Tip for downloading Opera 10.10 for Fedora 12 x86_64

When going to http://www.opera.com and choosing your Linux Distribution, pick "Suse" -> OpenSuse 11.2, that will give you an 64 bit RPM of Opera with qt4, and it runs much better on Fedora 12 than picking "Fedora" -> Fedora 10,11,12 which will give you a shared qt3 RPM. (at least for me)

Virtualbox 3 on Fedora 12

Read article. I was able to sync my iPhone 3G on a Windows XP guest running on Virtualbox w/o any hassle whatsoever. It just worked.

VNC through SSH tunnel

At work, I often use two computers, and to avoid moving back and forth with the keyboard and the mouse, I have both computers sharing one keyboard and mouse via synergy. I've even written a short article on how to get it working.

But even that has become a bit annoying because I still have to move my head between the display of one computer, and another. So, I decided to share my X session with VNC and just use my secondary machine on a VNC session.

To try to improve security a bit, I decided to tunnel my VNC connection via ssh using this article. The only thing about the article that I would point out is when starting the ssh tunnel, use the -X (or -Y) option so the vnc client can use the X display.

Linux VNC server setup

Log into your Linux host box.
[bar]$ ssh foo

[foo]$ vncpasswd

Only set this vnc password once. You'll need it to connect from any remote or local client

[foo]$ vncserver -localhost

Do not omit the -localhost argument, this stops VNC from listening on the external interface. IMPORTANT Note the server number returned by vncserver after you launch it. You will need this number to kill the server and to configure the SSH client.

[foo]$ exit

Linux client

From your local linux desktop open an ssh session
[bar]$ ssh -X -L 5901:localhost:590n foo

Note that n is your server number. Above command connects you to foo with a tunneled port as well.

[foo]$ vncviewer localhost:n

I guess it never hurts to remind fedora users, that the VNC packages are called: tigervnc and
tigervnc-server.

fedora 12 is here!

fedora 12 is here!
Originally uploaded by afsilva

I created this wallpaper based on this one to celebrate the release of Fedora 12.

Grab Fedora 12 now!

Grab the wallpaper:

Quake 4 on Fedora 12 (x86_64)

A few hours ago, I got Quake 3 Arena working on Fedora 12. So, I decided to also try to install Quake 4, which didn't work out of the box. It actually took me longer to figure out the solution for the problem for Quake4 than it took for Quake 3. Here's what I did.

1. Grab the latest Quake 4 binaries from ID Software. quake4-linux-1.4.2.x86.run.
2. Install, and copy the the baseq4 files from your original Windows CDs (or DVD) to /usr/local/games/quake4/base4q
3. When I tried to execute the binary like:
linux32 /usr/local/games/quake4/quake4-smp, I would get an error like this:

X..GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc not found

To fix this problem, the following was needed:

yum install driconf

Then, as the user who will be running the game, run:

driconf

and under Image Quality, enable S3TC textures. That did it for me.

4. My game still didn't have sound, so I had to edit ~/.quake4/q4base/Quake4Config.cfg and the the option from:

seta s_driver "best"

to

seta s_driver "oss"

And that worked.

5. As root, /sbin/modprobe snd_pcm_oss; chmod 777 /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss

6. echo "quake4-smp.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss && linux32 /usr/local/games/quake4/quake4-smp

Quake 3 Arena on Fedora 12 (x86_64)

I like OpenArena. It's a pretty fun game, but I still prefer the good old Quake 3. Taking in consideration that the game is 10 years old, and I haven't tried to play it in years, I took some time this afternoon to see if I could get the old original Loki Game/ID Software version working on the newest Linux distro possible: Fedora 12 (which comes out this week).

At first, I got all sorts of errors, I couldn't install it from the original CD, nor by downloading the most recent binaries from ID Software, which believe it or not, is already 6 years old.



Anyway, I was able to get Quake 3 running on my Lenovo Thinkpad T500 (Intel Graphics Card) running Fedora 12, and here's what I had to do:

Installation:

1. Grab the two latest updates from ID Software's FTP: Q3A Point Release 1.32b and Q3A Point Release 1.32c
2. Make 1.32b executable, run it, follow the directions, and you might have to set a couple of /usr/local/ directories to 777, if you want to run the game as a non-root user and install it on its default location. Also, on a 64-bit machine precede the executable with 'linux32' otherwise it will say it doesn't support 64-bit arch.
3. Unzip 1.32c, and copy over the binaries under the 'linux' directory to: /usr/local/games/quake3
4. Grab your Windows or Linux Quake3 CD, and copy over the base3q files to /usr/local/games/quake3/base3q/

Fixing Sound:

Before, you even try to start up the game, I can tell you right now the sound will be broken, so, here's how to fix it:

1. As root: /sbin/modprobe snd_pcm_oss # this is non-persistent, through this module /dev/dsp is created
2. chmod 777 /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss

Starting the game:

We need to do 2 things before executing the binary. The first is set some parameters for sound to work, and the second is tell quake3* binaries to run under a 32-bit arch.

echo "quake3-smp.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss && linux32 /usr/local/games/quake3/quake3-smp

Note, that I am running the SMP binary, since my laptop has 2 cores. If you run on a single processor, you will need to run:

echo "quake3.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss && linux32 /usr/local/games/quake3/quake3

Note: If your game freezes seconds after starting a match, use '+set s_musicvolume -1' when starting the game.

Note 2: If the sound still not working open your 'Sound Preferences' and under the Hardware tab, change the profile from Analog to Digital... it did the trick for me.

Fedora 12 beta KDM thru Xephyr

Fedora 12 beta KDM thru Xephyr
Originally uploaded by afsilva

Last night, I was playing around with Fedora 12 Beta some more, and decided to switch Display Managers from GDM to KDM. I was delighted to see how nice the KDM theme looks on Fedora 12 Beta.

A friend of mine asked me for a screenshot, and then I realized I didn't know how to take screenshots outside being logged in on KDE or GNOME. I did some googling around, and saw that 'Xnest' was the better way to getting screenshots of Display Managers.

I did have to turn off IPv6 to get Xnest working, but the fonts didn't look so good, that's when I found out about Xephyr, which supports modern X extensions.

First switch from GDM to KDM.

Then, install Xephyr.

yum install Xephyr

And then:

Xephyr :1 -query localhost -screen 1024x76

PS: If you use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost, Xephyr should work with IPv6 enabled.

A 'revisited' guide to GNU Screen

An old article of mine was re-published on Linux Gazette this month.