Spind.net Blog » Fedora10

Sun JRE on Firefox

hc — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:48:31 +0000

I rarely need a Java plugin for my 64-bit Firefox browser, but once in a rare while I need to use certain government services that require a digital signature and the original Sun Java plugin – OpenJDK just doesn’t cut it. Sun changed a couple of things recently, so many of the howto’s are outdated – this will work though:

Make sure you remove/disable OpenJDK:

$ rpm -e java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin

Get the latest Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) here. Make sure it’s the 64-bit non-RPM version. The RPM might work too, I just didn’t test it. We’ll assume it’s version 1.6.0-12. Execute the following commands to unpack it:

$ umask 022
$ chmod +x jre-6u12-linux-x64.bin
$ ./jre-6u12-linux-x64.bin

Accept the license agreement. The directory jre1.6.0_12 is created. Execute the following commands to move JRE and make a symbolic link to the plugin:

$ mv jre1.6.0_12 /opt
$ cd /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins
$ ln -s /opt/jre1.6.0_12/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so .

The new thing here is that they recently renamed the plugin from libjavaplugin_oji.so to libnpjp2.so – that set me off track for a while.

Restart Firefox and type in about:plugins and look for Java – if it’s there, you’re all set.

Ethernet device, where art thou?

hc — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:09:50 +0000

Today I lost my Ethernet devices, probably as a result of upgrading the apartment server from Fedora 9 to Fedora 10. The culprit turned out to be the service responsible for dynamic device management – udev. These symptoms started showing up in the logfile:

Dec 16 07:26:12 server kernel: udev: renamed network interface eth1 to eth4
Dec 16 07:26:12 server kernel: udev: renamed network interface eth0 to eth2
Dec 16 07:26:12 server kernel: udev: renamed network interface eth1 to eth5

The udev daemon creates and renames devices according to configuration files in /etc/udev/rules.d/ called rules. One of them – 70-persistent-net.rules – specifically handles network devices. This file was screwed up badly by Anaconda, and had dupes and network devices from a previous hardware configuration. I cleaned up this file, so it had only contained rules that matched the hardware addresses of the installed network devices:

SUBSYSTEM==”net”, ACTION==”add”, DRIVERS==”?*”, ATTR{address}==”00:1e:8c:85:cd:e2″, ATTR{type}==”1″, KERNEL==”eth*”, NAME=”eth0″
SUBSYSTEM==”net”, ACTION==”add”, DRIVERS==”?*”, ATTR{address}==”00:50:da:21:e3:34″, ATTR{type}==”1″, KERNEL==”eth*”, NAME=”eth1″
SUBSYSTEM==”net”, ACTION==”add”, DRIVERS==”?*”, ATTR{address}==”00:01:02:24:6d:91″, ATTR{type}==”1″, KERNEL==”eth*”, NAME=”eth2″

Various external “plug-and-play” helpers may add newly found network devices to this file, so if your network devices start changing names, you might want to check /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules.

nVidia on Fedora 10

hc — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:17:14 +0000

Quick guide to installing nVidia drivers on Fedora 10, using the RPMFusion repository:

$ yum install -y xorg-x11-drv-nvidia
$ /usr/sbin/nvidia-config-display enable

A reboot was required, as I had done some kernel upgrading and the installed nVidia module didn’t match the running kernel. If direct rending is enabled, you’ve got the driver properly installed:

$ glxinfo | grep ‘direct rendering’
direct rendering: Yes

Enjoy.

Fedora 10 – Light version

hc — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:08:00 +0000

Is your machine too old and too slow? Does the Gnome Desktop make you grind your teeth with impatience? Why not take Xfce or LXDE for a test spin?

Install both software groups:

yum groupinstall -y ‘XFCE’
yum groupinstall -y ‘LXDE’

Installing the LXDE group also gives you Openbox. LXDE and Xfce pretty much looks like the Gnome Desktop with application menus and icons on the desktop, whereas Openbox reminds me more of the good old days, where every application launch started with right-clicking on the desktop.

To try these desktop environments out, click your username on the login screen, pick the environment you want in the Session pull-down menu at the bottom of the screen, enter your password and you’re all set.

Note: Openbox’ Logout menu item didn’t work for me, but Exit did the trick. If you get stuck, you can simply kill the whole graphics subsystem (Xorg) with CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE.

Fedora 10 Install Notes

hc — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:45:13 +0000

These are the install notes for my Fedora 10 install on my workstation at the office:

Enable access to both the free and the nonfree repositories at RPM Fusion and run an upgrade:

rpm -Uvh \
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm \

http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Make sure the system is crisp and updated with the new repositories:

yum clean all
yum upgrade -y

Install GStreamer plugins with stability/license issues, including support for AAC, A52, SID, MPEG2, MP4, H.264, DVD navigation etc.:

yum install -y gstreamer-plugins-bad
yum install -y gstreamer-plugins-ugly
yum install -y gstreamer-plugins-schroedinger
yum install -y gstreamer-ffmpeg

Install various alternate video players:

yum install -y vlc
yum install -y mplayer

Install various video encoders:

yum install -y ffmpeg
yum install -y mencoder

In time of writing, Adobe’s Flash plugin isn’t available as RPM – at least not the lastest beta version for x86_64 – so download it from Adobe Labs, unpack and drop libflashplayer.so in ~/.mozilla/plugins/. Make sure you’ve removed any trace of NSPluginWrapper first. Example (this is a single-user install, so don’t run as root):

rpm -e nspluginwrapper
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
tar -zxvf libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
rm -f libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
mkdir –parent ~/.mozilla/plugins
mv libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins