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InstallFest Fall '09


V.T. Eric Layton

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V.T. Eric Layton

Alright then, folks...I don't think you folks noticed that my latest re-installation of Mandriva was with KDE 4. I figured I'd give it one last shot. So far, I've had experiences with three different versions of KDE 4 on three entirely different distributions of Linux on my system. I really thought this one might work out. However, just like the other times, I'd get to where I was nearly finished with my setting up/customizing of my new Linux distribution when KDE would start freaking out... using excessive CPU, locking up, losing settings, etc... finally catastrophic crash. I can't even reboot Mandriva. Something is now corrupted in the installation. GRUB can't boot it. Interesting, huh?Sad to say, but the Devil's gonna' have icicles on his arse before I install a distro with KDE again.Hell_froze_over.gifAs it stands now, I'm going to "cool off" for a few days and then maybe reinstall Mandriva with some other DE/WM other than KDE 4. On the other hand, I'm kinda' soured on Mandriva now. This coming install will be the third attempt. I'm not too happy about that. We'll have to see how I feel about this in a few days.Signed,Disgusted in Tampa :whistling:

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V.T. Eric Layton

Well, I managed to recover the installation, but I don't know why. KDE 4 really likes CPU cycles and RAM, it seems. Almost anything I do, any click on anything, sucks 100% CPU. At startx, the installation is already eating nearly 500Meg RAM. I'm not even using the cool graphic stuff with KDE. I guess I'm going to have to invest in a superFAST quad core with about 8 Gig RAM to use KDE 4. :whistling:

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V.T. Eric Layton

OK, everything KDE has been purged from my Mandriva installation. I'm running LXDE/Openbox. It still needs some work. If the installation remains stable now that KDE has been nuked, I'll continue to set it up. It's 6:24AM here in Tampa and I haven't been to bed yet. I'm going now...

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Wow EricI can't see a technical reason for KDE4 not to perform on your machine. I have it on a Acer One with an Atom processor and only 1 gig ram and it does fine, also on a 2200 AMD w/ 2 gig ram and it does fine. Just out of curiosity did you install the nvidia drivers..if so how?

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Well, I managed to recover the installation, but I don't know why. KDE 4 really likes CPU cycles and RAM, it seems. Almost anything I do, any click on anything, sucks 100% CPU. At startx, the installation is already eating nearly 500Meg RAM. I'm not even using the cool graphic stuff with KDE. I guess I'm going to have to invest in a superFAST quad core with about 8 Gig RAM to use KDE 4. :(
I'll have to say wow too! Sidux/kde4 works fine on my EeePC 900 with 900MHz cpu and one gig of RAM. On my desktop with Core2Duo E8500 (2x3.16GHz) and 2gig RAM there's no noticeable performance difference from my Lenny 3.5.10 install. Something in your computer just doesn't like it.I do recall having a 100% cpu problem ages ago but I can't remember which distro or DE or what the problem was. Certainly not in my current install which is upgraded from sidux 2009.3. Can you work out what process is gobbling up all the cpu?I just checked Htop and it reports 317MB memory used and about 1% cpu with Weasel and Dove open. Edited by sunrat
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V.T. Eric Layton

@ Barry... yes, manually installed 190.53 (x86_64) Nvidia drivers via Nvidia installation script.@ Sunrat... I haven't a clue what the KDE 4 issue is with my system. I've tried 4.2 in Slack13-64 --> crash and burn. It would keep losing preference settings and locking up. I've tried 4.2 in Arch 64 --> same thing as with Slackware. I have now tried 4.3.x in Mandriva 64 --> seemed to be OK at first, but then began flaking out... high CPU usage (plasma desktop), high RAM usage (plasma desktop again), herky-jerky, lockup, whammo... all buggered.hey-kde.png

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@ Sunrat... I haven't a clue what the KDE 4 issue is with my system. I've tried 4.2 in Slack13-64 --> crash and burn. It would keep losing preference settings and locking up. I've tried 4.2 in Arch 64 --> same thing as with Slackware. I have now tried 4.3.x in Mandriva 64 --> seemed to be OK at first, but then began flaking out... high CPU usage (plasma desktop), high RAM usage (plasma desktop again), herky-jerky, lockup, whammo... all buggered.
Surely you should take that as a challenge to whip it and bend it until it does work. :( :) :unsure:
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V.T. Eric Layton

Heh! Nah... life is TOO SHORT for me to be pulling my hair out over something like that. If I was looking for challenges, I'd install Gentoo. :(

