Author: doug

Categories
Unix

KDE won’t start in Fedora 13

I ran a yum update on my Fedora13 install the other day, and then when I booted back up and logged in, my KDE would not start! It would start to show the login screen, but once I did a login, it blacked out and went back to the login screen again.

Upon checking my .xsession-error file, I saw:

ksmserver: smybol lookup error: /usr/lib64/libGL.so.1: undefined symbol: _nv000027gl

It took a little looking around, but basically to fix this, you need to point to a proper Nvidia driver file. I ended up removing the old link and making a new one. My machine is x64, hence the lib64 directory instead of just lib:

root{/usr/lib64}: rm libGL.so.1
root{/usr/lib64}: ln -s nvidia/libGL.so.1 libGL.so.1

That did the trick!

Categories
Hardware Unix

Fedora 13 and Nvidia

Now that I got my new system running Fedora 13, I needed to configure my Nvidia card to support my two monitors.

It was pretty straightforward, and I found a post that does an excellent job of summarizing it at http://fedorasolved.org/video-solutions/nvidia-yum-kmod

I will comment on one thing though – when I did the install, I used the basic kernel for my i686 32-bit CPU. I found that my 4 GB of RAM only showed up in the system information page as 2.7 GB! I looked into this a bit, and it turns out that if you want greater than 3GB of memory supported, you need to have a 64-bit machine, OR you can handle this in software with the PAE kernel.

PAE stands for “Physical Address Extension” and all you have to do in install the PAE kernel, and then also the PAE Nvidia modules, and everything will work fine!

I know have my machine up with 8GB of RAM and working perfect! I read that the PAE kernel will cause a performance hit (sort of like doing RAID via software versus hardware I suppose), but I don’t see anything like that on my system.

Categories
Hardware Unix

Installing Fedora 13

I was readying my nice new home Linux server/desktop for Fedora 12 when I realized I only had to wait a few more days for Fedora 13. Sounded good!

My new server has a nice Coolermaster case that can hold 10 drives, and has a 1100 Watt power supply. I really like the case, it makes putting in drives a snap, plus the cable wiring went very well. Plus the thing is made of cool brushed aluminum. Who can argue with that?

I was re-commissioning this server after having used it as a gaming Windows machine for a bit. So it had dual NVidia SLI cards (GeForce 8800 Ultra) in it. When I first booted up the LiveCD, it got kernel errors that didn’t really track down to anything that was helpful. It would boot up but then freeze after a few minutes.

I tried the DVD install, and that got the same results. After much head scratching and googling, I tried removing one of the Nvidia cards. I was planning on only using 2 monitors anyway, and each card had 2 DVI outputs. This did the trick!

Next up, I had to run keyboard/mouse cables to my home office. I like to keep the actual computer down in my server room in the basement, it keeps my office nice and quiet. But I found that my 100 foot run for my PS/2 mouse didn’t work! My mouse is a Logitech MX310 that is really USB but I use a PS/2 converter on it so I can use a long cable run. This had been working fine on my previous Linux installations.

I found that the mouse would work fine if directly attached, so it was a distance issue! Which is odd, since on my old server it worked fine, and the cable was the same. I ended up using an USB extender device that I had bought years ago and never needed. It uses ethernet cable in between two adapters so you can have a long USB run. This did the trick! The brand is “coolgear” and I forget where I got it.

Next up: Getting Nvidia working on Fedora 13

Categories
Unix

Getting Thunderbird to use Google Chrome

I’ve been using Google Chrome on my Fedora11 system lately, it seems to handle Flash better than Firefox does (on linux). There were a few things I found missing in Chrome at first, but they are releasing version updates pretty regularly that are fixing all my issues.

But I had been putting up with my Thunderbird email client spawning Firefox when I would click http links in emails. I tried to fix this via the KDE system GUI, and via the Thunderbird preferences->config-editor functions but nothing would work.

