YUM Update Manager is the default package manager used in Fedora and Fedora derivatives. It is written in Python and have tonnes of features which average Joe might not know about. These additional features helps a lot on maintaining your system, improving your experience using the package manager and become more productive. Granted, yum depsolving and querying is quite slow compared with APT, but the flexibility and power yum grant to its users, its worth it.
To my comrade, Surface, here, as you requested.
Tips 1: Fastest Mirror
This is usually the very first yum plugin I install in a new Fedora deployment. What does it do?, well, the name tell it all. The plugin will time all the servers in the replied mirrorlist from mirrors.fedoraproject.org, and pick the one which is the fastest for you. Everything is done automagically, and considering its a YumCore class of plugin, it works with whatever GUI you use for yum.
To install this plugin, useyum install yum-fastestmirror
Unlike APT which you had to pick the fastest mirror yourself, yum handles this more elegantly
The plugin, after it has checked which server is the fastest, it will store a metadata in /var/cache/yum/timedhosts.txt . That metadata will expire after some time. However, if somehow, the cached timedhosts are no longer fast, you can easily force yum to recheck for fastestmirror by deleting that file.
Tips 2. Security Only Update
This tips helps a lot for users who can't keep up with Fedora updates. Fedora is well known for its very fast updating "updates" repository. Things get old quite fast in Fedora. Some people however, are afraid of updating their system to the latest updates packages, mainly because sometimes, these updates, suddenly break stuff as Fedora updates are not backport of fixes but rather moving forward to a newer version. One way to get around this overly sized and numbered updates is by only updating the system with security updates. Theres a plugin for yum for this purpose, and you can install it throughyum install yum-security
To use this plugin to update your computer to the latest security fixes, just useyum --security update
I have a detailed post about this plugin here
Tips 3: Presto
If you are on a budget internet connection with very limited bandwidth, yum-presto is for you. The presto plugin will download deltarpms, which are the changes of the current version installed in your computer and the one on the internet. This will drastically reduce your download size and you can get your updates faster.
Work is being done to integrate Presto to Fedora's base repositories, however, the developers are still facing problem trying to integrate Presto with Koji and Bodhi, the buildsystem and the updates pushing system of Fedora. Therefore you will need to configure Presto after installation by following the details at http://fedorahosted.org/presto/
To install this plugin, use:yum install yum-presto
Tips 4: Do NOT Mix Repositories!
Mixing repositories .. is BAD. There are a lot of repositories out there for you to choose from if you google enough. However, these repositories doesn't necessarily compatible with Fedora base repositories or between each other. I would only recommend users to install only Livna and small repositories which provide a small number of packages like Adobe Linux flash repository or Google's Apps repositories. Livna is the best because of their packages follow closely with Fedora's Packaging Guideline, so, you can expect that their quality of packages are as good as the real thing.
Good news that Livna, Freshrpms and Dribble are merging to form RPMFusion. Until RPMFusion is launched, just stick with Livna.
Tips 5: Broken dependencies? Skip them
Once you start installing 3rd party repositories, broken dependencies is a risk you will need to take on. This usually happens when the base repository and the 3rd party repository's packages are not in sync with each other. There is a yum plugin to help you automatically skip these broken dependencies together with packages which are affected by it. Its called yum-skipbroken. In rawhide F9, skip-broken have been merged with the core yum. I am not sure about F8.
To use it, just use the --skip-broken option parameter on the command line.yum --skip-broken update
If the option is not available for your Fedora installation, try installing the plugin throughyum install yum-skipbroken
Tips 6: Using proprietary drivers? lock your Xorg and Kernel version!
This plugin is very useful for users who are using proprietary drivers or kernel modules and would like certain packages to remain as it is to avoid breaking the drivers. I found this useful when I installed Fedora in a friend's computer and he/she needed to use a proprietary driver. I would lock his/her kernel and xorg from upgrading (yes, somehow this approach feels ugly, but it helps preventing them away from updating things which might break the driver)
To install, use:yum install yum-versionlock
Documentation on how to use it is available in /usr/share/doc/yum-versionlock-%{version}/README
Tips 7: Keep the cache for future use
Yum by default does not keep it cached downloads. You can change this behaviour through editing the yum config and change keepcache=1.
The yum cache directory, /var/cache/yum can be useful if you are going to play around a lot to the point that you might need to reinstall you Fedora installation frequently. It helps saving some time to redownload all those packages all over again. Just copy the rpm packages in that directory out, and you can reuse it later. You can also create a repository out of it using createrepo.
Tips 8: For organizations, create local mirrors!
It easy to create local mirrors for YUM repositories. There are several way of doing it - Rsync, or reposync (provided by yum-utils package). In normal situation I would recommend using rsync, but for poor me who in a college that blocks rsync, I uses reposync. Reposync downloads through http, but a bit harder to use to setup a usable repository.
A documentation on how to start contributing as a mirror is available here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Mirroring.
After you've get your mirror synced, get yourself a Fedora Account, and register yourself with Fedora's MirrorManager. The beauty here is, from the MirrorManager, you can set, for example, any requests for mirrorlist from your organization's public IP, will be replied with the URL to the mirror in your LAN IP. Your users won't know that they are using a LAN mirror! It JustWorks!. This is something APT won't give you :P. You can also set your mirrors to be available to certain range of IP/countries or not.