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V.T. Eric Layton

Well, hokey-dokey... where were we? Ah yes... we were experiencing dangerous blood pressure spikes and heart palpitations. Our angry outbursts at 4AM scared the cats out of the room. All's better now, though. The KDE4 demon has been exorcised from my Mandriva installation. LXDE/Openbox is stable and behaving. I continued with setup and customization this evening. We should have Mandriva in tip-top shape in another day maybe. :yes:LXDE Rocks! :(

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angryman.png
... we were experiencing dangerous blood pressure spikes and heart palpitations. Our angry outbursts at 4AM scared the cats out of the room.
YESS! An old-time installfest! Oh boy... the warm, fuzzy feeling overcometh meyour cuppa runneth over...stimpy.gif
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V.T. Eric Layton

It's funny... I set my different installations up so similarly, that the untrained eye can't even tell that they are using different distributions/desktop environments/windows manager. Neato, huh?

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Well, that bites Eric, I can't blame you for you "warm" feelings towards KDE4 :P. Besides Mandy looks neat and trim in LXDE :thumbsup:

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securitybreach

Looks nice Eric. Have you tried to use pure OpenBox instead of LXDE? I used OpenBox for a few years but never really liked LXDE. Too much clutter for my taste.

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V.T. Eric Layton

Well, I've just scratched the LXDE/Openbox surface. It's actually highly customizable. It's just gonna' take me some snooping to figure it all out. And no, Josh. Openbox alone would be just a tad too minimal and techy for me. ;)I spent three hours in Mandriva last night just trying to figure out how to manage/restore my wallpaper settings without using the LXDE pcman management. I went with Feh, but had a heck of a time trying to figure out how to get it to restore the wallpaper after reboot. Heh... then I remembered that I went through the same exercise in Sidux a few months back. I checked my notes. There was the answer all along. *sigh* Gotta' remember them notes, you know. :P

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V.T. Eric Layton

OK, after getting a bit frustrated with my printer and Mandriva over on Onederer's thread, I got it working. All's well in Mandriva world again... for the moment. I'm off to figure out key binding and why my Glipper's not working.

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securitybreach
I went with Feh, but had a heck of a time trying to figure out how to get it to restore the wallpaper after reboot. Heh... then I remembered that I went through the same exercise in Sidux a few months back. I checked my notes. There was the answer all along. *sigh* Gotta' remember them notes, you know. ;)
Personally, I just use Nitrogen and add:
nitrogen --restore &

to my ~/.xinitrc or wherever your startup script isNitrogen uses a gui to select the wallpaer and gives options for multiple desktops and automatic/scaled/stretched/centered/tiled/zoom. Also, it is extremely lightweight and it can be used in two modes: browser and recall. Recall acts similar to Feh, in that it restores the last used wallpaper(s).Also, here is the homepage with a list of features and description: http://projects.l3ib.org/nitrogen/

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V.T. Eric Layton

Still in Mandriva...- Killed Pulse Audio and fired up ALSA, installed alsaconf and alsamixer.- Installed my audio players... vlc, xmms, audacious, etc. Fired up some tunes - currently listening to Hiroshima-One Wish.- Removed Glipper (req's Gnome Panel to work).- Installed xclipboard and created menu entry.- Created symlinks for urpmi and urpme from /usr/sbin to /usr/bin. - Install xbindkeys... have to figure out how to use to bind Pr Scr key to xfce4-screenshooter app.moving along...

Personally, I just use Nitrogen ...
Yup! I was going to go with Nitrogen too, but it's not in any Mandy repos or on RPMFind. ;)
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securitybreach
Yup! I was going to go with Nitrogen too, but it's not in any Mandy repos or on RPMFind. ;)
Well that is crappy.
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Personally, I just use Nitrogen and add:
nitrogen --restore &

to my ~/.xinitrc or wherever your startup script is

What does the & mean?
Still in Mandriva...- Killed Pulse Audio and fired up ALSA, installed alsaconf and alsamixer.
I have found Pulse Audio to be difficult to customize, though perhaps this is a case of "what you're used to". I learned how to do alsaconf during one of my Archlinux attempts; for me, at least, ALSA has always been trouble-free ever since. I'd almost go so far as to say ALSA is "easy peasy", but I don't really know what that expression means. ;)
- Removed Glipper (req's Gnome Panel to work).- Installed xclipboard and created menu entry.
Tell me more! I Googled it and the documentation seems sparse, to say the least. Does xclipboard approach the functionality of G/Klipper? Can somebody like me figure out how to use it without documentation? I imagine it's lighter.
- Created symlinks for urpmi and urpme from /usr/sbin to /usr/bin.
What is the advantage of doing that?
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securitybreach
What does the & mean?
The & means to background the process. You can use this for many commands. Basically if you want to run a command in the background you add the & symbol after the command. Then you will be able to close the terminal and the command will stay running in the background. I use it frequently to start a program when I am using a console. For instance, I can start firefox from a terminal and do not have to worry about firefox closing when I close the terminal.
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The & means to background the process. You can use this for many commands. Basically if you want to run a command in the background you add the & symbol after the command. Then you will be able to close the terminal and the command will stay running in the background. I use it frequently to start a program when I am using a console. For instance, I can start firefox from a terminal and do not have to worry about firefox closing when I close the terminal.
Nice tip. Thanks!
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V.T. Eric Layton

