Island sizes...

Isle of Man is 53km (33 miles) long, 20km (13 miles) wide, land area 572 sq km (227 sq miles)

Great Barrier Island is 40km (25 miles) long, 16km (10 miles) wide, land area 285 sq kilometres (110 sq miles)

Chatham Island 61 km (38 miles) long, 40 km (25 miles) wide, 963 square km (372 sq miles)

Stewart Island is 70 km long (45 miles) long, 40 km (25 miles) wide, land area 1,746 square km (674 sq miles)

Jersey is 16km (10 miles) across, 8 km (5 miles) from north to south and has an area of 115 square km (44 sq miles)

(Don't quote me on the Chathams length and width - they're from the 1911 encyclopedia which is full of inaccuracies.)

USB Mouse with 2.6 Kernel

To get my USB mouse working with the 2.6 kernel (in Debian Sarge with 2.6.7)
I had to add these modules to /etc/modules:

usbhid
uhci_hcd
mousedev

I didn't need usbcore because it loaded itself.

I found that these also work for the 2.4.27 kernel, and I don't need the usbmouse module.

Windows Journal Viewer returns the alert 'The feature you are trying to use is...unavailable' when you start Acrobat (6.0 on Windows 2000 or XP) - Sup

Windows Journal Viewer returns the alert 'The feature you are trying to use is...unavailable' when you start Acrobat (6.0 on Windows 2000 or XP) - Support Knowledgebase

Suckful little thing!!!

Goes into a "I will beat on you until I am installed on your hard disk - at any cost!" loop...

Only way to break out is with Task Manager...

Microsoft Windows Journal Viewer 1.5

"This accessory enables users who do not have a computer running Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition to view files that were created in Microsoft® Windows® Journal on a Tablet PC."

Oh yeah, looks damn useful to ME... NOT!

PS2 Mouse in X with 2.6 Kernel

When you upgrade to a 2.6 kernel from 2.4 you may find that X won't start.

XFree86 Version 4.3.0.1 (Debian 4.3.0.dfsg.1-4 20040529113443 root@cyberhq.internal.cyberhqz.com)

Release Date: 15 August 2003

X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 6.6

Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.6-rc3-bk9 i686 [ELF]

Build Date: 29 May 2004

        Before reporting problems, check http://www.XFree86.Org/

        to make sure that you have the latest version.

Module Loader present

OS Kernel: Linux version 2.6.7-1-386 (dilinger@toaster.hq.voxel.net) (gcc version 3.3.4 (Debian 1:3.3.4-2)) #1 Thu Jul 8 05:08:04 EDT 2004

Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,

         (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,

         (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.

(==) Log file: "/var/log/XFree86.0.log", Time: Sat Aug 28 14:10:06 2004

(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/XF86Config-4"

(EE) xf86OpenSerial: Cannot open device /dev/psaux

        No such device.

(EE) Implicit Core Pointer: cannot open input device

(EE) PreInit failed for input device "Implicit Core Pointer"

No core pointer



Fatal server error:

failed to initialize core devices



When reporting a problem related to a server crash, please send

the full server output, not just the last messages.

This can be found in the log file "/var/log/XFree86.0.log".

Please report problems to submit@bugs.debian.org.



XIO:  fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"

      after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

At the bottom of the /var/log/XFree86.0.log log file you will find:

(**) Option "Protocol" "PS/2"

(**) Implicit Core Pointer: Protocol: "PS/2"

(**) Option "CorePointer"

(**) Implicit Core Pointer: Core Pointer

(**) Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"

(EE) xf86OpenSerial: Cannot open device /dev/psaux

        No such device.

(EE) Implicit Core Pointer: cannot open input device

(EE) PreInit failed for input device "Implicit Core Pointer"

(II) UnloadModule: "mouse"

(II) Keyboard "Implicit Core Keyboard" handled by legacy driver

(WW) No core pointer registered

No core pointer



Fatal server error:

failed to initialize core devices



When reporting a problem related to a server crash, please send

the full server output, not just the last messages.

This can be found in the log file "/var/log/XFree86.0.log".

Please report problems to submit@bugs.debian.org.

If you try catting the device:

cat /dev/psaux

cat: /dev/psaux: No such device

Or:

cat /dev/input/mouse0

cat: /dev/input/mouse0: No such device

If you load these two modules it will fix it:

modprobe mousedev 

modprobe psmouse

This can be made permanent by adding these two lines to the bottom of /etc/modules

mousedev

psmouse

This page helped me: http://www.hup.hu/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2136
It does have superstition and crap in it, like talking about the device being changed from /dev/psaux to /dev/input/mouse0 but it told me the right modules to load.

