There are far better pages scattered around out there, but this is the page I wish I'd found to begin with; a linux newbie guide based on a RedHat6 workstation install. I've used Linux at home only since '99 but use UNIX at work. LL: This is for You. A Choice of Operative System is traditionally based on what we'll use a machine for, but borders between OS aspects of usability are fading. Consider Linux if security, uptime, server- and multi-user abilities, automation, tunability or low costs matter. If you're the only user on your PC and mainly use it for office tasks, games and occasional mail and web browsing - stick with Windows, it's excellent for that use. Then again.. if you can't afford an Office suite, Linux offer a lot. But if you're a designer and used to Mac's.. hmm.. well. Some call Linux a "do it yourself" OS - there's some truth to that. You may have to undergo a steep learning curve to unlock it's treasures. But the hype is hot, the kids screaming for drivers.. I decided to take a harder look. And I'm impressed. Linux is getting ready for the desktop. |
Since Aug. 26th 1999
© RKAA 1999, 2001 |
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HARDWARE STUFF |
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When you know your hardware is OK, partitioning disk(s) is next "obstacle". Give that some thought - it can prove invaluable when you later upgrade your PC. The RedHat Installation Guide is good but there are some points I think could have been made clearer:
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Linux indicate partition names different than MS operative systems. A Linux partition name also tells what kind of disk we're dealing with, and which partition of that disk it is. There are different types of disks. Single user systems normally use (E)IDE and/or SCSI disks.
If a partition is named hda1:
hd indicates an IDE type drive
the next letter - a - indicates which IDE drive it refers
to, alphanumeric.
the following number - 1 - indicates which of the partitions
it is on the that drive.
hda is the first IDE drive
hda1 is the first IDE drives first partition, what Windows would know as
C:
hdb is the second IDE drive
hdb1 is the second IDE drive's first partition
SCSI disks on Linux have names starting with
sd
SCSI disks would be sda1, sda2, sdb1 etc.
The quickest IDE disks are as fast as SCSI disks. SCSI's benefit is "unlimited"
number of HD's. Most mainboards only have controllers for up to 4 IDE disks,
one of these normally used for a CD-ROM.
A real RAID disk setup is not worth considering on workstations. Typically used on servers demanding 100% uptime, mirrored disks, hot swapping etc. and they require expensive RAID disk-controller cards. Linux, however, also support "soft RAID", providing the mirroring abilities from the RAID system but used on "normal" disks. Private users aren't very likely to need this either.
Example:
My install look like this after just some months. I considered this a test-install
and I was right - it's not an ideal partitioning of a 2 gigabyte disk for
a single user machine.
$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb1 97M 57M 35M 62% /
/dev/hdb3 97M 72M 20M 78% /home
/dev/hdb5 97M 28M 64M 31% /tmp
/dev/hdb2 1.3G 875M 412M 68% /usr
/dev/hdb7 208M 133M 64M 68% /usr/local
/dev/hdc1 3.0G 2.4G 635M 79% /mnt/fat32
/dev/hda1 811M 785M 25M 97% /DOS
The /tmp dir is too big: a separate partition
for /tmp was overkill on a single user machine.
Let install create it as a plain directory under / *unless* you plan to
have more users added to the system later.
Mind you: we're now talking about *simoultanous* users - in other words
networking.
The /home partition is too small - but it IS a partition :) Means i can
replace /home with a 20 gig disk later. Netscape saves your cached files under
your homedir so if you set up a big cache you can run out of space if /home
is too small.
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When the installation guide refer to the
root partition it means the partition called just /
In addition, a user called root is a basic concept in unix. A home
directory for the user root will automatically be created under / and named
/root
Again: That is the user root's home directory. Do not make
a separate partition called /root
User root is the superuser with "a license to kill"
- the system administrator, with
all priviledges. During install you will be prompted for a password: It's the
root password you then set.
The root account is NOT the account you use on a daily basis. Your first vital task
as root, after install, is to create a private account for yourself. After
you've created your account, you from then on log in as your private user
and only change to user root to do serious system work, installations etc.
(and then you swiftly log out from root again). Using root as your normal
login would sooner or later prove disastrous. One slip of the finger can erase
vital files and mess your system up for good. The user "root" is a key security
concept on unix based systems.
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Linux by default create common users home-directories
as sub directories under /home
What you assign as the new users login-name will become the name of
his/her home directory.
Each user is set up to belong to a certain group or groups. These group
associations give the user certain rights and restrictions. A set of default
groups and users are predefined. If a new user is to be a common user on the
machine, assign this user to the group "users".
Someone you want to only be able to ftp into the machine, you would assign
to the group "ftp" to restrict their access to ftp only.
The user identification is called UID . The group identification is called GID. Internally, Linux use numbers to say something about users or groups: root always has UID 0. The first common user root creates on the system will be assigned UID 500, the next one UID 501 and so forth. There is no reason to change that on a fresh install UNLESS you're already in a permanent network and a mailserver for instance know users by different UID's. If that is the case, you should probably conform to UID's already in use, and you will find them on the existing system in a file called /etc/passwd (if you don't find it consult the network administrator.)
For each new user you create, a set of default initialization files will be copied to that users home directory. The user can later modify these to her own liking. These files often start with a dot when found in a home directory, and can later be modified by the user. The basis for them can only be changed by root, and are located in /etc and various sub directories there, like /etc/skel.
Usernames should be unique and must not contain special characters, like space. The same goes for passwords. They should be continuous strings, max. 11 characters long. Longer usernames are possible but NOT practical! As a rule, short usernames are best. If you want a mail address with a full name, that is arranged via mail aliases and not the system username.
Then we're about ready to create a new user account:
[walktrough to come]
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pwd The default prompt only show the name of the directory you're in at the moment. If you wonder where you've dug yourself down, write pwd - print working directory. Full path displays. |
cd change directory. "cd /path/somesubdir" to move around. The command cd alone is the quick way "home" - to the home-dir of the user you are currently logged in as. |
tab If you've written enough of a file- or path-name for it to be unique, click on the tabulator key and the rest of the name will be filled in. If several files match, a list of alternatives appear when you key tab once more. |
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Workstation users will typically want a GUI (Graphical User Interface). For that, you need X configured. Three different configurators are installed:
/usr/X11R6/bin/XF86Setup
/usr/X11R6/bin/xf86config
/usr/X11R6/share/Xconfigurator
During install you are given an option to start X by default. I advice you don't select that till all your setup is guaranteed correct. Most fiddle around for a week before settling down with X, tuning resolution and fonts. During that you're "safer" if you've made a habit of logging in from commandline (at runlevel 3) instead of from an X-enabled login-manager (at runlevel 5). More about runlevels later - just remember X can get grumpy if it disagrees with your typos.
startx from commandline starts an
X session.
The startx command is a front-end to something called xinit. Xinit reads
the script .xinitrc - a prototype script provided with the installation,
with heaps of settings you'll never use. When you get smarter you can edit
that and for instance remove redundant lines, which will cause slightly less
text fly by as you start X. Just never experiment without having a backup
of some sort. To force X to start with another colordepth than your default,
here's a sample to start with 32 bits per pixel (your card must support it):
startx -- -bpp 32
Mouse:
If you have a two-button mouse, select "emulate three buttons". This makes
it act in special ways when you click both buttons. In Unix, that third
button is used to paste with, drag scrollbar buttons and more. You'll want
this! To set up a wheel mouse correct, add the line "ZAxisMapping 4 5" as
the last line under "section pointer" in XF86Config, or select "5 button
mouse" in the setup menu. It doesn't actually have 5 buttons, but it does
in effect have three, and events the wheel generate (scroll up/down) add
for two more types of behavior. Most applications understand the wheel.
Virtual Resolution
With enough memory on your graphics card, you can set up a virtual desktop
larger than the actual display size. You can have a display resolution at
1024x768 on a 15" and a *virtual resolution* of 1280x1024. The effect of
this is NOT the same as the "desktop" options (1,2,3,4 etc.) where you can
"jump" between desktops via a pager (or sensitive screen-edges). Virtual
desktops are valid for the current desktop and let you "slide" or
"pan" the visible area, so when your cursor hits the edge of the screen it
will move slightly right/left etc. and display the rest of the virtual resolution
you set it up for. Personally I detest that feature - makes me sea-sick.
Desktop Environments and Window Managers
X is the fundament for any GUI [Graphical User Environment] on Linux for
now. KDE, GNOME, or any other of those more or less good looking desktop
environments and also the window managers utilize X. RH6 comes with KDE/KDM,
GNOME/Enlightenment, fvwm, fvwm2 and AnotherLevel. In RH6 the default GUI
is GNOME. It's worth while to also test out KDE. You find RPM packed upgrades
of GNOME and KDE at the RedHat site and I strongly recommend to install these.
X also has it's own minimalistic GUI: If no desktop environment is specified,
a simple X session with one instance of the Xterm terminal window will start.
A desktop environment is a complete
GUI solution, providing toolbars, icons, applets, applications, and abilities
like drag/drop. A window manager is just an application, working
in cooperation with the desktop environment and specializing in "makeup
and behavior". It deals with wallpapers, frames, handles, borders and let
you choose how you want windowing events to perform: whether a window shall
rise to top when the mouse is over it, be transparent while moved etc. A
desktop environment can run with one of several different window managers.
KDE is a desktop manager and comes with its own window manager called KDM,
but you aren't obliged to run KDM under KDE.
Gnome doesn't have a window manager of it's own and the RH6 version comes
bundled with a setup that gives you the choice of several window-managers.
