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Re: [Wlug] vendor recommendation

by Karl Hiramoto

http://www.pcsforeveryone.com/ in cambridge will install various Linux distros. I just bought a machine last week for work there. Baris Hasdemir wrote: >hi list, > >Would you guys give me recommendations for a company around >Massachusetts selling Linux pre-installed desktop computers at a good >price/performance ratio? > >I would also appreciate Linux pre-installed laptop/notebook sellers are >welcome, as well though I think that it is harder to find. > >Thank you >baris > >_______________________________________________ >Wlug mailing list >Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org >http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > > -- ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø Karl Hiramoto <karl(a)hiramoto.org> Work: 978-425-2090 ext 25 Cell: 508-517-4819 http://karl.hiramoto.org/ AOL IM ID = KarlH420 Yahoo_IM = karl_hiramoto ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø Old age is too high a price to pay for maturity.

Sept. 5, 2004

vendor recommendation

by Baris Hasdemir

hi list, Would you guys give me recommendations for a company around Massachusetts selling Linux pre-installed desktop computers at a good price/performance ratio? I would also appreciate Linux pre-installed laptop/notebook sellers are welcome, as well though I think that it is harder to find. Thank you baris

Sept. 5, 2004

Re: [Wlug] memtest hangs

by John Ferreira

I recently ran into something like this. Exactly the same symptoms. Intel motherboard with pc2100. Ended up being the motherboard itself. I kept hanging on the same test, between 2% and 8% completion. The test did run to 100% if I ESC out before the first test runs, and manually select that test to run by itself. Might be worth a try. I also tested the memory and processor in a second motherboard, and they checked out ok. Same processor and memory are running fine in the new motherboard. Good Luck. --- Gregory Avedissian <gma2004(a)verizon.net> wrote: > I'm testing some DDR ram (one pc2100 and one pc2700) in a dell 4500s > (1.8GHz Intel) and memtest hangs on the second test - Address Test, Own > Address, No Cache. > > I've tested the sticks together and separately, and the same thing > happens. The test just stops after a minute or two, with no error messages > and loss of keyboard control. Tested one stick in a different computer, > and it tests fine. It's a brand new memory chip. > > The Dell seems to run slower than I'd expect for a 1.8GHz with 384MB RAM. > I especially noticed it when I was installing software from source > packages - it went a lot slower than on my 1.2GHz Athlon with 500MB of > pc133. Other than that, it seems to run ok. > > Here are my questions: Is it obviously the cpu? Is there any linux > software that will test the cpu similar to what memtest does with memory? > Any suggestions for diagnosing this problem? > > Thanks, > Greg > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

Sept. 5, 2004

Re: [Wlug] Where do we eat?

by Frank

On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 12:22:51PM -0400, Carlton C. Stedman II wrote: > > I would have thought that 'Why do we eat?' would be a higher stage > > than 'Where do lunch?', but perhaps it is just a matter of taste. > > Which question seems more civilized may depend upon whether you > > are a French philosopher facing a plate full of jellied liver, > > or a film producer facing a starlet. > > No, no. First off, its a quote from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To > The Galaxy. Second, the idea is that after one finds how to do something, > the next step is to ask why they do it, all existential-like, and finally > the people eventually get tired of that and grow fat and stupid. Heh, I took a different meaning away from that quote... Adams referred to these stages as 1) Survival, 2) Inquiry, and 3) Sophistication. I don't think sophistication necessarily requires fat and stupid people, but I will agree that decadence and sophistication are often confused. > Hence: > > > And the web interfaces are generally a sign of civilization moving > > > from the 'How can we eat?' stage past the 'Why do we eat?' and > > > straight to the 'Where shall we have lunch?' stage... > > Implies that web interfaces are for the weak. This is silly, web > interfaces are very froody, and so easy to use, they make an excellent > alternative to command-line file editing, in many cases. > > CCS <SNIP> Not at all, I don't think that web interfaces are for the weak. They are another tool in the toolbox and get used and abused like any other... Frank

