Fedora Core is a collection of software that provides a complete working environment for a desktop or a server computer. It is often called an operating system , but, like other Linux distributions, it provides a lot more functionality than operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X because it includes desktop productivity applications and server software. Fedora Extras is a collection of software that is compatible with and extends the functionality of Fedora Core.

Fedora is developed and supported by a large community of developers, testers, package maintainers, documentation writers, marketers, and advocates. Many leading community members are also employees of Red Hat, Inc., which provides servers, build systems (the computers that compile and test the thousands of packages included with Fedora) and some funding for the project. In return, Red Hat gains the opportunity to receive feedback on new software and features before incorporating them into its commercial product line, called Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

1.1.1.1. What compatibility do you need?

If you want (or need) to run Windows games or a specific Windows application, Fedora may not be the right OS for youalthough Wine will let you run some Windows applications when you're in a pinch. Two commercial products based on Wine are available: Cedega, for Windows games, and CrossOver Office, for Microsoft Office and other business applications.

1.1.1.2. What level of stability do you need?

A new Fedora release is made approximately every four to nine months, and only the current and next-to-current releases are actively maintained by the project (beyond this time frame, security and bug fixes are supplied by the Fedora Legacy project).

If you need a platform with long-term stability, consider using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) instead (or CentOS, which is a nonaffiliated project based on RHEL that does not have commercial support). Each RHEL release is supported with updates and security enhancements for a full seven years.

Because Fedora serves as a testbed for new technologies, it can be used to gain a preview of the new technologies that will be incorporated into future Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases.

1.1.1.3. What kind of support do you need?

As a community distribution, support for Fedora is provided by the Fedora community rather than a commercial entity. That means that most questions receive a quick and friendly answer, but since no one is being paid to help you, you may not receive any answers to unique or unusual questions.

If you like Fedora but need commercial support, consider using RHEL, which is Red Hat's fully supported commercial Linux product.

1.1.1.4. Does your equipment meet Fedora's system requirements?

Fedora will install on PCs with Intel and AMD 32- and 64-bit processors, as well as compatible processors from Transmeta, Via, and others. You will need a minimum of 256 MB of memory, 7 GB of disk space, and a processor speed of 400 MHz to obtain reasonable performance with the graphical user interface. A broadband Internet connection is desirable for obtaining software updates but is not necessary.

You can also install Fedora Core on a system with a PowerPC processor, such as an Apple Mac produced after 1999 and before 2006, or an IBM RS/6000 system.

1.1.3.1. ...trying Fedora but also keeping Windows?

Fedora Core can be configured for dual booting , as long as you have sufficient disk space for both operating systems. You will be given the opportunity to select the default operating system during the Fedora installation, and you can override this default during the boot process, selecting the operating system you wish to use from a menu.

If Windows is currently using your entire hard disk, you will need to resize the Windows partition (see Lab 10.1, "Resizing a Windows Partition ") or add an extra disk drive. If Windows is not yet installed on your computer, you should install it before Fedora; otherwise, it may overwrite your Fedora bootloader (or, in some cases, the entire Fedora installation).

1.1.3.2. ...other Linux distributions?

There are dozens and dozens of Linux distributions, each aimed at a different audience. For details about specific distributions, visit http://distrowatch.com .

1.1.3.3. ...seeing a list of the software packages included in Fedora Core?

Visit http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/repodata/ , and you'll see a browsable display of all of the packages in Fedora Core. Click on a package name to see a detailed description of the package.

The Fedora Core installer is a bare-bones configuration of Linux designed specifically for the installation process. Once the installer is running, it configures and installs the Fedora Core software on your system.

There are, therefore, two parts to the software: the software used to boot up the system for the installation session, and the software that is installed on your system. These may be on the same media, or they may be separated into boot media and installation media .

1.2.1.1. Determining your architecture

Before selecting the media and obtaining the software, you must determine which architecture (machine type) you are using. Fedora Core is available for three different architectures:

i386

All Intel-compatible 32-bit systems with a standard BIOS, including all Intel 32-bit Celeron, Pentium, Centrino, and Core systems; AMD 32-bit Athlon, Duron, and Turion systems; and VIA CPUs such as the C3 and Eden processors. Older processors such as 80386, 80486, and K6 processors will also work. Fedora Core may be installed on Apple Mac systems with an Intel processor by using Apple's Boot Camp software (included in Mac OS X 10.5 and available in beta form for Mac OS X 10.4).

x86_64

All AMD-compatible 64-bit systems, including Opteron, Athlon 64, Duron 64, and Turion 64 systems, and Intel 64-bit Pentium 4, Xeon, and Core 2 systems. These systems can also run the i386 version but will do so in 32-bit mode.

PPC

Systems based on the PowerPC G3/POWER4 and later PowerPC processors, including recent PPC-based Apple Macs (manufactured between 1999 and 2006), IBM eServer pSeries, and IBM RS/6000 systems.

This chapter focuses on the i386 and x86_64 platforms, but the PPC installation procedure is quite similar.

1.2.1.2. Choosing boot and installation media

The Fedora Core installation boot software is usually started from a CD or DVD disc. It's also possible to boot from a USB flash disk drive if the system's BIOS supports it, or to boot from a network boot server using the PXE protocol. Table 1-1 outlines the boot media requirements.

Table 1-1. Boot media requirements for installing Fedora Core 6

Once the system has been booted, the rest of the installation software can be on a DVD, several CDs, an existing hard drive partition on the computer (or an external hard disk drive), or an FTP, NFS, or HTTP server. Table 1-2 outlines the requirements.

Table 1-2. Installation media requirements for Fedora Core 6

1.2.1.3. Creating Fedora Core CDs or DVDs

To create a Fedora Core CD or DVD set, you must obtain the ISO image files .

To download the entire Fedora Core distribution for installation direct from disc, use one of these two procedures:

 Go to the web page http://fedora.redhat.com/Download/mirrors.html and select an HTTP or FTP site for direct download. Select the directory for the desired Fedora Core version number (6), then the directory for your machine architecture (i386, PPC, or x86_64), and then select the iso directory. You will probably not need the files containing "SRPM" in the name. If you want the CD images, get the files containing "disc1," "disc2," and so forth in the name; to obtain the DVD image, get the file containing "DVD" in the name.

 Use BitTorrent ( http://www.bittorrent.com ) to obtain the files from one of the Fedora torrents listed on http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ .  

To download only the boot disk ISO (for use with a network or hard disk installation):

 Go to the web page http://fedora.redhat.com/Download/mirrors.html and select an HTTP or FTP site for direct download. Select the directory for the desired Fedora Core version number (6), then the directory for your machine architecture (i386, PPC, or x86_64), select the os directory, and then select the images directory. Download the file named boot.iso . (You can also find this file in the images directory of the Fedora Core DVD or CD disc 1).

Once you have the image files, burn them onto optical media using the CD-creator program available on the platform used for downloading. For example, on Windows you could use Nero or Roxio Easy Media Creator; on a Linux system (such as Fedora Core 4), right-click on the file and select "Write to disc," or use a tool such as K3B , xcdroast , or growisofs .

1.2.1.4. Buying Fedora Core CDs or DVDs

Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, it may be faster and cheaper to purchase a set of Fedora discs than to download the software. A list of online Fedora Core vendors is available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/OnlineVendors , and a list of local retailers carrying Fedora Core is at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/LocalVendors .

1.2.1.5. Preparing files for a hard disk installation

To install Fedora Core from a FAT, ext2, or ext3 partition, simply copy the ISO image files for the DVD or CD set onto that disk partition. For example, on a Windows system with a FAT32 disk partition D: , download the DVD image file as though you were going to burn it onto a DVD but place the image file on drive D: (be sure to record the name of the directory/folder containing the images!).

1.2.1.6. Preparing a USB flash disk, network installation server, or PXE boot server

Each of these tasks is most easily performed on a running Linux system; see Chapter 10 for instructions. (Similar software is available for other platforms.)

1.2.3.1. ...installing from a floppy disk?

The Fedora installer has grown to the point that it no longer fits on a floppy disk. The USB flash disk method has replaced the floppy-disk boot procedure.

To install Fedora Core, you'll need the installation media and your computer. If you are going to use a local area network or broadband Internet connection, it's recommended that you have it connected during the installation process.

A Fedora installation will usually take 15 to 90 minutes, depending on the speed of your computer and the amount of optional software you choose to install.

1.3.1.1. Preparing for dual-boot

If your system already has Windows installed, and you intend to continue to use Windows, you will need to free up some space on the hard disk for Fedora Core. See Lab 10.1, "Resizing a Windows Partition ," for instructions on shrinking a Windows disk partition (or deleting one that is unused).

