Tag Archive for 'fedora'

Fixing webcam flicker in Linux with udev

Published on 7 February, 2017 in Fedora, FOSS and OpenStack. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I recently got a new Dell XPS 13 (9360) laptop for work and it’s running Fedora pretty much perfectly.

However, when I load up Cheese (or some other webcam program) the video from the webcam flickers. Given that I live in Australia, I had to change the powerline frequency from 60Hz to 50Hz to fix it.

sudo dnf install v4l2-ctl
v4l2-ctl --set-ctrl power_line_frequency=1

I wanted this to be permanent each time I turned my machine on, so I created a udev rule to handle that.

cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/50-dell-webcam.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="video4linux", \
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", \
ATTRS{idVendor}=="0c45", \
ATTRS{idProduct}=="670c", \
PROGRAM="/usr/bin/v4l2-ctl --set-ctrl \
power_line_frequency=1 --device /dev/%k", \
SYMLINK+="dell-webcam"
EOF

It’s easy to test. Just turn flicker back on, reload the rules and watch the flicker in Cheese automatically disappear 🙂

v4l2-ctl --set-ctrl power_line_frequency=0
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

Of course I also tested with a reboot.

It’s easy to do with any webcam, just take a look on the USB bus for the vendor and product IDs. For example, here’s a Logitech C930e (which is probably the nicest webcam I’ve ever used, and also works perfectly under Fedora).

Bus 001 Device 022: ID 046d:0843 Logitech, Inc. Webcam C930e

So you would replace the following in your udev rule:

  • ATTRS{idVendor}==“046d”
  • ATTRS{idProduct}==“0843”
  • SYMLINK+=“c930e”

Note that SYMLINK is not necessary, it just creates an extra /dev entry, such as /dev/c930e, which is useful if you have multiple webcams.

Booting Fedora 24 cloud image with KVM

Published on 17 June, 2016 in Fedora and FOSS. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Fedora 24 is on the way, here’s how you can play with the cloud image on your local machine.

Download the image:
wget https://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/24_RC-1.2/CloudImages/x86_64/images/Fedora-Cloud-Base-24-1.2.x86_64.qcow2

Make a new local backing image (so that we don’t write to our downloaded image) called my-disk.qcow2:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b Fedora-Cloud-Base-24-1.2.x86_64.qcow2 my-disk.qcow2

The cloud image uses cloud-init to configure itself on boot which sets things like hostname, usernames, passwords and ssh keys, etc. You can also run specific commands at two stages of the boot process (see bootcmd and runcmd below) and output messages (see final_message below) which is useful for scripted testing.

Continue reading ‘Booting Fedora 24 cloud image with KVM’

Building a Mini-ITX NAS? Don’t buy a Silverstone DS380 case.

Published on 10 December, 2015 in Fedora, FOSS and Korora. 30 Comments Tags: , .

Edit: I made some changes which have dropped the temps to around 40 degrees at idle (haven’t tested at load yet). The case has potential, but I still think it’s slightly too cramped and the airflow is not good enough.

Here’s what I changed:

  • Rearranged the drives to leave a gap between each one, which basically limits the unit to 4 drives instead of 8
  • Inverted the PSU as per suggestion from Dan, so that it helps to draw air through the case. The default for the PSU is to draw air from outside and bypass the case.
  • Plugged the rear and side fans directly into the PSU molex connector, rather than through mainboard and rear of hard drive chassis

So I’m building a NAS (running Fedora Server) and thought that the Silverstone DS380 case looked great. It has 8 hot-swappable SATA bays, claims decent cooling with filters, neat form factor.

ds380-34

It requires an SFX PSU, but there are some that have enough juice on the 12v rail (although avoid the SilverStone SX500-LG, it’s slightly too long) so that it’s not a major problem (although I would prefer standard ATX).

So I got one to run low-power i3, C226 chipset mainboard and five HGST 3TB NAS drives. Unfortunately the cooling through the drives is pretty much non-existent. The two fans on the side draw air in but blow onto the hotswap chassis and nothing really draws air through it.

As a result, many of the drives run around 65 degrees Celsius at idle (tested overnight) which is already outside of the drives’ recommended temperature range of 0-60 degrees.