Tips 9: Detect problems early. Use package-cleanup
Sometimes, you might get your installation interrupted or some crazy happening which your installed package database goes crazy with duplicate packages or broken dependencies. There is one tool which helps a lot in tracing the problem and its called package-cleanup. This tool is provided by the yum-utils package, so to acquire it, yum install yum-utils
Several common commands I usually use:package-cleanup --dupes # list out duplicates
package-cleanup --cleandupes # clean up duplicates
package-cleanup --problems # list out packages with broken dependencies
More options? .. invoke the --help parameter
Tips 10: Download packages for usage later, together with dependencies
Sometime, you might want to download packages with its dependencies but without installing it and you want to have it easily copyable to another computer with exactly the same installed package list with your computer. yumdownloader (provided by yum-utils package) tool is great for this. You can use it to, for example, build reusable packs for a bunch of identical computers, and distribute them. You can also use it for grabbing the source rpm of a package, just in case you want to hack some stuff from the package.
My usual use of yumdownloader:
# download source package
yumdownloader --source packagename
# download a package, together with
# dependencies needed on my computer
yumdownloader --resolve packagename
# download a package, together with
# dependencies needed on a different
# chroot/mounted Fedora install
yumdownloader --resolve packagename --root /path/to/chroot
Theres another trick of using the yumdownloader with chroot, by copying /var/lib/rpm folder, you can make use of the rpm profile to download packages for a friend's computer and pass it in a CD. This concept is what being used in opyum (a similar tool like APTonCD) to build what debarashi call as YumPacks. Opyum is cool, but somehow I feel creating the set manually is more comfortable for me. Telling a user to pass me the /var/lib/rpm folder is much easier and quicker rather than telling them to install opyum and guide them through how to create a profile. Though, that is my personal preference, opyum is still a great tool to use for "users" who don't know how to mess with the CLI tricks.
Tips 11: Clean caches first if somehow yum behave weirdly
Sometimes the files cached in your computer might be broken because of some reason or another (I usually getting this problem in my university, with my hackish Fedora repository mirror - so, the metadata tend to be a crazy broken metadata once in a while). Try cleaning the cache first and retry. Chances are the problem is from there. To clean whatever cached files in your yum cache, use:yum clean all
Tips 12: When yum fails miserably for everything, fear not, APT and Smart are there to save the day
Fedora have APT too!!!. Those from debian roots who can't seem to get away from APT, just install apt-rpm. You'll get your familiar package manager again~ :D. Another available package manager for Fedora is smart.
One beauty about apt-rpm and smart on Fedora, they all uses the generic repository metadata similar to yum. That means, all yum repositories will work with apt-rpm and smart effortlessly!. Nice eh?. hehe
EOTipsList
Thats all the tips that I can recall during the writing of this post. I might have other tricks behind my head somewhere, but could not recall it at this moment. The only next time I might remember it is when I faced a problem which made me recalled it.
Enjoy with yum. Its a fun, yummy package manager once you get the hang of it. A final tips, not useful for "users", but useful for python hackers, Yum plugins are easy to write, and it can make use any python libraries. If you need a particular special-case feature for your own use, you can get more information how to write your own custom plugin here: http://wiki.linux.duke.edu/WritingYumPlugins. I myself wrote one hackish plugin for people in my university to get to my repository. My university network layout and restrictions sucks bigtime, so, I had to write something to automatically create a tunnel to my repository and let users yum through the tunnel - seamlessly. The users doesn't even need to learn how to tunnel, it JustWorks.
Have Fun~ :D
12 YUM Tips and Tricks
HOWTO: Controlling cpu temperature and scaling using cpuspeed
My beloved R51 which I bought almost 3 years ago is suffering of old-age. It processor heats up quite fast to 80/85 Celsius and sometimes triggered shutdown alarm on 90C. The temperature during idle is around 50C, which is pretty hot. Adding external fan and overriding the speed of the internal fan doesn't help much.
Whenever it goes to 80C, I manually scale down the processor to cool it down. Hassle, but at least it works. However, there is an easier way to control this without any manual interaction, and that is through using the cpuspeed daemon. It should have been installed by default in your computer. If it isn't , you can install it through:yum install cpuspeed
cpuspeed in Fedora by default only turns on the default scaling governor and didn't do anything else. You will need to configure it through /etc/sysconfig/cpuspeed.
Remember to set the Governor to "userspace" or your cpuspeed will not be started through the init script.
In my setup to ensure that I don't burn my processor too much, I set my UP_THRESHOLD=99 DOWN_THRESHOLD=90, and uncommented the lowest line for the temperature check and set the max temperature as 75. Yes, theres no scientific explanation to explain whether the values I selected is good or not. I simply set in so that my processor will only scale up if its being used 100%, scales down as soon as the processor usage reduce to 90%, and forbid scaling up if the temperature is above 75C.
Once you have configured it, restart cpuspeed/sbin/service cpuspeed restart
After I applied those above, my processor doesn't gets hot easily anymore :D. Yay~.
Micropolis-Activity RPM
Following the post I've made about the MicropolisCore package, I've packaged micropolis-activity.
The package was applied a patchset by Miriam Ruiz which was acquired from debian's svn:
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-games/packages/trunk/micropolis-activity/debian/patches/. (Thanks to Rahul Sundaram for notifying me about this).
The (S)RPMS are here http://izhar.fedorapeople.org/micropolis-activity/ (again, WARNING: Hackish Package!)