Sept. 4, 2004

Re: [Wlug] printers

by Frank

On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 11:04:22AM -0400, Andy Stewart wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > Hi everybody, > > While I happen to use CUPS, I'd like to note that there is at least one other > person who had an unhappy first experience. Eric Raymond documents his > experience here: > http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html Even though I do have a couple of disagreements with his various points, it was a very good article and probably doubly helpful in that it allows people to admit that they are having trouble with something (If ESR can't get it to work, why would they be afraid to admit it? His followup article mentions this effect a bit.). > Perhaps Chapter 3 of "The User's Guide to the Gimp-Print Top Quality Printer > Drivers" (authored by yours truly) would be of help in configuring CUPS for a > very basic installation. This document is available here: > http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/users-guide.pdf > > Admittedly, this doesn't cover the "login" window presented by the CUPS > interface. After searching the web for some time, I can't find the > documentation which describes how to setup accounts which give users > permission to modify certain aspects of CUPS. It must be somewhere on the > CUPS website. The CUPS website FAQ had a reference that I stumbled across while looking something up for my response earlier. (http://cups.org/faq.php?16) > When I first configured CUPS, I couldn't for the life of me figure out whether > to use http, IPP, or otherwise, in describing my printer, and there was no > guidance to help determine the proper choice. The CUPS admin web page asking > for "device URI" confounded me for quite some time. I found the examples on > that web page unhelpful. > > Now that I have it working, I am happy with it, but admittedly it was rather > frustrating to do the first time. In my opinion, the web interface should be > so simple that I don't *need* to read the manual - at least for a very basic > installation. > > Later, > > Andy <SNIP> I think this is where the CUPS web interface does begin to fall down. They have a lot of documentation elsewhere and you end up having to read a large portion of it to be able to configure things using the web interface. Frank

Sept. 4, 2004

Re: [Wlug] printers

by Frank

On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 02:50:53AM -0400, Keith Wright wrote: <SNIP> > I would have thought that 'Why do we eat?' would be a higher stage > than 'Where do lunch?', but perhaps it is just a matter of taste. > Which question seems more civilized may depend upon whether you > are a French philosopher facing a plate full of jellied liver, > or a film producer facing a starlet. It was a reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as explained recently by another poster and intended to mirror what I had seen as levity in the beginning of your post... > Though not yet civilized, the web interface may nevertheless be an > advance from savagery to barbarism. I worry about security. To each their own, however I think that equating a web interface with more insecurity than any other network reachable interface might be jumping the gun. <SNIP Adventures in CUPS-land> > > Your web browser had its auto-magical lookup functionality turned > > on and went looking for what you specified when it couldn't connect > > to the address you specified. > > I really don't think there is anything wrong with my browser > (Firefox), it has never done anything at all like that before. If I > had ever seen any hint of an auto-magical lookup functionality I would > have shot it. I might be mistaken and the functionality that I am referring to is in the DNS resolving layer. Same difference as the root issue was an inability to resolve a link as opposed to any clandestine communication (which wouldn't need to involve your browser anyway...). > > Honestly, CUPS is not that hard to configure and use these days. > > Well, I didn't mean to insult your baby, I was just telling > my experience. I have Cups as installed by Redhat, if you could > write or point me to a one page HOWTO send a file on this machine > to the working printer on the other, that would be great. Maybe > we could send it back to the Cups project. The documentation > I have seen manages to be both voluminous and elliptical and > lacks a short introduction to getting the damned thing working > in the simplest case. I'm not sure why you think CUPS is my baby, I have no affliation nor even heavy use of it. Heck, I've only used it reasonably often in two environments: One work environment on a linux desktop in a Windows only shop (much fun with samba, non/badly- documented copiers that pretend to be printers, and so on...) and a home environment where a mixed set of OSes talked to two printers (laser/inkjet) on different machines. Both were in the last couple of years. I was reporting on *my* experience and mentioned along the way what I thought might have been going on in your experience. Your browser going to odd places (assuming the link appeared to be valid) does not point the finger at CUPS (at least at first glance), but at what your browser was doing. For example, the question about the login box is answered in the FAQ section on the CUPS website under "What Password Do I Need to Use in the Web Interface?".) > > There was a period of history where it was pretty difficult to set > > up correctly but it has been pretty solid for the last couple of > > years. > > Maybe you have learned to do a difficult thing so well that you > forgot why it was difficult. Nah, I skipped the difficult years. I came in when it was easy to do. > > And, even in the difficult years, it offered a level of > > functionality not readily available with the rest of tools in play > > at the time. > > But if you don't want functionality, just want to send a file > upstairs in fewer steps than ftp and telnet... Out of curiousiy, what did you end up using? <SNIP> > > And I'd recommend it to the original poster. > > Near as I can remember the original poster asked about a photo- > printer with a USB interface. I don't dis-recommend Cups, but > I've told my story and I'm sticking to it. In this case, the poster can draw on the combined experiences of WLUG and we just might be able to get them through the (dark and scary)/(reasonably lit and pleasant) passage to printing bliss or a reasonably close facsimile thereof. > > (Typos and general icky-ness of the email I apologize for, had to > > recreate it from a bounce message as I discovered a bit of > > misconfiguration on my recently moved email server...) > > Every line came padded out with blanks to 80 columns. > I took them out in the reply. > Please don't accuse me of misquoting you. > > -- Keith What an odd request... But okay... Frank

