Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

A couple of days ago I bought two Lenovo G550 laptops – one for me, one for my wife.  After spending a day browsing all the online shops and driving around all computer outlets in the city, I decided that this is the best option available.

Specifications: Dual-core 2Ghz Intel CPU, 15.6 inch glossy screen (WXGA, maximum resolution 1366×768), 4 GB of RAM, 250 GB hard disk, a bunch of USB ports, HDMI out, DVD writer, WiFi, and all the standard stuff, weighting at around 2.7 kilograms. Battery life is around 4 hours. Price: 500 EUR + 15% VAT = 575 EUR.

Both machines are running Linux (Fedora 12) already, even though they were coming with some Windows pre-installed.  I wouldn’t know which one since I haven’t even booted into that once.  Fedora Linux installation was straight-forward and everything worked, except for the wireless networking, which needs an extra step to enable those Broadcom drivers.  Gladly, the required step is widely covered in the blogosphere. – basically, enable RPM Fusion yum repository, install kmod-wl package, and reboot your machine.

Everything is working find and I really enjoy the laptop, except for a few things that annoy me with its keyboard.  The layout is somewhat weird.  First of all, I am not used to having a number pad on a laptop keyboard.  But that’s OK – if there is space, then why not, right?  Well, there is space, but I think it would have been utilized better for Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys.  As they are now, PgUp and PgDn are located next to navigation arrow keys and Home/End keys are only accessible through a Fn key, which is really strange.  On top of that, Insert and Delete keys are in a different part of the keyboard – on top of the Backspace key.  And while I don’t use Caps Lock all that often, some people will notice that Caps Lock indicator is missing, as well as NumLock and ScrollLock.  What can I say?  That’s one weird keyboard layout.

Other than that though there is nothing that I can complain about.  The machine is nice and cool and pleasant to use.  My wife seems to enjoy it as well.

Until now I was completely and totally ignoring Adobe AIR.  As far as I was concerned, it existed in a separate universe.  But recently, quite a few Adobe AIR applications started to come up on my radar that I wanted to try.  Yesterday, for example, I saw the Flickrroom, which sounds exactly like something that I need.  So, I searched yum repositories, and then Google, and then I found this blog post, which provides clear instructions on how to install Adobe AIR on Fedora Linux.  Followed everything to a step, and failed.  Then Googled for more, tried, and failed.  And no matter what I do, it seems to fail miserably.

Adobe AIR in Gnome menu

As far as I can judge, Adobe AIR is installed on my system.  I see two items in the main menu and they even work when I run them.  But when I try to install any Adobe AIR application, I get a well known error message.

$ Adobe\ AIR\ Application\ Installer /home/leonid/Desktop/Flickroom.air
Application crashed with an unhandled SIGSEGVCrashlog has been dumped in /tmp/airCrashLogs/0219_1359_vG6AfW

This seems to indicate that I missing some dependency on my system, but I can’t which one. I’ve installed and updated everything that I could find a reference to.  I’ve also looked through the crash dump for any hints, but nothing jumped at me.

Any ideas?

Last weekend I went through a somewhat lengthy process of upgrading one of my servers from Fedora 6 to Fedora 12.  The server is vital for a company that uses it, there is more than 2 TBytes of data on that machine, and I only had a weekend to go through the upgrade.

Fedora is a very dynamic distribution, with new releases coming out roughly every 6 month.  An upgrade backward compatibility is maintained only for the last 2 releases.  So, I had to first upgrade from Fedora 6 to Fedora 8, then from Fedora 8 to Fedora 10, and then finally from Fedora 10 to Fedora 12.

Of course such a long path would pretty much guarantee that things would break.  But gladly I didn’t have to fix them for every upgrade, only once, after Fedora 12 upgrade was complete.  So the actual upgrade routine was rather simple: insert DVD with the new version, reboot, upgrade, remove DVD, reboot.  I was attempting to boot the system at least once into each new version to see how much stuff would break and if I notice anything going horribly wrong.  Everything was going smooth, except for once machine refused to boot into the new version (Fedora 8, if I remember correctly).  That didn’t stop me though.  Just upgrade to the next one, and then to the next one, etc.