I fell flat in love with Enlightenment :)
Since a desktop manager provide programs,
it has to conform to some suitable programming language. GNOME is based
on GTK+ , an Open Source GUI toolkit
primarily developed for use with the X Window System.
KDE is based on QT - a GPL
licenced cross platform GUI toolkit by a norwegian company called Troll
Tech. QT2.0 got the 1999 LinuxWorld Editor's Choice Award for Best Programming/Library
Tools.
If you want to compile programs made for GNOME or KDE on your own, you need these libraries installed. Both are found on the RH6 disk, but newer versions exist.
In addition to applications the desktop environments provide there's a plethora of "pure" X applications and widgets included. As a new user I kept wondering about why there were so damn many filemanagers, editors and process viewers added - it took me days to get oriented in menus...even learn the names. A wilderness . Then again - there's something for every taste and CPU so.. why not.
Switchdesk:
Let you select between KDE, GNOME and AnotherLevel as the desktop environment
to start the next time you run startx. Start it by writing "switchdesk"
from a terminal window.
"Runability":
>Programs written for X run under any Desktop environment. In addition
a Desktop environment can use extra libraries that X don't know too much
about. Applications written for KDE *may* not run under GNOME and vice versa.
Most do, however. If you're on KDE and start a GNOME application, just avoid
using it's docking features or the GNOME toolbar will start and mess up your
display. (it's gone again next time you start x though.)
Toggle Resolution:
Monitor resolution toggles on the fly with "ctrl alt +" and "ctrl alt -"
IF you set up more than one resolution when you configured X. You can also
define your own F-keys for resolutions.
For the curious:
To save the text that flicker past your screen as you startx, redirect
the standard output- and error messages to a file. This syntax is valid
for the shell called bash:
startx > startx.txt 2>&1
If you don't want to see it at all you can
dump the output to /dev/null (think of it as a trashbin with no recovery)
startx > /dev/null 2>&1
Multiple monitors:
Linux doesn't mind and leaves that to the X server. Check out the XFree86
homepage for compatibility. Keywords: Xinerama, dualhead. This tehcnology
as GPL is currently in beta versions. For broader card support there are
commercial solutions:
MetroX and AccelleratedX.
Multiple terminals: Each display has a "tty"
number. A practical excample: To direct log-output to one special display,
and have that as the permanent log-terminal, add a line like the following
to your syslog.conf file *.* /dev/tty5
Substitute tty5 with which the tty# you want to use.
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Takes you down to command line level and
you can run startx again. It does NOT necessarily stop running processes.
If you were online via a modem - you're still online. If you were running
single user licensed StarOffice, you may have to kill it's processes to
restart it.
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In applications you will normally find that
Alt+c Alt+x Alt+v will copy/cut/paste.
Some Linux-app's even use MSWindows standard, for reasons unknown. (Ctrl
instead of Alt)
In virtual terminals it suffice to select the text with the cursor and
then click the middle button to autopaste. Watch out for linefeeds if you're
pasting commands: If you select a whole line you also copy a linefeed.
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Sometimes your font display gets messed up and look all cryptic. For instance if you by mistake run "cat" on a binary file. Control sequences in that file can happen to set your display wrong. To reset it write:
^V^O
That's ctrl+v followed by ctrl+o (the letter).
Add a linefeed and you're back in business.
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In a virtual terminal window you can run
commands and start programs. A common icon for virtual terminals is the "X"
or an image of a monitor. Linux comes with a variety of terminal apps.
What happens when you start a terminal window is comparable to what happens
when you choose "run DOS in a window", but you can only start one shell
called command.com this way in Windows, and the terminal emulator
will always look and behave the same way (apart from fonts). Linux has plenty
of terminal types AND shell-options, highly adaptable. Xterm is "the
mother of all virtual terminals". It's unlikely that you will need all it's
features. I use rxvt instead - a smaller and quicker xterm clone.
(The transparent borderless terminals you see on many screeshots are either
Eterm or Gnome Terminal. You need a "wall to wall" wallpaper
to get a full background shine through - tiled wallpaper doesn't translate
right.)
I made a kdelnk to start rxvt, containing the following command
rxvt -sr -fn fixed -bg black -fg white
-sl 2000
(if you already found a terminal program and test this from command line,
add a & and push enter
rxvt will now start with:
-sr scrollbar on right side (default is left)
-fn fixed the "fixed" font - a font alias that's available on
all unix systems
-bg black a black backgroud
-fg white a white foreground (the text)
-sl 2000 a buffer of the latest 2000 lines that displayed.
A better look, valid if you installed the
RH6 type1 fontpack:
rxvt -sr -fn lucidasanstypewriter-12 -bg black -fg grey -sl 2000
The parameter -pixmap somepicture.xpm
will load a "wallpaper" inside the terminal window.
The -bg color must be indicated even so, to give correct reverse effect
when you select text.
Virtual terminals are not smart about font spacing, they like order and will place variable fonts too far apart according to their own ideas about a grid. Don't use - looks weird.
Now... write: ls -latr --color and
see what happens
Then write xlsfonts
To exit a terminal window you write exit
or simply click the close-button.
To terminate a process running in the window you can break it use ctrl+C.
This isn't considered a nice way to do things but at least it gives you
the prompt back.
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The RGB color names your system know
are listed in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt
Read it with more /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt
Click spacebar on full page to proceed the listing. Ctrl+C terminates.
Wonder what OliveDrab2 look like? A utility
Color Browser added with GNOME convert RGB (red/green/blue) values
in rgb.txt and display them as colors + names. ColorBrowser runs OK under
any X desktop.
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Quick and easy:
Download Xview - an image browser and snapshot utility, and a "must". Free
for private use and supports all common file formats and then some. The
rpm is found under the powertools section at the RH ftp site. Start it with
the command "xv" - or "xv filename"
Already on disk:
X comes with a heap of utilities - amongst others xvd for snapshots
of windows, and xmag for magnifying.
xwd will default dump a snapshot of the active window.
To make a snapshot of the whole display: Use in combo with xmag, running
at 1:1 ("xmag -mag 1") - select the whole display (or whatever portion is
relevant) and then run an xwd of the root window (being "xmag") - with forinstance:
xwd > filename
Display the file: xwud -in filename
Or pipe it to a postscript file at "snapshot time":
xwd | xpr > filename.ps
The overkill:
The Gimp and ImageMagick are two good but BIG graphics applications that
also do screenshots.
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A package you want from the RH6 CD is
mtools. mtools let you access DOS type files on unmounted partitions.
See the manpage; here a basic example:
To read all files from a diskette in "a:" to the directory you're
giving the command from in Linux:
mread a:* .
There's a space between the * and the dot.
The mtools package contain a little bunch of "well known" DOS commands, all with an additional "m" in front of the command name. If the thought of doing this from command-line puts you off: Get MToolsFM. A small but efficient GUI based (GTK) file-manager utilizing mtools.
Linux has native support for DOS and fat32 formatted HD's. Linuxconf let you choose what type you want to mount a disk as, and whether it shall mount during boot or not. Remember: Whatever you want to mount a partition as: you must create that directory first. (For instance "mkdir /DOS") It's "tidyer" (but no "must") to put mounting-point directories under /mnt.
NTFS - NT's generic filesystem - - is incompatible with about everything but itself. NTFS Read-Only drivers have been written for Linux as well as DOS and BEOS. If you need to network versus NT machines, check out SAMBA.
There's a file-manager style utility to let
you access Linux disks
from Windows. It's in beta - go easy.
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If you're at the point where NOTHING boots
and you only want your Windows back, use a DOS system formatted diskette
with fdisk copied onto it. (fdisk is in the windows/dos dir) Boot
from that. After booting and still on A: write:
fdisk /mbr
This writes a DOS Master Boot Record to your C-disk, in effect wiping out LILO - and your PC is back to it's "pre-lilo" self. You could check BIOS settings before the fdisk-stunt to verify it still looks like a DOS partition. Or just go for it.
NOTE: Separate NT description for multiboot/recovery
yet to come. The above is not valid for NT.
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RedHat6 has support for displaying TrueType fonts. It won't automatically let you print with truetype fonts but things sure look better. xfsft - a truetype fontserver - is made a part of xfs, the x fontserver. In order to make this work you should install the Freetype library and ghostscript rpm from the install CD. To install a rpm package you must be user root. Logged in as a common user: just write su in a terminal window, provide root's password, write gnorpm & and a graphical rpm administration program starts. Mount the CD-rom, click "add", find freetype and ghostscript and install. So far, so good.
Quirk 1: Font-names must be in lowercase and contain no spaces. If you already have tt-fonts on a partition containing Windows, a quick way to copy them all in lowercase is to mount the partition as a DOS filesystem instead of fat32. This way they'll all seem to be lowercase without spaces, whatever they might look like on a fat32 partition. Afterwards you can change partition type back to whatever is relevant. The file that needs modyfying if you want to do this is /etc/fstab. Unmount first - change filesystem - remount and the files will be 8.3 type DOS files se seen from Linux. If you don't feel comfortable with editing this file by hand, use linuxconf to unmount. change filesystem, and remount. That way you don't risk typos.
Quirk 2: Fonts can be more or less broken, and not so "true" to their type as the name indicate. Below is a reference to a little program you shall run: "ttmkfdir". We testrun this first and watch the output, to see if some fonts look completely crappy. You'll know when that happens IF it happens - it looks pretty wild. Delete offending fonts and try again. If you think it ALL looks wild, it's probably OK. If unsure, compare with an existing file called fonts.dir in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
Here the suggested approach to get TT fonts up and running. Commands are done as user root. What you write is annotated in bold fonts. Open a console window, su root, then:
cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
ls -la
If a directory called TrueType is not there - make it with
mkdir TrueType
then
cd TrueType
Now copy your truetype fonts to the new directory
cp /dir/with/ttfonts/*.* .
