slackpkg+ 0.9.1

As zerouno mentioned here, a new version of slackpkg+ is available. From it’s website:

The Slackpkg+ project is a simple plugin that allow the user to add third-party repositories to slackpkg so to use a single tool for keep update the slackware installation and to install non-official packages.

I downloaded it from here, and upgraded my previous installation with

upgradepkg slackpkg+-0.9.1-noarch-2mt.txz

Then, I made sure to use the new configuration file in stead of the old one:

mv /etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf /etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf.old | This is the old conf file from the previous installation of slackpkg+
mv /etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf.new /etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf | This is the new conf file that I wanted to use

Then I edited /etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf to my needs and made an update as it is recommended on slackpkg+’s website:

slackpkg update gpg
slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade-all

I made sure to not upgrade AlienBob’s multilib gcc-* and glibc-* with Slackware64′s default ones.
Great!

xgamma & xbacklight

Back to using XFCE. My experience with KDE was a nice run, but I miss the simplicity of GTK :) Anyways, it seems that the XFCE panel brightness plugin does not remember the settings after log off. I boot to runlevel 3 and therefore I put the following in ~/.xinitrc:

xgamma -gamma 0.4
xbacklight -set 70

Now gamma is set to 40% and backlight to 70%. I just like dark.

kdm Xsetup

When using KDE, I like to boot into runlevel 4 and have the nice KDM login manager. However, I also like to set the gamma of my screen to a lower value. When booting into runlevel 3, I would just place the following in the beginning of my ~/.xinitrc:

xgamma -gamma 0.4

This approach does not work when booting straight to X and KDM. So, the solution I found was to place the above line in /etc/kde/kdm/Xsetup.

Reboot and it works just fine.

queues

I have been using the great and handy sbopkg tool for quite some time and it works very well. Normally, I would just download the queue files collection and place it in /var/lib/sbopkg/queues. Recently, I heard about a nice little script called sqg that can generate queues files. I downloaded it from here, made it executable and placed it in /usr/local/bin.

Now, generating a single queue file, for example for QtiPlot is as simple as:

sqg -p QtiPlot

While generating all queue files is done by:

sqg -a

Wonderful!

slackpkg+

Some time ago I stumbled upon a very interesting discussion at LQ about using slackpkg with third party repositories. Down in the posts, zerouno wrote about a plugin for slackpkg that apparently can do that. So, I downloaded the beta version from here, installed it and decided to give it a try.

I am using Slackware64 14.0 -multilib and it would be real nice if I could update automatically the multilib packages. I opened /etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf and made sure to use the following repositories from AlienBob:

MIRRORPLUS['multilib']=http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/multilib/14.0/
MIRRORPLUS['alienbob']=http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/sbrepos/14.0/x86_64/

After that, I made sure that AlienBob’s packages are not anymore blacklisted in /etc/slackpkg/blacklist by commenting out these lines that I had put there previously:


# Blacklist all AlienBob's packages
#[0-9]+alien

# Blacklist all AlienBob's compat32 packages
#[0-9]+compat32


Then I did as usual, but made sure not to upgrade gcc-* and glibc-* to their non-multilib versions:


slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade-all


Works great! :)

Kernel upgrade

I’ve been running Slackware64 14.0 happily on my laptop, with a few annoyances. After fixing them as described in the previous post, the machine was quite stable for a week or so, when it froze again. Then I googled around and found a discussion about a similar issue, that was solved by upgrading the kernel. I cannt find the link at the moment. Anyways, I decided to give it a try and here’s what I did:

1. Download kernel source version 3.7.7 from kernel.org
2. Get a .config file. I used the config-generic-3.7.1.x64 from Slackware64 -current, which at this time was here.
3. Unpack the kernel source, move it to /usr/src, remove the existing linux symlink and create a new one pointing to linux-3.7.7
4. Navigate to /usr/src/linux and copy the ready config-generic-3.7.1.x64 inside, renaming it to .config
5. Then, following the instructions kindly provided at slackdocs, compile the new kernel:

make oldconfig
make bzImage modules
make modules_install
cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-generic-3.7.7
cp System.map /boot/System.map-generic-3.7.7
cp .config /boot/config-generic-3.7.7
cd /boot/
rm System.map
ln -s System.map-generic-3.7.7 System.map

I did not even bother to build in my root filesystem module. In stead, I just created an initrd file, specific for this kernel as follows:

mkinitrd -c -k 3.7.7 -m reiserfs -o /boot/initrd-3.7.7.gz

Now, it is time to take care of lilo. I opened and edited /etc/lilo.conf, adding the following:

image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-3.7.7
initrd = /boot/initrd-3.7.7.gz
  root = /dev/sda5
  label = generic-3.7.7
  read-only

Save and reinstall lilo with:

lilo -v

Reboot and the system seems to work very well! …for now…

LibreOffice in KDE4

I prefer to make LibreOffice behave as a GTK+ application in KDE4. Somehow, it looks and feels better this way. To do this, I simply added the following line in /usr/bin/libreoffice (i the beginning, before the rest of the variables):

# Use GNOME UI
export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome

Now, it will inherit the oxygen-gtk theme, which makes all menu colours as they should be. Also, the program defaults to the GTK+ open file dialogues.

KDE 4 and intel video

Got a ThinkPad and decided to give a full featured and fancy KDE 4 a try. Very nice deskop environment, indeed. However every now and then, the computer would just lock up. Freeze. Nothing but resetting it from the power button would help. Googled around and found a useful post by AlienBob. Also, reading the official Slackware 14.0 release CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT explained how to disable compositing.

In the end, this is what I did. Open ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc and add the following in the [Compositing] section:

DisableChecks=true
Enabled=false

Then, create a file called /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/disable-composite.conf, containing this:

Section "Extensions"
  Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

Log out and restart X. So far it hasn’t crashed…

ndiswrapper and Ralink 2500

My ancient laptop has a Ralink wireless card (RT2500). It has been supported out of the box for quite some time. Ironically, the wifi works somewhat better with the windows driver, when installed with ndiswrapper. At least in my experience… Or may be I am wrong and oblivious… :)

Anyways, here’s what I did on a Slackware 14.0 box. Install ndiswrapper-kernel and ndiswrapper-utils from SBo. The kernel source, should be present. Then, let’s check the hardware:

lspci | grep RT
lsmod | grep rt2500
iwconfig

The driver in use is rt2500pci. Blacklist it by creating a file /etc/modprobe.d/rt2500pci.conf, containing:

blacklist rt2500pci

More instructions are found in /etc/modprobe.d/README. Now navigate to the folder that contains the windows driver rt2500.inf and…

ndiswrapper -i rt2500.inf | install the driver
rmmod rt2500pci | unload the default driver
modprobe ndiswrapper | load ndiswrapper

Add the last line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local, so ndiswrapper is loaded automatically on boot.
That’s it.

Fixing two major issues in Firefox

I prefer Seamonkey, but sometimes I use Firefox, too. However, since some recent version, there are two things that I do not like — no easy way to put the tabs below the toolbar, as they used to be, and getting rid of the new tab page (completely). Some searching pointed me to the solutions.

For the tabs, open about:config, and change the value of browser.tabs.onTop to false. Restart the browser.

To fix the new tab page, go to about:config again, find browser.newtab.url and change its value to about:blank. For the record, I do not have privacy / paranoia issues, it just annoys me.

Finally…