Category: Linux

Linux is my primary operating system. I used it on the servers, desktops, laptops, netbooks, and even mobile phones since approximately 1997. I’ve tried a number of distributions over the years, and even created a couple myself. I still look around sometimes to see what others are up to. But most of my machines are running some sort of Red Hat – either a quick and easy Fedora Linux, or a stable and secure Red Hat Enterprise Server, or a cheaper CentOS alternative.

And while by now I am very comfortable in the Linux environment (both graphical and command line), I still discover a lot of new and interesting things about it. When I come across something worthy, I usually share it with the rest of the Open Software world, using this category.

Fedora 18

After a two month delay, Fedora 18 is finally here. So far, I have been surprised by two things:

Phasing out of “preupgrade” for “fedup“. Seriously? How’s “fedup –network 18” better than “preupgrade“? Especially, when dealing with desktop users…
How much new stuff I found in the Release Notes. I didn’t have much time to follow the development process last year, but even without that, I realized that a lot of my knowledge is quite outdated. Specifically: GRUB vs GRUB2 configuration, chkconfig/service vs. systemctl, date/hostname/etc migration to some*ctl scripts, network management (both with NetworkManager and with interface naming changes), and lots more.

And I haven’t even upgraded yet. I wonder what will come next.

P.S.: if you must know, I’ve written a huge rant on the whole Fedora direction, but after page 35 or so it got a little bit out of control, so I deleted it and left you with the above.

Linux kernel drops 386 support

Slashdot reports that Linux kernel won’t support 386 machines no more. This is more of a sentimental announcement for nostalgic reasons. The commentary is hilarious and insightful, as often with Slashdot.

Unfortunately there’s a nostalgic cost: your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won’t be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore. Sniff.

It’s been a long while sine I saw even a 486 machine. The last 386 I can remember is probably circa 1998 or so.

Configuring the Apache MPM on Fedora

If you take nothing else away from this article, let it be that you should tailor your MPM’s MaxClients setting so that your web server won’t try to allocate more resources than you have available. Better that a visitor wait a moment for a connection than that the server should dip into swap for more memory and bring the entire virtual machine to a crawl.

Color builder for 256-color terminal

With most Linux terminals now supporting 256 colors, a tool like this one is mighty useful in building the escape sequences. For off-line use, all code is available in GitHub repository, and all logic behind the calculations is explained in this Habrahabr post (albeit, in Russian).

Fixing screen resolution on Linux with xrandr

Not the best start of the week today. For some weird reason my desktop’s screen resolution crashed into a safe 1024×768 mode today. No updates, no changes in configuration, not even a reboot – just in the middle of the working morning. I’ve tried to fix it to no avail, installed updates, and even rebooted. Nothing seemed to help. Google to the rescue, and I find this handy page that shows step by step how to use xrandr to fix things. I knew about xrandr for a few years now, but it’sbeen decades since I had to use it, so I’m rusty. 15 seconds later I have the following script ready:

#!/bin/bash

#gtf 1280 1024 60
xrandr --newmode "1280x1024_60.00"  108.88  1280 1360 1496 1712  1024 1025 1028 1060  -HSync +Vsync
xrandr --addmode VGA1 1280x1024_60.00
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1280x1024_60.00

Run it once and all is back to normal. In fact, after a few minutes in 1024×768 mode, it feels like I have a better monitor now than I used to. They say, you need to lose something to really appreciate what you have. Until today I thought I had a crappy old monitor. But just a few minutes in a lower resolution make me appreciate it a lot now.