Tag Archive for 'fedora'

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Samsung R480 laptop LCD brightness

Published on 10 July, 2010 in FOSS. 1 Comment Tags: brightness, fedora, laptop, lcd, nvidia, r480, samsung.

Mendy got a Samsung R480 laptop but screen brightness did not work properly. Using KDE’s brightness slider caused the screen to flicker horribly and once you let go, it’s too dark. GNOME’s just doesn’t work at all.

After a suspend and resume with the Nouveau driver, the slider works properly, but only goes to half brightness at the maximum setting. It was possible to set the brightness manually via:
echo -n 60 > /proc/acpi/video/NVID/LCD/brightness

That was not suitable. So I switched to the NVIDIA driver, but the laptop brightness was immutable until I discovered a post with the solution. Simply adding the following to the Device section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf lets KDE control the brightness correctly, and perfectly. Great!
Section "Device" Identifier "Videocard0" Driver "nvidia" Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1" Option "UseEdidDpi" "false" Option "DPI" "96 x 96" EndSection

I also added the DPI option above to get 96×96 as some text was too large after switching to the NVIDIA driver. Fedora still suspends and resumes and everything is just perfect!

Getting full 32-bit support in 64-bit Fedora

Published on 15 January, 2010 in Fedora and FOSS. 0 Comments Tags: 32, 64, bit, fedora.

Is as easy as installing the 32bit version of Red Hat’s Linux Standard Base (LSB) package:
yum install redhat-lsb.i686

Fedora minimal install

Published on 5 January, 2010 in Fedora and FOSS. 6 Comments Tags: base, basic, fedora, install, minimal, text.

To get a basic, command line only, base packages install of Fedora, simply add “text” to the installer’s kernel line at boot.

This will then install around 200 base packages and give a small, clean, lean system. From here you can install whatever package or group you like to built it up to something you want.

See here for more options for Anaconda, the Fedora installer.

Update: Alternatively, select “Customize now” during the standard installation process and un-tick everything (yes, ALL package groups even the Base group!). This will then also install the same 200 base packages for a minimal system, but has the added benefit of providing the graphical installer. Use the netinstaller to reduce your initial download.

When Compiz won’t start..

Published on 23 December, 2009 in Fedora and FOSS. 0 Comments Tags: compiz, fedora, gconf.

So now that you know how to get Compiz working properly, what do you do if it still refuses to enable itself via the “Desktop Effects” program?

Justin had this exact problem on his machine. It appears that the compiz-gtk script wouldn’t start and my theory was that it’s unable to replace Metacity (for some reason).

So I fixed this by editing his gconf file directly
sed -i 's/metacity/compiz-gtk/' \ .gconf/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/%gconf.xml

This means that Metacity is never loaded to begin with, instead calling compiz-gtk to do its magic.

This is exactly what is set after successfully enabling Compiz via the “Desktop Effects” program, so we’re just bypassing whatever problem was stopping it from being enabled (like I said, I think it was unable to replace Metacity).

If you have the same problem, try this fix. If it can’t start Compiz it will safely revert to Metacity.

-c

Fedora 12 and Compiz (Settings Manager)

Published on 23 December, 2009 in Fedora and FOSS. 1 Comment Tags: ccp, compiz, fedora, gconf, gnome, nvidia.

Fedora uses the older method of enabling Compiz, via the gconf plugin.

The “Desktop Effects” program under System -> Preferences runs the /usr/bin/compiz-gtk script (part of the compiz-gnome package) to enable Compiz, or fall back to Metacity (GNOME’s window manager).

gconf backend
The compiz-gtk script executes the command:
compiz --ignore-desktop-hints glib gconf gnomecompat

On systems here (with NVIDIA cards at least), the gconf backend package was not installed. This means that even though NVIDIA and 3D is all working, Compiz won’t start. So, installing the required gconf backend package should make it all work.

su -c 'yum -y install compizconfig-backend-gconf'

Now try again.

ccp backend
Upstream however, Compiz has moved away from gconf and is using libcompizconfig (ccp) and the CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm) to handle settings.

Installing the ccsm package under Fedora and changing Compiz settings using the graphical manager (CompizConfig Settings Manager) results in none of those taking effect.

This is because the compiz-gtk script is not loading the ccp module. So the workaround is to install ccsm and then modify the script to replace gconf with ccp.

su -c "sed -i 's/gconf/ccp/' /usr/bin/compiz-gtk"

Now try again.

Keep in mind that updated versions of the compiz-gnome package may overwrite this file, so you’ll need to edit it again in future if this happens.

Does your Mac have 64bit EFI?

Published on 22 December, 2009 in Fedora, FOSS and Tech. 7 Comments Tags: efi, fedora, mac, mbr.

Update: Actually, you might be able to install 64bit Linux on a Mac with 32bit EFI by including the “fakebios” GRUB2 option. I’ve updated the grub-efi tarball to include this and it works on my Mac Pro. Thanks to Martijn Broeders for this.

To install 64bit Linux onto a Mac using only EFI (and not MBR emulation) then your Mac must have a 64bit EFI. Run the following under OS X to discover whether you have 64bit or only 32bit:
ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

This should return something like:
| | "firmware-abi" = <"EFI32">

If you see “EFI32” like I do, then it means your machine can’t execute 64bit EFI loaders, so you’re stuck with 32bit, d’oh!. If you see “EFI64” then you should be able to install native 64bit Linux using EFI only, yay!

I discovered this while trying to load 64bit only my Mac Pro at work as an alternative to running Linux with multiple drives and MBR (which doesn’t really work)

This is why the 64bit Fedora efidisk.img never worked on my Mac, but the 32bit one does.

