- WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Attorney asks son for advice on breaking DMCA
by Brian J. Conway Sept. 3, 2002

Sept. 3, 2002

Now that I have your attention (almost), my Dad recently bought one of the so-called copy-protected audio CDs and he is unable to rip it. As he regularly uses both a Rio while running and has a Rio receiver hooked up to the downstairs stereo, that's a real pain. I haven't looked at the CD myself yet so I don't know if I can use the Sharpie-over-the-corrupt-data-track trick, but has anyone else run into this and come up with a good solution? There's been a million Slashdot stories on the problem with no real resolution that I can find. I figured there would be an answer on this side of the pond if nothing else, but a Windows workaround would work too. Any ideas? My suggestion was, of course, to return the CD and write a nasty letter to the company about selling something labeled as a Compact Disc that does not conform to the Red Book standard, but that doesn't really fix the problem. Thanks in advance. Brian J. Conway bconway(a)alum.wpi.edu "Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves." - Albert Einstein

2 1

laser printer?
by Bill Mills-Curran Sept. 3, 2002

Sept. 3, 2002

I'm considering getting a laser printer (I'm tired of buying all those ink jet cartidges that my kids burn through), and I'm interested in recommendataions for low-cost models. (I'm running RedHat 7.2.) HP has a model (LaserJet 1000) for $250 retail. It has a USB connection that the HP web page says is for "window only". ("Non-Windows based operating systems will not be supported.") Any suggestions? TIA, Bill

3 2

RE: [Wlug] RH7.3 Questions -round 2
by Richard Goodman Sept. 3, 2002

Sept. 3, 2002

Well, I've got the ETH1 and DHCP issues resolved (Thanks, Charles). Did not need to do anything with modules - had misinterpreted the install dialog and ifcfg-eth1 had BOOTPROTO=dhcp. eth1 should have been static with DHCP running from there. One unresolved issue - when I issue an IPChains command, the first time I get "IPchains incompatible with this kernel" and thereafter "IPChains protocol not available". The IPChains command is there, as for example "ipchains -h" works. But I haven't got masquerading or firewalling yet because of this. [Past history of this problem dialog unavailable as I'm on a dial-up laptop] Dick Richard Goodman dick(a)goodman1.net ---> Home: (508) 753-DICK trader(a)goodman1.net ---> Work: (508) 757-3452 voice/fax

3 4

RH7.3 Questions
by Richard Goodman Sept. 3, 2002

Sept. 3, 2002

I have a RH7.0 server which has been giving me regular unrecoverable disk errors since 6-8 weeks ago. I figured today I had enough time to do something about it. I also figured that as long as I had to rebuild from scratch (after installing a new hard drive) I'd upgrade to RH7.3 -- but I have a few more problems that I figured on. The server is dual homed - eth0 (DEC 2104x 10mbps tulip driver) goes to DSL, eth1 (Realtek 100mbps) goes to internal network. Was running IP Masquerade / IPChains / Apache / sendmail / DNS server fine under RH7.0 I have the following problems: 1) During startup eth0 comes up but eth1 does not. My notes on the previous installation [year ago?] don't show that I did anything special when I installed the Realtek (was previously also DEC 2104x) but that doesn't mean I just didn't write it down. 2) dhcpd won't run, but I assume that's related to #1. Was surprised that dhcpd wasn't loaded during install, as I flagged eth1 as dhcp. 3) how do I know whether IPchains or IPtables is active, and how do I switch. Considering the time involved so far, I think I'd rather delay switching to IPTables and use my existing IPChains firewall for now. Can I still hook it in at the end of rc.local? 4) During install I did answer some firewalling questions (set to medium, custom) -- where is the results of that dialog? 5) If I can use my existing IPChains firewall, that will take care of IP Masquerade -- if not can I have some guidance as to what direction to take. 6) httpd comes up but says "cannot resolve hostname, using 127.0.0.1" - what did I forget to configure? (I haven't touched httpd.conf yet.) 7) issue and issue.net used to be set from rc.local, but no more -- where are they set? I'd like to patch that out and be a bit more anonymous. I'm definitely unconnected until most of these Q's get resolved. Thanks to any who can assist me. Dick