The game is running but i didn't test it much. There are some segfaults when loading certain maps. The dependency list might also not be complete. Here a screenie of it running a saved city from the the source tarball.
Happy hacking. ^-^
Original SimCity GPL'ed as Micropolis - here some RPMs for Fedora Hackers
Around 19:00MYT (11:00GMT) today @ #fedora irc.freenode.net
<evil_steve> oh come on. THey GPL'd Sim city 48 hours ago and it's *not* packaged and in repos yet?
<evil_steve> :)
<evil_steve> and we call ourselves geeks
<KageSenshi> aah?!!
<KageSenshi> yay to gaming!
* KageSenshi now waits for simcity4k to GPL ..
<evil_steve> http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2008/01/10/simcity-source-code-released-to-the-wild-let-the-ports-begin.aspx
<KageSenshi> >.<
* KageSenshi tries to build
<evil_steve> KageSenshi: let me know how you go.
<KageSenshi> :D
Yay to Free/OpenSource Softwares!!. The original SimCity is now GPLv3+!. From the way it looks, I believe it was released to make it as an Activity for the OLPC XO. Nevertheless, it can be compiled and run at our normal desktop linux.
From the guide on the link above ( which for building on VisualStudio (O.o)" ) .. Here are the RPM packages http://izhar.fedorapeople.org/MicropoliceCore/.
UGLY PACKAGE ALERT!: The original tarball have some hardcoded paths and no proper automated script for installation, so I patched it with my own HACKISH patch and a HACKISH %install to make it packageable. And the launcher is a very HACKISH launcher.
Dont expect its playable though. I couldn't find how to run it as a game - and the Visual Studio based guide is also not yet complete, so, I totally have no clue. If anybody succeeded, can you tell me how?
You can launch the demo run using
/usr/bin/MicropoliceCore-launcerThe original project site is at http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/. There, you grab the sources for the OLPC XO version of Micropolis if you want.
Happy hacking.
Hello Planet Fedora!!
My blog just included in Planet Fedora. Yay! (/me jumping with joy). Thanks Seth Vidal!!.
A little introduction about myself and Linux.
I started with computers on early age. My first encounter with computers was @ my mom's office (she's working @ NEC that time) about I'm 3 years old. When my mom stopped working to be a full-time housewife, my dad started working @ IBM and I've been living with IBM PC-DOS on the company-provided PC. I lived with it and having fun with DOS for quite a long time. Then, on 1997, my dad bought an IBM Aptiva with Win95 on it, during that time, Windows doesnt feel that sux too me, as its still something on top of DOS (guess what, it took me some time to get use to the mouse and I still reboot to DOS when I want to play Command and Conquer). But after winME, I got frustrated due to no longer able to troubleshoot my computer through DOS, and thats when I started considering for another OS. I have no access to the Internet until 1999, so I have no idea about open source, internet community and stuff back then. Software to me that time was only those that can be found from shops.
Around 2002, I heard about Linux and started by trying out Red Hat 9 (Shrike), it was a tough ride at first, especially due to Winmodem sucks big time. On 2003, I stopped trying for a while due to I was accepted to a boarding school. But I didnt stop fully, there, I familiarize myself with OpenOffice (secretly installed on the school's computer). And on end of 2004, after I finished the final exam of high school, I forces myself to fully migrate to Linux.
I was looking for RH that time but couldn't found any later release after Shrike (I didn't know about FedoraProject yet). Then I found Mandriva and sticks with it & KDE for almost year before I decided to jump distros again. Then I used SuSE for few months , then I found out that RH is now Fedora Core. I started using Fedora Core 3 and have fell in love with it ever since.
Around 2005, I got to know a group of OSS oriented people in Malaysia @ #myoss of Freenode and around that time too I started trying to contribute back something upstream. I joined Fedora Project early 2007 as an Ambassador, mostly advocating Linux to students and lecturers my university - PETRONAS University of Technology. But lately theres not many ideas for me to do there as Ambassador so I started contributing to Packaging and packaged some unofficial compiz fusion packages. Now I'm officially maintaining ccsm and libcompizconfig packages in Fedora.
Right now I'm a SysAdmin intern at a startup company that focuses on Zope and Plone called Inigo-Tech and having some fun with FreeBSD there.
Looking forward for great development on Fedora and I hope I can found something more to contribute back to Fedora Project.
Fedora detected @ Japan Club Kuala Lumpur
Yesterday I was at JCKL for my weekly ninjutsu class. When I was passing by their computer lab, suddenly something caught my eyes - "Flying High" and "Fedora Bubbles" !!.
The users (some grownups, some children) who are using the computers seems happily browsing the Internet and using OpenOffice. And they didn't look like having trouble using it. One of the children was also doing something with The GIMP!.
Linux is spreading slowly but far, hidden from the eyes of general public (^o^). Lets keep it going!. All hail to the Penguin!
RPM Package Rollback
One of the least known feature in RPM is that it has a rollback feature. This allows you to rollback any updates you have done to your installed packages. Quite useful if a recent update broke your system.
From http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/01/rpm_rollback_in_fedora_core_45.html
- To configure yum to save rollback information, add the line tsflags=repackage to /etc/yum.conf.
- To configure command-line rpm to do the same thing, add the line %_repackage_all_erasures 1 to /etc/rpm/macros.