Sept. 4, 2004

Where do we eat?

by Carlton C. Stedman II

> I would have thought that 'Why do we eat?' would be a higher stage > than 'Where do lunch?', but perhaps it is just a matter of taste. > Which question seems more civilized may depend upon whether you > are a French philosopher facing a plate full of jellied liver, > or a film producer facing a starlet. No, no. First off, its a quote from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Second, the idea is that after one finds how to do something, the next step is to ask why they do it, all existential-like, and finally the people eventually get tired of that and grow fat and stupid. Hence: > > And the web interfaces are generally a sign of civilization moving > > from the 'How can we eat?' stage past the 'Why do we eat?' and > > straight to the 'Where shall we have lunch?' stage... Implies that web interfaces are for the weak. This is silly, web interfaces are very froody, and so easy to use, they make an excellent alternative to command-line file editing, in many cases. CCS -- Carlton C. Stedman II, sageman(a)wpi.edu "To iterate is human, to recurse, divine." -- L. Peter Deutch

Sept. 4, 2004

Re: [Wlug] printers

by Andy Stewart

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi everybody, While I happen to use CUPS, I'd like to note that there is at least one other person who had an unhappy first experience. Eric Raymond documents his experience here: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html Perhaps Chapter 3 of "The User's Guide to the Gimp-Print Top Quality Printer Drivers" (authored by yours truly) would be of help in configuring CUPS for a very basic installation. This document is available here: http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/users-guide.pdf Admittedly, this doesn't cover the "login" window presented by the CUPS interface. After searching the web for some time, I can't find the documentation which describes how to setup accounts which give users permission to modify certain aspects of CUPS. It must be somewhere on the CUPS website. When I first configured CUPS, I couldn't for the life of me figure out whether to use http, IPP, or otherwise, in describing my printer, and there was no guidance to help determine the proper choice. The CUPS admin web page asking for "device URI" confounded me for quite some time. I found the examples on that web page unhelpful. Now that I have it working, I am happy with it, but admittedly it was rather frustrating to do the first time. In my opinion, the web interface should be so simple that I don't *need* to read the manual - at least for a very basic installation. Later, Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBOdmBHl0iXDssISsRAl76AJ9duHJww3GjGnUSCTy8wDRCNsWp0QCfV3rO jF3vlhhCqR5UXcHdrulvf7M= =oNes -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Sept. 4, 2004

Re: [Wlug] memtest hangs

by Brett Russ

Gregory Avedissian wrote: > I'm testing some DDR ram (one pc2100 and one pc2700) in a dell 4500s > (1.8GHz Intel) and memtest hangs on the second test - Address Test, Own > Address, No Cache. > > I've tested the sticks together and separately, and the same thing > happens. The test just stops after a minute or two, with no error > messages and loss of keyboard control. Tested one stick in a different > computer, and it tests fine. It's a brand new memory chip. > > The Dell seems to run slower than I'd expect for a 1.8GHz with 384MB > RAM. I especially noticed it when I was installing software from source > packages - it went a lot slower than on my 1.2GHz Athlon with 500MB of > pc133. Other than that, it seems to run ok. > > Here are my questions: Is it obviously the cpu? Is there any linux > software that will test the cpu similar to what memtest does with > memory? Any suggestions for diagnosing this problem? Check CPU temp and cooling if you can. I've seen CPUs halt unannounced (a hang like you say) when they reach a certain threshold temp. Also, it may throttle itself back if it's overheating causing the slowness. BR

