Oh no! More boring computer problems! Oh no!

maybe i should take up some kind of outdoor pursuit instead, like tennis

Sorry, I can't help you on that one.

porn

Good point.

A friend of mine kept a roll of "ASCII"-art porn in his desk drawer for thirty years. It was a telex print test file that a telex engineer had given him just after he'd started, when he was a teenager.

(it wasn't actually ASCII art, because Telexes - ones on the British telex system, anyway - weren't ASCII; they used 5-bit Baudot code)

Running gui apps remotely (through x11, citrix or whatever) has the potential to reduce our software licencing costs significantly. We only need 1 licence of loads of infrequently used but important apps to support all the users who need to use them. Plus we can concentrate all of the computing power in one place, office desktops are over specced for the use they are put to. We reckon we can service our productivity needs with two dual xeon servers, we need more power we upgrade or add to the servers, not to the desks.

There are an awful lot of graphical programs - mostly Windows ones - that I have to control remotely; to avoid going through to the server room, or to avoid a 50-mile drive. I wish there was a more flexible way to control remote applications on Windows, rather than using one of those entire-desktop mechanisms.

i'll ask it on that machints site tomorrow, i had thought this mounting business would be easy, i have to admit.

perhaps, it would be better if i went to bed

(many xposts)

It's the Windows filesharing protocol.

EXCEPT IF YOU USE STUPID APPS

X11 is a bitch

thing is, if i mount my mp3 player, like this

diskutil mount /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/JUKEBOX

it works fine, but the same syntax for the lacie, doesnt

diskutil mount //WORKGROUP;music@LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/WORKGROUP;LACIE

diskutil mount //WORKGROUP;music@LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/MUSIC

its all this workgroup business, that seems to be confusing things, well, confusing me

I take it that the hostname is "LACIE", the workgroup/domain is "WORKGROUP" and the username is "music". In that case, if we were talking the Linux version of mount, the command would be:

mount -t smbfs -o "username=WORKGROUP/music" //LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/MUSIC

i try this

$ mount -t smbfs //LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/MUSIC

it asks me for a password, which i give, then it gives me

mount_smbfs: mount error: /Volumes/MUSIC: syserr = Resource busy

Try putting -o "username=[...]" after the -t smbfs option.

Does 'man mount' have a section for smb/cifs-specific options? Is there a separate 'smbmount' command with its own manual page?

i have to make the directory first, it seems. is this really right?

so, it goes

mkdir /Volumes/MUSIC

mount -t smbfs //LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/MUSIC

and it mounts:)

Yes. You only have to do it once, of course.

If you put files in the directory when the remote disk isn't mounted, they will be inaccessible when it is.

though, how come, i didnt need to do this for the archos mp3 player?

and, why did i have to use diskutil mount for the archos, and just plain ol' mount for the lacie?

I don't know why one needs diskutil, but it's probably because of the access permissions on the device node (the "/dev/disk1s1" file)

I don't know why one needs diskutil, but it's probably because of the access permissions on the device node (the "/dev/disk1s1" file)

BECUZ OS X DOESN'T USE FSTAB

I'm using Sarah's laptop to post this as I seem to have a pretty sever problem with mine. When I boot up, the internet works for a couple of minutes at a snail's pace before crunching to a halt. The wireless connection seems fine; Sarah's PC works okay, and even mine says the connection is excellent. So why are AIM, firefox, MSN and IE all having the same problem? Literally after a minute or two, they just don't connect any more.

The troubleshooting sections are useless because, as far as I know, no settings or whatever have been changed. My only possible thought is hat I knocked the (closed) laptop off the table onto the carpet a couple of days ago, though it *has* worked fine since then.

So what could be wrong with these browsers, crawling for a very short while before dying? Help desperately sought!

Hmm - I have accessed a neighbour's unsecured wireless network and IT WORKS. That's interesting. I am going to try going back to mine...

What a kind neighbour. To be honest, your problem sounds like mine, but what's puzzling is that your computer works. What model is the wireless router and what's the ISP? That's my problem (one of them; it's not clear which).

Oh god, I don't know the wireless router model - it's in the bedroom and Sarah is asleep. However, as you can tell this (i.e. her) PC works just fine, so I'm not sure it can be the router's or the ISP's fault!

I also notice Sarah's PC, while working okay, isn't exactly fast tonight. Could there be any connection?

The full set of options used by an invocation of mount is determined by
first extracting the options for the file system from the fstab table,
then applying any options specified by the -o argument, and finally
applying a -r or -w option, when present.

oh! i was just coming to ask about this! so, instead of using fstab to automount, how should i do it?

sudo bash.

Never mind Deano: I'll bear that in mind if I have any X.25 issues in future. In the mid '90s weren't you firmly rooted in the mid '80s?

Down in London soon, by any chance?