After the upgrade was finished, I installed the updates for Fedora 12 and started fixing things.  The thing that I was worried for the most was Request Tracker (aka RT3) installation, which is a Perl application.  As any proper Perl application, RT3 utilizes a whole lot of Perl modules from CPAN and every time Perl version is changed signifficantly, these modules should be downloaded and installed.  Before, it was a rather slow, boring, and time consuming task.  Now however things are much simpler.  Before any perl upgrade just create an autobundle using the command “perl -MCPAN -e autobundle“.  This will create a bundle with all your current Perl modules.  After the upgrade is done, run “perl -MCPAN -e ‘install Bundle::Snapshot_2010_01_27_00‘” (where 2010_01_27_00 is the bundle version, as given to you by autobundle).  Now Perl will download all modules and their requirements from CPAN and install them automatically.  Pure magic.

Apart from RT3 only one thing broke.  One that I would expect to break because I don’t follow the development of it that close.  It was Samba.  After the upgrade to Fedora 12 none of the users could connect to any of the file shares.  ”Access denied” was given no matter which username and password was used and what was the access level to the share.  A quick Google search revealed the fix.  Apparently, somewhere in between Fedora 6 and Fedora 12, Samba changed default back-end for storing credentials.  A fix was as simple as adding a single line (“passdb backend = smbpasswd) to the configuration file, that switched Samba back to the old backend.

And that’s it!  That’s all that broke and had to be fixed after an upgrade between 6 versions of a rather dynamic Linux distribution.  Once again, I am really amazed by how well things are managed in Fedora.  Kudos and congrats!

Linux on netbooks is becoming a hot subject recently.  There are more and more netbooks sold, and more and more of them are coming with Linux.  Or are being used to try Linux out.  Netbooks are small and often cheap devices which makes them affordable and even … expendable.  So a lot of people are getting them just to play around.  And those of them who want to try Linux out often end up asking the question: Which distribution should I chose?

This question has been asked many times before.  Everyone who tried using Linux asks this question sooner or later.  And the answer is – it’s pretty much doesn’t matter.  The truth is no matter which distribution you will chose, you’ll have a whole lot of questions.  Which applications to use, how to configure things, how to do specific things that you are used to doing in your current operating system, etc.  With all these questions you’ll go to Google, forums, and other people.  So, choose the distribution which you can find the answers for easier.  If someone is introducing you into the world of Linux, choose the same distribution that person is using.  That simple.

But aren’t netbooks different?, you might ask.  Yes and no.  Netbooks are in the class of their own because it’s very easy to classify them.  They are smaller than laptops, often cheaper than laptops, and often have weaker hardware (less powerful CPU and less RAM specifically).  But they are still as normal a computer as any other desktop or laptop.  And while there are quite a few Linux distributions for netbooks, you can still use practically any desktop-oriented or generic Linux distribution on the netbook.

How come?  Well, the differences between Linux distributions are in:

• how the kernel is compiled
• which software is packaged
• default configuration options

All three of these items are quite easy to change.  You can compile your own kernel.  You can remove installed software and install additional software.  You can change configuration options.  Involving yourself in any of these activities is not something I’d recommend to a novice user, but the important bit is that it can be done.

Consider for example, a recent example in my blog post about Fedora 12 installation on my netbook.  It went like a charm and the only issue I came across with was that wireless wasn’t working.  Which could be fixed either by installing an additional package or re-compiling the kernel and enabling the device driver.

What I am trying to say is that trying different distributions is fun, but you shouldn’t be basing your choice of the distribution just on the fact that you are using a netbook.  Consider the purpose of the distribution, software that you will be using, and people that you will be consulting with before choosing the Linux distribution for your netbook.

After a recent release of Fedora 12, the attention is starting to focus on Fedora 13.  And, as it is usually, the work starts with the name.  Here are the suggested and approved names for the next release of Fedora distribution:

• Botany
• Gloriana
• Goddard
• Langstrom
• Loana
• Manfredi
• Truro

The Fedora naming tradition says that the new name must be in some way related to the previous one. If you don’t know how any of these names are linked to “Constantine”, the name of the Fedora 12 release, here is a page with more information.

And if you want to learn more history of the Fedora release names, you should visit this page.

I’ve been using Skype for a few years now, but mainly for chats.  Occasionally, I’d do a call, but that never involved video.  Until recently.  A couple of days ago my dad got online (finally!).  And now there is a good reason to use Skype with a web camera for video calls.

One of the key points in Fedora 12 release notes was about improved support of video cameras.  That I was glad to hear.  I got my hands onto several web cameras and all of them seemed to work just fine in Cheese – a video capture application.  However, none of these cameras worked in Skype.  Either they were not recognized by Skype, or Skype was crashing, or I was getting really weird green-screen output, or something else.

