The great AT Linux/BSD/*NIX FAQ project!

[jonmullen]

Originally posted by: pitupepito2000
Hi,

My Linux box for some reason doesn't play very well any game that is 3d. It acts very sluggish like if I my set up couldn't handle it. I have a Radeon 8500LE with 64MB and that card should be able to play tux fine. Although I don't have any 3d acceleration with 3d games, when I issue the command glxgears from the command line, I do get 3d acceleration.

Please help me,
pitupepito

Do you have X set up to use the right drivers, where did you get your drivers for you card?

 

[pitupepito2000]

thanks for the help, but I actually was able to fix this problem. This is what I get from glxgears now:

11685 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2337.000 FPS
12530 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2506.000 FPS
12443 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2488.600 FPS
12353 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2470.600 FPS


Thanks for the help though,
pitupepito

 

[skyking]

postcount +1
heckofa way to keep this up top......

 

[rayven]

Have fun with linux!!!

cat /dev/mem > /dev/audio heheh... don't do it even vaguely the other way round though... (/dev/mem is normally read only anyways tho)

White noise: cat /dev/urandom > /dev/audio

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

OK, here's a puzzler. I'd like to print from RedHat 9 Linux to printers attached to several print servers I have. One is an Intel Netport 100 Pro with a LJ-III attached, and the other is a IO-Gear USB Print Server with an HP PSC-750 attached. I can't figure out a way to access either of these printers from Linux.

 

[Coldfusion]

FAQ: How do I install True Type fonts on my system? Is there an rpm out there for this?

 

[Electrode]

Coldfusion: Your distro should have a directory for truetype fonts. Find it by running: find /usr/X11R6/* | grep ttf

Now, put the TTF fonts you want to use there. Next time you reboot, your distro will probably run a program to regenerate Xfree's font list. At that point your fonts will be available. Test by running xfontsel.

If that didn't work, go through your distro's configuration program, there will be something for fonts in there. I can't help at all, since all I've ever run is Slackware (which has an app called fc-config to update fonts) and LFS (which must be configured completely by hand).

 

[Coldfusion]

Electrode,

Thanks for the response. I should have posed my question a different way I guess. I'm looking for the fonts the truetype fonts microsoft released a while back. They've since taken them down, but most of the fonts in word were there (with the exception of like Tahoma, which requires a valid IE license, and hence a windows license).

Times New Roman, etc.

 

[Electrode]

Just install a copy of Windows somewhere and get the fonts from that. It should be legal if you have a Windows license. If you've ever owned a major-OEM computer you probably have a valid Windows license from that.

 

[Coldfusion]

Thanks, that worked.

 

[NuclearFusi0n]

Coldfusion, http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/

 

[Coldfusion]

Thanks Nuke

 

[DaemonJ]

Some things that may of use to a few people:

1. If you are short on disk space but need to make a backup, you can do the following:
tar cf - * | gzip -9 > ../outfile.tar.gz

The - specifies that the output from tar should be sent to stdout instead of a file.

This will tar the files and directories (starting at the directory you are in when you execute the command) and immediately send it to be compressed with gzip and create a file in the parent directory.

The reason this will work when you are low on disk space is because normally you would have a separate huge tar file that would then need to be sent to gzip.


2. chmod -R does not work on SunOS v5x

Try as I might I could never get chmod to work recursively on SunOS v5.x

I hope that the above is of some use to someone. I know they helped me out when I needed them.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: DaemonJ
Some things that may of use to a few people:

1. If you are short on disk space but need to make a backup, you can do the following:
tar cf - * | gzip -9 > ../outfile.tar.gz

The - specifies that the output from tar should be sent to stdout instead of a file.

This will tar the files and directories (starting at the directory you are in when you execute the command) and immediately send it to be compressed with gzip and create a file in the parent directory.

The reason this will work when you are low on disk space is because normally you would have a separate huge tar file that would then need to be sent to gzip.

Believe it or not, this will help me! Thanks!

