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 slmingol posted this in tips & tricks on June 23rd, 2010, @ 4:53 amProblem
Sometimes you’ll get a dialog box that pops up saying that firefox is already running when you know in fact that it isn’t.
 Firefox Already Running Dialog Box Solution
This is typically caused by the existence of 2 files in your ~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile> directory. For example in my case:
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| % ls -la ~/.mozilla/firefox/rhwevaqa.default/|egrep "lock |lock$"
lrwxrwxrwx 1 tstacct users 16 2010-06-22 18:49 lock -> 127.0.1.1:+11131
-rw-r--r-- 1 tstacct users 0 2010-06-22 18:49 .parentlock |
Just delete these 2 files and firefox should start right up.
References
For more info about Firefox startup issues check out this mozilla FAQ
NOTE: For further details regarding my one-liner blog posts, check out my one-liner style guide primer.
slmingol posted this in tips & tricks on March 12th, 2010, @ 11:10 am
Background
A system’s BIOS is a treasure trove of a lot of useful info about the capabilities of a computer. BIOS, which stands for Basic Input/Output System, contains information such as:
- motherboard manufacturer
- system’s serial number
- amount of RAM installed
- the CPUs speed & signature
Normally the BIOS is accessible by pressing the delete key or the F1 key while your computer is booting up.
Problem
Occasionally I’ve wanted to check out the BIOS settings of a system without having to go through the hassle of rebooting. With the help of this nifty command line tool, dmidecode, BIOS info can be had, without having to reboot.
Solution
…from the dmidecode man page…
dmidecode is a tool for dumping a computer’s DMI (some say SMBIOS) table contents in a human-readable format. This table contains a description of the system’s hardware components, as well as other useful pieces of information such as serial numbers and BIOS revision. Thanks to this table, you can retrieve this information without having to probe for the actual hardware. While this is a good point in terms of report speed and safeness, this also makes the presented information possibly unreliable.
The DMI table doesn’t only describe what the system is currently made of, it also can report the possible evolutions (such as the fastest supported CPU or the maximal amount of memory supported).
SMBIOS stands for System Management BIOS, while DMI stands for Desktop Management Interface. Both standards are tightly related and developed by the DMTF (Desktop Manage- ment Task Force).
Example output from a Thinkpad T42 laptop
When you first run the dmidecode command it tells you a summary of how many structures are present within your system’s BIOS.
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| % dmidecode
# dmidecode 2.9
SMBIOS 2.33 present.
61 structures occupying 2126 bytes.
Table at 0x000E0010. |
Each structure is represented by a handle ID which is a hex value of the form 0x001F, followed by it’s type and it’s size.
…. Continue reading → [one-liner]: Analyzing a System’s BIOS from the Command Line under Fedora, CentOS, or RHEL »»
slmingol posted this in tips & tricks on January 26th, 2010, @ 8:34 pm
Background
Recently I was trying to create a Ubuntu 9.04 vmware image using Vmware Server 1.08, but I was doing it remotely from my Fedora 10 laptop which was running Vmware Server 1.06. This can normally be done by using Vmware Server’s ability to remotely connect to other Vmware Servers.
 VMware Server Console Here’s my work flow. NOTE: Ubuntu 9.04 will be running on the vmware server on CentOS 5.4.
 VMware Workflow Problem
While going through the setup I encountered a problem I hadn’t seen before where the arrow keys didn’t appear to be working within GRUB while I was installing Ubuntu 9.04.
 broken arrow keys Solution
Turns out there is an option you can enable (i.e. set to TRUE) in the $HOME/.vmware/preferences file which fixes this.
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| xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = "TRUE" |
NOTE: This change was made to the Vmware Server that was running on the Fedora 10 box.
…. Continue reading → Broken Arrow Keys during an Ubuntu 9.04 install on Vmware Server 1.X »»
slmingol posted this in tips & tricks on September 28th, 2009, @ 11:00 am
Background
A while back I was trying to get the vim textile plugin installed and ran into a problem. Apparently the vim that’s included with Fedora 10, 11, and CentOS 5 doesn’t include ruby support. This bug report explains what’s wrong with vim and how it’s missing ruby support. The problem is visible with this command:
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| % vim --version | grep ruby
+printer +profile +python +quickfix +reltime +rightleft -ruby +scrollbind
...
... |
The –ruby tells us that ruby support isn’t enabled. The only solution I’ve seen thus far is to rebuild vim. Not really a huge deal but it’s work non the less 8-).
