John dingo at coco2.arach.net.au
Wed Nov 9 06:35:40 CST 2005


Cefiar wrote:

> I've found that kmail tends to handle mailboxes of significantly larger sizes 
> than Thunderbird. I'm running plain Ubuntu and I use Kmail over Evolution 
> because I find it easier to use for a number of things.

I don't know about the others, but kmail used maildir format: one 
message per file, unless told otherwise.

However, I control most of the servers I use and they provide imap services.
> 
> That said, if it's not on the menu, the user can't use it!
> 
> 
>>5.
>>I was able to use system-settings to configure wireless, but wireless
>>didn't come up at first because of this line in /etc/network/interfaces:
>>iface eth0 inet
> 
> 
> That's definitely incomplete, and it could be related to the reboot you had 
> during the install process when you were playing with iwlist. If that file 
> was being installed and never finished being written to, it would definitely 
> explain why it was incomplete.
> 

In an earlier msg I said I deferred network configuration as I wasn't on 
the LAN, and suspected wirelesss might be problematic.

I think it more likely a template was available, but insufficient fields 
filled in.

> 
> 
>>10. This is a suggestion for improvement.
>>The Bos (not me) wants the Macs at school, when they're moved around the
>>premises to automatically switch airports (access points). I can see
>>this is problematic if different servers assign IP addresses as they
>>move, but in our case the airports do not run DHCP servers, they are
>>invisible to the IP transmission layers and it should work.
>>
>>I've not discovered how to do it on OS X (closing an opening the lid
>>doesn't count), but if it can be done, then I think Ubuntu Linux should
>>do it.
> 
> 
> Does the network of airports have the same ESSID, or are they all different?

The are all different.

> 
> If they're all the same, and you've connected to the Airport by configuring 
> Unbutu to use the ESSID (not the AP's MAC address), then this should work. 
> Unfortunately, the "when" of roaming from one AP to another is not a well 
> defined process, and no real standards exist (YET!) to handle Roaming when 
> not in distress (eg: when there is no signal between you and the target AP, 
> and you roam, you are "roaming in distress"). And by standards, I'm referring 
> to IEEE 802.11* standards, not just what various vendors do.
> 
> If they all have different ESSID's, then you need an app to do the choosing 
> for you. But this also will only happen in distress. It may be worthwise that 
> said app should allow you to set a signal level to consider the "floor" 
> level, which it should consider roaming. You'd also want a time that the 
> signal needs to stay below this level to avoid false trips.

If there's no change to IP address, then the change should be able to 
made at any time.

The Mac does change when you open the lid, but closing the lid can be 
bad: OS X basically shuts down, there's no network activity and so file 
transfers and other TCP sessions can be interrupted and broken.



> 
> However, connecting to just any-old network in the area is a bad idea. You 

We aecure our networks (may be not brilliantly well, but anyone who has 
the WEP we assume is authorised). That should prevent other folk from 
connecting to our networks, and if the solution prefers secure networks 
(as it should, and OS X does) we don't have a problem. I do know one of 
the staff gets to check email at home through someone else's unsecured 
wireless:-)

> really want to set a preferential list of networks (and have an easy way to 
> add more when they're detected) to connect to when they're available. Yes, 
> this sounds suspiciously like Microsoft's Wilress ZeroConfig interface, and 

I think Zeroconf belongs to Apple. The current implementation's called 
Bonjour.




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