Xeta Linux installation and update notes
Xeta is the name of a Fujitsu C2210 notebook computer, 2 GHz, with 512 MB RAM, a 60 GB HD, a Firewire port, 4 USB2 ports, an SD memory stick port, PCMCIA ports, an ethernet port, and integrated 802.11b wireless.
20040310
<>After using Partition Commander CD to repartition the 60 GB Xeta HD, reducing the size of the NTFS partition to 20 GB and setting the size of the Linux partitions as follows:
/boot 300 MB
/home 7 GB
/ 30 GB
But errors were found in the root partition.Using the tools "e2fsck" and "tune2fs -j" on the /dev/hda4 rootpartition seemed to work at first, but subsequent use of the systemresulted in serious evidence of file damage in the root partition, soit was decided to do a complete re-install of Fedora Core 1 (then version 2.4.22-1.2115.npt1.i386), wiping out the root partition but preservingthe /home partition where most of the downloads and builds were stored.Selected the options of installing Everything, that is, all packages.Grub now defaults to loading the latest Linux kernel.
However, if I were to partition the drive again, I would allocate about half of the / partition to the /home partition, because that is where most downloads, workfiles, email, and other data files tend to reside. I might also want to create a /usr/local partition, and perhaps an /opt partition, for files added outside the original distribution and upgrades to it.
Logged in as root —
Added "Terminal" app to the root taskbar and moved it to the left of the 4-pane icon.
Changed name of "Start Here" desktop launcher to "File Manager: Nautilus" and set preferences to "View as List".
This began a practice of naming desktop launchers with the category of function or application they are, so that when the launchers are sorted by name, by right-clicking on the desktop screen, those of the same kind will be grouped together. Other categories include "SCSI", "Floppy", "HTML Editor", "XML Editor", etc.
Added logout launcher to root toolbar to the left of the Volume icon. (So far have not figured out how to do the same for the non-root user desktop taskbar.)
Created ordinary non-root user "jdr", but added it to group "root".
Changed name of "Start Here" desktop launcher to "File Manager: Konqueror" and set icon to /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/apps/konqueror.png.
Added Terminal launcher to toolbar.
Set time and date formats.
Set its environment to KDE using menu "Preferences | More Preferences | Desktop Switching Tool" or " System Settings | More System Settings | Desktop Switching Tool". (There appears to also be another way to switch environments, but it doesn't work. Use only the wizard on the menu.
Added launcher icon "File Manager: Gentoo" executing '/usr/bin/gentoo --root-ok' and set it to run as root so it can always be used to override permissions, then selected gentoo.png icon from icon library /usr/share/pixmaps. Did the same for both root and non-root desktops. The Gentoo file manager is more useful than the Nautilus or Konqueror file managers for many purposes, especially for file copying and backups.
As root
Downloaded old_gond.ttf (Old Gondor) font from www.constitution.org and saved into /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/ which seems to be sufficient to recognize and display them in the X browsers after reboot, because the font displayed property on the home page of www.constitution.org.
Wanted .ttf fonts from Windows not included in the Linux distro, so copied some of my favorites from a Windows machine using the Gentoo file manager to three directories:
Created in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/ a script install-fonts containing
mkfontdir mkfontscale fc-cache
And executed it in that directory, but so far the additional fonts have not begun to work in the Mozilla browser, particularly the fonts spionic_.ttf (Greek), sptiberi.ttf (Hebrew), and spedessa.ttf (Syriac), testing it with the document www.constitution.org/sr/q18.htm
As root
Ran "yum update" using the unmodified /etc/yum.conf file to get updates from fedora.redhat.com. Very slow. Got several errors. Download seemed to stall so terminated with ctrl-C. Log apparently supposed to be stored as /var/log/yum.log but no content found, so copied output from terminal window into file, using ctrl-shft-c and ctrl-shft-v and made backup named /var/log/yum.log.040311.
