Oxford Geek Nights #13 Dorkbot presentation

I presented Dorkbot Oxford idea at Oxford Geek Night last Wednesday. J-P, the organiser of OGN has put up the slides from and a video of my presentation. I've also put up a fledgling web site at http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotoxford

Proposal document for Transition ICT partnership on-line

I've published the document I wrote on Google Docs for the proposal that led to us starting Transition ICT

You can view the partnership proposal document here

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Going to be at the Big Green in the Be the Media and Bristol Wireless cybertent

The Bristol Wireles cybercafé will be open from 9AM until 9PM daily (power permitting) with a one hour free session for kids first thing in the morning. We also hope to be showing some independent media films on some evenings. Please visit the Be the Media Cybertent during the Gathering for up-to-date details on cybercafé opening times and film showings.

Visit this page for more info including the programme of workshops.

Hacking a Indymedia Bristol Film Night

I'm going to start to blog frequently now, having had this blog for quite some time. My intention is to move this to my own hosting as soon as I can.

Last night was great, did a talk with Sy from Indy Bristol at the Cube Microplex on the subject of hacktivism. I showed the film En Busca de Hackers, which is beginning to look slightly hackneyed to my eyes though I think it's still a good example and introduction to the topic. It's notable that the story lines are slightly open-ended with no clear conclusion.

The talks went really well and it seems that Sy's academic top down talk joined up perfectly with my bottom up approach.

Would like to do more of this and perhaps organise a weekend of hacking....

Using xhost with Ubuntu/Kubuntu Linux running gdm or kdm

I was just chatting to a work colleague about the ease and wonders of X11 as part of extolling the virtues of the Linux Terminal Server Project, when I said I'd show him how it works.

So I tried to do 'xhost +' on his machine and then ran xeyes from my machine giving his machine's IP address in the -display option, but it didn't work! Trawling the web, I found that Ubuntu had tightened things up:

http://davesource.com/Solutions/20070912.Ubuntu-xhost.html

This solution works for gdm users, but my colleague and I both run kdm (kde4) to control acces to X. So here's the expanded instructions:

1. Edit /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc:
   Remove (or comment out) the "-nolisten tcp"
2. Edit /etc/X11/kde4/kdm/kdmrc:
   Find the line 'ServerArgsLocal = -br -nolisten tcp and comment out the '-nolisten tcp' bit.
3. Log out of X (GNOME or KDE) and log back in again (this should restart the kdm or gdm process).

Having done that it should work thus:

My machine's IP is 192.168.0.10 and my colleagues is 192.168.0.20. On my colleague's machine, having done the above he opens a command line and issues:

% xhost +

On my machine, I open a command line and issue:

% xeyes -display 192.168.0.20:0.0

And xeyes appears on his screen!

Running a network batch file under Windows XP without the publisher could not be verified error appearing.

At my work for People & Planet, I was setting up a new PC running Windows XP (shock, horror).

One of things that the new machine has to do is to run a DOS batch file over the network to set a few things up when a user logs in. However Windows XP displays a warning dialogue box telling you The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software?.

I searched around the net and found some information about the page at http://windowsxp.mvps.org/networkfile.htm and had to adapt the instructions a tad. Here's what I needed to do to make the batch file run without the annoying warning:

1. Click Start, Run and type INETCPL.CPL
2. Click the Security tab.
3. Select Local intranet and click Sites.
4. Click Advanced.
5. In Add this website to the zone: enter \\mysmbservername\ and click Add.
6. Make sure Require server verification... is unchecked.
7. Click Close, then OK, then OK to close the Internet Properties dialogue.

Obviously you need to replace \\mysmbservername above with the name of the Samba (Windows networking, CIFS) share name that your script is running from. So for example if your script is \\scripts\startup\startup.bat then enter \\scripts above.

Disabling autonumbering in OpenOffice.org Writer

Autonumbering can be useful, but it can also be annoying. Personally I know what I want to do and I don't need some smart-arse word processor telling me otherwise.

OpenOffice is really cool, but this particular feature was driving my girlfriend to derision and she was threatening to dump her Ubuntu Linux laptop in favour of a return to Windows: the situation was serious!

It's not obvious how to to disable this feature; in fact, it's down-right annoyingly difficult to find out where it is. Anyway I did by searching around the net and here's how you do it:

1. Tools -> Auto Correct
2. Options tab
3. Uncheck the option Apply numbering - symbol: *
4. Click OK

That's it, obviously re-check that option to turn it back on.

Results of installing Flash Media Server 3.5 on Debian Etch Linux

I've been trying to install Flash Media Server 3.5 on Debian Etch.

It works with some messing about.

Firstly you can download the software from Adobe's web site and then have it ready to install on your server, but you must first install some libraries, do the following:

aptitude update && aptitude install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 iceweasel

Yes install iceweasel! You'll see why in a sec. Now download the software and get it onto your server and follow the instructions to install it (by reading the file Install.htm with lynx).

Now on first start-up you should spot the error about the NSPR library:

NPTL 2.3.6
Starting Adobe Flash Media Server (please check /var/log/messages)
Error: Flash Media Server needs the NSPR library installed.

Now if you run the command 'ldd /opt/adobe/fms/fmsmaster' you'll get this:

linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7f83000)
libnspr4.so => not found
libplc4.so => not found
libplds4.so => not found
libasneu.so.1 => not found
librt.so.1 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt.so.1 (0xb7f43000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7f3f000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb7e59000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb7e34000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb7e29000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7cf8000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f9f000)

We need to sort out those missing libraries, all except libasneu. So do this:

ln -s /usr/lib/iceweasel/libnspr4.so /usr/lib/
ln -s /usr/lib/iceweasel/libplc4.so /usr/lib/
ln -s /usr/lib/iceweasel/libplds4.so /usr/lib/
ln -s /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.7 /usr/lib/libssl.so.4 # (I'm not sure that that is necessary, so try without)

Now run the ldd command and you should get:
server:/opt/adobe/fms# ldd fmsmaster
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7f51000)
libnspr4.so => /usr/lib/libnspr4.so (0xb7f20000)
libplc4.so => /usr/lib/libplc4.so (0xb7f1a000)
libplds4.so => /usr/lib/libplds4.so (0xb7f17000)
libasneu.so.1 => not found
librt.so.1 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt.so.1 (0xb7f0e000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7f0a000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb7e25000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb7dff000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb7df4000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7cc3000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f6d000)

Now try to start the server again. You can do this with the command:
/opt/adobe/fms/fmsmgr server fms start

The admin server can be started with:
/opt/adobe/fms/fmsmgr adminserver start

Finally you need to run the console, I'll put the instructions up for this soon.