(the last dot is a pointer to "current directory" - here applied as your
target directory)
When that is done (still in the TrueType directory) we do the mentioned
testrun of ttmkfdir, to see that the font descriptions we store afterwards
is set up ok in the long unix-wise manner. If one or more fonts seem to vary
wildly from the other descriptions there's something crappy with the internal
font description of that font. Delete it (rm somefont.ttf) and try again -
till the output seems reasonable uniform. The line-lengths can vary but should
contain the same "elements".
ttmkfdir
If the output seem to follow the same type of pattern for all fonts we
proceed:
ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale
Now for the smart part: For some reason ttmkfdir sort the font entries
in reverse. This cause problems with character cell truetype fonts when
the font also contain proportional characters: TT charcell fonts are not
well handled under X. If you ONLY use the command above when creating fonts.scale,
you won't run in to problems: The character cell letters won't be included
for the common MS webfonts. But often we want to include decorative fonts
in fonts.scale. These often lack many characters, and ttmkfdir by default
only tolerate 5 missing characters in a font. However, we can tell it to
be more tolerant with the parameter -m nnn where nnn is the number of missing
characters we want to tolerate in a font. A "ttmkfdir -m 100 -o fonts.scale"
will make a much larger file, however, and since it sorts them in reverse,
the character cell fonts will now be listed before the proportional variants
within the same font. This plainly sux, because applications can "jump
to conclusions" and grab the first and best occurance of a requested font
- and if that is a TT charcell font it will look like there's heaps of white
space on both sides of it. Bad bad bad.
So as a good rule - before we proceed now - we reverse the content
of the file fonts.scale to put it right again, like this:
tac fonts.scale > fonts.dir
If you write "head fonts.dir" now you will see the first font begins with
an "a" (most likely).
Since the first entry in a fonts.dir and fonts.scale file should be a number
listing how many entries there are in the files, we must do a little manual
editing to perfect it.
Open fonts.dir in an editor
Go to the bottom of the file
Cut out the number there
Go to top of the file and paste the number in there, so it is alone on
the first line.
Make sure the file ends with a linefeed. Then SAVE it and exit the editor.
NOW we have an OK fonts.dir file! But we still have the old topsy turvy
fonts.scale file. Since these two files in our case are meant to be identical
anyway, we now overwrite the original fonts.scale file we made:
cat fonts.dir > fonts.scale
We are ready to rehash xfs, which happens automatically whenever a fontpath
is added or removed with the utility "chkfontpath".
/usr/sbin/chkfontpath --add /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
(Remember Linux "fill out" paths/filenames for you when you hit the tab, once you've written enough to make it unique. However: Do NOT let the fontpath end with a /)
Your fonts should now be readable in X .
If you have arial there, check it with:
xlsfonts |grep arial
xfs can be rehashed/restarted in different
ways, here are two other approaches:
The "old" Linux way: /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart
The politically correct X-way: xset fp rehash
If you later add/remove fonts in the truetype
dir, you must make a new fonts.scale and fonts.dir file. BTW: It is only
proportional fonts - variable width fonts - like truetype fonts, that you
should make a fonts.scale file for before you make the fonts.dir.
NOTE: RH6 version of xfs now listen
to a different port than earlier (now set to -1) If you've upgraded
from an earlier version of RedHat: Edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and replace
all references to fontpaths with:
FontPath ``tcp/localhost:7100''
You must also make sure that xfs runs and is started at boot time - to
ensure that write:
sbin/chkconfig --add xfs
Those with fresh installs do not have to bother about this point.
xfstt is another truetype fontdisplay server for X and doesn't require any additional libraries. It's easy to set up and can use the fonts right from your windows-disk, if you have fonts there.
In the Makefile for xfstt a default path
to your windows fonts is given. Modify the relevant line to reflect where
your Windows disk is mounted, if you want to use the fonts located there.
(they're in /whatevermount/windows/fonts) Then "make" and (as root)
"make install". Then - as whoever you want to - from the commandline run:
xfstt --synch &
Now WAIT... some 4 seconds BEFORE starting X, so xfstt gets time to unwind
:)
After X is started - with startx or what
you use - you must set a fontpath that xfstt will find fonts at. xfstt doesn't
cooperate with the native xfs fontserver. Write:
xset fp+ unix/:7101
This tells X that there's an additional fp = fontpath found at that port.
Since xfstt runs independently of xfs, the command "chkfontpath" does not
affect it.
NOTE: It is only the very first time
you start xfstt you need the --synch parameter. This creates a database
of the installed fonts. Synchronizing is only required when xfstt needs
to know about added or removed fonts.
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Some webpages use tiny fonts, unreadable in Netcape4.* unless we tune for them. X and MSWindows interpret tt-font sizes differently. Netscape under MSWindows display a larger font at "12 points" than the Linux version does - it seems the error is off by approximately 2 points. What this means in practical life is that TT fonts smaller than 9 points aren't readable under Linux. But many sites use them, since they appear larger on MSWindows.
A "font deuglification" page is out there, but I found the suggested fix of perm "swapping" the 100 and 75 dpi fonts caused way too big fonts in menus and elsewhere. Instead: Here is THE fix for those with the MS truetype webfonts installed:
The fix assumes:
RH6* xfs already working
TT fonts in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
ISO8859-1 character set.
(easily adjustable to other dir's / character sets.)
Before we start the TT fontstuff i have to
correct an error i wrote here earlyer:
I used to recommend this line in .Xdefaults in your homedir:
Netscape*documentFonts.sizeIncrement: 5
REMOVE IT! It's no good.
INSTEAD of sizeIncrement we will add aliases for helvetica! I just discovered
they are lacking in RH6. And that's why helvetica fonts on typical unix
sites on web look way bad and scale as smooth as...a brick. If you recognize
the problem: Do this to check whether there at all are aliases for helvetica:
grep elve /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/fonts.alias
grep elve /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/fonts.alias
If it isn't already aliased: Check that you have it installed:
grep elve /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/fonts.dir
grep elve /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/fonts.dir
If you didn't have aliases, but did get filenames listed after the last
two commands (lines mentioning helvetica outside filenames) - you have it
aboard, all is well and we will proceed:
Use the contents from these pages 75dpi
and 100dpi
Then start by taking a copy for safekeeping of the original fonts.alias
files you already have in the mentioned directories.
Then - as root:
-fire up your favourite editor
-open the fonts.alias files in the above directories
-paste the content into the corresponding files AFTER what is there from
before
-make sure the files end with one linefeed
-save the files in their respective directories.
Reminders:
OK. That was the basics. Rehash xfs with
"xset fp rehash". And then we go for the good stuff:
Tuning for TrueType fonts
We will create (or add to) a fonts.alias in your TT fontdir. Sample content
for the font Arial is given below. The sample contains a little "trick" we
add to avoid too small font-sizes. We will get back to that later.
Making a correct fonts.alias file in the truetype directory provide more sizes as options under preferences/fonts in Netscape.
Here are the sample contents of a fonts.alias. Must end with one linefeed and be saved as user root:
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--6-60-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--7-70-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--8-80-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--10-100-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--11-110-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--11-110-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--12-120-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--13-130-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--13-130-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--14-140-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--14-140-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--15-150-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--15-150-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--18-180-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--24-240-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--24-240-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--6-60-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--7-70-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--8-80-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--10-100-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--10-100-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--11-110-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--11-110-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--12-120-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--12-120-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--13-130-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--13-130-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--14-140-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--14-140-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--15-150-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--15-150-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--18-180-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--24-240-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--24-240-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
NEW:
Roman Sulzhyk [roman@starmedia.net]
sent me a nice mail including a python script he wrote to ease the creation
of a fonts.alias file. And after I had edited this page to include the
script, he read the page here once more and modified the script to take
into account the error with fontsizes rendering smaller under Linux than
under Windows. I am still not sure whether this is a bug in FreeType or
whether MS have bumped up the sizes on Windows, but as long as we can compensate
for it, it doesn't matter too much. So thank you Roman, and thanks again
:) It works like a dream.
I added names for common MS webfonts to it earlyer, so this is already
version 0.3 ;)
It is easy to add other fonts it should map, follow the same syntax. Roman
Sulzhyk's script is perfect for making an initial fonts.scale file for
tt-fonts. You should not, however, use it for native X-fonts, due to the
TT specific compensation it does.
To use the script you need
python installed.
(There are perl scripts that do the same thing, but noone ever mailed me
one.)
NOW:
- Save mkfontalias.py and then..
su root
- copy the file to a directory in your path. (echo $PATH). I copied it
to /usr/local/bin
cp mkfontalias.py /usr/local/bin
- change filemode on it so it becomes runnable:
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/mkfontalias.py
- cd to your TT font-dir, e.g.
cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
- run the script by simply writing:
mkfontalias.py
Depending on how you ran ttmkfdir the first
time, you can now end up with a pretty large file: mkfontalias.py use the
existing fonts.dir file as basis for creating a fonts.alias. If you ran
ttmkfdir with for instance the "-m 100" option mentioned earlyer, you now
got a lot of aliases for character sets you will never use, and thus don't
need aliases for.
So what we do now do is filter the file down to something that suits our
language and won't torture X too much. In my case iso8859-1 do nicely,
so I now wrote:
grep 'iso8859-1"' fonts.alias > newfonts.alias
cat newfonts.alias > fonts.alias
This trimmed fonts.alias down to contain only the iso8859-1 entries.
