stick online

Three Annoyances In Fedora 12

2010-04-19T03:10:00.004+02:00

First, empathy, the new default chat client, does video. But to make it work seamlessly with your friends who use GoogleTalk on Windows, you'll need all the gstreamer plugins. Here's how to get them:

sudo yum install gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer-plugins-* -x *devel -x *docs

Second, Google Earth is a pretty sweet program. But to make it run on 64-bit linux, you need some compatibility stuff added in. Here's how to get it working, courtesy of bigjim-network - the command he used on Fedora 11 is modified here for Fedora 12:

sudo yum install glibc.i686 libxml2.i686 freetype.i686 libXrender.i686 libXrandr.i686 mesa-libGL.i686 libcanberra-gtk2.i686 bug-buddy.i686 PackageKit-gtk-module.i686

If you have an nVidia card, you'll want to do the following as well:

sudo yum install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686

And for an ATI card, use this (untested by me):

sudo yum install xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs.i686

Update 26 May 2010: I just tried to install it on Fedora 13, and I got the error below:

./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: ./libminizip.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied

To fix it, run this command:

sudo chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /opt/google-earth/*.so

Third, if you've got the less awesome startup screen - the plain black screen with a blue bar turning white at the bottom - kernel modesetting will allow you to have the full plymouth graphical boot. Add the proper "vga=XYZ" to the end of your kernel line(s) in /etc/grub.conf. The mode for MacBooks and other screens at 1280x800 resolution is "vga=865".

Small things, but perhaps important ones. If you're not a linux user and you think this post was dumb, here's a picture from the interwebs.

Anything is possible when your dead badgers run linux.

RealCrypt == TrueCrypt in Fedora

2010-01-28T19:29:00.003+01:00

So, I didn't know this, and I've been installing TrueCrypt from source every time I update my system, but via a comment on this guide page I found out that RealCrypt is a rebranded version of TrueCrypt that's available in the RPMFusion repository. Hello, encrypted files (with no compiling required).

Just thought I'd share the knowledge since it's Data Privacy Day.

Fedora 11 is BACK!

2009-07-15T03:09:00.004+02:00

I discovered yesterday after deciding to check in on the state of Fedora 11 on aluminum MacBooks that they have the trackpad working now! And it doesn't even require any editing of fdi policy files, it Just Works(TM). You may recall my dismay at Fedora 11's poor showing when I first installed it, but with the touchpad working it was too good to resist. So I promptly pulled out my Fedora 11 netinstall CD and went to work. It's nice to be able to use my printer again and feel more secure with full-disk encryption. The reason I made the trip over to Derek Hildreth's excellent guide was that I saw an article on Phoronix which, while proving Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11 neck-and-neck in performance, extolled the virtures of Fedora 11's etx4 filesystem and newer kernel. So I'm back with Fedora 11 on my MacBook, and while Ubuntu was nice, I've been using Fedora since Fedora Core 4 and it just feels like home.

Fedora 11 Impressions

2009-06-12T19:13:00.003+02:00

So far, after a day of use, I'm completely unimpressed. Fedora 11 fails to even recognize the trackpad on my MacBook; while in Fedora 10 I couldn't enable multi-touch options, at least the trackpad worked! Also, the default browser is Firefox 3.5.4b, which is still beta - and I get that this is Fedora, so it's supposed to be the bleeding edge and all - but seriously, Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is not ready to be a default browser. GMail doesn't even load correctly!

Here's what works, that didn't in Fedora 10:

GUI, out of the box. It isn't perfect, but it works. With RPMFusion enabled, you can install the nVidia drivers to make it work perfectly - see Derek Hildreth's guide for details.
Hmmm, that's really about it.

Here's what doesn't work:

The trackpad. At all.
Sound. And I can't seem to fix it the way I did in Fedora 10.

Overall, I'm not impressed, and I'm tired of working without the full benefit of the trackpad - which in Mac OS X is probably the most awesome input device ever created, and should work just the same in Fedora, but doesn't. Look out - I am downloading Ubuntu 9.04 right now, so there may be some posts detailing my experiences over the next couple of weeks!

Fedora 11 Released!!!

2009-06-09T19:40:00.001+02:00

Get to the download page! Do it now!

