Fedora Linux Lessons and Tips

Updated January 22, 2009

Most of these lessons are from working with Fedora Core 3 - 6, and Fedora 7 and 8, but may be applicable to other Linux distributions as well. Some tweaks in cross platform applications such as Thunderbird may apply even to Windows users.

How Tos

Various lessons

For more tips and reasons that inspired my switch to Linux, also see: Adventures Learning Linux: My experiences with Fedora


Disclaimer: The following hacks and tweaks worked fine for me, but I make no promises that they will for you! It is always a good idea to back up your important data to a different media before you tweak your system. Please read through the entire section of the problems I faced and the solutions I found before you start to implement any of them! At the end of some of the sections I later added some updated information of new things I learned. You may not have implement the first steps I took. I left the older steps to remind me from whence I came.

Recent things I learned with Fedora 9 and 10

Fix the broken OpenOffice quickstarter link
Just copy it from the usr/lib64/openoffice.org3/share/xdg/ directory to ./config/autostart directory!

Clear Bash History
From Terminal enter:
history -c && rm -f ~/.bash_history

Wipe the freespace of your home user directory
bcwipe -F -v -r -md /home/jamesjpn

Plymouth graphical boot loader display
To get it to work, just add to the grub kernel line after the word quiet: vga=792

Combine AVI files:

We're going to make use of the wonderful cat command. I'd renamed each Luther video as Luther1.avi - Luther2.avi. Now to string them all end to end.

cat Luther1.avi Luther2.avi > Luther.avi

Now we're 2/3 of the way there! Stringing together .avi files can cause a breakdown in the sync between video and sound. So, we'll use mencoder to sort things out.

mencoder -forceidx -oac copy -ovc copy Luther.avi -o Luther_final.avi

But tried this and it didn't seem to work for me! :-(

Play mp3 in Totem Just run: yum install xine-lib-extras-freeworld xine (After RPM Fusion repo is installed!)

RPM install

rpm -ivh packagename

src.rpm install

rpmbuild --rebuild packagename..src.rpm
cd /root/rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/
rpm -ivh packagename

RPM Uninstall

rpm -e packagename

Command to rip DVDs:

mencoder /dev/sr0 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate="1200" \ -vop scale -zoom -xy 640 -oac mp3lame -lameopts br=128 -o /home/jamesjp/Name-Of-DVD.avi

Way to Change Fedora Root Password At boot Grub, press e to edit the command line, add a space and -s meaning single user. It will boot up with root access. After that run the passwd command.

Command to convert wmv file to swf file: ffmpeg -i source-file.wmv -s 400x326 -ar 44100 -r 12 target-file.swf

How to make Firefox Faster Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

Type about:config into the location bar

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" (if you use a proxy)

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 10. This means it will make 10 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

Yum Commands after installation. yum -y install kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia libdvdread libdvdplay libdvdnav lsdvd libdvbpsi seahorse bluefish thunderbird yumex nautilus-open-terminal gftp gnome-commander mc k3b k3b-extras-nonfree samba system-config-samba wine* zim gstreamer-* libdvdcss kleansweep timidity++ cabextract devede grsync gconf-editor sunbird deluge gparted cssed nautilus-actions preload xine-lib-extras-freeworld xine

yum groupinstall "Development Libraries" "Development Tools" -y

yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33 compat-libstdc++-296

Secure Delete to right click

su yum -y install nautilus-actions

Label: Secure Delete

Tooltip: Securely Delete files not folders

Icon: gtk-delete

Path: shred

Paramaters: -f -n 26 -u -v -z %M

Comand to install flashplugin

yum install nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} pulseaudio-lib.i386

How to edit sudoers to use sudo with certain programs without being prompted for a password/

Examples:

jamesjp ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/pup
jamesjp ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/puplet
jamesjp ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/pup
jamesjp ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/puplet'>/usr/sbin/puplet

(End of Recent Tips)

Problem: Desktop icons in Gnome do not appear after log in: How to fix it.

I had this problem once before, found the answer, fixed it, but then forgot the solution a couple years later. I won't forget this time now that I'm documenting the solution. Simply open Terminal as a normal user and enter:

$ killall nautilus

This will kill Nautilus which will immediately again reload bringing back the desktop icons. Why this problem happens I don't know except that in both times from what I remember, it happened after a system update with yum.

Enigmail error message problem and solution

After upgrading to a newer version of Fedora and starting with a clean /home/user directory, I could no longer use the Enigmail plug in of Thunderbird but kept getting error messages such as "can't connect to `/tmp/seahorse-4VRcyo/S.gpg-agent': No such file or directory". This message also was listed as a bug in Ubuntu but nobody in the Fedora community seemed to have the same problem. After much detective work, I learned the the Seahorse agent has to be turned on for Enigmail to run properly. I added to the session manager the following entry. 

seahorse-agent

This loads the Seahorse agent each time I log in. Problem fixed!

How to fix the grub bootloader

When playing around with other distros like Ubuntu, sometimes the installation messed up the grub bootloader of Fedora. Consequently Fedora will not boot. Here's how to fix it:

  1. Boot with the Rescue CD or the installation DVD
  2. Choose linux rescue
  3. At the prompt, enter:
    chroot /mnt/sysimage
    grub-install /dev/yourbootdrive
  4. Enter the word exit, and the PC will restart. Remove the CD / DVD from the drive before it does.

In my case because I am using a SATA hard disk, I entered:

grub-install /dev/sda1

How to make OpenOffice start up faster

I added Openoffice to the Gnome Session manager with the following command: 
ooffice -quickstart -nologo -nodefault
I had to do this in Fedora 7 only. In Ubuntu Feisty Fawn just checking the "Enable systray quickstarter" option under Tools, Option, Memory will add the command automatically to the Gnome Session manager.

How to erase a CDRW disk.

I kept getting errors trying to erase a CD RW disk both k3b and gnomebaker. From Fedora Forum I learned one must unmount the disk first, but there was no unmount options for that disk in Gnome Nautilus. I had to do it from the command line in root using the umount command. This problem seems to be fixed in Fedora 7.

Playing streaming video .asf files in Firefox

I couldn't watch certain streaming video files with the .asf extension. I found that all I needed to view them is mplayer and the mplayer plugins for Firefox! I got them by enabling the Livna repository and installed them with yum.

Mixed repositories resulting in VLC and Mplayer not working

I started getting the error message: 
symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.51: undefined symbol: faacDecOpen
when I tried to use either Mplayer or Vlc. I learned it was because I mixed FreshRPMs and Livna. To fix the problem I had to remove some components with yum:
# yum remove faad2 faac
and then reinstall with yum:
# yum install mplayer vlc k3b*
Problem fixed!

