Identi.ca

Wow. Seems like a large horde of people in Planet Fedora are jumping ship from Twitter to Identi.ca.

While I do have a twitter account, but I'm not that active. Anyway, guess I'll jump to the identi.ca bandwagon too in the spirit of supporting FOSS : http://identi.ca/kagesenshi.

/me anxiously wait for desktop integration (twitux, or similar), and phone based client (jtwitter or similar).

Symbian going FOSS?

Noticed this from an aggregated post in Planet Fedora by Adam Jackson - Symbian Foundation.

The Symbian Foundation will provide, manage and unify the platform for its members. Also, it will commit to moving the platform to open source during the next two years, with the intent to use the Eclipse Public License.

Pressure from Google Android??. Change of heart??. Anyway, its still a good sign for FOSS world :)

12 YUM Tips and Tricks

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, use

yum 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 through

yum install yum-security

To use this plugin to update your computer to the latest security fixes, just use

yum --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 through

yum 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

Catching up

Catching up on stuff that happened this week:

MAMPU Migrates Malaysian Government Agencies to OpenOffice/ODF

MAMPU Migrates to OpenOffice.org

Hooray to kaeru and OSCC!. This is a great success indeed.

UTP-OSS meetup March 2008

Our little special interest group in my University just held a meetup last friday. We haven't done any meetups for quite a while now and to my surprise, it looks like the number of really interested people have grown a lot. The turnout was approximately 20 people, and I can be sure at least 90% of them used linux in some point of their life and have some clue about OSS world. Compared to our previous big meetup which was mostly attended by uninformed people.

Yondie presented his presentation from the last Ubuntu meetup and I share my experience working with an Inigo and how OSS economics works.

IMO, this meetup was a great success and I hope those who are in UTP-OSS can continue this momentum and help building UTP-OSS reputation among UTP academician as a great knowledge-community.

p/s: wheres our cameraman, da.blindheart???. I want the pictures!!. Upload it somewhere pls. :P

GNU/Linux World Domination for the Wrong Reasons

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3733286

In the same way, you only have to glance at the user forums of major distributions like Fedora or Ubuntu to see that more users are concerned with getting proprietary video drivers installed than with having control of their own computers. After all, the proprietary drivers are available at no cost, just like the ethically free ones, so why not use them, especially when they are technologically more advanced? I've even seen some users castigate Fedora for not providing the proprietary drivers in its repositories.

Never mind that to do so would be against Fedora's policy of including only free software -- with such users, the short term convenience of the technically superior proprietary drivers outweighs the ethos of freedom. Many of the complainers do not even appear to have heard of free software ideals. Nor do they bother listening when those ideals are raised.

Fedora is a strong supporter of software freedom, and it will be for a long time to go. I am a believer of this ideal and this is one of the main reason I love Fedora. Thanks Bruce, for understanding Fedora's stand.

A bunch of CeBIT exhibitors busted for MP3 patent infringement

Something I saw at Fedora Planet from Jeremy Katz's post Who says the mp3 patents aren't enforced?

CeBIT crackdown: 51 exhibitors busted for patent infringement

The word is that 51 different exhibitors got busted at the show for the patent infringement, with 180 law enforcement officers confiscating 68 moving boxes worth of gear. Primary offenses included Meizu-style MP3 / MP4 infringement, along with unregistered CD, DVD-R and DVD playback devices.

Calling all Malaysian Fedora users and contributors

Fedora presence in Malaysia is quite hidden from the general public. Fedora users in Malaysia are everywhere, but hard to find due to most of them being in their own, secluded, microcommunity. A number of small companies, government offices, organizations, have Fedora deployments in them with their own group of users, but they are hard to notice.

Me and my comrades have just created and registered a channel in Freenode.net for our own Malaysian community. Come and join us at #fedora-my @ irc.freenode.net.

We are also planning for a site for Fedora Malaysia in http://fedora.foss.org.my/ but our capacity is limited as all of us are quite busy with out current job. Yes, we are looking for more hands to help making this a reality.

We are quite related to #MyOSS and Ubuntu-My usergroup. Together with FOSS-SM, we work together to spread FOSS love in Malaysia.

All Fedora and Fedora derivatives (RHEL, CentOS, Blag, etc) users are welcomed. I'll be waiting for you. ^-^

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-launcer

The 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.

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

1. To configure yum to save rollback information, add the line tsflags=repackage to /etc/yum.conf.


2. To configure command-line rpm to do the same thing, add the line %_repackage_all_erasures 1 to /etc/rpm/macros.


3. 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.

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.

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.

Getting Compiz Fusion into Fedora | UiTM iHack 2007 Result

Getting Compiz Fusion into Fedora Progress

compiz-bcop ( #247405 ) package passed review a around 2 weeks ago .. but i just noticed today that i need a sponsor to get that package into fedora .... err .... some help ??? .. i'm not familiar with the process..

compiz-bcop, compiz-fusion-plugins-main, libcompizconfig final RPMS are available in my fedorapeople space .. those rpms built nicely on mock and rpmlint at the src rpm is silent ..

http://izhar.fedorapeople.org/



UiTM iHack 2007 Result

Yay~ ... my team won 1st place in Forensic Challenge and 2nd place in Capture the Flag.

