devnet, Author at Yet Another Linux Blog

Force Firefox to Remember Initial Window Setting in KDE

I have a laptop with the resolution of 1440×900…so when I installed the latest TR6 from PCLinuxOS, I was dismayed to find out that when launching Firefox, it opened up in a window that was 1024 pixels. Of course, I maximized this and then closed it thinking that Firefox would remember my settings. The problem is…it didn’t remember my settings.

When I opened Firefox up again, it popped up to say hello once again at 1024 pixels. Sure, you can right click on the Firefox window bar and drill down into application specific settings via KDE (yes, it’s that configurable) but I didn’t want to have to do this…because if I did, ALL Firefox windows would open up maximized…and that includes any pop-ups as well. I also know that you can drill down even further to fix THAT problem. However, it should ‘just work’ right? You shouldn’t have to change anything at all correct? Well, I’ve found a fix that is pretty easy to accomplish…and I hope it helps the hundreds of people I found when searching through google on this.

Open up Firefox and it will open at the smaller screen size…in my case, it opened up 1024 px in width on my 1440px screen. Then, hover over the top right hand corner with your mouse until you get the resize arrow. Resize the window click dragging it to the top, right hand corner of the screen. It should ‘snap-in’ once you get close to maximized size. Now close the window, and open Firefox again. It should open up fully maximized.

I sure hope this saves someone time…because I spent the better part of a morning trying to fix this.

The Foresight Linux Search Engine

If you’re a Foresight Linux user, there are many resources you have at your disposal for documentation. First and foremost, you have the excellent guide shipped by default in Foresight accessible in the menu…but there are other resources you can search for a resolution to your problems. The Foresight Wiki and Foresight Forum are other areas that can be searched as well as the Foresight Issue Tracking System (FITS). Since Foresight is rPath Linux based, you also have the rPath mailing lists, the rPath wiki and rPath Issue Tracking System (rITS). There is also Planet Conary and Planet Foresight. With all of these resources, I found that I was jumping back and forth quite a bit while searching for information. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but it isn’t efficient.

Taking this into consideration, last year I created a Foresight Linux search engine. (You can bookmark this at http://bit.ly/foresight-search-engine because the Google url is quite long)

This search engine is Google powered and searches the following locations for you:

http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/*
http://foresightlinux.org/*
http://wiki.foresightlinux.org/*
http://issues.foresightlinux.org/*
http://planet.foresightlinux.org/*
http://planet.conary.com/*
http://lists.rpath.com/*
http://forum.foresightlinux.org

The interface is a single search blank that returns results from the aforementioned 8 sites. Google indexes those domains and searches through them for you, making it much easier to find what you’re looking for.

If you’d like to give it a try, you can visit the link above. On the front page of the search engine, you can get code to embed this search engine on any web page or add it to your google homepage as well. Hopefully, this search eninge will come in handy for Foresight Linux users.

Foresight Linux and KDE 4.2

UPDATE: Foresight Linux 2.0.6 has recently updated the stable branch with python 2.6. Therefore, much of this post is not needed to get Foresight KDE 4.2 running. I’ve crossed through the portions not needed. Thanks for reading!

I’ve been working with a lot of different distributions out there the past few days and haven’t found one that I like that has KDE 4.2 packages. Experimenting further brought me back to my old friend Conary and Foresight Linux. For those of you that don’t know what Conary is, I’ve written a Part 1 (I never finished Part 2 as I changed jobs and haven’t found the motivation) on what Conary attempts to accomplish and a bit of background on how it does things.

When I think of Foresight and rPath Linux along with Conary, I come to a direct comparison to Arch Linux…because pacman is quite similar. The main difference is that Foresight does a lot more for you out of the gate than Arch does…and arch is quite a bit faster than Foresight. Still, I decided to give KDE 4.2 a go on Foresight to see how it’s been progressing.