How to tweak Thunderbird's spam filter setting to catch more spam.

In spite of all the good things I read about Thunderbird's Bayesian spam filter, it was still catching only a relatively small percentage of spam mail in spite of the fact that I had been training the filter for over a year. I found a tweak that increased the likelihood of catching spam at the risk of some false positives. But because Thunderbird is set to never label as spam anybody listed in the address book, I considered increasing the spam catching ability with the built in Thunderbird spam filter over all safer than using third party spam filter plugins. I used such a plugin called "Spamato" and though it did an overall better job than Thunderbird's spam filter, it did have some false positives from time to time in spite of the fact that there was a Thunderbird address book entry for the sender of the email that was classified as spam.

To change the default setting of Thunderbird's spam filter, do this:

  1. On the toolbar click on Edit, and then on Preferences
  2. Click on Advanced
  3. Click on the General tab
  4. Click on Config Editor...
  5. Scroll down till you find "mail.adaptivefilters.junk_threshold" and double click on it
  6. Change the number from 90 to 50
  7. Click on OK, and exit out of that window

How to delete unwanted emails from the server without having to download them first

Due to a large amount of spam I was receiving in a certain email account, it became such a chore to find valid email, I opted to quit the using the account and made a new one on another server. However because the old account was connected to one of my web sites, the administrator told me I could not remove the email account entirely without also removing my web site. And so I was stuck with keeping the account, and also keeping it from getting too full of junk. The only email program I previously knew able to delete email directly from the server without having to download it first is a Windows program called Becky! email. I effectively used it with Wine and it did the job. But I always wondered if there was a program in Linux that could do the same thing. I finally found it on Dec. 4, 2006: kshowmail

It uses KDE libraries and so you need KDE installed on your system. It's very simple to setup and use. You can also use kshowmail to delete a single large unwanted email from the server!

How to mount an ISO file

I knew there exists software in Windows that can mount an ISO file so that you can use it to install programs without having to first burn it to a CD, but I didn't know how that could be done in Linux. I googled for the answer and found that Linux already has all the tools needed to do it!

First log into root in Terminal and then make a new directory under /mnt
mkdir iso
Then use the cd command to go to the directory of the ISO file and enter:
mount -o loop -t iso9660 name-iso-file.iso /mnt/iso
After that browse to the /mnt/iso directory and you should see the contents of the ISO file!

How to run a Java .jar file

I wanted to up upload a large file to the Google Video server. Google said to download and install the "Desktop Uploader" for files over 100 megabytes. I downloaded the file for Linux called GoogleVideoUploader.jar but could not figure out at first how to run it. Google offered NO instructions whatsoever on their instructions page! And so I googled for the answer from another web site and found the command to run the file:
java -jar name_of_jar_file


And so I CDed to the jar file, opened terminal and ran the command:
java -jar GoogleVideoUploader.jar

and it worked! Of course you need Java installed to use Java.

How to stop a hung (run-away / zombie) process

I found that though I exited a certain application, System Monitor showed me that it was still using a lot of CPU power! Usually this was after exiting a Windows application using wine. This not only wastes needless CPU cycles which slows down your system, it runs up your electric bill and heats up the CPU. I learned how to kill the process using the kill -9 process command.
1. Open a Terminal Window
2. Enter:
top
The top command will give you a list of the running processes and their respective ID numbers. Usually the runaway process will be near or at the top of the list. Note (remember) the ID number of the runaway process.
3. Enter:
kill -9 process-id
Substitute the word process-id for the number of the process you want to kill. Presto! Your CPU idle should be restored to normal. The top command gives you lots of other information besides the process ID, like memory usage for example. The top and kill commands are two of the hundreds of nifty Linux / Unix commands that Windows users don't have.

Fixing a slow jumping DVD playback

Playing DVDs worked fine in FC 4 but for some reason FC5 did not play them as well. I learned from Fedora Forum that I need to add DMA to my DVD device. I edited in root /etc/rc.d/rc.local and added the following line to the end of the file:
/sbin/hdparm -d 1 /dev/dvd
and rebooted my system. That fixed the problem!

Lesson how to make certain Windows programs to run under WINE

Some Windows programs will not run unless the DLL overrides are set in the winecfg. In the case of Theophilos Bible program, it would hang unless riched20 and riched32 were set in the DLL overrides section. To do that open winecfg from Terminal:
winecfg
and click on the Libraries tab. After that click on Add and choose riched20 and riched32. See a screen shot of my Wine Configuration GUI.
The Windows version setting in winecfg may also need to be set differently according to the Windows program you wish to run. For example, though most programs will run if set to Windows 98, DVD Shrink will work only if set to Windows 2000 or XP.

From Wine version 0.9.23 to the current version (0.9.28 at the time of this post) there is a conflict with installations that include Smart Common Input Method (SCIM). SCIM is used to input Asian characters such as Japanese, Chinese or Korean, and so mainly folks who use these languages (such as myself) would have a problem with Wine. To get around this bug, I had to remove the installed Fedora Core Wine, download the Wine source file from winehq.org untar the source, and edit the dlls/winex11.drv/x11drv_main.c file by commenting out the line: 
if (!XInitThreads()) ERR( "XInitThreads failed, trouble ahead\n" );
by adding /* to the start of the line and */ to the end of the line so it looks like this: 
/* if (!XInitThreads()) ERR( "XInitThreads failed, trouble ahead\n" ); */
This line is just under the line that says:

/* Open display */

After making the change, save the file and then open Terminal in the root of the Wine source directory and start to compile the source with the following command:
./tools/wineinstall
Compiling Wine from source seems to be better rather than installing it with yum from the Fedora repositories. My Windows applications work better than ever.
April 1, 2006: How I fixed the problem not not being able to play a DVD rented from the video shop in Fedora Core 5
I had no problem at all in FC4 playing a rented DVD, but could not play the same DVDs after installing FC5! My favorite multimedia program, VLC, could not do the job. Totem didn't work. I tried other multimedia programs like Xine. That didn't work. Finally I installed a totem-xine combination which gave me a clue: I was missing a library file named libdvdcss! And so I downloaded libdvdcss with yum using the Livna repository:
yum -y install libdvdcss
That worked and fixed the problem! Now I can play DVDs in either Totem, VLC or Xine.
I also learned another way to do it by executing this command in root:
echo -e "remove totem\n install totem-xine libdvdcss libdvdnav\n run\n quit" | yum -y shell
July 29, 2006 update: I continued to have troubles playing some DVDs. Today I also downloaded libdvdplay and reinstalled vlc i386 0.8.4a-1.lvn5 from livna. This time VLC worked without error and the problem seems to be fixed.
March 5, 2006: Fixing dependency problem: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5
I downloaded the latest version of Thunderbird from Mozilla but I couldn't run it. I kept getting "error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5" The fix was to run the following command in root and install the needed library with Yum:
yum -y install compat-libstdc++-33
March 2, 2006: How to set up SCIM in Fedora to type in Japanese

SCIM is the default Asian language input method in Fedora Core 5. I found it works in Fedora Core 4 also. The former method is called IIIMF but SCIM is superior to it.

