I am a fan of Privoxy and initially had some problems on Fedora 15 in that privoxy failed to start on boot.
A work around is to enable both privoxy and network service at boot.
su -c "systemctl enable privoxy.service"
su -c "systemctl enable network.service"
It seems to me that privoxy should start on the default port without having to enable the network script. to that end I have an open Bug report .
I am pleased to announce a major milestone in the Ubuntu Community and what I hope will result in increased integration between the Ubuntu Forums and participation of forums members with support (IRC – #ubuntu) documentation (Ubuntu Wiki) and development (pre-release testing, bug reports, and MOTU).
On behalf of the entire Forums Council, it is an honor to extend the benefits to Ubuntu Membership to these outstanding community members.
andrew.46
Welcome New Ubuntu Members
cariboo907
CharlesA
coffeecat
forestpiskie
howefield
JuanCarlosPaco
KiwiNZ
Lars Noodén
lkjoel
lisati
lovinglinux
lucazade
philinux
Quackers
Rubi1200
sisco311
spynappels
ubudog
I have once again been playing with custom live CD and have released my second incarnation of Zenix.
Zenix 2.0 is built using the live build scripts and Debian Squeeze as a base and is designed to be a minimal, but not frugal installation of (Debian) Linux.
The general goals of Zenix are:
I know this is probably one of the most controversial aspects of my re-spin and that Buddhism is in the minority of religious practices in "The West", all the same, Buddhism is a part of who I am. From time to time, people who know me will ask about Buddhism and thus the Buddhism in Zenix.
One change from the first release, I have moved much of the Buddhist content to the Zenix site and lessened the content on the respin. Hopefully the Buddhist content is "soft" in that non-Buddhists will find it unobtrusive.
Although there are many light weight distros out there, everything from SliTaz and various LXDE spins, many of them seemed a bit frugal to the point where basic functionality suffers.
With Zenix I added enough applications so that the respin feels less frugal. Default applications include Midori, icecat, xchat, cream, gedit, vlc, and audacious.
Why midori and icecat? Midori is faster then icecat and works very well in it’s own right as well as with low RAM installations. Icecat has a wider range of features, extensions, and customizations.
At the same time it is "lightweight" and users can add applications they feel it lacks.
Zenix will run on as little as 128 Mb with very acceptable performance.
When installed, Zenix uses just over 1.5 Gb of space on the hard drive.
I included openbox + tint2 and awesome.
Openbox and awesome are window managers, as opposed to desktop environments, and thus lack graphical tools for system administration. The target audience for most window managers is intermediate to experienced Linux users who are familiar with the command line.
To increase the user friendliness s much as possible, I included graphical tools for system administration, or at least a menu entry, for basic system administration.
There are graphical tools for customization (background image, gtk theme, openbox configuration,)software management, printers, customizing the openbox menu, managing the firewall, encryption, and security (zenmap and wireshark).
There are (custom)menu entries for setting a default shell, enabling /disabling the terminal MOTD, setting the default window manager, managing PSAD, setting a mouse theme (opens a dialog in a terminal), managing conky, and setting a password.
I use Zenix on my Netbook, which is obviously portable, and so am interested in security.
Security features include – ufw (firewall enabled by default), psad, fwsnort, zenmap, wireshark, and encryption tools.
Adblock is enabled in Midori. NoScript and AdblockPlus are included with icecat.
Zenix runs quite well from a CD or Flash drive.
Zenix is configured to use persistence by default. You can save your data in a persistent /home directory, or if you wish to make changes to the system, a persistent ( directory. With a persistent root directory, any changes to the system or installed applications will be available across (live) sessions.
If you use persistence, you can encrypt your data with Cryptkeeper.
Zenix runs well as a virtual machine with both VirtualBox and KVM. The VirtualBox guest additions are pre-installed.
See the Zenix live page for additional information.
Although both distros use Debian and openbox, IMO, and I am biased, Zenix is more polished.
With Zenix I included a custom theme, and all applications match the default theme. As an example of attention to detail, I wrote a custom skin for audacious.
