# Fedora 9: The other things



## Hitboxx (May 20, 2008)

For starters, you can do a full-on  plugins and codecs installation from the guide below. So I won't be telling that.

*www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f9.html

I will be sharing some other stuff here, which I normally tend to do on my Fedora box and hope it will benefit the others.
*
1) Service Configuration:*

You can customize what services you want to run and what to run at startup and then some more. Notice there is a difference here, by run I mean in all the runlevels and by startup, I mean only in the graphical login or runlevel 5.

_Startup_

Here's what my startup looks like

*www.imgx.org/files/17059_eo4kx/starrtup.png​ 
You can comfortable disable(uncheck) the things like I have done here. You will find the launcher at *System Main Menu > Preferences > Personal > Sessions.
* 
_Services_

The  services which I have left ON are NetworkManager, anacron, auditd, crond, iptables, messagebus, microcode_ctl, qemu, restorecond, rsyslog and wine. You can disable others except the ones with the *controller* like icons., see image below

*www.imgx.org/files/17057_zgdec/services.png​ 
Those are required by the system on different run levels, so you can leave it as it is. You will find the launcher at *System Main Menu > Administration > Services.*

*
2) Sudo* :

This is for the die-hard users of sudo. To be able to do so, you have to add your username with privileges to the sudoers file, which is read by the system for granting access as per the defined objectives.

To edit this file, you have to do as follows in the terminal
$su
_Enter root pass:_
root$/usr/sbin/visudo

This will open  a file in the terminal and you have to use the vi" commands to add the entry. It's pretty easy actually...

a> Use the cursor keys to move the in the file, in this case, keeping pressed the <down> cursor key will scroll the file downwards.
b> Look for a entry like *root  ALL=(ALL)     ALL*
c> That is the entry for the root, *ALL* implies total control over the system.
d> Now you have to add your username to reflect that, go to end of the file, hit the '*insert'* key once to get into entry mode and type, i.,e like this

```
username  ALL=(root)   ALL
```
Look at the image below

*www.imgx.org/files/17058_etorf/visudo.png​ 
A word of caution, adding like me will give you total control as in root, so use it wisely. When the entry is added, hit '*Escape*' once, then the '*:'* key, then type *'wq' *and hit '*enter'*. 

wq  - is used to save the file
q  - quit
q! - quit without saving

*If you think you botched up the file, then please stop and use 'q!' immediately. *Then you can start afresh again. _For more information on visudo, read it's documentation._

Now can immediately check if it's working fine, using the rugular method of sudo'ing i.e., $sudo <somecommand>


*3) Adding nifty packages*

Apart from the plugins, the applications and all, there are some really nifty utilities available from the repo. Some of them are..

nautilus-open-terminal : As the name says, it adds an entry to the right click menu to open the location in a terminal wherever applicable. A very handy app if you ask me. Install it by..
*$yum install nautilus-open-terminal*

yumex : A graphical frontend for the yum installer, very neat and very good.
*$yum install yumex

*nautilus-scripts : A neat set of scripts for the Nautilus file manager accessed by the right click menu like image conversion, batch rename, sound conversion etc. Just put it in search box in Yumex and you will find them.

gprename, krename : A must have if you plan on batch renaming files.
*$yum install krename*

soundconverter : Again a nifty app for quick conversions of audio files.
*$yum install soundconverter
*
gconf-editor : As known by all it's to control the various aspects of the GNOME desktop, if still not installed by the distro, then
*$yum install gconf-editor

DONE. *That's all I can remember for now. I will keep updating as I find more.

_OTHERS, please add your tips of the same in this thread._


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## j_h (May 20, 2008)

thanks


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## CadCrazy (May 20, 2008)

Thank you very much. Was looking for something like this to start my fc9 tour. It'll certainly make the life easier for noob like me.
Bhagwan tumhara bhala kare


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## subratabera (May 20, 2008)

Here is another great guide.


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## nileshgr (May 21, 2008)

disable NetworkManager - it sucks. do disable -


```
$ sudo /sbin/chkconfig --del NetworkManager
```

This will not delete the init script of NetworkManager but will disable it on all runlevels.


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## Hitboxx (May 21, 2008)

Update:

One more super utility : mkbootdisk
*$yum install mkbootdisk*

As the name says, it makes as boot disk based on the current snapshot of the kernel state. This is far better than using a live cd to recover partitions or grub.

Open up terminal and do.,


> [hitboxx@Mothership Desktop]$ sudo /sbin/mkbootdisk --iso --device sample.iso `uname -r` --verbose
> Installing isolinux... done
> Copying /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.3-18.fc9.x86_64... done.
> Copying /boot/initrd-2.6.25.3-18.fc9.x86_64.img... done.
> Configuring bootloader... done.



