Saturday, February 26, 2011

Wakka new GTKPacman wrapper like Synaptic

This gives a nice user interface for exploring Pacman installed etc; something like Synaptic. If'you use it for installing ,open the terminal feedback window by clicking on the little triangle
Download here: http://code.google.com/p/wakka-package-manager/downloads/
On the Arch forum: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=114112

Use go to the folder where located in terminal and do: sudo python2 wakka

What I miss is the size of the files to be installed.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Make room with pkgcacheclean in Arch

All installed packages will be cached in /var/cache/pacman/pkg
If you look in this cache you will be surprised to find as much as four or five versions of the same program.
If you want to make room than it is useful to purge the cache of too many versions of the same program with pkgcacheclean: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pkgcacheclean/
Do as root: #pkgcacheclean -v 
to actually do it.
Usage: pkgcacheclean [options] [number]
The default number is 2. That means, for all installed packages, the currently used version and the newest of the remaining cache is retained. All caches of not-installed packages are removed.
Currently, supported options only includes -v/--verbose, -q/--quiet, -n/--dry-run, -k/--all-as-installed.
more info 

Friday, February 18, 2011

When you miss xorg.conf as a configuration tool

Now most drivers are administered with udev the xorg.conf is not default present in your install anymore.
Still you can get your xorg.conf back for instance if udev can't work for you in getting the correct driver to work or you cannot set the screen resolution you want.

You have to add hal as a daemon in rc.conf
Notice this when doing so:
Edit as root /etc/rc.conf
especially the last daemon line
Make sure you DON'T have dbus in your daemons line if you have hal in it. I stopped dbus by putting an exclamation mark before it: !dbus
hal will start dbus as well.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Bad fonts in Chromium?

Use a custom font:
Go to Pref Under the hood and specify a different font.
I use Verdana. It works for me.
For managing fonts I recommend fontmatrix.

A lots of people seem to have this issue:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issue … l?id=29871 comment 48 step 3 seems to provide a solution:
Create a ~/.gtkrc-2.0.mine file in your home directory with the following content:
gtk-xft-hinting = 1
gtk-xft-hintstyle = hintfull
gtk-xft-rgba = rgb

Step4: Restart your X server (for e.g. do a Logout)

Friday, February 11, 2011

Problem: username is not in the sudoers file

Solutions:
1.You can use su
give root password and you work as root.

2. How to configure sudo, under header configuration on this page:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sudo

Some Linux theory: su compared to sudo
The sudo solution is a different way of granting permission.
The reason sudo is sometimes considered superior to su is that it allows privilege escalation based on the user’s own identity, and most importantly does not require use of a shared password. Using su to access a privileged account requires distribution of a password to an admin-capable account, a security weakness that sudo does not have. Sudo is considered less secure for the same reason - it eliminates the two factor authentication that would otherwise be required to "get root" (or become the administrator. A more secure alternative would require a second, but per-user, password instead of using the user's own password.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo

sudo executes a command as another user but observes a set of constraints about which users can execute which commands as which other users (generally in a configuration file named /etc/sudoers, best editable by the command visudo). Unlike su, sudo authenticates users against their own password rather than that of the target user (to allow the delegation of specific commands to specific users on specific hosts without sharing passwords among them and while mitigating the risk of any unattended terminals).

Some Unix-like systems have a wheel group of users, and only allow these users to su to root.[2] This may or may not mitigate these security concerns, since an intruder might first simply break into one of those accounts.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_%28Unix%29

Thursday, February 10, 2011

When you have difficulty with oblogout

before i used the zenity script to do that job i also used oblogout and had the same problem after the update, try the follwing:

- open /etc/oblogout.conf as root

- settings must look like this

[settings]
usehal = false


source barchi http://bbs.archbang.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1590#p1590

This may be useful, when you don't have hal installed or active.
In my configuration oblogout works well with usehal=true

The zenity script is a very useful and low resource exit script for open box that doesn't need hal (thanks xunil for the tip: http://bbs.archbang.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1454#p1454)
http://bimma.me.uk/2011/01/01/zenity-exit-shutdown-script-for-openbox/

Zenity Exit / Shutdown Script for Openbox

Finally got around to doing this.

Use the zip file included at the bottom, as all the double hyphens get lost on this blog.
Also, depending on with version of zenity you have (e.g. on Debian Squeeze / #!-10), you may need to remove the “- - no-cancel” options in the second half of the script.

downloadlink>> exit.zip

Or on aur pastebin:
http://aur.pastebin.com/fe0uEifn

When you forgot to add auser during install Arch

Creating a user and giving a root password is part of the install.
I suppose you oversaw it.
Here is the solution:
User management

Local user information is stored in the /etc/passwd file. To list all user accounts on the system:

# cat /etc/passwd

To list users currently logged on the system, the who command can be used.

