Roundtable August 2010

roundtable@muug.ca

17 participants
15 discussions

wireless N router recommendations?
by Gilles Detillieux 03 Sep '10

03 Sep '10

I was talking to Gilbert about recommendations for wireless N routers, as I'm in the market for one. I'm not particularly interested in running custom firmware (just need good, solid, secure and reliable wireless LAN and basic Internet support), so this post is perhaps slightly off-topic in this forum. But Gilbert did mention that there had been discussion at a recent meeting about Wireless N antenna strength, and some recommendations (mostly negative) about specific routers, though he couldn't recall specific brands mentioned. Any good dual-band models in the $70 to $130 price range? 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 0J9 (Canada)

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MUUG Board Elections - Call for Nominations
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 18 Aug '10

18 Aug '10

Hear ye, hear ye! This is a preliminary call for nominees to participate in the election for the MUUG board. Those elected will serve from October 2010 until October 2011. The deadline to nominate yourself, or someone else, is September 28, 2010. Instructions follow. The MUUG board is charged with coordinating the meetings and other events by the group. It's fun, and you get a role in guiding the group. All are encouraged to apply. ------------------------ MUUG Board Elections - Call for Nominations Every October the Manitoba Unix User Group holds its Annual Meeting, the main goals of which are to elect a new Board of Directors and to pass any special resolutions. (Aside from that, it is a regular meeting) Any MUUG member in good standing can be nominated to run for a position on the Board. As of this writing, the following members of the current Board have let their names stand for re-election: Sean Cody Senior System Admin. Prime Focus VFX Services Gilbert Detillieux Systems Analyst University of Manitoba Michael Doob Professor University of Manitoba Kevin McGregor Network Analyst City of Winnipeg Montana Quiring Systems Administrator University of Manitoba Doug Shewfelt Systems Specialist City of Winnipeg Adam Thompson Consultant athompso.net Of course, this list is just a starting point. Any member in good standing of the group can be nominated simply by getting the support of one other member. If you feel you would like to contribute to the group by running for a board position, please don't hesitate to do so. (In fact, we'd like to see the number of board members increase.) If you want to be nominated, or to nominate someone else, send a letter to the group's postal box or deliver it in person to a current board member. The letter must contain the name, title, and employer of the nominee, along with a short (100 word or so) biography, and must contain the signatures of the nominee and one other member. The letter must be received no later than September 28, 2010, which is 14 days prior to the October 12 meeting. Although the by-laws require that the nominations be done in writing, with signatures, you can speed up the process by sending e-mail to <election(a)muug.mb.ca>, with the above information, and sending the signed paper copy later. In this case, please include the e-mail address of both the nominee and the supporter on the CC: list of the message, so that all parties concerned have a record of the communication. Nominees should familiarize themselves with the MUUG bylaws, found here: http://www.muug.mb.ca/pub/bylaws/ If you have any questions about the election or the nomination process, please contact Gilbert Detillieux, either by phone (474-8161) during business hours, or by e-mail to <election(a)muug.mb.ca> anytime. Gilbert Detillieux Election Committee Chair ------------------------ -- 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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Solved my problem with Apache, PHP, and user directories
by Mike Pfaiffer 18 Aug '10

18 Aug '10

I had to comment out some lines. Here is the NEW listing of my php5.conf file if anyone wants to try it for themselves... <IfModule mod_php5.c> <FilesMatch "\.ph(p3?|tml)$"> SetHandler application/x-httpd-php </FilesMatch> <FilesMatch "\.phps$"> SetHandler application/x-httpd-php-source </FilesMatch> # To re-enable php in user directories comment the following lines # (from <IfModule ...> to </IfModule>.) Do NOT set it to On as it # prevents .htaccess files from disabling it. #<IfModule mod_userdir.c> # <Directory /home/*/public_html> # php_admin_value engine Off # </Directory> #</IfModule> </IfModule> It was a 10 second fix it took me a year to find. ;-) Now I'm off to chase more wild geese. Later Mike

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Dell PowerEdge 2650 For Sale
by John Lange 16 Aug '10

16 Aug '10

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2650 Server for sale. It includes rack-mount rails and cable management arms. It has dual Xeon 2.6Ghz processors and 4Gig RAM. Storage is RAID 5 and comes with 5 60G SCSI drives (240Gig storage available). ** NOTE ** I'm going from memory so some of the above specs might be off slightly. I'd like $350 for it. Email me directly if your interested. Thanks, -- John Lange http://www.johnlange.ca

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Got a loan of a computer until September - Playing with Ubuntu Server 10.4
by Mike Pfaiffer 15 Aug '10