So far so good. We now have a valid fonts.alias
file.
Now remember the fontsize issue: A 12 point font under MSWindows will look
approximately like a 10 point font under Linux. This isn't a real problem
untill the fonts get very small. You *may* want to edit the fonts.alias
file to become 100% consistant, and alias ALL fonts with an offset of 2
points. But this isn't really required, and personally i find the bigger
fonts become too big for my taste if i do that.
The script has already made aliases for 6, 7 and 8 pt. fonts refer to what's
really the 9 point version of it. Applications that want to use them, now
"find" the small fonts, but what they display is size 9.
For the sake of comparision: Here is my own fonts.alias for TT fonts, but it may contain fonts you don't have, so do NOT copy it as such! Use mkfontalias.py and then finetune It's quick, and if fonts you don't have are defined in the script, it simply ignores them.
When all filemaking and editing is done:
To activate the aliases we restart xfs. You don't have to exit X first, just:
xset fp rehash
Then the final makeup:
After the file is created: Restart Netscape.
Open "preferences/fonts" and select:
"Allow Scaling" for variable width font
Check the checkbox for "use document-specified fonts".
Then select "Arial (monotype)" as your Variable Width Font and choose font-size
12 in the upper dropbox.
Click OK.
If after all this some fonts still look crappy:
It's CSS bugs! Go to prefs/advanced and disable stylesheets to cure it.
The only bad stylesheet page i know of is Altavista where the error seems
to occur for fonts defined as a % of a size. The new Netscape will handle
this beautifully however, and Mozilla already does.
There is of course a lot more to dealing with fonts under X. Later you
may want to add aliases for larger fonts, for instance. I'll add more info
later when i get in the spirit ;)
A little WARNING to the incurably
curious:
If you get bloodthirsty after the success with TT-fonts: Be aware that
you must be very very careful if you mess around with fonts.alias files
in *other font directories* than the truetype one. Some aliases must
be available at all times! In particular you should keep your fingers
away from the fonts.alias in the /misc directory. There the vital aliases
for "fixed" and "variable" must be the first two entries mentioned. Mess
that up and X won't start. Also be careful with fonts.dir and fonts.scale
files - don't fool around with them unless you mean it ;)
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|
|
StarOffice an WordPerfect of course import MS doc files, but are large applications. Here is what I'm using for the moment:
1: ImageMagick
2: WV
3: Abiword
These three work in conjunction. Install them in the above order. (rpm -Uvh blabla.rpm)
Abiword uses the wv engine to import MS Word doc's from version 6,7,8 and 9 - in other words Word6, Word95, Word97 and Word2000 documents. (Wv also includes a neat script allowing quick convertion from doc to html-files.)
Abiword doesn't save as .doc files but can save as .rtf
MS-Word can read .rtf files.
As a matter of fact, using .rtf (rich text format) is safer, since no macro
viruses can be attached that way.
Files listed as dependencies you need to have installed.
To find what you have and not use "locate blabla.so.6" etc.
Here you find the mentioned files:
WV:
http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/freshmeat/wv/wv-0.5.43-1.i386.html
ImageMagic:
http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/rawhide/1.0/i386/RedHat/RPMS/ImageMagick-4.2.9-3.i386.html
Abisuite:
http://www.abisource.com/dl_linux_intel.phtml
Read Winword doc's in Netscape 4.*:
Having WV 0.5.44 installed, i modified /usr/doc/wv-0.5.44/helper-scripts/mswordview.wrapper to look like this, basically:
#!/bin/sh
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
HTML=/tmp/mswordview.$$.html
/usr/bin/wvHtml "$*" > $HTML
netscape -remote 'openUrl(file://'$HTML')'
(sleep 30; rm -f $HTML)&
Then I added this to Netscape preferences for helper apps:
Description: Winword-file
MIMEType: application/msword
Suffixes: doc
Handled by:
Application: /usr/doc/wv-0.5.44/helper-scripts/mswordview.wrapper %
And VOILA - Netscape displays a html version of doc-files. Quite handy to quicly browse an attachment.
|
This is an area with a few pitfalls and I'll give you a link covering it better than I could. There's a variety of protocols for dialup connections. PPP is the one you'll want for Internet use with a modem. RedHat has an excellent and up to date howto full of hints and details about how to see what responses the modem in the other end expect. There is no such thing as a "windows" or "Linux" ISP. If they can be connected to - they CAN be connected to. However, it's common that ISP's won't know up from down on a Linux system, so their support for Linux users can be meager.
Before you start you need to know the IP of your ISP's nameserver. In my case, it turned out all I needed of info apart from that IP was the instructions under "Setting up PPP with Linuxconf". After having read that it took me 5 minutes to connect to my ISP first time and I had never done this before.
If you notice errors about missing compression - it's there but not yet aliased: Add this to /etc/conf.modules (may be called modules.conf on non-redhat systems)
alias ppp-compress-21 bsd_comp
alias ppp-compress-24 ppp_deflate
alias ppp-compress-26 ppp_deflate
Hints:
Modem and FAX |
After a half hearted encounter with mgetty+sendfax, I took a closer closer look at efax and xfax. Efax is a commandline based send/receive fax application. Xfax is a GUI for efax, allowing edit, attach, preview, send, log and save, amongst others. Once an xforms beauty she may appear slightly faded now, but let's call it the "retro unix look". The Real Neat Thing is that this is simple - and works!
Flowers to xfax author Kees Lemmens and co-author Jean-Pierre Demailly, who both swiftly mailed me hints and URL's after an xfax compile misbehaved.
-Install the Xforms library. xforms-0.88-9.i386.rpm is found at rpmfind.net.
- netpbm-8.0.tar.gz is acclaimedly needed; a set of utilities and drivers for converting graphical formats. However, our "interesting" files come precompiled with Kees Lemmens' static version of xfax 1.11 mentioned further below. If you don't intend to waste days on this: get the static and grab what you need. (Netpbm is a bastard to build.) You see the usage of the convertion applets in the "faxdirect" script included with the static. The more recent xfax-2.11 doesn't seem to need them. Forget netpbm till you know you need it.
- efax you want. efax-0.9-3.i386.rpm seems to be the latest.
-xfax: get
xfax-2.11.tgz
Read INSTALL, edit accordingly
make, su, make install - then chmod u+s /usr/bin/xfax or wherever you determined
to put it. Perhaps a quick and dirty fix but I couldn't make it work right
as non-root. I assume you are aware of the security implications.
Install the ghostscript and ghostview packages, found on the RH CD. I have
ghostscript-5.10-11 and gv-3.5.8-7. They are needed for some browsing, printing
and converting postscript files to fax format. To see what's installed:
rpm -q gv
rpm -q ghostscript
If these are missing: put the RH CD in the player, start gnorpm, select "install", roam around on the CD, find the files and install.
1: Get a copy of an
efax RPM
Netscape users then right-click on the
link efax-0.9-3 RPM for i386 and select "Save Link As"
The efax homepage is in Canada at
http://casas.ece.ubc.ca/efax/
Efax require /bin/sh and glibc. This is most
likely installed but if you aren't sure, issue these commands and see if
the files are found:
locate libc.so.6
locate ld-linux.so.2
ls -la /bin/sh
If any are missing you're in trouble and probably not reading this page.
2: Install efax
su
[password]
rpm -Uvh efax-0.9-3.i386.rpm
3: Get the binary xfax.1.11Linuxbin.tar.gz from
ftp://ta.twi.tudelft.nl/pub/dv/lemmens/
We don't need xforms or netpbm when using the
static binary.
4: Unpack the file and change working directory
tar -zxvf xfax.1.11Linuxbin.tar.gz
cd Xfax_linux
5: Configure xfax
Now is when you have to read and edit. The whole
procedure is described crisp clear in the file "INSTALL". The files
you shall modify are:
xfaxrc
faxdirect
In case you would like to compare, here are samples of how i edited them to look, without the personal information. Values you may want to modify are BOLD - leave the rest.
Sample: modified .xfaxrc
Name: My Name
Title: My Title if any
Department: Home Office
Email: myname@myisp.com
AsciiCmd: /opt/lib/xfax/efix -ve -itext -ofax
-p21x29.7cm -d0,0.2 -l62 -n %s.%%03d %s
Editor: xterm -e pico
EmailFlag: False
FrontPageFlag: True
Header: /opt/lib/xfax/faxheader
SpoolDir: /var/spool/fax
FaxSend: /opt/lib/xfax/faxsend
FaxPrint: /opt/lib/xfax/faxprint
GifCmd: /opt/lib/xfax/giftog3 %s.001 %s
PSCmd: gs -q -sDEVICE=faxg3 -dNOPAUSE -sOutputFile=%s.%%03d
%s quit.ps
G3ToXpm: /opt/lib/xfax/g3toxpm
If the directory /var/spool/fax/ does not exist, as root: create it.
----
Sample: modified faxdirect
for a Class 2 modem capable of 14400 bps, which
is about all of them now. If you have an old old modem, you have to read
that file more thorough, but all you need to possibly modify is explained.
efax has a manpage - xfax a html based help-page.
Only the editable part is here, original comments
mostly deleted and my own added. Comments are prefixed by a #. [The very
first line in a script often states which shell the script uses - never remove
a leading #! line]
Again: Remember that descriptions here are for
RedHat 6.* installations.
#!/bin/sh
XFAX=/opt/lib/xfax
#BELOW: The path to EFAX is modified!!
#We use the newer version we installed via
rpm instead!
EFAX=/usr/bin/efax
DEV=modem
CLASS=2
# Your fax number in international format,
20 characters maximum.