There is an alternative to repartitioning your disk: you can install an additional disk drive in your system and use that drive for Fedora, or use an external USB or FireWire drive.

1.3.1.2. Starting the installation

Insert your installation media (DVD, CD, or USB stick, or plug your system into a network with a PXE network boot server) and turn your system on. If it does not boot from the installation media, change your system BIOS settings to boot from it.

The first thing you will see is the boot screen shown in Figure 1-1 .

Figure 1-1. Fedora Core installation boot screen

The boot: prompt at the bottom of the screen lets you configure special options. You can press Enter for a standard, graphical installation, or you can type linux followed by any of the keywords in Table 1-3 to specify particular options for the installation session. Table 1-4 lists hard disk device names.

 Table 1-3. Fedora Core basic installation options

 Table 1-4. Hard disk device names

 For example, if you are using a CD for booting, and you want to use text mode and to be asked for the installation method, enter this boot string:

boot: linux text askmethod

In most cases, you should simply press Enter at the boot prompt. The Linux kernel and ramdisk ( initrd.img ) will load, as shown in Figure 1-2 , and then start executing, as shown in Figure 1-3 .

Figure 1-2. Loading the kernel and initrd (ramdisk)  

 Figure 1-3. The Linux kernel starting up  

1.3.1.3. Testing the installation media

At this pointif you are installing from DVD or CD seta media-check tool enables you to test the DVD or CD set, as shown in Figure 1-4 . Press Enter to test the discs (optional), or press Tab and then Enter to skip the media check. The tests will take 26 minutes per CD or 812 minutes per DVD on a modern computer.

Figure 1-4. DVD/CD media check  

1.3.1.4. Selecting the installation method

The screen shown in Figure 1-5 will appear only if you did not not boot from an optical disc, or if you entered the method or askmethod keywords at the boot prompt ( Figure 1-1 ).

Figure 1-5. Language selection screen

Select the language to use during installation using the up/down cursor keys, and then press Enter to proceed. The keyboard selection screen shown in Figure 1-6 will appear.

Figure 1-6. Keyboard selection screen

Select the entry that matches your keyboard and press Enter.

If you included the askmethod keyword at the boot prompt or booted from a USB flash disk or a PXE boot server, the installation method dialog shown in Figure 1-7 will appear next.

Figure 1-7. Installation method dialog

If you select an installation method that is network-based (NFS, FTP, or HTTP), you will be presented with a network configuration screen where you can enable automatic IP configuration through DHCP and select IPV4 (used on most networks) and/or IPV6. If you do not enable DHCP support, an additional page will appear to collect the IP settings (IP address, netmask, DNS server, and gateway). In most established networks (including small business or home networks with a broadband Internet connection through a router/gateway device), the IP settings can be obtained from a DHCP server. If in doubt, try the DHCP server option; if it fails, you will be given the opportunity to enter the network information manually.

If you select the hard disk installation method, you will be prompted to select the disk device and path to the Fedora Core ISO images. Use Table 1-4 to determine the disk device, and append the partition number to the device name (for example, use /dev/hda2 for partition 2 on the IDE primary master disk); for the path, enter the pathname of the directory containing the ISO images, using the forward-slash ( / ) character to separate directories instead of the Windows-style backslash ( \ ).

1.3.1.5. Installation stage 2

At this point, control of the system passes from the boot media to the installation media. For example, if you've used a USB flash drive to boot and HTTP for the installation method, it is at this point that the system switches over to software from the HTTP server.

If you're using a graphical installation, the graphical environment will be started now, and the splash screen shown in Figure 1-8 will appear. Click Next to proceed.

 If you are using a text-mode installation, you will see a text-based version of each of the following screens; the layout may be slightly different to accommodate the available screen space and the absence of a mouse pointer. Use the Tab key to navigate among the controls on the text screen.

Figure 1-8. Fedora Core graphical-installation splash screen

If you have not already selected your language and keyboard type, the screens shown in Figures 1-9 and 1-10 are presented to collect this information.

Figure 1-9. Graphical language selection

Figure 1-10. Graphical keyboard selection

1.3.1.6. Upgrading a Fedora installation

The installation program will check to see if you have an existing Fedora installation; if you do, it will offer you the option of upgrading the current system instead of performing a new installation (Figure 1-11).

Figure 1-11. Upgrade option

Choose Install Fedora Core if you want to replace your existing installation, or "Upgrade an existing installation" if you want to upgrade your existing Fedora system to Fedora Core 6. Click Next.

If you choose Install, skip to the next section titled "Performing a New Fedora Installation." Otherwise, the screen shown in Figure 1-12 will appear, asking what you want to do with the bootloader configuration.

Figure 1-12. Bootloader configuration during upgrade  

Choose an option based on your current bootloader:

Update boot loader configuration

Use this if your previous installation installed the GRUB bootloader (the default for recent versions of Fedora Core).

Skip boot loader updating

Use this if you are using a third-party bootloader program. You will need to refer to your bootloader documentation to determine how to update the bootloader manually.

Create new boot loader configuration

Select this option if you are using the older LILO bootloader. The installation system will replace LILO with GRUB.

Click Next. After a few seconds, the screen shown in Figure 1-13 will appear.

Figure 1-13. Fedora installation confirmation screen 

This is the point of no return. Click Next to proceed with the upgrade, but remember that the upgrade process must run to completion and cannot be safely interrupted. The Fedora installer will analyze the software installed in your existing Fedora system, determine what needs to be updated, and install the new packages.

1.3.1.7. Performing a new Fedora installation

If any of your hard disks are empty and have not been previously used, the warning message displayed in Figure 1-14 will appear. If the drive contains data that you wish to preserve, abort the installation and boot into your existing operating system, figure out why the disk does not show a partition table, and restart the installation. Otherwise, click Yes to continue the installation.

Figure 1-14. Warning about a blank partition table

The installer will now ask what you want to do about partitioning, as shown in Figure 1-15 . In most cases, there are four options available:

Remove all partitions on selected drives and create default layout

This will wipe out everything on the drive and use the entire drive for Fedora Core. Select this option on a new computer or a computer you want to convert for use entirely with Fedora Core. This is also the right option to use when you are installing Linux on a second (or third) disk drive, leaving the software and data on the other drives untouchedbut be careful that only the Fedora Core drive is selected in the list of available disks.

Remove Linux partitions on selected drives and create default layout

Use this option if you are replacing an existing Linux installation and want to leave other operating systems (such as Windows) untouched.

Figure 1-15. Disk and partition strategy selection

Use free space on selected drives and create default layout

If you have unused space on your disk drive, or you have shrunk a Windows partition to free up some space, select this option.

Create custom layout

If you are familiar with partitioning and have special requirementsfor example, you wish to preserve only one filesystem (such as /home ) from a previous Linux installationselect this option.

If you have more than one disk drive installed, you will be able to select the drive(s) to be used for Fedora using the checkboxes in the rectangle labeled "Select the drive(s) to use for this installation." Refer to Table 1-4 for Linux disk names.

At the bottom of this screen, be sure to select the checkbox labeled "Review and modify partitioning layout" so that you will have an opportunity to see the proposed disk layout before it is used. Click Next to continue.

If you have selected an option that involves removing an existing partition, you will see the partition-removal warning shown in Figure 1-16 . Review the information shown, and then click Yes to confirm that you are prepared to remove the partitions listed.

Figure 1-16. Partition removal warning

1.3.1.8. Partitioning layout

By default, Fedora Core uses a system called Logical Volume Management (LVM). A partition managed using LVM is called a physical volume (PV). Storage space from one or more PVs is used to create a pool of storage called a volume group (VG). Out of this pool of storage, one or more virtual partitions are created; each virtual partition is a logical volume (LV). Figure 1-17 illustrates the relationship between these components.

Figure 1-17. Relationship between LVM components

LVM has several advantages over traditional partitioning:

 Logical volumes can be resized, enabling you to shift space between filesystems without reinstalling the system.

 Logical volumes can span multiple physical volumes, enabling the use of filesystems that are larger than one physical disk.

 Additional storage can be added to existing filesystemsfor example, you can add a new disk drive and add that storage space to the home filesystem.

 Data can be migrated from one drive to another.

Chapter 6 delves into more detail regarding LVM.

Although logical volumes can be enlarged or reduced at any time, the ext3 filesystem that Fedora uses can be enlarged only while it is in use. It must not be in use when it is reduced in size. This can make it fairly complicated to shrink an ext3 partition. Because it's difficult to determine how much disk space each filesystem will require in the future, it is a good idea to make Fedora filesystems no larger than necessary at first, and then add space to them as required. This avoids the need to reduce the size of one LV in order to increase the size of another.

Unfortunately, the LVM system is too complex to use during the early stages of the booting process, so a system configured to use LVM must also have a small traditional partition for boot files.

