December 2003 - Roundtable

LCD character displays?
by Sean A. Walberg 29 Dec '03

29 Dec '03

Has anyone played around with LCD character displays under Linux, perhaps with something like LCDProc? (I'm talking 2x24 character and the like, not LCD display panels) If so, any recommendations on serial LCDs? I've been playing with Hitachi 44780 displays and microcontrollers lately, but it's a parallel display and LCDProc's interfaces to it are through parallel ports. There are several serial LCD products out there, and I'm trying to weigh the work of building a serial interface to it vs just buying a serial LCD. For those that have no idea what I'm talking about, this would let you display things like load average and memory utilization on the front of a headless computer. Throw in some switches, and you can safely power down a box without having to ssh in or fiddle with KVMs. Cobalts have them, you can even fiddle with IP addresses from the front panel. Tx, Sean -- Sean A. Walberg <sean(a)ertw.com> http://www.ertw.com

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Data recovery
by John Lange 22 Dec '03

22 Dec '03

I have a hard drive that sort of died recently. For the most part it was working normally but whenever I tried to "cd /" it would stall for a long period of time. This got worse and worse until I finally made a fatal mistake.... Not suspecting the drive was the problem and in a moment of weakness I decided to reboot to try and fix the problem... It never worked again... I will attribute my poor judgement to having spent so much time in the past working with "other" OSes where rebooting is your main trouble-shooting tool. Sometimes you have uncontrolled flash-backs and fall into old habits... That being said, while I do have backups of all my most critical items there was some other things I wouldn't mind recovering if possible. The drive is still recognized in the BIOS etc. but it simply won't mount under linux. Error is: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdc1, or too many mounted file systems I've also tried mount with the "mount -o sb=xxx" option specifying some alternative superblocks as determined by calling "mke2fs -n /dev/hdc1" all to no avail. Seems likely that the drive is 100% dead at this point but if anyone has any tricks they could pass along I'd like to give them a whirl. I didn't find much by the way of google. Very much appreciate if anyone has any ideas. On an entirely related note, does anyone have a good script (possibly using rsync) for keeping files up-to-date between a desktop and a laptop by way of a central server ? Thanks. -- John Lange BigHostBox.com (204) 885 0872

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IP Masquerading for USB ethernet
by Brian Doob 21 Dec '03

21 Dec '03

I have a Compaq iPaq with Linux installed on it (see http://opie.handhelds.org/) and it is connected to my Gentoo Linux box with USB ethernet. The Gentoo box is connected to an Ovislink router (with a DHCP server) via regular ethernet. I want the hanheld to be able to talk to the net via the Gentoo box. I have not been able to get IP masquerading to work under Gentoo. I would prefer to have the handheld get its IP address from the router (and have the Gentoo box just forward the packets). Does anyone know how to get this working? Here is some info about my situation: # ifconfig eth0 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:20:ED:B8:91:55 inet addr:192.168.1.1 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:3340 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:3557 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:3330687 (3.1 Mb) TX bytes:448922 (438.4 Kb) Interrupt:11 # ifconfig usb0 usb0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 4E:DC:69:01:CA:EF inet addr:192.168.1.200 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:25 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:980 (980.0 b) TX bytes:574 (574.0 b) # iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -j MASQUERAQDE -s 192.168.1.3/16 iptables v1.2.8: Couldn't load target `MASQUERAQDE':/lib/iptables/libipt_MASQUERAQDE.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory # uname -a Linux proton 2.4.23-ck1 #1 Thu Dec 4 19:21:52 CST 2003 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1800+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux This is how I bring up the network to the PDA: modprobe uhci sleep 1 insmod usbnet ifconfig usb0 192.168.1.200 netmask 255.255.255.0 pointopoint 192.168.1.3 up route add -host 192.168.1.3 usb0 If anyone is interested in the really gritty details, I have attached the config file for my kernel. Does anyone know what I need to do? Thanks. -Brian