Backed up /etc/yum.conf to /etc/yum.conf.fedora1
Downloaded yum-fd.conf from freshrpms.net/packages/builds/index.html?build=yum and saved as /etc/yum.conf
In preparation for using yum with www.freshrpms.net, got Matthias Saou's pgp key from the freshrpms site and inserted it into the keyring with
gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key e42d547b
Could verify that his key not already in rpm database with
rpm -q gpg-pubkey-e42d547b
So extracted from pubring with
gpg --export -a e42d547b > /tmp/key
and added to rpm database with
rpm --import /tmp/key
Also saved key from freshrpms.net/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.txt into /tmp/key1 and executed
rpm --import /tmp/key1
But the command on the freshrpms web page was incorrect for importing the Fedora/Red Hat keys, so instead used
rpm --import /usr/share/doc/*/RPM-GPG-KEY
rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY
Ran
yum -y update
which upgraded the kernel to 2.4.22-1.2174.npt1.i386
(And re-run this every couple of days to update packages.)
The -y option for yum is to pass it the "y" reply to the prompt it would otherwise issue, and which would be needed if it is run as a cron job.
Current yum.conf file is here.
Decided it was dangerous to still have the up2date icon on the root/gnome taskbar, consisting of a circle with an exclamation point that turns red when an update is needed, and blue after an update has been done, if it still pointed to the fedora site, so edited the file /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources to comment out the existing lines beginning with "yum" that point to the fedora site, by inserting a # at the beginning of the lines, and insert the lines
yum freshrpms http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/1/i386/freshrpms yum Dag http://apt.sw.be/redhat/fc1/en/i386/dag
Also added the Dag Apt/Yum repository by following the directions at dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/
Created launcher for Synaptic:
Name: 'Synaptic' Executable: '/usr/bin/synaptic' Icon: /usr/share/synaptic/pixmaps/synaptic_48x48.png
As root
Downloaded and installed the latest version of Mozilla from www.mozilla.org and installed it into the directory /opt/mozilla.
Created a script moz-ni in /opt to download and expand the nightly Mozilla binary builds. Created desktop launcher for it, with a Mozilla dragon icon.
Modified properties of Mozilla taskbar launcher to launch that latest nightly build of Mozilla instead of the original 1.4.1 version.
As both root and nonroot user jdr
Wanted a text editor that compared to UltraEdit that is my favorite in Windows (www.ultraedit.com). Found three on the system and created desktop launchers for them:
Name: 'Text Editor: gedit' Executable: '/usr/bin/gedit' Icon: /usr/share/pixmaps/gedit-logo.png Name: 'Text Editor: kedit' Executable: '/usr/bin/kedit' Icon: '/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/apps/kedit.png' Name: 'Text Editor: nedit' Executable: '/usr/X11R6/bin/nedit' Icon: '/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/apps/nedit.png'
After some testing, I concluded that nedit came closest to my needs.
Upgraded nedit from v 5.3 to 5.3 by downloading rpm file from http://www.nedit.org and running
rpm -Uvh nedit-5.4-1.i386.rpm
Also added a launcher for XEmacs:
Name: 'Text Editor: XEmacs' Executable: '/usr/bin/xemacs' Icon: /usr/share/pixmaps/emacs.png
Scientific calculators and documentation tools
Added application Rascal, a scientific plotting calculator, by downloading its rpm into /home/downloads/rascal and running it, which put grascal in /usr/local/bin, and created desktop launcher for it by copying /usr/share/applnk/Utilities/rascal-kde.desktop to /home/jdr/Desktop.
Created launcher for the scientific calculator kcalc by copying /usr/share/applications/kde-kcalc.desktop to /home/jdr/Desktop and sorting the icons by name. Unfortunately, it uses the same icon that Rascal does, so would ltimately like to find a better, unique icon for Rascal.
