Thanks to this post, I’ve managed to fix a rather severe display problem under Fedora Core 4 by downgrading X Windows to the version included with FC itself. The steps:

rpm -qa | grep xorg > download.txt
pull the correct file names off the FC4 CDs with the lower versions, then:
rpm -Uvh *.rpm --oldpackage

Fairly straightforward – the hardest part was finding the proper files, which actually consisted of just going through all four CDs and doing cp ∗xorg∗ /root/fix, then running the above RPM upgrade command from that directory after weeding out the RPM files not listed in download.txt.

I’ve been working on restoring caeryn to operation (my home server), since she’s been down for the last few days. Turns out, the IP address on our DSL line changed, rendering her inaccessible. So that problem’s fixed.

I’ve also uninstalled my manual install of SquirrelMail on that machine and installed it via RPM for easier updating. She’s also now getting a much-needed update:

116 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 removed and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 130MB of archives.
After unpacking 21.1MB disk space will be freed.

She should be back to normal soon. Gotta love Fedora Core 3-based servers.

I recently had some problems with checksum mismatches for the dag yum repository. The specific error was as follows:


http://apt.sw.be/fedora/3/en/i386/dag/repodata/primary.xml.gz: [Errno -1] Metadata file does not match checksum
Trying other mirror.
Error: failure: repodata/primary.xml.gz from dag: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.


Below is the series of commands I used to resolve the problem, as root:


cd /var/cache/yum/dag
yum clean all
wget --cache=off http://apt.sw.be/fedora/3/en/i386/dag/repodata/filelists.xml.gz
wget --cache=off http://apt.sw.be/fedora/3/en/i386/dag/repodata/primary.xml.gz
wget --cache=off http://apt.sw.be/fedora/3/en/i386/dag/repodata/repomd.xml


Trent from the FreshRPMs general discussion list suggested the wget command sequence, and I refined his steps a bit to eliminate the hassle of having to move files around. It works just fine now, and I’ll use this solution anytime there’s a checksum problem with that repository.

I just installed Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 for UNIX.

This morning, I got up, ran Synaptic (apt graphical package manager) to update the system, then tried once again to get onboard wireless working. As it turns out, I had forgotten to add the new laptop’s MAC address to the wireless MAC list, so the router was prohibiting the connection. Figures — you always miss the obvious. After tweaking the network scripts to get the key right, the connection works.

Up to this point, I’ve been following a lot of the instructions provided here, since this is a pretty good set. For safety to make sure that DVDs would play, I ran

ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd

Just to make sure the link existed. To verify DVD functionality, I popped in my copy of The Reduced Shakespeare Company and started xine. Changing the configuration’s experience level to “Master of the Known Universe”, I started the player, then accessed the volume control and turned off the muting on the PCM line. Sound works, video works. I also managed to get CRT out working using this driver, then wrote a little shell script resident in the driver’s directory so all I have to do is type crt on and crt off.

Going into Applications > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts, I set the volume mute, volume down, and volume up buttons to their appropriate Fn+F5, Fn+F6, and Fn+F7 key combinations, respectively.

After that, I transferred all my settings over from autumn to this computer. I’m now using this computer as the primary for all my work and holding on to autumn for a while until I’m certain I don’t need anything else off of her. The 700M has a much lower resolution than I’m used to, but hopefully that will do me some good in terms of eye strain. It’s also cool to be able to carry it around.

I did have to install the mozilla-j2re package to get some Java applications to cooperate with me, but that’s been the only major tweak required (not even really a major tweak). Other than that, it’s functioning very, very well.

My new laptop arrived a few minutes ago (5:41PM, according to UPS tracking, after being loaded at 5:20AM — poor baby…).

And the assimilation process begins…

Step 1: boot from System Rescue CD and run the command run_qtparted. Autodetect the mouse (option 1), then select the hard drive. Delete all the existing Windows partitions, then split the drive in half by specifying 50% of the unallocated space. Two partitions are created — one is ext3 for the Linux filesystem and one is FAT32 for the Windows reinstall. This left about 8MB free at the end of the drive for me — no issue, since I don’t even use 10GB regularly, much less 30. Commit the changes, exit, and reboot.

Install order matters here — because I want to use Fedora Core 3’s boot loader (GRUB), I’m installing Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 first. This takes a while, even with a 1.6GHz processor, though I did fully format the FAT32 partition to an NTFS partition (I started at 6:10PM and ended the install at 7:15 or so.) I then started the Fedora Core 3 install.