2. chmod -R does not work on SunOS v5x

Try as I might I could never get chmod to work recursively on SunOS v5.x

It works just fine on SunOS v5.8. I use it fairly frequently.

 

[Electrode]

Would anyone be interested in a cdrtools FAQ? Info on things like making ISO images, how to burn CDs, erasing CD-RWs, ide-scsi emulation, how to install dvdrtools for DVD burners, frontends, things like that?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Electrode
Would anyone be interested in a cdrtools FAQ? Info on things like making ISO images, how to burn CDs, erasing CD-RWs, ide-scsi emulation, how to install dvdrtools for DVD burners, frontends, things like that?

Yes.

 

[Electrode]

How to prepare and burn CDs and DVDs on *NIX systems with cdrtools

If you want to burn CDs on Linux, BSD or any other *NIX system, your only software choices are cdrtools and clones of cdrtools. All the graphical CD burning programs you see are just frontends for cdrtools.

cdrtools isn't one application, but rather a suite of 4 small, specialized programs:

readcd: Low-level CD/DVD reader, nice for ripping protected or damaged disks.
cdda2wav: CD audio ripper.
mkisofs: ISO/HFS/UDF filesystem builder.
cdrecord: CD/DVD writer.

In this guide, I'm only going to be covering the last two.

Before anything else, you might want to make sure that you can run cdrecord as a non-root user. Try running cdrecord -scanbus. If it succeeds, you're all set. If you get a Permission Denied error, run chmod 4755 $(type -p cdrecord) as root. This will make cdrecord suid root. Insecure, but easy.

If you're using Linux, and possibly other systems, cdrecord will only work with SCSI CD burners. If you have a SCSI burner, fine. If you have an IDE burner, you'll need to use SCSI emulation.

SCSI emulation in Linux

First off, you should check to see if it is already enabled. Run dmesg | less and look for the "Kernel command line:" line. If it contains something like "hdc=ide-scsi", you're all set, so skip this section.

To enable SCSI emulation, you need to make your boot loader pass the parameter hdx=ide-scsi to the kernel. Check dmesg if you don't know the name of your burner. If it's the secondary master device, it will be hdc.

I've never used GRUB, so I can't help you with that, but here's how to set up LILO to do it:

1. Open up /etc/lilo.conf in your favorite editor, as root.
2. Go down to the "image" section for your current kernel.
3. Directly under the "label" line, add this line: append = "hdc=ide-scsi"
(replace hdc with the correct identification for your drive)
4. Save, exit, then run /sbin/lilo -L as root.
5. Reboot.

Note that from now on you will need to access your drive as /dev/sr0 instead of /dev/hdc or whatever you currently use. If you have a /dev/cdrom symlink, replace it:

rm /dev/cdrom
ln -s /dev/sr0 /dev/cdrom

Now your system is ready to burn some CDs.

Burning a filesystem image

To cut to the chase:

cdrecord -v -dao dev=0,0,0 speed=10 driveropts=burnfree file.iso

Explanation:

-v: Verbose mode. Might as well enable it.
-dao: Disk-at-once mode.
dev=0,0,0: Specifies the SCSI device to use. Format is bus,id,lun. If you don't have any real SCSI devices, this setting is correct. If you ARE using SCSI, run cdrecord -scanbus to get a list.
speed=10: Burning speed, in this case 10x.
driveropts=burnfree: Enables buffer underrun protection, if your drive supports it.
file.iso: Image to burn.

cdrecord doesn't support .bin, .ccd, .nrg or anything else that isn't a raw filesystem image. However, there is a tool that breaks .bin files into their component images, which cdrecord can burn correctly. I'll discuss it later.

Erasing CD-RW and DVD-RW media

cdrecord -v dev=0,0,0 speed=10 blank=fast

Explanation:

-v: Verbose mode.
dev=0,0,0: Device.
speed=10: Speed.
blank=fast: Erase mode.

The options for blank that you'll be interested in are all and fast. fast does a quick, minimal erase that doesn't really erase the disk. Unless you need to totally erase the disk, fast is good enough. all erases the entire disk, which can take a long time.