What Did You Do First With Linux?

2009-04-27T22:54:00.002+02:00

Via Slashdot, I stumbled upon several articles answering that question. So here's my answer.

I started using Linux in mid-2003. I had received $2000 to build a computer for Christmas 2002 (and nothing else, either for Christmas or my birthday, that year) as I was at the point in high school where I really needed one and interested in learning how to put my own together. Knowing that I could spend an extra $100 on slightly better hardware if I didn't pay for Windows 2000, I obtained a copy from a friend... yes, illegally. Convinced over a six-month period that Windows 2000 was too much work, and that it was probably a good idea to go along with existing copyright law whether I thought it was good or not, I started to seek alternatives. A classmate gave me a copy of Slackware, but text-based installation was a little intimidating. Finally, a friend who was a Linux administrator at the local community college gave me SuSE 8.1... and it was great! Now, by great I mean it worked, and I embarked on the long quest to figure out how to do all the things I was using Windows for. I had already been using Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice, so that was easy enough, but what about the games??? No dice. Wine? Needs 3D acceleration. That means getting graphics card drivers... and I had a Radeon. Not an auspicious start, as those of you with ATI cards probably know, but after months of fiddling with it and getting deep into the command line, my interest shifted. The rest is history. When Novell bought SuSE, I bought Fedora 4 Unleashed and switched distros. I've used SuSE 8.1, 8.2, and 9.0; Slackware 11.0, and Fedora 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10. Can't wait for 11!

What did you do first with Linux?

How To Configure Fedora 10

2009-01-22T15:53:00.024+01:00

[EDIT 29 Jan 2009:] I just figured out something very important. Upon completion of the "Firefly" series on Hulu.com, I pop in my DVD of Serenity, and... nothing. VLC won't open it, neither will xine, nothing. Having used libdvdcss in the past, I immediately go to yum and try to install it, but it isn't there. Afer searching teh blagoweb for several minutes, I finally find, in a comment on this post, that the repo at rpm.livna.org is still up to serve one package that RPMFusion refuses to carry. Guess what that package was? The first long command in this guide now installs the livna repository and libdvdcss.[/EDIT]

After several months of working fine, one of Fedora 10's updates last week killed my MacBook's networking capability. I tried everything I could think of, but to no avail, so last night I reinstalled Fedora 10, and I realized that I do a lot of post-install configuration work that I don't have saved on this blog, so here's How I Configure Fedora 10.

PRE-INSTALL (MacBook):
Partition your drive using Boot Camp... you really only need to use it to shrink the Mac OS X hfs+ partition. The rest of the partitioning doesn't matter.
Install rEFIt.
Install the StartupSound.prefPane in Mac OS X and mute the startup noise... unless you really love annoying everyone around you every time you turn on your computer.

INSTALL:
During my install, which I generally do from the Fedora 10 netinstall CD (which I get via bittorrent), I usually make a / partition (about 15GB, ext3), a swap partition (2 or 3GB, swap), and a /home partition (whatever is left, ext3). The EFI boot system on the MacBook requires a /boot partition (100MB, ext3). I always set a hostname for the computer, and for package selection, I uncheck everything except the "Base," "Java," and "X Window System" groups. If you use GNOME, KDE, XFCE, or whatever other window manager aside from FVWM, then you should check the appropriate box at that point and remove "fvwm" from the long command listed next.

POST-INSTALL COMMAND LINE:
You can do a lot with one command. This command removes PackageKit, the Totem line of media players, and the Presto yum plugin, adds the Adobe, Google, Livna, FedoraJunkies, and RPMFusion software repositories, and adds in all the software I use on a regular basis. It also fixes the Google favicon mismatch in Firefox. The last thing that happens is sensors-detect, which helps the kernel to know what hardware sensors are available on your computer. You'll have to manually enter "yes" to each of it's questions.

