MPlayer RPM packages - quicktime video support for Linux. Don't know if it supports streaming though, so might be better to go crossover and run the Win32 version?
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Monday, September 15, 2003
The old Tecra 500 got some more attention this morning. Basically the Debian/KDE environment was too slow, so I started trying to get the old favourite, Window Maker running. This was not as easy as it sounds, as the system uses gdm to manage sessions at logon, and it's configured not to allow root login. Safe, but a pain in the arse. The issue is that Window Maker is not available in the list of available sessions, although it is installed.
So, I try and run the gdmconfig from a root terminal and it moans about display not found (you can't provide a password if starting it as a normal user from the Gnome menu).
Eventually I kill the running gdm session from the command line using another terminal and then startx as root, so I can use gdmconfig.
Then it's just a matter of copying the Window Maker execute script to the gdm folder as per:
>$ echo -e "#!/bin/bash\n/usr/bin/wmaker" > /etc/gdm/Sessions/WindowMaker
>$ chmod 755 /etc/gdm/Sessions/WindowMaker
...and we're away. (I actually manually copied the wmaker script and manually modified it to use bash, but hey, my command line is not that strong yet - I know that -e enables the \ modifiers for echo and that the \n means new line, so I can see what it's trying to do, but not why it didn't work).
So, I try and run the gdmconfig from a root terminal and it moans about display not found (you can't provide a password if starting it as a normal user from the Gnome menu).
Eventually I kill the running gdm session from the command line using another terminal and then startx as root, so I can use gdmconfig.
Then it's just a matter of copying the Window Maker execute script to the gdm folder as per:
>$ echo -e "#!/bin/bash\n/usr/bin/wmaker" > /etc/gdm/Sessions/WindowMaker
>$ chmod 755 /etc/gdm/Sessions/WindowMaker
...and we're away. (I actually manually copied the wmaker script and manually modified it to use bash, but hey, my command line is not that strong yet - I know that -e enables the \ modifiers for echo and that the \n means new line, so I can see what it's trying to do, but not why it didn't work).
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Linux as a Workstation - more precisely, some useful stuff on using Window Maker (on debian, as it happens!).
Had a couple of quiet days this week, so have revisited the crappy old Tecra 500 project. I wanted to get it running nessus and maybe apache, the idea being that it could be left on a customer site scanning hosts as part of a security audit.
First I tried my old SuSE 6.4 as an OS, and I loved it. It was compact enough (<800MB) and KDE was acceptably quick. The problem is that SuSE only started supporting online package updates with 7.2, and everything was so old that it would have taken me years to manually update everything to support a modern version of nessus.
I considered Red Hat 7.2, but I really want to branch out from Red Hat and learn something new (although my servers all run Red Hat, and probably always will). SuSE don't offer a downloadable version of their distro unless you're prepared to download the lot, and that is more gigabytes than I have time or space for. In the end I plumped for Debian, although Mandrake would probably have been next.
At first I didn't like Debian. It went on to the Tosh OK, but the installation is all text-driven and you go a bit cross-eyed sorting through the package lists. I was impressed with the Toshiba laptop utilities being detected as appropriate though, and the installer does prompt for input in a very helpful way.
When it's up and running, it's Linux as we know it. The Debian desktop environment is just a very slightly customised but pleasing KDE, and is a lot slower than the old version under SuSE 6.4, although it feels faster than Gnome under Red Hat 7.2. (I've tried Mozilla Firebird on this machine, which is my usual browser of choice, but it is slow!. I'm sticking with Konqueror as it's light and works well with the crappy processor power).
The thing I don't understand is the versions of everything. I'm running "Woody" = Debian 3.0 = latest release, and the kernel is still 2.2, and Apache is 1.3! This is apparently because Debain aim to be the most stable, controlled distro, so updates get applied very slowly.
Also, everything seems to have been done a bit differently. I don't know if this is just because I'm used to Red Hat, but the default runlevel is 2 and the inittab seems to do things slightly differently. I guess this is all part of things being set up to be as robust as possible, and that does seem consistent; you get a gnome chooser at login after X is configured, and there are "emergency" sessions you can choose if you can't log in normally. The inittab also seems to have some lines pertaining to handling errors, so it does all look well thought out.