-c

Linux and X.Org multitouch support

Published on 21 December, 2009 in Fedora and FOSS. 0 Comments Tags: fedora, multitouch, screen, touch, x, x.org.

With X.Org 7.5, multitouch support under Linux has finally arrived and appears to be working very well. There’s a new video showing it off, along with instructions on how to get it going (most of it works out of the box on Fedora 12).

-c

Script for configuring ClamAV server on Fedora

Published on 17 December, 2009 in Fedora and FOSS. 10 Comments Tags: bash, clamav, fedora, script, server.

In short, I’ve written a bash script (available from github) for configuring and removing instances of clamav-server on Fedora. It lets you create and remove individual instances with a specific user and port (if you specify them) and will install the required packages if not already present on the system.

In long, we use Clam AntiVirus as our antivirus protection for Digital Preservation Recorder and talk to it over the default port, 3310.

Installing the clamav-server package under Fedora however, doesn’t actually set up an instance. In fact, it doesn’t copy any system configuration files into place at all. This means that the system is left without any working ClamAV server out of the box.

Under Fedora, ClamAV server is configured on a per user basis. This is actually quite important (unless you run as root) because the daemon needs at minimum read access (and we’ve found also write) on the files/directory being passed for scanning.

The instructions on how to configure it are located under /usr/share/doc/clamav-server-[version]/ but I have taken these instructions and written a bash script to configure all of this for you.

The script is available from github. It can create or remove an individual instance of clamav-server using a specific username and port (if you want to specify them, else it defaults to clamav on port 3310). The script will also install any required packages, if you don’t already have them on the system.

Hopefully this is useful to someone else out there and not just us If you find any bugs feel free to let me know.

Fedora 12 and NVIDIA driver

Published on 10 December, 2009 in Fedora and FOSS. 0 Comments Tags: 12, driver, fedora, nvidia.

Matt has a post over on his blog about how to get the NVIDIA driver working under Fedora 12. I currently use the Nouveau driver, but I’m sure it’ll come in handy in the future. Thanks Matt!

It wasn’t as straight forward as it _should_ have been, as apparently there is a bug in the current (at time of writing) version of Xorg, which causes X to run really slow.

I’m not convinced that it’s a bug in X.org, sounds like a problem caused by the NVIDIA driver. If only it were open source..

-c

How to triple boot Mac Pro with OS X, Fedora, Windows

Published on 2 December, 2009 in Fedora and FOSS. 59 Comments Tags: boot, efi, fedora, gpt, intel, Linux, mac, mbr, os x, osx, triple, Windows.

Here are some step by step instructions on how to triple boot a Mac Pro (and I guess any Intel based Mac) with OS X (Snow Leopard), Fedora 12 and Windows XP. I ran into trouble because of the Fedora 12 installer being clever and setting my Fedora partition to be bootable, which didn’t play nice with the MBR table and Windows.

Firstly, the Mac Pro I am using has a 500GB SATA drive, so the partition sizes that I choose reflect that fact. Your machine might be different, so adjust accordingly.

Step 1
Install OS X on single partition using the whole drive (insert DVD and boot with C key held down).

Step 2
Use the diskutil terminal command to resize the OS X partition and create one for Linux and Windows.

Open “Terminal” and then run:
sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 200G "MS-DOS" "Linux" 200G "MS-DOS" "Windows" 5G
(Note that the final number for the Windows drive doesn’t really matter, it will fill all remaining available space.)

Step 3
Under OS X, install rEFIt (a graphical EFI boot loader) and then bless the drive:
sudo /efi/refit/enable-always.sh

Step 4
Insert Fedora 12 disk and reboot, holding down the C key (or boot it from the Linux CD entry in rEFIt menu).
(Note: I had to install via FTP, because installing from DVD didn’t always work on my Mac Pro. If you have the same issue then at the boot menu hit the “Tab” key and add “askmethod” to the kernel line and boot the entry.)

Step 5
During the installer, select the 3rd partition for / (choose “Custom” partition), format ext4.

Next, switch to terminal 2 (CTRL+Alt+2) and toggle boot to off for the Linux partition, like so:
parted /dev/sda toggle 3 boot quit

Now sync the GPT and MBR partition tables:
gptsync /dev/sda
(Or you can do this step via rEFIt menu after the install if you prefer.)

Switch back to terminal 6 (Alt+6) and continue. Install the boot loader to /dev/sda3 (this is the default).

Complete Fedora install, reboot into OS X, eject disk, insert Windows XP install CD.

For reference, the GPT partition table should look something like this:

[chris@localhost ~]$ sudo parted -l Model: ATA ST3500630AS P (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 500GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI System Partition boot 2 210MB 200GB 200GB hfs+ OS X 3 200GB 400GB 200GB ext4 Linux 4 400GB 500GB 99.9GB ntfs Windows

While the MBR table should look like this:

[chris@localhost ~]$ sudo fdisk -l WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xcce7cce7 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 26 204819+ ee GPT /dev/sda2 26 24325 195181428 af HFS / HFS+ /dev/sda3 * 24341 48656 195311616 83 Linux /dev/sda4 48657 60802 97556480 7 HPFS/NTFS

Step 6
Reboot, holding down C key (or choose the Windows CD entry from rEFIt menu), install Windows XP to 4th partition, format NTFS.
If the Windows installer sees a single partition and can’t detect the file system, re-sync the GPT and MBR partition tables via rEFIt or Fedora gptsync command. Also, ensure that the Fedora partition is not set to be bootable (Step 5, part 2). The installer should see multiple drive letters, with the 4th partition being the C drive. Yes, Windows has to be installed on the last partition.

After install, the rEFIt menu should see Windows on the hard drive. Boot it and continue your Windows install. Once installed, insert the OS X Snow Leopard DVD and install the system drivers, etc.

That’s about it.