First make sure that SCIM is installed by running the follow command in Yum after logging into Root from a Terminal window with su.

yum -y install scim scim-anthy scim-libs scim-qtimm

And press enter. This command is especially to install Japanese language input. If you wish to install other Asian languages as well you can shorten the command in Yum by simply entering:

yum -y install scim*

This will give you everything that applies to SCIM. After installing SCIM, run the following command in Terminal as a normal user:

gedit .bash_profile
Gedit should open up a file that looks something like this: 
 .bash_profile

 Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
	. ~/.bashrc
fi

 User specific environment and startup programs

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

export PATH
unset USERNAME

Add the following lines at the end of that file:

GTK_IM_MODULE=scim

XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM

export GTK_IM_MODULE XMODIFIERS

After saving the file, log out of your user account and then log back in again. SCIM should run and you will see a new icon in the display panel that gives you the option to change langages! But to select a language, first you must first open the program that you want to use to type in. This SCIM setup works great in Thunderbird email, Gedit, all Gnome based word processing and editing programs, Bluefish, and OpenOffice. It does not work (at least this setup) in KDE applications. :-(

Lesson on Feb. 23, 2006: Slicing images with Gimp
I tried to figure out from before how to cut up an image into sections and put in a table so that it will load faster section by section rather than using one large image. I'm sure you've seen images like this on the web. It's cool to watch an image load this way! This is something that I could only do in Windows using Paint Shop Pro up till now, but I learned that it's just as easy to do in Gimp, just not as apparent.

The steps are to first put horisontal and verticals guides on the image. The guides option is under Image in the Toolbar. After that use: Filters → Web → Py-slice. It will copy the cut image and make a HTML file with the table code you need. After that just import into your web page! If you know about relative paths, this is not hard to do.
Lesson May 31, 2006: Networking with my Windows laptop using Samba

It seems I bungle through this every time I set up Samba, but I eventually get it working. Here is what I did last time:

  1. Using Gedit I edited /etc/samba/smb.conf and set my Windows workgroup to WORKGROUP. Here's another good page to see more examples of various options in smb.conf
  2. Caveat: Edit smb.conf and remove the entire Homes section or the entire user directory will be accessable!
  3. Go to System → Administration → Samba and add the directories you wish for Windows to be able to access. (Note: system-config-samba must be installed in order to do this.) Change the acess properties so that only your linux user name can access them.
  4. While still in the Samba server configuration dialog box, click on Preferences, then click on Samba Users, then Add User. Now you should see the Create New Samba User dialog box.
    • Click the drop down arrow to the right of Unix User Name and select the user name of your account.
    • In Windows Username type the user name you wish to access your Linux PC from Windows. This does not have to be the same as your Linux user name.
    • Then type your Samba password twice. This is the password you type from Windows just after typing your Samba User name in Windows. It doesn't have to be the same as your Linux user password.
  5. In root open /etc/samba/smb.conf with a text editor and remove the ; in front of the hosts allow string IP address line and change it to the IP address of your Windows computer. You can find that IP address within Windows by entering at the command line:
    ipconfig
    If you have more than one windows computer, enter the second ip address immediately after the first separated by a space.
  6. Also in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file, go to the encrypt passwords line and remove the semi-colon at the beginning of this line and set it to yes.
  7. Go over other entries in the smb.conf file and make sure that's want you want.
  8. From root enter the command:
    chkconfig --level 35 smb on
  9. From root enter the command:
    system-config-firewall
    and check Samba and Samba client to be a trusted services
  10. From root enter the command:
    /etc/init.d/smb restart

Now you should be able to access your Linux shares from Windows!

It is so nice to be able to network with my Windows PC! Now I have the best of both worlds and can exchange documents back and forth between PCs. I can even edit my Linux PC documents from Windows if I need to, and visa versa.

Update Mar. 15, 2006 I learned I had to remove the Homes section in /etc/samba/smb.conf or my entire /home/user folder was browsable!

Update January 22, 2009: I learned I had to enable Authentication since upgrading. Go to System → Administration → Authentication and enter your root password. The Authetication Configuration dialog box should appear. Click on the Authentication tab, and check the Enable SMB Support box.

Make sure also that both Samba and Samba client is checked as a trusted service in the Firewall Configuration dialog box.

Jan. 6. 2006 How to install new fonts in Linux
Installing a new font I found is something that took me a long time to figure out after a lot of bungling around. I read lots of web pages how to do it, but they were so complicated and over my head. However I found a simple procedure and am finally taking the time to document it: All you need to do is create a hidden directory in your /home/user directory named .fonts and copy the new font into it!

mkdir .fonts
cp font_file_name .fonts

You can even use a file manager like KDE or Nautilus to drag and drop the fonts into the .fonts directory after changing the view to show hidden files / folders.
Lesson on Nov. 24, 2005: How to download a section of a password protected web site with wget
Because my friend Lydia in Ukraine does not have broadband, she had been sending me requests to download music from a certain organization's web site. (All original music made by members of the organization). This particular site is for members only, and therefore password protected. Even using a download manager such as Star Downloader (using WINE) it was very laborious to download all the music she wanted (nearly 30 CDs to date) And so I wondered if I couldn't use the Wget program to down the whole section in one shot. Using wget means the program would do all the work for me even if it took days and night - which it did - nearly 48 hours of 24Gigabytes of MP3 files! (WIth ADSL before I upgaded to fiber optic cable!)

I only wanted the audio section of the web site, and that included all the sub directories of the audio directory recursively, but not the entire web site. I had to abort my first attempt when I saw that wget was downloading the entire site which I didn't want or need. Then I discovered the -np option of wget which means "no parent" or do not descend to the parent directory. I figured this would work and it did! Here is the command I used.
wget --recursive -np --http-user=xxxx --http-password=xxxx http://my-organization.members.com/audio/

It took much longer than I thought, even at 150K a second! Here is the message I got when done:
FINISHED --07:47:01--
Downloaded: 24,622,929,541 bytes in 11073 files

This was not cracking that site for I am a member with a legitimate user name and password! I literally saved myself scores of hours of future labor by taking just a few minutes to learn the command options of wget. Maybe you poor Windows GUI only users might appreciate the power of the command line after reading this. :-)

"Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server" problem and solution
After logging in as root with su, certain Gnome applications (like gedit) would not load. Instead I would get the error message: 
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified
(gedit:5789): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
Other things I couldn't do was use gdmsetup or other system apps that related to Gnome. I also noticed that there were KDE apps in the Gnome menu that weren't there before. Another difference was the Log in screen had changed that reminded me of what KDE uses. So I came to realize that KDE was somehow causing conflicts. It was probably because I added two more KDE repositories to Yum that weren't there before. I added them because I want to experiement with Quanta Plus again but couldn't install it without these repositories.