Burning the contents of .bin files

In certain circles, the most common CD image format is the .bin/.cue combo. cdrecord can't burn these, but you can get .iso images and other stuff out of them using a tool called binchunker.

To install it:

1. Extract the archive
2. Switch to the directory of the extracted files
3. Run make
4. Run make install as root.

To use it:

bchunk -v file.bin file.cue file

Explanation:

-v: Verbose mode.
file.bin: .bin file
file.cue: .cue file
file: Name for extracted tracks. Appropriate extensions will be added automaticly.

For data CDs, you'll get a .iso file. For audio CDs you'll get .cdr files, unless you use the -w switch in which case you'll get .wav files.

Creating ISO-9660 filesystems

If you have a directory whose contents you want to put into an iso file as is, then it's very easy to use mkisofs manually to prepare the image. However, if you want to take files and directories from all over your system and assemble them into an .iso using an arbitrary directory structure, you'd be better off using a frontend.

I'm assuming that the former is true. Switch to the directory to be .iso-ized.

mkisofs -V "Volume Label" -iso-level 2 -J -R -v -o ~/file.iso .

Explanation:

-V "Volume Label": Sets the volume label to Volume Label. The most commom use of this information is as the name of the disk displayed next to the drive letter in Windows.
-iso-level 2: Sets ISO-9660 compliance level to 2, allowing filenames beyond 8.3 to be used. If you're going to be using this CD in DOS, you might want to use -iso-level 1.
-J: Enable Joliet extensions, used by Windows and some *NIX systems to allow longer filenames, special characters in filenames, and deeper directories.
-R: Enable Rock Ridge extensions, used by *NIX systems to store owner and permission info, as well as unrestricted filenames.
-v: Verbose mode.
-o ~/file.iso: Save to file.iso in your home directory (~).
.: Directory to create the image from, in this case the current directory.

Now, which of the -J and -R flags you use will depend on what you need to store, and what operating systems you'll be using this CD under. In most cases, -J is enough. If you want to store extra info for *NIX systems and still have extended filenames in Windows, use -J and -R. If you will only be using it on *NIX systems, just use -R.

Installing dvdrtools for DVD burners

If you've been trying to follow along with this guide using a DVD burner, you may have found that cdrecord says "built without DVD support, ask author for ProDVD". In this case, you'll need to get something with DVD support. I use a fork of cdrtools called dvdrtools.

To install it:

0. If your system has a package manager, uninstall the existing cdrtools package.
1. Download dvdrtools.
2. Unpack it, then switch to the extracted directory.
3. Install it using the usual ./configure, make, make install method.
4. Go to the directory where the dvdrtools binaries are located, usually /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin.
5. Run ln -sf dvdrecord cdrecord. This creates a symlink for frontend compatibility.

I believe I've covered everything you'll need to know to get started with CD and DVD creation under *NIX systems. Remember that this only scratches the surface of what you can do, consult the man pages for more info.

 

[Electrode]

No comments on the CD burning FAQ?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I tend to use -U instead of -J or -R and/or other combinations of options.

Making cdrecord suid should be stressed as an optional step.

Also, I know it's not part of cdrtools, but cdparanoia is great as a least-common-denominator audio cd ripping program. cdparanoia -w -B will dump the cd into individual wav files in the current directory. Hmm.. and then rename will rename them, lame will encode them.. ok I'm going too far.

Also, for cdrecord, you can set environment variables in your shell init scripts. I have:

CDR_DEVICE=0,0,0
CDR_SPEED=32
export CDR_DEVICE
export CDR_SPEED

Then you can just do cdrecord -v foo.iso (and of course burnfree if you want, and -dao if you want, although I only use that for music cds)

Nicely written though, as usual.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Did a little write-up, not really a worthy entry to the faq, but nonetheless useful I think. I wrote it pretty fast and sloppily, so speak up if something doesn't make sense

Stuff you might not know about that kicks ass

Dragging and resizing windows with the Alt key

A LOT of people seem to not know about this one. In almost all window managers, you can grab a window by any part by pressing Alt+left mouse button, and dragging the window. Alt + right mouse button usually resizes, too. Some window managers let you do it in multiple directions, others restrict you to resizing the bottom right corner.

