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This month's answers created by:

[ Ben Okopnik, Kapil Hari Paranjape, Paul Sephton, Rick Moen, Robos, Steve Brown, Thomas Adam ]
...and you, our readers!

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icewm question. maximized windows stick to top of screen can this be changed?

Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]


Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:16:07 -0500

----- Forwarded message from Mitchell Laks <mlaks@post.harvard.edu> -----

Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 15:13:39 -0400
From: Mitchell Laks <mlaks@post.harvard.edu>
To: editor@linuxgazette.net
Subject: icewm question. maximized windows stick to top of screen  can this
be changed?

Hi Ben,

I noticed your articles on icewm and wondered if you know the answer to this question.

I have been using icewm and am very happy with it. One issue for me is that maximizing a window, which i do as an expedient way to "make it bigger" (so that it fills the screen) also seems to make the window 'stick' to the top of the screen.

Thus the screen if maximized is stuck and I am unable to move the screen around with my mouse.

I have to manually hit 'Restore' (Alt-F5) to get out of the stuck mode. Then I can move it again.

This is not the default behavior in a kde (kwin?) session on my machine. I have noticed this type behavior before in gnome. It is my main reason why I have used kde in the past.

Is there any setting that I can set so that I would have 'maximize' but not the 'sticking'?

Is there any preferences I can set to arrange this?

I am willing to recompile icewm from scratch if neccesary. Where is this behavio r set in the code?

Thanks! Mitchell Laks

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *


Our Mailbag


file system related question

ALOK ANAND [alokslayer at gmail.com]


Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:32:53 +0530

please advice how much space needs to be allocated for each of the directory of an opensuse 11.1 operating system if you intend to install it by manually allocating space (i.e by not following the one proposed by yast2) .I'am looking for a detailed explanation of the following directories and the space needed (i have a 160 GB Hard Drive).also give me a general explanation of each of the following directories (example what do they store and the minimum space needed on a server class system)

/
/bin
/boot
/home
/usr
/var
/tmp
/opt
/sbin

An early reply will be greatly appriciated.

Thank you

[ Thread continues here (6 messages/10.30kB) ]


linux command to read .odt ?

J. Bakshi [j.bakshi at unlimitedmail.org]


Tue, 9 Jun 2009 21:11:52 +0530

Dear all,

Like catdoc ( to read .doc) is there any command to read .odt from command line ? did a lot googling but not found any such command like catdoc.

On the other hand I have found that .odt is actually stored in zip format. So I have executed unzip on a .odt and It successfully extracted a lot of files including "content.xml" which actually have the content :-)

Is there any tool which can extract the plain text from .xml ?

Please suggest.

The content.xml looks like

<office:document-content office:version="1.2">
<office:scripts/>
-
<office:font-face-decls>
<style:font-face style:name="Times New Roman" svg:font-family="'Times
New Roman'" style:font-family-generic="roman"
style:font-pitch="variable"/>
<style:font-face style:name="Arial" svg:font-family="Arial"
style:font-family-generic="swiss" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
<style:font-face style:name="Arial1" svg:font-family="Arial"
style:font-family-generic="system" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
</office:font-face-decls>
<office:automatic-styles/>
-
<office:body>
-
<office:text>
-
<text:sequence-decls>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Illustration"/>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Table"/>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Text"/>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Drawing"/>
</text:sequence-decls>
<text:p text:style-name="Standard">This is a test </text:p>
</office:text>
</office:body>
</office:document-content>

Note the content

<text:p text:style-name="Standard">This is a test </text:p>

[ Thread continues here (5 messages/5.31kB) ]


Laptop installation problem

jack [rjmayfield at satx.rr.com]


Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:57:47 -0500

I have a Dell Latitude 400 .... is there any Linux OS that will work on this laptop?

[ Thread continues here (4 messages/2.01kB) ]


[Mailman-Users] Virtual domain not quite working on HTTP (but fine on SMTP)

Kapil Hari Paranjape [kapil at imsc.res.in]


Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:42:43 +0530

[[[ This references a thread that has been moved to the LG Launderette, re: the various LG mailing lists. -- Kat ]]]

Hello,

Disclaimer: Unlike you I have only been running mailman lists for a year and a half so I am unlikely to be of any help!

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009, Rick Moen wrote:

> Greetings, good people.  Problem summary:  After server rebuild, 
> virtual hosts work for SMTP, but Mailman's Web pages are appearing
> for the main host only and not the virtual host.