2 3

Server For Sale
by JV Sept. 3, 2002

Sept. 3, 2002

Sometime around April I bought a server from Dell. The plan, at the time, was to make it into a webserver and host Wormtown.org and whoever else I could split the bandwidth/hard drive with at a hosting facility in Marlboro. However, it was also in April that I lost my job and then determined that the donations that Wormtown.org collects are not nearly enough to cover the cost of hosting. So, now that I've been unemployed since April. I'm feeling the money start to tighten up and I think it's about time to sell this server. It is a Dell PowerEdge 1650 http://www.dell.com/us/en/esg/topics/esg_pedge_rackmain_servers_1_pedge_165… It is a 1U rackmountable server. It has one PIII 1.13 chip in it It has 512M of RAM (2x256) It has one 36G drive (U160, 10K RPM) The rest of the specs are standard. I've got all the CDs including the Dell Drivers CD and the Red Hat 7.2 Discs that came with it. I've even got Rack Rails. And it does have the cool blue Dell logo that lights up on it. It's been run for about 15 hours total. I believe I paid a bit over $2100 for it. I just priced the same exact machine for $2071 (plus tax and shipping) at Dell.com. I will, of course, take the best offer I can get. I don't want to go any lower than $1500 if I can help it, though. If you're interested, or someone you know might be, contact me. Thanks John V +--------------------------------------------+ |-- "I taught you how to cyclops rock |-- (and then you go and) |-- turn around and break my heart |-- and waste my cyclops time |-- mess up my cyclops mind" |-- |-- - They Might Be Giants |-- |-- John: http://voegtlin.org/~john +--------------------------------------------+

1 0

RE: [Wlug] WLUG's membership in BUG
by Marc Hughes Aug. 30, 2002

Aug. 30, 2002

Sounds to me like all we really got was a single new member out of last years membership. I say skip the membership. If we're itching to spend the money, throw it into an ad in a college newspaper or two. Otherwise let's hoard our cash reserves for a hostile takeover of microsoft. -Marc -----Original Message----- From: Andy Stewart [mailto:andystewart@attbi.com] Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 9:21 PM To: Worcester Linux Users' Group Subject: [Wlug] WLUG's membership in BUG Hi everybody, Last year around this time, an organization was formed called the Boston User Groups (http://www.bostonusergroups.com) WLUG was invited to participate. As a group, we decided to pay our $50/year membership fee to participate for the first year. Some of you might remember this meeting, where the general consensus was "OK, let's try it for a year and see how it goes". Our yearly membership dues are being requested by BUG. I had some questions about whether or not WLUG should continue its participation in BUG. I had a discussion with the WLUG members who attended the BBQ. Several of those people thought that the discussion should take place among the entire WLUG membership. The timing of BUG events is such that I'd like to settle this issue before our next WLUG meeting (ideally within the next week). Take a look at the BUG webpage as you consider my comments and those of other WLUG members. Please take note of the other groups who are current BUG members. There are 3 Linux groups, a Palm group, a Mac group, and some others, not to mention the wide variety of Microsoft related user groups. Given that Microsoft is a documented monopoly (a court said that, not just me), this distribution of member groups should not be a surprise to anybody. Some of the commentary below assumes familiarity with the contents of the BUG website. My initial question (if I recall correctly) was to wonder about what tangible benefit WLUG received for its $50 expenditure. a) BUG has a link to the WLUG website on its website b) WLUG had a table at last year's MegaMeeting and gave out literature advertising the group, its meetings, etc. c) I met some leaders of other regional user groups while eating free pizza, drinking free soda, and touring the US DataCenters facility in Marlboro, MA. d) I know that we got at least one new WLUG member from the MegaMeeting. Perhaps there were others, or folks who shortly thereafter joined the mailing list, but I have no way to know for sure. The BUG website also has a calendar of group activities onto which WLUG's activities were never placed. The calendar is designed for groups who meet, say, every 2nd Thursday of the month. WLUG's schedule is not as regular as that, and hence our information was not put onto the calendar after two requests by me. Rick Zach is the current BUG president. He recently sent an e-mail to the user group leaders (attached) wherein he describes some of the benefits of BUG membership. I also have personally spoken to Rick to make sure my information about BUG is correct so that I can present it fairly to the WLUG membership. My question to WLUG is: Do we as a group wish to continue our participation in BUG for $50/year ? Later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

