YJL

Since today's Friday the 13th, I felt an obligation to install Fedora 13, why? Because the abbreviation of Fedora 13 is F13! How was it going? Not good, I finished installing the first stage, I saw the first boot but it just hanged there. Might be input devices issue?

Then, I downloaded the Kubuntu 10.10 Alpha 3. Why Kubuntu? Because I want to try the KDE 4.5, though it has only 4.5 RC (4.5 official release is out few days ago). Still no luck.

Just two failures. You can't beat me that easy!

I tried Haiku alpha 2, oh BeOS! After its beautiful booting screen, it went blank. Moved on.

ReactOS 0.3.11 was next. I wondered if it has same login sound effect? It went very well and fast, the whole installation process was taken less than 5 minutes. Reboot, well, I got GRUB recuse prompt, which was from Kubuntu install. How would that be possible? I thought ReactOS override MBR?

So, four failures, so far. I wasn't done yet.

Next, Arch Hurd LiveCD 2010-06-05, I wanted to try GNU/Hurd. I couldn't pass Install System.

Okay, that's five failures. I have enough.

Friday the 13th is meant to make you fail. (or die?)

Are you expecting Fedora 12?

while [ 1 ]; do wget -q http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora -O - | grep -q "f12" - && notify-send -u critical 'Hooray! Fedora 12 is available!' && break ; sleep 10m ; done

Get notified!

Fedora 11 is not yet released (2009-05-26), but there is already something moving behind the scene.

Here is a list of packages that tagged with dist-f12: kernel, fedora-release, gnome-commender. So far there is no detail information on release schedule.

In fedora-mingw mailing list there are two threads about Fedora 12:

• Fedora 12: Let's think of a better name for the project
• Fedora 12: What projects for F12?

Now it's too early to tell about Fedora 12.

I created a new blog on WordPress.com, then I felt the dashboard is really really slow. I hoped the Google Gears can improve speed a lot.

$ svn checkout http://gears.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gears-read-only
$ cd gears-read-only

There is an patch in this comment. However this patch would not work with more efforts, because it still use the Gecko comes with repository and that Gecko in subversion has 32-bit binary stuff, we need the 64-bit binary of Gecko (aka. XULRunner), you can install it on Fedora using yum install xulrunner-devel.x86_64.

My patch for r3234 (include exact same patch from that comment and comment out line 1195 of gears/tools/rules.mk) for Fedora 10 x86_64 can be downloaded in my comment on that issue.

You can patch by running

patch -p0 < r3234-64bit.patch

Copying 64-bit binary

Starting building process by running

cd gears
make BROWSER=FF3

The process will be stopped with the following error message:

/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible ../third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/lib/libxpcom.so when searching for -lxpcom
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lxpcom
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [bin-opt/linux-x86_64/ff3/libgears.so] Error 1
make: *** [default] Error 2
 [ 2 ] livibetter@dfed ~/var/src/gea/gears > file ../third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/lib/libxpcom.so 
../third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/lib/libxpcom.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, not stripped

Now we need to do the follows:

cp /usr/lib64/xulrunner-sdk-1.9/sdk/lib/libxpcom.so ../third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/lib/libxpcom.so
cp /usr/lib64/xulrunner-sdk-1.9/sdk/lib/libxpcomglue_s.a ../third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/lib/libxpcomglue_s.a
cp /usr/lib64/xulrunner-sdk-1.9/sdk/lib/libxul.so ../third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/lib/libxul.so
cp /usr/lib64/xulrunner-1.9/xpt_link ../third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/bin/xpt_link
chmod +x ../third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/bin/xpt_link

Build again, you should have no problem this time.


Packing can be done by running

make installers

The XPI should be generated under gears/bin-opt/installers.

You can download it here.


There are few demos that you can try out. I got no errors when ran them.

A day ago, I downloaded Opera 9.63/10a to give them a try within GNOME Desktop Environment. I then found out Compose Key and iBus didn't work. Opera now still only ships Qt3 for x86_64, there is Qt4 Opera. iBus has no problems with Qt4 applications. If you have Qt3 programs, you need to run by

XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus QT_IM_MODULE=xim qt3_program

About Compose/Dead Keys, you need to run by

XMODIFIERS= QT_IM_MODULE= qt_program

In fact, if the program is Qt3, then you only need QT_IM_MODULE=.

