Linux and Open Source
Installing Adobe Flash Player 9 on Fedora 7 is a piece of cake, only two commands! First, get a root shell (either log in as root, or su to become root), and type:
rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
This will download and install the yum configurations and gpg keys necessary to install Flash via the yum updater. Next enter…
yum install flash-plugin
The system will then download and install the Flash player on your machine and register it as a Firefox plugin. You can make sure it worked correctly by opening a new Firefox windows and going to Adobe’s About Flash page. If it all woked, you should see a “Version Information” box which says something like “You have version 9,0,48,0 installed”.
Flash Player is really easy to install on Fedora, and having it makes the “new” web (e.g. YouTube, etc) a lot more usable, well worth the little time and effort required to get it installed.
I did a “yum update” on my CentOS box the other day and discovered MySQL 5 packages in the CentOS Plus repository! So if you’re after PHP 5 or MySQL 5 for your CentOS box enable the CentOSPlus repository as described in my earlier port. I’m using MySQL 5 on my laptop (FC5), and I’ll probably migrate my CentOS server to it eventually.
For now though, I’m not interested in re-testing everything that’s running on my server against a new MySQL, so I’d rather stick with version 4 as it ships with CentOS. I still want PHP5 from CentOSPlus though, but not MySQL5. To make this happen, I added the following line to the bottom of the [centosplus] section of /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo…
exclude=mysql mysql-server mysql-client mysql-devel
This causes yum to ignore the named packages in the CentOSPlus repository. This works well for me so far. Later when I want to upgrade to MySQL 5 I’ll just need to remove that line (or comment it out).
Hauppage have just released a device that can play MPEG 1/2 and DivX to your TV set over a WiFi network (eHomeUpgrade has a Press Release here).
The device seems to come in either WiFi model or Wired models (more detail on the wired model here)
I’ve been wanting to build a media PC for the lounge room for a long time now, but have been put off by the expense. Cheaper alternatives such as a modded xbox just didn’t feel right to me. This thing could be the perfect answer. I already have a server with a load of disk space that contains my media stuff, and a WiFi point. The MediaMVP would serve as a bridge between that and my TV. According to the press release linked above, $149 US for the WiFi version means its cheap too. What more could you want! I definately want one of these. As an added bonus the device itself runs Linux (although who realy cares if its reliable).
Found via Scott.
I decided it was time to bite the bullet and set myself up with a subversion repository for a project I may start on in the near future. I couldn’t find find a quick guide to setting up a repository on CentOS, so this is how I did it. Based on Chapter 6 (Server Configuration) of the subversion book, and the config files.
First up we needed to get subversion installed. This is pretty easy, CentOS has subversion packages.
yum install subversion mod_dav_svn
Next up I created an entry in DNS for the domain I wanted to host subversion on. I then added the following to the httpd.conf to create a vhost for subversion.
<virtualhost *:80>
ServerAdmin [My Email]
DocumentRoot [Path]
ServerName [Host Name]
ErrorLog logs/svn-error_log
CustomLog logs/svn-access_log combined
<location />
DAV svn
SVNPath [Path - same as DocumentRoot]
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion repository"
AuthUserFile /etc/svn-auth-file
Require valid-user
</location>
</virtualhost>
Next up create the user file, the folloring command takes care of that, then we can restart apache so the config changes take effect:
htpasswd -c /etc/svn-auth-file jim
service httpd restart
Next up, we create the directory we specified as the DocumentRoot above. Finally, change into the directory we just created, and use svnadmin to create the repository and set the ownership to the apache user.
svnaddmin create .
chown -R apache:apache
After that I was able to check out a working copy of the (empty) repository, and we were off and running.
Courier-IMAP was one of the third party RPM’s installed on the the Fedora machine I recently upgraded to CentOS Initially Courier just worked, no problems. After 3-4 weeks it stopped accepting connections (very light load, 5 mailboxes only). Restarting the service didn’t help, but rebooting the server did.
Log file messages indicated issues with FAM, and a bit of digging indicated that FAM was no longer installed on the system. Further digging indicated that this was most likely the cause of the problem. FAM seems to have been replaced by Gamin, however Courier seemed to have issues with Gamin.
I tried compiling the FC2 FAM source RPM, but had issues with the build. I also tried upgrading to the latest (at the time) Courier-IMAP 4.0.6. This had the same issue, after 3-4 weeks it stopped accepting connections.