# Use only digits, spaces, and the "+" character.
FROM="+47 0123456"
# Your name as it should appear on the page
header.
NAME="MyName"
# Dialprefix "T" for TONE, "P" for pulse.
DIALPREFIX="T"
DIALSUFFIX=""
LOCK='-x /var/lock/LCK..$DEV'
# Uncomment one of the following lines to
force xon/xoff flow
# control if you have one of the types of
modems listed.
# FCINIT='-j\Q4' # AT&T (Dataport,
Paradyne)
# FCINIT='-j\Q1' # Motorola (Power
Modem, 3400 Pro,...)
# FCINIT='-j*F1' # QuickComm (Spirit
II)
# FCINIT='-j&H2' # USR (Courier,
Sportster)
# ****************************************************************
# The remaining options probably won't need
to be changed.
# ****************************************************************
## well...so it says.. Actually there's ONE
more line you want to change
# for a 14400 capable fax
# scroll down till you find this line:
TXCAP="1,3,0,0,0,0,0,0"
# and change it to this:
TXCAP="1,5,0,0,0,0,0,0"
6: Create the proper directories
The static version is compiled for some predefined
directories we have to comply with. These directories aren't created
during a RedHat installation, so we make them by hand now instead:
(as root)
mkdir -p /opt/lib/xfax
mkdir /opt/bin
7: Move the files to their new homes
Still as root, cd to the directory where you
unpacked xfax
cd /home/mylogin/Xfax_linux
mv xfax.static /opt/bin
mv * /opt/lib/xfax
cd /opt/lib/xfax
The directory the files were originally unpacked, Xfax_linux, should be empty now.
Still as root, make a textfile in /opt/lib/xfax/ called faxheader. Edit the content be whatever you want your faxheaders to display.
8: SUID xfax, so you don't have to be root to use the program
cd /opt/bin
chmod u+s xfax.static
9: Now exit from user root
write exit and then cd
Now you should be "yourself" - check that with
the command "whoami"
If you are still root, write "exit" again and
another "whoami" till you become your ordinary login.
When you are "yourself" again make sure you
are in your homedir (cd)
10: Start xfax
/opt/bin/xfax.static &
xfax will start with an error message this first time as it tries to load
personal settings not yet created.
Select menu's "File" and then "Set From Info".
Fill in the appropriate values.
This is done "double up" because the application
is made to be used by many people withing the same organisation. When no
personal settings exist, xfax transmits the default header-page if a header
is requested. Personal settings are saved to a file called .xfaxrc in your
homedir.
Now check out the application and abilities. The only quirk i found is that it won't preview/send a page containing just one word.
When you want to fax just a page with up to 1500 characters you can simply write in the header field. Send longer files and/or images as attachments. Xfax with this setup handles ordinary text-files and *.ps (postscript)
If all seems to go well, add a Gnome menu-item or kdelnk or whatever, so all you have to do in the future is to click on it to start. Note that error messages from the app itself will be routed to STDOUT, (and can't be seen when started via a click), but error messages regarding the fax routine is displayed in the logging window when you use the static binary.
Efax supports incoming fax as well as shared fax/data, manual reply etc etc. If other applications also use the modem, make sure they use the same lockfile /var/lock/LCK..$DEV and remember to refer to ttyS1 as "modem" as a rule, in all apps that use it. (ttyS1 being the device on "COM2") Xfax, however, has no longer any fax reception features - these were deliberatly removed at an earlyer stage.
Technical:
I use a cheap external modem, white print on
a black concave box states:
"56K V.90/K56 FLEX Data/Fax/Voice Modem", it's
made in Taiwan. Default xfax setup worked fine.
Firmware: V2.210-V90_2M_DLS ROCKWELL AC/K56 class
2
FCC: H52PT-3020
Other fax solutions for Linux:
mgetty+sendfax(+vgetty) The "standard"
GNU solution. I'm sure it's great but it isn't very intuitive to configure.
Commandline based. Vgetty is the voice capable addon. I'll date this bugger
again some day.
HotWire Commercial GUI based app. Free beta RPM. Picky about modems. OK looking interface but didn't dial anywhere. Preview fails.
HylaFax The "overkill" - more fit for commercial use where a good fax-server
is required. Can be configured for single users as well of course. Commandline
based AFAIK. Free for private use.
|
You may want to tell your machine to go online or do other stuff while you're not at home. You can use some tools to achieve this - and "program" the machine to respond by simply dialing the machine in certain preset sequences. These hints were posted in comp.os.linux.misc:
Q:
Is it possible to have my modem detect an incoming call, hang up on that
call and immediately run pppon? I'd like to connect to my home machine from
office, and I don't have a modem there.
>From: Robert Clare <Robert.Clare@cern.ch
>Hi. I know of two programs on the market that can do this.
There are probably more... Take a look at ringconnectd and xringd.
Both should be available at your local sunsite mirror. I have used
ringconnectd in the past and it worked perfectly
From: Peter Caffin <peter@ptcc.it.net.au>
I believe that mgetty is capable of doing this. Have a look at the Mgetty
Homepage at http://www.leo.org/~doering/mgetty/index.html and the Usenet
newsgroup de.alt.comm.mgetty.
From: Robert Clare <Robert.Clare@cern.ch>
Dont know about ringconnectd, but xringd is capable of pretty complex "sequence
detection" - like 3 rings, then 30-60 seconds silence, then 1 ring, then
at least 30 seconds silence, etc.
I have used this in the past to make the computer do different things (one
sequence would grab the From: and Subject: of all my new emails and send
it to my pager, another would connect to my ISP, etc.)
|
RealAudio5 will screw up in RH6. The simple fix is also the one RealNetworks inform about: Get it and follow instructions.
-download by right-clicking on the file-link and choose "Save Link As.."
-unpack (tar -zxvf filename)
-Run a simple "make" in the dir it unpacked to
-After the make: copy open.so and rplayer to the dir where your (compiled)
rvplayer is.
-Edit the file "rplayer" to contain the real path to your rvplayer.
-Then point your browser's association with realaudio to rplayer INSTEAD
of rvplayer
Now things should work, apart from the fact that the RedHat rpm version
will work as a application and not a plugin.
RealAudio G2 is also said to work but according to RealNetworks it
hasn't even been released for RH6.
*Something* is there for download now and then, higher than v.5 - it's
a beta and has it's quirks. Some have problems with G2 and can't hear it
play. Various solutions and rumored links are posted in comp.os.linux.misc
almost every day.
ShockWave Flash
Unproblematic install - works fine.
|
Due to a slip in the RPM install, the fontpath to the unscaled 75dpi fonts
isn't always set.
This cause JAVA crashes in Netscape. If you have a problem with Netscape
crashing whenever it tries to load a java applet, that is the problem.
Here the solution, extracted from RedHat's own fix: Write:
chkfontpath --list
You should get output that looks something like the following:
Current directories in font path:
1: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled
2: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled
3: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled
4: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
5: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1
6: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo
If /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi isn't listed: Verify they are installed:
ls -la /X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi
If you get a long list of files, now add them to your fontpath like this:
chkfontpath --add /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi
If javascript pages give you problems even after this, check your ~/.mailcap
file (cat .mailcap)
Remove this line if you find it:
application/x-javascript;;\ x-mozilla-flags=save
RedHat offer an upgrade to version 4.7-1. Find a suitable mirror site close to you. Download the files from the update directory - here's how you upgrade of the full communicator suite:
CLOSE ALL your Netscape stuff, and (as user root) write:
rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps netscape-common-4.7-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh --force netscape-communicator-4.7-1.i386.rpm
For changes in v.4.7, see:
http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/4.7/relnotes/unix-4.7.html
|
RPM:
The first "new" format you meet on RedHat: RedHat Package Management. These
are compressed files but also contain whole installation routines. You use
the program rpm from command-line, or a graphical interface for it (like
gnorpm) to unpack and install in one operation.
TAR:
Tape Archive format. This is one of the "old" unix formats, originally
intended to copy files to tape for backup purposes. Like ZIP files they
can contain detailed file-information (file accesses, timestamps, directory
structures.) A TAR file isn't compressed, it's just a heap of files assembled
together in "one container". Often referred to as tarballs. When
you unpack a tar file you can force it to restore the directory structure
it was packed with. Quite handy, almost a necessity.
GZ:
The original unix ZIP format. These are compressed files. It's common to
first "tar" files and then compress afterwards. These files are normally
given the extentions .tar.gz to tell something about the contents
and packing routines involved. Another abbreviation may be TGZ.
To unpack a tar file: tar -xvf filename.tar
To unpack a gz file: gzip -d filename.gz
New versions of tar also let you unzip: tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz
bz2:
Made with a program called bzip2. Uses a more effective compression algorithm
than gzip. Files are typically 20% smaller than gzip'ed files. Bzip2 isn't
included in the RedHat6 distribution but they have a good
howto on it, with download links.
For backups: Also see manpages for dd and cpio.
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C is a programming language, as you probably know, and Linux is based on C. If you want to compile applications for Linux, install the GNU C-compilers that come with RH6: gcc and g++, (aka egcs), the C library glibc and the "make" utility and you're half way there.. While you're at it - throw in the libraries you can find, if you have enough space on your HD - gtk, qt, the whole lot. (The latter are used when you compile apps made specially for Gnome and KDE)
Newcomers to Linux are often confused by the plethora of C libraries -
not without reason.
The libraries contain the routines the various flavours of the kernel has
used over the times.
Comparable to DLL files under Windows. Here a quick overview of the major
versions:
libc-4 - a.out libc - this is a real OLD one - not needed on a fresh install.
libc-5 - The original "ELF libc" - often referred to as only libc (Linux2.2)
libc-6 - aka "GNU libc" aka "glibc". RedHat6 is based on this one!