Eddie,-- What Josh said about &.-- Pulse audio sucks... just my opinion. That's why I killed it and fired up alsa. :thumbsup:-- Nope. Xclipboard does NOT work as well as Glipper or Klipper or Clipman. :thumbsup:-- I had to create the symlinks because stupid Mandriva has the executables for urpmi and urpme in /usr/sbin. not the default /usr/bin. This means I can't just type the "urpmi (e)" command in the terminal and execute the program. I had to type the full address: /usr/sbin/urpmi (e) to execute the apps. SUCKED! It's stupid. I don't know why it's like that in Mandriva. Creating the sym-links allow me to just type "urpmi (e)" to get it started now.

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-- I had to create the symlinks because stupid Mandriva has the executables for urpmi and urpme in /usr/sbin. not the default /usr/bin. This means I can't just type the "urpmi (e)" command in the terminal and execute the program. I had to type the full address: /usr/sbin/urpmi (e) to execute the apps. SUCKED! It's stupid. I don't know why it's like that in Mandriva. Creating the sym-links allow me to just type "urpmi (e)" to get it started now.
Shouldn't /usr/sbin be in your PATH when you run as root? Mine from Sidux:-
root@brain:/home/roger# $PATHbash: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

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securitybreach
Nice tip. Thanks!
You can also combine two of them together to string numerous commands together. For instance:
╔═ comhack@Venus 10:09 PM ╚═══ ~-> sleep 2200 && rtorrent ╔═ root@Venus 10:10 PM ╚═══ ~-> pacman -Syu && reboot

The first command basically tells the terminal to wait 2200 seconds and then run rtorrent. You can string together basically however many commands you want and I do not think there is a limit. I use a script to install Archlinux which basically just strings along all the commands into one long line. I once combined all the commands needed to setup Arch (install packages, generate Xorg etc.) into one command using &&. I would not advise doing this but I knew exactly what packages and scripts I needed to install/run on the machine. I know there are easier ways to automate an install but I just wanted to see if it could be done and it worked. The ampersand is a very useful symbol in Linux.

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V.T. Eric Layton
Shouldn't /usr/sbin be in your PATH when you run as root? Mine from Sidux:-
root@brain:/home/roger# $PATHbash: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

You'd think, wouldn't ya'? But it wouldn't execute that way. Works fine now with the symlinks. Who knows? This is Mandriva. I'm a serious Mandriva neophyte. :thumbsup:
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Eric, I'm not sure why that is happening, as far as I know /usr/sbin is linked statically to root. As far as I can tell(and from what I understand) the sbin file are complete and do not need dynamic linking to lib file that are in bin file, therefore start earlier in the boot process and can be used in single user mode. From what I gather, this follows the fs standards(but then again,,I think it depends on the distro's view of the standards). Also believe that because of Mandriva's Enterprise backbone, uprm tools may have been placed in the usr/sbin to further protect the standard user from messing up.Not saying it's bad or good..just that I understand the how and of it...Then again urpm is a mandriva tool and doesn't have a "standard" home outside of Mandriva.But for what it's worth I use urpmi/urpme from a terminal all the time, without typing direct path(unless I am missing your meaning)

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Woo-hoo!Think I'm pretty lucky. After playing a few days with slackware 13, I decided to give gentoo a try. I tested on my old box cos reading others' experience with it made me feel very very nervous, and oops it worked the very first time. The only difference compared to the gentoo handbook is that I use parted magic CD to create all the necessary partitions before hand :thumbsup:). I'll playing with it a few days more until I have enough confidence to install it on my production PC.

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Woo-hoo!Think I'm pretty lucky. After playing a few days with slackware 13, I decided to give gentoo a try. I tested on my old box cos reading others' experience with it made me feel very very nervous, and oops it worked the very first time. The only difference compared to the gentoo handbook is that I use parted magic CD to create all the necessary partitions before hand :)). I'll playing with it a few days more until I have enough confidence to install it on my production PC.
Eric is going to be sooooo jealous! :thumbsup:
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