It turned out, that there is something I had to do.  First, check if libv4l package is installed, and if it isn’t – “yum install libv4l“.  That’s a video for Linux library.  Second, start Skype like this: “LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype“.  Once I did that, Skype / Options / Video Devices confirmed that video is working fine.

I recently got my hands on an IntelliBook netbook (site in German, but the machine is actually Clevo M810L).  It’s a really small, light, and simple machine, which I got for nothing, and which, I haven’t got it for nothing, would cost me around 400 EUR.  The truth is, if I wouldn’t have bought it for 400 EUR.

The good things about it are: small, light, built-in WiFi and a rather large 160 GB hard disk.  The bad things are: non-standard keyboard layout (I touch type, so I don’t mind, but the other people in my home do), non-Linux-supported web camera, and really low battery life (around 2 hours or so).  Also the touchpad always gets in the way, and the whole case has this cheap plastic feel to it.

When I first got the machine, it was running Ubuntu 9.10.  While I have nothing against Ubuntu, I am a Fedora person.  I want a regular desktop, and I want my commands and configurations to be where I am looking for them.  So I replaced Ubuntu 9.10 with a recently released Fedora 12.  The Live USB installation was as simple as it can possible be – boot from USB stick into a desktop, click “Install to hard disk“, and click Next three or four times.

Once the Fedora 12 Gnome desktop booted up, I was slightly disappointed to find out that wireless wasn’t working.  Since it was working just fine in Ubuntu, I was pretty sure that fixing the problem won’t be hard.  And  I was right.

First, I established that the wireless card uses RealTek chipset (rtl8187se).  Secondly, I Googled for rtl8187se and Fedora 12, which led me to this blog post, comments to which suggested that I need to add RPMFusion to my yum repositories and install kmod-staging* packages (there are two of them, one generic, and one with specific kernel version).  Once the packages are installed, loaded up the driver with “modprobe rtl817se“, and restart both network and NetworkManager servers.  Not even a reboot is needed – NeworkManager picks up the wireless network adapter and connects to the network.  A test reboot confirmed that nothing else needs to be done and everything is just fine.

With that, I now have a little computer, which is easy to move around, and can even be given to my kid to play with.  If it wasn’t for the short battery life, it would be perfect for travelling.  So, either I’ll find an extended battery for this thing (which I doubt), or I will get myself another netbook for all the travels that I do.  Carrying around a full fledged laptop becomes heavy and ridiculous.

I’ve upgraded my laptop to Fedora 12.  I know, that wasn’t the smartest move, since the conference which I am attending is not over yet.  But I just couldn’t wait.

The upgrade process was as simple as:

• Open up the terminal, switch to root user, and run “preupgrade“.
• Select Fedora 12 from the list of available options and click Next.
• Watch the downloads in progress.  Or, as I did, go and have a few beers and socialize.
• When you are back from the beers, before you crash into bed, click the Next button for the installation to start.
• Go to sleep.
• Wake up to a shiny Fedora 12 distribution on your computer.

The only thing that got me worried for a second was that after the laptop rebooted into Fedora 12, for some reason the resolution of the screen went down to 800×600 or something like that.  But all I had to do was login into Gnome, navigate to System / Administration / Display and switch resolution back to what it was before the upgrade.

I didn’t have much time to explore things yet, just read through release notes and features list.  However things do look to be faster and more polished.  I’ll have to use it for a few days to know for sure.

The more and more I use Firefox, the more add-ons I install, and the heavier it becomes.  Recently I got to the point where I am annoyed by all the heavy weight functionality, but cannot remove it complete because I need it occasionally.

The solution to my problem turned out to be pretty simple, even if it required some Google searching and IRC chatting – multiple profiles.

By default, when you run Firefox for the first time, it created a default profile to store all your stuff – saved passwords, bookmarks, add-ons, etc.  However it is possible to create more profiles and separate things a bit.  For example, I currently have three profiles:

• Browser.  I use this one for generic browsing stuff, such news reading, email, etc.  Firefox add-ons for Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, Flickr, and other major sites I used frequently are installed under this profile.
• WebDev.  I use this one for my web development needs.  Web Developer, Firebug, Live HTTP Headers, and any other add-ons that help me do my job are installed under this profile.
• Default.  I keep this one clean and empty.  Sometimes I want to see how  site behaves in the browser with default settings – for this I use the Default profile.