There is one thing you should be careful to claim if Compose/Dead Keys works or not. If you want to get é,

• In KDE, you can only compose as follows: [compose]+[']+[e]
• In GNOME, not only the sequence above, but also: [compose]+[e]+[']

Make sure you use correct sequence to test Qt applications.

However, I can not make both worked together, either I have iBus or have Compose key. I could only have one working in both Qt3 and Qt4 programs.

PS. If you are not sure what version of Qt is using, just check up HelpAbout [Program's Name], that will tell you what version of Qt it is using.

---

• 2009-01-22 Fixed QT->Qt
  

I am reading this thread on FedoraForum, it's too funny to ignore. I picked up few and shared here in order of how I like:

1. Fedora: to boldly break things that no one has broken before. posted by Shivas
2. Fedora: To boldly go where no Penguin has gone before. Zigzagcom
3. Fedora: Hold On to Your Hat, It Might Be A Bumpy Ride. Hlingler
4. Fedora: Get in, buckle up, hold on and shut up. Dan
   

I believe that they were inspired by Why is Fedora always seem to be broken? and I agreed with them, but I am still a Fedora user.

I thought I needed to do some tricks in order to put them all together, but it turns out none is needed. The following is cited from README:

Installing multiple versions
----------------------------

On Unix and Mac systems if you intend to install multiple versions of Python
using the same installation prefix (--prefix argument to the configure
script) you must take care that your primary python executable is not
overwritten by the installation of a different versio.  All files and
directories installed using "make altinstall" contain the major and minor
version and can thus live side-by-side.  "make install" also creates
${prefix}/bin/python which refers to ${prefix}/bin/pythonX.Y.  If you intend
to install multiple versions using the same prefix you must decide which
version (if any) is your "primary" version.  Install that version using
"make install".  Install all other versions using "make altinstall".

For example, if you want to install Python 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 with 2.6 being
the primary version, you would execute "make install" in your 2.6 build
directory and "make altinstall" in the others.

All I did is:

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
su -c "make altinstall"

for both Python 2.6.1 and Python 3.0.

Since Python 3.0 is compatible with current any Python programs, never make install Python 3.0 unless you are 100% sure your system doesn't use Python scripts for system maintenance. On Fedora, Yum is very important Python script. If you have done, rpm and Koji are your savers.

As you can see on Koji, Python 2.6 seems to be the primary version on Fedora 11.

When I make 2.6, there are few bits missing:

Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
bsddb185           dl                 imageop
sunaudiodev
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for the module's name.

After checked the setup.py, I think they are not necessary on my system.

If you were an ex-Ubuntu user, you should have already seen these:

username@hostname ~ > yum update
You need to be root to perform this command.
username@hostname ~ > sudo yum update
[sudo] password for username:
username is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.

And you can read that incident in /var/log/secure:

Dec  8 11:11:11 hostname sudo: username : user NOT in sudoers ; TTY=pts/3 ; PWD=/home/username ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/yum update

It's easy to turn on sudo support on Fedora. Run this command as root

visudo

The default editor is vi, if you don't like it you can run

EDITOR=myeditorcommand visudo

If you are not familiar with vi, you better run

EDITOR=gedit visudo

Once opening, find

root    ALL=(ALL)   ALL

and append

username  ALL=(ALL)   ALL

Save it and exit your editor. Do not try to directly edit /etc/sudoers, that won't work.

A successful sudo'd reads like in log:

Dec  8 11:22:33 hostname sudo: username : TTY=pts/3 ; PWD=/home/username ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/yum update

xsnow

Follow the instruction to download and to install. You need to turn off desktop icon. Open gconf-editor, uncheck show_desktop under /apps/nautilus/preferences.


Snow plugin of Compiz Fusion

The Compiz Fusion from official repo does not have Snow plugin. So install compiz-fusion from non-official repo.

Before you can use this plugin, you need a snow image, download the snowflakes or mine. In CompizConfig Settings Manager, type snow to search for snow plugin. Enable it and add images under Textures tab. Press Super+F3 to enjoy!

