Linux Interests

I have a small computer setup at home. I have three laptops one of which is my "server". Nothing fancy - just runs owncloud and mediawiki for my use around the house. The "server" runs RHEL-7 while my other two laptops run Fedora 21 Xfce The reason for this post is - ever since I setup my little server, my appreciation for systemd has gone up significantly. It has been incredibly easy to setup everything I wanted, as I wanted. I have no idea about large enterprise level networks - for my setup - it's hands down amazing! One thing I have done ever since I started using Linux (not very long ago) was look at system logs. With journalctl , I feel, monitoring logs is much easier. The man page is easy to read, fairly clear and very easy to filter the logs! Long story short - Thanks folks for a quality product! Kudos!

I stumbled upon this yesterday when I was fiddling around with Xfce - I can set different wallpapers for different workspaces! Small feature, yes - but made me very happy! :) My three workspaces/wallpapers are below -

I have been running Fedora 21 for a while now on my main laptop. I have also been testing some of the TCs and RCs as time permits.With release candidate 1, I think lots of things are fairly ironed out. I think Fedora 21 is going to be a fantastic release! The remain "major" bugs (officially, blocker bugs) are listed here - https://qa.fedoraproject.org/blockerbugs/milestone/21/final/buglist These could use some testing with the RC images. Go Fedora! :D

I have finally setup owncloud and mediawiki on my "home server" (well, I actually set it up about a month ago) - I have to say - It's awesome! My "server" is actually one of my older laptops running EL-7. Setting up owncloud was a breeze - thanks to excellent documentation!

I updated the xfdashboard package this morning to version 0.3.4. The big arrival with this update is that there are multiple themes that can be installed. The themes available are xfdashboard (default theme) xfdashboard-dark xfdashboard-mint xfdashboard -moranga   xfdashboard-auber xfdashboard-wine The themes are available in a sub-package called xfdashboard-themes . Screenshots Xfdashboard (default theme) Xfdashboard-dark Changing Themes To change the theme, either use xfce4-settings-editior or in a terminal type, xfconf-query -c xfdashboard -p /theme -n -t string -s {theme-name} Documentation Detailed d ocumentation can be fo und here -  http://xfdashboard.froevel.de/settings.html

Let's see how regular in blogging I am this time around! Kevin pushed Xfdesktop-4.10.3 update to rawhide and F21 yesterday (or was it Sunday?). I have built the update for Fedora 20 and have pushed the same.  Leave some karma, please! :) In the EPEL world, I have pushed gparted-0.19.1 as an update for EL-6. Although this is a major version update, this version fixes lots of serious bugs and the upstream devel opened a bug listing all the bugs fixed! So, I have submitted this update with karma threshold of 7 . Hopefully, this will be tested thoroughly.  

Xfce4-power-manager has now been updated to the latest version on my xfce411 COPR repo.One nice thing about this update for me is that it seems to fix the lid closing actions! If anyone is still running Xfce 4.11 on F21/Rawhide, please let me know if there are problems. I am planning to update F21 and rawhide packages on koji over the weekend unless I get some "emergency stop" bug reports! :)

I have built more of the Xfce packages for eventual inclusion in EPEL. For now these reside in the COPR repo - xfce410_epel7_2 https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/nonamedotc/xfce410_epel7_2/ Here is the list of package that have now been included (from my last post) - xfce4-sensors-plugin xfce4-timer-plugin      xfce4-modemlights-plugin xfce4-radio-plugin      xfce4-xfswitch-plugin   xfce4-xkb-plugin      xfce4-wavelan-plugin    xfce4-cpufreq-plugin    xfce4-verve-plugin      xfce4-time-out-plugin   xfce4-eyes-plugin      xfce4-netload-plugin    xfce4-genmon-plugin      xfce4-fsguard-plugin    xfce4-systemload-plugin xfce4-quicklauncher-plug xfce4-smartbookmark-plug xfce4-places-plugin      orage xfce4-diskperf-plugin   xfce4-weather-plugin...

I have setup a COPR repository for Xfce 4.10 plugins that can be installed with EL-7. The original Xfce 4.10 repo for EL - 7 ( xfce410_epel7 ) contains the core xfce packages. The new repo contains only plugins. I  made a second repo just for organizational sake. I will start building these on koji in the near future. But, for now, I would appreciate any testing I can get on these packages. Here is the COPR link - https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/nonamedotc/xfce410_epel7_2/ At present, these are the packages present - xfce4-mount-plugin xfce4-clipman-plugin xfce4-datetime-plugin xfce4-mailwatch-plugin xfce4-battery-plugin xfce4-notifyd xfce4-notes-plugin xfce4-mixer xfce4-power-manager xfce4-taskmanager libxfcegui4 xfce4-dict xfce4-screenshooter xfce4-terminal I expect to populate this repository with many more packages the coming week and weekend. Again, I would appreciate any testing of these packages!