GNU libc also have versions. glibc 2 is the current. You will often find
it referred to as libc2 also, to add to the confusion.
Often you will find programs in different versions, for "glibc" and "libc" for instance. RH6 users shuld pick "glibc". If you can't find glibc sources, but ELF sources are available - go for ELF. Install libc5 (on CD) and tell your ld.so.conf file where it is. As you realise now, you can perfectly well install older C libraries but this must be done with care, so you don't overwrite files or links to your primary libc library. For that purpose, see what ldconfig does. Ldconfig tries to make some system in your local madness and writes to /etc/ld.so.conf. The order of the paths there is vital if you install more libraries. glibc should be mentioned before anything else. And - that means you keep glibc in /usr/lib and if you install other versions, keep them in other directories, mentioned later in the config file.
Just for the "fun" of it - here's my own /etc/ld.so.conf file
/usr/lib
/usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib
/usr/X11R6/lib
/usr/openwin/lib
/usr/local/lib
/usr/local/lib/gtk/themes/engines
/usr/lib/qt-1.44/lib
When your C-stuff is onboard, you're ready to go:
Unpack whatever you downloaded:
tar -zxvf program-0.1.tar.gz
cd program-0.1
ls
It is common to find files called "Makefile" and "configure".
Furthermore, a README and INSTALL is normally added. Untill you get used
to it all: READ the files that are in all uppercase - they can contain important
information. If required: edit the Makefile to reflect "private" oddities.
Which can be paths, settings, card-types, dis and dat. It will be described
in these files what changes you eventually should make and why.
To compile is simple (if everything goes smooth and "configure" and "Makefile" are well written)
./configure
make
su
(password)
make install
If anything goes badly wrong during congfigure or make, the compilation will terminate with an error. You often see SOME errors fly by, warnings of various kind etc.. but those aren't fatal: The critical ones will terminate the whole process, and tell something about what went wrong.
If you compile gnome-apps from sources on a RedHat6 system, do ./configure --prefix=/usr instead of only ./configure or the apps will "land" in the wrong directory (we want them to eventually overwrite older versions and in any case keep the gnome-stuff together; god knows when an rpm will contain the same app and it'll only confuse you to have several versions on disk in different dir's)
More about glibc:
The GNU libc site:
http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/libc.html
A glibc FAQ:
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/glibc/glibc-faq.html
and about ELF and having multiple libraries on disk:
http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/ELF-HOWTO.html
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Vanishing panel:
I tuned KDE panel to sit at bottom of desktop, as small as possible and
to auto-hide/display real quick. Then decided I wanted it on the left side
instead and FOOF: it vanished for good. To recover manually you must edit
~/.kde/share/config/kpanelrc
(in your homedir)
There's a line that reads "Position=....". If you want it at the bottom
again - change that from for instance "Position=left" to "Position=bottom".
This could be your first encounter with command-line based editors: check
out pico (For instance with "pico -w filename" where -w means don't wrap lines.)
Pico is easy peasy - you'll master it in a few minutes! Commands are
explained on bottom line. The ^ means you should use the Ctrl-key in combination
with some letter. ^x will exit and you are prompted to save changes (y/n)
and then for a filename (defaults to opened file.) Press enter, changes
are saved and you're returned to the shell.
"grep -n someword filename.txt" will list the lines where the word "someword"
is found in filename.txt
"pico -w +644 filename.txt" will bring the cursor right to line 644 in
filename.txt
Stuck process records in /tmp
In the /tmp dir you may after a while discover a heap of "files" beginning
with kio_, kfm_ and orbit
There's some bug in the KDE that came with RH6 that doesn't let it clean
up properly after a session. These files don't take any space and you can
safely delete files from previous sessions of KDE if they bother you. After
a while - if your machine is up and running at the time, you probably have
a cron-job that automatically deletes files in /tmp "older than x hours".
[/etc/cron.daily/tmpwatch]
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Files called only core are dumps done when a program crashed. You can safely
delete those files (rm core)
If you wonder what program was the sinner: gdb /bin/ls core
Somewhere down the output you'll see what dumped it and why. Doesn't tell you too much though - coredumps are useful for debugging purposes, which is an artform in it's own right.
If you don't want coredumps to take place at all you can prevent it: the
syntax depends on which shell you use:
If you want to globally disable it on the system - do the following as
user root:
bash: add following line to /etc/profile
ulimit -c 0
tsch: add following line to /etc/csh.cshrc
limit coredumpsize 0
If you want to disable it only on a particular user-account you place the lines in the users .profile and .cshrc
kcore is something entirely different. You find it in /proc/kcore and it
isn't a real file but a listing of your onboard RAM. User root can read
from it to see what resides in memory. Again: this is not a file, it's a
process and doesn't occupy space on disk however huge it looks.
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The reboot syndrome:
Users accustomed to MS Windows often think they have to reboot Linux -
like in Windows - to make changes take effect. The "reboot-nightmare" is
MS specific, and has to do with the way the registry works there. Rebooting
Linux is the wrong approach in 99% of the cases.
In Linux you instead restart only the one process or the set of processes that you want changes to take effect for. Saves time and doesn't wear your disk out.
In Linux the operative system and most processes run in the background and don't care whether you run X or not. "Services" that always run in the background are often called "daemons" (and often have a name ending with a d). You can stop/start the single daemon as you wish - without tearing down the whole system.
Examples:
If you have established a modem connection from KDE and then log out: pppd
is still active in the background and your modem connection remains up and
running. You can continue using it from commandline - or you can startx
again and go on using X applications to access it.
Or if you're in KDE and want to make changes to your mouse setting: "su"
with appropriate password, run "/usr/sbin/mouseconfig" - modify the setup
- log out from KDE - startx - and the changes take effect.
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To see a long list of all running processes, maximize a terminal window
and write ps -edalf |more
Various fields display, amongst them the UID, PID, PPID, the name of the
job and the parameters it was started with.
The PID is the Process IDentification.
The PPID is the PID of the Parent process. A process can spawn "child processes".
The parent process owns the child process and if you kill the parent chances
are you kill it's children too.
The UID field tells about the ownership of a process: Commonly which User
ID originally started. Tooyt processes have UID 1. Root was either the original
owner of this process but it also happens root take over ownership of a
process originally started by another user.
The process ID's are referred to as numbers.
To rehash one particular daemons processes, try this command:
killall -HUP processname
After making changes in your mail configuration you for instance "killall
-HUP sendmail", to restart it with new settings.
This will not only reset one single PID belonging to sendmail but ALL processes
that has to do with "sendmail"
If you see mentioning of sending SIGHUP to a process, it's the above procedure
that's referred to.
You'll run across the term "SIG..." in various connections and it has to
do with unix process signals. The signals that can be called are textual
or numeric - as you prefer. Textual petnames are most common and safest to
use. Write killall -l to see the list.
When you run "kill -9 PID" the number 9 is the signal squence, and 9 is
the signal to terminate relentlessly - disregarding dependancies of other
processes etc.
A nicer kill would be done with only "kill pid" - in which case the process
can respond in a variety of ways, depending again on how it's programmed
to react to a "kill" command. Some ignore it - others rehash then...all is
possible, you have to consult the individual manual to find this out.
If a programs run on several threads, like Mozilla's "mozilla-bin", it is practical to use "killall mozilla-bin" instead of issuing several "kill PID".
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This section is about how to find it all on your OWN disks, but Linux software is for instance found at http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM and http://www.freshmeat.net
To the matter: Manual pages are common UNIX type help-files. You read them from a shell by writing "man commandname". Linux also come with a X-based man-page reader (xman under utilities). When run from a terminal window: While you still haven't reached the end of a man-file, your display will usually indicate this with a colon. At that point you can search in the manpage, and scroll with page up/down keys. Write "man man" for usage. When you're at the end of a manfile it displays "(END)". Towards the end of manualpages is usually a list over closely related commands. Exit the manual-program by typing Q (for "quit").
Some of the man-pages related to signal sequences and kill-commands are:
alarm(2), bash(1), fuser(1), pidof(1), ps(1), kill(1),
kill(2), killpg(2), pause(2), raise(3), sigaction(2), signal(7),
sigsetops(3), sigvec(2), and tcsh(1)
It isn't for nothing people write extremely thick books about these things.
Manual pages are referred to with a number as a reference to which manpage
directory it can be found in.
(man1 through man8). "man" by default delivers the first "hit" it finds.
As you see above, pages for "kill" can be found in two man-page directories.
(kill(1) and kill(2)) To read the manpage for kill in the first directory,
all you have to write is "man kill". To read the manualpage in the second
directory, you have to specify it: "man 2 kill".
And if this sounded spooky - here's more to test out:
info command
about command
apropos command [or a topic]
whereis program (find a program or manpage that is or isn't in your
path)
which program (find a program in your default path)
If it doesn't show up then you can try:
locate filename
(can give a long list if a directory has that name)
Each night - if up and running - some jobs described in scripts in /etc/cron.daily/
will run.
slocate.cron is one of those. Slocate itself is a program that builds a
little database over files and their locations - according to given criteria.
This little database is what "locate" consults when you ask it to.
And then there's find
find finds files. With one short command you can search for a file on all
the disks you have mounted. That would be the approach of a desperado however,
and can take a lot of time if you have a big system: you're hereby warned.
Note: stdout (your terminal(-window)) is NOT find's default output. You
must tell "find" where to place what it finds.