- Install, erase, and update packages to your heart’s content, using pup, pirut, yumex, yum, rpm, and the yum automatic update service.
If/when you want to rollback to a previous state, perform an rpm update with the –rollback option followed by a date/time specification. Some examples: rpm -Uhv –rollback ‘9:00 am’, rpm -Uhv –rollback ‘4 hours ago’, rpm -Uhv –rollback ‘december 25′.
But remember that rollback takes up quiet a lot of space on /var . I won't do this Fedora as Fedora have quite frequent updates. But if you are running an important server on CentOS or RHEL, you might want to turn this feature on. It would be nice if somebody implements deltarpms support for rpm rollback. I believe it gonna save a lot of space.
A month with FreeBSD, Zope and Plone
For the past month, I have been working as an intern at Inigo Tech. The company focuses on Zope and Plone deployment and customization and I'm the sysadmin of the company server.
FreeBSD
The company server uses FreeBSD as the OS with several BSD Jails on top of it. BSD Jails is one of the virtualization technology on the OS level. Unlike Xen, Qemu and VirtualBox, Jails is a very lightweight virtualization where the Guest environment does not run any kernel on it. While Xen, Qemu and VirtualBox allows different OSes running as Guest, Jails can only support another BSD installations.
I found that Jails is very useful for those who only needs better process and environment separation and doesn't need another full blown OS features. Interested to know what available on the Linux world for this, I went googling and found the Linux-Vserver Project and the OpenVZ Project. However, the RPM packages provided by both of them (especially the kernel) are quite not in sync with the current Fedora repositories. So, if anybody thinking of trying them out, I would recommend installing on CentOS or a Debian derivative instead as the packages does not being updated as fast as Fedora. Btw, if anybody successfully deployed a OpenVZ guest, can you post me an easy to follow guide??. As I'm quite confused with the OpenVZ documentations (the templates etc).
But so far, I think thats the only thing I liked from the BSD world. Everything else, are kindof PITA and not elegant in my point of view. Perhaps because I have been pampered by RPM way too much. Ports, while have quite a large collection of packages, is not as elegant as RPM or DEB in package management. If only for installation and removal of packages, Ports works quite well, but if I want to do extra stuff to the installed files, everything went messy. Dependency hell, I dont know how many times i've faced that in Ports. Updating and removing packages feels quite scary when it might causes another app, hidden somewhere, to have a library problem. For the filesystem hierarchy and file placements, is another messy thing as trying to separate stuff that maintained by package manager and stuff that are done by local user is not as clear as in RPM distros. But for this, I might be biased as I come from the Red Hat Linux / Fedora Linux origins and still not that experienced in BSD. Perhaps after exploring and learning more about the BSD way of doing stuff, I might change my opinion on this.
Zope and Plone
In Inigo Tech, I was introduced for the first time to Zope and Plone. I have heard about it before, and followed the debate on Fedora mailing list about why Fedora 7 could not support Zope and Plone due to Python2.5, but I had never tried using it firsthand. What I know about during that time Zope was that its something like Tomcat but in Python, with Plone as one of the most popular app running on Zope.
After this whole month of using Zope and Plone, I grown to like it and the ideas it brought together. I have been a fan of proper separation of services and environments since I learned about virtualization. So, I feel Zope is a great platform. A virtual filesystem on an ORDB? Cool!. Full separation of the web environment and the host server? Great!. Using Instances instead of a full copy of files? Yay!. Plugins architechture, of which different instances can have different set of Plugins? Superb!. All in all, I love Zope, except for maybe, the ZMI which looks kind of cluttered, but looks good or not is a matter of who looking at it :).
As for Plone, Inigo sees it as an alternative to Microsoft SharePoint. As I had never tried out SharePoint, I couldn't comment much about their differences/similarities. But one thing I know, Plone offers more features that SharePoint in term of document management and sharing, Plone is easier to use than SharePoint, Plone can work nicely with commodity softwares while SharePoint requires you to upgrade to IE7, Vista, Office 2007 etc, and best of all, Plone is Free! and SharePoint is dictated by Microsoft (>.<) . So, that makes it Plone is better than SharePoint right? So if your company want to buy SharePoint, how about you look at Plone first before deciding ;).
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All in all, working with Inigo is fun with all these. I'm glad I took Kaeru's offer and not other internship offers with other companies. Plus, I got to telecommute. Saved some hassle of transportation, food, etc :D
Firefox3 Beta2 Release
I woke up today with a Firefox popup on my desktop, notifying that my firefox is now upgraded to Firefox 3 Beta 2. Note that I install firefox beta in my home folder, so, automatic update JustWorks(tm)
See whats new here : http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0b2/whatsnew/
What noticable is, at last, the visual refresh for Linux is here!!
And the new addressbar is cool.
HOWTO: Making VIM in FreeBSD, Linux-user friendly
The hellish semester have ended, and I just started my 8 month internship with Inigo-Tech. I've also got an access to the company's FreeBSD server. However, one thing annoys me - the VIM acts in a way i'm not familiar with.
A quick hack to resolve this annoyance.
from the linux boxscp /etc/vimrc server.host.com:/path/to/homefolder/.vimrc
done~
Whats New , and Whats Old - A little comparison between Ubuntu 7.10 new features with the upcoming Fedora 8 and older Fedora releases
Ubuntu 7.10 'Gutsy Gibbon' was just released a few days ago, and Fedora 8 just hit devel-freeze yesterday. With all the hype going all over the internet, one point annoys me - when some Ubuntu users claiming that some of the new features in Ubuntu are something Fedora does not have. Now, lets bust this myth. (This list might not be complete)
Ubuntu 7.10 feature list was taken from : http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/710tour
GNOME 2.20
Both Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 uses GNOME 2.20.