Three packages have been updated in my Xfce 4.11 COPR repo. I am running Fedora 21 at present and presently do not have a Fedora 20 machine (VM). So, I have not tested these packages on Fedora 20. If you encounter any bugs, please comment or better still send me an email and I will try to get back in touch as early as possible. The packages that have been updated (with the versions updated to) are    xfce4-power-manager         1.4.0    xfce4-settings             4.11.3    xfdesktop                  4.11.8 As always, please do not report this to bugzilla. Xfce 4.11 packages are not official yet.

For those who have my Xfce 4.11 COPR repo, xfce4-panel has now been updated. This should present itself as an update. Version 4.11.1 was released on June 22, 2014. The full release announcement can be read here - https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce-announce/2014-June/000327.html

I recently updated xfce4-power-manager to release 1.3.0 on my COPR repo. Here are screenshots from the latest releas, which has had a significant makeover. :) Tab 1 Tab 2 Tab 3 Tab 4

I have not had much time to take care of Fedora stuff over the last one month or so. But, now I have some time again and here are some updates - clustal-omega - This is command line bioinformatics tool to perform multiple sequence alignment. I had this package in review which has now been approved! Nice! :) xfdashboard - Updated to latest upstream package (0.1.91) libxfce4ui - The update to this package fixes a bug where shift modifier did not work when assigning keyboard shortcuts. (bug #1095362) xfce4-mixer - I am in the process of building this package on my COPR Xfce-4.11 repo. If this repo is enabled, expect to see this. In the coming days, I am also hoping to build a few more packages belonging to Xfce 4.10 for EPEL-7.

For all those who are testing EL 7 beta - I have built some Xfce 4.10 packages for testing in EL 7 beta. These packages are available from my COPR repo -  Xfce 4.10 for EL 7 Instead of clicking the link the above, add the repo using the details below - [nonamedotc-xfce410_epel7] name=Copr repo for xfce410_epel7 owned by nonamedotc baseurl=http://copr-be.cloud.fedoraproject.org/results/nonamedotc/xfce410_epel7/epel-7-$basearch/ skip_if_unavailable=True gpgcheck=0 enabled=1 I have not yet tested any of these packages. So, I have no idea if they will work as intended. I will test it myself soon (after I lay my hands on the VM) but for the moment, I would appreciate some testing of these packages. --  xfconf has been built without the perl bindings. There were too many perl dependencies. Some of the packages I built are still in the repository but, as far as I can tell, they are not needed -- List of the packages in the repo are below. This is only a starting list. ...

So, I have been running Rawhide for a while now. It has been been incredibly surprising that rawhide is so stable! I run Xfce 4.11 from my COPR repo and I have had practically no trouble whatsoever. One of the things I have wanted to do and still have not "accomplished" is to run qemu-kvm on my T500 laptop. Till date, I have been using Virtualbox for all my VMs - want to switch and as the first step installed qemu packages yesterday along with virt-manager and libvirt. Next is to download some installation images - CentOS 6.5, Fedora 19 and 20. May be Debian as well. Now, some news -  New versions of xfdashboard are available. The one in testing is 0.1.6 while the one in stable is 0.1.5. I am, of course, running 0.1.6 on both F21 and F20. It works quite fine so far! :) Kevin (nirik) has added xfdashboard and xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin to Fedora Xfce live CD - https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/xfce/2014-March/002031.html

A quick update about three packages Official Packages I have built the latest versions of xfdashboard (0.1.5), greybird theme (1.3.3) and submitted for update. They should be available in updates-testing very soon. Please test and add karma. Unofficial Packages Xfdesktop-4.11.4 was released today. See the original email announcing the release here . This builds without problems locally and so I have submitted a COPR build for the same. Once the build is completed, xfdesktop-4.11.4 should be available as an update for Fedora 20 and Rawhide. Again, please send me an email with any bugs/crashes noticed. The complete release notes (for xfdesktop-4.11.4) from the email -  Release notes for 4.11.4 ======================== [Please note that this is a development release.] Fifth development release of xfdesktop targeting for Xfce 4.12. Please report all problems at bugzilla.xfce.org. * Versioned help: - Point to the docs.xfce.org page for xfdesktop 4.11. ...