If you have selected a partitioning option that includes the default layout and have selected the checkbox to review and modify the layout, the screen in Figure 1-18 will appear at this point in the installation.

Figure 1-18. Fedora Disk Druid partitioning screen

The table on the bottom half of the screen contains two sections: one for LVM volume groups and one for hard disks. The default layout creates a 100 MB boot partition, and takes all remaining available disk space on all drives and places it in a single volume group named VolGroup00 . The space in this volume group is then divided into two logical volumes: LogVol00 for the root filesystem and LogVol01 for swap space (virtual memory).

There are three improvements that we are going to make to the default Fedora Core partition/LVM layout:

 A separate LV will be used for the /home filesystem, so that users' home directories are separated from the operating system. This will enable you to wipe out the operating system and reinstall it (or install another distribution of Linux or a later version of Fedora Core) without affecting the users' files.

 The LVs will be reduced in size so that they are no larger than necessary. Surplus disk space can be left unassigned within the volume group and added to logical volumes as needed; this eliminates the need to perform complex operations to shrink one volume group in order to grow another.

 The volume group and logical volume names will be replaced with more descriptive text.

To make these changes, double-click on the line in the table that reads VolGroup00 and then click the Edit button. The Edit LVM Volume Group window will appear, as shown in Figure 1-19 .

Figure 1-19. Edit LVM Volume Group window 

Start by changing the Volume Group Name at the top of this window from VolGroup00 to main . Next, click on the entry that has a mount point of / and click Edit; the Edit Logical Volume window shown in Figure 1-20 will appear.

Figure 1-20. Edit Logical Volume window for the root LV  

Change the Logical Volume Name to root , and change the size to a value that is closer to the size of the installation. I recommend 8,000 MB (i.e., 8 GB; most server and desktop systems will take 26 GB of space to install, so 8 GB gives a modest amount of headroom). Click OK when you are done.

Figure 1-21 shows the settings that repeat the process for the other predefined LV: click on this LV and then click Edit. Change the Logical Volume Name to swap , leaving the size at the default value. Click OK when you are done.

Figure 1-21. Edit Logical Volume window for the swap LV 

Finally, click the Add button and create a new Logical Volume to hold the home directories, as shown in Figure 1-22. Set the Mount Point to /home , the File System Type to ext3 , the Logical Volume Name to home , and then set a reasonable size for storing the users' home directories (if you're not sure what value to use, start with 1000 ). Click OK when you are done.

Figure 1-22. Creating a new Logical Volume for the home LV 

Review the final disk partition and LVM layout, and then click Next. The bootloader configuration screen will appear, as shown in Figure 1-23 .

Figure 1-23. Bootloader configuration screen 

The default bootloader configuration replaces any existing bootloader installed on the main hard disk. If you have more than one operating system installed, the bootloader will ask you which OS to boot when the system is started. If you have a Windows boot partition present, it will be listed as a boot option, but it will be labeled Other. To change this label to something more descriptive, click on that entry, and then click Edit. Enter the text of your choice, such as Windows XP Professional , and then click OK.

Use the checkboxes in the Default column to select which operating system will be loaded by default if the user doesn't override the selection at boot time.

It is a good idea to install a bootloader password. Without this, any person with physical access to your machine will be able to easily override all security by booting the system into single-user mode. Click "Use a boot loader password" and then enter your selected password twice when prompted. 

Click Next to proceed.

1.3.1.9. General questions

If you have not already configured the network, and you have a network adapter installed in your system, the network configuration screen appears next, as shown in Figure 1-24 .

Figure 1-24. Network configuration screen

If you have a DHCP server on your networkwhich is the case in most large networks and in most small office and home networks that have a broadband Internet gateway/router devicethen you will only need to change the "Set the hostname" option to "manually" and then enter the hostname of your choice (unless your DHCP server sets the hostname for you). If you have a registered domain, choose a hostname within that domain, such as bluesky.fedorabook.com (which specifies the host bluesky within the domain fedorabook.com ); otherwise, choose a hostname and append .localdomain to the end of the name.

If you do not have a DHCP server on your network, select your primary Ethernet card from the Network Devices list and then click Edit. You will see the Edit interface window shown in Figure 1-25 . Click on the "Configure using DHCP " option to deselect that checkbox, then enter the IP address and netmask. Click OK to save this information, and enter the hostname, gateway, and DNS server information in the blanks provided (it is necessary only to enter a Primary DNS server).

Figure 1-25. Edit interface window

Click Next to proceed to the next step in the installation, which is time zone selection, as shown in Figure 1-26 .

Figure 1-26. Time zone selection

Click on your region of the map to zoom in, and then click on the major city closest to your locationor use the pull-down menu to select your time zone.

You can choose to configure the system's hardware clock to store information in local time or in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This is controlled by the checkbox labeled "System clock uses UTC." If you are using multiple operating systems on your computer (dual-boot), to use local time, deselect the checkbox so that the other operating system will interpret the time correctly.

If you are using only Fedora, or Fedora and another distribution of Linux, choose UTC by selecting the checkbox. This will avoid multiple adjustments of the clock when entering or exiting daylight savings time.

Click Next to proceed.

The screen in Figure 1-27 requests that you enter a root password for the system (twice). This is the master system administration password, so be sure to safeguard it against both theft and loss.

Figure 1-27. Creating a root password 

1.3.1.10. Software selection

The next screen, shown in Figure 1-28 , is used to select the software that will be installed. Use the checkboxes to select the categories of applications that you wish to have installed. To further refine the software selection, select the "Customize now" option; this is recommended if you are installing on a system with minimal disk space or a slow Internet connection.

Figure 1-28. Software selection screen 

Click Next to continue. If you selected "Customize now," you will see the screen shown in Figure 1-29 . Otherwise, skip ahead two paragraphs.

Figure 1-29. Software customization screen 

Select a category on the left side to see the package groups within that family on the right side. Use the checkboxes provided to select the groups you want. For even finer control, you can select a package group, click the "Optional packages" button, then select the individual packages you wish to include from the window shown in Figure 1-30 .

Figure 1-30. Optional package selection screen  

 Click Next to continue. After a short time for dependency processing, the screen shown in Figure 1-31 will appear.

Figure 1-31. Installation confirmation  

This is the point of no return; once you click Next, the partition table, filesystems, and bootloader will all be modified. Once the installation process begins, it cannot be safely interrupted and must be allowed to run to completion. During the installation, a progress bar similar to the one in Figure 1-32 will be shown.

Figure 1-32. Installation progress indicator 

When the installation is complete, the confirmation message shown in Figure 1-33 is displayed. Remove the installation boot media, and then click Reboot to start up the new system.

Figure 1-33. Completed installation 

1.3.1.11. First boot

The first time you boot your freshly installed Fedora system, you will be asked a few questions to finish up the initial configuration. The display shown in Figure 1-34 will greet you; as you work through the questions, the arrow on the lefthand side of the screen will move downward to indicate your progress.

Figure 1-34. First boot welcome screen

Click Forward to proceed to the license-agreement screen. Read the license carefully, and then click Yes or No to indicate whether you accept the license terms.

Click Forward to enter the firewall configuration screen. I strongly recommend that you leave the firewall enabled, and that you initially select only ssh as a trusted service. You can loosen your firewall to permit other inbound services later, as you set those services up.

Click Next to proceed to SELinux configuration. SELinux hardens the Linux kernel against attack. Although it can be a bit difficult to configure at times, the protection that it provides is well worth the extra effort. SELinux is covered in more detail in Lab 8.2, "Using SELinux ." For now, leave the Modify SELinux Policy option at its default setting; you can always adjust SELinux later.

Click Forward to proceed to the date and time configuration screen. Select the current date by clicking on the calendar, and enter the current time into the fields provided.

If you have an always-on Internet connection, click on the Network Time Protocol tab. Select the checkbox labeled Enable Network Time Protocol. This will configure your system to communicate with timeservers on the Internet to keep the clock closely synchronized to official time. This is valuable because it ensures that time and date stamps on your system are always accurate.

You can edit the list of timeservers that can be contacted using the Add, Edit, and Remove buttons beside the server list. The NTP Server Pool Project maintains a pool of publicly accessible timeservers; the default server list ( 0.fedora.pool.ntp.org , 1.fedora.pool.ntp.org , and 2.fedora.pool.ntp.org ) configures your system to randomly select up to three timeservers from the pool at boot. To use a timeserver in your country, use your ISO country code as the hostname within the pool.ntp.org domain; I'm in Canada, so a server in my country could be found using the name ca.pool.ntp.org .