I would also see an error in my thunderbird logfile that looks like:
Error: uncaught exception: [Exception… “Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIExternalProtocolService.loadUrl]” nsresult: “0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)” location: “JS frame :: chrome://communicator/content/contentAreaClick.js :: openLinkExternally :: line 188” data: no]

Eventually I found this gnome tool did the trick!

% gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
firefox %s
% gconftool-2 --type string -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command "google-chrome %s"
% gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
google-chrome %s

Also, while you’re at it, do the same commands but use “https” instead of “http” to handle SSL URLs.
Another way to do this is to use “gconf-editor” — just “yum install gconf-editor”

Categories
Windows

Human Target Likes Windows 7

I was watching an episode of “Human Target” — not a bad show by the way — and I got a kick out of a scene where a guy is moving some windows around using Windows 7, and he used the “shakey” trick to hide the other windows and make the current one go big.

Usually when shows have computer stuff going on, they show a bunch of fake stuff that you can’t do on a computer, so it’s rare when you see something real, let alone a little known Windows 7 trick!

Kudos to Human Target!

Categories
Unix

Icons in Dolphin Viewer

I was running Dolphin on my Fedora Linux install to view some images, and I was confused as to why in “Icon” view I wasn’t seeing the actual thumbnail images as I would expect to see using Windows Explorer or similar.

I actually googled around a bit to figure out if I needed a JPG codec or something, but it turns out all I needed to do was click “Preview” instead of “Icons” !

Sometimes you overlook the obvious 🙂

Categories
Fun Stuff Hardware

Bad Marketing from Cisco

I was in Best Buy the other day browsing some wi-fi access points and came across the WRT54G2 which seemed to suit my purposes. On the back of the box I encountered this interesting piece of marketing material:

wrt54g2

Now seriously, what the hell? They’re using a fading scale to indicate the uses? So I suppose “Multiple Computers” is vaguely recommended? And “Streaming Music” seems to be slightly recommended? I suppose the usage icon on the far right is downright not recommended, but can’t we just get an honest do or don’t from the usage guide?

And then the marketing team seems to have their own rating system which is not explained anywhere and is completely unhelpful. Ok, so “High Performance” is rated N++! Are you kidding me? What the hell is a “N”, and what does a plus sign indicate? What would “N–” mean?

The back of the box should be a case study in a marketing class on what not to do!

A quick tech tip… there are actually TWO WRT54G2 models floating around on shelves. DO NOT buy the one that has this silly thing on the back of the box, it actually has less onboard memory than the other model. But they both cost the same.

Categories
Windows

Vista is Bad for Window Media Player

I was running into ALL kinds of problems with WMP on Vista (64, but I hear 32 is bad also) where it was not ripping my CDs into MP3s, getting errors when trying to even play my CDs, and generally confusing the hell out of me. It was NOT a codec problem, everything was normal on my system. In fact, it would play about 30 seconds of a song and then throw an error.

But I just upgraded to Windows 7, and now my WMP is working fine!

So now I have Microsoft’s new tagline for their advertisements they are plastering all over hell and back: “Windows 7: You can play music now!”

Categories
Unix

SSHD on Fedora11

Quick tip on getting sshd to accept authorized connections on Fedora 11… I did all the main things but still had problems, those things are:

1. check permissions on your .ssh directory and authorized_keys file

2. make sure /etc/ssh/sshd_config allows authorized_key connections, although this is almost always on by default

And still no luck; it turns out I had to upgrade my key from RSA to DSA!

So, use “ssh-keygen -r dsa” and use the key it provides, that did the trick for me.

Categories
Hardware

How to fix a Frozen ReplayTV

I have some old ReplayTV’s in use in my home setup, and sometimes they act up on me. The usual thing is they no longer are able to tune into the cable signal (“no video signal” errors).

Here are the steps I need to take to fix them:

1) Press the power button to turn the unit off.
2) Disconnect the RF coax cable from the back of the unit.
3) Unplug the unit’s power cord from the wall.
4) Reconnect the RF coax cable to the back of the unit.
5) Wait at least one minute.
6) Plug the unit’s power cord back in and allow it to boot up.
7) Enjoy flawless ReplayTV operation.