Installed LaTeX and its IDE Lyx by downloading its rpm from http://www.lyx.org into home/downloads/lyx and running
rpm -ivh lyx-1.3.3-1rh9_qt.i386.rpm
Didn't find a .desktop file that I could use for a launcher so created one using:
Name: 'Lyx LaTeX' Executable: '/usr/bin/lyx' Icon: '/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/32x32/apps/lyx.png'
The icon looks a bit ragged. Need one in 48x48.
As root, installed and/or created desktop launchers for several HTML editors to evaluate in use:
Added application "Nvu", an HTML editor, based on the Mozilla Composer, by downloading its tarball into /home/downloads/nvu and expanding, then creating a desktop launcher to the nvu executable there with the icon mozicon50.xpm.
As user jdr added icon launcher for Nvu in desktop.
Added application "Bluefish", an HTML editor, by downloading its rpm into /home/downloads/bluefish and running it, which put the bluefish executable into /usr/bin and its icon into /usr/share/pixmaps, and created desktop launcher for it using that icon.
As user jdr added icon launcher for Bluefish in desktop.
Added launcher for already-installed HTML editor Quanta 3.1.4, the executable for which is /usr/bin/quanta, and selected the icon /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/quanta.png
Created similar launchers on the desktop of the nonroot user.
After trying each of the above 3 HTML editors, I found that while each had some useful features the others lacked, Quanta was on the whole the most satisfactory, although not as satisfactory as the Windows HTML editor I have long used, HoTMetaL Pro (which is no longer sold or supported since Corel bought it). However, from the menu you should select
Settings | Configure Editor | Editing
Then uncheck Word wrap and Remove trailing spaces, because there is a bug that fails to restore the training space when lines are joined, thereby losing the spaces between words.
Decided to download and install the latest version of the product, Quanta+, from http://quanta.sourceforge.net to see if it had fixed the bugs and made other improvements. I downloaded version 3.2.-BE-1 into /home/downloads/quanta and did the installation from there. However, I found that it did not replace or overlay the previous installation, and that despite having added the following environment variables to both the root and nonroot .bash_profile files
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/kde/bin; export PATH KDEDIRS=/usr/local/kde; export KDEDIRS
Neither which nor locate found the executable, so modified the launcher to execute '/usr/local/kde/bin/quanta' and thereby was able to launch and use the new version.
However, it still does not work to enable word wrap or removal of trailing spaces, and one must take care to make sure there are trailing spaces after every word before hitting ENTER to start a new line, and before every ending paragraph tag.
As root
Added application "Conglomerate", an XML editor, by downloading the latest version of its rpm into /home/downloads/conglomerate and running it, which put the conglomerate executable into /usr/bin and an icon into/usr/share/pixmaps, but that icon was too small at 16x16, so created desktop launcher for it using another icon.
Name: 'XML Editor: Conglomerate' Executable: '/usr/bin/conglomerate' Icon: '/usr/share/conglomerate/pixmaps/conglomerate-icon-32.png'
Wanted character selector desktop launcher. Found two on the system, kcharselect and gucharmap. Liked kcharselect better, but not its icon, so used the gucharmap icon for it:
Name: 'Character Selector' Executable: '/usr/bin/kcharselect' Icon: '/usr/share/pixmaps/gucharmap.png'
As user jdr added icon launcher for Conglomerate in desktop.
Added launchers on both root and nonroot desktops for gftp and set up to upload to my sites. Found that the "publish" function of Nvu would not work for that purpose because it cannot move up the directory tree from the default directory one gets with the site URL, and for constitution.org ftp takes one to the home directory of the user account rather than to the html file directory tree root.
As root
Added application "WordPerfect 8" by first going to the sites http://www.linuxmafia.com/wpfaq/and http://www.faqs.org/contrib/wordperfect/downloadwp8.html and reading the instructions there. Downloaded the tarball of needed library files wp8-libs.tgz from http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/vectorlinux/packages/wordperfect8/wp8-libs.tgz into /home/downloads/wp8-libs and as root ran
tar -zxvf wp8-libs.tgz
on it to expand it.