My hard disk now has a partition layout as follows:

/dev/hda1 (Mount point /, ext3, 27588MB)
/dev/hda2 (NTFS, 28608MB)
/dev/hda3 (swap space for FC3, 1028MB)

I enabled the firewall software and configured it for web server access, then disabled SELinux. Selecting package groups, I chose:

X Window System (no changes from default)
Gnome Desktop Environment (default minus at-spi, gnopernicus, gok)
Editors (default selections)
Graphical Internet (firefox, gaim, gftp, thunderbird only)
Text-based Internet (lynx only)
Office/Productivity (default minus openoffice.org-i18n, planner)
Sound and Video (plus xcdroast)
Graphics (no changes from default)
Web Server (minus httpd-manual, webalizer, plus php-mysql)
MySQL Database (no changes from default)
Development Tools (no changes from default)
X Software Development (no changes from default)
Printing Support (no changes from default)

After formatting and installing, a reboot. I finished the install around 8PM. I set up my own FC3 account, then immediately switched into console. Logging in as root, I changed the init level to 3 to shut down X. I then modified the X configuration to match this xorg.conf, which was generated from another Inspiron 700M.

From there, I type init 5 and get back into X.

Now, I follow the Yum installation instructions posted here, then:

yum -y install libdvdcss
yum -y install xine xine-lib xine-lib-devel
yum -y install apt
yum -y install synaptic
yum -y install fortune fortune-bofh-excuses fortune-hitchhiker fortune-tao
yum -y install totem-xine

The wireless still isn’t functioning, and it’s time for bed, so more tackling this tomorrow.

I finally got pissed off at Evolution, since every single time I have to restore from backups, something fails. this time, it refused to read my mail signatures, Contacts and Calendar, which was the last straw — I wiped it from the system.

I’ve switched over to using Mozilla Thunderbird for my mail and the new Mozilla Sunbird for my calendar. The only problem is that Sunbird seems to like crashing any time I try to make a change, but it’s a very new piece of software, so I’ll forgive it its sins. It’s a very nice piece of software, and if it develops further, it’ll rock. It already rocks, it just needs higher “cool” and “stability” quotients.

Thunderbird is a little limited — I can’t do threaded message views or maintain multiple signatures. I have yet to dig around Mozilla Update to see what’s there for Thunderbird, though, so there might be something…

The other big, annoying thing about Thunderbird: I relied extensively on SpamAssassin for my spam filtering while using Evolution, and can’t for the life of me determine how to use SpamAssassin and Thunderbird together. I’ve read a few articles that suggest I could do something weird like a procmail/SpamAssassin combo, but that’s way too complicated for my tastes. I don’t really want to use Thunderbird’s built-in stuff; I’ll settle for SpamAssassin if I can.

Oh, and for a “holy crap, that’s cool” moment: type in about:config into Mozilla Firefox. For control junkies, this is just plain cool.

So I completely wasted my time the last few hours and wrote a command-line-based PHP script that fetches the weather from wunderground.com, parses the resulting HTML file, and outputs the results on the command line. This is a lot like what some Eggdrop scripts do (and they even get the output from the same site). The result looks like:

pellis@localhost(~): weather 98296

Forecast for Everett, Washington (98296; as of 4:53 PM PST on December 22, 2004):
Currently 39F | Humidity: 100% | Dew Point: 39F | Wind: North at 0 mph
Pressure: 30.52 in | Conditions: Clear | Visibility: 10.0 miles | Sunrise/Sunset: 07:55 AM (PST)/04:19 PM (PST)

A completely worthless use of my time, but an interesting exercise. I may end up using this.

After installing Fedora Core 3 in text mode without X installed on caeryn (my home server), I did the following to get her ready for use:

1. Followed the instructions to initialize Yum off of the Fedora Core 3 Installation Notes.
2. service httpd start
   chkconfig httpd reset
   service sendmail stop
3. Yum didn’t seem to want to cooperate, so I downloaded Apt off the web for Fedora Core 3 and did an apt-get upgrade, which seems to have done the job. I also ran:
   
   apt-get install mysql-server

caeryn is now much easier to update and manage remotely than her old FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE software. Oh, did I mention I switched caeryn to a different box, since the old one can’t boot from CDs through the BIOS? She’s now a 233MHz Pentium MMX (better than her old case, which was only about 133MHz, if that) with 64MB RAM. Hopefully, this helps, though Fedora Core 3 is also more memory/CPU-intensive than FreeBSD.

I had to add in the MySQL server, since it wasn’t installed properly:

yum install mysql-server

As root on my Fedora Core 3 partition, since SETI@Home, mysqld, and spamd weren't starting properly:

service setiathome start
service mysqld start
service spamassassin start
chkconfig spamassassin reset
chkconfig mysqld reset
chkconfig setiathome reset