Tag Archives: fedora

The Nexus 7 and Fedora 17

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Fedora support MTP, but the Nexus 7 is not recognised.

But it is fairly straight forward to get ADB, if your using the Developer Tools, and MTP mounting working.

  1. Create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/99-android.rules

    # Google Nexus 7 16 Gb
    SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4e41", MODE="0666", OWNER="your-login" # MTP media (multimedia device)
    SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4e42", MODE="0666", OWNER="your-login" # MTP media with USB debug on(multimedia device)
    SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4e43", MODE="0666", OWNER="your-login" # PTP media (camera)
    SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4e44", MODE="0666", OWNER="your-login" # PTP media with USB debug on (camera)
    SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4e40", MODE="0666", OWNER="your-login" # Bootloader
    SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="d001", MODE="0666", OWNER="your-login" # Recovery
    # MTP Support
    ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4e41", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}="1", ENV{ID_MEDIA_PLAYER}="1"
    ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4e42", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}="1", ENV{ID_MEDIA_PLAYER}="1"

  2. Restart udev

    # systemctl restart udev.service

  3. Install required software

    # yum install mtpfs libmtp

Done.
You should now be able to mount your device:

$ mtpfs /home/user/some_mount_point

The existing help I have found on MTP failed to include both Product IDs. Meaning if USB debugging was enabled on the device libmtp would not recognise your device.

Exim/Gmail/Fedora

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Ever since working with Debian I have wondered why more Linux distros don’t ship with exim on as the default mail client.

“exim -bt email@address” is reason enough

It is simpler to setup and easier to administer. If you want your fedora machine to send local email via Gmail, here is a guide.

One point to add, if you want root mail delivered somewhere, edit /etc/aliases and set an alias for root. Don’t forget to run “newaliases” when your done.

Gnome 3.0 Fallback with Compiz

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The Gnome 3.0 Fallback mode is one of the nicest Classic Gnome interfaces available. With compiz I think it may be one of the nicest gnome desktops bar none.

And it is easy to get compiz working with it. Really easy. One command easy.

# yum install compiz compiz-gnome compiz-manager compiz-plugins main

Now one you enter your username at GDM you will be presented with a pull-down from here you can select. “Classic GNOME with Compiz”.

Remove the Accessibility menu in Gnome 3

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By default gnome-shell has an accessibility menu visible in the shell. I get that this is sensible by default. But I don’t need it and it bothers me that I can’t remove it.

User fpmurphy over at fedoraforum has posted a shell extension that removes the offending icon.

I have created a tarball of the extension. Download it here and extract it to “~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions”

$ cd ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions
$ unzip gnome-shell-extensions-noa11y.zip

Then restart the shell. Hit “Alt+f2″, and type “r”.

Fedora 15, initial impressions

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I have moved back to Fedora on my primary laptop. And not the stable. I am using the Alpha of Fedora 15. I expect bugs, so I am not going to complain about stability in an Alpha release.

I decided to dump Ubuntu as my primary desktop for a couple of reasons. I think Ubuntu is a more polished desktop, and provides a better user experience over-all, especially for a regular user, and I like its Debian heritage and package system. But I do not like Unity. I am not going to debate it’s pros/cons here it has been done all over the interwebs. I simply don’t like it, and do not think it should be built the way it is. Unity should be built upstream, as an alternative shell to Gnome, not inside Ubuntu’s closed walls, and then customized for Ubuntu later on. Canonical could learn from red-hats previous mistakes and successes in this regard.

I was also very disappointed with the way Ubuntu handled the inclusion of Banshee and with the outcomes from that debacle.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Fedora and I like the community built around it, but I was also skeptical of the Fedora choice to ship Gnome-Shell. So I gave the Alpha a spin.

And I like it. It took a little getting used to, but I moved back to the old gnome-panel interface and I missed the changes now present in gnome-shell. So much that I decided months out from release to stick with Fedora 15 as my primary installation.

