Screen issues still not sorted :(

I was hoping changing from HDMI to DisplayPort would sort out my screen issues. To a degree, it did.

I can now use my screen at full resolution using the amdgpu driver from Fedora repositories but the intermittent, incredibly irritating, sporadic blank screen issues persists.

Another suggestion that came up from a forum was to try X11 instead of Wayland to draw stuff, that helped with a wonky dialog issue, but still no fix for the sporadic blank screen.

Getting to the point I'm almost tempted to try another monitor in case it's not software. That would be surprising though.

Display issues still being a nuisance

A while back I purchased a nice fat Benq BL2710.

Besides the frustrating front panel buttons, it seems to be a really decent monitor, which I'd be really happy with if I could get Fedora Linux to drive it correctly.

Initially I was using the onboard Intel graphics, which simply refused to offer the resolution(s) I want to run at (2560 x 1440).

So I decided to try a seperate graphics card. After some reading that suggested it may be workable with Linux I went for a 4GB Gigabyte Radeon RX460.

[dafoot@bigfoot ~]$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 460] (rev cf)
[dafoot@bigfoot ~]$ 

Now under Fedora 25 there are included open drivers for this GPU and it appears my system has them installed:

[root@bigfoot ~]# lshw -c video
  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Baffin [Radeon RX 460]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: cf
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=amdgpu latency=0
       resources: irq:131 memory:b0000000-bfffffff memory:c0000000-c01fffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:de300000-de33ffff memory:c0000-dffff
[root@bigfoot ~]# 

So now my 'select resolution' interface at least recognised the Radeon 460 and the monitor as Benq BL2710.

So that's progress.

Unfortunately, any time I select that resolution, it is unusable....all fuzzy/jaggy.

Curiously, I just took a screenshot to add to this post while the scrren was a mess like that and the image showed all the text perfectly clearly.

I wonder if DisplayPort will behave any better if I try that.

Brother MFCL8650CDW

I've recently been battling with a Brother laser printer to get it to print from my Fedora (23) workstation. It had been working before, so compatability wasn't the issue, unless some library withing my system had changed. Turns out it was SELinux getting in the way (I usually have it off altogether as it causes me more headaches than I can be bothered with!). Running the command below seemed to sort it out:

setsebool -P cups_execmem 1

Fedora 20 and running ASP scripts

A while back I posted about trying (unsuccessfully) to run some ASP scripts on my Fedora (20) box using XSP.

I knew nothing of ASP tech at the time, so I ended up doing a fair bit learning. Turns out ASP has been largely replaced by a newer version of the tech, ASPX. XSP has a half decent go at trying to run the scripts.

I was still getting plenty of issues, so ended up installing a Microsoft IDE on my Windows laptop and doing the work there. I forget what it was called, but I was very glad to have got the project running correctly under ASPX before the trial ran out! It was a nasty to work with when used to the likes of Eclipse and IntelliJ for Java and PHP development.

In brighter news, I've now migrated that project over to PHP so there is no longer a reliance on running a Windows server. Happy days!

ASP, XSP, Apache, mod_mono and Fedora 20

It's been a while since I posted here. I've not given up on my project, in fact I'm still very happy with Linux and the Fedora distribution. I've just not been doing anything particularly interesting with it recently.

So why the post? Well I've come into contact with an ASP project I need to make some changes to.

PHP? fine, it runs under Apache.
Java? no problem, I can run that under Tomcat.

So I've landed myself a bit of work on an old website, yay. The site is running on ASP of some sort, boo.

Of course I'm running Fedora with Apache not Windows with IIS.

A bit of reading leads me to all sorts of old pages about XSP and running mod_mono under Apache. I tried getting mod_mono to interpret the asp scripts I've downloaded, but Apache can't find mod_mono plugin.

I really don't care if ASP ends up running under Apache or some other server, in fact in some ways I'd rather use a standalone ASP server. Which is where XSP comes in.

XSP is a small service/server that should enable serving up of ASP scripts as I understand it.

Installed ok with yum. Then when it comes to running it, it seems to be a simple matter of running it in the project directory.

At localhost:8080 I get a 404 page which is clearly being served up by the xsp server, so that appears to be running at least.

When I try to hit one of the scripts (localhost:8080/default.asp), rather than getting anything vaguely like a nice webpage, I get the ASP code as text. So no ASP processing has occurred.

There is no output in the terminal running the server, nor in the /var/log directory.

This one could run for a while I suspect....

Adding fonts in Fedora 17

I had a graphic designer produce a banner for me a while back. Of course the font he used isn't part of the standard Linux font packages (AFAIK), so I had find a way to add it to my machine.