This is my new blog for exclusively writing about GNU/Linux  more precisely the Fedora distribution since I use Fedora day by day. My first working distribution is Fedora Core 2 or 3, then I left animal planet for a while. I was back on Fedora Core 6. I have used Arch Linux and Ubuntu for months, but they didn't taste good. I think Fedora is right distribution for me, even though I still have some complaints about it.

Anyway, because of Fedora, I named this blog with it. But, the posts on this blog will not only be for Fedora, they are suitable to other distributions in some degree. I will post things caught my eyes, so this blog is not a comprehensive blog for GNU/Linux or Fedora. This is a personal blog with own notes and experiences.

About the header image, I use this Tux and this Fedora. You can download the final GIMP format file.

Hope you would like this blog and give me some comments!

I read this Howto about WordGrinder. I give it a try, it's easy to compile, just need a little change. You will need:







Then run ./pm install to install, I got an error from linker:





I do install lua, but the name isn't right for Fedora. So, I opened the pmfile for "lua5.1", it's at line 215 in the version 0.3.2. I changed it to "lua". Now, I have WordGrinder.



But there is a problem, I couldn't make text italic or underlined, maybe I don't know how to use that? Anyway, here is a screenshot of what I get from WordGrinder and exported HTML result:





By the way, it also provides binary package for Windows users!



Updated: I got it! RTFM! wordgrinder README.wg. You can press CTRL+SPACE to enter selecting mode, then press CTRL+I to italicize the text.

I have upgraded to Fedora 10 with DVD. Honesty, I don't feel many changes. The booting process has a little bit different. It's now always in graphical mode but still the same text-mode message (I don't use RHGB), that looks great. The logging-in sound is different.



The problems I have:

• If enable gcin (an input method editor) in IM Chooser, system will extremely slow response.
  
  


• Woopra client doesn't run well, it hangs. Could be a Java problem.


• Flash (64 Bit) doesn't render well.


• Saw a message "Could not detect stabilization, waiting 10 seconds." at booting, not sure what does that mean. After searched, I got this thread.
  
  


• Amarok is 1.94, but UI has big problem and it can't play.
  
  

I ran yum to check if there is updates and hoped they would fix the problems above. I need to disable few repos, e.g. freshrpms and jpackage. Right now, I have 143 updates about 203 MB. After updated, those problems remain.



I am trying to resolve:

• freshrpms is ready for Fedora 10.
  
  

Updated on 2008-11-27



After a day, I still didn't see anyone has same problems as I have. I decided to do a fresh installation, yea, I don't have much patience. I think all problems are caused by very fundamental thing but I don't know what it is.



Post closed.

I followed my own steps to set up wdaemon for my Intuos 3 on Fedora 9, but I can't even start X server. The log said the InputDevice's Type is incorrect. The Type should be one of stylus, eraser, pen and pad, but it already is one of them. I guess this may be an problem with X.org 1.5?



I don't want to compile latest source, so I found a newer package on Koji, 0.8.0.3-2-fc10. Upgraded with this version, the problem is gone.

Yes, I am back on Fedora 9. Is something wrong with Ubuntu? Nope, just an idiot Linux user run a script without care. I partially nuked the first part of /dev/sda. My home parition is at last of disk. Actually, I have no idea what the script will do.  That script didn't at first, I then ran with sudo. When I checked the script, I saw dd, I was wondering doesn't this script is to analyse my files (No, it's not), but I still run with sudo. I wasn't aware of what would be done on my disk when I just ran.



Few minutes later, I feel strange why took so long? I read the article for the first time, then imediately switched to terminal and press CTRL+C. At that moment, I only laughed at what I did. I know I got to save my files, those in home dir. I know I can't reboot, or plug this disk to other computer. The very first portion of this disk had just completely wiped out. Partition table is gone. I need to take time when I still can access the disk.



I plugged a USB harddisk, no luck; tried the DVD drive, still no luck. I don't dare to close the terminal which I used to nuke my disk. Almost all programs in /usr/bin were gone. mount was gone. So I think saving via network is possible the only thing I can try since I still can tweet and use Firefox to check emails. Luckily, I have rsync. So I copied my home dir to another computer. However, I didn't copy those configuration files because the command I gave is not complete. But I can accept the loss, it's better than nothing saved.



Then, I think should I install Ubuntu again, or go back to Fedora? I chose going back. Now Fedora is updating, downloading really takes long long time.