The first thing I needed to do was to change from the 2 branch of Foresight to the 2-qa branch. The reason for this is that 2-qa houses python 2.6, which is needed for KDE 4.2. Until python 2.6 is pushed into the stable branch of Foresight, you’ll need to move your installation to the 2-qa branch. First, using your favorite text editor, edit /etc/conary/config.d/foresight file. Inside that file, you’ll see next to the line InstallLabelPath the following:

installLabelPath foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-kernel  foresight.rpath.org@fl:2 conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa

change this to the following:

installLabelPath foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-qa-kernel  foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-qa conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa

or you can substitute 2-devel there if you’d like to move to the 2-devel branch:

installLabelPath foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel-kernel  foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa

Now, let’s migrate the system. Migration to a different branch will result in moving your system to become EXACTLY like the branch you’re migrating to. That means that any custom applications you have installed may be removed…conary will make your system become EXACTLY what 2-qa says it should. This is the reason I recommend performing these tasks with a fresh install before customizing.

Change with the following command:

sudo conary migrate group-gnome-dist=@fl:2-qa --keep-required --resolve

Don’t worry, 2-qa is not as unstable as it sounds…the most unstable branch of Foresight is 2-devel. To compare these branches to Debian, 2-qa is like testing while 2-devel is like unstable.

I installed Foresight Linux 2.0.6 Gnome using a DVD on a Dell D630 Latitude. Next, I like to uninstall the stuff that is extra in Gnome that I don’t use (you could say, I strongly do not like these):

sudo conary erase transmission f-spot evolution evolution-exchange tomboy banshee

With those packages out of the way, I did a full update.

sudo conary updateall

Some early Foresight 2.0.6 kernels cause random disconnects for my wireless chipset on the Dell Latitude D630 (Intel Pro Wireless) but after the upgrade this symptom isn’t present. The default 2.6.27.5 kernel made way for the 2.6.27.10 and it seems to work for me quite nicely. I did notice that the 2.6.27.10 kernel had some sound abnormalities for me with the Intel HDA sound card…so I rolled back to the 2.6.27.5 and things worked great. See this issue for more information on this sound issue.

Now we have a completely “useable” Gnome system on our hands…but we can’t have that unusable system now can we? (easy Gnome supporters…tis only a joke). Let us get a real desktop like openbo…er…KDE on there! Before I got too far though, I wanted to make sure I could play mp3’s and other restricted format items so I installed the codecs needed:

sudo conary update group-codecs

Once this has finished, let’s get KDE 4.2 up and running.

sudo conary update group-kde4=kde.rpath.org@fl:2-kde4.2-devel

Once that command has completed, you should be able to logout and log back in to KDE 4.2. The most recent builds of KDE 4.2 include python 2.6…something that Foresight Linux has been slow on the uptake with due to conary being written in python. I’m still working on testing everything…I’m not sure how well this newest build works. Look for a status update in a few days on this…

Dear Lazyweb, Microsoft Laser Mouse

I was shopping around for a mouse for gaming. After reading the reviews, I found that I wanted to give the Microsoft Sidewinder x8 a try (previously had a Logitech G5 that broke). It works great in Windows, which I dual boot on my gaming machine. However, when I try to use it in Linux…it doesn’t operate at all. (2.6.26 kernel)

Googling around hasn’t turned up much at all…so I figured I’d ask here. So…here goes:

Dear lazyweb, has anyone gotten the Sidewinder x8 or x5 laser mouse to work in Linux and if so, can you point me in the right direction in the comments?

Install the Latest Kernel in PCLinuxOS

Do you run PCLinuxOS 2007 or Minime 2008 and would you like to take advantage of the latest kernel for PCLinuxOS? You can do this by enabling the ‘testing’ portion of the repository.

Read about Repository Control in PCLinuxOS

You’ll be looking for the ‘sections’ blank when viewing repository details and you’ll just need to add ‘testing’ to the end of the line (don’t replace the entires there already). Once that is done, click the reload button in Synaptic and allow it to refresh your local rpm cache.

Click the ‘search’ button and search for the keyword ‘kernel’. Look for the highest number of kernel that is returned. At the time of this writing, the 2.6.26.8 kernel was the newest kernel for PCLinuxOS (it has .27 patches all over in it…so it’s quite a nice kernel). Click and install that kernel and allow it to select any packages it needs to install. Once installed, you can remove the word testing from the repository (this is recommended to prevent your system from downloading ALL testing packages/updates) and click the reload button for Synaptic.