I was expecting a nice easy, drop into font directory style of installation. Well it was pretty much that easy.

Copied the .ttf file to /usr/share/fonts
As root, run fc-cache. Use the -v flag to get a list of what gets noticed then you will see if your new font gets picked up.

I put mine in /usr/share/fonts/local to keep the ones I add separate from those installed by Fedora.

DigiKam and Fedora 17

Since Picasa support for Linux has been withdrawn by Linux (it was only ever partial support tbh as it runs under Wine) I've been on the lookout for new photo management software.

I've tried Shotwell, that seems to do a reasonable job but not comprehensive. It would be ok if I hadn't been pointed towards DigiKam by a blog entry somewere comparing packages.

Both shotwell and digikam can be installed direct from the Fedora repositories using yum.

DigiKam seems to have a much greater range for features. Shotwell worked well enough, what it does it does well. I'm going to try DigiKam for a while now and see how I get on.

One quirk of DigiKam in Fedora 17 is that out of the box there didn't seem to be anyway to export images to another folder ready for burning to disc or uploading to a website.

A bit of reading later and an installation of "kipi-plugins" later I seem to have a plethora of export options.
I now have options to upload images directly to a variety of website (Flickr, Facebook, ImgShack, PicassaWeb, SmugMug the list goes on and on!) as well as local export (eg as HTML presentation, email client, IM client ....) but still not yet found a simple "take these photos and export to this place on disc" option!

It does seem odd to me that such fundamental functionality isn't included in DigiKam straight from the repositories. Even if that was just a matter of saying kipi-plugins is a dependency of DigiKam.


EDIT:
Found it!
Apparently to export files to a local directory I have to go through "export -> Export to remote computer". Hardly intuitive but it works!

Fedora 17, Eclipse and Javascript

I forget why or how I ended up in the situation but I recently ended up switching from a downloaded Eclipse installation to using the Fedora repository version of Eclipse.

So I'm now flying Juno Eclipse. Installed bunch of packages to let me do Java and PHP work in Eclipse:

[root@bigfoot html]# rpm -qa | grep eclipse

eclipse-pde-4.2.0-0.22.I201205031800.fc17.x86_64

eclipse-rcp-4.2.0-0.22.I201205031800.fc17.x86_64

eclipse-phpeclipse-1.2.3-4.fc17.noarch

eclipse-emf-xsd-2.8.0-0.7.e674bb28ad412fc9bc786f2f9b3c157eb2cbdae0.fc17.noarch

eclipse-swt-4.2.0-0.22.I201205031800.fc17.x86_64

eclipse-dtp-1.10-0.1.M6.fc17.noarch

eclipse-gef-3.8.0-0.3.20120402.fc17.noarch

eclipse-platform-4.2.0-0.22.I201205031800.fc17.x86_64

eclipse-emf-core-2.8.0-0.22.I201205031800.fc17.x86_64

eclipse-emf-2.8.0-0.7.e674bb28ad412fc9bc786f2f9b3c157eb2cbdae0.fc17.noarch

icu4j-eclipse-4.4.2.2-11.fc17.noarch

eclipse-jdt-4.2.0-0.22.I201205031800.fc17.x86_64

[root@bigfoot html]# 

So great, I have a shiny Juno installation that lets me do PHP work (not tested Java builds yet...) , woohoo!

So how do I get Javascript editing working?
When I was using Eclipse downloaded directly from the Eclipse project I just needed to install WTP (I think), so I went looking for that and found a few likely candidates:

yum install eclipse-wtp-common eclipse-wtp-servertools eclipse-wtp-sourceediting

Now when I fire up Eclipse Juno, it starts, but I get all sorts of error messages about null pointers and not being able to initialise plugin properly. I guess those packages aren't quite right somehow.

So when I get this PHP contract out of the way I may be switching back to a 'proper' Eclipse installation direct from the Eclipse project.

Unless any Fedora people out there can hold my hand through my Eclipse Juno Javascript editing setup needs? ;)

Banshee 2 way sync

Anyone out there able to help get 2 way sync working properly in Banshee 2.0.1 on Fedora 15?

Here is my situation, 2 PCs and a USB thumbdrive. I want to be able to use the thumbdrive to sync the 2 PCs, the thumbdrive also gets used in the car.

So if I buy some music via the Banshee Amazon plugin on one machine, sync to the thumbdrive I then want that file to automatically find its way into the library on machine two during a sync. Likewise if I tweak some meta data or set a rating on a track on one machine I want those changes to be reflected on the other machine after syncing.

