December 2002 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

REMINDER: WLUG Meeting
by Andy Stewart 11 Dec '02

11 Dec '02

HI everybody, The next WLUG meeting will be held on Thursday, Dec. 12th at 7:00 PM in Kinnicutt Hall on the WPI campus in Worcester. At this meeting, we'll informally discuss the Linux news and events which took place over the year 2002. Let's take a look at how far Linux has come in the past year, and muse over where it will head during the next year. Look back through your old magazines, e-mails, and newsgroups and let's see how many different things we can remember about this past year and Linux. We will also hold a brainstorming session to get more details about upcoming WLUG meetings for the year 2003. After the meeting, we'll make our monthly pilgrimage to the Boynton Restaurant for some pizza and beer as we celebrate Linux and the holidays together. See ya later! Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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Upcoming meetings
by Andy Stewart 11 Dec '02

11 Dec '02

HI everybody, I like the idea of having a handhelds night, be they Zaurus, IPAQ, Palm, etc. I also would agree that January might be a good time for such a meeting. There seems to be a general consensus on this, so I'd like to propose that the January meeting will be the "Handhelds and Linux" meeting. I'll volunteer to bring my Palm IIIx and show how to sync it with Linux. Admittedly, that's not as cool as running Linux on the handheld itself, but hey, its one more thing to keep me away from Windows! I would like to hear from other volunteers who plan to bring their handheld devices so I can pencil you in. When I announce the meeting, I'd like to be able to say what types of devices will be discussed and demonstrated. That type of detail will draw people to the meeting. Note that Jon 'Maddog' Hall is scheduled to be our speaker at the February meeting. Maddog has come to WLUG meetings in the past and is an awesome speaker. You definitely do NOT want to miss this meeting! If we advertise this around the WPI campus and on the net, I don't see why we couldn't have a big crowd for this meeting. With regard to a possible LAN party, its not clear to me that we can pull it together just a few days before the meeting date (or am I wrong?), so should we plan on this for the March meeting? I propose that with all of the network gear and people's computers, we could accomodate the computer gamers as well as those who want security checks (nessus and the like), or even those who have never configured networking before and would like to give it a try. Given all of the above, that still leaves our December meeting open. What do folks think we can pull together in the next few days? Later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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badblocks on ext3 fs
by Bill Mills-Curran 10 Dec '02

10 Dec '02

I've located the cause of weekly SCSI errors that I asked about a little while ago -- a backup program reads a file (not an important one) which has bad blocks. The file is on an ext3 file systems. My question is, do I use "e2fsck -c" to fix the problem? I'm under the impression that ext3 filesystems are just ext2 with journalling added, so that ext2 tools are the right ones to use. TIA, Bill

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Question on making a CD from a VHS...
by Stephen C. Daukas 10 Dec '02

10 Dec '02

Never having before played with music, etc., on a computer, I'm womndering if anyone hasd done this sort of thing before... I'm looking to take the music from a VHS tape and produce a CD for my wife for Christmas. Also, making a DVD of the VHS would be handy too. The issue here is that the VHS player isn't going to last forever, nor is the tape, and the DVD isn't available (nor is the soundtrack). Any suggestions for doing this? Steve

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RE: [Wlug] Lan party ideas...
by Haines, Charles Allen 10 Dec '02

10 Dec '02

Have you made sure that there will be enough power to accomodate this many computers. I've had to deal with this problem many times before and I know that both the Odeum and Riley Commons can support up to 50 computers. Once we decide on a location, I'll speak with NetOps about internet access. ============================================================= | Chuck Haines | WPI Box 1531 | | chaines(a)wpi.edu | 100 Institute Road | | http://www.linux-xtreme.net | Worcester, MA 01609 | ============================================================= | ECE Systems Admininstrator | AIM: CyberGrex | | GDC Developer | Yahoo: CyberGrex_27 | | WPILA Lab Manager | ICQ: 3707881 | | Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity | IRC: termleech | ============================================================= -----Original Message----- From: Stephen C. Daukas [mailto:stephen@daukas.com] Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 7:36 AM To: wlug(a)mail.wlug.org Subject: Re: [Wlug] Lan party ideas... I have a couple of ideas... The first one that comes to mind, regarding location, is to hold it at the Mass Academy of Math & Science at WPI, which is of course a part of WPI, and is loacted at 85 Prescott St. This is where WPI's campus expansion (gateway park) will be happening over the next N years. As is so happens, I'm a faculty member at the Academy (Computer Science) and have already secured permission to use the entire facility, if need be, for WLUG acitivity. There is one large room (a.k.a. the brick yard) where we can probably accomodate up to 30 people with various PCs on bench-tables (we have had 100+ people in there for presentations). This room has the same AV sysetm as Kinnekut Hall... In addition to that, we have a large "room" (a.k.a. the library) off of a number of classrooms that could also be used. Every room is equipped with drops (between a 6 and 30) that we could use if Chuck can secure permission to connect to the WPI network. As to what, well I must confess, I have never seen what the attraction is to playing computer games. I have brought up the possibility, as the last "Boynton meeting", of attracting the "technology" types from area schools (and the folks they hang out with) for an install fest and topical discussions revolving around getting Linux into the hands of students and family as well as the topic of running Linux on all the older PCs that many schools already have. My guess is that taking this route, instead of a night of games, would not only serve to help the communities in which we live, but also bolster WLUG's standing in central MA and probably double our membership as well... Steve > > _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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Lanparty game
by Marc Hughes 09 Dec '02