I’ve replaced the case with my second choice Fractal Design NODE 304 and the drives at idle all sit at around 35 degrees.

node

It has two smaller fans at the front to bring air directly over the drives and a larger one at the rear, with a manual L/M/H speed controller for all three on the rear of the case. As a bonus, it uses a standard ATX power supply and has plenty of room for it.

The only downside I’ve found so far is the lack of hot-swap, but my NAS isn’t mission-critical so that’s not a deal breaker for me.

Your mileage might vary, but I won’t buy the DS380 for a NAS again, unless it’s going to run full of SSDs or something (or I heavily mod the case). It’s OK for a small machine though without a bunch of disks (shame!) and that’s what I’ve re-purposed it for now.

-c

Btrfs RAID 6 on dm-crypt on Fedora (post updated)

Published on 15 November, 2015 in Fedora and FOSS. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Update 2016-08-26: A nasty bug was found in the RAID5/6 Btrfs parity calculation, so I recommend using RAID 10 for now. Where I use raid6 below you may want to change this to raid10. See this post for how to migrate to RAID 10.

I’m building a NAS and given the spare drives I have at the moment, thought I’d have a play with Btrfs. Apparently RAID 6 is relatively safe now (update: turns out, it’s not), so why not put it through its paces? As Btrfs doesn’t support encryption, I will need to build it on top of dm-crypt.

Boot drive:

  • /dev/sda

Data drives:

  • /dev/sdb
  • /dev/sdc
  • /dev/sdd
  • /dev/sde
  • /dev/sdf

I installed Fedora 24 Server onto /dev/sda and just went from there, opening a root shell.

# Install the btrfs and crypt packages (if not already there) so that this will actually work.
dnf install -y btrfs-progs cryptsetup

WARNING WARNING WARNING
The following cryptsetup commands will wipe any drives you specify below. Please make sure you are specifying the correct drives.

# Setup dm-crypt on each data drive
# and populate the crypttab file.
for x in b c d e f ; do
  cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sd${x}
  UUID="$(cryptsetup luksUUID /dev/sd${x})"
  echo "luks-${UUID} UUID=${UUID} none" >> /etc/crypttab
done
 
# Rebuild the initial ramdisk with crypt support
echo "add_dracutmodules+=crypt" >> /etc/dracut.conf.d/crypt.conf
dracut -fv
 
# Verify that it now has my crypttab
lsinitrd /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img |grep crypttab
 
# Reboot and verify initramfs prompts to unlock the devices
reboot
 
# After boot, verify devices exist
ls -l /dev/mapper/luks*

OK, so now I have a bunch of encrypted disks, it’s time to put btrfs into action (note the label, btrfs_data):
# Get LUKS UUIDs and create btrfs raid filesystem
for x in b c d e f ; do
  DEVICES="${DEVICES} $(cryptsetup luksUUID /dev/sd${x}\
    |sed 's|^|/dev/mapper/luks-|g')"
done
mkfs.btrfs -L btrfs_data -m raid6 -d raid6 ${DEVICES}

See all our current btrfs volumes:
btrfs fi show

Get the UUID of the filesystem so that we can create an entry in fstab, using the label we created before:
UUID=$(btrfs fi show btrfs_data |grep uuid |awk '{print $4}')
echo "UUID=${UUID} /mnt/btrfs_data btrfs noatime,subvolid=0 0 0"\
  >> /etc/fstab

Now, let’s create the mountpoint and mount the device:
mkdir /mnt/btrfs_data
mount -a

Check data usage:
btrfs filesystem df /mnt/btrfs_data/

This has mounted the root of the filesystem to /mnt/btrfs_data, however we can also create subvolumes. Let’s create one called “share” for shared network data:
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/btrfs_data/share

You can mount this specific volume directly, let’s add it to fstab:
echo "UUID=${UUID} /mnt/btrfs_share btrfs noatime,subvol=share 0 0"\
  >> /etc/fstab
mkdir /mnt/btrfs_share
mount /mnt/btrfs_share

You can list subvolumes easily by referencing our mounted Btrfs volume:
btrfs subvolume list -p /mnt/btrfs_data/

If you want to delete a subvolume, first unmount it, then remove it from fstab, delete the Btrfs subvolume and finally remove the mount point.
umount /mnt/btrfs_share
sed -i /btrfs_share/d /etc/fstab
btrfs subvolume delete /mnt/btrfs_data/share
/mnt/btrfs_share

Now I plugged in a few backup drives and started rsyncing a few TB across to the device. It seemed to work well!

There are lots of other things you can play with, like snapshots, compression, defragment, scrub (use checksums to repair corrupt data), rebalance (re-allocates blocks across devices) etc. You can even convert existing file systems with btrfs-convert command, and use rebalance to change the RAID level. Neat!

Then I thought I’d try the rebalance command just to see how that works with a RAID device. Given it’s a large device, I kicked it off and went to do something else. I returned to an unwakeable machine… hard-resetting, journalctl -b -1 told me this sad story:

Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: ------------[ cut here ]------------
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: kernel BUG at fs/btrfs/extent-tree.c:1833!
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: Modules linked in: fuse joydev synaptics_usb uas usb_storage rfcomm cmac nf_conntrack_netbios_ns nf_conntrack_broadcast ip6t_rpfilter ip6t_REJECT nf_reject_ipv6 xt_conntrack ebtable_nat ebtab
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: snd_soc_core snd_hda_codec rfkill snd_compress snd_hda_core snd_pcm_dmaengine ac97_bus snd_hwdep snd_seq snd_seq_device snd_pcm mei_me dw_dmac i2c_designware_platform snd_timer snd_soc_sst_a
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: CPU: 0 PID: 6274 Comm: btrfs Not tainted 4.2.5-300.fc23.x86_64 #1
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: Hardware name: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z97N-WIFI/Z97N-WIFI, BIOS F5 12/08/2014
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: task: ffff88006fd69d80 ti: ffff88000e344000 task.ti: ffff88000e344000
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: RIP: 0010:[] [] insert_inline_extent_backref+0xe7/0xf0 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: RSP: 0018:ffff88000e3476a8 EFLAGS: 00010293
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 0000000000000001 RCX: 0000000000000000
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: RDX: ffff880000000000 RSI: 0000000000000001 RDI: 0000000000000000
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: RBP: ffff88000e347728 R08: 0000000000004000 R09: ffff88000e3475a0
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000002 R12: ffff88021522f000
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: R13: ffff88013f868480 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: 0000000000000000
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: FS: 00007f66268a08c0(0000) GS:ffff88021fa00000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: CR2: 000055a79c7e6fd0 CR3: 00000000576ce000 CR4: 00000000001406f0
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: Stack:
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: 0000000000000000 0000000000000005 0000000000000001 0000000000000000
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: 0000000000000001 ffffffff81200176 0000000000270026 ffffffffa0925d4a
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: 0000000000002158 00000000a7c0ba4c ffff88021522d800 0000000000000000
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: Call Trace:
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] ? kmem_cache_alloc+0x1d6/0x210
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] ? btrfs_alloc_path+0x1a/0x20 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] __btrfs_inc_extent_ref.isra.52+0xa9/0x270 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] __btrfs_run_delayed_refs+0xc84/0x1080 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] btrfs_run_delayed_refs.part.73+0x74/0x270 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] ? btrfs_release_path+0x2b/0xa0 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] btrfs_run_delayed_refs+0x15/0x20 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] btrfs_commit_transaction+0x56/0xad0 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] prepare_to_merge+0x1fe/0x210 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] relocate_block_group+0x25e/0x6b0 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] btrfs_relocate_block_group+0x1ca/0x2c0 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] btrfs_relocate_chunk.isra.39+0x3e/0xb0 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] btrfs_balance+0x9c4/0xf80 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] btrfs_ioctl_balance+0x3c4/0x3d0 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] btrfs_ioctl+0x541/0x2750 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] ? lru_cache_add+0x1c/0x50
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] ? lru_cache_add_active_or_unevictable+0x32/0xd0
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] ? handle_mm_fault+0xc8a/0x17d0
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] ? cp_new_stat+0xb3/0x190
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] do_vfs_ioctl+0x295/0x470
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] ? selinux_file_ioctl+0x4d/0xc0
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] SyS_ioctl+0x79/0x90
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] ? do_page_fault+0x2f/0x80
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: [] entry_SYSCALL_64_fastpath+0x12/0x71
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: Code: 10 49 89 d9 48 8b 55 c0 4c 89 7c 24 10 4c 89 f1 4c 89 ee 4c 89 e7 89 44 24 08 48 8b 45 20 48 89 04 24 e8 5d d5 ff ff 31 c0 eb ac <0f> 0b e8 92 b7 76 e0 66 90 0f 1f 44 00 00 55 48 89 e5
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: RIP [] insert_inline_extent_backref+0xe7/0xf0 [btrfs]
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: RSP
Nov 14 06:03:42 localhost.localdomain kernel: ---[ end trace 63b75c57d2feac56 ]---