To see it there and then you add the parameter -print (which will
"print" to stdout - standard output - which is the terminal(window) you gave
the command from.
To find all files ending with .txt ANYWHERE on your disks: find /*
*.txt -print
To find files somewhere in the dir you're in - or any subdir: find ./*
*.txt -print
The output in this case will be a listing of all files searched and then list of hits at the end of the output.
Remember how you also can pipe and redirect commands and output in unix,
to files for instance.
Remember enough about it and you're close to start shell-scripting.
In addition, helpful files in various other formats are found on the RH6
CD, from plain text to html and postscript. They are a good source to understanding
Linux but as mentioned, not always up to date. README files that accompany
installed programs may indicate that you need to install them all over again
for instance. Efforts are made to make more consistant documentation, but
for now it can be a jungle of good advice.
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3D acceleration under Linux is still close to "bleeding edge" technology. The openGL/Mesa 3D apps and demos only understand maximum 16 bpp colormode and can't yet emulate colordepth. To toy with 3D you have to install additional drivers and libraries and set up a video mode at 16-bit or lower
NVidia has a patched version of XFree86 and xfs (including xfsft) for Riva TNT based cards. There are also Matrox drivers of course. A growing range of applications and games like Doom3D and Freeflight (a flight simulator) use these 3D engines. To install it all is a serious pain and still don't run as fast as on the same hardware under Windows. Some keywords for 3D is Mesa, Glut, openGL, plib. You find Mesa and glut rpm-packages on the RedHat PowerTools CD or at the RedHat ftp site. After that you're on your own.
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RedHat packed their version of KDE, a popular desktop manager, with a non-standard
path.
This means that if you aren't quite "into" things, you depend on RedHat
rpm distributions of KDE applications if you want painless upgrades. Furthermore
it means that KDE applications you get as normal tar.gz files are likely
to screw up to some degree during install - they'll expect to find KDE is
in /opt/kde/.... which is where a normal KDE install would be. There is no
/opt dir in a RH install. How to make a path of symbolic links to "cure"
this is partly described below under "quirks with KDE".
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An invaluable page for all RedHat users is the
Errata, where updates and various bugfixes are posted with a description
about how to update the files and what is being fixed.
Bookmark that page and keep an eye on it.
If you download rpm, gz or tar files with Netscape: Download by right-clicking on the link and choose "Save link as" instead of just clicking on the link. Unless you have told Netscape that this is an "application" MIME type, it doesn't understand these formats properly and will try to display them as text instead, or worse..reformat them during download (unpacking tar.gz files, but maybe leave them on disk with the wrong filename. If possible, use a dedicated FTP program: They're better, faster, and usually let you resume aborted downloads.
Xfree86-3.3.5 upgrade:
If you get X crashes: First thing to do is run XF86Config and set up your
graphics card again. (Type only.) If you have an ordinary scrollwheel mouse
the setting for that will probably vanish during this operation: either
reconfigure that too or simply add the line "ZAxisMapping 4 5" to /etc/X11/XF86Config
under "Section "Pointer"" (also comment away the line with Emulate3Timeout")
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One vast area you never really get "finished" with. If your machine is
online there's some basic precautions you should take right away. In comp.os.linux.security
a link to Lanze Spitzners page about
Armoring Linux was posted.
If you've overlooked it till now - check out what "umask" does. (Explained
on the unix commands page.)
You can test if your mailer is vulnerable by a telnet to mail-abuse.org.
Mail relay exploit is further explained at
http://maps.vix.com/tsi
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So called "unsupported hardware" MAY still work under Linux, but takes
more work to get going. A great effort is made by the Open Source community
to keep up with new hardware, and a lot of drivers is available in alpha
or beta versions. Hardware producers hesitation to publish specs to GNU developers
is the main reason for this lack of Linux drivers. Many major HW companies
are announcing future support for Linux these days as the OS is becoming
increasingly more popular. This section contain a private mix of info and
links regarding both GPL and commercial vendors, based on my own interest
in or experience with various hardware.
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GPL applications and info found at:
http://www.exploits.org/~rkroll/smartupstools/
http://www.brisse.dk/site/apcupsd/
APC now have native Linux support for their UPS'es
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USB is not supported in kernel 2.2.* but partly supported in 2.3.* and under development.
Links:
http://www.linux-usb.org/Linux USB
Project Homepage
http://www.kroah.com/linux-usb/
USBView and other Linux USB stuff
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/
Table of working devices
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[under construction - IGNORE this]
RedHat6 hardware compatibility list sort scanners under "unsupported". There is some "stuff" out there however, providing general support for most SCSI scanners, and also increasingly more support for parallel port scanners. It's bleeding edge technology and in beta or alpha for now. Consult the list of working, partly working and NOT working devices.
Being in early beta, stability and features isn't up to par with Windows versions yet, and it can be a bitch to install and configure it all. I got a demo used Microtek Phantom for 60$, which should be identical to Microtek V300 or V310, which is supported via patches.
Familiar with the TWAIN? Forget it. THE Linux Scanner project is known
as SANE (Scanner Access Now - EASY) where I found an rpm site linked.
http://developer.redhat.com/rhcn/browse/conventional/packageinfo.php3?package=sane
and downloaded:
sane-1.0.1-2.i386.rpm
sane-client-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
sane-devel-1.0.1-2.i386.rpm
sane-clients-1.0.1-2.i386.rpm
sane and sane-devel installed fine. The others whined for libgimp.so.1.
Since I located something on disk called /usr/lib/libgimp-1.1.so.6.0.0, well
equipped with a jungle of symbolic links already, I made one more.
locate libgimp.so - then
cd to where you found it (or install the rpm if you don't find it at all)
cd /usr/lib
ls -la libgimp*
decide which version you actually
have there
if it isn't libgimp.so.1, link
the one you have to a "dummy" file, in effect pointing to the real file:
su
(password)
ln -s libgimp-1.1.so.6.0.0
libgimp.so.1
then rpm -Uvh the other files
(just in case you had some version from before) and exit from root.
So far, so good. But it turned out I needed a lot more. The latest
kernel patch that includes drivers for chips used in parallel port scanners
was ftp://ftp.torque.net/pub/ppSCSI-0.91.patch
Piece of advice, in case you
want to dive deeper: print out the info found here:
http://www.torque.net/parport/
http://www.torque.net/parport/ppscsi.html
The doc's for this patch bluntly stated that it's a patch for kernel 2.2.10. RH6 comes with 2.2.5-15. It suddenly seemed outdated. New kernels are found via http://www.kernel.org, and as I write the latest version is 2.2.11, around 14 mb big.
QUIRK: When unpacking the tar.gz - place it first in /usr/src - then delete
the current "linux" link there to linux-2.2.5, mkdir linux-2.2.10, then
make a new symbolic link to linux-2.2.10
(ln -s linux-2.2.10 linux)
tar -zxvf linux-2.2.10.tar.gz
and it nicely unfolds in linux-2.2.10
Then move the patch you downloaded to /usr/src/linux-2.2.10/drivers
cd to it
write:
patch -p1 < ppSCSI-0.91.patch
Now I'd come to the point where I was worse off than when i started. I actually had to compile a new version of the whole operative system. This can be scary stuff and I've failed miserably before - my kernel angst is almost as big as my SCSI angst ;) None the less - this medicine was required to blow life into the beloved Microtek - so I couldn't resist one more attempt.
See: How to make a new kernel under RedHat6
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QUICKCAM LINKS
The cqcam Homepage (application)
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~patrick/cqcam/
QuickCam color and Linux mini-HOWTO
http://www.dkfz-heidelberg.de/Macromol/wedemann/mini-HOWTO-cqcam.html
"My Web Cam on Linux" - A user page with practical hints
http://home.sol.no/~robertgr/linux/webcam.html
Third-party Quickcam software
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~reynolds/quickcam/
DIGITAL PHOTO LINKS
gPhoto - the GNU Digital Camera Program
http://gphoto.fix.no/
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Dreaming of a Toshiba I keep half an eye on this. Problem areas can be pointing devices, docking, display. Normally overcomable problems but can take some inventive tweaking to get running properly. Be aware that so called WinModems and IBM MWave are not normal modems but a similar type of communication devices, depending on MSWindows to work at all. They will not work on Linux. Many laptops come with internal "modems" of this type - be warned.
Links of interest:
Linux on Laptops The Linux Laptop authority page with tons of resources.
Linux Laptop HOTWO. Lists machines with links to users HOWTO pages for particular
machines.
Toshiba Computer Engineering
Corp. Linux Page - Page created in July 1999 and under construction.
It has an eye-catching disclaimer and not so much is there yet, but they're
obviously working on it.
Exchanging ZIP files between MS-DOS/Windows and Linux -
A Toshiba US whitepage describing how to deal with large zip-files (spanning
several diskettes.)
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If you have a card combination that worked under Windows, it will 99,9
% certain work under Linux.
Exeptions: The trouble with Cirrus Logic 5446 is still active in the Linux
driver. This most likely also goes for Trident cards. You'll get a crisp
clear TV image - and all the fonts on your desktop get garbled. Consider
these cards incompatible for now.
For the curious: RedHat and Hauppauge provide extensive lists over compatible / incompatible graphic cards. A benefit with Hauppauge cards is that you don't tie yourself up to one particular graphic card manufacturer and don't need connectors beyond the PCI bus.