.Xdefaults

I see a lot of people talking about their cool aterm -tr -sh 40 -bg asdf -fg ljk blah blah blah. You can control most of this with X resources. Individual programs have to actively load these resources, so they don't apply to all X apps. XTerm, Aterm, and pretty much all core X clients (that are part of the XFree86 distribution) obey them. Put them in ~/.Xdefaults, and use "xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults" to update them. They're automatically loaded when X loads, but gnome-settings-daemon also clobbers them, so you might have to do some fiddling if you use Gnome. What they are, are basically configuration settings. Pretty simple really, just google around for some Xdefaults files and you can get lots of good examples. Here's mine: http://incise.org/files/conf/Xdefaults-2003-02-03

rename(1)

A lot of people actually try renaming hundreds of files either in a gui, or by hand in a shell. If you want to perform similar editing operations on a bunch of files, use rename. It is usually installed along with Perl. Basically, it takes a first argument which is a regular expression, and a bunch of filenames after that, and then it applies the regex to those filenames. Nothing else beats it when it comes to mass renaming of files. Some example usage here: http://incise.org:82/~death/rename.txt

Flow control

I sometimes hear about people setting "scroll on output" settings for their terminals, because otherwise they can't scroll up when they're compiling, for example. Flow control has been around since the dark ages of computing, when people actually used it because their modems were too slow to transfer screenfuls of information over and over without being lagged to death. Control S sends the XOFF signal, which stops output, and Control Q sends XON, which resumes output. One thing to beware of, is that if you stop output for more than a few seconds, whatever is running in the terminal might stop until you hit ^Q, because it's trying to write text to the terminal, and you've caused that write operation to be blocked.

control R

History in bash can be accessed by hitting Control R and typing part of a previous command. This is really helpful for really long commands that you don't want to type out every single time. You can also use ! to run a certain command number, for example, !-1 runs the last command you typed. Not so useful IMO, but I never knew about it till recently.

Readline vi mode

Bash uses the readline library for input, and the readline library supports a vi mode, which acts just like the vi editor (well, with some quirks). Use "set -o vi" to turn on vi mode, and "set -o emacs" to turn it back off, if you don't like it (imposible! ). There's also a general readline option that you can put in ~/.inputrc so that all readline apps use vi mode, "editing-mode vi".

Screen!

Screen is a program that basically runs a terminal inside your terminal. You can then detach from this imaginary terminal, close your real terminal, and reattach to screen from another terminal. You can also have multiple terminals inside of screen, and switch around between them. There's a ton more features that I won't get into, but there is documentation around if you want to learn.

To get started with screen, just run "screen". Now, you're in screen. All screen commands start with ^A, followed by another key. ^A c will create another screen window. ^A ^A will switch between the two. ^A ? will show you the help screen. ^A d will detach screen. Now you can use "screen -dr" to reattach to it. ^A <number> switches to <number> window, where <number> starts at zero, then one, etc. You can also run a lot of different screens and give them names. Use "screen -S name" to start a screen session called "name". Then you can use "screen -dr name" to reattach to that exact session.

Bitlbee

I tend to dislike gui programs, and gaim was the final one for me to replace (I don't plan on replacing firebird). I replaced it with Bitlbee. Bitlbee is an "IRC to other chat networks gateway." It runs a small, fake irc server, which you then connect to with any irc client. You join #bitlbee and talk to a bot named root, who helps you out when you're first starting, and does a good job of explaining it all. There is one rather bad bug right now where random users won't work right, and you can't talk to them. I hear there is a fix in CVS.

mpd

I just got started with mpd lately, and have been working on Python stuff for it. It's basically just a really small and simple (KISS) music playing daemon, which takes commands on the network. It has lots of clients, including 2 gtk clients, a php web interface, a window maker dockapp, a command line client, and lots more in the pipeline. Development is very active, too. Right now I'm working on mpdsh, which is a shell-like interface for controlling mpd.

vimtutor

Lots of people are scared by vi, but never have really tried to learn it. Many of them don't seem to know about vimtutor, which is a really good introduction vi and vim. Often it is a shell command, so just run "vimtutor" from the command line. If that doesn't work, then start up vim and type in ":vimtutor".