15 Aug '10

An interesting package. Some adventures... The first is I appear to have purchased a bad batch of CDs. Or it could be the burner. It works fine installed on a DVD. I've set up a LAMP server. It works fine for standard HTML files. It took me a while to configure it for users public_html directories. The usersdir module wasn't hard to find but finding out what to do was where the time went. I tried to display a PHP test file and ran into problems. It seems it only works fine in the system directory but not for users. This is the same problem I was having with OS X (10.4) last year. It wants to send the file as a download. The documentation I've read today seems to be out of date and makes some assumptions. For example, that I'm running Windows, the software isn't already there. That sort of thing. Even the documentation from Canonical wasn't very helpful (I spent most of the day reading the 8.04 documentation without realising it). They also assumed I had to download the software even though it was on their ISO. I know I'm missing a setting somewhere. Probably in the /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file. It probably has to be a 30 second fix. Would someone happen to know it off the top of their head? I'd like to set up Python as well. The language is installed. I want to hold off installing it until I can get PHP working. If someone could point me to some documentation for that too it will help a lot. There are quite a few apps installed. Moinmoin and mediawiki are there. I was wondering if installing a "forum" program would be worthwhile. I'll probably connect it to a wireless router in the last week and let my neighbours access it for a while. Of course with me it's also about installing games. Chris was saying there are a few free PHP (web) games which might be worth looking at. Then there is Montanas recommendation about Stendhal. Anything else worth installing before the machine goes back in September? Later Mike P.S. There will be no web access through the wireless router. Shaw gets their collective underwear in a knot at the idea of something like bittorrent let alone an open router.

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CRTC consultation regarding internet and telephone service
by John Lange 11 Aug '10

11 Aug '10

Just in case you aren't aware of it; I thought the people on this list might be interested in participating in this public preceding: http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=7166 Deadline is August 20. "The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today launched an online consultation to hear the views of Canadians about their access to basic telephone and Internet services." "Through the online consultation, the public is invited to discuss various topics and questions. The topics for discussion are: * the services that should be included as part of a basic telephone service * the role of the CRTC in ensuring that Canadians have access to broadband Internet service * whether cellphones can serve as a substitute for landlines, and * whether wireless Internet services can serve as a substitute for landline Internet services. The online consultation will close at midnight EST on August 20, 2010 and can be found at www.obligationtoserve.publivate.ca." -- John Lange http://www.johnlange.ca

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Re: [RndTbl] Learning a little about /etc/hosts
by Adam Thompson 09 Aug '10

09 Aug '10

Interesting mental exercise - the most comprehensive way around that filtering technique is simply to delete the hosts file (or edit it, I suppose). But if it were somehow made immutable, how would I get around it? Ignoring the difficulty of doing so under Winsock32, I think I would run a transparent http proxy server bound to localhost that did its own DNS without relying on the system libs... Hmm, that sounds exactly like the win32 port of squid. -Adam

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Learning a little about /etc/hosts
by Mike Pfaiffer 09 Aug '10

09 Aug '10

At the lab the teacher advocates using the Windows equivalent of the /etc/hosts file to prevent access to certain sites from classroom computers. He and I have been having an ongoing chat about this for a few months. I've been reading up on the way the file is used to redirect requests to a different address (eg. 127.0.0.1). Is there a difference in the way Windows parses the file compared to Linux? One reason for the above question is I was thinking it might be useful to redirect requests to advertising sites to 127.0.0.1 to speed up access on days when things seem to crawl. One article I read on Digg suggested a lot of the wait time for web pages was due to slow and misconfigured ad servers. I found one site which has example files which are updated so often. I tried one and I got almost nothing when surfing the web. Using the file as a pattern I created a smaller version which works well with the chromium browser but fails to display text in firefox. These are the lines I've added. Yes I know there are duplicates. 127.0.0.1 media.fastclick.com media.fastclick.net 127.0.0.1 *.tribalfusion.com a.tribalfusion.com 127.0.0.1 cdn.optmd.com 127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.com ad.doubleclick.net *doubleclick.net googleads.g.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 as.casalemedia.com 127.0.0.1 ads.adsonar.com 127.0.0.1 seeker.dice.com 127.0.0.1 townhall.com 127.0.0.1 s3.amazonaws.com 127.0.0.1 pixel.quantserv.com 127.0.0.1 st.blogads.com 127.0.0.1 *.rackspacecloud.com 127.0.0.1 js.adsonar.com 127.0.0.1 ads.pointroll.com Would the "*" in the domain name cause problems? Like I said, I used the Windows file as an example. Later Mike

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SIP providers and DID
by Kat 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Curious what you guys are using for SIP providers and a dialing number service. What's worked best for you? Anything I've been finding has been very US-centric. I'm using an HTC Magic on Rogers. I've got SIPdroid installed. //don't want to pay 350% more for long distance charges than what I had with Telus -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Katherine Scrupa Network Technology CCNA student, RRC

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Cameras
by Kevin McGregor 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good place to get decent (but reasonably priced) IP cameras with day/night vision (IR)? I've seen some for $100-$120. No need for pan/tilt/zoom or wireless. Kevin

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Roundtable August 2010