From Fedora to Kubuntu - Part 1

One of my first chalenges has been moving to a yum free world. With Debian distros, 'apt' is package manager instead of 'yum'. I keep returning to this hurdel as I think "okey which package do I need," or "I wonder what this package contains." Well I found a great post giving the approximate equivalent between the package managers.


Mike from 'The Linux and Unix Menagerie' blog provides the following:
(included inline if Mike every decides to delete it - this is his original post)

Show package info: apt-cache show PKG - yum info PKG

Install package: apt-get install PKG - yum install PKG

Remove package: apt-get remove PKG - yum remove PKG

List the package that owns a particular FILE: Can't be done to my knowledge - yum provides PKG

List all files in an already installed package: Can't be done to my knowledge - Can't be done to my knowledge

List all files in an uninstalled package FILE: Can't be done to my knowledge - Can't be done to my knowledge

List all packages installed on your system: Can't be done to my knowledge - yum list installed

Check that all files from a package are installed correctly: Can't be done to my knowledge - Can't be done to my knowledge

Check that all files from all packages are installed correctly: Can't be done to my knowledge - Can't be done to my knowledge

Check that a package FILE is OK before installing: Can't be done to my knowledge - Can't be done to my knowledge

Fix an altered package installation: Can't be done to my knowledge - Can't be done to my knowledge

From Fedora to Kubuntu - Part 0

After going to linuxworld expo in San Francisco, and hearing/seeing all the Ubuntu hype. I decided to give Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE packages - Gnome packages = Kubuntu) a spin. I am still running Fedora on one of my work boxes, my home server, and my personal laptop.

I feared the transition from a Red Hat world view to a Debian view, but so far it hasn't been as bad as I feared.

Basic networking is a little different from Fedora to *buntu -- all my NIC configuration is /etc/network

I've come to realize *buntu does a minimalist install. This is not so much how my Fedora installs would go. I'd install everything I knew I would need and then just go. On *buntu you get a basic system install and then a few 'apt-get's to get the rest of the system going.

FireFox + touchpad = page foward/back madness

FireFox misinterprets your left/right movements along the bottom of the touch pad as your desire to move forward and back in your page history. This can be VERY annoying. There are 2 solutions to this:

1. add this line to your xorg.conf file in the 'synaptic' device section
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"

2. edit FireFox to stop doing this behaviour (this is my recommendation as it is not a system wide change)
"""
In firefox type in the address about:config. Double-click the line mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action. Set it to 0 (2 is forward and back pages. 1 enables Horizontal scrolling). Set mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines to true.
"""
I found this solution at http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Synaptics_Touchpad

Fedora 8 / SVN / Apache

This is my second time setting up SVN with apache on Fedora so I figured I'd record my experience.

1. get svn and the apache plugin
# yum -y install subversion mod_dav_svn

2. make a root directory for the svn repos
# mkdir /svn

3. give ownership to apache user
# chown -fhR apache:apache /svn

4. create a skeleton repo
# mkdir -p /root/repo/branches
# mkdir /root/repo/tags
# mkdir /root/repo/trunk

5. make a test repo (just make sure everything is all good, you can use 'rm -rf /svn/test' to remove it later)
# svnadmin create /svn/test
# svn import --message 'Initial set up' /root/repo file:///svn/test
# cd /svn/test
# chown apache:apache . -R
# chmod 700 * -R
# chmod +s db

6. configure /etc/httpd/conf.d/subversion.conf, it should look something like this:

<location repos="">
DAV svn
SVNParentPath /svn

<limitexcept get="" profind="" options="" report="">
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Authorization Realm"
AuthUserFile /etc/svn.passwd
Require valid-user
</limitexcept>
</location>

7. create the /etc/svn.passwd file and the 1st user (don't use '-c' after this unless you want to truncate the file)
# htpasswd -c /etc/svn.passwd

8. restart apache for changes to take effect
# service httpd restart


That should work, might need to be tweaked for security, but you should be able take your favorite web browser to http://localhost/repos/test and see the test repo