64-bit, including MacBook: yum -y install yum-fastestmirror && yum -y remove *packagekit* *PackageKit* *totem* yum-presto && rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm && rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm && wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub && rpm --import linux_signing_key.pub && cd /etc/yum.repos.d/ && wget http://nstickney.googlepages.com/google.repo http://nstickney.googlepages.com/google64.repo http://nstickney.googlepages.com/fedorajunkies.repo && cd && yum -y update && yum -y install aterm AdobeReader_enu boinc-client boinc-manager conky firefox fvwm gcc gdm gimp gnome-mount-nautilus-properties gnomesword gnupg google-desktop-linux gparted grip gvim imlib2 imlib2-devel libdvdcss libogg mozilla-vlc mpc mpd numlockx padevchooser paman paprefs pavucontrol pavumeter picasa pidgin pidgin-libnotify pidgin-otr sonata thunderbird thunderbird-lightning transmission scrot vlc yumex && yum -y install *fonts* nautilus* pulseaudio* --exclude=*debug --exclude=*devel && cd /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ && wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz && tar -xvzf libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz && cd /usr/lib64/firefox-*/searchplugins/ && rm -rf google.xml && wget http://www.mozillalinks.org/download/google.xml && cd && wget http://dnmouse.org/fedora/truecrypt/10/x86_64/truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.x86_64.rpm && yum -y install truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.x86_64.rpm && rm -rf truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.x86_64.rpm && sensors-detect

32-bit: yum -y install yum-fastestmirror && yum -y remove *packagekit* *PackageKit* *totem* yum-presto && rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm && rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm && wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub && rpm --import linux_signing_key.pub && cd /etc/yum.repos.d/ && wget http://nstickney.googlepages.com/google.repo http://nstickney.googlepages.com/fedorajunkies.repo && cd && yum -y update && yum -y install aterm AdobeReader_enu boinc-client boinc-manager conky firefox flash-pluin fvwm gcc gdm gimp gnome-mount-nautilus-properties gnomesword gnupg google-desktop-linux gparted grip gvim imlib2 imlib2-devel libdvdcss libogg mozilla-vlc mpc mpd numlockx padevchooser paman paprefs pavucontrol pavumeter picasa pidgin pidgin-libnotify pidgin-otr sonata thunderbird thunderbird-lightning transmission scrot vlc yumex && yum -y install *fonts* nautilus* --exclude=*debug --exclude=*devel && cd /usr/lib/firefox-*/searchplugins/ && rm -rf google.xml && wget http://www.mozillalinks.org/download/google.xml && cd && wget http://dnmouse.org/fedora/truecrypt/10/i386/truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm && yum -y install truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm && rm -rf truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm && sensors-detect

HARDWARE SPECIFIC COMMAND LINE:
If you have an aluminum MacBook, you're probably wondering why you have no video... To fix it, add support for the nVidia video card with the following command, which also adds networking support for the Broadcom wireless card. The second half of the command (after "&&") fixes the soundcard detection for the new MacBooks. For Fedora to start a GUI automatically on a new MacBook, you'll have to edit the file /etc/inittab and change the "3" in the very bottom line to a "5" (id:3:initdefault: becomes id:5:initdefault:).
yum -y install kmod-nvidia kmod-wl && echo "options snd_hda_intel model=mbp3" >> /etc/modprobe.d/sound

The wireless card on my fiancé's laptop (2004 model 17" Dell Precision M60) is a Broadcom card, but it's older than the one in the MacBook and so the kmod-wl driver solution doesn't work. Ndiswrapper to the rescue! Note: substitute in a link to your card's WindowsXP drivers package where I put "R115321.EXE" in this command -- you'll have to find it on your own.
yum -y install kmod-ndiswrapper && mkdir wld && cd wld && wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R115321.EXE && unzip R115321.EXE && cd DRIVER && ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf && cd && rm -rf wld && ndiswrapper -m

My desktop computer has an ATI video card; to make it work, I installed the kmod-fglrx package from RPMFusion.
yum -y remove xorg-x11-drv-ati && yum -y install kmod-fglrx

My desktop's wireless card is a Netgear card, but the important thing is that it's an Atheros chipset... an AR5212/AR5213 to be exact. To make it work, I simply installed the Madwifi drivers.
yum -y install kmod-madwifi

If you're just now getting video, you'll realize that Fedora 10 won't let you log into a GUI session as root. So you'll have to make a user. If you had video from the beginning, you probably made a user during the GUI setup the first time you booted after installation. If so, you don't need to do this.
useradd new_username -p

