- WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Server For Sale
by JV 03 Sep '02

03 Sep '02

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 +--------------------------------------------+

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RE: [Wlug] WLUG's membership in BUG
by Marc Hughes 30 Aug '02

30 Aug '02

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

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Re: WLUG and BUG
by doug waud 30 Aug '02

30 Aug '02

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

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I'm not normally in favor of cracking but....
by Wesley Allen 28 Aug '02

28 Aug '02

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.

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Stupid Hardware Clock Tricks, aka: WTF?
by Theo Van Dinter 28 Aug '02

28 Aug '02

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

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python regular expressions
by Brad Noyes 28 Aug '02

28 Aug '02

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

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Exchange clients for linux
by Haines, Charles Allen 28 Aug '02

28 Aug '02

I was wondering if anyone knew of any exchange clients for linux besides the plugin for evolution. WPI is now offering a student exchange server and I am testing it for the admin's. However I currently have to use the outlook web client to view my mail (which of course doesn't look right in galeon, since M$ designed the outlook web). So any comments, flames, or suggestions are welcome. Thanks, Chuck Haines WPILA Lab Manager

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An update to all user group leaders...
by Rick Zach 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

____________________________________ sent via the Boston User Groups Leadership Listserv ____________________________________ ==================================================================== Our annual user group MegaMeeting-III is near! Wed, Sept-25 Sheraton Tara in Framingham, MA Wednesday, September 25 from 6:30 - 9:30 PM http://www.BostonUserGroups.com/MegaMeeting ==================================================================== To all user group leaders: Boston User Groups is now almost one year old (at least as a true non-profit corporate entity) and MegaMeeting-III is just around the corner. Our value proposition TO you and our expectations OF you as a user group leader are quite simple: Boston User Groups' value proposition TO you: * Greatly increase your user group's visibility to the public * Help promote, increase and cross pollinate your user group membership with other groups * Assist to provide speakers via BUG web site awareness * Provide an annual MegaMeeting for face-to-face networking and exposure Boston User Groups expectation OF you as a user group leader * Greatly increase your User Group's visibility to the public by promoting BUG and it's other user groups * Have a link on your home page or other readily visible location on your web site back to BUG (again to increase mutual awareness) * Promote the MegaMeeting to your group to increase our mutual awareness As you can see, even BUG's expectations OF you are solely to help promote all user groups which certainly includes you. I would like to leave you with two thoughts and a "call to action": 1) Like your own user group, Boston User Groups is mostly funded by out-of-pocket personal donations of it's User Group leadership. In the case of MegaMeeting-III, we could not locate a free facility of adequate size and location so certain people fronted about $3,000 for room rental in the expectation of re-covering the costs by renewed BUG/UG leader memberships, door admission and a few corporate sponsorships. We are VERY non-profit. 2) I ask you to please help to aggressively promote the upcoming MegaMeeting and BUG. In the process, you will be promoting your own group! MegaMeeting-III Chairperson Brad Dinerman will be following up with a "call to action" email with specifics on up-front cash costs to you (none) and how to help promote the MegaMeeting and your own group! Please look for Brad's email coming soon. And finally: Please note a recent article by John C. Dvorak on the death of User Groups and the few glimmers of light out there. As a united group of groups, we may be one of those few glimmers. Please help us to help each other! The URL is http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=29639,00.asp ______________________________________ Rick Zach, President Boston User Groups, Inc. cel: 508-395-8730 http://www.bostonusergroups.com/Benefactors/

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Server crash - is recovery possible?
by Richard Goodman 26 Aug '02

26 Aug '02

I'm running a RH 7.0 box at home that does (a) NAT for the local network (b) mail server for multiple domains (c) web server for multiple domains and (d) DNS for multiple domains Yesterday I attempted to ssh login from a workstation and got a message "..exited with Signal 11". I attempted to log on from the console and could not - got screen full of messages and numbers. At this point at least the web server was still running. I hit reset to reboot, got all the standard messages until "Checking root filesystem...." About 5-10% in, then: "Warning ..fsck.ext2 for device /dev/hda2 exited with signal 11 [FAILED] " Looked in my configuration book this morning ... hda2 is "/" . The only fortunate thing is that /home and /var are separate partitions on a second hard drive. Is there any way to recover from this? Barring that - is there any way to recover any config files from various places in /etc on this partition. If not I guess its a complete reload - mainly a problem with mail and DNS config files. I am only mildly competent on this stuff. If you need more info, I'll get it, although I don't know how to capture that screen full of info at the abort point. Dick Richard Goodman (508) 757-3452 r.goodman(a)11harvard.com 11 Harvard St, Worcester MA 01609

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/dev/sequencer problems
by Wesley T Allen 25 Aug '02

25 Aug '02

Hi all, I'm full of problems this week. Hopefully this'll have a successful ending as well! Any time I try to open a midi file, I get an error "can't open /dev/sequencer" it doesn't matter what desktop I'm in (sometimes I hate arts); and I can't figure this out. Anyone got an idea? Wes

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