Bummer!

Looks like rebalance has a major bug at the moment. I did a search and others have the same problem, looks like I’m hitting this bug. I’ve reported it on Fedora Bugzilla.

Anyway, so I won’t do a rebalance at the moment, but other than that, btrfs seems pretty neat. I will make sure I keep my backups up-to-date though, just in case…

Creating certs and keys for services using FreeIPA (Dogtag)

Published on 24 August, 2014 in Fedora. 5 Comments Tags: , , .

The default installation of FreeIPA includes the Dogtag certificate management system, a Certificate Authority for your network. It manages expiration of certificates and can automatically renew them. Any client machines on your network will trust the services you provide (you may need to import the IPA CA cert).

There are a number of ways to make certificates. You can generate a certificate signing request or you can have Dogtag manage the whole process for you. You can also create individual cert and key files or put them into a nss database. My preferred method is to use individual files and have Dogtag do the work for me.

If you so desire, you can join your servers to the realm in just the same manner as a desktop client. However, even if they are not joined to the realm you can still create certs for them! You will need to run a few additional steps though, namely creating DNS records and adding the machine manually.

Let’s create a certificate for a web server on www.test.lan (192.168.0.100) which is has not joined our realm.

SSH onto your IPA server and get a kerberos ticket.
[user@machine ~]# ssh root@ipa-server.test.lan
[root@ipa-server ~]# kinit admin

If the host is not already in the realm, create DNS entries and add the host.
[root@ipa-server ~]# ipa dnsrecord-add test.lan www --a-rec 192.168.0.100
[root@ipa-server ~]# ipa dnsrecord-add 0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 100 --ptr-rec www.test.lan.
[root@ipa-server ~]# ipa host-add www.test.lan

Add a web service for the www machine.
[root@ipa-server ~]# ipa service-add HTTP/www.test.lan

Only the target machine can create a certificate (IPA uses the host kerberos ticket) by default, so to be able to create the certificate on your IPA server you need to allow it to manage the web service for the www host.
[root@ipa-server ~]# ipa service-add-host --hosts=ipa-server.test.lan HTTP/www.test.lan

Now create the cert and key.
[root@ipa-server ~]# ipa-getcert request -r -f /etc/pki/tls/certs/www.test.lan.crt -k
/etc/pki/tls/private/www.test.lan.key -N CN=www.test.lan -D
www.test.lan -K HTTP/www.test.lan

Now copy that key and certificate to your web server host and configure apache as required.
[root@ipa-server ~]# rsync -P /etc/pki/tls/certs/www.test.lan.crt /etc/pki/tls/private/www.test.lan.key root@www.test.lan:

You can also easily delete keys so that they aren’t tracked and renewed any more, first get the request id.
[root@ipa-server ~]# ipa-getcert list

Take note of the id for the certificate you want to delete.
[root@ipa-server ~]# getcert stop-tracking -i [request id]

A CRL (certificate revocation list) is automatically maintained and published on the IPA server at ​https://ipa-server.test.lan/ipa/crl/MasterCRL.bin

Fix problem updating packages in Fedora/Korora due to broken SELinux update

Published on 20 January, 2014 in Korora. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Unfortunately an update to the SELinux policy package in Fedora 20 (and therefore Korora 20) caused RPM scriptlets to fail when updating packages.