1 0

Re: WLUG and BUG
by doug waud Aug. 30, 2002

Aug. 30, 2002

Hi all, Keith Wright wrote: > On the bright side, I have looked at the BUG web pages > and they do not crash my browser (Netscape Communicator 4.76 > on RedHat 7.1 with a 2.4.27 kernel.) Just to prove I am not just a pretty face, I can note that I got and installed Mozilla 1.0 and it too does not crash. > Why do all these web-wankers think > that a six-pixel high font is such a great thing that it must be > hard coded to override my preferences? I don't know the answer but I agree that the practice sucks! :-) doug (Vulture for culture) Waud

3 2

I'm not normally in favor of cracking but....
by Wesley Allen Aug. 28, 2002

Aug. 28, 2002

Anyone catch this story at wired? http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54812,00.html Apparently the RIAA site got cracked, and the crackers put up a fold with..."pirated" mp3 files. Ummmm, yes this is illegal (the cracking, not the creation of mp3 archives for personal use), but can you imagine a more deserving organization for this to happen to. Keep in mind, I also happen to be a PASTOR, and I think this is just about the funniest thing I've ever seen on the internet. Wes -- This message may be digitally signed. For my public key, e-mail me a request.

1 0

Stupid Hardware Clock Tricks, aka: WTF?
by Theo Van Dinter Aug. 28, 2002

Aug. 28, 2002

Over this past weekend I upgraded my server from a P200/RedHat Linux 7.2 to a new Athlon 850/RedHat Linux 7.3. The Athlon was my trusty workstation for many a year. Everything's great, except for one problem: the clock goes crazy! It seems to be a once per second issue: $ perl -e '$t=time;while(1){$t2=time; warn join("\n",scalar localtime($t),scalar localtime($t2),"") if ($t2-$t>4); $t=$t2;}' Wed Aug 21 17:17:28 2002 Wed Aug 21 18:29:03 2002 Wed Aug 21 17:17:29 2002 Wed Aug 21 18:29:04 2002 Wed Aug 21 17:17:30 2002 Wed Aug 21 18:29:05 2002 I use netsaint to monitor system health, and it keeps complaining about the time jumps: Aug 21 18:28:03 eclectic netsaint: Warning: A system time change of 4296 seconds (forwards in time) has been detected. Compensating... Aug 21 17:16:31 eclectic netsaint: Warning: A system time change of 4293 seconds (backwards in time) has been detected. Compensating... Aug 21 18:29:42 eclectic netsaint: Warning: A system time change of 4296 seconds (forwards in time) has been detected. Compensating... Aug 21 17:18:10 eclectic netsaint: Warning: A system time change of 4293 seconds (backwards in time) has been detected. Compensating... Of course, random checks start failing as well since they occasionally run during the time jump, and if they're checking for time since something occured (log entry, cron run, query response time, etc) ... I've tried "hwclock --systohc" to force the hardware clock to the same time as the system, didn't help. I'm running NTP and thought maybe it was having problems, so I tried turning that off, didn't help. I went through BIOS and tweaked memory/IRQ settings -- I didn't think it would really solve anything, but the setting changes and reboot kept the behavior away for ~14-15 hours. So I'm completely stumped as to what causes this problem. Has anyone seen anything like this before? Any suggestions for things to look at? I'm at the point where I'm planning to just buy a new bit of hardware, migrate the drives and such again, and go from there. With my luck the problem would follow me of course... :( Thanks in advance. :) BTW: If anyone is wondering, I'm running SGI's XFS patched 2.4.18 kernel: 2.4.18-SGI_XFS_1.1. I'm thinking about dropping back to a 2.4.9 kernel w/ XFS support and seeing if that works any better. :( I was running 2.4.18 on the P200 for quite a while though without problem. -- Randomly Generated Tagline: I don't want to look like a weirdo. I'll just go with a muumuu. -- Homer Simpson King-Size Homer

4 8

python regular expressions
by Brad Noyes Aug. 28, 2002

Aug. 28, 2002

Hi All, I'm starting to learn python. I was looking for a python equivalent to a perl regular expression such as $_ = "FreeBSD"; /(.*)BSD/; where $1 would get what ever is between '(...)', 'Free' in this case. Is there a way i can make use of the () regex operator in python? I can't seem to find an equivalent in python's regex module (re). Thanks, --brad

3 5