09 Dec '02

Just saw this... http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/1209.barr2.html And with all that talk about a lan party, a pure open source game sounds like a good idea :) Quick Summary: Zlib license 3d first person shooter called Cube available for windows & linux SDL opengl -Marc

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RE: [Wlug] Lan party ideas...
by Haines, Charles Allen 09 Dec '02

09 Dec '02

Here is what I suggest. We co-sponsor this with the WPI Game Development Club. The GDC holds LAN parties often and would help us a great deal with the planning of this. I think its a great idea, having helped with many of the GDC LAN parties myself (I'm a GDC executive). For the installfest part, I say we charge nothing, unless the person doesn't have the distro on CD, in which case we can ask for a couple bucks to cover the cost of the CD's (since most distro's take up like 5 CD's now anyway). However, for the LAN party part, the way that the GDC usually does it is, $3 for GDC members, $5 for WPI students, and $7 for Consortium students, and $10 for everyone else. Now since WLUG is a WPI organization, we could say, $3 for WLUG / WPILA members and $5 for everyone else. I think that is a very fair price. As for placed to hold it. WPI would be more than happy to hold it. We really have two choices in the matter, Riley Commons, which is easy to get, but not very large. Or we can try and get the Odeum, which is much more tricky, but much larger and more power. Any WPI Alumni or current student can book either of these (though I've heard that Alumni have a better change of getting the Odeum than a student does). The link should be an isolated link just internally for the LAN party. If we want an outside link for the install fest portion, we will have to talk to netops and see what they can do. Right now, every machine on the WPI campus has to be registered for security reasons. They might be able to help us out with something. If we decided to turn this into more than a LAN party, I say we turn it into a series of small demos / tutorials kinda thing. We could host some beginner tutorials, like a basic recompiling of the kernel, a desktop setup, stuff like that. We could also hold more advanced tutorials such as iptables, security, clustering, stuff like that. I think that we should have the installfest go for like the first 3 hours, along with a LAN party, and then turn over to tutorials and workshops, maybe offering a couple at the same time to give people a choice. I'd really like to do something like this. As for time frame... GDC LAN parties usually last from around 6pm to whenever everyone leaves, which has been as late as 3am the next day. Now for this, I would say that something like 5-midnight, or something similiar would work well, giving us enough time for both the installfest and the workshops / tutorials. I suppose that is enough long windedness for me, ================================================= | Chuck Haines | AIM: CyberGrex | | ECE Sys Admin | Yahoo: CyberGrex_27 | | GDC Developer | ICQ: 3707881 | ================================================= http://www.linux-xtreme.net -----Original Message----- From: Keller, Tim [mailto:Tim.Keller@stratus.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 10:19 AM To: Wlug (E-mail) Subject: [Wlug] Lan party ideas... Hey All, So after reading Andy's email, it got me thinking about the whole installfest/lan party thing... and I'd like some input. 1. Do the members of WLUG think a lan party is a possible thing? 2. How many people do you think we could get to attend? 2a. How many people would we want to attend? At a certain point, if 200 people show up, it could get ugly... 3. Where and When could we hold such a shindig? Would this be something that the support staff at WPI would even entertain as an idea? Or, should we look else were... such as a VFW or some such place... 4. Should we have a link to the outside world, or should it just be an isolated LAN? 5. Time Frame... 6. What should we charge people (if anything) to attend? 7. Activities? This is where I want some broad input. Other than the obligatory FPS/RTS games, what other games or "stuff" would people like to see? I know Andy had mentioned a security demo... How about a clustering demo... Let me know what your ideas are... Thanks, Tim. _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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Possible Printer discussion
by Andy Stewart 08 Dec '02

08 Dec '02

HI everybody, If it were possible for me to get a person to speak to WLUG regarding printers and printer drivers, would that be of interest? (Hint: say "yes"). I'm thinking of a programmer's talk here, not a user level talk. For example, what does the skeleton of a printer driver look like? What functions must it provide to user level software, and what does it pass to a queueing system or perhaps directly to the printer? How are JPG pictures converted to dots of ink that appear on your printer paper? What's the deal with these different dithering algorithms? What is dithering, and why do it? These are just some ideas to get the creative juices flowing. Let me know what topics in this realm would be of interest at a future WLUG meeting. Once I have that information, I'll see if I can find a speaker to address these topics. Thanks, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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SuSE for Power Mac?
by Gregory Avedissian 08 Dec '02

08 Dec '02

Does anyone have a copy of SuSE for a power mac? My neighbor would like to get a copy, and we've all got 56k connections. Thanks. Greg

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web hosting
by Baris Hasdemir 07 Dec '02

07 Dec '02

hi all, I have a domain(hasdemir.com) hosted on linux by a web hosting company. Nowadays many emails that I have sent, neither bounce back or be received by the other company. Help desk of the web hosting company told me that probably there are filters for our network (by the way I have no idea on what network means here). here is what they exactly told me: >> why would they filter my domain which has only three email accounts, >> and never spammed throughout its life? > They don't block domain by domain but they block a whole network, they > don't care many domains in that network are legit. They are quite bad on informing the customer about ant problem. they refuse to show me the SMTP logs. It is Exim as far as I know. Would any of you tell me what my problem really might be? I need my web site hosted on a linux machine with mysql and php installed. What would your recommandations be for a web hosting firm? Things I would like to have, shell account with ssh connectivity and web space around 100MB. thanks, baris

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