Section "Pointer"

   Protocol        "PS/2"

   Device          "/dev/psaux"

   BaudRate        1200

   Emulate3Timeout 50

   Emulate3Buttons

EndSection

You can change this section if you like:

# diff /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.old /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

57c57

<    Device          "/dev/psaux"

---

>    Device          "/dev/input/mouse0"

But I found I didn't need to - once I'd loaded the two modules both devices worked again.

Listing packages with long names in Debian...

(export COLUMNS=256; dpkg --list) | awk '/kernel-/{print $2}'

Time for a general statement...

I'd like to refine this, but the gist of it is that more often than not if you're hunting for a tool on the net to do something in Windows... the quality of a freeware product is better than that of a shareware one... where possible I don't like to have any shareware on my machine at all.

Perhaps part of the reason is that the motivation for freeware is to make the best possible product, while the motivation for shareware is to make money. If they can do it quick and dirty and pump it out and get dosh for it from the minimum investment - then that's the most suited to their needs.

I just clicked about something...

When in your mail logs it says:


2004-04-16 07:41:05 recipients from [218.84.71.28] refused (failed to find host name from IP address)


I had always thought that it meant that it had failed because it couldn't resolve the reverse name of the IP... and I thought "that's not RFC compliant - so why is it enforcing it?"

Looking at the logs just now, I realised that it merely means that it failed (for some other reason), and when it tried to log the reverse name it couldn't resolve it... so it wrote "failed to find hostname..." where it would have normally logged the hostname... perhaps it should just put "could not resolve" or something which doesn't have the word "failed" in it...

It's frustrating sometimes that Debian (and much of Linux!) seems to be set up as a workstation operating system running X - apps like hnb come configured to launch X apps - when I want to use it tucked away on my server... tools like vim require gpm - when I'm hundreds of miles away from the mouse port, ImageMagick requires most of an X environment and epinfo requires digital camera stuff, when both of these tools are good to have for in-situ image work on my webserver...

I've just tried out Flonix build41

Hmmm - it has a fancy media centre app which feels like a full-screen DOS thing - good to hardwire as an interface for idiots - like in a public access terminal, but over-all I wasn't impressed with Flonix at ALL :o(

My (negative) comments are:

• The first thing I noticed was that it didn't give me a boot menu or any boot-option help like DamnSmallLinux or Knoppix do.


• Next it didn't get my video mode right and I was in 256 (or 16???) colours and it looked HORRIBLE!


• Next thing was that the colour palette wasn't fixed, and when you moused over different windows things on the screen would all change colour - YUCK!


• Next when I brought up a shell the default colours are gross.


• THEN, the PS1 prompt has a HASH!!! you NEVER give a hash prompt to a non-root user - that means "you're root, so be careful!" - This says to me that Florent is either ignorant of or doesn't care about *nix standards.


• The next thing is it uses the username damnsmall - you should never use a username that has 9 or more characters - always use 8 or less - it breaks things - you do an ls -l and the columns are pushed out of alignment - i.e. you try and write a script that cuts out the columns you want and does something with them - it will break on this.


• damnsmall is messy in that it uses so much knoppix, flonix is even worse, it has Debian, Knoppix and DamnSmallLinux leftovers all over it - not tidied up.


• I don't know if it was meant to - I'll need to go back and look if I can be bothered with it - it didn't detect or set up any network.


• When I crashed out of X I couldn't re-start it with startx. It may have taken looking around and reconfiguration to restart it, but I didn't try changing the runlevel down and back up again - that may have done the trick.

As a final whinge, the website isn't all that easy to get around - like how to find the download link...

All in all, it looks like a rough hack to serve a purpose, good on him for putting it online for people to use, I hope it's that he's a newbie, not a rough oldbie... but at the end of the day it's not in the same league as Knoppix or DamnSmallLinux...

Turning the "My Documents" icon on and off...

I feel terrible about this, but I've been reduced to being a L00z3d0z3 luser again... new workplace with "thou shalt have thy productivity hobbled by using this inferior gunk on our hardware" - i.e. I have to run Win2K, can't use Linux... geh!

I deleted the "My Documents" icon from the desktop and wanted to put it back a week later for some reason...

I wrote this inf file:


;
; This turns on and off your "My Documents" folder on the desktop...
; Use to restore a deleted "My Documents" icon in Windows 2000
;

[version]
signature="$WINDOWS NT$"

[DefaultInstall]
DelReg=ClearOut
AddReg=MyDocsOn
;AddReg=MyDocsOff

[MyDocsOn]
HKCU,%MD_SWITCH_PATH%,"Attributes",65537,74,01,40,f0

[MyDocsOff]
HKCU,%MD_SWITCH_PATH%,"Attributes",65537,74,01,50,f0

[ClearOut]
HKCU,%MD_SWITCH_PATH%,"Attributes"

[Strings]
MD_SWITCH_PATH="Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\{450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103}\ShellFolder"


It says "Installation Failed" when I run it, (not sure what it's missing), but it does actually work :o)