Compiz Fusion
Both Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 have Compiz 0.6.0 during its release. However, in Fedora 8, compiz will not be enabled by default , as there are several issues which still need to be fixed in Fedora's point of view, one of it is the Xv video support - patches are being developed by Red Hat developers in fixing the the X server and Xv and apply it upstream. Compiz is enabled by default in Ubuntu - with a hack patch applied in mplayer to allow Xv rendered properly on Mplayer only.
In Ubuntu 7.10, Compiz-Fusion plugins are included in the installation CD and enabled by default . As for Fedora 8, the Compiz-Fusion plugins can be yum'ed from the repositories.
yum install compiz-fusion compiz-fusion-extras
CCSM is currently under review, it might not reach Fedora 8 during the release because Fedora 8 already hit its devel freeze. Anyway, it will available as an update. (Maybe I can try poking Jesse to make an exemption for this)
Desktop Search
Desktop search was enabled by default during Fedora Core 5 (yes, FIVE!), but due to complains about it eating too much resource , it was made optional on later releases. Desktop search can be yum'ed from the repos to those who want it.
yum install deskbar-applet tracker-search-tool
Fast User Switch
One of the new features of Ubuntu 7.10 is FUS. This feature was developed under Fedora Project and was integrated together during the release of Fedora 7.
See: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/FastUserSwitching
Firefox Plugin
The firefox plugin finder is from upstream, therefore, all distros using it get the feature
Ubuntu 7.10 repositories now have Firefox add-ons packaged in DEB. This feature is a creditable new feature. There was a discussion about this not so long ago in Fedora-Devel-List ( https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-October/msg01097.html ). Concerns were raised about low-quality and vulnerable add-ons might be hitting the repository if the package submission are not properly managed. Maybe we will be seeing this in Fedora after a guideline for the XPIs is available.
Dynamic Screen Configuration
XRanR have been included together in Fedora 7. Ubuntu 7.10 just included it.
Graphical Configuration for X and BulletProofX
Now now now ... this is REALLY OLD .. Fedora have a similar configurator called System-Config-Display and that tool have been around in Fedora ever since I started using it .. and that was .. Fedora Core 3 (read, THREE) and it might have existed older than that. System-Config-Display supports Xinerama (Multi Display) as long as that too.
Same goes for BulletProofX (but in a different form). When a X session was misconfigured , system-config-display will automatically reset Xorg.conf to the lowest settings of which Xorg can start. This feature have been around as long as system-config-display.
One thing nice in Ubuntu's BulletProofX is the display configurator actually display itself to allow manual adjustments. In Fedora, it'll simply reconfig automatically - and sometimes this doesnt work and causes a failure loop. I had to run system-config-display manually to fix the settings when that happens. I have asked for this 'feature' before, but Fedora believes the fallback should be done automatically without user interaction, and running system-config-display to allow manual reconfigure is considered a hack because it does not fix the actual problem. Any issues about fallback not functioning properly are supposed to be reported at bugzilla.
Printer Support
Ubuntu 7.10 includes a modified Fedora's System-Config-Printer. (thats all I could say, as I dont use printer much).
NTFS Writing using NTFS-3G
Ubuntu 7.10 includes NTFS-3G for accessing NTFS partitions. NTFS-3G have been enabled by default in Fedora since Fedora 7 LiveCDs. Fedora Core 6 added this support through update.
Power Consumption
Ubuntu 7.10 inludes kernel 2.23 which includes tickless kernel support. Fedora 8 also includes kernel 2.23. Fedora 7 might be having kernel 2.23 from updates soon.
Encrypted Harddisk
Alternate installer for Ubuntu 7.10 includes install-time encrypted hdd creation support.
I dont see this in Fedora's Anaconda installer, but a little googling for "encrypted hdd fedora" pointed me to
Fedora Core 5 release note which then pointed me to LUKS. Maybe theres an easy way to encrypt HDD post-installation in Fedora, but I dont know that for now. While I dont see theres a need for encrypted HDD support for / as those installed in / are basically stuff from RPM which everyone have access to on the net, and good admins will separate the system and the data and encrypt the data partition, maybe some people really need it.
Security Framework
Ubuntu 7.10 just included AppArmor by Novell in their release. A similar tool is available in Fedora since long ago called SELinux. SELinux was developed by NSA and has more strict control and security, but however, it was tauted hard to configure. That has changed in Fedora 7 with lots of GUI configuration tools were introduced for ease of maintaining SELinux.
The rest?
well, I have no idea what "Additional installation profiles for Ubuntu Server" , "Profile-based Authentication Configuration", and "Improved thin-client support" supposed to mean in the Tour page, so I couldn't compare them.
What Fedora 8 Will Have, Sooner Than Other Distros
The full feature list available here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/FeatureList
- NetworkManager 0.7.0 is under heavy development and is included in Fedora 8.
- Online-Desktop - Internet and Desktop - Working together! - Online Desktop developer interview
- IcedTea - IcedTea are the fully Free components of Sun's OpenJDK
- PulseAudio - PulseAudio is a powerful sound server system which supports advanced mixing capabilities.