Click Next to proceed on to creating the first user. The root password that you entered during installation is used only for system administration and should not be used for day-to-day work. This screen lets you create the first user account; you can create as many additional accounts as you want later (see Lab 4.7, "Managing Users and Groups").

Fill in the four fields on this screen:

Username

Choose a username that contains no spaces and starts with a letter. This name will be used for logging in and will also serve as the user's local email address (typically, this is not intended to replace the email address you got from your ISP or mail provider; it is generally used to receive system notices and other local messages). I recommend using only lowercase letters, digits, underscores, and periods. If you are setting up a home or personal system, first names work well; for a corporate server, full names in firstname.lastname form reduce the likelihood of confusion between users (now and in the future).

Full name

Enter the user's full name (for example, Chris Tyler ).

Password

Enter a password that is easy to remember and hard to guess. Just like the root password, using the first letter from each word plus the punctuation from an obscure line of text can be helpful (for example, FL:AcgtRHcd. for "Fedora Linux: A complete guide to Red Hat's community distribution.").

If the button in the lower-righthand corner of the screen reads Forward, there is one more step. Click on that button to proceed to the the sound card check screen.

On this screen, click on the Play button (labeled ) and adjust the volume slider until you hear a guitar strum on the right, left, then the center channel of your sound system. If you don't hear anything, check your speaker power, physical volume control, and sound connections (if you have multiple sound cards, use the device tabs on the left side to switch between them), clicking Play after each adjustment (or just select the Repeat checkbox).

If you can't get sound working at this point, don't worry; you may just need access to some of the advanced mixer controls, which you can experiment with later (see Lab 2.6, "Configuring Sound ").

Click Finish. Congratulations, Fedora is installed and ready to use!

1.3.3.1. ...rerunning the firstboot process to reset the system configuration?

You can rerun the firstboot script by adding reconfig to the boot parameters when the system is started (boot parameters are entered in the same way as runlevels are during the boot process; see Lab 4.5, "Using Runlevels"). The sequence of steps used during a reconfiguration is slightly different and longer from that used when the script executes for the first time; for example, you can change the system's default language during reconfiguration.

1.3.3.2. ...getting help if I encounter problems during (or after) installation?

Fedora is a community-based project, and the Fedora community is very helpful. The best places to turn for help are the Fedora Forum and the Fedora mailing lists. You can also access help using IRC (see Lab 9.2, "Using IRC ," for more information).

Fedora Linux can boot into graphical mode or text mode, depending on the default runlevel (see Lab 4.5, "Using Runlevels"); when installed using the graphical installation program, Fedora's default is to present the graphical login display shown in Figure 2-1 .

Figure 2-1. Fedora default login screen

In the middle of the screen are four clickable controls:

Language

Displays a dialog enabling you to select the default language for the session. This will not change the messages on the login display, but it will change the default for messages after you successfully log in. Where possible, messages will appear in this selected language, but when no translation for the selected language is found, messages will appear in the default language for the application (usually English). After you enter a username and password, you will be given the choice of making the selected language the permanent default for that username, or using it only for one session.

Session

Permits you to select the session type: GNOME (the default) or a fail-safe session. If you install additional software for other desktop environments, such as KDE or Xfce, they will also appear on this menu.

Restart

Presents a confirmation dialog, then restarts the computer. Except for the kernel (the core of the operating system), almost everything in Fedora can be restarted without a reboot, so this option is usually used only when switching between operating systems in a dual-boot configuration.

Shut Down

Presents a confirmation dialog, then shuts down the system and turns the computer off.

If you press F10, a menu containing most of these options appears.

After you enter your username and password, the system will check to see if you have selected a session type or language different from your normal settings. If so, you will be asked if the change is temporary ("Just for This Session") or permanent ("Make default"). Click on one of the buttons to make your selection.

2.1.1.1. KDE or GNOME?

GNOME and KDE are built upon different technology and have been designed with different philosophiesas a GNOME or KDE advocate will quickly tell you. However, the most common operations are the same in both environments, and the GNOME and KDE communities collaborate on a number of key issues through freedesktop.org ( http://freedesktop.org ). The friendly rivalry between the groups spurs them on to develop innovations and refinements for both desktop environments.

Fedora installs and uses GNOME by default, and it is the best choice for most Fedora users. However, KDE is provided on the installation CDs/DVD, and it's worthwhile experimenting with both desktops to find the one that suits your style.

2.1.1.2. Using the desktop

Once you have logged in, you will see the GNOME desktop, shown in Figure 2-2 , or the KDE desktop, shown in Figure 2-3 . The same default visual theme has been installed in both environments to provide a fairly consistent appearance and style.

Figure 2-2. Fedora GNOME desktop.

Figure 2-3. Fedora KDE desktop

Although the two desktop environments have some significant differences, their main features are very similar. Here is a summary; where KDE and GNOME differ in their naming conventions, I've used a unified terminology (which will mortify GNOME or KDE purists but allow the rest of us to talk about the desktop in a sane way):

Panel bar (panel)

Fedora's default configuration of the GNOME desktop includes two panel bars, one at the top of the screen and one at the bottom. Fedora's KDE configuration includes one panel bar at the bottom of the screen. In both cases, you can move the panels to any edge of the screen by clicking on them (in an empty area of the panel) and dragging them. You can move an item within a panel by clicking on it with the middle mouse button (on a mouse with a wheel, depress the wheel; on a two-button mouse, press both buttons simultaneously) and dragging it to the desired location. To shove other items along while dragging an item, hold down the Shift key.

Application/panel menus

GNOME's application menus appear on the left side of the top panel bar. Three menus are provided: Applications, which contains various useful programs; Places, which contains a list of location-oriented options, such as viewing your home directory or desktop, searching for files, or going to a recently edited document; and System, which includes preferences, administration, help, and options to log out or lock the display.

KDE's main panel menu is called the K menu (it's customized to look like an F in Fedora) and is located at the left side of the panel bar. It includes roughly the same applications as the GNOME menus, with some KDE programs replacing GNOME programs (such as the KDE Control Center instead of the GNOME Preference options).

Both environments permit you to access the application menu by pressing Alt-F1.

Panel icons

Common applications have icons on the panel bar. To add an icon for another program to the panel, find the program on the application menu, then right-click and select "Add this Launcher to Panel" or "Add Item to Main Panel."

Desktop icons

A default set of icons appears on the desktop, including your Home directory, Computer, and Trash. You can create additional icons by dragging files from a file manager or links from a web browser and dropping them on the desktop. Desktop icons are stored in the directory named ~/Desktop .

Workplace/desktop switcher

Both GNOME and KDE include virtual desktop (or workspace ) capability, which means that the visible screen represents only one of several desktop workspaces. To switch between desktops, click on one of the desktop icons in the desktop switcher, or place your mouse pointer over the desktop switcher and roll the mouse wheel. GNOME's workplace switcher also allows you to drag a window outline from one desktop to another. GNOME's workspaces are initially arranged in a horizontal row, while KDE's are arranged in a 2×2 grid.

The virtual desktop facility provides a lot of screen area to arrange your windows; many users arrange their open applications according to tasksfor example, having email and messaging programs open on one desktop, a web browser on another, and OpenOffice.org on a third.

Window/task list

When an application is running, an entry appears in the window list (or task list ) in the bottom panel. KDE's default task list includes the windows in all virtual desktops; GNOME's includes only windows in the current virtual desktop.

Clock/calendar

Click on the clock/calendar to display a calendar of the current month. The GNOME version of the calendar will also show you to-do list items from the Evolution scheduler program, and double-clicking on a date will take you to the Evolution schedule for that date.

Applets and monitors

A panel can also display applets and monitors to let you perform operations easily and to keep you informed. To add additional applets to the panel bar, right-click an empty spot on the panel and select "Add to Panel," and then select the applet or monitor from the list displayed.

2.1.1.3. Managing windows

When you start a program by clicking on an icon or application menu item, one or more windows will appear. Almost all windows have a title bar and window controls, as shown on the window in Figure 2-4 .

Figure 2-4. Dasher window, showing title bar and window controls

These are the basic controls:

Window border

When you position the mouse cursor over any edge or corner of a resizable window, it will change to a double-ended arrow. Click and drag to resize the window.

Title bar

Clicking and dragging the title bar will move the window. Double-clicking the title bar can be configured to maximize the window to fill the entire screen (the default for GNOME, similar to Windows) or to roll up the window into the title bar like a window shade (the default for KDE, similar to Mac OS 9).

Window menu

Clicking on the icon on the left side of the titlebar will bring up the window menu. You can also view the window menu by right-clicking anywhere on the window border.

The window menu contains options for placing the window on top of all other windows; maximizing, minimizing, and closing the window; and placing the window on a specific workspace/desktop or making it appear on all workspaces.