I tried the "switchdesk gnome" command from Terminal. This fixed a similar problem before, but this time it didn't work. So I decided to remove all the KDE libraries with Yum.
yum -y remove kde*
Yum did its thing and removed all kde related files. Then I got rid of the kde respositories by deleting them from the /etc/yum.repos.d directory. Then I rebooted. The log in screen was normal again, and all seemed as before in Gnome. Problem seemed to be fixed! But of course removing all of KDE meant I also removed k3b which is my favorite CD/DVD burner so I reinstalled it with yum:
yum -y install k3b*
The next day after starting the computer, I noticed that the problem was almost the same as before. The desktop menu was normal as before but the log-in greeter still had that same KDE look. Moreover the error message using gedit in root persisted. So I googled again for the answer and learned that editing the /etc/sysconfig/desktop file was what I needed to edit to fix the problem.

There are only two lines in that file and should read thus if you use Gnome:
DESKTOP="GNOME"
DISPLAYMANAGER="GNOME"
In my case, one of the lines had KDE after the equal sign. and without quotation marks around it. So I edited it in root with Midnight Commander, changed the KDE to "GNOME", saved the file and rebooted. This time the problem was *really* fixed! The greeter screen looked like it should look for Gnome and there were no more conflicts using gedit in root.

K3b, Kaddressbook and Kgpg are really the only KDE apps I really like and use. I don't like the KDE sounds for events, especially the breaking glass sound during error messages! Awful!! Sometimes my speaker was too loud and the breaking glass sound really jars my nerves. I stopped using Kyum as a gui for Yum and started to use Yumex instead.

Lessons using Yellowdog Updater Modified (Yum)
Oct. 24, 2005: I think using Yum is the best and easiest way to install software and keep the system updated. It sure beats hunting all over the Internet for updates like I used to do when working in Windows! But sometimes I ran into snags using here. Below is my compilation of things I learned to date:

Besides Yum, I found that I can also use apt-get and its graphical form of synaptic to install new applications in Fedora Core. Either Apt-get and Synaptic work much faster than Yum. If you don't have these utilities yet, just install them with Yum!

How to make seamless image patterns for web backgrounds
I learned this trick on Oct. 24 and am really excited about it! That's because previously the only way I knew how to do it was using Paintshop Pro in Windows. But by using the Gimp in Linux, it is much easier to make a seamless pattern!

1. Open the image you wish to make sceamless in Gimp.
2. In the Tool Bar, click on Filters, → Map, → Make Seamless.
3. Save the image

That's all there is to it! In Paintshop Pro I had to select only part of the image, and if the selection was too close to any one of the 4 edges of the image, Paintshop Pro would tell me it couldn't do the job unless I gave it more slack. I'm glad to be free of that hassel! The background image on this web page was created by this method.
How to convert Nero Burning ROM NRG image files to ISO files
Problem: I had some image files I made with Nero Burning Rom (back in my Windows days) and I wanted to burn more CDs from them. K3b, my favorite CD/DVD burner in Linux, did not recognize the .nrg format. Renaming the extension didn't help. So I googled for the answer and found a cool little utility that could convert nrg to iso: nrg2iso Click on the link to download the tar file, untar it (I use Gnome Fileroller) log in as root, cd to the nrg2iso-0.2 directory, and enter the make command. It will compile in a jiff. Then use Midnight Commander or the cp command to copy the file nrg2iso to /usr/local/bin To convert your nrg file, CD to the directory of that file and enter the command:
nrg2iso name_your_image.nrg name_iso_image.iso
Substitute the two parameters after nrg2iso command with the names of your preference.
Problem and solution playing WMV (Windows Media Video) files
My favorite video player, VideoLAN (vlc) couldn't seem to play wmv format video format files and my next favorite player, MPlayer, could only play some of them. After going to the Mplayer web site, I learned I needed to download more codecs for it, unpack the tar file and to copy them to /usr/lib/win32 directory. The easiest way to do this is to log in as root and use Midnight Commander (mc). Midnight Commander sure beats typing out long paths and file names from the command prompt!
How to create a DVD disk from an AVI file you downloaded from the Internet
I downloaded some really good educational documentaries from the Internet, and wanted to show them to the young people I live with. But because the downloads were AVI files and could only be played on a fast PC, and because the kids weren't interested in coming to my room and watching them from my PC screen, they didn't see them. I wondered if I could convert them to DVD format to play on our DVD player. I knew if I could make them into DVD and show them from the big TV screen, the kids would want to watch them! So I googled for the answer and finally found it Oct. 4, 2005. It worked! Boy am I excited! I bet a lot of my Windows savvy friends don't know how to do this. :-)

These steps are thanks to the author of: DiY DVD from avi: doing it with Linux But because of some things I considered small errors (probably typos), and some updated information, I am duplicating his tutorial and trying to simplify it for both myself and my readers.

You need the following software and its dependencies:
Tovid needs mjpegtools and transcode. So before you install tovid, open a Terminal Window, log in as Root with su, and enter the following command:
yum -y install mjpegtools transcode

This will not only install mjpegtools and transcode, but the dependencies that they need!

If Yum can't find these packages, you probably need Livna added as a repository. If you use Fedora Core 4, you can check out this link to add Livna.

After that go to the tovid download site and download tovid from the mirror closest to you. It is an RPM file, so you can either open it immediately with "Install Packages" or download it and open it after that with Install packages. If you downloaded and installed tovid's dependencies first, it should install correctly.

Download and install dvdauthor in case you don't have it:
yum -y install dvdauthor

Exit from Root, CD to the directory that contains the AVI file you want to convert to DVD, and run the following command:
tovid -dvd -wide -in avifilename.avi -out mydvd

Substitute "avifilename.avi" for the name of your avi file. This command will create a file named mydvd.mpg. This mpg file will be much larger than the original AVI file, so you need to be sure you have at least 3 or more gigabytes free on the partition you are working in! Also be prepared to wait a looong time for this process to finish. You can be doing something else while its working.

When Tovid is finished its job, a file named mydvd.mpg should be in the directory you are working in. Enter:
ls mydvd.mpg
to be sure it exists. If it does, enter the next command:
makexml mydvd.mpg dvdlayout

This process is quick and will make a file named dvdlayout.xml. After that enter this command:
dvdauthor -x dvdlayout.xml

Lo and behold, you should now see a new subdirectory named dvdlayout. Open it and you will see further subfolders named AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. The latter directory should contain the video / audio files converted from your AVI source. If so, success! Now all you need to do is use K3B to burn the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS directories to a blank DVD disk and you're done!

