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Starting software at reboot

April 14th, 2011 by jde

If you want to automatically start up Skype, Pidgin, Firefox or something else, you can use “Startup Applications” which will start desired software at login.

System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications

Since the above approach starts applications at login, it only works for software which is run by your user.

If you need to start Apache or MySQL which are typically run by a dedicated user, use chkconfig from the command line:

# chkconfig httpd on
# chkconfig mysqld on

The name of the application used with the chkconfig command is equivalent to the name in /etc/init.d.

Firefox 3.6 and Java on Fedora 12

November 11th, 2010 by jde

Today I needed to upgrade Firefox (FF) from 3.5 to 3.6.

New versions of FF is not available until the next release of Fedora – so FF 3.6 is not officially available until F13.

Luckily I am not the only person facing this challenge, and therefore the answer was in the Fedora Forum. The solution is to add the unofficial remi repository, which contains several versions of FF.:

Make sure you get the correct rpm:

$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/remi-release-12.rpm
  • System->Administration->Add/Remove Software
  • In the “Add/Remove Software” window, choose System->Software Sources
  • Enable “Les RPM de remi pour Fedora …”
  • Search for Firefox and choose your desired version.

Next you need to fix Java for Firefox. It has something to do with OpenJDK not being supported by FF any more.

Go to: http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

In the Linux section select “Linux RPM (self-extracting file)”

Install it and create a symbolic link to libnpjp2.so in the FF plugins folder:

$ cd ~/Downloads/
$ chmod a+x jre-6u22-linux-i586-rpm.bin
$ su
Password:
# ./jre-6u22-linux-i586-rpm.bin

# rm -rf /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
# ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_22/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so

My favorite Linux distro

April 30th, 2010 by jde

In the summer of 2005, I decided to broaden my horizon and installed Fedora Core 4 on my Dell laptop along with various applications… and I have no regrets! :-)

Since then, I have moved on to Fedora Core 5, 6, 8, 9 and 12. And it just keeps getting better…

Installation

March 20th, 2010 by jde

When I got my laptop in january 2009, F10 was the most resent stable Fedora version. But it contained a bug which meant that my raid 1 was seen as 2 disks instead of one. So I installed F9.

It’s now late 2009 and both F10, F11 and F12 has gone by… F9 is getting old. Actually it’s dead and buried.  I’m guessing the raid bug is long gone so it’s time to move on.

I went with a live usb stick because my DVD drive was broken at the time (since then, the nice people from Dell has replaced it with a new one).

Installing from a live USB stick

It seams easy to just download the live *.iso and then create the usb stick with liveusb-creator, as described in the installation instructions. But I ended up looking at a blank screen with a gray radial gradient background. Pressing enter resulted in a box with a titled border containing “Password required”. It didn’t look right.

Instead I wiped the stick completely (both data and partition table) with fdisk, and then added the *.iso with dd:

# fdisk /dev/sdc

Command (m for help): o

Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x388da29a.
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
After that, of course, the previous content won’t be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0×0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): n
Command action
e   extended
p   primary partition (1-4)
p

Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-1010, default 1):  1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-1010, default 1010): 1010

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): 6
Changed system type of partition 1 to 6 (FAT16)

Command (m for help): a
Partition number (1-4): 1

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: If you have created or modified any DOS 6.x
partitions, please see the fdisk manual page for additional
information.
Syncing disks.

Command (m for help): q

# umount /dev/sdc1
# /sbin/mkdosfs -F 16 -n usbdisk /dev/sdc1

# dd if=Fedora-12-i686-Live.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=8M

When done, just leave the stick in the USB slot, and restart the computer. As soon as the DELL logo appears, press [F12]. A list of boot device options will let you choose to boot from USB. Select it and press [Enter]. The installation starts and you can just follow the instructions on the screen. The Fedora web page contains a detailed step-by-step guide to walk you through the installation process.

A list of things to backup

This is my list of things I need to backup before the installation begins:

  • Email account settings
  • Browser bookmarks
  • Documents
  • Gnote notes
  • tsclient configuration
  • apache httpd configuration
  • local database
  • local web-projects
  • Pidgin folder (.purple)
  • Subversion folder (.subversion)
  • Gnote notes

Adding the Atrpms repository

Adding ATrpms repo to Yum… Import the key and then create a *.repo file:

# rpm –import http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
# gedit /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo

Add this content:

[atrpms]
name=Fedora Core $releasever – $basearch – ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/f$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
gpgcheck=1

Then save and close the file.

Build-in webcam microphone

At the top of the laptop monitor, there is a small build-in webcam and microphone. For a long time I could not get this microphone to work, bug I finally discovered how to do it.

First go to System -> Preferences -> Sound. Select the “Input” tag an make sure the “Connector” option is set to “Microphone 1 / Microphone“.

Start a terminal and then…:

$ amixer -c 0 set ‘Input Source’ ‘Digital Mic’