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IBM Linux commercial
by John Lange 15 Dec '03

15 Dec '03

On another local linux mailing list, someone posted this link to a IBM commercial for Linux which was apparently spotted on CNN. http://www.ibm.com/open/ I feel this is pretty significant news. A large marketing campaign from a very large and credible source designed to bring Linux to "top of mind". Apologies for the cross posting for those of you who are also members of the other list. John Lange

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RBC rethinks SCO investment
by John Lange 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

An update to the original story that RBC is investing $50 million in SCO: http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031209.gtscodec9/BNSto… Unfortunately, "rethink" does not mean they are pulling out of the investment, only that they have placed some conditions on the deal. -- John Lange BigHostBox.com ltd (204) 885 0872 Toll free: 1-866-690-8297

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CD, VCD & DVD Burning
by John Lange 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

At a recent MUUG meeting someone was asking about burning VCDs (Video CDs). I believe the consensus at the meeting was that burning under Linux was comprised of a hodge-podge of various command line tools for converting video formats and burning making it quite difficult at best. I recently stumbled on the following software: http://www.k3b.org/ which seems to bring everything under one roof and claims to do CD, VCD, and DVD burning all in one application (it does not appear to be just a GUI front end to command line tools). However, I do not currently have a burner to test it with so I was hoping someone from the group could give it a whirl and report back on success? Thanks. -- John Lange BigHostBox.com ltd (204) 885 0872 Toll free: 1-866-690-8297

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MUUG Meeting, Dec 9, 7:30PM -- Virtual Private Networks
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

[Posted to man.unix.general and other news groups] ------ Forwarded Article <bqj4pk$50d$1(a)canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca> ------ From gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca (Gilbert E. Detillieux) The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting on Tuesday, December 9. The meeting topic for this month is as follows: Virtual Private Networks Shawn Wallbridge will be presenting on Virtual Private Networks. He will cover the basics of VPN's, what they are, why to use them, and how they work. Shawn will also discuss IPSec and how it can be used to implement a VPN. The group holds its general meetings at 7:30 PM on the second Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. ********************************************************************** Please note our new meeting location: The IBM offices, at 400 Ellice Ave. (between Edmonton and Kennedy). When you arrive, you will have to sign in at the reception desk, and then wait for someone to take you (in groups) to the meeting room. Please try to arrive by about 7:15 PM, so the meeting can start promptly at 7:30 PM. Don't be late, or you may not get in. Limited parking is available for free on the street, or in a lot across Ellice from IBM, for $1.00 for the evening. Indoor parking is also available nearby, at Portage Place, for $2.00 for the evening. ********************************************************************** For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their Web server: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ Also note that MUUG maintains two mailing lists, called "muug-announce" and "roundtable". If you're not already on these lists, we encourage you to subscribe now: http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/ The "muug-announce" list is used for monthly meeting announcements (such as this one) as well as other important announcements of interest to MUUG members. The "rountable" list is meant to be a forum for follow-ups to topics discussed at the meetings, or for round-table-style discussion on other topics that come up between meetings. Of course, for this to be effective, we need to reach a certain critical mass. So, please subscribe, and stay involved! -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ P.O. Box 130, St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609 ------ End of Forwarded Article

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Royal Bank invests 50 million in the SCO Group
by John Lange 01 Dec '03

01 Dec '03

The following story indicates that the Royal Bank has just invested US $50 million in the SCO Group. http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/32251.html As I simply can not stomach the thought of in any way helping SCO I am forced to move all of my business and personal accounts including RRSPs to another institution. Aside from the political issue I don't think it says much for whomever is making the investment decisions over at RBC. SCO has no future so they just threw away 50 million dollars. On a related note, the same story indicates that CIBC pulled out of all of its SCO shares in June. -- John Lange BigHostBox.com ltd (204) 885 0872 Toll free: 1-866-690-8297

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