I have a Canon Pixma MP210 printer, and it also requires some special work. The command below gets the four required .rpm driver files from the Canon Australia support page and installs them, along with their dependencies.
cd && rm -rf *.rpm && wget http://pdisp01.c-wss.com/gdl/WWUFORedirectTarget.do?id=MDEwMDAwMDgyNzAx http://pdisp01.c-wss.com/gdl/WWUFORedirectTarget.do?id=MDEwMDAwMDg0NDAx http://pdisp01.c-wss.com/gdl/WWUFORedirectTarget.do?id=MDEwMDAwMDg0MjAx http://pdisp01.c-wss.com/gdl/WWUFORedirectTarget.do?id=MDEwMDAwMDgzMTAx && yum -y install *.rpm --nogpgcheck && rm -rf *.rpm

FINALIZING COMMAND LINE CONFIG:
Clean everything up and reboot to GUI.
yum -y update && yum -y clean all && rpm --rebuilddb && updatedb && reboot

POST-INSTALL GUI:
As I mentioned in this post, PulseAudio doesn't work right out of the box for some people; to fix it, add tsched=0 to the end of the line load-module module-hal-detect in the file /etc/pulse/default.pa.

The applesmc kernel module allows control of fans and sensors in Apple hardware. Instructions for autoloading the module at boot are available at Cenolan's guide for installing Fedora 10 on older MacBooks. That guide also includes information for getting the Plymouth graphical boot loader working on MacBooks; I don't use Plymouth, prefering a text-only boot (see next paragraph)... but the guide works as advertised.

My preference is a text-only boot, and I like to actually see the boot menu, even when it only has one item. Both are easy enough with grub. I simply delete the line hiddenmenu and any instances of rghb quiet from the file /etc/grub.conf and set the timeout value to "3".

A default Fedora 10 install starts a lot of services at boot, many of which I don't need. Mauriat Miranda has a pretty good explanation of them at his website. I generally run system-config-services and set it so that everything is disabled except the following: acpid, auditd, cpuspeed, cups, gpm, haldaemon, ip6tables, iptables, kerneloops, lm_sensors, messagebus, microcode_ctl, network, portreserve, rsyslog, setroubleshoot, and udev-post. Many people like to have NetworkManager running as it can automate switching wireless networks (great for laptops), but it's never worked for me, so I disable it and enable network. If you are running a software raid array, you should also enable mdmonitor.

My post about essential software covers all the Firefox/Thunderbird extensions, Greasemonkey scripts, and other bits and pieces, and there's no real need to list it all again, so here's a link to that post.

My last steps are to install my personal FVWM and other configuration files... but that's another whole post, or a few thousand.

MacBook, Fedora 10, FVWM

2008-12-22T19:15:00.005+01:00

I love this stuff. The background is from Stratification, edited to reflect that this is no ordinary Mac. Yes, I blurred out the names... but that's the only editing done on this screenshot. Enjoy. I'll post an explanation of my desktop software sometime in the future.

F10 on Aluminum MacBook: Sound Working

2008-12-18T23:26:00.002+01:00

Update to this post about installing Fedora 10 on a brand-new MacBook...

To make the sound work, at least from the headphone jack, I had to run this command, from a guide Naresh put up on his blog...

echo "options snd_hda_intel model=mbp3" >> /etc/modprobe.d/sound

This sets the soundcard model option for the sound server. I then followed this guide to get PulseAudio running by changing one line of the pulseaudio config file /etc/pulse/default.pa, adding tsched=0 to the end of the line load-module module-hal-detect. It also directed me to install a bunch of PulseAudio packages, some of which don't exist and others I didn't need. The command I ended up running is below. I'm not sure if all of these packages are necessary; most of them were already on my system. In any case, sound works now. Out of the headphone port.

yum -y install pavucontrol pavumeter paman padevchooser paprefs alsa-plugins-pulseaudio pulseaudio pulseaudio-core-libs pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-libs pulseaudio-libs-glib2 pulseaudio-libs-zeroconf pulseaudio-module-gconf pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-module-zeroconf pulseaudio-utils xine-lib-pulseaudio

Fedora 10

2008-11-29T03:29:00.032+01:00

I own four computers. Three of them actually work. All three run Fedora 10.