The other thing I struggled with was installing packages. Compiling source is fine, and works as usual, but as an example, I hadn't installed gtk-devel and needed it to compile nessus. I couldn't find gtk-devel anywhere in the debian source, so tried a downloaded rpm, which failed to install. However, eventually I worked out how to use apt-get, which is great technology, and the Debian packages web pages. Essentially, you can find what you need via the web pages (it turns out that gtk-devel is actually called libgtk1.2-dev in debian-speak) and then just use apt-get to install it. This I like!
APT (there's more than just apt-get) is another Debian innovation, although I think it may have been ported to other distros including Red Hat - I'll look into that later. Anyway, there's a howto here that gives an overview.
All in all, Debian is probably a good client distro if you have broadband and aren't bothered about the latest versions of stuff, as it's stable and pretty easy to manage with APT being happy to use Debian's ftp servers as the install media.
However, for serving, I prefer to know that I am up to date with the latest versions of packages and applications, so I'll stick with Red Hat or SuSE :)
First I tried my old SuSE 6.4 as an OS, and I loved it. It was compact enough (<800MB) and KDE was acceptably quick. The problem is that SuSE only started supporting online package updates with 7.2, and everything was so old that it would have taken me years to manually update everything to support a modern version of nessus.
I considered Red Hat 7.2, but I really want to branch out from Red Hat and learn something new (although my servers all run Red Hat, and probably always will). SuSE don't offer a downloadable version of their distro unless you're prepared to download the lot, and that is more gigabytes than I have time or space for. In the end I plumped for Debian, although Mandrake would probably have been next.
At first I didn't like Debian. It went on to the Tosh OK, but the installation is all text-driven and you go a bit cross-eyed sorting through the package lists. I was impressed with the Toshiba laptop utilities being detected as appropriate though, and the installer does prompt for input in a very helpful way.
When it's up and running, it's Linux as we know it. The Debian desktop environment is just a very slightly customised but pleasing KDE, and is a lot slower than the old version under SuSE 6.4, although it feels faster than Gnome under Red Hat 7.2. (I've tried Mozilla Firebird on this machine, which is my usual browser of choice, but it is slow!. I'm sticking with Konqueror as it's light and works well with the crappy processor power).
The thing I don't understand is the versions of everything. I'm running "Woody" = Debian 3.0 = latest release, and the kernel is still 2.2, and Apache is 1.3! This is apparently because Debain aim to be the most stable, controlled distro, so updates get applied very slowly.
Also, everything seems to have been done a bit differently. I don't know if this is just because I'm used to Red Hat, but the default runlevel is 2 and the inittab seems to do things slightly differently. I guess this is all part of things being set up to be as robust as possible, and that does seem consistent; you get a gnome chooser at login after X is configured, and there are "emergency" sessions you can choose if you can't log in normally. The inittab also seems to have some lines pertaining to handling errors, so it does all look well thought out.
The other thing I struggled with was installing packages. Compiling source is fine, and works as usual, but as an example, I hadn't installed gtk-devel and needed it to compile nessus. I couldn't find gtk-devel anywhere in the debian source, so tried a downloaded rpm, which failed to install. However, eventually I worked out how to use apt-get, which is great technology, and the Debian packages web pages. Essentially, you can find what you need via the web pages (it turns out that gtk-devel is actually called libgtk1.2-dev in debian-speak) and then just use apt-get to install it. This I like!
APT (there's more than just apt-get) is another Debian innovation, although I think it may have been ported to other distros including Red Hat - I'll look into that later. Anyway, there's a howto here that gives an overview.
All in all, Debian is probably a good client distro if you have broadband and aren't bothered about the latest versions of stuff, as it's stable and pretty easy to manage with APT being happy to use Debian's ftp servers as the install media.
However, for serving, I prefer to know that I am up to date with the latest versions of packages and applications, so I'll stick with Red Hat or SuSE :)
Friday, September 05, 2003
Social Software - an interesting piece on Wikis, which I still haven't got round to investigating.......
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Linux is for Bitches :: A Linux Humor site dedicated to poking fun at Linux
