speed up metacity

Open up gconf-editor. goto app>metacity>general
set the reduced_resource to true

Note: Not good when playing video. The overlayer will be stale while dragging take place

http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc4.html

Some FC4 config goodies

Disable Unneeded Services/Daemons

15 May 2005

To see what services you have running:

[root@charon ~]# service  --status-all | grep running

Also you can use 'chkconfig' (replace 3 with 5 for runlevel 5):

[root@charon ~]# chkconfig --list | grep 3:on

Run 'serviceconf', edit running services for runlevel 5 *AND* 3,
do not touch the others.

Be careful, do not disable things that you're not sure if need or
if you do not understand or know what they are.

Note: The following are either the most popular services or the
services and daemons that were enabled by default on my installation.

apmd
 Is used by some laptops. If your computer supports ACPI, then 'apmd'
 is probably not needed.
auditd
 This saves audit records generated by the kernel. Not sure how this
 information is used. For now I have this enabled.
autofs
 This mounts removable disks (such as USB harddrives) on demand. I highly
 recommend keeping this enabled.
bluetooth, hicd, sdpd

 Bluetooth is for portable local wireless devices (NOT wifi,802.11). Some
 laptops come with bluetooth support. I have no bluetooth devices.
cron, atd, anacron
 These are schedulers, it is recommended you keep at least 1 (cron)
 running, especially if you keep your computer running for long periods
 of time. If you are running a server look into which schedulers you require.
cpuspeed
 Changes your CPU speed to save power. Many laptop CPU's might use this.
 (Pentium-M, AMD PowerNow, Transmetta, Intel SpeedStep, Athlon-64?)
cupsd, cups-config-daemon

 Used for printing. Allow these only if you have CUPS compatible printer
 that works in Fedora.
gpm
 This is the console mouse pointer (no graphics).
 Leave enabled for runlevel 3, but probably not needed for runlevel 5.
iptables
 This is the standard Linux software firewall. Learn to set this up if
 you are directly connected to internet. Not needed if you use a hardware
 firewall (D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, etc).
isdn
 Another form of internet connect service/hardware. I do not use this hardware.
kudzu
 This runs the hardware probe, and optionally configures changed hardware.
 If you swap hardware or need to detect hardware you can leave this enabled,
 however if you do not, you can disable this and run it only when necessary.

lm_sensors
 This monitors motherboard sensor values useful for watching realtime values
 for PC health, etc. This is also popular with 'GKrellM' users.
 More information on lm_sensors homepage.
 I personally do not find this valuable or necessary.
mDNSResponder, nifd, autoipd
 This is part of zeroconf and is useful for detecting devices
 and their names on local network without a DNS server.
 Some devices support this feature as well as Apple OS X.
 Although this is getting more popular, I do not use this on my network.

mdmonitor
 I do not have a Software RAID.
messagebus
 This is an IPC (Interprocess Communication) service for Linux.
 I highly recommend leaving this enabled.
netfs
 This is used for automatic mounting of any shared network file space
 such as NFS, Samba, etc on bootup. Useful if you connect to another server
 your network. I have this disabled.
nfs,nfslock
 I do not use NFS. This the standard network file sharing for Unix/Linux/BSD.

ntpd
 Automatically updates system time from the internet.
 Mentioned in the installation process.
pcmcia
 Removable slot hardware support used primarily on laptops.
rhnsd
 Service to inform you of updates from Redhat/Fedora. I only update sparingly
 when necessary. I have this disabled.
rpcgssd, rpcidmapd, rpcsvcgssd

 Used for NFS v4. If you do not have other Unix/Linux machines this unneeded.
sendmail
 Most people do not need a mail transport agent. If you check your mail
 on the web (hotmail/yahoo) or you use a mail program (imap/pop) in Thunderbird,
 Mozilla, Kmail, Evolution, etc. then you do not need sendmail.
sshd
 SSH allows other people to log into your computer from another computer
 on your network. This is not needed if you have no other computers or no
 need to login from a remote location (work etc.).

DO NOT DISABLE THE FOLLOWING (unless you know what you are doing).

acpid, haldaemon, messagebus, klogd, network, portmap, syslogd, xinetd

Xterm Default Xresources

15 June 2005

Settings, for EVERY user:

EDIT /etc/X11/Xresources
ADD at the END:

xterm*visualBell: true
xterm*background: Black
xterm*foreground: Wheat
xterm_color*background: Black
xterm_color*foreground: Wheat
xterm*scrollBar: true
xterm*ttyModes: erase ^?

(The last line is to fix the backspace key in FC4 for
xterm and vi, vim applications).

To reload Xresources, run:
[mirandam@charon ~]$ xrdb -merge /etc/X11/Xresources




or simply restart the X-server.

Top Home

sudo with no passwd verification

just do visudo and add the following in BOTH user and group
btai ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

FC4 with prism54 driver netgear wg511

Took me a day of googling to get it working, and have to combine other ppls' experiences for it to work, and I wouldn't wish this upon my enemy. But like everything linux, transparent complexity is much sweeter than blackbox dumbness.

My gf's laptop is a real old samsung P4. Got the netgear card and install the Linspire (when I mention penguin, she can only relate to alaska cruise vacation). It installed flawlessly, evthing works right off, but the debian repositories apt-get wouldn't do KDE, which is understandable. Then I try FC4 in it. Can't even go online with the eth0 ethernet.

At the boot screen, I saw the wireless card taking over the eth0 but wouldn't run, so the DHCP is just hanging there.Don't know in FC4 why the wireless alias is taking the eth0 and the somehow messed up the ethernet even. No sweat. Unplug the wireless card, goto the system setting > Network and try and just disable the wireless one and correct the ethernet to use eth0 (this works for me).

Then goto the /etc/modprobe.conf and make sure the alias for both the wireless and ethernet is what you want. I set etho to be ethernet.

Now once reboot, the eth0 should work. At this point, I'd fix the yum repositories (goto http://www.fedorafaq.org/ and grab that yum.conf , it's got most of the major repo, dries dag, and whatnot, works for me). and do update for kernel and whatever for KDE / gnome. This ensure you get the latest sys config scripts. (Who knows, the world richest linux distro might actually go and fix these kinda problem one day).

Then shutdown, put the card back in, reboot. You should see the card in hardware browser. Now we install the firmware like other poster henrik suggest:

-======================================================-
1.) First, check out that your wireless card is supported by www.prism54.org.

2.) Download the proper firmware add-on release. This is not a firmware update for the card, but a microcode add-on which has to be loaded everytime your system starts up. Your card firmware won´t be changed.
In my case, I took the 1.0.4.3.arm firmware add-on release.

3.) Check your pcmcia daemon is running from startup. If not, just type "chkconfig pcmcia on" an restart your system.

4.) Copy your firmware add-on to the /lib/firmware directory. The
directory already exists !
If the directory is not there, take a look at the firmware path stated in
the /etc/hotplug/firmware.agent script. In FC3 there is no need to
update the firmware agent at all by additional stuff from the
prism54.org page.


Example: /etc/hotplug/firmware.agent

----------------- snip ----------------
# directory of the firmware files
FIRMWARE_DIR=/lib/firmware
----------------- snap ----------------


5.) Rename your firmware add-on from "1.0.4.3.arm" to "isl3890".

6.) Edit your /etc/modprobe.conf. In my case, the wireless card points to eth1. Change the alias: alias eth1 islpci_cb

Example: /etc/modprobe.conf

------------- snip ---------
alias eth0 e100 # build-in ethernet adapter
alias eth1 islpci_cb # netgear wg511 pcmcia adapter
------------- snap ---------


7.) Restart your system and check with "lsmod" the existence of the prism54 driver.
-======================================================-

Then after restart, goto system tools>internet configuration Wizard, config your access point and such to match. NOTE: you have to apend '0x' in the front the HEX wep passphase.
and behold it actually works. Now I got both connection working, just need to make it looks as nice as linspire.

Bryan Tai

FC4 mplayer installation

http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mplayer-fedora.shtml#depend

Mounting CD images

I've read several threads about bin/cue files whilst trying to find out how to mount bin/cue files in linux - like daemon tools does in Windows. I found out how...

But first - why do so many people think bin files are so many different things!?? I've seen numerous times people just saying "use 'mount -t iso9660 some.bin /some/dir'" - this is crap! (in most circumstances...)

So i'd like to set the record straight:

bin/cue files are paired.

- The bin file is a raw image of a cd. A cd is composed of sectors (approx. 333,000 on a 74min cd) of 2352 bytes each. Different types of cd use different amounts of space in the sectors for actual data. A normal PC cd will use 2048 bytes per sector - the rest of each sector is given over to error correction. PSX/VCD cds use 2336 bytes, Audio cds use the full 2352 bytes with no error correction. Since bin files are raw data images, they are larger than iso files. The bin image can contain of any type of cd.

- The cue file is necessary, it specifies the mode that a cd image is written in (see elsewhere for description of mode) and the number of bytes that have been read into the image per sector (normally 2352). Also index is specified. A typical cue file looks like:

FILE "image-name.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00


Now for some useful info! The linux mount command will not mount a bin file. If you can mount a particular bin file then its an .iso file with a .bin extension. In my searches, I came across several handy utilities:

isodump - get it here: http://www-tet.ee.tu-berlin.de/soly...-0.05.02.tar.gz
isodump will dump iso images from bin (CloneCD img) files. Its not perfect, and failed on one or two i tested.

cdfs - get it here: http://www.elis.rug.ac.be/~ronsse/c....4.20-a.tar.bz2
cdfs is a file system kernel module. You can use it instead of iso9660 when you mount cds. It will show all the tracks on a cd as files in the mounted directory, i.e. A data cd may show a single .iso file, an audio cd will show some .wav files (yes, it adds the WAV header!!), and a mixed cd may show an .iso file and an apple hfs image, and some .wav files...! This thing rocks!!

And now for what you've all been waiting for - cdemu. This is another kernel module, but this one creates virtual cd drives, just like daemon tools. A userspace program allows you to link a bin/cue file pair to a virtual cd device, and then simply use the linux mount command to mount the virtual cd!! Oh yeah, its here: http://robert.private.outertech.com/virtualcd/

So, now you CAN mount .bin files!!!!

------------------------------
Richard Wellstead

http://www.uselinux.co.uk/
------------------------------

vmware-config.pl

vmware keeps asking you to reconfigure everytime you reboot? try this (taken from a redhat forum)


After you have run vmware-config.pl, do:

# cp -rp /dev/vm* /etc/udev/devices
# chkconfig vmware reset

You only need to do these once.

after compiling mplayer twinview full screen problem

After compiling and installing the mplayer, if you have a nvidia card with twinview enable, then the full screen is not gonna work out of the box, because mplayer would think you got a 8:3 monitor (3200x1200), modify the shortcut to be something like this

gmplayer -screenh 1200 -screenw 1600 -stop-xscreensaver

This would set the thing in place nicely.

compiling mplayer for ubuntu

remember to get all the required libs
if encounter glxGetMscRateOML or XFree86 errors, remember to install the xxf86vm-dev.

remember to ./configure --enable-gui --enable-menu


just follow the installation guide.

info for vim / gvim save user setting

First, specify your font by going to Edit > Select Font (btw, I'm on a Windows machine, so maybe the Linux menus are different).

Second, after you've selected your font, enter the command :mkvimrc!. This will write your font choice (and key mappings, etc) to your _vimrc file. This will NOT save your color settings if you're using a theme, however. To tell gVIM to use a color theme at startup, go to the next step.

Third, to specify your color theme, enter the command :e _vimrc. This will open your VIM settings file for editing. Scroll to the bottom of the file and add the line "colors blue". You can specify whatever color theme you want in place of "blue", provided you use the name of the theme itself. No file references are necessary. And it's case-insensitive too, so you could enter "colors Elflord" or "colors elflord" and be fine either way. Just make sure you write the file to disk before you quit gVIM.

Also, to change the winpos and geometry for gvim:

The position is given in screen pixels.  Now you can use the numbers to move
Vim somewhere else.  For example, to move it to the left a hundred pixels:

 :winpos 172 103

 Note:
 There may be a small offset between the reported position and where
 the window moves.  This is because of the border around the window.
 This is added by the window manager.

You can use this command in your startup script to position the window at a
specific position.

The size of the Vim window is computed in characters.  Thus this depends on
the size of the font being used.  You can see the current size with this
command:

 :set lines columns

To change the size set the 'lines' and/or 'columns' options to a new value:

 :set lines=50
 :set columns=80

This blog is created to temporarily document my continous efforts in Linux usage and developments

Now, nothing to say really. This is just the start of the documentation. Once I setup a real website (time permitted), I gotta move all the stuff to there.

I'm now starting to move my desktop env to xfce4, seeing it becoming more and more stable and mature, it's time to put it in production.