Minimize, maximize, and close icons

There are three icons on the right side of the titlebar. Clicking the leftmost one will minimize the window (you can then access through the window list); clicking the middle one will maximize or unmaximize the window, and clicking on the rightmost one will close the window.

You can also minimize a window by clicking on its entry in the window list.

Table 2-1 lists a number of useful keyboard shortcuts available for window management.

Table 2-1. Keyboard shortcuts for window management

2.1.1.4. Fast pasting

KDE, GNOME, and other GUIs based on the X Window System have standard cut-and-paste features. Most applications use Ctrl-X for cut, Ctrl-C for copy, and Ctrl-V for paste, which is compatible with the keyboard shortcuts on other platforms.

But the X Window System also has a faster way of pasting: select the text (or graphic) you want to duplicate by highlighting it, then click the middle mouse button at the point you wish to paste. For example, to fast-paste a web address from Firefox into an email being composed in Evolution, you can highlight the text in Firefox (place the mouse cursor at the start of the text, press the left mouse button, drag the cursor over the text, and release the button), then move to the Evolution window and press the middle mouse button to paste that text.

Taking this one step further, all of the Fedora web browsers allow you to highlight a web address in any application's window, then middle-click on a blank spot in the browser window to go directly to that page (with Firefox, you can also search using this technique, by highlighting a search term instead of an addressas long as there's no period in your search term).

2.1.1.5. Logging out

To log out of the desktop, press Ctrl-Alt-Delete. A confirmation dialog will appear, and then you will be logged out. You can also select the Log Out option from the application menu (System menu in GNOME).

2.1.3.1. ...other desktops/GUIs?

Many other desktop/GUI environments are availablefor example, Xfce, a nice but lightweight desktop environment included in the Fedora Extras repository. To install Xfce:

# yum groupinstall XFCE

You'll see an entry for Xfce in the Display Manager's Session menu (shown in Figure 2-1).

Almost all of the Fedora GNOME desktop, as well as desktop options that are not part of GNOME or KDE, can be configured using the System→Preferences menu; other portions of the desktop can be configured by right-clicking on a GNOME component.

This lab looks at the GNOME settings most commonly used to customize the desktop.

2.2.1.1. Customizing the desktop appearance using themes

The GNOME desktop and the Metacity window manager (the default GNOME window manager) use themes to configure appearance. Each theme is a combination of configuration information, images, and software that provides a particular visual effect and behavior.

Three types of component themes are used on the desktop:

Application (or control) themes

Configure the appearance of the controls: elements used by applications to build the graphical user interface, such as buttons, sliders, scrollbars, and text-entry fields.

Window border themes

Used by the Metacity window manager to control the appearance of the window borders, title bar, and title bar buttons.

Icons

Control the appearance of icons on the panel, desktop, application toolbars, and Nautilus file manager.

One component theme from each category can be combined into an overall desktop theme .

To change themes, select System→Preferences→Theme from the panel menu. The window shown on the left of Figure 2-6 will appear.

Figure 2-6. Theme preferences tool

You can select a desktop theme from this list by clicking on it. The theme will start to load immediately, and the appearance of your desktop will change in a few seconds.

To create a custom combination of component themes, click the Theme Details button. The window shown on the right of Figure 2-6 will be displayed. There is a tab for each of the three component theme types. You can select a different theme for any of the components, and when you do, a Custom Theme entry will appear in the main Theme Preferences window. Your selection will take effect immediately so that you can preview the effect. Once you are satisfied with a combination of component themes, click on the Save Theme button to name the combination and save it as a desktop theme.

To install additional component themes, open a browser and go to http://art.gnome.org/ , and open the Theme Preferences window in an adjacent part of the screen. When you find a theme on art.gnome.org that you wish to install, simply drag the download icon (a small floppy disk) from the browser window to the Theme Preferences window, and it will automatically be installed. You can then combine that component theme with others to produce a new desktop theme as described earlier.

2.2.1.2. Customizing the panels

Fedora's desktop is configured with two panels by default: one at the top of the screen containing the menus, icons, and applets, and one at the bottom of the screen containing the task list.

You can add another panel by right-clicking on an existing one and selecting New Panel. The new panel will appear on an edge of the screen that doesn't have a panel, or at the top of the screen if all of the edges are occupied. You can move it to another location by dragging it with the mouse.

To delete a panel, right-click on it and select "Delete this Panel." If there is anything on the panel, a confirmation dialog will appear before the panel is deleted.

To add items to a panel, right-click on the panel and select "Add to Panel." Although most of the options presented are applets or monitors, you can also add a drawer , which is like a panel that can be unfolded from another panel. A drawer is managed in the same way as a panel, by right-clicking on it.

To move an item around a panel, or move it to another panel, middle-click on the item and drag it (or right-click and use the Move menu option). To push along other icons, hold the shift key while dragging.

To delete an item from the panel, right-click on it and select "Remove from Panel."

To set a panel's properties, right-click it and select Properties. A small window will appear, containing two tabs, General and Background.

The General tab contains these settings:

Orientation

Selects one of the four screen edges for panel placement.

Size

Sets the panel size in pixels. 48 pixels is the default; the minimum size is 23 pixels, and the maximum is 120. Reducing this number will make the panel smaller and leave more screen space for your applications, while increasing this number will increase the panel size, making the icons bigger so that they are easier to see and click on. Experiment to find a value that works well for you; I find that 24 pixels is right for my eyes.

Expand

Selecting this checkbox makes the panel expand to fill the entire edge of the screen; deselecting it makes the panel just large enough to hold its contents.

Autohide

When selected, most of the panel will slide off the screen when not in contact with the mouse pointer, freeing up space for applications. To unhide the panel, place your mouse pointer over the part of the panel that is still visible.

Show hide buttons

Enables buttons at the end of the panel that can be clicked to make the panel slide off the screen (endwise). The "Arrows on Hide Buttons" checkbox will make the hide buttons bigger and add a graphical arrow to each one.

The Background tab lets you set the background color to the default for the current desktop theme, a solid color (which can have a pseudo-transparency effect applied using the Style slider), or a background image. This is almost always left at the default setting, which uses the desktop theme.

2.2.1.3. Customizing the desktop background

The menu option System→Preferences→Desktop Background is used to adjust the desktop background color and imagebut most Fedora users get there using the shortcut of right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Change Desktop Background. Both methods cause the Desktop Background Preferences window to appear, shown in Figure 2-7.

Figure 2-7. Desktop Background Preferences window

You can change to any of the listed background images by clicking on it. To add your own image, drag and drop an image file from the Nautilus file manager, or click the Add Wallpaper button and enter the filename; to remove an image, highlight it and click the Remove button. If you don't want a background image, select the No Wallpaper option.

The Style control determines how the selected image will be displayed:

Centered

The image is placed, full-size, in the center of the screen. If it's smaller than the screen, the remaining space is filled with the desktop color; if it's larger than the screen, it is automatically cropped.

Fill Screen

The image is scaled in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions to fill the screen. This may result in some distortion of the image if its rectangular proportions ( aspect ratio ) don't match those of the screen.

Scaled

The image is scaled, keeping the original aspect ratio, until it fills the screen. Any remaining space is filled with the desktop color. For photographs, this is a better choice than Fill Screen.

Tiled

The image is placed in the upper-left corner of the screen and repeated as many times as necessary (both horizontally and vertically) to fill the screen.

The Desktop Colors control sets the desktop color style (solid, horizontal gradient, or vertical gradient) and the colors used for that style. The color or gradient selected here will fill any part of the background not covered by an image and will show through background images that have transparency.

2.2.1.4. Customizing the window manager's behavior

Select the menu option System→Preferences→Window to modify the behavior of the window manager, Metacity. Three options are presented in a window:

Select windows when the mouse moves over them

This behavior is called focus-follows-mouse and is very popular with some long-time users of the X Window System. Normally, you need to click on a window to give it focus in other words, the last window clicked is the window that receives keyboard input. If you select this checkbox, you can focus a window simply by placing your mouse pointer over it. This is convenient, but if your mouse pointer drifts to another window, you may end up typing into the wrong window.

If you select "focus-follows-mouse," then you can optionally configure the window manager to automatically raise focused windows after a brief pause, so that they are on top of other windows.

Titlebar Action

Configures the window manager to maximize or shade a window when the titlebar is double-clicked.

Movement Key

This setting selects the modifier key for moving windows. If you hold down the selected modifier and click on a window, you can drag it to a new location.

2.2.1.5. Customizing Nautilus

The Nautilus file manager is configured using the Edit→Preferences option in any Nautilus window, or through the panel menu option System→Preferences→File Management. A configuration window will appear with five tabs, containing lots of options.