After you burn and test the DVD on a DVD player, you might want to delete the source files from your HDD as they are probably pretty large.
How to install Bittorrent and set the iptables (firewall) to receive incoming and outgoing connections

For a long time I struggled on whether to use the easy graphic interface of Firestarter to manage my firewall, or to use iptables. Even though Firestarter seemed to be easier to use, the constant messages of blocked connections were discomforting. I didn't know if it was good good or bad to block them, and especially so when using Bittorrent and Skype. On Sept. 27, 2005 I finally found a simple easy to follow step by step tutorial how to set up iptables properly for Bittorrent!

However now I use Firestarter instead of setting iptables from the command line. Firestarter is much easier to use and much faster to add and remove firewall rules.

Fixing Gnome log in problem with error message: Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds .... Warning: Unable to read ICE Authority file /home/myusername/.ICEauthority
On Aug 25, 2005 I apparently did something bad and messed up the permissions of my Home directory. I couldn't log in to Gnome anymore as a normal user! So I googled for the answer and found I could use the chown command to fix the problem while logged in as Root in the failsafe terminal from the log in screen.
chown -R username /home/username
It worked and I was able to log in normally after that. Some folks had to go as far as re-install their whole system again!
Lesson August 1, 2005: Using the sudo command to avoid having to type the root password
I learned that instead of typing su or su - and then a password for root access, I could skip having to type the password by using the sudo command. By default sudo should already be installed on your system. You just need to edit the /etc/sudoers file and add this line:

username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

To edit the /ect/sudoers file, you of course need root access first by logging in with the su command. You are supposed to only the visudo editor program, but this editor is perhaps the most unfriendly text editor I've ever seen! I can't make head nor tail out of it, and couldn't figure out how to save the sudoers file and exit from visudo properly. The next time I tried to use visudo, I would get an error message. So rather than use visudo, I use gedit instead. All I know is that it works! If you edit the /etc/sudoers file correctly, after that to get root access without typing a password, from the Terminal window just enter this:
sudo su
Or:
sudo su - (to get root's path)
Lesson on July 26, 2005: How to backup a DVD.
I found a program called Dvdbackup (RPM file download) which can make ISO images of DVD. If you use install this RPM, here is the code to use it to make an ISO image. The command is one single line. Substitute DVD_Volume_name for your DVD volume name. The DVD device would also need to be changed if yours is not /dev/hdb
dvdbackup -M -i /dev/hdb -o ./ && mkisofs -dvd-video -V"DVD_Volume_name" -o dvd.iso DVD_Volume_name/

Lesson on July 13, 2005: How to extract the contents of multiple ZIP files with a single command
I was asked to make audio CDs from files I downloaded of original music made by my friends from MP3 files compressed with ZIP. I found myself opening each ZIP with Gnome's graphic archive program "Fileroller" and dragging and dropping each MP3 file to a folder. For each CD of 14 to 18 songs each, this is a lot of work! I remembered a saying I used to tell others about working with PCs, "If you think there must be an easier way to do it, there probably is." In the old DOS days I used to use single commands from the DOS command prompt to do lots of things, and so I was sure there must be some command to do it in Linux. There is! I found the command from a forum in linuxquestions.org. I copied the next set of downloaded ZIP files to a directory of its own, opened Terminal, CDed to that directory, and typed the followed at the prompt:

for i in `ls`; do unzip $i; done

Rather than have to refer to this documentation each time I want to run this command, I saved it in a text file, copied it into the /home/myusername/bin directory, (you can create a /bin directory in your home user directory. This is already included in the PATH) and set the properties to executable. I named the file "unzipall". It acts just like the good old DOS batch file except that it doesn't need a .bat extension. Because the unzipall file is in a directory in the PATH, I can type this command from any directory at the Terminal prompt to extract all the ZIP files in it with one shot!

Later I added a second line to my unzipall script to automatically delete all the zip files after extracting the contents. Now my script file looks like this:

for i in `ls`; do unzip $i; done rm *.zip

Lesson on July 11, 2005, Manual partitioning
I bought a third SATA HDD for my PC for the purpose of using it for the /home partition so that in future upgrades I would only have to format the root partition. In order to do this, and because I wanted to use the Reiser file system, I could not use the installer's automatic partitioning tool but had to figure out how to do it manually.

In the beginning of the installation process, when I first booted with the FC4 DVD ROM, I first had to type some garbage text at the prompt. This is due to some bug in FC4 that has to do with my chipset. After that I entered:

linux selinux=0 reiserfs

This is to enable support for the Reiserfs.

To make a long story short, after installation I kept getting the message:

Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block (0,0)

I came to realize this is because I failed to create a separate boot partition. The kernel apparently didn't like /boot to be formated in Reiser. So I started the install process again, this time making sure that the first partition of the system HDD was allocated 100 megabytes and partitioned in ext2 with the mount point set as /boot. After that the kernel had no trouble booting! Because the /home partition was no set up on a second HDD, the new installation didn't change any of my basic settings.


How to mount a LVM (Logical Volume Managed) drive To mount a second drive or partition, you first log in as root within Terminal and enter:
mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/drv2
In this case ext3 is the format of the filesystem, /dev/sdb1 is the partition to be mounted, and /mnt/drv2 is the mount point. You replace the partition's filesystem format, partition device name and mount point with what you have on your system. But what if you need to mount a LVM device? I couldn't quickly find any documentation on the Internet about it but was able to figure this one out on my own. Rather than use the name of the device listed by fdisk -l command, I used the name of the volume group in the /dev/mapper directory:
mount -t reiserfs /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 /mnt/drv2

(Note that I am using the Reiser file system) Because Linux is case sensitive, you must type the case the exact way you find it listed in the /dev/mapper directory.

June 30, 2005 If your Motherboard is one of the latest models, the Linux kernel may not recognize either your audio card or LAN device. At this point I still don't know how to install drivers to make Linux recognize hardware like audio or LAN devices. I do know that once you do install the needed modules to a kernel, you have to do so again next time a new kernel is installed. So to avoid that, I found a simple workaround: Buy a cheap second hand PCI card to use instead! I did so with both my audio card and LAN card. The kernel recognized them no problem.

In Windows I used to use PGP Disk to store private files, and so was looking for something similar in Linux. Today, June 16, 2005, Gabriel in Chile turned me on to a web page that gave me the answer I was looking for! http://www.saout.de/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=looptutorial

Though you can go to that page and figure it out for yourself, I wanted to add this tutorial for us newbies because if you use Fedora Core, you can skip some of the steps. I tried this using Fedora Core 4 Test 3 and the kernel already had everything I needed! There were no extra packages I needed to install.