I am using this as a desktop, so my comments are really only relevant in that space, but a couple of thoughts.

 

SE Linux.

Technically SELinux is brilliant. But on a desktop it gets in the way, and the alerts will make no sense to a regular user. After an update I had to set my policy to permissive to simply be able to login again (Not a real complaint, it is Alpha). But until work is done to make the whole thing a lot clearer to non-technical users every howto is still going to start with, “Turn off selinux”. If I build a live respin, I will probably disable selinux on install.

GNOME Shell

The preferences are sparse, and this is by design, but I think most users, after getting used to the interface, are going to won’t more customization option. For the technically minded people install “dconf-editor”. If you want things a little simpler check out “gnome-tweak-tool“.

But personally, after getting comfortable with the shell, I think it is a better way to work. I like managing my work-flow with dynamic workspaces. A few extra keyboard shortcuts would come in handy.

I also have a usability problem with the notification tray. When there are multiple icons, you hover over the icon, which then moves to display the name of the application. If you need to click on an icon for options it has moved some arbitrary number of pixels away. It is only a little thing, but it annoys me no end. I think rather than shuffling icons, the title could simply be displayed as a pop-op, hint style.

Adding things and customization

Getting things to work with Fedora is just a little bit tricky. 32 bit flash on 64 bit system requires a visit to the wiki. Yum doesn’t process architecture dependencies properly, so whenever an app was only available 32 bit, like Skype, it would take a bit of a forum search to find a solution for installation. And I think that has always hindered Fedora adoption. The learning curve is just a bit steeper than Ubuntu. Sure a visit to a  Fedora FAQ will normally fix you up. but it takes a bit of investigation.

But all that said. I am back on very familiar Fedora soil, and I couldn’t be happier. I will try when writing blog posts to include instructions for Fedora/RHEL/CentOS and Ubuntu/Debian. I work with all of them. But I am a little lazy, so instead there will probably be a mash of howto’s each one on whatever distro the problem I was fixing was based.

Google Chrome theme for Adwaita (gnome-shell)

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Update: A much better looking and more official theme is now available in the chrome webstore http://goo.gl/CmRUk

I have been running Fedora 15. It is kinda buggy, (expected it’s alpha,) but I am actually finding gnome-shell growing on me.

Firefox 4 in included, but I still find I prefer Google Chrome, trouble is, it looks out of place on the desktop. I used this site and threw together a quick theme. It’s not perfect, but feel free to download it.

Backup/Restore remote disk images.

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There are occasion when backing up data is not enough. You may want a snapshot of your whole system. There are some great tools out there like Clonezilla, which in turn uses partdisk, or Ghost if you don’t mind closed source. But you can do this using tools almost certainly available even in the most minimal of linux installs.
Caveats:
  • The image is easily restorable to the hardware it was created on. If you restore to another computer it will create unexpected issues. Usually fixable by creating a new initrd
  • The partition sizes are fixed and must be restored to a harddrive of equal or larger size.
  • dd creates a byte level copy of your harddrive, empty space is included in the backup. Without gzip a 160GB disk will create a 160GB disk image. With Gzip the image will still be very large.

Backup image to another Linux machine

If you have a Linux workstation with a large enough hard-drive you can simply backup and restore across the network. You will need root access to both boxes. Netcat is also available for Windows and Mac.

1. On the Destination Where you are storing the backup

In this example /dev/sda is the harddrive you want to backup/restore. Make sure you choose the correct harddrive.

 # nc -l 1010 > harddrive.img.gz

2. On the source computer The machine being backed-up

# dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -cf | nc -q 10 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1010

Restore image form another Linux machine

1. On the Targe The machine you are restoring to

  • You will need to boot into a live image, I suggest Ubuntu, from USB or a CD.
  • From the now booted, live operating system:
    # nc -l 1010 | gzip -dcf | dd of=/dev/sda

2. On the Source machine The machine with the image saved

# nc -q 10 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1010 < harddrive.img.gz