Creating this profiles in very easy.  As per Firefox documentation, all you need to do is close all current Firefox windows, and then run Firefox from command line with -ProfileManager parameter.  A small window will popup that will give you options to create, rename, and delete profiles, as well as select with which profile to start the new session.

The problem that I came across was running several Firefox sessions in parallel, each with its own profile selected.  I could easily select the profile for the first session, but when I was starting up the second session, it would just reuse the same profile from the first session.

The solution to this problem is either setting MOZ_NO_REMOTE environment variable to 1, or specifying -no-remote parameter on the command line.  The -no-remote parameter on the command line seems to be a recent addition to Firefox, so if it doesn’t work yet for your version of the browser, you’ll need to fall back on to the MOZ_NO_REMOTE environment variable.

So, if you have a recent Firefox version, you need to run (updating your desktop and menu shortcuts seems like a good idea):

[user@host dir]$ MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 firefox -ProfileManager

If you want to start Firefox with specific profile (e.g.: DesiredProfile), you can do so with

[user@host dir]$ MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 firefox -P DesiredProfile

Alternatively, you can export the variable globally, by adding the following line to your .bashrc file

export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1

If you have a recent version of Firefox, then the command changes to:

[user@host dir]$ firefox -no-remote -P DesiredProfile

Other things that you might want to keep in mind are:

• Some add-ons will be common between your different profiles.  For example, I want to have my delicious bookmarks available to me everywhere.  For these cases, you’ll need to install the same Firefox add-on to every profile that you will need it at.
• Some bits of configuration (such as custom keyboard shortcuts, for example), will need to be configured in each profile separately.
• You might want to have a different Firefox theme for each of your profiles, so that it’s easier to see where you are visually.

Fedora 11 Launch

Fedora 11 – code named Leonidas – was released just a few days ago.  Having access to an excellent Internet connection in the office, I immediately downloaded it and upgraded.  It didn’t go as smooth as I wish it did, and I still don’t have everything working properly, but I’m glad that I did upgrade.

Here are the issues that I came across:

• I was upgrading using the preupgrade utility.  It downloaded the packages nicely and created a “Upgrade …” option in the grub boot loader.  Once I rebooted, the upgraded process started and everything was looking good.  However, when the last package was installed, and a popup came up saying “Finalizing install process.  Please wait, it can take a while”, the upgrade actually hang.  The progressbar was going back and forward, but nothing was happening.  I waited for about 40 minutes or so and decided to reboot the machine.  Upon the reboot, it seemed like the upgrade process actually did everything it had to do.  So that was a minor issue.
• My dual monitor setup broke.  I am using a Lenovo T61 laptop with an external Samsung SyncMaster 2053bw monitor.  Laptop’s resolution remained at 1280×1024, but Samsung monitor went down to 1024×768 and it seems there is no way to push it up.  This is probably due to new kernel and xorg, and I guess has something to do with kernel mode setting.  I tried those few tips that  I could find, but nothing worked.  I still have the problem, so if you by any chance can suggest anything – I am all ears.
• Once I got to my desktop after the upgrade, Firefox refused to start.  It was crashing with a whole bunch of debug output, but nothing that made any sense.  I had to spend a day in Opera, which turned out to be a nice browser for as long as you don’t need your extensions.  Gladly, the Firefox problem as resolved the next day with the help of some folks in #fedora IRC channel. The issue was a plugin conflict (not addon, but plugin).  Once I removed conflicting plugins and restarted Firefox – it worked automagically.
• Flash was broken in the browser, but once I removed all plugins and re-installed the ones that I needed, the problem was solved.

That was pretty much all in the troubles department.  Now for the good stuff.

• My filesystem wasn’t upgraded to ext4.  This is probably a bug or something, but I’m glad it wasn’t.  I have a single / partition with /boot, /home, /var, and everything else on this same partition.  Probably Fedora decided that it’s too precious for the upgrade.
• Booting is faster now.  I can feel it.  And being on the laptop, I do lots of booting (between home and office, due to very different setups).
• KDE 4 is a pleasantly usable stage.  After using Gnome for the last year, I decided to give KDE 4 another chance, and it happily took it.  It’s a fast, slick, efficient desktop.  And I enjoy using it.
• Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is way faster than whatever I had before.  Some addons are still not supporting this version, but the speed with which it starts up and renders pages provides for some balance.

So, apart from having just one screen now, I am enjoying the ride.  It was worth waiting for, downloading, and  upgrading.  And the screen … the screen will come.