In preface to my earlier post about Fedora 10 on my MacBook (yes, I know that prefacing something that's already happened is backwards, but I'm doing it anyway), here's a guide to installation and post-install configuration of Fedora 10 for my uses. YMMV. Note: all commands meant to be performed as root.

1) Get Fedora.

2) Install Fedora. I always separate my /home directory on its own partition and use a 2GB swap partition.

3) Get rid of software I don't want: yum -y remove *packagekit* *PackageKit* *totem* yum-presto.

4) Not all the software I use is in the official Fedora repositories, so I add the Google, Adobe, and RPMFusion repos. Create the Google repo file as discussed here and install the Google repo keys according to these instructions. Install the Adobe repo by downloading the "YUM" file from this page and installing the resulting .rpm. Install the RPMFusion repository by following the instructions provided Mauriat Miranda: rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm.

5) Install yum-fastestmirror to save time with the next two steps: yum -y install yum-fastestmirror.

6) Update everything: run yum -y update repeatedly until no more updates are available.

7) Install your favorite software: yum -y install *fonts* abiword aterm AdobeReader_enu boinc-client boinc-manager conky firefox fvwm gcc gdm gimp gnome-mount-nautilus-properties gnomesword gnupg google-desktop-linux gparted grip gstreamer* gvim imlib2 imlib2-devel mozilla-vlc nautilus* numlockx openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-draw openoffice.org-impress openoffice.org-writer picasa pidgin pidgin-otr rhythmbox* thunderbird thunderbird-lightning transmission scrot vlc yumex --exclude=*debug. Some of these may already be installed; this command is a catch-all to get everything I use on a daily basis, all at once. You may have different necessary programs. If you are on a 32-bit architecture, you'll want to add flash-plugin to the list.

8) Fedora, for some reason, doesn't automatically run sensors-detect and then load the correct drivers... so run sensors-detect and answer "yes" to every question.

9) If your computer is x86_64 architecture, install the FlashPlayer 10 alpha according to the instructions provided by Steven Moix: rpm -e nspluginwrapper.i386 flash-plugin && cd /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ && wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz && tar -xvzf libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz.

10) Clean up and reboot: yum clean all && rpm --rebuilddb && updatedb && reboot.

11) Print some sweet stickers out and put them on your computer/USB thumbdrive/girlfriend/whatever.

Fedora 10 on a new MacBook

2008-11-28T22:30:00.015+01:00

That's right, folks, I'm running Fedora 10 on my shiny new MacBook 5.1... and you can too!! Here's how to do it.

1) Partition your harddrive with BootCamp. My harddrive is 160 gigs (yes, I bought the cheapest MacBook since it was all I could afford), so I shrank the Mac OS X HFS+ partition to 40 GB and left the rest for "Windows." Note: don't actually install Windows, just exit BootCamp once the partitioning is done.

2) Install Fedora 10 as per the Fedora 8 instructions on mactel-linux.org. This includes installing rEFIt. I made partitions for / (40GB), /boot (200MB), /home (as big as possible), and swap (2GB). Unfortunately, the NetInstall CD doesn't correctly identify the video card, so the installation and the rest of this configuration is all done in text mode. However, once the nVidia drivers from RPMFusion are installed, Fedora will automagically detect and configure the video card so the last reboot in this sequence should lead to a fully fuctional X session.

3) [EDITED] Install extra repositories and other software as needed following my future post.

4) Install the nVidia graphics drivers from RPMFusion (as root):
yum install kmod-nvidia

5) Install the Broadcom wireless drivers from RPMFusion (as root):
yum install kmod-wl

6) ???

7) Profit!

As of right now, I don't have the trackpad working to my satisfaction... the mactel-linux guides for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9 both claim to have the function keys and trackpad working just like they do in Mac OS X, but I can't seem to get them functioning. pommed, the daemon to make MacBook function keys work, hasn't been released/packaged for Fedora 10 yet, and I'm too lazy to build it from source. Also, for some reason I have no sound. Expect updates as this goes on.

However, Fedora 10 FTW!!!