Rebuilding vim with ruby support
Here’s how I fixed it.
download vim Source RPM (SRPM)
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| % wget http://mirrors.xmission.com/fedora/updates/10/SRPMS/vim-7.2.148-1.fc10.src.rpm |
confirm that ruby is installed
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| % yum list installed ruby*|column -t|grep ruby
ruby.i386 1.8.6.287-2.fc10 installed
ruby-devel.i386 1.8.6.287-2.fc10 installed
ruby-irb.i386 1.8.6.287-2.fc10 installed
ruby-libs.i386 1.8.6.287-2.fc10 installed
ruby-rdoc.i386 1.8.6.287-2.fc10 installed |
make sure you have your own rpmbuild directory
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| % mkdir -p ~/rpmbuild/{BUILD,RPMS,SOURCES,SPECS,SRPMS}
# caution with this second command if you already have your own .rpmmacros, this will overwrite!
% echo '%_topdir %(echo $HOME)/rpmbuild' > ~/.rpmmacros |
rebuild vim / re-install vim
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| rpmbuild --rebuild vim-7.2.148-1.fc10.src.rpm
rpm --force -Uvh /root/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386/vim-{c,e,m,X}* |
check that vim now has ruby support
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| % vim --version | grep ruby
+printer +profile +python +quickfix +reltime +rightleft +ruby +scrollbind
...
... |
Ahh. a +ruby means it worked.
Textile Plugin for vim
Now onto installing the vim textile plugin.
First things first, we need to install rubygems
Next we need to install the RedCloth gem, it’s required by the textile plugin
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| % gem install RedCloth
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
Successfully installed RedCloth-4.2.2
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for RedCloth-4.2.2...
Installing RDoc documentation for RedCloth-4.2.2... |
Finally, install the textile plugin
Downloading the textile plugin from here,
…. Continue reading → Fixing Ruby Support in Vim on Fedora 10, 11, and CentOS 5 & Installing the Vim Textile plugin »»
slmingol posted this in tips & tricks on September 21st, 2009, @ 10:13 am
Background
I recently saw a post over on Linux Journal that discussed how to glean information about a system’s hard drive, such as its serial number, without having to actually open up the case and physically check it. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to write up a blog post with the specifics of how to do this under Fedora & CentOS, just so I’d have this info handy for future use.
BTW, I was able to accomplish this task several different ways, so this post will cover all the different ways that I could get this info.
Command #1: lshw
This is probably the best tool for getting at a system’s internals. First make sure it’s installed.
For our example you would run the command lshw -class disk:
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| % lshw -class disk
*-disk
description: ATA Disk
product: HTS726060M9AT00
vendor: Hitachi
physical id: 0
bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: MH4O
serial: MRH403M4GS551Y
size: 55GiB (60GB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=cccdcccd
*-cdrom
description: DVD reader
product: UJDA755yDVD/CDRW
vendor: MATSHITA
physical id: 1
bus info: scsi@1:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/cdrom
logical name: /dev/cdrw
logical name: /dev/dvd
logical name: /dev/scd0
logical name: /dev/sr0
version: 1.71
capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd
configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc |
The first section that’s returned is called -disk. Here’s you’ll see the vendor: Hitachi, the product number, HTS726060M9AT00, and my serial number: MRH403M4GS551Y.
Command #2: smartctl
The next tool that would give this type of info is called smartctl. It’s a tool that’s part of the smartmontool package. You may be familiar with the acronym S.M.A.R.T.. The acronym stands for: Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. This is a standard that most modern disks have in which vital statistics about a disk drive are provided through a standard API. Here’s how to install it.
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| yum install smartmontools |
…and once installed you can use the bundled in tool smartctl like so:
…. Continue reading → [one-liner]: Determining a Hard Drive’s Manufaturer Under Fedora 10 & CentOS 5 »»
slmingol posted this in tips & tricks on July 10th, 2009, @ 1:16 am
These are some notes on how I was able to get Webex to work on my Fedora 10 laptop. Webex is a java application so to start we need to install java. I usually opt to use the real thing because I’ve never been able to get Ice Tea to successfully work with the webex app.
Installing Java
So to start I download java from java.com. Specifically I downloaded version 1.6u14. This will offer up a file, jre-6u14-linux-i586.rpm.bin. After saving that to disk you need to convert this file to it’s native RPM format. This can be accomplished with these commands.
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| # unpack RPM file
sh jre-6u14-linux-i586.rpm.bin
# install RPM
rpm -Uvh jre-6u14-linux-i586.rpm |
Firefox Java Plugin
Once we have the java JRE installed we need to get the java plugin to be picked up by firefox. This can be accomplished by creating a unix link in firefox’s plugin directory, /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins. Additionally I also usually create a link in my home directory, ~/.mozilla/plugin. I occasionally run into problems where firefox seems to get confused about which plugins are available when I only install them to the firefox’s main system directory, so I’ve just gotten in the habit of installing them in both directories.
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| # install plugin to firefox's main plugins dir
cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_14/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
# install plugin to user's firefox plugins dir
cd ~/.mozilla/plugins
ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_14/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so |
At this point do a quick restart of firefox and you should see the plugin under the pull-down, Tools -> Addons, under the plugins tab.
 java plugin added to firefox
…. Continue reading → Setting up Webex under Fedora 10 »»
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June 23rd, 2010, @ 4:53 am |
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