This bug only affects systems that have SELinux mode set to enforcing (which is the default) and were updated to version 3.12.1-116 of the selinux-policy package. If you have seen the following sort of error when updating packages, then this bug may affect you:

warning: %post(libkcompactdisc-4.12.1-1.fc20.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 127
Non-fatal POSTIN scriptlet failure in rpm package libkcompactdisc-4.12.1-1.fc20.x86_64

Below are the commands to resolve this issue (which has been fixed in an updated 3.12.1-117 version of selinux-policy).

sudo setenforce 0
sudo yum clean expire-cache
sudo yum update selinux-policy\*
sudo setenforce 1

The first command disables SELinux enforcement for the current session and the subsequent commands expire the yum cache and install the SELinux policy update which fixes this issue. The last command re-enables SELinux enforcement.

If you previously installed any packages which failed with scriptlet errors like above, you can reinstall them using the following command:

sudo yum reinstall

You can find out what packages were installed after the broken update using a command like this:

sudo sed '1,/selinux-policy-3.12.1-116/d' /var/log/yum.log

If you require any assistance please don’t hesitate to ask for help using Engage or jump onto the #korora channel in IRC freenode.net servers.

Kororaa 16 (Chum) released

Published on 16 December, 2011 in Korora. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

It was a little while in coming, but it was worth the wait! It is my pleasure to announce the release of Kororaa 16 (codename “Chum”) which is now available for download.

Features
Derived from Fedora 161, this updated release comes with the usual Kororaa extras out of the box, such as:

  • Tweaked KDE 4.7, GNOME 3.2 and base systems
  • Third party repositories (Adobe, Chrome, RPMFusion, VirtualBox)
  • Firefox 8 as the default web browser (with integration theme for KDE)
  • Firefox extensions included (Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, Flashblock, Xclear)
  • Microblogging client (Choqok for KDE, Empathy for GNOME)
  • Full multimedia support (excluding Flash, see next)
  • Installer for Adobe Flash plugin
  • Jockey device manager to handle drivers such as AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
  • Video editor (Kdenlive for KDE, OpenShot for GNOME)
  • VLC as the default media player
  • SELinux enabled (particularly worthwhile for Flash)
  • English (Australian/British) support & dictionaries
  • and more..

Desktops
The GNOME 3 desktop has several custom themes available, as well as numerous extensions to provide an enhanced user experience (and help ease the transition from GNOME 2.x). It also comes with the GNOME Tweak Tool to allow further customisation.
Kororaa 16 desktop - GNOME

The KDE desktop has a custom layout with specific default applications, such as Firefox for the web and VLC for media, etc.
Kororaa 16 desktop - KDE

Upgrade
It is still recommended that existing Kororaa users perform a fresh install, however we are working on experimental support for in-place upgrade and hope to post more information soon.

Users still on Kororaa 14 should upgrade to 16 as the older version is no longer supported upstream. Unfortunately for users who wish to stay with GNOME 2.x, this means you will need to upgrade to GNOME 3. Do not despair however, Kororaa includes a desktop switcher for GNOME 3, so that users can switch between the new Shell interface and the 2.x style Fallback mode. Just run the “Switch between Shell and Fallback desktops” link on the desktop (see screenshot above).

Word of thanks
We are starting to get a nice little community around Kororaa and I’d to thank everyone for their help and support, which is greatly appreciated. I’d like to especially thank the following people (in alphabetical order), who have helped make this release possible:

  • Alan Gindlesperger (almigi)
  • Hedayat Vatankhah (Parsidora Fedora Remix)
  • Ian Firns (firnsy)
  • Jason Nielsen
  • Jim Dean (ozjd)
  • Liam Campbell (lijcam)
  • Matthew Oliver

Feedback
We’d love to hear your feedback on the forums, so download it today and let us know! 🙂

Thanks!

Note: Kororaa is not provided or supported by the Fedora Project. Official, unmodified Fedora software is available through the Fedora Project website.

Kororaa 15.1 (Squirt) released

Published on 20 October, 2011 in Korora. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The second release of Kororaa 15 (codename “Squirt”) has been released. Version 15.1 is available for download, in 32 and 64 bit with KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3.