Here : sample.iso - name of the iso file to create, can also be a path. 
           --iso - is used to tell the command to create an iso image on the disk
           --verbose - is used to print put the status
           `uname -r` - is used to specific the current kernel, if you have more than one kernel, you can even give the name of the particular one.  [.*NOTE:* Those are _*backticks*_, not single quote, i.e., the ~ key ..]

Once done, burn the iso to a cd and keep it somewhere safe. Say your GRUB went kaput, boot with this cd, it will search for Linux partitons and mount it. Then just issue 'grub-install /dev/sda' or wherever you want it to go and it will be restored.

_For more on mkbootdisk, see its documentation or man page._


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## abhijangda (May 21, 2008)

good info


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## nileshgr (May 22, 2008)

Hitboxx said:


> Update:
> 
> One more super utility : mkbootdisk
> *$yum install mkbootdisk*
> ...


+2


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## Hitboxx (May 27, 2008)

*Gnome-Screenshot:*

It's an utility to capture the desktop screen and save it as an image file. But if you just hit the PrintScreen/Print button, all you get is a basic screen cap program called *gnome-screenshot*. In reality, this can be made to do more by adding the *"--interactive"* argument to gnome-screenshot. Now why hasn't his been the default for Print is beyond me.

Anyways this is how it is
*www.imgx.org/files/17517_y1twd/screen_inter.png​
You can do the same by going into *gconf-editor* (install it using yum if not yet) and navigating to *apps > metacity > keybinding_commands* and edit the value of *command_screensho*t with "gnome-screenshot --interactive". 

*www.imgx.org/files/17518_iwdks/gconf.png​
Now whenever you hit the Print button, you get a much more controlled gnome-screenshot program.

*NOTE:* _If you use other window managers like Compiz etc., modify that program's shortcut for screenshot._


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## Krazy_About_Technology (May 27, 2008)

Hitboxx said:


> A word of caution, adding like me will give you total control as in root, so use it wisely. When the entry is added, hit '*Escape*' once, then the '*:'* key, then type *'wq' *and hit '*enter'*.
> 
> wq  - is used to save the file
> q  - quit without saving
> ...



Umm.. Hitboxx, correct me if i am wrong, but in vim, if you have done some edits, accidental it may be, you can not quit by the 'q' command. You'll have to use q!, i think.


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## Hitboxx (May 27, 2008)

Yes, you are right, my bad sorry, thanks for pointing it out. I had thought q! but typed q, what can I say, lag between my brain cells and my hand muscles


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## Krazy_About_Technology (May 28, 2008)

Thats all right. So how is your experience with Fedora 9 going? and ya, since i am a .NET programmer by profession, i like to have mono and monodevelop with full documentation for both mono and GTK#. Are all these packages on the Fedora 9 DVD? Haven't used fedora since version 4 mainly due to lack of space on my 40GB hdd in my 2 year old lappy. 

I am currently using Mandriva One 2008. Can you or anybody else do a comparison on these two? I know at the core, all these are same but rate then on the basis of distro specific tools and utilities. Plz, its a request. Till now, My experience with Mandriva is very sweet  specially the package manager is way too good then previous versions. Its ultra fast and i can't even feel the dependency hell that is said to be present in the RPM packaging method. Kudos to the Mandriva team for that!!

But i had to download too much of stuff after installing from the cd, to get it working for me, very little configuration was needed but downloads took quiet some time on my 256kbps connection. Thats why i had requested for the Free version DVD, atleast then i'll only have to download codecs


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## mehulved (May 28, 2008)

Hitboxx said:


> Yes, you are right, my bad sorry, thanks for pointing it out. I had thought q! but typed q, what can I say, lag between my brain cells and my hand muscles


Or maybe you lack brain cells


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## praka123 (May 28, 2008)

^just wake up now to say this  ? waah!

@krazzy: mono libs and all will be available in dvd for sure.


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## mediator (May 29, 2008)

Latest Nvidia drivers released!



> Release Highlights:
> 
> * Added support for the following new GPUs:
> o Quadro FX 3600M
> ...



Source

For fedora, install livna & command "yum install kmod-nvidia". Njoy


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## praka123 (May 30, 2008)

thanks @mediator for the news


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## MetalheadGautham (May 30, 2008)

praka123 said:


> thanks @mediator for the news


instead of thanking people for drivers you can never use, do something good.
Help translate GPL to Malayalam


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## praka123 (May 30, 2008)

why I can never use nvidia driver?  I use it with Debian.


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