There is now a file etc/ld.so.conf containing a list of directories that need to be added to /etc/ld.so.conf so that one can find these library files when they are added to the corresponding directories. In this case the directories that need to be added are
/lib /usr/lib /usr/local/lib /usr/i386-linux-gnulibc1/lib
One doesn't need to add /usr/X11R6/lib because that one is already there.
Now copy the files in the director is lib and usr
cp lib/* /lib
cp -r usr/* /usr
and run /sbin/ldconfig to rebuild the library cache. One gets an error message "/lib/ld-linux.so.1 is not a symbolic link" which will come up in later installations, so I made a symlink out of it with
mv /lib/ld-linux.so.1 /lib/ld-linux.so.x ln -s /lib/ld-linux.so.x /lib/ld-linux.so.1
then rerun /sbin/ldconfig.
Now
mkdir /opt/wp8 chown [yourself] /opt/wp8
Now download xwp8-linux.tar.gz from http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/apps/ into /home/downloads/wp8. If there is a previous xwp8 directory from aprevious install run "rm -rf xwp8". Now expand with
tar -zxvf xwp8-linux.tar.gz
This will put the files into a subdirectory xwp8.
chown -R [yourself] xwp8 cd xwp8 su [yourself] sh Runme
You will be asked to choose an installation directory. Enter/opt/wp8, then choose the defaults for the remaining options until you get to the choices for printers, and select those. If one has space, one might as well select them all.
Now
cd /opt/wp8/wpbin
You need to configure the printing subsystem. As the root user, start xwp with the -admin (or -adm) command-line option, then select and install an appropriate printer driver, from the menu select File | Print | Select Printer | Printer Create | Add and fill in "Passthru Postscript" to the Search/Selection field, then back out with OK, to hand off jobs to the Postscript system printing daemon. (Alternatively, specify "-oraw" in the Lpr options of Select Destination.)
For WP8 registration keys try "LW8XW-NfDyZN1HfZ", "LW8XW-9K87F9tldF", "LW8XW-bA8L9bjZf9", or "LW8XW-nEqIHnZrcH". The first worked for me.
Found WordPerfect icon for the desktop launcher at http://www.buzzard.org.uk/jonathan/icons/kde-icons.html and downloaded into /usr/share/pixmaps, then created desktop launcher.
Later, as usr jdr, created icon launcher on desktop for WordPerfect 8, but found that I could not select the wp.gif icon for it using the launcher creation tool, which in KDE will only recognize .png nd .xpm files. So converted the .gif file to .png using the netpbm utilities
giftopnm wp.gif | pnmtopng > wp8.png
What is happening here is that the first utility, giftopnm, is converting the .gif file to a common "netpbm" format, and then converting from that to the .png format and saving the result. This is done because there is not a giftopng utility to do it directly.
That .png file was then selected for the icon.
Also wanted to experiment with a native Linux word processor, so chose kword and created launcher:
Name: 'Word Processor: kword' Executable: '/usr/bin/kword' Icon: '/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/kword'
First tried to add 1394 (firewire) support by first downloading gscanbus-0.7.1.tgz from http://gscanbus.berlios.de into /home/downloads/gscanbus and extracting and compiling it there:
tar -zxvf gscanbus-0.7.1.tgz
cd gscanbus-0.7.1 ./configure make
But the compilation failed with errors, so I had to find another alternative.
Next, downloaded rescan-scsi-bus.sh from http://www.linux1394.org/sbp2.html into /home/downloads/rescan-scsi-bus and created a symlink
chmod 777 rescan-scsi-bus.sh ln -s /home/downloads/rescan-scsi-bus/rescan-scsi-bus.sh /usr/local/bin
Create a mount point for the firewire device, which Linux will see as a scsi device:
mkdir /mnt/scsi
While I ws at it, I made the devices to be mounted writable with
chmod 777 /mnt /mnt/floppy /mnt/scsi
Now create in /home/downloads/rescan-scsi-bus a script file named mnt-fw containing
rescan-scsi-bus.sh -r mount -o uid=jdr,rw /dev/sda1 /mnt/scsi
I set uid to jdr because I expect only users root and jdr will be writing to the scsi devices and this covers both. Mounting a SCSI device or floppy sets all its files and directories to 755 permissions so that only the owner and root can write to it. To enable any other user than root to write to it, the owner needs to be set to the user that mounts the device.