This release includes a number of fixes and enhancements, as listed below. A special thanks to Prashanth for the review of Kororaa 15 which outlined many of these shortcomings.

Major changes:

  • Fixed KDE crash in live mode (prelink wasn’t properly disabled)
  • Fixed Kdenlive bug which stopped it from running
  • Fixed KPackagekit crash in live mode
  • Bypass the login screen and load straight to desktop
  • Disable screensaver and locked screen in live mode
  • Renamed desktop switcher to “Switch between Shell and Fallback desktops”
  • Added Google Talk Plugin repo for easy installation
  • Added a wrapper package (skype-helper) for Skype dependencies (can’t ship Skype though)
  • Added more GNOME Shell themes
  • Removed Gloobus preview (not complete in Fedora)
  • Removed GNOME Appearance Properties link (deprecated in GNOME 3)
  • Removed Synaptic package manager
  • Removed Miro (currently broken upstream)
  • Updated to Firefox 7
  • Updated to Openshot 1.4

Kororaa 15.1 comes with an RPM metapackage to install and configure Adobe Flash, now that Add/Remove Extras is gone. To get flash, install the flash-plugin-helper package. To remove flash, uninstall the flash-plugin package.

Kororaa 15.1 also comes with an RPM metapackage to install the dependencies for Skype (but not Skype itself). Simply install the skype-helper package, then download the Skype package for Fedora from their website and install using the package manager.

Upgrade
Existing Kororaa 15 users need not upgrade to 15.1 as these changes mostly affect live mode, while others have been pushed out via system updates.

Users still on Kororaa 14 may wish to upgrade to 15.1 and should do so via a new install (backup your data if necessary). Users who wish to stay with GNOME 2.x should not upgrade to 15.1, as it comes with GNOME 3. However, Kororaa 15.1 does include a desktop switcher for GNOME 3, so that users can switch between the new Shell interface and the 2.x style Fallback mode using the “Switch between Shell and Fallback desktops” link on the desktop.

Desktops
The GNOME 3 desktop has a custom theme available, as well as several extensions to provide an enhanced user experience (and help ease the transition from GNOME 2.x). It also comes with the GNOME Tweak Tool to allow further customisation.
Kororaa 15 desktop - GNOME

The KDE desktop has a custom layout with specific default applications, such as Firefox for the web and VLC for media, etc. It now also comes with Linphone for those wanting a SIP client.
Kororaa 15 desktop - KDE

Features
Derived from Fedora 151, this updated release comes with the usual Kororaa extras out of the box, such as:

  • Tweaked KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3 base systems
  • Third party repositories (Adobe, Chrome, RPMFusion, VirtualBox)
  • Firefox 7 as the default web browser (with integration tweaks for KDE)
  • Firefox extensions included (Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, Flashblock, Xclear)
  • Microblogging client (Choqok for KDE, Gwibber for GNOME)
  • Full multimedia support (excluding Flash, see next)
  • Installer for Adobe Flash plugin
  • Jockey device manager to handle drivers such as AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
  • Video editor (Kdenlive for KDE, OpenShot for GNOME)
  • VLC as the default media player
  • SELinux enabled (particularly worthwhile for Flash)
  • English (Australian/British) support & dictionaries
  • and more..

Feedback
We’d love to hear your feedback on the forums, so download it today and let us know! 🙂

Thanks!

Note: Kororaa is not provided or supported by the Fedora Project. Official, unmodified Fedora software is available through the Fedora Project website.

Kororaa 15 (Squirt) released

Published on 20 September, 2011 in Korora. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The first stable release of Kororaa 15 (codename “Squirt”) has been released and is available for download, in 32 and 64 bit with KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3.

This release includes Ubuntu’s Jockey Device Driver manager, which has replaced the Add/Remove Extras script for configuring third party drivers (such as nvidia). While I am still working on the port of Jockey to Yum, in order to release Kororaa 15 now (already a month later than I was hoping) I am using Jockey packages created by fellow Fedora Remix, Parsidora, so thanks and kudos to them!

Kororaa 15 comes with an RPM metapackage to install and configure Adobe Flash, now that Add/Remove Extras is gone. To get flash, install the flash-plugin-helper package. To remove flash, uninstall the flash-plugin package.

