sellis

Forgive me if I'm being thick, here, but it sounds as if you need to publish your IP address to the outside world, so that they can keep up to date with any changes. If you could have a DNS entry that magically stayed up-to-date, then could you avoid publishing your IP address, just your router's name as registered with the DNS server? If so, you may be able to get round this with dynamic dns (http://www.dyndns.org). If you're really lucky, the router may even do this for you. I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router, and it deals with dynamic DNS automagically. If it gets a different IP address when it renews its DHCP lease from the ISP, then it informs dyndns.org who in turn update their DNS server.

Is your network connection working? I find that my system can be very slow when it is down.

After searching around (and finding very little about this model of printer/scanner combo) I have had a fun couple of evenings in its company, and thought I would share my experiences with it. First off, I couldn't get HPLIP 0.8.8 to play. After following the (very detailed and rather good) instructions on the HP website http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/, I noticed that the PSC1215 wasn't supported, so selected the next model down, the 1210. This prints fine, but locks up hard on a scan attempt, requiring a power cycle to both the PC and the printer. Ouch. So, I uninstalled HPLIP as it won't play nice with HPOJ, the other, older sibling of the HP printer project line. HPOJ 0.91 is mandated for this printer, and luckily this is a RPM package on Mandrake 10.0 install disk 1. However, on following the installation instructions, (at http://hpoj.sourceforge.net/index.shtml), I realise that the printer is not on the list, and in fact nothing remotely like it is on the list either. Using the included diagnostics, I notice that the device identifies itself as a PSC_1200_SERIES rather than as a 1215 or anything more specific. Further investigation suggests that I also need to install HPIJS too. So I download the lates version, 1.7.1, from http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/. (If this URL seems familiar, it is. It's the same site as for HPLIP.) After following their instructions and restarting CUPS (as root, type "service cups restart"), the printer driver list was vastly expanded. Included on there was the PSC1200, select that, and voila! Printer test page OK! Quick test printing from Firefox OK! Right, now for the scanner. sane-find-scanner found the scanner, but scanimage --list-devices found nothing. Simple solution - in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf had the hpoj detection commented out (i.e. its line was #hpoj). Remove the #, and run xsane, and everything is lovely. So, to recap, it seems you need to: - install and configure hpoj 0.91 - install hpijs 1.71 - restart cups - uncomment or add the "hpoj" line in the scanner configuration file Hope that this helps someone out there. [moved from Hardware by spinynorman]

I wouldn't do it like that - how long after wget would you schedule the mv for? Since mget is a network operation, it is subject to the vagaries of bandwidth and could take a long time to complete. I suppose you could "mv" the OLD version, to rename it, then start wget afterwards. That would be less error-prone. I'd still go with a shell script though. With a shell script, you can do the following: - Know that all the items will execute in sequence - Keep it in your own folder, owned by you, for easy editing. - Have access to all the shell scripting goodness for when you want to do something more sophisticated with it. Just IMHO, of course...

I have a wireless connection, which I set up manually as wlan0. Even though shorewall has been set up to use it, it does not read the setting back correctly and displays ppp+. The actual setting has been changed, and I can connect to the internet OK (as you can see). Perhaps you have the same problem.

So, you need to perform the following steps: 1. Log in to the server (This is the missing part) 2. Download the file 3. Rename the file, adding the current date. 4. Do this at a set interval To tackle these in reverse order, step 4 can be accomplished using cron - you add a line to the crontab file that says what to run and when. See http://www.scrounge.org/linux/cron.html for more info. What you would run is a bash script, containing steps 1 to 3. Step 3 is certainly possible using Linux's shell scripts. You can get the current date and time as a variable and rename a file. In a bash script, you can do something like this... FILENAME=your file's local filename DATE=$(date +%G%m%d) mv $FILENAME $FILENAME$DATE The cryptic DATE syntax is something I cribbed off the web and returns a date and time in this format: 20050217 (2005, month 02, day 17). So if the original filename is "foo", then the renamed file will be "foo20050217". http://archive.lug.boulder.co.us/Week-of-M...011/028455.html For step 2, the program "wget" allows you to get a file from a http server. See http://www.linuxforum.com/man/wget.1.php which is basically the man page. However, I can't immediately see a way to perform step 1 - log in to a web server. Proxy server, yes, wget handles that nicely, but I presume you mean something more like the "login" page here at MandrakeUsers.org. If you can get at the same files via ftp instead, then wget can submit a username and password to an ftp server easily too. Anyone else have any ideas? (Disclaimer: All of this is just off the top of my head and untested.)

But this refers to action on legal protection, not technological measures. I'm sure that Tom Clancy's legal team strongly protects the copyrights on his books, but that doesn't mean he has to encrypt them, or cover each page in stripes to defeat photocopiers. There's another interesting post from Dr. Felten today about how the record companies should react to the new MP3Tunes download service: license their back-catalog to it. Here's the URL http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000769.html.