Sept. 4, 2004

Re: [Wlug] printers

by Keith Wright

> From: Frank <fmoody-ug-wlug(a)moodman.org> > > On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 05:26:53PM -0400, Keith Wright wrote: > > > From: "Son Nguyen" <snguyen(a)hotmail.com> > > > > > > I would recommend not using LPRng. It is too old. > And the web interfaces are generally a sign of civilization moving > from the 'How can we eat?' stage past the 'Why do we eat?' and > straight to the 'Where shall we have lunch?' stage... I would have thought that 'Why do we eat?' would be a higher stage than 'Where do lunch?', but perhaps it is just a matter of taste. Which question seems more civilized may depend upon whether you are a French philosopher facing a plate full of jellied liver, or a film producer facing a starlet. Though not yet civilized, the web interface may nevertheless be an advance from savagery to barbarism. I worry about security. > > I can print from the printer/Linux machine, but when I tried to > > use the much-touted CUPS web-based set-up to connect to the > > printer from another Linux machine, it went totaly wonky. > > Sometimes it would take me to some crazy random place in the > > Internet, to pictures of buildings that had the same name as my > > server machine, ... > You had some misconfiguration going on there probably... Well, I hadn't configured it yet! The machine with the printer has Redhat, Samba, and Cups installed and working fine. The Windows laptop prints; bin/lpr.cups on the Linux server prints. It seemed like it should be easy to make another Linux/Cups machine print, so I did "man lpr", which said a few things not to the point and SEE ALSO CUPS Software Users Manual, http://localhost:631/documentation.html So I did that, which gave me a page: cups> The CUPS web server provides a user-friendly "wizard" interface cups> for adding your printers. Rather than figuring out which device cups> URI and PPD file to use, you can instead click on the cups> appropriate listings and fill in some simple information. Enter cups> the following URL in your web browser to begin: cups> http://localhost:631/admin cups> Click on the Add Printer button to add a printer. So I did that and nothing worked. I just tried it again, to refresh my memory what went wrong. It came up with a login box. I told it my /etc/passwd name and password (Is that what it wants? Why would it need it, I have been logged on all day? Maybe it wants some kind of printer specific name?) It just shows the login box again. I think I got past that point last time by telling it my root password, but I don't feel like trying that again right now. It was no help in setting up the printer, it just showed some forms to fill in with inscrutable labels, and occasionally locked up or hijacked my browser off to random web sites. I remembered that I had given it my password, and I had no idea why it was communicating with anything outside my local network. Paranoia strikes deep, so I stopped. > Your web browser had its auto-magical lookup functionality turned > on and went looking for what you specified when it couldn't connect > to the address you specified. I really don't think there is anything wrong with my browser (Firefox), it has never done anything at all like that before. If I had ever seen any hint of an auto-magical lookup functionality I would have shot it. > Honestly, CUPS is not that hard to configure and use these days. Well, I didn't mean to insult your baby, I was just telling my experience. I have Cups as installed by Redhat, if you could write or point me to a one page HOWTO send a file on this machine to the working printer on the other, that would be great. Maybe we could send it back to the Cups project. The documentation I have seen manages to be both voluminous and elliptical and lacks a short introduction to getting the damned thing working in the simplest case. > There was a period of history where it was pretty difficult to set > up correctly but it has been pretty solid for the last couple of > years. Maybe you have learned to do a difficult thing so well that you forgot why it was difficult. > And, even in the difficult years, it offered a level of > functionality not readily available with the rest of tools in play > at the time. But if you don't want functionality, just want to send a file upstairs in fewer steps than ftp and telnet... > CUPS is probably something you want to look into... I looked into it. It was deep and dark and I couldn't see the bottom. I got scared and ran away. > And I'd recommend it to the original poster. Near as I can remember the original poster asked about a photo- printer with a USB interface. I don't dis-recommend Cups, but I've told my story and I'm sticking to it. > (Typos and general icky-ness of the email I apologize for, had to > recreate it from a bounce message as I discovered a bit of > misconfiguration on my recently moved email server...) Every line came padded out with blanks to 80 columns. I took them out in the reply. Please don't accuse me of misquoting you. -- Keith

Sept. 4, 2004