My university sent out 2 teams :
Pr0j3ct T4ng0 - My team
Fnord - The other team

Plus, one of our alumni joined as a private team with his friends from other Universities. Team name - Tang0

The game was fun .. though the prizes are not as tempting as last year's iHack competition .. (higher money .. but no gadgets .. perhaps next year iHack committee should find more sponsors .. and btw ... Norton AV is practically useless to us :P )

Several pics from the competition

Heck .. i'm really NOT photogenic ... T_T

UTP Foreva! .. Pr0j3ct T4ng0, Fnord, and Tang0 .. /me 5th from left

Forensics First Place Winner!!!

I was explaining answer of Forensic Challenge flag 6 to Team "UMS Hackers" after the competition

UiTM iHack 2007 Competitors!!

What do we get? .. RM1500 (approx USD431) for winning 1st place in Forensic Challenge. RM 1000 (approx USD287) for winning 2nd place in CtF. Hampers for both. Norton utilities (eek! .. its win32 app, practically useless ). and participation in HiTB SecConf 2007 KL Conference for 3 - for winning 2nd place in CtF (but i'm a volunteer in HiTB, so .. i passed my place to my friend)

Looking forward for iHack 2008 ... ^-^

Good luck to iHack 1st place winners, 3boss.org / Bandar Baru Bangi Open Source Software Group in the HackInTheBox CtF competition .. :D

Compiz Fusion 0.5.2 packages | UiTM iHack 2007 | Hakaze 2ch-Type Forum/BBS Engine

Compiz Fusion 0.5.2 Packages

Its available in the main repo now .. both i386 and x86_64 packages ..

a little sidenote about the packages : 1 primary thing .. its not compatible with compiz 0.5.2 package from rawhide due to the one on rawhide is patched with a patch that forces indirect-rendering .. this, causes Nvidia cards to misbehave and also causes fusion-icon to need a patch to inverse its indirect-rendering option to direct-rendering ..


UiTM iHack Competition

I'm entering this competition tomorrow ... 2 days competition .. 1st day - computer forensic competition , 2nd day - ctf competition ... me and my friends entering both - 2 teams ... Hope we'll get 1st/2nd place with ctf like we did last year ..

http://www.tmsk.uitm.edu.my/~i-hack/ (They call it International Hacking Competition, but i have NO idea whats "international" with it .. perhaps its just yet another "Bolehland" attitude)

Hakaze 2ch-Type Forum/BBS Engine

For the past month i was playing with Django to build a forum engine .. I have released its 0.1.0rc1 release.. Its a 100% anonymous board based on a Japanese forum called 2channel..

GoogleCode page: http://code.google.com/p/kagesenshi-private/wiki/Hakaze
0.1.0rc1 package: http://kagesenshi-private.googlecode.com/files/hakaze-0.1.0rc1.tar.bz2
Demo page: http://devel.kagesenshi.org/hakaze/forums/

Compiz-Fusion just released official tarballs

I just noticed something a few minutes ago ..

Compiz Fusion have released their official tarballs!!!!

http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/compiz-fusion-our-first-release-052/

This is nice ... guess i'll skip doing homeworks for today and tomorrow ... wanna package this thing ... homeworks can wait .. :P

With the release of official tarballs for compiz fusion, i hope i can get it properly submitted into fedora .. (the git packages changes too much.. .thus makes me not confident to send them for review) ..

Off I go ... ~~

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://repo.kagesenshi.org/pub/
http://devel.foss.org.my/~kagesenshi/repo/pub/
Repository YUM Config File: http://repo.kagesenshi.org/pub/kagesenshi.repo
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-decorator and install compiz-core, compiz-fusion-plugins-main, emerald, emerald-themes and compizconfig-settings-manager
compiz-kde
- a package that provide kde-window-decorator and install compiz-core, compiz-fusion-plugins-main and compizconfig-settings-manager
compiz-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 compiz-core, compiz-fusion-plugins-main, emerald, emerald-themes, and compizconfig-settings-manager the core compiz 0.5 from freedesktop.org installed your computer. For Compiz-Fusion, you will require to also yum these.

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

For the time being , there is no exact/convenient way to launch Compiz that I know of (yet).

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 &

Or, you can try out compiz-icon. compiz-icon is an app similar to beryl-manager. However, it does not work in my computer, but maybe you have better luck than me.

yum install compiz-icon
compiz-icon &

compiz-icon package also provide a script called compiz-manager that will do the if-else for the manual launch above, if compiz-icon doesn't work for you, you might have better luck with compiz-manager. However, compiz-mananager does not have any tray icons etc despite the name. It only launches compiz and provides some useful (to some) commandline tools.

# 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.