The Mission

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ecomoney
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Joined: Fri 25 Nov 2005, 07:00
Location: Lincolnshire, England
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#76 Post by ecomoney »

Here goes!

Ive recently moved town from Scunthorpe to Scarborough.. Its hard to explain the difference...its so big! Great place to weather the recession, and to test Puppy Linux on some more open minded people!

The reason I havnt posted for a while is simply because Ive been behaving, for the most part, like a crazy tourist! Life has improved for me *considerably* :D I have been keeping up with Puppy related work, but Ive just not told you about it... :shock:

Things at the Mission have changed considerably. The project manager has got made redundant, which has really thrown a spanner in the works. Whats also thrown a big spanner in the works is the Billion router there, which it turns out was an old one off a shelf from when the Mission cybercafe was managed by a company called Servo. I discovered last week that it seems to be kicking computers off the network arbitrarily because they fail some kind of check to see if antivirus software is installed...I cant tell exactly. Weve had huge problems with the system disconnecting randomly and this appears now to be the culprit. I will be swapping it out tommorow with a Netgear DGM2000 Adsl modem. Ive basically been given 2 months to complete the features already identified after a somewhat gloomy meeting with the new management. :cry:

Ive started a few other puppy related projects too which I will let you know about over the next few days. Keep posted! :roll:

P.S. Sorry about my ecomoney.eu hosting site being down (and my email/website). I need to pay Servage my hosting fees (cut off without notice again!!!).
Puppy Linux's [url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=296352#296352]Mission[/url]

Sorry, my server is down atm!

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mikeb
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#77 Post by mikeb »

Ive recently moved town from Scunthorpe to Scarborough.. Its hard to explain the difference...its so big!
The only thing they have in common is the first 2 letters. :D

mike

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ecomoney
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#78 Post by ecomoney »

LOL!!! I will remember that on!

Saying that....somethings missing from Scunthorpe now ;-)
Puppy Linux's [url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=296352#296352]Mission[/url]

Sorry, my server is down atm!

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ecomoney
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#79 Post by ecomoney »

Theres been quite a shake up at the mission. Weve had what I thought was problems with the wiring, it turns out that the modem/router we were using is some kind of "security router", and was disconnecting certain computers from the network for not having anti-virus installed...we dont need antivirus!!!

Anyway, the staff there are getting towards the end of their tether with the problems. As usual, when people dont understand something, they make up superstitions about them (but let not get into a theological debate). The staff at the centre believe thet the problems are due to the Linux system, and the second-user equipment we have been forced to use for budgetary constraints. The problems (I know) are down to the wiring and the router. There is a specialist networking company coming in on wednesday to check over the network with cable testers, and weve now installed a new router. For the moment Ive had to disable the billing system as the staff have such low confidence in the system they believe that its not fair to charge the seafarers a pound an hour to use it. Obviously this state of affairs cannot go on for long as the centre has no way of covering its costs. They have already had to lay off the centre manager (the only one that knew how to resolve a lot of the systems "doesnt-just work quirks" like the xorgwizard and the internet connection wizard).

Ive been given a month to resolve the following issues.

- Ethernet not connecting at startup (currently effects 2 of the computers needing the ethernet setup wizard needs to be run on each startup).

- Webcams needing a reboot to work when they are plugged in (hotplug)

- An easy way to change the language/keyboard layout of the system

- A way to remove all private data without a full reboot (basically to delete what is cached in memory, the stuff that would be written to a new pup_save file on shutdown).

- Flash crashing the browser (a pox on Adobe!)

-Getting facebook chat to work (basically install the latest firefox/seamonkey 2.x)

Got my work cut out for me. Any suggestions about where to start gratefully appreciated.
Puppy Linux's [url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=296352#296352]Mission[/url]

Sorry, my server is down atm!

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mikeb
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#80 Post by mikeb »

Try making multiuser friendly :D ..now there's a challenge.
Don't like the sound of the antiviral router as I may come across that one.

Well some of these issues would be puppy version dependant....eg if puppy 4 then udev rule needed for webcams or hotplug for older. Same for latest firefox...needed puppy 4.

Flash...combination of healthy gtk2, flash 10...but there seems to be a video driver/X issue still unresolved...ttuuxxx seems to have a fairly stable setup...I get random crashes on heavy flash sites but otherwise ok...flashblock helps.
Or your suggestion of using wine...opera portable works particularily well.

basically to delete what is cached in memory...are you talking of browser cache ? (set to 0 if so)..latest firefoxes have a clearout option for privacy. Or have a default mozilla profile which gets reinstalled each boot.

An easy way to change the language/keyboard layout of the system...its a line in xorg.conf but X would need rebooting for it to take effect.
edit...locales are set in /etc/profile and most likely would need a reboot or the variable set per application launch

Hope some clues in there

mike

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mikeb
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#81 Post by mikeb »

Ethernet...sounds like it needs a delay for the net card to settle the run the autoconnect (its in right click in connect icon so could be run from a mini script in startup which includes a delay or checks the card is ready

mike

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greengeek
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#82 Post by greengeek »

ecomoney... very old post I know...but did you ever sort out the problems with the routers kicking some machines off the net?

Is it possible that this was an issue with dhcpcd not running within Puppy the way the router was expecting?

I have problems with some versions of puppy (old ones and new ones alike) not being acceptable to the router intermittently, and the router refuses to issue a dhcp lease. Sometimes loading a newer dhcpcd fixes the issues.

4.3.1 is the most reliable I have found. Also there is a lot of recognition recently that Puppy hasn't treated it's internal "hostname" as uniquely as routers expect that it should, and this has a bearing on how some routers handle each machine. Could this have a bearing on some of the cafe probs you saw?

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