My system is as follows: /dev/hda1 - 16GB FAT32 - Windows boot partition, mounted at /mnt/win_c /dev/hda5 - 16GB ext3 - Linux root partition, mounted at / /dev/hda6 - 2GB swap - Swap partition /dev/hda7 - 113GB ext3 - User home directories, mounted at /home /dev/hdd1 - 80GB NTFS - My old windows drive, mounted at /mnt/win_c2 (read-only) I originally had the 113GB home partition formatted as FAT32 and mounted as /shared (then using symlinks from /home in much the same way described by Gowator), but I didn't need to transfer much stuff to/from Windows, and the lack of permissions, etc on FAT32 finally drove me to reformat and remount it earlier this week. The old drive will probably go the same way, once I've got the big files off it that I couldn't before (FAT32 only allows 4GB files, and some of my home movies are 12GB+).

A couple of relevant links from Ed Felten's excellent "Freedom to Tinker" website: "... If the goal is to keep protected DVD content off the P2P nets, then this product will fail..." http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000768.html "... If you choose the Napsterization threat model, then you have to be able to stop every would-be infringer from ripping the content ..." http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000469.html And here's Larry Lessig's lecture to Microsoft (yes, that Microsoft), on why DRM is bad, from virtually any standpoint [PDF]: "... in the long run: she'll find out about Kazaa and the next time she wants to get a movie for the kids, she'll download it from the net and burn it for them ..." http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/msft_drm.pdf Meanwhile, Hollywood and the DRM companies appear to be putting their hands over their ears going "lalala... can't hear you...", while criminalizing their users and stopping them doing perfectly legal things with the content that they have bought. Sigh. I really should be inured to this by now.

From "The Linux Pocket Guide" from O'Reilly... Ensure that there is white space around both side of "[" and "]", like this: if [ "$COMMAND" = "1" ]; then That's your problem, or I'm a dutchman.

There are several avenues of attack against this kind of thing. One of the most robust is the replication of defects in the original code. Imagine two students on an exam - if they get identical, correct answers, that shows nothing. But if they make identical mistakes, you will probably assume cheating. If the logic is flawed (and not just the execution) then even translation of the code to a description and back again won't fix it. The question then becomes a more practical one. Even if you have proof of this happening, are you going to go up against Microsoft's Scary Lawyers , and not take the out-of-court take-the-cash-and-shut-up money?

One possibility that I have been alerted to is that it may be your hostname that's causing the problem. I certainly noticed previously that when I'm off the net, it takes *a*g*e*s* for simple things like a terminal to open (>1 minute). The solution which was suggested to me was to add the host names to your /etc/hosts file - you'll need to do this as root. My understanding of why this works (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that there is some kind of operation going on when launching a program, which requires resolution of your local host name to an IP address. Of course, it's always 127.0.0.1, your local machine, but if you're not on the net, then the DNS query for that name has to time out, which can be a long time. And even if you are, you still have to contact the DNS server and do all that stuff. I believe that the name is first checked against /etc/hosts, and if it is there it completely bypasses the network and therefore the timeout or overhead for doing this. By default, it looks like this: 127.0.0.1 localhost Here's mine - I have two additional entries because both my actual ISP (NTL) and dynamic DNS (homelinux.org) allow me to set up a separate host name: 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 notmyrealhostname.ntlworld.com 127.0.0.1 notmyrealhostname.homelinux.org All of these resolve immediately to the local IP address, 127.0.0.1. I haven't noticed a great speedup when connected, but on the other hand, I haven't had any ot those huge, 2 minute app launch delays that I was seeing before either. You try this fix, or if you can confirm or deny my speculation as to why it works, please post a quick reply to let us know.

My favorite quote from Judge Kimball's statement: [Emphasis mine.] The FOSS community all saw the writing on the wall for SCO many moons ago; it's nice to see that the Judge appears to agree with us, even if he's trying to avoid any grounds for appeal by being super-cautious.

Registration and setup of DynDNS was a piece of cake - I'd recommend it to others. Since I have a WRT54G wireless router, I just entered the appropriate registration information in the router setup page, it manages it all for me, and off we go. Add port forwarding for SSH and I can connect from work to home, and work from home when I'm at work. (Which is not quite as stupid as it sounds, in point of fact.)

Everybody should be allowed to use a computer. The computers people use really need to be made much more secure by default, to avoid the problems with malware that not only plague novice users, but also indirectly make the rest of our lives a misery. In my experience, Linux seems to be a lot less susceptible to this than Windows, although I still think that there is progress required on other fronts before I would give a Linux box to my Dad. Luckily, that progress is happening and happening fast. This time next year, who knows? I might advice my father-in-law to get a Linux laptop instead of a Windows one.

As I know from experience, the signal quality doesn't necessarily mean thet you can connect using your card. The most common problem (I have heard) is firewall setup - I certainly encountered it when trying to get wireless working. You may need to change your firewall to connect via the wireless card instead of a wired connection.

At some point, there comes a requirement for a mode where the user can do anything to the machine. Whatever it's called, it's effectively "root" as we know it now. The obvious case where this happens is after a catastrophic failure. You need unfettered access in order to undo whatever nastiness has been wrought by the failure. Now, you can argue that there should be an intermediate level ("power user"?) below that, where several dangerous things are allowed, but not unlimited access. As far as I can see, this can be largely achieved by using sudo. And as for actually running as root? I wouldn't do it, and I wouldn't advise others to do it either. But if you want to do it, who am I to disagree, and how could I stop you anyway?