In addition to themes, as outlined above, Zenix includes a number of security features.
Ladislav Bodnar agreed to list Zenix under "New distributions added to waiting list" on Distrowatch
Thank you to everyone who helped with the release. Several people on IRC were kind and patient enough to take the pre-release versions for a test drive and provide invaluable feedback. s-fox and Unit193 were instrumental in providing support and testing and I could not have done it without either of these two. s-fox designed the zenix web site.
Just a brief post on transferring Firefox 4 passwords from one installation to another.
There are several online resources to sync bookmarks and passwords and while you may be "OK" using these services for bookmarks, you may not wish to use these services for passwords.
Of course you could simply copy all the files in your profile, but which files store your password information ?
Your profile is in ~/.mozila/firefox/profile_name
Your passwords are in two files, key3.db and signons.sqlite
Simply copy these two files to transfer your passwords. Of course, you may wish to encrypt these files ;)
Bookmarks can be exported/imported from the bookmark toolbar (as a html file).
This is a short post regarding extracting deb on Fedora.
The advantage of extracting a deb is that it contains the pre-compiled binary and associated files (libs, man pages, etc). This allows you to then review the contents of the deb and "install" (copy) the files. For example, you can copy the binary foo into /usr/local/bin rather then /usr/bin.
You can do the same thing if you compile the package from source, but sometimes, for simple packages, or when you do not want to install a compiler, sometimes extracting the deb will be a better option.
There are several sets of instructions already on extracting the contents of a deb , and they rightly instruct us to use the ar command.
The problem is , ar is not installed on Fedora by default.
To install ar, install binutils
su -c "yum install binutils"
Then extract the deb
ar vx your_package.deb
tar -xzvf data.tar.gz
Copy the extracted files to your desired location (/usr/local for example)
I know, this information is posted in several locations, the problem is it did not work as I expected.
I use nvidia cards (obviously) and when booting the Fedora 15 live CD (gnome and xfce) the nouveau driver failed. Although at first all seemed well, and the initial resolution on my monitors was normal, as the live Cd finishes booting, my primary monitor goes black (gnome) or white (xfce) and I can not start applications or access the console (ctrl-alt-F1 failed).
To install an configure Fedora 15 and the nvidia drivers :
1. Boot the fedora 15 live CD, at the boot screen choose the failsafe graphics option.
2. Perform the installation in low graphics mode, reboot.
3. You will then need to enable the rpmfusion repos and install then nvidia-kmod. At the time of this post, the nvidia akmod fails as it did not build the nvidia module.
Enable the rpmfussion repos:
su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'
Install the nvidia driver
su -c "yum install -y nvidia-settings nvidia-kmod"
4. Do not reboot just yet, first you need to configure X (otherwise it will boot to a console and X will fail).
su -c "nvidia-xconfig"
5. Now reboot and X will at least start. Log in and run nvidia-settings
su -c "nvidia-settings"
Set your monitor resolutions and save the file (do not merge with the old file).
Common problem I have seen solution for are :
1. Some people have had to run dracut manually after installing the nvidia kmod.
mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img \
/boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)
2. Make sure to blacklist the nouveau driver by adding ‘rdblacklist=nouveau nouveau.modeset=0′ are on the kernel line in /bot/grub/grub.conf
rpmfusion maintains a page on the nvidia module here.
From time to time I see posts on various Linux forums asking how to set a screen resolution.
Often this results in a discussion about writing a configuration file, xorg.conf ( /etc/X11/xorg.conf )
While there is nothing wrong with writing a xorg.conf, xorg.conf is depreciated and writing an xorg.conf is intimidating to many users.
Using xrandr is potentially faster and easier.
First display a list of your monitor resolutions
xrandr -q
Note: If you do not see the resolution you desire listed, either your monitor does not support that particular resolution or you may need to install a driver (ati, intel, or nvidia are the big 3). The technical details of installing these drivers varies by graphics card and will not be covered in this blog.
Then set the resolution you want to use (change the “1400×1050″ to your desired resolution).
xrandr -s 1400x1050
dpi refers to the resolution of your monitor (pixels per inch) and affects window decorations, window size, and font. See this page for additional information.
