Monday, June 7, 2010

Fedora 13 lxde spin - my personal installation

Downloaded fedora 13 lxde spin cd and installed on my dell xps 1210 harddisk. By default it created seperate volumes for root and home partition which was a problem for me due to very less space. It's more convinient for me to have one volume to manage the diskspace so chaged the disk management while installaion.

Download rpmfusion from http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

[All yum and rpm commands needs to be run as root]

yum update

echo 'bhupendra ALL=(ALL) ALL' >> /etc/sudoers
After this we can logout as root and run sudo yum ...

vi /etc/selinux/config
Change SELINUX=enforcing to SELINUX=disabled

-Enable left clicks and scrolling on mousepad
I added following lines to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf. If you do not have this file, check which conf file is present under /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "1"
Option "VertEdgeScroll" "1"
Here is an interesting page to test scrolling: http://www.richinstyle.com/test/dynamic/overflowscroll.html
Reboot system.

-Download flash-plugin-10.0.45.2-release.i386.rpm for adobe flash from adobe's site
rpm -Uvh flash-plugin-10.0.45.2-release.i386.rpm

-Installed needed apps
yum install vlc mozilla-vlc audacious audacious-plugins-freeworld* NetworkManager-vpnc vpnc proftpd

-Default volume on system was less. Gmixer still annoyingly defaults to the mic options instead of speaker volume.
yum install pulseaudio-equalizer
I was able to ehance audio levels using this one.

-gtalk video calls
yum install x264 ffmpeg empathy
Unfortunalty this did not work for me. Though I was testing with 2 laptops where in only one had webcam. Hope this works for all.

-Download and install skype rpm for fedora 10+
rpm -Uvh skype-2.1.0.81-fc10.i586.rpm

-Disable screensaver
-enable ftp in firewall

-Remove unwated stuff
yum remove liberation-mono-fonts liberation-sans-fonts liberation-serif-fonts libertas-usb8388-firmware iok sylpheed lostirc asunder gxine xmms2 gnomebaker lxmusic libdiscid liberation-fonts-common m17n-lib

-cd/dvd burning. Though for kde, this is the best tool for the purpose.
sudo yum install k3b k3b-extras-freeworld
While burning cd-rw, I had to black out existing content which did not work. I got this error
/usr/bin/wodim: Operation not permitted. Warning: Cannot raise RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limits.
After looking at k3b site, it was recommended to disable automount and/or use unpatched cdrtools(wodim)
After looking around real hard, I opened pcmanfm, goto edit->preferences-> volume management tab, uncheck 'mount removable media automatically when inserted'. This did the trick instead of various other good suggestions.

-VirtualBox can now be installed from fpmfusion repos, installing dependencies has never been easier with manual rpm install.
yum install dkms VirtualBox-OSE VirtualBox-OSE-guest
Evils of using opensource edition is that after 2 days when I needed to connect my phone to xp guest, I was not able to add usb. Aparently open source edition does not support it.
So downloaded http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/3.2.0/VirtualBox-3.2-3.2.0_61806_fedora13-1.i686.rpm
yum remove VirtualBox-OSE VirtualBox-OSE-guest
yum install dkms gcc kernel-headers
rpm -Uvh VirtualBox-3.2-3.2.0_61806_fedora13-1.i686.rpm
Add virtualbox group to your user.
Any installation errors can be seen in and reinitialization done via /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup as root
Boot xp guest. I had to change network to intel pro/100 T server for my xps 1210.
Loaded guest additions cd from /usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso and installed on my xp guest
Added shared permanent folder.
To access shared folder under xp, open windows exporer, goto tools, map network drive.
select drive say eg. V
Browse for folder and you should see 'Virtualbox shared folders->//Vboxsrv'
Map it and create shortcut to desktop for easy access.

-Want video chat on yahoo
yum install gyachi

-google picasa. Download rpm from http://picasa.google.com/linux/download.html#picasa30. Will have to install few dependecies first.
yum install lsb libgphoto2 openssl sane-backends audiofile esound-libs openssl-devel
rpm -Uvh picasa-3.0-current.i386.rpm

-ssh between laptops on wireless network
enable and start sshd service under services
ensure firewall has ssh enabled

-ftp between 2 laptops on wireless network
install proftpd on one laptop
start ftp service using
sudo service proftpd start
Ensure ftp is enabled on firewall
Enable port 21 port forwading on router for ip of laptop having proftpd service.

-download google chrome and install rpm
http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?hl=en&brand=CHMA&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bk&utm_medium=ha

-My desktop folders and icons went missing after an update. To get back the icons open following
sudo vi /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostar
Change @pcmanfm2 --desktop --profile lxde
to @pcmanfm --desktop --profile lxde

-Missing java plugin on firefox 3.6
Install openjdk
sudo yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin
Restart firefox and check if plugin comes up in about:plugins. If not then
sudo alternatives --config libjavaplugin.so
Enter the number for other .so file and restart firefox.