Made mnt-fw executable and created a symlink in /usr/local/bin
chmod 777 mnt-fw ln -s /home/downloads/rescan-scsi-bus/mnt-fw /usr/local/bin
Next created a desktop launcher for mnt-fw with the icon /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/devices/hdd_mount.png
Finally, create a script named umnt-fw to unmount in /home/downloads/rescan-scsi-bus containing only
umount /dev/sda1
then
chmod 777 umnt-fw
ln -s /home/downloads/rescan-scsi-bus/umnt-fw /usr/local/bin
and create a launcher for it using the icon /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/devices/hdd_unmount.png
Note that if a file manager like Nautilus is used to read the directory of the mounted firewire (or scsi) device, the unmount command won't work, because it will be considered "busy". You have to close programs accessing the device before it can be unmounted.
This will need to be revisited when both 1394 and true scsi devices are connected and disconnected.
As both root and jdr
Created icon launchers on the desktops "Mount Floppy" executing
mount -o uid=jdr,rw /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
set to run as root
and "Unmount Floppy" executing
umount /dev/fd0
Also set to run as root.
For each selected the Gnome or KDE icons already designated for those functions.
/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/devices/3floppy_mount.png /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/devices/3floppy_unmount.png
Modified the root .bashrc file to add
alias h='history | less'
which provides a 1-character command to get the command history,
and at the end
PS1='\! \$ '
which makes a shorter, simpler prompt suitable for my needs.
Did the same for jdr.
20040410
Installed latest version of Java SDK. This isneeded for Java development, in particular, use of the Eclipse IDE forJava development, and installation of Java plugin. Went tohttp://java.sun.com, and in particlar to http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html , for the SDK rpm file j2sdk-1_4_2_04-linux-i586-rpm.bin which was downloaded to /home/downloads/javasdk1.4.2, then in shell running as root, ran
sh j2sdk-1_4_2_04-linux-i586-rpm.bin
rpm -iv j2sdk-1_4_2_04-linux-i586-rpm
which installed java into the /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_04/ tree.
Also downloaded the J2SE 1.4.2 Documentation into /home/downloads/javadoc and used unzip to extract it.
Installed java plugin to Mozilla with
ln -s /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_04/jre/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so /opt/mozilla/plugins/
Took advantage of list of links to various plugins for Mozilla under Linux for the X86 at plugindoc.mozdev.org/en-AU/linux.html to download plugins into a directory /home/plugins.
Since plugins for Mozilla are placed in the directory /opt/mozilla/pluginsin the main Mozilla directory tree /opt/mozilla, and users are advised todelete this directory before installing a new version, without always reminding them to first back up the /opt/mozilla/plugins directory, saved the plugins into subdirectories under /home/plugins and wrote script install-moz-plugins saved into /home/plugins containing the commands to follow that create symlinks to the plugins for Mozilla in the /opt/mozilla/plugins directory, and a symlink to it was created with
ln -s /home/plugins/install-moz-plugins /usr/local/bin
Installed RealPlayer plugin by downloading from http://scopes.real.com/real/player/unix/unix.html the filerp8_linux20_libc6_cs2.rpm into /home/downloads/real and running
rpm -ivh rp8_linux20_libc6_cs2.rpm
as root from that directory, then creating a symlink with
ln -s /usr/lib/RealPlayer8/rpnp.so /opt/mozilla/plugins/
Installed mplayer by downloading the file mplayerplug-in-2.50.fc1.i386.rpm from http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/download.html into /home/downloads/mplayer and running
rpm -ivh mplayerplug-in-2.50.fc1.i386.rpm
which put mplayerplug-in.so in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, but we need it in /opt/mozilla/plugins, so ran
ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/m* /opt/mozilla/plugins/
which also created a symlink for mozplugger.so .