Note that all the commands below can run only when logged on as root with the su - command to give you root's path. Note also that the variables you can change in these commands are the word "secret" for the name of the drive mounted, (you can substitute another word) and the number 100. This will create an encrypted volume of 100 megabytes. You can make it bigger or smaller if you wish.

You may need to install cryptsetup first. I noticed it wasn't included after I did a clean install of Fedora Core 4. Use yum to install it after logging in as root with the su - command:

yum -y install cryptsetup
Then enter the following commands:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/home/secret bs=1M count=100
losetup /dev/loop0 /home/secret
cryptsetup -c aes -y create secret /dev/loop0
mke2fs -j /dev/mapper/secret
mkdir /mnt/secret
mount /dev/mapper/secret /mnt/secret

After that open up gedit or kedit in root and call up the /etc/fstab file and add the following line to it:

/dev/mapper/secret /mnt/secret ext3 noauto,noatime 0 0

If you wish to copy files to your new secret volume immediately after this procedure, you also have to change ownership from root to your user name:
chown -R username /mnt/secret

After I copied the files into the secret volume, I wanted to make sure I could access them again before wiping the source files. So I reboot the PC and ran the following commands as root with root's path (Enter su - first)

losetup /dev/loop0 /home/secret
cryptsetup create secret /dev/loop0
mount /dev/mapper/secret /mnt/secret

Rather than typing all this out every time you want to mount the secret volume after booting your PC, you can use gedit and make a file with the lines in it. You can name the file anything you want and then set it with executable permissions.

To access this new volume, just browse to the /mnt/secret directory! (Or whatever name you named the directory under /mnt)

Added information on Oct. 6, 2005: Unless you unmount your encrypted volume and remove the actions of cryptsetup and losetup, your PC will not shutdown cleanly and you will get error messages the next startup telling you so. But in spite of that, I've had no problem remounting the encrypted volume - except once which freaked me out. But it did work again after a reboot. I made a backup of the volume's source file just in case it gets corrupted.

In order to avoid error messages in the future, I wrote an umount script. It is basically the same procedure in mounting the encrypted volume but in reverse with different options! Here they are below that you can run from the command line:

To unmount your secret volume manually, run the following commands in root:
umount /mnt/secret
cryptsetup remove secret /dev/loop0
losetup -d /dev/loop0
Unless you run the commands with root's path by logging in with su - command, you will not be able to run the last two commands. OR you can add /sbin/ to the path before cryptsetup and losetup and run them that way. And of course the easiest way is to put them into a text file and make it executable - a script.
May 13, 2005: How to format a drive or partition

Formating a drive in Linux is not as simple as in Windows. One reason I think is because there are more security walls in Linux to prevent viruses from doing damage. This is a good thing! Because there are more steps involved and my memory is getting poorer, I added these notes not only to help you, but help myself remember how to do it.

1. Open a terminal window.

2. Log in as root and enter root's password. The hyphen after su is necessary to give you root's PATH.
su -
3. After that enter:
fdisk -l
This will give you a list of the drives that are mounted. You should be able to recognize the drive or partition you want to format by the size. Remember or write down what Linux calls your drive. In my case the USB drive I wanted to format is sdc1

4. Unmount the drive with the following command:
umount /dev/xxxx
Replace the "xxxx" with what Linux named your drive.

5. Then enter:
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/xxxx
This is assuming you want to format your drive in the ext3 filesystem. If your kernel supports reiserfs, you may be able to format in Reiser.

6. After the format is finished, you have to change the ownership from root to your user name in order to have write privileges to copy files to it:
chown -R username /mountpoint
Substitute username for your user name and mount point for the point your drive is mounted. In my case because I was working with a usb drive, the mount point was:
/media/usbdisk

Most mount points are either under /media or the /mnt directory.

Lessons from April 14-16, How to make audio CDs from MP3 files / how to add MP3 support to K3b:
A young man I live with asked me to burn an audio CD for him from MP3 files he downloaded from the Internet. I thought, "No problem for K3b! If Nero can do it, K3b can too!" But I was disappointed to see a message from K3b when I dragged and dropped an MP3 file on it that the format is not recognized! The MP3 plugin for K3b in Fedora is not added by default. I tried to install the plug-in but couldn't figure out how. So I searched the Net for an alternative CD burner and found one for Gnome called "GnomeBaker"! Because I prefer Gnome to KDE I thought to give it a go. GnomeBaker does recognize MP3. However, I still couldn't make an audio CD from MP3 with it. GnomeBaker is still apparently buggy.

Finally 3 days later I found a line on a Fedora forum that gave me a clue what to do: Use Yum! It was so easy! You must update your yum.conf file first in order to add mp3 support for k3b and add the Livna repository.
(Warning: Do not mix Livna with Dag, Freshrpms or Dries repositories. They are incompatible with Livna.)
Follow the instructions on how to do that from the Unofficial Fedora Core FAQ.
1. Open Terminal
2. Enter the following commands:
su (log in as root by typing root's password
yum -y install k3b*

That's all it takes! Yum added the MP3 plugin automatically to K3b and K3b recognized it. I tried to do it manually before based on instructions from another web site but with no success

.

April 13, 2005, Enabling Japanese input in an English locale

I struggled off and on hours and hours over a period of weeks to figure out how to type in Japanese in the English locale. Linux in an English locale correctly displayed Japanese characters, but to type in Japanese I would have to log out and then log back in using the Japanese language locale. I searched and searched the Internet for a tutorial how to input Japanese characters while still in an English locale. Only finally today for the first time I found the answer from the Fedora Core web site http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/i18n/iiimf-faq.html - the first place I should have looked but it was the last....duh!

Do this:
Open Terminal and enter the following commands:
mkdir ~/.xinput.d
ln -s /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/iiimf ~/.xinput.d/en_US
Restart X. (Log out and then back in again)

Once you are back in your normal English language log in, open an editor and then press the shift key and tap space to enable Japanese input mode. Works great! Now I can finish typing all my Japanese emails from within the English log in.

Update Dec. 13, 2005: I heard that Fedora Core 5 test 1 implemented a newer far superior method of Japanese input called SCIM, I installed it with Yum. I found SCIM is indeed better than IIIMF!

In order to make SCIM work, I had to edit a file in my Home User directory named .bash_profile. I added the following lines to the end of .bash_profile:

export PATH
unset USERNAME
xport XMODIFIERS='@im=SCIM'
export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"
export LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.utf8
scim -d
After that I logged off and logged back in again. Lo and behold, a new icon poped in in the Notification Area of the bottom icon panel of my desktop. It is much easier to switch languages back and forth and the Kanji selection is better than before too.