Here are some common customizations for Nautilus:

 The appearance of folder contents can be separately configured for each folder using the Nautilus toolbar. To configure default settings, set the View New Folders Using and the Arrange Items options on the Views tab.

 To disable the spatial behavior of Nautilus, select the Behavior tab and select the "Always Open in Browser Windows" checkbox.

 To enable the direct deletion of files (instead of placing them in the trash, which requires the trash to be emptied before the disk space is freed up), select "Include a Delete Command that Bypasses Trash" on the Behavior tab. Right-clicking on a file will now expose both the normal "Move to Trash" option and a new Delete option.

2.2.1.6. Customizing keyboard shortcuts

Both mice and keyboards are effective input devicesbut switching between them can significantly slow you down. A good set of keyboard shortcuts enables you to perform common operations without switching to the mouse.

Fedora's GNOME configuration contains a good set of keyboard shortcuts. To change shortcuts or add new ones, select the menu option System→Preferences→Keyboard Shortcuts, which displays the window shown in Figure 2-8.

Figure 2-8. GNOME Keyboard Shortcuts window

This window shows a number of actions on the desktop and the shortcut key for each. To change a shortcut, click on an entry. The shortcut for that entry will change to read New Accelerator. Press the key or key combination that you wish to use for that keyboard shortcut; if the shortcut is not already in use, it will be assigned to the selected action, and if it is in use, the conflict will be displayed in an error dialog.

To remove a keyboard shortcut, click on an entry, and then press Backspace.

2.2.3.1. ...making a theme available to all users?

After testing component themes, you can move them from your personal theme directories to the system-wide directories:

# mv /home/ yourusername /.icons/* /usr/share/icons/

# mv /home/ yourusername /.themes/* /usr/share/themes/

# chown -R root:root /usr/share/{icons,themes}

Most KDE configuration is performed through the KDE Control Center, which is found on the K menu. The Control Center is shown in Figure 2-9.

Figure 2-9. KDE Control Center 

 Along the lefthand side of this window, there is a collapsible menu of configuration categories; each category contains several subcategories, which can be revealed or hidden by clicking on the +/- icon in front of the category name. Each subcategory is handled by a separate configuration module . When you click on a configuration category, the configuration module for that category is shown on the righthand side of the window.

You can also configure some desktop components by right-clicking on them. For example, right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Configure Desktop will bring up a subset of the Control Center options, which is useful for changing the appearance of the desktop.

Unlike GNOME, KDE settings are not usually automatically applied; you must click on the Apply button before your changes take effect.

2.3.1.1. Customizing the desktop appearance using themes

To configure KDE themes, select Appearance & Themes→Theme Manager in the Control Center (Figure 2-9). You can select a theme from among the options listed by clicking on it and then clicking Apply.

To install a new theme, click the "Get new themes..." link in the upper-right corner to open the Konqueror web browser with the kde-look home page (http://kde-look.org). Select a theme that is packaged into a .kth file and download it to your system. Click the Install New Theme button within the KDE Control Center and open the downloaded file to install it into the list of available themes.

2.3.1.2. Customizing the panels

KDE panels are configured in much the same way as GNOME panels.

You can add a new panel by right-clicking on an existing one and selecting Add New Panel→Panel. You can move the new panel to any edge of the screen by dragging it with the mouse.

To delete a panel, right-click on any panel and select Remove Panel, and then select the panel you wish to remove. It is not possible to remove the original panel. If the panel contains anything, a confirmation dialog will appear before the panel is deleted.

To add items to a panel, right-click on the panel and select "Add Applet to panel" or "Add Application to panel"the difference being that applets run within the panel, displaying information or performing useful actions, while applications are simply buttons that launch programs.

To delete an application from the panel, right-click on it and select "Remove application." To delete an applet, place your mouse cursor over it, which will cause a small bar to appear beside it; right-click on this bar, and select "Remove applet."

To move a panel object, middle-click on the object (or on the bar beside the object if it is an applet) and drag it to the desired location. To push other objects around, hold down the Shift key while dragging; to move between bars, left-click and drag.

To set a panel's properties, right-click on a panel and select Configure Panel, which displays the window in Figure 2-10 . You can also start the KDE Control Center and select Desktop→Panels, in which case the window arrangement is modified slightly to fit into the design of the Control Center.

Figure 2-10. KDE panel configuration window  

In either case, you will have buttons or tabs for Arrangement, Hiding, Menus, and Appearance.

The Arrangement section contains these settings:

Position

The location of the panel on the screen. There are twelve buttons, enabling you to place the panel in the center or either corner of any edge of the screen (for example, if you place the panel on the bottom edge of the screen, you can place it in the left corner, the center, or the right corner). The position along an edge has no effect if the panel length has been set to 100%.

Length

The percent of the screen edge that will be occupied by the panel. The default is 100%, where the panel fills the entire length of one side of the screen. The checkbox labeled "Expand as required to fit contents" makes the specified length the minimum.

Size

The thickness of the panel in pixels. The Fedora default is rather big, so I usually set this to Small or Tiny.

The settings affect the panel selected by the "Settings for" drop-down menu. As you adjust the settings, the preview in the Screen section is updated to show your changes.

The Hiding section contains three settings:

Hide Mode

Configures the panel to be displayed all the time unless manually hidden, to hide itself after a period of time, or to be coverable by other windows. To reveal an automatically hidden panel, place the mouse cursor along the edge of the screen where the panel would normally appear.

Panel-Hiding Buttons

Allows you to add buttons to the left and right (or top and bottom) ends of the panel.

Panel Animation

Configures the animated sliding of the panel when it is hidden or revealed. The panel animation is a cute effect, and it serves the practical purpose of helping the user understand what's happening to the panel.

Like the Arrangement options, the Hiding options are applied to the panel selected with the "Settings for" control.

The Appearance section lets you configure icon mouseover effects (which include really big, animated tool tips), tool tips helps, colored or patterned button backgrounds, and a pseudo-transparency effect for panels.

2.3.1.3. Customizing the desktop background

The background image or color is adjusted using the Appearance & Themes→Background option in the Control Center. You can get to the same configuration module by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Configure Desktop, then selecting the Background button. Figure 2-11 shows the window that appears.

Figure 2-11. KDE desktop background configuration

You can individually configure the desktop background for each virtual desktop. This can make it easier to identify which virtual desktop is currently displayed, but it can use a lot of memory and increases the amount of time it takes to switch desktops. The "Settings for Desktop" control selects the desktop to be configured; use All Desktops to use the same image on all of the virtual desktops.

In this configuration module, there are two sections:

Background

Selects a picture or slideshow to use for the image background.

Options

Sets the background image position, scaling, and tiling (repeat) options; background colors, patterns, and gradients; and blending between the background image and background colors/patterns.

There are also two special buttons:

Advanced Options

Permits you to use a program to draw the desktop background (such as kwebdesktop , which uses a web page for the desktop background), to set the color and shadow for the desktop icon text, and to set the size of the background cache.

Get New Wallpapers

Provides a simple way to download wallpapers from http://kde-look.org , using the window shown at bottom right in Figure 2-11 . A list of available wallpapers appears (you can use the tabs to change the sort order); clicking on one will present a preview, and clicking Install will add that wallpaper to the Picture list in the KDesktop Background window.

2.3.1.4. Customizing the window manager's behavior

To configure window-manager behavior, right-click on a title bar and select Configure Window Behavior. Figure 2-12 shows the window that appears. You can access the same options through the Control Center using the Appearance & Themes→Window Decorations, Desktop→Window Behavior, and the Desktop→Window-Specific Settings options.

Figure 2-12. KDE window-manager behavior configuration

The KDE window manager, kwin, offers extensive configuration options:

Window Decorations

Enables you to select the window-manager theme and the buttons that will be placed in the title bar. Some themes have additional customization options, such as adjustable border width.

Actions

Configures the actions performed when the various mouse buttons are clicked on the title bar and active or inactive windows. The Titlebar Actions tab contains settings for the action that will be taken when the user clicks on the window title bar, frame, and maximize button.

Focus

The window with focusalso called the active windowreceives keyboard input. This section selects the focus policy:

Click to Focus

Click on a window to give it focus.

Focus Follows Mouse

Place the mouse cursor over a window to give it focus. You can also change focus with Alt-Tab or Shift-Alt-Tab.

Focus Under Mouse

Same as Focus Follows Mouse, but Alt-Tab/Shift-Alt-Tab does not change the window focus (though it will raise other windows to the top), and new windows will not receive focus.

Focus Strictly Under Mouse

Same as Focus Under Mouse, but moving the mouse pointer over the desktop background (not over any window) will unfocus all windows instead of leaving the last window focused.