 

[Tab]

Long story short.... I used partition Magic to make a swap and Red Hat 9 Partition, screws up so say fsck it. I format everything; put Red Hat 9 on first. I was going to try to figure out how to install stuff, but I've never used Linux. I can't even get on the internet.... I guess I need some Drivers? Is that what you even call them in Linux? Anyway, I go to nVidia's site. I've got a Soltek FRN-75, as I guess I need Linux nForce Drivers. It turns out they've got two. Red Hat 9.0 and Red Hat 9.0 Keneral Upgrade. Which one do I want? Now another problem is my computer automatically starts up in Windows XP Pro. No boot loader, how do I fix this?

 

[Kylixen]

Thanks for the uber explanation Electrode

 

[StrongShock]

hmm, this thread could be useful for filling in between the lines after googling about. i'll give it a shot:

i need some assistance getting Mandrake 9.1 installed on my desktop's Promise Fasttrack TX2 RAID-0 array.

i'll start off by mentioning that i have the correct partitions setup already (3 ex3's and a swap). i also searched "tx2 mandrake install" here and @google. obviously I also read through and attempted to install using this procedure:
Promise's Mandrake 9.0 Install Guide

through step 6, everything appears to be working. after that, i try to continue the install and the installer says it can't find any storage to install to (so i believe the driver did not load correctly). further, the tx2 controller does not appear in the list of drivers if i attempt to do a manual SCSI driver install.

the driver & install procedure on the promise site are for Mdk9.0, and the readme instructions in the DL file also say they're good for Redhat too.

is there something else i'm missing to get my rig working with Mdk9.1? maybe a typo in promise's install readme?

is that driver even compatible with Mkd9.1? or do i need to consider another dist? RH9? (please, say it ain't so)

i heard on #mandrake that my RAID isn't real IDE RAID, it's software RAID (argh), thus i won't be able to install linux on my fast rig without either dropping coin on another drive, or reinstalling all my xp crap after splitting the array for normal IDE use. i don't have enough storage to make an image of the ~100GB xp install, so is it true? will i have to hold off on *nux on my rig until i get another drive? (there's no way i'm going to spend hours reinstall/configure everything on that xp box, no way in h3ll.)

 

[Electrode]

It is true that the card only uses software RAID. What you need to make sure of is that the pdcraid module is running. That allows you to access the array using Linux. However, once you are rid of Windows forever, switch to Linux's built-in software RAID. It's much better.

Quoted straight from the kernel config docs:

Support for IDE Raid controllers
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID
Say Y or M if you have an IDE Raid controller and want linux
to use its softwareraid feature. You must also select an
appropriate for your board low-level driver below.

Note, that Linux does not use the Raid implementation in BIOS, and
the main purpose for this feature is to retain compatibility and
data integrity with other OS-es, using the same disk array. Linux
has its own Raid drivers, which you should use if you need better
performance.

This driver is also available as a module ( = code which can be
inserted in and removed from the running kernel whenever you want).
If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read
<fileocumentation/modules.txt>. The module will be called
ataraid.o

Support Promise software RAID (Fasttrak(tm))
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_PDC
Say Y or M if you have a Promise Fasttrak (tm) Raid controller
and want linux to use the softwareraid feature of this card.
This driver uses /dev/ataraid/dXpY (X and Y numbers) as device
names.

If you choose to compile this as a module, the module will be called
pdcraid.o.

 

[RP]

Wonderfull thread!

What about a FAQ for making a good allround Media (video) player, including the most common codecs? Just divx, xvid and so on. No DVD's

This is the first thing that bugged me on my 1117th attempt at installing Linux (RH9) and actually using it. This time, I wanna make it further than ever, and this thread has allready given me alot of help.

Keep it up