On many monitors xrandr will set the dpi automatically. When it does not, or if you prefer an alternate setting, you can try specifying a dpi manually.
xrandr --dpi 96 -s 1400x1050
If that fails, you can specify a dpi in ~/.Xdefaults
Open any editor and enter the following configuration:
Xft.dpi: 96
This dpi will then be applied to any new windows you open. Alternately you can log off and back on (no need to reboot).
If 96 is not the right size for your, try a smaller ( 72 ) or larger ( 135 ) value.
To use xrandr to configure dual monitors, use the --right-of or --left-of options.
Example, using a nvidia card:
First list your monitors with xrandr, note the monitor names (in bold).
bodhi@zenix:~$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1200, maximum 4096 x 4096
DVI-I-1 connected 1920x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 520mm x 320mm
1920×1200 60.0*+
1600×1200 60.0
1680×1050 60.0
1280×1024 75.0
1280×960 60.0
1152×864 75.0
1024×768 75.1 70.1 60.0
832×624 74.6
800×600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
640×480 72.8 75.0 60.0
720×400 70.1
DVI-I-2 connected 1920x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 520mm x 320mm
1920×1200 60.0*+
1600×1200 60.0
1680×1050 60.0
1280×1024 75.0
1280×960 60.0
1152×864 75.0
1024×768 75.1 70.1 60.0
832×624 74.6
800×600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
640×480 72.8 75.0 60.0
720×400 70.1
TV-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
Use xrandr to configure the monitors. Change the names “DVI-I-1″ and “DVI-I-2″ to the names of your monitors. You may also need to adjust the resolution and change “--left-of to” “--right-of”
xrandr --auto --output DVI-I-2 --mode 1920x1200 --left-of DVI-I-1
Has the same effect as
xrandr --auto --output DVI-I-1 --mode 1920x1200 --right-of DVI-I-2
To set a primary display, use the --primary option.
xrandr --auto --output DVI-I-1 --mode 1920x1200 --primary --right-of DVI-I-2
The method to do this varies by desktop and with most major desktop environments (gnome, kde, xfce) you would add the xrandr command to your start up options / applications.
With openbox, add the xrandr command to ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh.
With fluxbox, use ~/.fluxbox/startup
Alternately, depending on your window manager, you can add the xrandr command to ~/.xinit
For a link on using ~/.xinit, see this fluxbox wiki page or, as an alternate, the Arch wiki Slim page.
I am aware of 3 5 (thanks to charlie-tca and KenP) graphical font ends for xranadr : lxrandr , grandr, the grandr applet, ARandR, and Krandr.
lxrandr is a part of the lxde and is lightweight and fast, but does not have all of the xrandr options available.
grandr has more a few more options, including rotation, but again not all the xrandr options are available from the graphical interface.
grandr applet is a small application (gnome applet) that would run in your panel and similar to lxrandr allows one to set a resolution.
Krandr is a KDE applet to set your resolution.
arandr is similar to grandr, but IMO the interface seems less intuitive. Arandr will write a script for you to set your resolution at login.
For additional information on using xrandr, see the xrandr man page.
This is a brief tutorial on how to use gtk-2 themes with qt applications.
The problems arise when you use applications such as virtualbox, vlc, keepassx, synaptic, cryptkeeper, and wireshark (to name a few) on XFCE or one of the *box (Fluxbox or openbox) or other window managers (awesome).
A screen shot is a good example, here I am showing a screen shot of squeeze and vlc. I am using a dark theme in openbox and you can see VLC is NOT using the gtk-2 theme, and is thus an eyesore.
The fix is fairly easy, but not intuitive.
Basically you need to run qtconfig . qtconfig allows some very basic configuration of qt look and feel, we are interested in this tutorial in only 1 setting, GTK+
If you do not have qtconfig installed :
Fedora :
yum install qt-config
Debian / Ubuntu :
apt-get install qt4-qtconfig
Run the command in a terminal:
qtconfig-qt4
Select "GTK+" from the "Select GUI Style" menu.