Reboot and choose the new kernel on your grub menu. Test things to see how they work. If everything is good to go, congratulations! You’ve just installed the latest kernel in PCLinuxOS.

To make this kernel the default one, you can use the PCLinuxOS Control Center and Change the Way the System Boots. I’ll cover this in a later post. Hope this helps a few of you out there. I know it is often asked on IRC.

Host Your Own Domain and Webserver

This article is from 2006! The information here may not be the most current. You can visit an updated version here!

Doesn’t sound like anything new right? Well, some people may not know of this method.

Normally, to host your own webpage you would need to spend around 7 bucks to purchase a domain. Next you would need a hosting plan that usually runs around 3-15 dollars per month to serve up your web pages.

What most don’t realize is that you can skip these steps all together…you don’t need to get dedicated Windows or Linux Hosting (this blog is hosted on dedicated hosting…but started out in my apartment!) to serve pages up to your friends and family. You absolutely do not need to get domain name services through a provider. You can even host your own webserver using a dialup connection (that’s right…I said dialup) although. I don’t recommend it (but I’ve done it using 56.6kbps).

Why would you want to do this? My reply…to stay connected to friends and family…perhaps throw up a gallery so that your grandparents can see pics of your new dog/car/tinfoil hat. Sure, you could waste my time with MyWaste..er..space and be barraged daily by advertisers and solicitors…or you could roll your own web host, install a gallery or website, and provide media to your friends and family without costing yourself a dime. That’s right, NO COST (except time spent getting it running). Just remember, your website might not survive a digging or slashdotting if you run it yourself. Keep that in mind 🙂 So without more chatter, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of things:

Do you cringe at the thought of buying a domain and putting up with the headache of trying to make sure your IP address is up to date with your domain? Do you hate the 40 dollars you spend on DNS service each year to resolve your IP address to your hostname? Read on and learn the the flat-broke-and-busted way of maintaining a fixed hostname for your IP…even if you have dialup.

I’ll divide this up into 2 sections. The first will deal with Linux. The second, Windows. This is only something that I’ve found easy to do and the price is just right (it’s free). The only thing that I recommend is a dedicated internet connection (cable, DSL) but even this is not necessary as dialup can be used. I recommend that you use the Linux way of doing things since it is more secure and doesn’t require a restart every time you patch it.

*note: I’m assuming that you aren’t behind a firewall/proxy of any kind and that your ISP doesn’t block port 80 traffic. If your ISP blocks port 80, see the appendix at the end of this article.

LINUX

No matter what version of Linux you run, chances are that you’ll be able to install the apache webserver. This is good news as over half the websites of the world are run by the extremely efficient and speedy apache. I’m not going to address the specifics of how to set up your website…only how to get it a fixed address without buying a domain. So, you have your pages dropped into your webservers public directory…good. Now, how to resolve your IP…lets say it is…25.24.4.166 (for our example) and you want it to have a host.name.com to bind to. Easy to resolve. Go to http://www.no-ip.com/index.ph p and sign up. You can get a site from noip that is like yourname.theirdomain.com/.net/.info. They have cool names like sytes.net and servebeer.org…even workisboring.com

You’ll be able to choose your own top level name…for instance, Ithink.dnsiskinky.com could be your new domain name. Next download a client from the download tab: https://www.no-ip.com/downloads.php

The linux client is a tar.gz source and is simple to install. Follow the instructions when installing. You may have to install compilation tools (devel packages like GCC) to install the client. You now are the proud owner of yoursite.theirsite.com and your IP will ALWAYS update (as long as noip.com is up) each time you log on/sign on/beam up or whatever it is you do.

How does this help you? Well, if you’re like me, you have a dynamic IP address. If you connect to the internet via cable, dialup, or dsl…you also have a dynamic IP address. Dynamic means that it will change from time to time without warning. So by binding yoursite.theirsite.com to your IP address…you don’t ever have to worry about what IP address you have anymore. Instead, you’ll always be able to connect using yoursite.theirsite.com. You can host a webserver using Apache and a virtual host (also known as a Virtual Private server or VPS Hosting) in this style as well (look for another how-to on this subject later) so that everyone can visit a shiny website at yoursite.theirsite.com.

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