Discovered that although the xine multimedia viewer was installed, the gxine front-end ws not, so installed from freshrpms with Synaptic, then
ln -s /usr/lib/gxine/gxineplugin.so /opt/mozilla/plugins/
installed the plugin for Mozilla.
Installed the Eclipse IDE by downloading 3.0 Stream Stable Build eclipse-SDK-3.0M8-linux-gtk.zip from http://eclipse.org/downloads/index.php into /home/downloads/eclipse and running unzip to extract it. This put the eclipse executable into /home/downloads/eclipse/eclipse, which is not in the global PATH, so, rather than expanding the PATH variable, created symbolic link
ln -s /home/downloads/eclipse/eclipse/eclipse /usr/local/bin/
But when tried to execute eclipse found it was still missing a .jar file. Only .jar file found in /home/downloads/eclipse/eclipse was startup.jar so created a symlink for it with
ln -s /home/downloads/eclipse/eclipse/startup.jar /usr/local/bin/
However, when tried to execute eclipse, found it ws still looking for /usr/local/bin/jre/bin/java, so provided it with
ln -s /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_04/jre/ /usr/local/bin/
After which, eclipse seemed to work okay, so created a launcher for it executing /usr/local/bin/eclipse and found an icon for it, /home/downloads/eclipse/eclipse/icon.xpm, which was copied into /usr/share/pixmaps to make it easier to find with the launcher creation wizard.
Wanted a good forth package with a good IDE, so after some research, selected bigForth, and downloaded all the Linux files except the German documentation from http://www.jwdt.com/%7Epaysan/bigforth.html (which is mirrored at http://bigforth.sourceforge.net/) into /home/downloads/bigforth. Then extracted the .tar.bz2 files with tar -jxvf . Then
cd /home/downloads/bigforth/bigforth/
make
make install
Which put the executable xbigforth in /usr/local/bin. Then created launcher for it named bigForth but could not find an icon for it, so chose the generic icon /usr/share/pixmaps/016_template.png .
Created launcher for the IDE idle for python:
Name: 'IDE Idle Python' Executable: '/usr/bin/idle' Icon: '/usr/share/doc/boost-1.30.2/libs/python/doc/tutorial/doc/theme/python.png'
Note that the actual executables and icons can be found in the launcher files in, e.g., /home/jdr/Desktop, which are ASCII text files, by selecting them with the file manager, then opening them with the embedded text editor. Thus the desktop of a user may be duplicate for another user by just copying the contents of the Desktop directory from the one user to another.
Installed the package CmapTools, for concept mapping, by downloading from http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/index.php?myPlat=Linux the file LinuxCmapTools_v3.3_03-09-04.bin into /home/downloads/cmaptools and then running
sh LinuxCmapTools_v3.3_03-09-04.bin
to install it, choosing /opt/cmaptools as the installation folder, and creating a symlink CmapTools in /usr/local/bin/ and a desktop launcher for it. However, no icon file was found, so found one on some of the source site's pages named CmapTools48px.gif, which was downloaded to /usr/share/pixmaps and converted using
giftopnm CmapTools48px.gif | pnmtopng > CmapTools48px.png
2004024
Got embedded wireless working, but only at an away AP, not at home, so not sure which if any of the things I tried contributed to success.
First, make a backup of /etc/resolv.conf that works at home, because after being away, will need it when return home to be able to resolve URLs, because it contains the IPs of the DNS servers that work there.
After some experimentation, I created two scripts, the first, wi-away, to reconfigure for wireless access at an away AP:
dhclient ifconfig
dhclient rewrites resolv.conf, so when return home run script wi-home:
mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.`date +%Y%m%d%H%M` dhclient ifconfig /bin/cp /etc/resolv.conf.bak /etc/resolv.conf
Need to restore from the backup because can't depend on dhclient getting the correct DNS IPs at home. The mv renames resolv.conf to append the date and time, but should be further renamed with an identifier for the location where dhclient was last run.