I originally went with Courier because I was setting up a system to automatically sort email into multiple folders. I was expecting a large number of folders to be created over time, so maildir support was a logical requirement. Given that 18 months down the track I now have a large number (25K+) of email messages sorted into these folders, maildir support in any replacement was pretty much essential.
I know Redhat/Fedora has moved away from their old IMAP server (UW-IMAPd?) and was replacing it with Dovecot. Given the similarities between Redhat and CentOS, it was to be expected that CentOS would also use Dovecot as its preferred IMAP server. Even better, it appears that Dovecot supports maildir! Easy decision then, lets replace the troublesome Courier-IMAP with Dovecot. This was so easy I couldn’t believe it:
service courier-imap stop
service courier-authlib stop
rpm -e courier-imap
rpm -e courier-authlib
yum install dovecot
chkconfig dovecot on
service dovecot start
That’s it, just shut down and uninstall Courier-IMAP, then install and start Dovecot. Dovecot also seems to perform better, handling the extremely large number of folders in my maildir without any dramas (performing better than Courier).
Only issue struck is that Dovecot doesn’t act as a POP server by default. This is an easy fix, add the following line to /etc/dovecot.conf:
protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s
Then restart the service and you’re away. Dovecot has been running on my machine for a couple of weeks now without any dramas, so all is looking good.
I just updated a Gentoo box from kernel-2.6.10r1 to 2.6.13. This necessitated a change from devfs to udev. Not a major problem of itself, but it broke my X server. The issue I saw was a blank screen after gdm/xdm started. Te following messages could be seen in the syslog…
gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
deal_with_x_crashes: Running the XKeepsCrashing script
Not terribly helpful, but its a start. The /var/log/gdm/\:0.log was a little more helpful:
(EE) xf86OpenSerial: Cannot open device /dev/mouse
No such file or directory.
(EE) Mouse1: cannot open input device
(EE) PreInit failed for input device "Mouse1"
No core pointer
Fatal server error:
failed to initialize core devices
After a bit of digging, it appears that /dev/mouse no longer exists. I did the following to fix it:
cd /dev
ln input/mice mouse
Now gdm and XOrg start without any problems.
One nice thing about CentOS is the long support life and stability of the system. One not so nice thing is that because it is based on Red Hat Enterprise, the package selection is pretty conservative. That’s not too bad though, Apache is 2.0.52, MySQL is a 4.0.x version, so things are reasonably current. One thing that’s really dated though is PHP (4.3.x)… I’ve been using PHP 5 for a while and quite like it, so a PHP 5 package for CentOS would be nice. Good news though is that one already exists, its in the CentOSPlus repository. This post to the CentOS Mailing List explains what the CentOSPlus repo is for.
To enable CentOSPlus edit /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo. After [centosplus] heading, you’ll see a line that currently says “enabled=0″. Change that to “enabled=1″ to enable CentOSPlus. Once the CentOSPlus repo is enabled, “yum update” will search the repository and offer to upgrade any packages to newer versions from CentOSPlus. If you had PHP installed previously, this will upgrade you to PHP 5.0.x.
After my upgrade from Fedora to CentOS I noticed a few issues with the PHP photo gallery I use (Scry). Specifically, Scry wasn’t generating thumbnail images. A quick check of /var/log/httpd/error_log showed the following error…
PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function: imagecreatetruecolor()
It turns out that there’s a slight packaging difference between Fedora and CentOS (and presumably Redhat Enterprise as well). CentOS uses a separate php-gd package for the GD image library, and the php-gd package hadn’t been installed. This fixed the problem for me…
yum install php-gd
service httpd restart
Groklaw explains why Linus needs to trademark “Linux” in Australia. This move has caused a fair amount of debate, and could have been communicated a little better, but the Groklaw piece explains the why fairly clearly. The two main reasons being:
Dilution causes of action are normally brought when the defendant’s use of the mark causes either
* “Blurring”, by which the connection in consumers’ minds between the plaintiff’s mark and the plaintiff’s goods or services is weakened; or
* “Tarnishment”, which means that the defendant’s use is unsavory or unwholesome, or the mark is used in connection with inferior products.
I’ve been contemplating an upgrade from Fedora Core 1 to CentOS for a while now. My server was originally installed with FC1 about 18 months ago, and runs Apache, PHP, DNS, sendmail/courier IMAP, and Samba, as well as acting as a NAT gateway and firewall for my home network.
Continue reading ‘Upgrading Fedora Core 1 to CentOS 4.1′