If you select a focus policy other than "Click to Focus," you can configure a delay between when a window receives focus and when it raises, as well as whether focused windows are raised at all (placed in front of other windows). The Navigation section enables you to set options related to keyboard navigation between windows (Alt-Tab/Shift-Alt-Tab).

Moving

Configures behavior when windows are moved. For best performance on a slower system (or a remote connection), disable the options "Display content in moving windows," "Display content in resizing windows," and "Animate minimize and restore"but on a fast machine, these options can provide useful user feedback. The Snap Zone settings make it easier to align windows with other windows or with the edge of the screen.

Advanced

Configures Shading (window roll-up) animation and automatic unrolling when under the mouse; Active Desktop Borders, which permit you to move off the desktop onto an adjacent virtual desktop; and Focus Stealing Prevention, which attempts to eliminate unpleasant surprises when you're typing and a new window appears (which in normal circumstances would automatically get focus). Right-click on the control and select "What's This?" to see a detailed description of the options.

Window-Specific Settings

Enables you to configure kwin to handle some applications differently than others. To create special settings for a window, ensure that the window is presently on the screen, and then click New in that window. A window labeled Edit Window-Specific Settings will appear; click the Detect button, and then click on the window you wish to configure. You can then use the provided tabs to configure your desired settings, such as specific window geometry (size and location) or preferences (e.g., causing the window to stay above or below other windows).

Translucency

Enables transparency and shadow effects for windows. This uses the COMPOSITE capability of the X server, which requires a modern graphics card for good operation; you can then use these settings to configure the transparency, shadows, and fade effects. To enable the COMPOSITE extension, see Lab 2.4, "Fine-Tuning Your Display Configuration ."

2.3.1.5. Customizing Konqueror

Since Konqueror was designed as both a web browser and a file manager, it offers many options for customization. You can access these configuration options by selecting Settings→Configure Konqueror from within Konqueror, or within the KDE Control Panel by selecting KDE Components→File Manager. The arrangement of the configuration options is slightly different, depending on the route you take get there; Figure 2-13 shows both layouts.

Figure 2-13. Konqueror configuration window; Control Panel version (left) and Konqueror Settings version (right)

Here are some of the most useful customizations:

 On the Behavior tab/button, the checkbox "Open folders in separate windows" enables a mode similar to the Nautilus spatial mode, which displays each folder separatelybut, unlike Nautilus, window locations are not remembered on a per-directory basis by Konqueror.

 Also on the Behavior tab/button, the checkbox "Show 'Delete' context menu entries which bypass the trashcan" enables you to directly delete files without the two-step process of moving them to trash and then emptying the trash (two-step deletion gives you a chance to review deletions before finalizing them but does not free up disk space right away).

 The Previews tab/button configures the types of files and the maximum size of files for which previews will be generated. Setting the maximum size to a lower value will speed up the display of large directories of big files. Enabling "Show file tips" and "Show previews in file tips" on the Behavior tab/button will make Konqueror display an extended preview whenever you hover the mouse pointer over a file icon.

 The Quick Copy & Move tab (Control Center only) enables "Copy to" and "Move to" options on context menus. This is a useful feature that offers recent and common directories as copy/move targets.

2.3.1.6. Customizing keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are configured using the Control Center option Regional & Accessibility→Keyboard Shortcuts, shown in Figure 2-14. To add or change a shortcut, double-click on an action in the list of actions under the Shortcut Schemes tab or a command under the Command Shortcuts tab. Enter the new shortcut (such as Ctrl-Shift-H) and click OK, or click on the whisk-like icon beside the Shortcut field to clear it.

Figure 2-14. KDE keyboard shortcut configuration

2.3.3.1. ...setting the defaults for new users?

The directory /etc/skel acts as a template, or skeleton , for new account creation. Any KDE configuration files placed in /etc/skel/.kde/share/config will get copied to new user accounts automatically.

2.4.3.1. ...per-user display resolution settings?

The GNOME menu option System→Preferences→Screen Resolution sets the default resolution and refresh rate for a particular user (in KDE, select Control Center from the panel menu, then click on Display under Peripherals; be sure to select the checkbox labeled "Apply settings on KDE startup"). 

The system-wide resolution setting will be used for the user login display; individual user settings will take effect after the user logs in. The color depth can't be set this way because the architecture of the X Window System requires the color depth to be a system-wide setting.

2.4.3.2. ...creating the xorg.conf file without using system-config-display?

The X server itself is capable of generating a reasonable xorg.conf file, which you can then fine-tune by manually editing it:

# X -configure :1

The new configuration file will be placed in /root/xorg.conf.new . In order to use it, you'll need to link the name /dev/mouse to the default mouse device:

# ln -s /dev/input/mice /dev/mouse  

You can then test the new configuration:

$ X -config /root/xorg.conf.new  

This will present a blank display with an X-shaped mouse pointer. If the display looks right and you can move the pointer with your mouse, then go ahead and install this new configuration file as the default configuration:

# mv /root/X11/xorg.conf /root/X11/xorg.conf.backup

# mv /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf  

You can fine-tune this configuration either manually or by using tools such as system-config-display .

2.4.3.3. ...using multiple mice and keyboards with one display?

The default X server configuration will work with all USB pointer devices and keyboards plugged into the system. The devices will work in parallel; for example, if you have two mice, moving either one will move the onscreen pointer, and if you have two keyboards, typing on either will send characters to the display.

Most keyboards will be detected as soon as they are plugged in, but other keyboards will be detected only when the system starts. For example, I have a secondary French Canadian USB keyboard and a USB calculator/numeric keypad; the French Canadian keyboard is detected as soon as it is plugged in, but the numeric keypad must be plugged in during boot in order to be detected properly. Special features of advanced pointers (such as touchpads) will not be configured automatically unless those devices are plugged in when system-config-display is run.

2.4.3.4. ...a nonstandard monitor, such as a widescreen laptop display?

In most cases, these displays can be probed automatically using VESA standard protocols. If not, edit /etc/X11/ xorg.conf , find the Monitor section, and enter the HorizSync (horizontal scan frequency) and VertRefresh (vertical scan/refresh frequency) values specified in your monitor documentation:

Section "Monitor"

 Identifier "Monitor0"

 VendorName "Monitor Vendor" 

 ModelName "Unknown Monitor"

 HorizSync 32.00 - 72.0 # Horiz. sync in kHz

 VertRefresh 58.0 - 62.0 # Vert. refresh in Hz

EndSection

Next, edit the default resolution to match your hardware:

Section "Screen"

 Identifier "Screen0"

 Device "Videocard0

 Monitor "Monitor0"

 DefaultDepth 24

 SubSection "Display"

  Depth 24

  Modes "1280x800"

 EndSubSection

EndSection

Select the menu option System→Administration→Printing (in KDE, it is Administration→Printing). You will be prompted to enter the root password, and then the printer configuration window will appear, as shown in Figure 2-16. If any print queues have been previously defined, they will be listed on the left side of the window, grouped according to connection type; if you click on one of these printers, the configuration details for that printer will appear on the right.

Figure 2-16. Printer configuration window

2.5.1.1. Add a new print queue

USB and parallel printers, as well as network printers that use the Internet Print Protocol (IPP), will be detected and configured automatically; you can adjust the printer configuration by editing the values in the main printer-configuration window (Figure 2-16) and then clicking Apply.

Other printers must be configured manually. Click on the New Printer icon to access the window shown in Figure 2-17.

Figure 2-17. New Printer window

Enter the name of the printer, which should be short and contain no spaces. I recommend using the generic printer type followed by a number (e.g., laser3 or inkjet0 ); even if you only have one printer now, you may add more in the future. If desired, you can add verbose description and location information. Click Forward to proceed to the connection configuration step, shown in Figure 2-18 .

Figure 2-18. Printer connection configuration

The Devices list shows all detected local printers, plus serial ports and common network printing protocols. Select the appropriate option; for network printers, you will need to enter the IP address or hostname as well as the printer or queue name. Press Forward to proceed to the driver configuration step, shown in the left side of Figure 2-19. Select the printer manufacturer, then click Forward; on the next display (shown on the right side of Figure 2-19), select the printer model. Use the Comments buttons to display information about the printer, driver, or PPD file.

The Drivers list may present more than one driver option. In almost all cases, it is best to use the default driver.

Click Forward, then click Apply on the confirmation dialog that appears.

Figure 2-19. Printer driver selection

2.5.1.2. Edit an existing print queue

To change an existing queue configuration, select the printer in the main window (Figure 2-16) and edit the option values on the tabs:

Settings

Configures the printer description, location, connection details, printer driver, and printer status (enabled/accepting/shared). Enabled means the the queue contents will be sent to the printer; accepting means that new print requests may be enqueued.