This question came up in Fedoraforum sometime back and the following is from my notes on how the trackpoint can be disabled in Lenovo Thinkpad. It might be similar in other laptops but I have not tested in any others. Step 1: Identify the trackpoint $ xinput list Virtual core pointerid=2[master pointer  (3)] Virtual core XTEST pointerid=4[slave  pointer  (2)] PS/2+USB Mouseid=10[slave  pointer  (2)] SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPadid=12[slave  pointer  (2)] TPPS/2 IBM TrackPointid=13[slave  pointer  (2)] [ ... ] Step 2: Look up device properties $ xinput list-props 13 Device 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint': Device Enabled (141):1 Step 3: Disable the trackpoint Long form of the command $ xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Device Enabled" 0 Short form of the command $ xinput set-prop 13 141 0

I finally found time to update the Xfce 4.11 COPR repo to include xfce4-session-4.11 also. The package has built successfully for Fedora 20 and Rawhide - both 32- and 64-bit architectures. As before, do not use bugzilla for reporting bugs for this COPR package . Please email me directly. Here is the link to my COPR repo - Xfce - 4.11 COPR repo (for Fedora 20 and Rawhide only) This is what I am running one of my laptops and verything is good so far. Some potentially important information is given below. Kernel $ uname -r 3.14.0-0.rc5.git0.1.fc21.1.x86_64 Xfce  $ rpm -qa xfce4* | grep 4.11 | sort   xfce4-appfinder-4.11.0-1.fc21.x86_64 xfce4-panel-4.11.0-1.fc21.x86_64 xfce4-session-4.11.0-1.fc21.x86_64 xfce4-session-engines-4.11.0-1.fc21.x86_64 xfce4-settings-4.11.2-1.fc21.x86_64 systemd $ rpm -qa systemd systemd-210-3.fc21.x86_64 SELinux $ rpm -qa selinux*   selinux-policy-targeted-3.13.1-29.fc21.noarch selinux-policy-3.13.1-29.fc...

Short update - The latest version (1.3.1) of Greybird theme (made by people at  Shimmer Project ) should soon be in Fedora 19 and 20 stable repo. 

Someone had asked me if it was possible to get xfdashabord to show the overview like GNOME shell does when triggering the top left corner of the screen. Upon searching the internet, I found an amazing little tool called xdotool . Here is one way of using xdotool to enable hit-the-left-corner-of-screen to enable overview behavior for xfdashboard. First, xdotool is needed and can be trivially installed. yum install xdotool Assuming, top-left corner of the screen is the preferred location to start the overview, the following command may be used - xdotool behave_screen_edge top-left exec /usr/bin/xfdashboard & Here is some explanation - The command usage is xdotool [action] [values] The action here is a mouse action. From the man page, behave_screen_edge is very appropriate. behave_screen_edge [options] where command ...            Bind an action to events when the mouse hits the screen edge or corner. One ...

Autodocksuite is a set of automated docking tools to study protein - ligand interactions which is being developed by folks here . It's a free software and I have packaged it for Fedora. The latest version of the software is now available in the testing repositories for Fedora 19 and 20. The developers have provided some excellent documentation which can obtained from following the links below. Getting Started With Autodock   Tutorials   They also have a GUI application for analyzing the docking data (which uses the above package in the backend). Unfortunately, it comes with commercial use restriction and hence cannot be included in Fedora.

Xfce 4.11, the development release in the journey towards the next stable 4.12, was released recently. I have built some Xfce 4.11 components for Fedora 20 and rawhide in COPR. It is not complete yet - xfce4-session is missing for one. I have not seen any problems in my test virtual machines or on my laptop - but that's no assurance. For those who want to try, repository links are below. But first, ** Do not use bugzilla for reporting bugs for this COPR package ** Here is the link to my Xfce - 4.11 repo - https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/nonamedotc/xfce411/ Although, page shows Fedora 19 repo, do NOT try these packages on Fedora 19. Good luck! :)

xfdashboard provides a GNOME shell dashboard like interface for use with Xfce desktop. It can be configured to run to any keyboard shortcut and when executed provides an overview of applications currently open enabling the user to switch between different applications. The search feature works like Xfce's app finder which makes it convenient to search for and start applications. The latest version of the xfdashboard will be available in updates-testing repository for Fedora 19 and Fedora 20 soon. The packages are building in koji and will be submitted for testing soon. The new version (0.1.4) includes support for themes. From the git changelog, New feature: Add support for theming with CSS. A default theme called 'xfdashboard' will be installed and is a CSS version of the previously hard-coded style. You can now develop and tweak the appearance you like. More information about xfdashboard can be found from the http://xfdashboard.froevel...