If my thumbdrive contains a subset of my collection (eg a playlist) I don't want the sync to assume that means that all those that aren't on the thumbdrive should be deleted from the PC as happened today (thankfully I do semi regular backups!)!

Perhaps the answer is to maintain a playlist on each machine for the thumbdrive and sync the drive/playlist together rather than the library, would that import new tracks and data into main library while not deleting 'missing' tracks from the PC?

Helping other people...

Times they are a changing.

I've considered myself a Linux user for quite a number of years at a basic level, but since moving to a fulltime Linux setup on all my machines I've learnt so much more as a user of course but more still about the Linux world in general and sysadmin side of things.

Even to the point where I have become the goto person for Linux (Fedora) help for a few folks now. Now I am not only using Linux but helping support others coming into the Linux world and growing the community :)

Some of the update issues sorted...

Turns out switching on the rpmfusion-free-update repository sorted out a lot of the issues with doing a yum update.

Now left with ....
[root@yeti yum.repos.d]# yum update
Loaded plugins: dellsysidplugin2, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Update Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
--> Processing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 for package: iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586
---> Package libnetfilter_conntrack.i586 0:0.0.100-1.fc11 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
[root@yeti yum.repos.d]#

To sort out.

kmod-fglrx issues

Recently ran through the upgrade process of Fedora 10-11. Preupgrade went smoothly but no upgrade, so had a look at grub.conf and discovered I had to select the upgrade option there during boot. Duly done and complete, kind of.

A $yum update gives me a bunch of dependency issues, here are a couple....

Error: Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libxcb-keysyms.so.0 is needed by package vlc-core-1.0.0-0.11rc3.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.27.38-170.2.113.fc10.i686 is needed by package kmod-fglrx-2.6.27.38-170.2.113.fc10.i686-9.3-1.fc10.15.i686 (rpmfusion-nonfree-updates)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

Straight away I can see a package is from fc10, so not a big suprise that causes issues. Turns out kmod-fglrx-2.6.27.38-170.2.113.fc10.i686-9.3-1.fc10.15.i686 is from the ATI proprietry drivers I installed, so....

[root@yeti yum.repos.d]# yum remove kmod-fglrx
Loaded plugins: dellsysidplugin2, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Remove Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-fglrx.i686 0:9.3-1.fc10.14 set to be erased
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

...now at least I only have fc11 packages whining at me....

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
vlc-core-1.0.0-0.11rc3.fc11.i586 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: libxcb-keysyms.so.0 is needed by package vlc-core-1.0.0-0.11rc3.fc11.i586 (installed)
gstreamer-plugins-bad-0.10.11-4.fc11.i586 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: libass.so.3 is needed by package gstreamer-plugins-bad-0.10.11-4.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libass.so.3 is needed by package gstreamer-plugins-bad-0.10.11-4.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libxcb-keysyms.so.0 is needed by package vlc-core-1.0.0-0.11rc3.fc11.i586 (installed)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

The gstreamer and VLC packages are packages I want to keep for my video/mp3 collections so I need to work out why these are failing. Clearly (?) they have missing dependacies, but I need to know where to get those from and equally why can I not get them from the repos I have enabled? Dropped from Fedora 11 possibly? In which case I need to find out what replaces them in 11.

Maybe a format is the answer

I ran the online upgrade process using preupgrade and apparently everything went smoothly upgrading to FC10.

The machine seems to behave itself and everything works as it used to, only when I run an update yum downloads packages marked with fc8 rather than fc10. So it would seem everything is not quite as good as it could be.

I was contemplating doing a format and install of FC10 to take advantage of the ext4 filesystem anyway. Next step - backup all those config files that I spent time working out (eg. httpd/svn/yum.repos.d etc).

Not sure when I'll get time to do it though........

Fedora 8 and FireFox 3

Fedora 8 comes with FireFox 2.x.x out the box. It seems policy of whoever decides these things is that yum should be restricted to the same major version of software as first installed. So it's FireFox 2 only on FC8.

Unless... Some kind sole creates a repo for FC8 that includes FireFox 3.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=192162&highlight=firefox+fedora&page=2

So.... as root...
wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/remi-release-8.rpm rpm -Uvh remi-release-8.rpm yum whatprovides firefox

At this point I get a list containing only FireFox 2.x.x versions. Quick check in /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo and set enabled=1 instead of 0.

Retry yum whatprovides firefox this time it picks up both ver2 and 3.

Now I can install Firefox 3.x.x from this remi.repo:

yum install firefox-3.0.5-1.fc8.remi.i386

A quick restart and add-on check and we're away, all FF3'd up :)