A still developing standard to deal with video/multimedia devices, video4linux,
is now part of the kernel. (2.2.*). So contrary to what all official HOWTO's
and FAQ's indicate: After a fresh install you do NOT
have to compile a new Linux kernel. RH6 drivers are placed in
/lib/modules/2.2.5-15/misc. Download and compile a TV app, load the modules
and you're up and running with your favorite soap in *almost* no time at
all ;)
TV-APPLICATIONS: kWinTV or Xawtv
kWinTV only runs under the KDE desktop. xawtv is a more "pure" X app, and runs on any desktop. Both are good TV applications and even if they claim beta status they don't stand much back for the Hauppauge app for Windows. You may find them even better in some respects. These applications have a slightly different touch and feel but are equally good.
To guide you through an installation process from A to Z and because the kWinTV install can be the trickiest, this is the installation that's described here in detail.
xawtv and sound: The worst "quirk" with xawtv: You have to figure out which device you add manually in .xawtv to enable volume tuning with the +/- keys. In my case "mixer = vol" did the trick but this is a sound card dependent setting. If you run out of ideas: let that line read "mixer = mixer" and you'll get an error message when you start xawtv manually, listing available devices. Try, fail and succeed from there - it's one of them.
kWinTV and sound: kWinTV let you choose sound device in a menu, and the sound device on a Hauppauge card is "line in". If you upgrade to v. 1.1.1-1 of the multimedia pack from KDE you may experience a bug that cause the sound not to cease when you exit kWinTV. For now i start xawtv and make it "force" the sound device to respond again.
kWinTV requires a C compiler and the QT library and development files installed.
If you installed them earlier they are in the development category of the
rpm packages, else you find them on disk 1 of the RH6 CD set:
qt-1.44-6.i386.rmp
qt-devel-1.44-6.i386.rpm
Also install everything C related if you haven't already. (Apart from the sources (src).)
Now start a terminal window. (How to read files from DOS diskettes is described further down this page.) If you already have the kwintv archive in your homedir you write:
tar -zxvf kvintv-0.7.1.tar.gz
(unzip's and places in the right sub-dir's)
cd kwintv-0.7.1
Check out the README, the INSTALL-file and Makefile and edit according to your needs. There are two generations of the Hauppauge card and you should set card-type and possibly tuner-type in one of these files. Most Hauppauge cards will be auto-detected though, which is the default setting.
When the files are edited write
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
su
("su" without a login-name sets user to superuser aka root. Provide password
when prompted)
make install
./MAKEDEVICE
(MAKEDEVICE will create the required device "files" in /dev, with the correct filemodes and ownership.
Here some useless links to my kwintv and xawtv configuration files, valid
for the Norwegian cable operator Avidi.
The kwintv configfile must be located to a dir called .kwintvrc and should
be called "default.ch"
The .xawtv resides as a file in your homedir.
THE MODULES
Modules must be loaded before you can run the TV-application / TeleText etc.
videodev.o [the v4l basic videodevice module)
bttv.o [driver for Hauppauge cards]
i2c.o [interface to a bus thingie most framegrabbers/TV-cards use]
tuner.o [the tuner-module: you might want to switch channels]
For those with stero capable cards look for msp3400.o
Radio-tuners are also installed, but I'm not blessed with one so haven't
checked out that part.
A dependency between the required videodev.o and the i2c.o modules is already made. (As far as I remember) This means that when you load the bttv module, it auto-loads it's "friends" videodev and i2c.
In addition you must load the tuner-module with the required parameter for your tuner-type - for the Hauppauge WinTV/PCI bt848 TEMIC tuner it's type=0. It shouldn't be required to add this extra setting though.
To load, what you write (as user root) is:
/sbin/modprobe bttv.o
/sbin/modprobe -t misc tuner.o
exit
(exits the root-shell and you're back on your own login)
cd
(changes directory to your homedir). Full path is only needed if /sbin
isn't in your path-statements. (To get a quick overview over the variables
set for your user, write "printenv".)
If you aren't already running the KDE desktop, make sure you change to
it. If you're out there in the dark on commandline, write startx and when
a desktop has appeared, open a terminal window and write "switchdesk" and
make sure it is KDE you're using.
After a KDE session is running you write:
kwintv &
kWinTV will make a configuration dir in your homedir, .kwintvrc - where it later will store your channel settings and preferences in a file to read at startup. That "&" at the end tells the shell to run this as a background process - in effect "freeing" the shell-window for additional commands. If you don't add "&" the window is locked till you close it, Ctrl+C will then stop the running process.)
Now you should be up and running and can scan for your favorite channels.
Look around and enjoy.
You might want to read /usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv/INSTALL
to learn more about the driver. You should *definately* read about quirks
with the bttv driver.
TELETEXT / VIDEOTEXT AleVT
A very different look and feel and a simpler program than the Hauppauge app for MSWindows, but quicker.
I went through how to unzip, read README's and Makefile's above - the procedure here is even simpler : you don't have to ./configure this application, just check out the Makefile if changes are required and do a simple "make". Don't run "make install" - you keep this app in it's install-dir. (According to the author).
The bttv driver provided in RH6 is an old version. Start AleVT from the
dir you unpacked and ran make in with this commandline to avoid warning-beeps:
./alevt -oldbttv
You'll want to make a kdelnk file for it, this procedure is explained in
the KDE helpfiles. Remember to give full path since it's not in any of the
default path statements.
MODULES IN GENERAL |
Modules are drivers and a way to add functionality to the kernel. The modular
concept allows you to keep the kernel small and load/unload modules as required
- which prevents the system from being a memory hog. Most private users
would prefer a kernel with some additional slack for modules, to allow them
to just load an already existing module if a new device is added to the system.
A kernel that's built to be capable of listening to a whole lot of modules
isn't so much bigger than one that doesn't. A RedHat install will throw in
heaps of "popular" modules - the kind it's likely a user could need at some
point. This is done to save you the trouble of compiling a new kernel if
you add a standard device to your computer later, but if you really want
a sleek system you can of course compile a kernel that suits your system
like a glove - no extras. The sourcefiles and HOWTO's for that are included
in the distribution.
If you want the modules to load already during boot you can do that too
of course, read up on runlevels and how Linux boot.
/sbin/lsmod
/sbin/rmmod modulename
(don't add the path or the additional .o (object) here - just the name
of the module)
QUIRKS in kwintv-0.7.1 |
1: paths
RedHat makes life pretty hard for KDE users - they've changed the path
for it so a KDE app like kwintv sets wrong path to the icons (/opt/kde/share/icons).
I guess I could have changed this in the Makefile but at that time i wasn't
aware of the problem. kwintv install doesn't create that dir though - it
just expects to find it. My own lazy solution was a symbolic link and a dummy
directory structure should the event ever occur again. After copying the
icons in ~/kwintv-0.7.1/kwintv/icons to /usr/share/icons the commands would
be:
cd /
mkdir opt
cd opt
mkdir kde
cd kde
mkdir share
cd share
ln -s /usr/share/icons icons
"ls -la" now looks something like this:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root
16 Jun 1 02:39 icons -> /usr/share/icons
You know you didn't put any files there...but write "cd icons"...and do
ls -la again.
Symbolic links are powerful shortcuts.
2: Sound
In the options setup of the running application, sound defaults to "CD".
To adjust volume on the WinTV card you should probably change this
to "Line In".
QUIRKS with bttv |
Ugly quirk to all bttv usage:
You risk ruining the eeprom chip on the Hauppauge card if you use TWO applications
utilizing the card simultanously. This is a quirk related to the i2c driver,
which can get unstable and act up because various apps utilizing the card
don't know about eachother.
Thus, to watch teletext with AleVT you should start kwintv, tune to the
channel you want to browse videotext from and then QUIT kwintv BEFORE starting
AleVT.
The phenomena is further described in /usr/src/linux-2.2.5/Documentation/video4linux/bttv/README.
There's a utility added with xawtv to read the eeprom settings and save
to disk, and another utility to eventually write the settings back to the
EEPROM if things go wrong. If you only want to copy the contents from the
eeprom and still have windows installed, you also find the contents of the
eeprom in device properties. (A paired hexadecimal annotation like in "E1
02 F5 11" etc etc etc)
Cirrus Logic 5446 PCI cards and Trident:
These cards are probably best classified as incompatible with the Linux
drivers for now, even if they list as compatible at Hauppauge and RedHat.
The TV-app seems to "take over the universe" and garble text in buttons and
apps. This bug was earlier found in several versions of Hauppauge's own drivers.
Hauppauge finally sorted it out for Windows. Before I managed to compile a
newer version of bttv I had bought a new TNT128 based card which works fine.
I doubt the problem is solved yet but if someone really really want to know
I'll reinstall the GD5446 and test it.
Garble snapshot (1024x768)
RH6 bttv driver is old - how to compile a new
You may want a newer driver, 0.6.4 is out and another version, bttv-0.6.4e
is found at the xawtv page.
If it whines about your kernel not being modular when you try to compile
it:
-Install the linux sources (linux****src.i386.rpm)
-cd to /usr/src/linux
- as root: run xconfig and choose "modular", then save and exit - and don't
make a new kernel.
The bttv driver will now compile just fine. Pay some attention to where
the files are saved! There will be made symbolic links to these files.
Reason for this needlessly awquard approach is that the fresh sources don't
indicate that you have a modular kernel, and RedHat don't provide you with
your original configuration file after an install.
Then copy the FILES (not symbolic links) bttv.o, i2c,o, videodev,o and
whatever you might need to /lib/modules/2.2.5-15/misc/
If you "ls -ltr" in the drivers dir you see the newest files list last.
You may want to rename the existing modules to bttv.o.old etc before you
do this stunt, or else you overwrite them. Do make sure the modules aren't
loaded (/sbin/lsmod to list, /sbin/rmmod bttv to remove. (also videodev,
tuner, i2c and other files you may want to upgrade.)