Are the actual pages being generated in /var/lib/mail/archives/ ?

Is the apache virtual domain configured to use the mailman cgi-bin?

These were the only two questions that occurred to me when I read through your mail.

Regards,

Kapil. --

[ Thread continues here (2 messages/3.48kB) ]


Quoting question

Robos [robos at muon.de]


Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:21:08 +0200

Hi TAG,

I need some help.

I'm writing a script in which I use rsync and some functions. The test script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
set -x
LOGDATEI=/tmp/blabla
 
backup_rsync()
{
/usr/bin/rsync -av $@
}
 
backup_rsync '/tmp/rsync-test1/Dokumente\ und\ Einstellungen' 
/tmp/rsync-test2/

This "Dokumente und Einstellungen" is the windows folder Documents and Settings. I'm stumped now, I've tried loots of combinations but can't seem to find the right combination so that the script works. The spaces in the name "Dokumente und Einstellungen" break the script. How do I have to escape/quote it?

A little help, please?

Regards and thanks in advance

Udo 'robos' Puetz

[ Thread continues here (3 messages/2.43kB) ]


Fixed. Was: Virtual domain not quite working on HTTP (but fine on SMTP)

Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]


Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:48:43 -0700

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:47:57 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
To: Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net>
Cc: mailman-users@python.org
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Virtual domain not quite working on HTTP (but
fine on SMTP) Organization: Dis-

Quoting Mark Sapiro (mark@msapiro.net):

> Yes it is. 'listinfo' is a CGI. You need a
> ScriptAlias /mailman/ "/usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin/"

The Apache conf has:

ScriptAlias /mailman/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/mailman/

I didn't harp on that in either of my posts because I had pointed out that the Mailman Web pages _do work_ for the default host -- and also invited people to have a look at http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo and subpages thereof, if they had any doubts.

-=but=-, the above ScriptAlias was neatly tucked into the stanza for the default host. And:

> (or whatever the correct path is) in your httpd.conf where it will
> apply to the lists.linuxgazette.net host. I.e. it needs to be in the
> VirtualHost block for each host with lists or it needs to be outside
> of the virtual hosts section so it applies globally.

That was it! Fixed, now.

Damn. Bear in mind, I've just had a forced transition from Apache 1.3.x to Apache2 (on account of sudden destruction of the old box), so my excuse is that Debian's Apache2 conffile setup is rather different from what I was used to.

Thank you, Mark. And thank you, good gentleman all.

-- 
Cheers,                      Notice:  The value of your Hofstadter's Constant 
Rick Moen                    (the average amount of time you spend each month 
rick@linuxmafia.com          thinking about Hofstadter's Constant) has just 
McQ!  (4x80)                 been adjusted upwards.

[ Thread continues here (2 messages/2.68kB) ]


Jim, HELP needed, 5-minute solution needed by computer industry

Aviongoo Sales [sales at aviongoo.com]


Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:10:14 -0400

Jim,

I'm looking for a "simple" client server solution. I just want to upload files from my PC to my server under program control.

The client is Windows XP and the server is Linux.

I was recently forced to write a VB application to collect files on the Windows PC. Now, I need to upload the files to my Linux server. I usually use FileZilla, however, there is no easy accepted way to automate the queue building process in Filezilla, therefore manual intervention is still required.

I need to get rid of all manual intervention.

My old PHP applications had a custom server to server file transfer implemented. So, I can use that solution on the server if the client were cooperative. I setup up an Apache server on the PC client but dynamic DNS is no longer allowed by my ISP (as far as I can determine).

So, I started looking for a simple custom program solution. VB.NET was my first choice since I can reuse alot of my recently developed code.

I've looked for days (weeks) now and tried 20 or so pieces of code that claimed to allow client to server file transfer. None have worked so far.

So, the challenge is this - come up with a solution (preferably PHP on Linux and VB.NET on Windows) that a programmer can implement in five minutes that will upload a file from the VB.NET Windows client machine to the PHP Linux server machine. I just want to copy the code and have it work. I can't believe it's that hard!!!!

If you get something to work and document it well, I've got to believe millions of folks will be viewing your result. The various search terms I use in Google to try to discover a solution indicate millions are looking!

Thanks, Bill

[ Thread continues here (29 messages/75.42kB) ]



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Published in Issue 164 of Linux Gazette, July 2009

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