The Linux Page

Nowt special here im afraid chaps / chappets. Just a bunch of tips and tricks for compiling, installing, using linux. What gives me the right to post this stuff here you ask your selves...? Well nothing really but, i do have a world of experience of linux and its dererative dating back to 1995 so i guess i might have something usefull to pass to you in the end eh?
I'll let you be the judge of that!

On with the tips then eh!
[bla bla bla] = command!

Xorg VNC to native / real X session
Ever wanted to VNC to an active X session?? I fo all the time. Sometimes I'll be gaming with windows and need a tip or a map from a website. These days most games won't let you ALT+TAB out and back in again. The solution, run a VNC session to an already exsisting X session. You dont even have to be logged in, because the support is native it'll work with GDM/XDM/KDM!!! Simply ensure you have the line Load "vnc" in your xorg.conf (it was already there in my FC10/11/12 installs) then add the following to your "screen" section:

Option "SecurityTypes" "VncAuth"
Option "UserPasswdVerifier" "VncAuth"
Option "PasswordFile" "ABSOLUTE PATH TO .vnc/passwd"

Clearly there has to be a .vnc/passwd file where you tell it to. To create one in your home directory run vncpasswd.

Enlightenment DR.17
CVS info: (never had any luck compiling it from CVS!)
http://www.enlightenment.org/p.php?p=download/cvs&l=en
Dependencies / build order for e17:
eet
evas
ecore
embryo
edje
efreet
enlightenment
the rest of it!
If you have no luck installing it from CVS (as i N E V E R have) try going to http://dr17.saaf.co.uk/packages/ and downloading the packages in the list above. Compile and install [./configure && make && make install (remeber you need to be root to install outside of your home directory)] them in the order above, bobs your uncle!!! If you have aggro with them think of it as a learning curve, in the programming trade we call it "Applied Learning"
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configure error: fluxbox requires X headers and libraries...
Yes, that old chestnut, that had me tied up for ages. Probably because its a bit of an erroneous error, doesn't really tell you much does it...? Especially if, like me, you actually have the X headers and libraries installed on your system!!! Simple way around this one
[find / | grep X.h]
to find your include path,
[find / | grep libX11.so]
to find your library path. If you dont find them, they arent installed so install them! Now you know where you are you need to
[./configure --x-includes=/path/to/includes --x-libraries=/path/to/libs]
... Now [make && make install]
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Unpacking initrd.img
Sometimes we want to know what goes on in our boot process or wee need to get some files out of initrd, maybe you want to make your own cool linuxrc with pretty coloured test everywhere. For that you mus unpack and pack your .img's! To unpack it use
[mv file.img file.gz && gunzip file.gz]
then
[cpio --extract < file]
. You now have all the files in your initial ramdisk! To pack them, back up again use [find . | cpio --create | gzip -9 -c > ../initrd.img] MAKE SURE you pack it back up to ../ otherwise you will end up with a broken initrd thats got hal an initrd in it!
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Update Fedora Core 5 to Fedora Core 6 the easy way
1) Go to http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/VER/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/ where VER = the next version up from your current distro.
2) Download the fedora-release*.rpm
3) [rpm -ih fedora-release*.rpm]
4) [yum update -y]
Using this method i have upgraded from FC3 to FC4 to FC5 to FC6. FC6 to FC7 does not seem to work by doing this?!?
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Updating yum to use decent repos:
livna = [rpm -Uvh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-VER.rpm]
freshrpms = [rpm -Uvh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/linux/VER/freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm]
Didier (enlightenment) Visit http://sps.nus.edu.sg/~didierbe/ for a link to the right repos RPM...
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Unpacking .tar.gz or .tar.bz2
Instead of messing around with tar xjvf or xzvf get newer versions of tar and bzip2 then just use tar xvf!!
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Copying and Pasting in the console and X
For the console and if its not installed already you need gpm (general purpose mouse). All of the current distros and most of the old ones have it in their package lists. Do a [yum install gpm] or [apt-get install gpm] or whatever you use to install packages then you will have copy and paste on the console. Selecting text copies it, right or middle click pastes it! This also applies to X. Just selecting the text copies it then a right or middle click will paste it :)
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eclair not working???
Get xine-lib installed, then add the mad mp3 decoder job done, assuming you have emotion installed too that is!!!
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Minimal linux system
Here you have it folks, a miniature linux system built from scratch! You can download it here http://linux.thegeakes.co.uk/files/good-mini-linux.tar.gz. Its got a kernel set up for my system so it wont have the drivers you require for the network to function but all you need to do is compile and install a kernel with your net drivers in it and bobs your uncle.
Tiny Linux build order:
I used the first section of the LFS book to build me a decent development environment (which is permenantly installed on a hard drive for development work) into which i can chroot and know i have a clean environment. From there i built the following packages in the order listed below!

Lilo / Grub (If booting from minimal system is required)
kernel (the boss)
glibc (libraries and function for all below)
ncurses (screen control)
sysvinit (the /sbin/init program required for boot)
bash (a shell)
util-linux (agetty and login plus some other stuff)
sed (required for boot scripts)
uDev (automatic population of the /dev directory)
coreutils (ls, cp, mv and the like)
lfs-bootscripts (to boot the system and bring up services)

And there you have it, a miniature working linux. I had to install then remove some other packages (binutils, gcc) to get some of these packages installed but i got there in the end! Initially it worked out at over 150MB so i stripped (cleaned out debug info) the libraries and binaries then set about remove that which was not needed(locale data, includes, man and info pages). It ONLY has the en_GB.UTF-8 charset and a GB keymap. Try it if you like, its pretty boring!!!
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