Correct it may be :-) ... But disabling it doesn't fix my USB problem :-( Back to the drawing board... Edit: I solved the USB problem. Harddrake handily displays what modules a given device is expected to use. My old usb controllers used "uhci-hcd" and the new one "usb-ohci". A quick edit to /etc/modprobe.conf and everything seems to be OK.

Looks like this is a known problem with interrupt allocation between certain USB controllers and the APIC (advanced programmable interrupt controller?) subsystem. Some additional references, courtesy of Google: http://seclists.org/lists/linux-kernel/2003/May/2621.html http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/ker...304.2/0476.html I'm having a similar problem with USB at the moment and am just off to check if this does the trick for me...

Right-o. That wasn't pleasant, but I am back up and running after about 3 hours' work. Physical installation of the new mobo, and plugging all the case leads etc back in was about half that; the rest was convincing Linux to boot. What I hadn't realised was that the old mobo had 4 ide channels rather than the usual 2 - it had a built-in RAID controller and this was assigned to /dev/hda-/dev/hdd. Therefore my boot drive was /dev/hde rather than its new assignment - the more usual /dev/hda. Cue a lot of fiddling around in the rescue console (thanks to pmpatrick for suggesting booting to installation CD 1 - that would not have occurred to me until about this time Sunday). A quick edit of lilo.conf and fstab to change all the hard drive identifiers did the trick. Reinstalling the boot loader was then necessary to activate the changes to lilo.conf. There have been some minor teething problems after that. My ndiswrapper-based WLAN configuration had been removed from modprobe.conf, but this happens all the time and I'm getting to be a dab hand at putting that back, so no sweat there. I did a lot of fiddling around with the sound drivers, because the audio system had changed and I was getting now sound. Finally, of course, it turns out that the speakers were plugged into the mike socket. (D'oh. I should have learned my lesson from the time I tried to install a scanner, but that's another thread...) So, there are a couple of minor problems remaining: The cdrom doesn't mount on boot even if there's a disk in the drive - ejecting it and closing the draw mounts it nicely though. This is odd - it doesn't show up in the mount list even though it's set up in fstab. Finally, the USB is not detecting my pendrive - the new mobo has USB 2.0, so that might be causing some confusion I'll read around the issue first before coming begging for help though. Just in case anyone cares, the old motherboard was an Elite K7VTA3 and the new one is a PCChips M848ALU - cheap and cheerful at £19 from ebuyer. I also got an extra 256MB stick of memory, which amazingly was more expensive! There must be literally 1000 components on the motherboard; how they churn them out this cheap I don't know, even using automation. Anyway, if I find a solution to my CD and USB problems, I'll post them here. Edit: I solved the USB problem. Harddrake handily displays what modules a given device is expected to use. My old usb controllers used "uhci-hcd" and the new one "usb-ohci". A quick edit to /etc/modprobe.conf and everything seems to be OK.

Well, that's reassuring. Assuming that everything else is basically OK, it sounds like it should be simple. We shall see! Edit: 50 posts! Apparently, I win a penguin.

Yesterday, my mobo when "pfft!" while I was at work. PSU seems to be OK, but the bare mobo is pulling enough current to pull the 5v line down to 2v. Nasty. (I still don't know if there is any collateral damage; I hope not, given that this is an undervoltage rather than an overvoltage condition. Let's assume that the rest of the system's Ok for now.) I have a new mobo on express order, but it is of course different from the 3-year-old one I had before. So, what can I expect when I plug in and boot (assuming that my hard drive is OK)? Is it likely that Mandrake 10.0 will detect the change easily (new USB controllers, etc.), or will it complain and refuse to boot? Or somewhere in between? Anyone else have any experience of this? Basically, I'd like to plan whether I should expect to fix this tomorrow evening, or if I should write off my weekend doing software reinstallation and recovery. [moved from Installing Mandrake by spinynorman]

Marvellous. Especially the "virtually unanimous" bit. :-)

Thanks, Papaschtroumpf. I am currently waiting for my registration e-mail from DynDNS.org to work its way through our spam filters at work - I will let everyone know how I got on. Edit: well, as mentioned in another thread, my motherboard went "pzzt" yesterday, so I'm waiting for a replacement - further updates on the Dynamic DNS problem may therefore be delayed...

OK, here's a question I haven't seen a good answer to... Like many people I am unpaid tech support for my parents. It would be good to be able to use VNC to control their machine remotely, instead of having do describe iconsto them down the phone. ("No, the one that looks like a printer." "There isn't one." "The second one along." "That doesn't look like my printer." "Click on it anyway." Sigh.) Anyway, both they and I have dynamic IP addresses - a consequence of the ISPs we are connected to. I'm also behind a wireless router, so my IP address is always 192.168.1.100, which isn't really visible to the outside. So, how do I go about setting up VNC connection between these machines? Can I do it at all? Apologies for rank ignorance - IP routing isn't an area I have studied in any great detail. Moved from Software to Networking - Artificial Intelligence