After running the first script, one can test the connection with
ping yahoo.com
But this won't work at some locations, where the host expects the user to first open a browser, and then be served the host's web page for setting up an account or logging in, and perhaps making some contract for use or payment After that one will normally have general access to the Internet, which can be tested by opening a remote web page URL.
20040501
Mysql
In the course of testing and selecting a personal taskmanager/ organizer I found that many of the more interesting ones used a mysql database, and one of thefirst I tried had me create the database by executing
# mysql
But this produced the error message
ERROR 2002: Can't connect to local MySQL sever through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)
I confirmed that the socket was set to that in /etc/my.cnf but doing a
# find / -name mysql.sock
which did not find it anywhere on the system. This led to the discovery that the daemon mysqld was not running, and had never been run since the OS was installed, since it creates the mysql.sock file and other files in /var/lib/mysql/
I was able to start the daemon with
# /etc/rc.d/init.d/mysqld start
Then I could try connecting to a database using the mysql client program
# mysql -u root -p -h localhost Enter password: [mysql] mysql>
But it is still necessary to have mysqld start on bootup.
To list what runlevels mysqld is supposed to start for run
# chkconfig --list mysqld
If they are all set to off (or mainly 3 4 and 5), then run
chkconfig mysqld on
If it returns that it is not registered, run
chkconfig --add mysqld
Then rerun
chkconfig mysqld on
That will create all the links in the /etc/rc.d/rc[0-6].d directories to automatically start and stop mysqld.
Having found Evolution inadequate as a task manager, I turned to korganizer and added a launcher for it to the desktop by copying
/usr/share/applications/kde-korganizer.desktop
to /home/<user>/Desktop
It is better than Evolution, in that one can export the data to a file, from which one can use a shell script to extract what I want, which is a simple list of tasks, printed in 3 columns
If an app is in one of the menus launched from the KDE toolbar icon, it can be copied to the Desktop by finding the *.desktop file for the entry under /var/lib/menu/kde/ and copying it to the directory /home/<user>/Desktop. Likewise, one can duplicate the Desktop environments of two users by copying the files from the Desktop directory of one user to the other.
20040602
Installed mondo backup utility from http://www.mondorescue.com. This involved downloading the following files into /home/downloads/mondo and execuring them:
As a test, created image files of the /home partition by
This last line was saved as the file /home/jdr/notes/mondo.txt . However, the -L option did not work — apparently the lzop compression didn't get installed properly — so omitted on a second try. Took about 3 hours to create 5 iso files, which could then be used with k3b to copy them onto bootable CD for a restore. This requires further testing to make sure it can be used for backups and restores, and that the 700 size setting will fit on the CDs.
20040609
Added launcher for the kate editor to the desktop, to be tested along with other editors.
Could not get mplayer to work, because standard distros do not include some needed files, like the proprietary codecs file. These can be obtained as a complete installation package from http://www.mplayerhq.hu
20040616
Downloaded yumgui from http://cobind.com/yumgui.html into /home/downloads/yumgui and installed with
rpm -ivh yumi-2.0.7-1.noarch.rpm
Then executed yumi from the command line. Looks promising, but does not weed duplicate packages and has no option to "select all" or some range of packages. Had to select one at a time.
To play DVD movies, select xine from the menu, and DVD from the sources shown on the control panel that comes up. To eject the DVD open a xterm window and enter "eject" at the prompt.
To increase sound volume, press Alt-F2 to get command window, then enter kmix and click to accept. This launches a control panel, and one increases the general volume by raising the slider under the blue waveform icon. This also adds a speaker icon in the taskbar that one can click on to get a volume control and mute button.
To play avi, mpeg files, launch kaboodle, which is installed.