March 30, 2005, Downloading an entire web site with "wget"

I missed my Theophilos Bible software that I used to use in Windows and looked around for something for Linux to take its place. I could at first only find on-line HTML Bible sites and wondered if I could download a whole site to my hard disk with all the files linked properly. So I did a search on the Internet and found the wget command could do the job. I opened a terminal window and entered: wget

Sure enough, wget showed its existance by showing some output lines! I then typed at the terminal prompt:
wget -r http://ebible.org/
Notice the "-r" switch meaning recursive to download all related links to the site.

Upon entering the above command, the download process and finally ended with the message:

FINISHED --19:15:35--
Downloaded: 330,750,211 bytes in 1909 files

Sure beats downloading page after page manually!

On March 30, 2005 I learned how to install "Bible Time" - a Bible program for Linux. It was a bit of work to compile two different programs using the "./configure" "make" and "make install" commands. First I needed to compile "sword", then "bibletime" and then finally I downloaded the KJV module files and copied them into my home/.sword folder. When I entered bibletime at the terminal prompt, my first Linux based Bible program started up!!

March 23, 2005, Installing new updates automatically with "Yum"


Yum runs from the command line and is the prefered method of updating your software and system in Fedora Core 4. Don't use the "Add/Remove Applications" under Desktop - System Settings menu to add new applications because you will be prompted to insert your installation CD/DVD and the applications that are on it are probably already outdated! Moreover, you will run into dependency issues if do.

After a clean install, the first thing you should do is update your system with Yum. Log in as root with the su command and enter the following command:

yum -y update

Let Yum do its thing! The first time you update your system, it may take a long time depending on how old the installation CD is. Linux is very much dependant on the Internet for updates, and so you need a broadband (fairly fast) connection to use Yum.

Yum not only updates, but you can install software you don't even have yet directly from the Internet if that software is included in one of the repository links listed in the yum.conf file! For example, I heard that Mplayer could convert MP3 files to wav. I didn't have Mplayer installed nor did I have the installation program. So I just opened a Terminal window, entered su to log in as a Super User as root, and entered the command:

yum -y install mplayer*

Yum did downloaded not only mplayer, but all the library files I needed for Mplayer! What could be easier? It sure beats the old Windows way of searching for programs with a browser!!

However in order to install Mplayer and other third party software repositories that Fedora Core cannot include for legal reasons, you must first update your /etc/yum.conf file. If you don't, you won't have any support to play MP3 files and do other things that Fedora Core does not include. The easiest way to update yum.conf in Fedora Core 4 is to follow the tutorial of the Unofficial Fedora FAQ

Bittorrent is not included in Fedora Core by default, and so I used Yum to install it the painless way:

su
yum -y install bittorrent*

Besides yum, there are GUI versions of it called Kyum and Yumex (Yum Extender). These are not installed by default but you can use yum to install both of them with one command:

yum -y install kyum yumex
Kyum seems to be the better of the two.

May 31, 2005 Problem of installing a kernel update with Yum:
Yum failed to install a new kernel ending with an error message saying that it could not unpack it. After several attempts, I realized that it was unpacking the kernel in the /boot directory and that it could be /boot had reached its limit of 100 megabytes! The solution? I logged in as root and simply deleted a few of the old kernels. There were at least a dozen saved up in /boot. No wonder yum couldn't finish the job! After that I ran the yum update again and the new kernel was installed with no problem.

Later I learned from Fedora Forum that I could remove old unwanted kernels with the following commands:
su -
rpm -q kernel
yum remove kernel-2.6.xxxxxxxx

The first command is to log in as root with root's PATH. The second will bring up a list of all the kernels. The third will remove the kernel. Substitute the xxxes for the kernel version you wish to remove. Doing this will free up space in the /boot directory. It is good to keep at least one extra kernel that you know worked for you before!

May 22, 2005 Problem: I could not update with yum because of an unresolved reference to libjawt.so.6. I found the answer below from the fedora-test-list Digest, Vol 15, Issue 78.

Find out where the problematic dependency is coming from:
rpm -q --whatprovides libjawt.so.6
libgcj-4.0.0-7
...and exclude that from the update set:
yum --exclude=libgcj update

However when I tried the same procedure on other failed dependency problems, it didn't always work for me. Sometimes I fixed them by using Yum to uninstall and then reinstall a certain application. However one time I really messed myself up that way by uninstalling the glibe library and ended up with Gnome vanishing from the Desktop! I had to do a total reinstall of my system to fix it! But because I have my /home partition on a seperate drive, I didn't lose hardly any of my previous settings or any of my data. And so for me a clean install is not such a big deal anymore.

I think the answer to avoid unresolved dependancy problems is to use only Yum from the very beginning to update your system as soon as you install it and to try to stick to yum as much as possible in installing new software. It is probaby also good to stick to one configuration of your yum.conf file. I found that tutorial on the Unofficial Fedora FAQ page on how to update yum.conf worked best for me. I have no failed dependency issues since then.

Installing NTFS file support in the Linux Kernel

I wanted to be able to access files from my 40 gig USB portable HDD in Linux, but because Fedora cannot support for the NTFS file system for legal reasons it is rumored, Linux recognized the USB drive when I plugged it in, but it could not read any of the files. Googled for the answer and learned that the Livna repository can supply NTFS support. First you need to make sure you have the Livna repository installed.

yum -y --enablerepo=livna install kmod-ntfs
I like to have Livna disabled by default because I also use FreshRPMS, and enable it only when I need it from the command line with the --enablerepo=livna switch. Keep in mind that you have to repeat this command each time you upgrade the Linux kernel.

Making my SCSI scanner to work

Note: This tweak seems to be unneccesary from Fedora Core 6 which automatically recognized my SCSI scanner!
From the command line I entered:
xsane
But xsane came up with a message saying it could not find my scanner! My scanner was turned on and plugged in the SCSI port from startup. The message said that one possible reason is that the scanner is "owned" only by root. So I logged in as a Super User (by entering the su command and root's password) and ran the xsane command again. Sure enough, sane ran and recognized my scanner! However a message came up warning me:

You try to run XSane as ROOT, that really is DANGEROUS! ...... Continue at your own risk

So from the lesson I learned on March 8, I knew I had to somehow allocate ownership to my log-in user name. I knew the command but not the device name. Using Hardware Browser I found my Epson scanner was assigned as /dev/sg2

Logged in as root I entered the command
chown -R jamesjpn /dev/sg2
I exited root and again entered xsane at the command line. Success! I scanned an image from a printed page, edited it with GIMP and uploaded it to my web page, The Magic Green Shirt.