- Eclipse 3.3 - Fedora Eclipse IDE.
- Animated Wallpaper - Animated wallpaper for your Desktop - Fedora Artwork interview (details in one of the paragraphs)
- Enhanced Bluetooth Improvements - Bluetooth Improvements developer interview
Fedora: Infinity | Freedom | Voice.
Review: A few days with Fedora 8 Test 2
I just upgraded my laptop to F8T2 several days ago. Heres some of my experience of the journey.
Like Moonshine (F7), Fedora 8 Test 2 releases several ISOs to choose from. The classical DVD installer, a Desktop LiveCD, a KDE LiveCD, plus 2 additional new images -> Fedora Electronics Lab LiveCD - targeted for Electical Electronic geeks, and Fedora Developer LiveCD. As I already mirrored Rawhide repository in my local server, I used the Desktop LiveCD for installation. Note that I prefer clean reinstallation rather than upgrade, plus the LiveCDs doesnt offer upgrade option so far.
Installation
Installation was a breeze as usual , just that I forgot to set /boot mountpoint during installation that causes anaconda to crash -> my sda1 is an NTFS partition which i keep a winXP installation just in case i need it, and all other partitions are on LVM besides /boot - this might have what caused the crash. I have my /home on a different partition, just to be safe, I didnt set the mountpoint during the installation. After installation, I edited /etc/fstab to automount my home folder.
First boot
New looks at GRUB!, new looks at RHGB!, F7 look @ GDM (huh?). The bootup feels a lil bit faster than before, but it might just be me who felt that. Logging in to my user caused the usual missing applet errors due to they havent been installed. Everything else looked fine.
Playing around
After using for a while, I noticed stability problem all over, nautilus keep crashing , firefox halts lots of time. The weird thing is, when i tried using a new user, everything seems okay. So I thought it might be a GNOME config problem and I cleared most of my GNOME settings and stability becomes better. However, firefox still halt frequently on my user. A little more investigation shows that SCIM-Anthy might have been the cause, so I stopped using it for a while and I got my firefox back. I have other stability issues with other apps too, but they all went away after a yum update.
YUM got yummier
YUM speed improved a lot. The depsolving is noticably faster than before. Pirut doesnt frequently hang like before. Joy!. I also noticed theres a plugin in YUM that will keep retrying if yum.pid is locked by another app. This is somewhat convenient as I no longer need to manually rety.
Default Appearance
The GTK Nodoka theme design looks good, however it looks fugly in light blue!. GNOME 2.20 now uses a centralized appearance manager, which is cool. From there, I discovered that Nodoka colors can be changed easily through the UI. Double Nice!. A little darkening of the window color, switched the light blue color to dark grey, and Nodoka became pleasing to my eyes ^-^.
PulseAudio
At first pulseaudio pissed me off, why?, coz I didnt hear a thing if I set gstreamer to use pulseaudio. But after a little investigation, I discovered the daemon was not started (duh~). Executed pulseaudio in the command line, and it seems to work. I played around more by yumming for available pulseaudio tools from the repo, and they impressed me. I'm now able to have more controls over volumes in of applications, like right/left channels, and different volume for different apps. There might be more feature I dont know yet, but so far PulseAudio rocks!.
Compiz
Fedora 8 Test 2 have compiz 0.5.2 included. For some reason compiz doesnt work on the LiveCD, but after installation, it worked with some problems - certain plugins like "move", "resize" were not loaded - gladly it was fixed after a yum update. Compiz Fusion are also in the Rawhide repositories now, (they are not my packages, but Dragoran/Adel Gadlah's). However, libcompizconfig, compizconfig-python, and ccsm are not there yet. Therefore, the compiz from F8T2 uses glib gconf instead of libcompizconfig. A little rpmbuild from my src rpms, and a little editing at /usr/bin/gnome-wm , my compiz is back like it was before.
Due to I'm quite bz with school stuff, I havent updated my packages for quite a while, Leigh@Linux from the fedoraforum looks like have taken over my work, thanx and goodluck Leigh ^-^ .
Compiz fusion thread in fedoraforum
Conclusion
F8T2 might be quite unstable at first, but it getting better as time goes. I'm looking forward for the official release of Fedora 8.
Now , I better get back to my assignments and coursework projects. Until next time.
Status of Compiz Fusion packages submission into Fedora
I noticed Adel Gaddlah ( drago01 ) have submitted several compiz-fusion packages for review in BZ. He already pushed compiz-bcop into rawhide and in the process of getting the fusion plugins reviewed
#253692 Review Request: compiz-fusion - Collection of Compiz Fusion plugins for Compiz
#253693 Review Request: compiz-fusion-extras - Additional Compiz Fusion plugins for Compiz
With this semester seems like its gonna be a busy semester, guess I'll just leave the fedora submission & maintaining to him.. hope the packages will get into fedora before the feature freeze ..
On a sidenote .. i just noticed screenlets now have 0.0.10 release available .. and it now works with Fedora (the older release doesnt work because Fedora's DBUS version was too new for it). I'll package it when I have time.
Future
I'm currently mirroring rawhide into my LAN server and planning to switch from F7 to rawhide when its done. Once compiz-fusion 0.5.2 gets it way into Fedora, i'll drop it from my repository and will start packaging compiz(-fusion) 0.6.0. Compiz 0.6.0 now requires XCB which, if i'm not mistaken, is not available for F7 and earlier.