Then from the menu select :
File -> Save
File -> Exit
The configuration files are ~/.config/Trolltech.conf (qt) and ~/.gtkrc-2.0 (gtk) .
If you want root to use the same theme (if you run an application as root via gksu [synaptic]), copy the configuration files to /root
sudo mkdir /root/.config
sudo cp ~bodhi/.config/Trolltech.conf /root/.config/
sudo cp ~bodhi/.gtkrc-2.0 /root/
Change ~bodhi to ~your_user_name.
The result is that now your qt apps match your gtk theme
The Ubuntu Forums Council is pleased to announce the availability of Ubuntu Membership in recognition of Forums participation.
Benefits of Ubuntu membership include:
See The Ubuntu Wiki Membership page for details regarding the benefits of Ubuntu Membership.
In addition, we will almost certainly be selecting future forums staff from among Ubuntu Members active on the forums.
How to petition for membership:
There is a “sticky” note in those forums Applying For Ubuntu Membership via Ubuntu Forums Contributions with a template for applications as well as some general advice on how to apply.
For additional information see Ubuntu Membership via Forums participation .
Current members are listed on Launchpad at: Ubuntu Forums Members .
If you are currently an Ubuntu member and would like to be added to the Launchpad team or if you need recognition on the forums feel free to send me a PM on the Ubuntu Forums with a link to your launchpad page.
Please be advised that this is a new process and as such there may be unexpected glitches SNAFU’s .
Once one is approved and Ubuntu email is automatic (takes a few days), but many of the other benefits require a request from the approved individual to the proper team / location as outlined on the The Ubuntu Wiki Membership page.
If you are not familiar with Slitaz, it is a light weight Linux distribution. The iso is about 30 Mb but do not let that fool you, it is packed with features. Post installation there is a reasonable repository and the iso can also be customized.
Many people ask how I install Slitaz, and thus this post.
Download, burn, and boot the Slitaz .iso . Select ‘us’ as the default keyboard.
Once Slitaz has finished booting, start gparted from the menu and make a few partitions.
Start the installer, when given the option to format the partitions select no.
My partition scheme was:
root = /dev/sda1
home = /dev/sda2
swap = /dev/sdb3
When asked if you want to format the partition to ext3 answer no (this keeps ext4).
As the installer finishes, when asked, install grub on /dev/sda
Boot slitaz, log in, install grub2. You can use the graphical tool or the command line.
tazpkg get-install grub2
We now need to manually install and configure grub2. Again from the command line:
# Install grub to your MBR
grub-install /dev/sda
# We need to generate a configuration file
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
This section is depreciated, use the above method
I wrote this section before I understood grub2 was in the slitaz repositories.
Boot a live CD. In this example I used Ubuntu 10.04 (i386).
We now need to copy ( “install” ) grub2 to slitaz and install grub2 to the MBR.
To do this I will use a chroot.
Obtain a root shell and run the following commands as root
sudo -i
# Set up a chroot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/home
mount –bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount –bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount –bind /sys /mnt/sys
#Copy the grub2 files
mkdir /mnt/etc/default
cp /etc/default/grub /mnt/etc/default/
# Side note : Edit /mnt/etc/default/grub and change “echo Debian” to “echo Slitaz” (without quotes)
cp -R /etc/grub.d /mnt/etc
cp /usr/bin/grub* /mnt/usr/bin
mv /mnt/usr/lib/grub /mnt/usr/lib/grub-legacy
cp -R /usr/lib/grub /mnt/usr/lib
cp /usr/sbin/grub* /usr/sbin/update-grub /usr/sbin/upgrade-from-grub-legacy /mnt/usr/sbin
cp /lib/libdevmapper.so.1.02.1 /lib/libselinux.so.1 /mnt/lib
# Update grub
chroot /mnt /bin/sh
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
Note: You will get error messages when running update-grub.
Reboot.
Slitaz will appear to hang (hidden menu), let it sit, it will boot
Alternate – To show the grub menu, hold the shift key as it boots.
Enjoy Slitaz =)