On Sept. 23, 2005, I finally got tired of running the chown command each time to make my SCSI scanner work and Googled for an easier way. I found that by editing the 50-default.perms file located in /etc/security/console.perms.d that I could automatically give the scanner permission to run as a normal user! This is what I did:

1. Log in from terminal as root with the su command
2. Run the following command:
gedit /etc/security/console.perms.d/50-default.perms
3. You should now see the file loaded in gedit. Add the following line:
<scanner>=/dev/sg*

Note that this only applies if your scanner is a SCSI. According to the 50-default.perms file, a USB scanner should already have user permissions by default.

Lesson on March 11, 2005, Subject: Installing the Java plugin for Firefox:
I just spent at least a couple hours trying to figure out how to install the Java plugin for Firefox! The Flashplayer installation was easy and installed automatically from the Internet, but the Java plugin can only be installed manually. Here is what I finally did. I hope it will save you time and not have to bungle around like I did! Just follow the directions below. After every command at the command prompt, hit enter. You don't have to write all all the long commands but just copy and paste them into the terminal window. Exit all Firefox windows before starting this procedure.

  1. Go to the Java Download page and download the J2SE(TM) Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 4. The Java installation file should download in your Home directory
  2. Open a Terminal window (command line prompt) and change directory (cd command) to where you downloaded the jre-1_5_0_04-linux-i586-rpm.bin file if you are not there already.
  3. Enter the commands:
    su (log in as root)
    ./jre-1_5_0_04-linux-i586-rpm.bin
  4. The Java installation process should start. Just follow the simple instructions given and type Yes when asked to.
  5. After the Java installation process is completed, go to the /home/user/.mozilla/plugins with the cd command
  6. You should now be in the Mozilla plugins directory. Now enter:
    ln -s /usr/java/jre1.5.0_04/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so
  7. Enter the ls command to see if the libjavaplugin_oji.so link has been created in the directory. The file name should appear in cyan color.
  8. Run Firefox and go to a page that has a Java applet to test it.

Later I learned that the ln -s command is used to create a "symbolic link". In Windows terminology this is known as a "shortcut". What I was doing was creating a link from the libjavaplugin_oji.so file located in /usr/java/jre1.5.0_04/plugin/i386/ns7 to the mozila plugin directory located in my Home folder. In my case the full path to the Mozilla directory is: /home/jamesjpn/.mozilla/plugins So if you are having problems following the above instructions, make sure you are typing the command from the correct mozilla plugin folder and that you are using the correct path to libjavaplugin_oji.so file in your system. You can know for sure by using the File Browser.

Update on March 10, 2006: I just followed a tutorial by Stanton Finley on how to install Java. It's a slightly different procedure and perhaps easier to do than the above!
Lesson on March 10, 2005, Subject: Fixing my LAN device:
I couldn't connect to the Internet after running some updates. I finally realized that Linux was not recognizing my LAN card correctly anymore. I went to:
Applications
System settings
Network
Was asked to type the root password
The Network Configuration window came up. I saw that the status was inactive.
I clicked on the Hardware tab and then clicked on the Edit icon. I saw that the IRQ setting was "Unknown" This meant that Linux was not recognizing the LAN device correctly. What to do? I used brute force! I shut down the machine, removed the power cord, removed the LAN card, turned on the machine and booted into Linux. I was asked if I wanted to remove the LAN device from the settings. I said Yes. After it booted into the Log in screen, I click shutdown, turned off the machine, removed the power cord, put the LAN card back in, turned on the machine and booted into Linux. I was asked if I wanted to configure the LAN card. I said Yes. Linux configured it automatically and my Internet and Email was restored!

Later I had a similar problem, but instead of physically taking the card out, I deleted the LAN device completely from the Network Configuration dialog box, rebooted the computer, and added it again. This time when I clicked on "Activate Device" it activated properly!

Also today I discovered why I was getting an error message when logging into Gnome. It kept telling me it couldn't find my Internet host and therefore may not work correctly. So I put in my yahoo.com provider host name in the Hostname under the DNS tab of the Network settings, and that seemed to satisfy Gnome!

I was using KDE before but always seemed to run into problems with it. KDE seems more powerful and user friendly in some ways, but it also seemed unstable at times. I like Gnome more than ever now and appreciate the cool applets, like the weather applet for example.

Lesson on March 8, 2005, How to automatically mount a second physical hard disk drive or partition and assign write privileges as a user:
I had lots of fun trying to make Linux automatically mount my second physical HDD! It took me a long time but I finally figured it out. You can save lots of hours by following the instructions below if you want Linux to automatically mount a secord HDD. These instructions also apply to mounting a Windows NTFS or FAT partition on your HD if you set up for dual booting and Linux did not automatically mount it for you.
  1. Open a Terminal Window
  2. Enter the su command with a space and a hyphen after it:
    su -
    and type your root password. This will make you a "Super User" with Root's path.
  3. Enter the command:
    mkdir /mnt/drv2
  4. This will make a folder under the /mnt directory with the name of drv2. You could even use a different name if you wish. If you are mounting a Windows partition, you might want to name it
    /mnt/win-c or /mnt/win-d according to the drive letter that Windows gives that drive or partition. This will be the mount point of the drive you want to access.
  5. Find out what device name Linux gave your second hard disk by using fdisk with the -l switch:
    fdisk -l
    This will give you a quick list of your drives and you should see from the list what Linux called your other drive. In my case it was /dev/sdb1

    Remember the device name of your second HDD for now you need to do some real geeky work and edit your /etc/fstab file!
  6. Go back to the Terminal Window. If you did not exit it, you should still be logged in as a Super User. If not, type su and your root password again.
  7. Now enter the command at the prompt: gedit /etc/fstab Note that there is a space between gedit and /etc/fstab
  8. If you typed that correctly gedit should have called up the fstab file Now type in this line in that file on its own line:
    /dev/sdb1 /mnt/xxx ext3 rw,auto,user 1 3
    Please note the variables being the name of your second hard disk device and the name of the directory you created in the /mnt directory.
  9. Save the file and reboot your computer

If the drive you are mounting is formated in NTFS, you will be able to read it only if your kernel supports NTFS. Chances are that if your distribution is something other than Red Hat or Fedora, it probably does support reading NTFS. But even so, you will not be able to write to it, only read or copy files from it. If you are mounting a drive formated in FAT or FAT32, you will be able to write and copy files to it only if you change the ownership by executing the following commands from Terminal:

su
chown -R username /mnt/xxx

Note that you need to substitute username for your login name and xxx for your mount point directory name. After this you should be able to copy files into your second hard drive formatted in FAT or FAT32. To access the drive using the file manager, just browse to the folder under /mnt that you set the mount point, and you should see them.

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