's still on topic, a quick run-down of the Hauppage cards for those unfamiliar with them: PVR-150 : a basic framegrabber. Requires more CPU cycles to do the MPEG encoding work. Works fine if you have CPU bandwidth to spare. PVR-250 : hardware MPEG encoder. Doesn't require much CPU while recording. (However, it takes *more* CPU time to transcode if you don't happen to like their choice of encoding format!) PVR-350 : hardware MPEG encoder *and* hardware MPEG decoder. Doesn't require much CPU time to record OR play back. Playback can be through the TV-OUT port on the PVR-350. Linux supports using the PVR-350 as a display device for X, but only as an unaccelerated framebuffer. In other words, it's really good for playing back MPEG video (in the same format as it recorded it in the first place) but really, really, REALLY bad for doing anything else like playing XMAME games or really, anything other than MPEG playback. On the other hand, the TV-out generates "perfect" resolution for your TV set, and you can theoretically run a MythTV box without a VGA card at all... The key point I wanted to make, is that although conventional wisdom says the PVR-150 requires the most CPU horsepower, that's not always the case. With the PVR-150 you can control what encoding format gets used - and you only have to encode once. With a PVR-250, if Hauppage's MPEG4 flavor isn't to your liking, the CPU has to *decode* and then *re-encode* the video in realtime - actually taking more CPU time than if you didn't have the hardware acceleration in the first place. The other point is that with the PVR-350, you'll get (reportedly) fantastic output quality but that for doing anything OTHER than watching MPEG4 playback, the performance will actually suck - and take lots of CPU time. -Adam Thompson Sean A. Walberg wrote: >I was at Staples in Portage Place yesterday, they have the 250 for the >same deal. > >People looking for the 350 -- it came down in price on Sep 1. We ordered >a few direct from Hauppauge, it ended up being $215 each after shipping >and taxes. > >http://www.1click2computers.com/searches/results.asp?product_search=pvr-350… > >has it for $180.60 Canadian. > >Sean > >On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Theodore Baschak wrote: > > > >>If you're interesting in setting up mythtv, the pvr 150 is on sale for $99 >>at futureshop this week ($50 instant savings, *NOT* mail in rebate for >>once) >> >>http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10057681&ca… >> >>I've got this card working with mythtv on fedora core 4, following this >>guide. >> >>http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php >> >>Theodore Baschak >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>Roundtable mailing list >>Roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca >>http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable >> >> >> > > > --------------010302010500050704060308 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> While it's still on topic, a quick run-down of the Hauppage cards for those unfamiliar with them: PVR-150   :   a basic framegrabber.  Requires more CPU cycles to do the MPEG encoding work.  Works fine if you have CPU bandwidth to spare. PVR-250   :   hardware MPEG encoder.  Doesn't require much CPU while recording.  (However, it takes *more* CPU time to transcode if you don't happen to like their choice of encoding format!) PVR-350   :   hardware MPEG encoder *and* hardware MPEG decoder.  Doesn't require much CPU time to record OR play back.  Playback can be through the TV-OUT port on the PVR-350.  Linux supports using the PVR-350 as a display device for X, but only as an unaccelerated framebuffer.  In other words, it's really good for playing back MPEG video (in the same format as it recorded it in the first place) but really, really, REALLY bad for doing anything else like playing XMAME games or really, anything other than MPEG playback.  On the other hand, the TV-out generates "perfect" resolution for your TV set, and you can theoretically run a MythTV box without a VGA card at all... The key point I wanted to make, is that although conventional wisdom says the PVR-150 requires the most CPU horsepower, that's not always the case.  With the PVR-150 you can control what encoding format gets used - and you only have to encode once.  With a PVR-250, if Hauppage's MPEG4 flavor isn't to your liking, the CPU has to *decode* and then *re-encode* the video in realtime - actually taking more CPU time than if you didn't have the hardware acceleration in the first place. The other point is that with the PVR-350, you'll get (reportedly) fantastic output quality but that for doing anything OTHER than watching MPEG4 playback, the performance will actually suck - and take lots of CPU time. -Adam Thompson Sean A. Walberg wrote: <blockquote cite="midPine.LNX.4.58.0510191113460.2229(a)sergeant.ertw.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">I was at Staples in Portage Place yesterday, they have the 250 for the same deal. People looking for the 350 -- it came down in price on Sep 1. We ordered a few direct from Hauppauge, it ended up being $215 each after shipping and taxes. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.1click2computers.com/searches/results.asp?product_search=pvr-350…">http://www.1click2computers.com/searches/results.asp?product_search=pvr-350…</a> has it for $180.60 Canadian. Sean On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Theodore Baschak wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">If you're interesting in setting up mythtv, the pvr 150 is on sale for $99 at futureshop this week ($50 instant savings, *NOT* mail in rebate for once) <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10057681&ca…">http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10057681&am…</a> I've got this card working with mythtv on fedora core 4, following this guide. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php">http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php</a> Theodore Baschak _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Roundtable@muug.mb.ca">Roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable">http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable</a> </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> </pre> </blockquote> </body> </html> --------------010302010500050704060308-- _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable

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wintv PVR 150 cards $99 at futureshop this week
by Theodore Baschak 19 Oct '05

19 Oct '05

If you're interesting in setting up mythtv, the pvr 150 is on sale for $99 at futureshop this week ($50 instant savings, *NOT* mail in rebate for once) http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10057681&ca… I've got this card working with mythtv on fedora core 4, following this guide. http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php Theodore Baschak

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burning DVD on OS/X Panther
by millward 19 Oct '05

19 Oct '05

First, I'd like to thank Shawn Wallbridge for the .PDF files. Great stuff. My question is for OS/X users. I won a Knoppix DVD door prize but since I don't have a DVD burner, I took it to my friend who has a PowerPC OS/X Panther system. To my surprise, his system failed to read the Knoppix DVD, so could not burn a copy of it. We think OS/X can't deal with the Linux file system, probably ext3. How do you get OS/X to recognize the ext3 file system and be able to read from it? Of course my assumption that a Knoppix DVD uses ext3 might be completely wrong. In that case, what file system are we dealing with and, again, how do I get OS/X to read it? I'm not too keen on buying a DVD burner myself since next year Blue-Ray and HD DVD will have arrived and made it instantly obsolete. I once had a programming instructor who refused to purchase his own computer for this very reason. I used to think he was nuts. Now I'm not so sure.

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WRT54G, DNS, and DHCP
by Glen Ditchfield 13 Oct '05

13 Oct '05

I have a WRT54G with Linksys firmware (v4.20.7). It's set up as a DHCP server, and when I ask it to show me the DHCP client table, all of my computers' names are there. However, the computer names don't show up in DNS: 'slate' is listed in the DHCP client table, but 'ping slate' doesn't work. I thought I had seen web pages that said that the Linksys firmware could connect DHCP and DNS so that 'ping slate' would work, but I can't find anything now. I do find lots of pages about OpenWRT and dnsmasq... Have I been misremembering things? Is dnsmasq the way to go?

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GPS & Mapping Presentation PDF's
by Shawn Wallbridge 12 Oct '05

12 Oct '05

For those of you interested, I have put the PDF's of the slides from my presentations online... http://www.winnipegmapping.org/presentations/ shawn

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Adding second NIC - RH 7.1
by Raymond J. Henry 10 Oct '05

10 Oct '05

>From time to time, I have to UL a lot of stuff to my server (tonight, 12GB). Because of this, I'm wondering about dropping 1000MB NIC's into my XP system and the server, and running a separate dedicated connection between them. I don't want to spend the money to replace my switch, that's why I'm thinking separate network. I'm running RH 7.1 w/kernel 2.4.20-24.7. If I go ahead with this, I'm thinking the D-Link DGE-530T (http://www.dlink.com/products/resource.asp?pid=284&rid=879&sec=0) because of the price, and D-Link's indication it should work with my kernel. Anyone run one of these cards in a system similar to mine? Of course, I'd like this to be a painless as possible, so the other issue would be trying to have the existing NIC remain as eth0, so I don't have to mess with anything there. Any suggestions/ideas/flames?