USB "Key" based authentication using pam_usb in Fedora
What Is pam_usb?
pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary USB Flash Drives.
It works with any application supporting PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module), such as su, any login manager (GDM, KDM), etc. The pam_usb package contains:
http://www.pamusb.org/
So? What does it do?
pam_usb enables you to login to your system using a USB "Key" as a physical authentication device. Ever watched some of those movies where user required to key in some sort of card before logging into the computer? Well, pam_usb allows you to do this on Linux, using your USB drive!.
Getting pam_usb
pam_usb 0.3.3 is available in Fedora repository.
yum install pam_usb pam_usb-hotplug
Setting up Your Computer
1 . Setting up console login to use pam_usb
add this entry to the first line in /etc/pam.d/login
auth sufficient pam_usb.so
2 . Setting up GDM to use pam_usb
add this entry to the first line in /etc/pam.d/gdm
auth sufficient pam_usb.so allow_remote
1 . Setting up su command to use pam_usb
add this entry to the first line in /etc/pam.d/su
auth sufficient pam_usb.so
more details about options can be acquired from the quickstart, located at
file:///usr/share/doc/pam_usb-0.3.3/quickstart.html
Creating your DSA key pair
To enable your USB drive as an authentication device, you will need to generate a set of public and private key which one will reside in the USB device and another in your home folder.
To generate the key, first, make sure your USB drive is mounted, then this command:
usbadm keygen /path/to/usb/mountpoint username keybitseg:
usbadm keygen /media/usbdrive root 1024
Thats it, you're done. Try su-ing to root to test out whether it works or not.
Enabling log for debugging
In case it did not work, you can enable pam_usb logging to find out whats wrong. To enable logging, add log_file=/var/log/pam_usb.log at the end of pam_usb entry in the pam.d files.
eg:
auth sufficient pam_usb.so log_file=/var/log/pam_usb.log
then create an empty log file
touch /var/log/pam_usb.log
done.
Ref:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-305540-highlight-pamusb.html
Wiki , Compiz fusion 20070716git, and package review
It has been 2 weeks+ since I last post. Here goes
Compiz Fusion 20070716git
A little update on the compiz fusion packages:
- fusion-icon is now separated into 3 packages. fusion-icon, fusion-icon-gtk,fusion-icon-qt
- I have included in 20070716git compiz package my rewrite of desktop-effects to make use of compiz's CCP plugin. Desktop-effects menu is back, but might be buggy, I'm quite noobie in coding, help greatly appreciated
New Wiki
Just created a wiki to keep certain stuff in/from this blog more organized http://wiki.kagesenshi.org/. Compiz Fusion's wiki page is here :
http://wiki.kagesenshi.org/moin.fcgi/CategoryPackages/CompizFusion
Compiz Fusion package review
I have submitted Fedora package reviews for libcompizconfig, compizconfig-python, and compiz-bcop in Fedora bugzilla.
compiz-bcop: #247405
libcompizconfig: #247406
compizconfig-python: #247408
and a RFE for compiz : #247409
I havent send the other packages yet, I would like these core packages to pass review first.
Update on Compiz Fusion repository
I have updated the repository just now. A few noticable changes are:
package updated to 20070625 morning's git (I'm @ GMT +8 if that matters)
compiz package is slow splitted into compiz-gnome and compiz-kde
release numbering is changed to follow Fedora Packaging: Naming Guideline
a few bug fixes at the specfiles
IMPORTANT NOTE:
To those who are using 20070622git packages, you will need to remove them manually before upgrading through yum, or it wont work. This is because the change in the release numbering which make yum thinks the the older packages are newer.
To erase them
yum erase \*compiz\*
yum erase \*emerald\*
Installing the new packages
# Install the repository (if you havent)
cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
wget http://repo.kagesenshi.org/pub/kagesenshi.repo
# all compiz fusion packages (GNOME and KDE)
yum install compiz
# compiz fusion and emerald (for GNOME)
yum install compiz-gnome
# compiz fusion and KDE window decorator (for KDE)
yum install compiz-kde
Enjoy~
Original Post : Compiz Fusion Repository for Fedora 7
Compiz Fusion repository for Fedora 7
This post is obsolete ( Its hard to keep this page updated, so I created a wiki page for it :P ). Latest & updated guide can be acquired from my wiki page
http://wiki.kagesenshi.org/moin.fcgi/CategoryPackages/CompizFusion
At last ... I have finished the Compiz Fusion packages for Fedora 7 .. now for the grand announcement :D
Repository Location
Repository URL:
http://devel.foss.org.my/~kagesenshi/repo/pub/
Repository YUM Config File:
http://devel.foss.org.my/~kagesenshi/repo/pub/kagesenshi.repo
The repository is hosted in a limited bandwidth shared hosting which I have for playing around with Django. Please dont abuse it. I couldnt afford larger hosting because I'm still a (jobless) student and currency exchange between MYR and USD is kindof too high for me.
Provided Packages
compiz
compiz-all
compiz-gnome
compiz-kde
compiz-devel
compiz-fusion-plugins-main
compiz-fusion-plugins-main-devel
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra
fusion-icon
compiz-bcop
compizconfig-python
compizconfig-python-devel
compizconfig-settings-manager
libcompizconfig-devel
libcompizconfig
emerald
emerald-devel
Edit Updated to follow 20070630git packages
The compiz packages are based on Fedora 7's compiz specfiles and added together with bits and pieces from Fedora beryl packages. The package sets are similar to beryl's. I dont have any KDE specific builds mainly because I don't use KDE and not familiar with beryl/compiz's KDE packages.