To add a new user, use the useradd command:

# useradd -g users -G group1,group2{,...} -m USERNAME

This command will create a new user named USERNAME belonging to the users group (GID 100 by default) and the specified supplementary groups. Groups are discussed below, and must be comma-separated.

For more advanced uses of useradd, type:

$ man useradd

To specify the user's password, type:

# passwd USERNAME

A guided tool is available for adding users:

# adduser

adduser asks common questions about the user with sane defaults and constructs a useradd command to run. It also sets the password and changes finger information.
source:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Users_and_Groups


Furthermore:

when you create a user, and use the -m flag, the files in /etc/skel are placed in the home directory.


here is an example for creating a user who is in the most common groups:

useradd -g users -G users, wheel, hal, network, video, audio, optical, storage, power -m USERNAME

after using this command in terminal, you can go to the file "/etc/group" and open it with leafpad, now you can see all the groups of the system and which users are in these groups.


source: http://bbs.archbang.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1584#p1584

how to blacklist an unwanted module

Mostly in connection to a wireless card it is necessary to block some modules in the kernel to overcome kernel panic:

Note: Some people experienced random kernel panic with the new 2.6.37 because they forgot to blacklist some modules that normally had to be disabled for their Broadcom wireless card. See the wiki.
The thing is many wireless drivers are included with this new kernel so your wireless card will most likely work right away but you still have to be careful (at least for Broadcom users). If you get a kernel panic and your wireless card gets disabled, your system
might freeze with a black screen everytime until you enable your wireless card again through windoze or something else). If you used to install broadcom-wl for your wifi card, you should still install it (to be sure your wifi card works perfectly and to have a blue LED rather than a RED one)
It occured to me so I know

Blacklist the unwanted module on the MODULES= line by prefixing it with a bang (!) in /etc/rc.conf.
example:
MODULES=(!ath5k !rt2860sta forcedeth snd_intel8x0 ... ...)

install Archbang on USB drive from windows

You of course can do using a live CD
If you want to install from usb, don't use unetbootin but run the following command "sudo dd if=ArchBang_Symbiosis-2011.01.24-i686.iso of=/dev/YourUsbDevice bs=8M". Type fdisk -l to see your list of devices (your usb stick is probably /dev/sdb)

If you use unetbootin this is a workaround according to a forum member of AB>
When you get the "Wait 30sec for device 'ARCH-20XXXX'" Error or so, try to name the device exactly this way under Windows.
Then unetbootin and every other method should work fine.

The universal USB Installer from Pendrive seems to work out of the box:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

Arch set the keyboard to german or french

Press ALT+F2 and type: setxkbmap de
or setxkbmap fr


To enable locale
To enable or disable them, the file /etc/locale.gen is used. It contains every locale you can enable, and you have just to uncomment lines you want to do so.

So #pt_BR.UTF-8 UTF-8
becomes pt_BR.UTF-8 UTF-8
Remove the # before the locale.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

fun type weblinks

type shooter: http://www.phoboslab.org/ztype/ thanks to awebb on the crunchbang forum

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Hunspell solves spell checker problems in LibreOffice

Had problems with spell-checking in LibreOffice.
Installing hunspell and hunspell-en and hunspell-nl (Dutch language pack solved this for me.
sudo pacman -S hunspell hunspell-en hunspell-nl

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Ratpoison some essential info

Ratpoison kills your mouse; that aspect of it I really like.
But it is difficult to get used to it and even to get it working:
This review explains it very clearly:
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/pc/how-to-save-your-linux-screen-space-923730?artc_pg=2

More info

Found this review about the basics of Ratpoison: http://www.linuxgoodies.com/review_rat.html
Wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ratpoison
Site: http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/

What is interesting is to me that is is a mouseless window manager.
What I don't like about it is, that it is a tiling wm.
I like to see one application at a time.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

show all image files of a folder with feh

This was added to the FEH Wiki two days ago and I like it.

You get a new addition in the context menu of thunar.

First make the script by putting this code (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Feh#File_Browser_Image_Launcher)in a text file and making executable.
Put it in a desired place.
Go in thunar to Edit, Create Custom actions and add in the command something like:
home/paul/Scripts/feh_thunar_images %f -F -Z

Adapt place and user name of course.
Give it a name: browse images with feh
and a description: shows all images in a folder.
And of course be sure you have feh installed.

wicd sometimes won't connect;hosts file ctkarch changed

Sometimes wicd works in ctkarch sometimes it don't.
As it is working is all my other installation I figue it must be a configuratio issue
Changed
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost ctkarch

to
127.0.0.1 paul.localdomain localhost paul

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