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Re: [RndTbl] drive partitioning for Linux install
by Mike Pfaiffer 10 Oct '05

10 Oct '05

On October 9, 2005 02:45 pm, Dan Martin wrote this amazing epistle: > Mike Pfaiffer wrote: > >On October 8, 2005 09:05 pm, Trevor Cordes wrote this amazing epistle: > >>On 4 Oct, Dan Martin wrote: > >>>It turns out that my BIOS and ATA interface cannot handle HDs bigger > >>>than 137 GB, so I am switching my new larger drives to another computer > >>>and using its drives in the P3 - ie, lots of copying drives and > >>>partitions. > >> > >>The easiest way to get big drives working on even ancient computers is > >>get a PCI IDE card. Many options are available in the $40-$60 range and > >>they almost all work with linux OOB. As for SATA, I've had nothing but > >>grief with cheap SATA cards and would recommend staying away from them, > >>esp if you're using FC which seems to be the worst for SATA. > > > > The USB solution I mentioned a while ago works on fairly new machines. It > > may work on older machines as well (I haven't tried it yet). A friend > > running M$ said he tried a 200GB drive under ME and it would only see 137 > > GB as well. He ended up returning it for a 120. Later he got another 200 > > (internal this time) ME only saw the 137 GB like before, but Chris and I > > managed to get Linux installed on the rest of the drive. It worked until > > he had to reinstall ME. Since 137 GB seems to be common, there may be a > > possibility putting the big drive in a USB box (again around $40.00) > > could get around the limitation of the BIOS as long as it's not a M$ > > drive. > > I have a 200 GB IDE drive in a USB box. The old machine sees it > perfectly under Windows (and presumably under Linux). I am pretty sure > that I cannot boot from it, so I got 2 WD 120GB internal drives that I > am having some adventures with. Booting depends on the BIOS. It'll have to be a newer one. For storage I find it great. If speed isn't essential it's a decent alternative. It doesn't involve taking the machine apart and the power source is external. > The USB will come in very handy, however. When I get the hang of the dd > command and make sure that I'm not using it in such a way that I trash > my systems, I will use it to ghost a copy of my laptop harddrive to a > file on the USB HD. Never used dd much. I got it to work half the time (my fault it didn't work the other half). If your laptop drive is only used for data (ie. you don't care about the image booting or you'd prefer a fresh OS each time) you can just use the cp command. I recall a few years back someone at one of the meetings was mentioning a ghost command for Linux. Later Mike -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Call-A.P.P.L.E. and the Digital Civilization http://www.callapple.org | | http://members.shaw.ca/pfaiffer = Mike Pfaiffer (B.A., B.Sc.) | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ ----- BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK ----- Version: 3.12 GCS/G/IT/PA/SS d s+:- a? C++ UL L++ W++ N++ o+ K- w(---) O+@ M++@ V PS+ PE !PGP t+ 5+ X R tv b+ DI+++ D++ G e++* h! r-- !y-- UF++ ------ END GEEK CODE BLOCK ------

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creating image file
by millward 09 Oct '05

09 Oct '05

I'm trying to create an image file from a CD mounted in a CD burner /DVD ROM drive, but I keep getting error messages when dd tries to read the CD disk. I'm using the dd command: dd if=/mnt/cdrom of=/temp/my_image.img bs=18k or dd if=/dev/hdb of=/temp/my_image.img bs=18k My operating system is Red Hat 9 installed in hda9. The cdrom does not have scsi emulation. I removed that command from the Grub boot because I got worse error messages when it was in effect. The drive is defined in /etc/fstab as: /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0 The error messages all look like this: hdb: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error} error=0x54 Is there another way to create an image file from a CD without dd?

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