Upgrade
Users still on Kororaa 14 may wish to upgrade to 15 and should do so via a new install (backup your data if necessary). Users who wish to stay with GNOME 2.x should not upgrade to 15, as it comes with GNOME 3. However, Kororaa 15 does include a desktop switcher for GNOME 3, so that users can switch between the new Shell interface and the 2.x style Fallback mode.

Desktops
The GNOME 3 desktop has a custom theme available, as well as several extensions to provide an enhanced user experience (and help ease the transition from GNOME 2.x). It also comes with the GNOME Tweak Tool to allow further customisation.
Kororaa 15 desktop - GNOME

The KDE desktop has a custom layout with specific default applications, such as Firefox for the web and VLC for media, etc. It now also comes with Linphone for those wanting a SIP client.
Kororaa 15 desktop - KDE

Features
Derived from Fedora 151, this updated release comes with the usual Kororaa extras out of the box, such as:

  • Tweaked KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3 base systems
  • Third party repositories (Adobe, Chrome, RPMFusion, VirtualBox)
  • Firefox 6 as the default web browser (with integration tweaks for KDE)
  • Firefox extensions included (Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, Flashblock, Xclear)
  • Microblogging client (Choqok for KDE, Gwibber for GNOME)
  • Full multimedia support (excluding Flash, see next)
  • Installer for Adobe Flash plugin
  • Jockey device manager to handle drivers such as AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
  • Video editor (Kdenlive for KDE, OpenShot for GNOME)
  • VLC as the default media player
  • SELinux enabled (particularly worthwhile for Flash)
  • English (Australian/British) support & dictionaries
  • and more..

Major changes:

  • Add/Remove Extras script removed by default (still in repository)
  • Jockey device driver manager added
  • New Flash plugin RPM metapackage installer
  • New DownThemAll download manager addon for Firefox
  • Linphone VoIP client for KDE added
  • GNOME 3 switcher between Shell and Fallback desktops
  • Pidgin replaced with Empathy for better GNOME integration
  • KSplice has been removed by default

Feedback
We’d love to hear your feedback on the forums, so download it today and let us know! 🙂

Thanks!

Note: Kororaa is not provided or supported by the Fedora Project. Official, unmodified Fedora software is available through the Fedora Project website.

Jockey device manager port for Fedora (using Yum)

Published on 27 August, 2011 in Korora. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

One of the things I wanted to do for Kororaa was make Ubuntu’s Jockey device manager work. This would replace my current dodgy script and provide a mechanism for extending support for other devices over time (if needed). I’ve put my code on github if you want to check it out.

It wasn’t meant to be a joke, but on the 1st April this year I contacted Martin Pitt (the Jockey project lead) to pitch the idea. He helpfully replied saying that they’d written Jockey to be pretty vendor agnostic and that he had already discussed the idea of porting it to Fedora with Jon Masters. Indeed, he had did have the test suite working on Fedora 12 already (using PackageKit).

So I started out trying to understand the code and seeing what was possible. The core of the work is in oslib.py which implements the package management side of things (the default code uses PackageKit). Ubuntu has their own apt implementation, so I wanted to make a native Yum implementation.

There is some detection code (which shouldn’t need to be touched) and then there are the handlers for each device you want to manage (nvidia, etc).

A few weekends ago, Jason Nielsen and I got together to work on the code. In a few hours we had ported oslib.py to Yum, so I think the majority of the work there is done (thanks for your help, Jason!). It’s a much cleaner implementation than running PackageKit and parsing the results, because Yum is written in Python 🙂

That’s where it’s at now. Next I need to create some handlers and then begin some testing. I’m holding off on the next Kororaa release, because I want to get this working before I ship it. Longer-term this naturally won’t go into Fedora, but perhaps into RPMFusion.

Parsidora (another Fedora Remix) has also been working on Jockey, but using the PackageKit implementation (I’ve sent them a message to see if they are interested in the native Yum version). You can try their existing implementation for Fedora 15 if you’re interested.

Hopefully I’ll have everything ready for Kororaa in the next few weeks, before Fedora 16 comes out! 🙂