* NOTE: the compiz packages will obsolete Fedora 7's compiz-0.3.6 packages.
* Other Credits: the naming and description of some of the packages are taken from Trevino's Ubuntu Compiz repository
Some descriptions of common packages
compiz
compiz-all
- a meta package that will install all compiz packages from this repository
compiz-gnome
- a package that provide gtk-window-decoratorand install compiz-core, compiz-fusion-plugins-main, emerald, emerald-themes and compizconfig-settings-manager
compiz-kde
- a package that provide kde-window-decoratorand install compiz-core, compiz-fusion-plugins-main and compizconfig-settings-managercompiz-core
compiz
- contains the core compiz files
compiz-fusion-plugins-main
- main plugins for compiz fusion ( cube, animation, expo, negative, opacify, scale, wall , etc)
compiz-fusion-plugins-extras
- extra plugins for compiz fusion ( addhelper, benchmark, cube reflection, firepaint, etc)
emerald
- a themable window decorator for compiz
compizconfig-settings-manager
- a GTK UI for configuring compiz fusion and its plugins
Edit: changed guide to follow GNOME KDE splitted packages
Edit Updated to follow 20070630git packages
Installation Instructions
As root, just follow these simple commands
# Install the repository
cd /etc/yum.repos.d/wget http://repo.kagesenshi.org/pub/kagesenshi.repo
wget http://devel.foss.org.my/~kagesenshi/repo/pub/kagesenshi.repo
# all compiz core packages (GNOME and KDE)yum install compiz
yum install compiz-all
# compiz and GTK window decorator (for GNOME)
yum install compiz-gnome
# compiz and KDE window decorator (for KDE)
yum install compiz-kde
Edit: changed guide to follow GNOME KDE splitted packages
Edit Updated to follow 20070630git packages
After this step, you'll have
yum install compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra
and if you want Emerald decorator
yum install emerald
Launching Compiz Fusion
The most convenient way to launch Compiz Fusion for now is by using its tray icon (similar to beryl-manager), called fusion-icon
yum install fusion-icon
fusion-icon &
* Theres also a launcher for it in the system menu . Located at Applications > System Tools > Fusion Icon
OpenCompositing.org forum have a post on commands to launch Compiz here -> http://forums.opencompositing.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=758#p6439
If you have an Intel or an ATi Radeon card (using AIGLX or the radeon driver):LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 compiz --replace --indirect-rendering --sm-disable ccp &If you are using the FGLRX driver:LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa compiz --replace --sm-disable ccp &If you are using NVidia:compiz --replace ccp &
yum install compiz-icon
compiz-icon &
# launching compiz-manager
compiz-manager &
Edit Updated to follow 20070630git packages
Conclusion
For technical support related to compiz itself, please goto OpenCompositing Forum at http://forums.opencompositing.org/ and ask there. I will only attend problems related to my packaging.
If you want a more bleeding edge build, read the tutorial on how to compile from source here -> http://forums.opencompositing.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=758
Enjoy~ :D
Compiz Fusion is here
The merge of compiz and beryl have already created an offspring
Introducing Compiz Fusion
http://youtube.com/watch?v=E4Fbk52Mk1w
If you want to try it out, follow this guide to compile it on your system
http://forums.opencompositing.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=758
For Ubuntu users, checkout Trevino's repository http://3v1n0.tuxfamily.org/dists/feisty/eyecandy/
For Fedorans, theres no Fedora packages for Fusion for now .. So, follow the from-source guide above. However, fear not , I am putting up together the pieces into a YUM repository. Currently I'm in the process of building them properly in Mock and making sure no Errors appear on rpmlint. I will announce it when I have satisfied with the packages.
VMXGenerator.py : Python program to generate VMware configuration
Ok, I'm bored during this holidays ..
While surfing around and playing with Xen and VMWare, I stumbled upon this http://sanbarrow.com/vmxbuilder.html and saw a DOS Shell script to generate VMX. The crazy me took over, I started converting the script to Python~ :P. I have reimplemented most of the basic functionalities of the script in Python classes. Below is the script.
vmxgenerator.py
If youre interested to improve it, Sanbarrow.com provides lots of useful docs related to VMX parameters here - http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html
Setting up ADSL connection, the Fedora way
Some users might not notice that Fedora have a very easy to use GUI for setting up ADSL and other network connections. The tool is integrated together with Fedora/RH system-config utility called system-config-network. This howto will show you how to set-up a PPPoE/ADSL connection using it.
Starting Up system-config-network
If you are using GNOME, the menu for it is located at
System > Administration > Network
Okay, the interface is somewhat looks complicated. I was a little bit lost too when I first time using it. But after knowing that the tool support lots of other advanced network capabilities (like multiple IP per device, IPsec, VPN, etc), I accepted the UI is the best that way.
Creating a PPPoE/ADSL connection
To create a new PPPoE connection, click the New button and this window will appear. Select xDSL Connection.
Follow through the instructions and fill the forms. For the Ethernet Device entry, select the device that connected to your ADSL Modem.
Click Apply
Done