Policies

Configures starting and ending banner pages (which identify each print job) and the action to be taken when a printer error occurs.

Access control

Used to restrict printer access to specific users, or to prevent specific users from accessing the printer.

Printer options

Configures the default settings for printer features such as stapling, duplexing, media, ink cartridge type, and resolution.

2.5.1.3. Set the default print queue

The default print queue is used for all print requests that do not specify a queue. To set the default, select a printer and then click Make Default Printer. Click Apply to activate your change.

2.5.1.4. Printing

The command lpr (line printer requester) is used to place a print request into a queue. When used from the command line, lpr can accept input from standard input or from a specified file. For example, to print the file output.ps :

$ lpr output.ps

Or to print the calendar for the year, generated by the cal -y command:

$ cal -y | lpr

To specify a specific print queue (such as laser3 ), add the -P argument along with the name of the queue:

$ lpr -P laser3 output.ps

$ cal -y | lpr -P laser3

You can view the status of a print queue, including the documents in the queue, by clicking on the printer icon that appears in the notification area of the GNOME panel bar. The window shown in Figure 2-20 will appear; this window shows all print requests made by you on all print queues. To delete a document from the queue, right-click on it and select the Cancel document option.

Figure 2-20. Document print-status window

The lpq command provides another way of viewing a queue's contents:

$ lpq

inkjet0 is ready

no entries

While the graphical Document print-status window shows requests by one user on all queues, lpq shows requests by all users on a single queue. The output in the previous example shows that there are no documents in the default queue inkjet0 . You can specify a specific printer queue using the -P argument:

$ lpq -P laser3

laser3 is ready and printing

Rank Owner Job File(s) Total Size

active chris 91 report.ps 124928 bytes

2 jason 92 spreadsheet.ps 523423 bytes

In this case, there are two jobs in the queue; job 91 is printing, and job 92 is scheduled to be printed next.

You can delete a document using the lprm command, which accepts a job number (the default is the active job) and the -P option to specify the print queue. This command will delete job 92 on the print queue laser3 :

$ lprm -P laser3 92

2.5.3.1. ...creating a group of similar printers that are accessed on a first-available-printer basis?

This is called a printer class; to create one, use the New Class button in the graphical configuration tool. Add the desired printers to the printer class and click Apply; you can then print to the printer class instead of a specific printer, and the first available printer will be used to print your document.

2.5.3.2. ...setting up more than one queue for a printer?

Not only is it possible to set up more than one queue for a printer, it's a good idea, because each queue can have a different driver configuration.

For example, I have a color inkjet printer, which is used in text mode with plain paper and in a photo mode with photo paper. I have created three separate queues: color0-draft for fast, low-quality printing that saves ink; color0 for regular printing; and color0-photo for photo printing. The appropriate driver options have been set for each. Although it is possible to create just one queue and set the resolution and paper type within some applications, not all applications are capable of setting those options, and it's simply faster and more convenient to have preconfigured queues. Similarly, I have single- and double-sided queues for my laser printer.

2.5.3.3. ...making a PDF instead of printing?

Many applications that don't provide PDF output do provide the ability to print to a file instead of printing to an output queue; this feature can be used to save a PostScript copy of the print request, which you can then convert to a PDF by using Ghostscript via the ps2pdf script.

For example, you could "print" from Firefox to the file bankstatement.ps and then convert bankstatement.ps to bankstatement.pdf with this command:

$ ps2pdf bankstatement.ps

The resulting PDF file can be viewed with Evince, xpdf, or Adobe Acrobat Reader (not installed by default).

2.5.3.4. ...using an HP multifunction printer?

HP produces several lines of multifunction printer/copier/scanner devices that use a multiplexed communication protocol; the printer and scanner are accessed through a single connection. The software necessary to access these devices is built into Fedora Core; just ensure that the hplip service is running.

2.6.3.1. ...allowing multiple users to use a sound device at the same time?

When a user logs in, Fedora assigns ownership of the sound devices to that user and sets the permissions so that only that user can open them. If you want to allow several users (including those remotely logged in) to use sound at the same time, you can change the permissions of the sound devices so that they're universally accessible:

$ chmod 0777 /dev/snd/* /dev/mixer* /dev/audio* /dev/dsp*

To make this the default configuration, add this line to the end of the system-wide login script, /etc/profile .

2.6.3.2. ...controlling the volume levels from the command line or a script?

The amixer utility provides command-line access to the sound controls. Run without arguments, it will tell you all of the current settings (which can run into hundreds of lines of output):

$ amixer

Simple mixer control 'Master',0

 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined

 Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

 Limits: Playback 0 - 31

 Mono:

 Front Left: Playback 17 [55%] [on]

 Front Right: Playback 17 [55%] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Master Mono',0

 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined

 Playback channels: Mono

 Limits: Playback 0 - 31

 Mono: Playback 14 [45%] [on]

Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0

 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined

 Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

 Limits: Playback 0 - 31 

 Mono:

 Front Left: Playback 20 [65%] [on]

 Front Right: Playback 20 [65%] [on]

...(Lines snipped)...

You can generate a more compact list of just the simple mixer control names using the scontrols subcommand as an argument:

$ amixer scontrols

Simple mixer control 'Master',0

Simple mixer control 'Master Mono',0

Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0

Simple mixer control '3D Control - Center',0

Simple mixer control '3D Control - Depth',0

Simple mixer control '3D Control - Switch',0

Simple mixer control 'PCM',0

...(Lines snipped)...

To get the setting for a single control, use the get subcommand:

$ amixer get Master

Simple mixer control 'Master',0

 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

 Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

 Limits: Playback 0 - 31 

 Mono:

 Front Left: Playback 20 [65%] [on]

 Front Right: Playback 20 [65%] [on]

To change a setting, use the set subcommand:

$ amixer set Master 31

Simple mixer control 'Master',0

 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch

 Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right

 Limits: Playback 0 - 31

 Mono:

 Front Left: Playback 31 [100%] [on]

 Front Right: Playback 31 [100%] [on]

2.6.3.3. ...playing or recording an audio file from the command line?

There are many different audio file formats, and Fedora includes many different media players so that you can listen to them (including Totem, Mplayer, and Xine). Fedora Core also includes the sox utility to convert between formats; the sox package also includes a handy script named play that can be run from the command line. It converts just about any file into an appropriate format for output and sends the sound to your speakers:

$ play /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup_2.ogg

You can also apply various sox effects to the output. To play a file backward at a reduced volume:

$ play /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup_2.ogg -v 0.2 reverse

The sox package also includes the rec script to record sound:

$ rec /tmp/x.ogg

Send break (control-c) to end recording

         Ctrl-C

Fonts can be easily added or removed by manually copying the font files or by using the file managers: Nautilus (GNOME) or Konqueror (KDE).

2.7.1.1. Adding and removing fonts using GNOME Nautilus

GNOME's Nautilus file manager has a special URI for viewing and managing fonts. To access it:

1. Start Nautilus; use the My Computer or Home desktop icons, the panel bar icons, or any folder in the Places menu.

2. Select Open Location from the Nautilus File menu, or press Ctrl-L. An Open Location dialog will appear.

3. Enter fonts:/ in the location text box.

Figure 2-24 shows the Nautilus font display.

Figure 2-24. Font display in GNOME's Nautilus file manager

The lower- and uppercase letter A of each font are displayed, if the font has those characters. Double-clicking on a font (or right-clicking and selecting " Open with GNOME Font Viewer") will display some basic information about the fontincluding the license, file size, and font stylealong with an extended font sample, as shown in Figure 2-25 .

Figure 2-25. GNOME font viewer

To install fonts into your personal font directory (~/.fonts), simply drag and drop them into the Nautilus font window. The fonts may not show up in the Nautilus display until you log out and log in again, but they will be installed and immediately accessible to applications when they start (if an application is already running, just restart that application to gain access to the new fonts).

To install fonts that are in a compressed archive, such as those from http://www.1001freefonts.com , click on the .zip archive link (i.e., for the Windows font) in your web browser, then select "Open with Archive Manager" as the action. You can then drag and drop the file from the Archive Manager window to the Nautilus font window.

A personal font can be deleted in the same way that a file is deleted using Nautilus: drag it from the Nautilus window to the trash can, or right-click on it and select "Move to Trash."

2.7.1.2. Adding and removing fonts using KDE Konqueror

KDE's Konqueror file and web browser enables you to view, install, and delete fonts from both the system-wide font directories and your personal font directory. To access this mode:

1. Start Konqueror, using the Home or Web Browser panel icons, or the K menu.

2. Enter fonts:/ into the location field.

The window will show icons labeled Personal and System; double-click on the group you wish to see, and the display shown in Figure 2-26 will appear (the System group is shown here).

Figure 2-26. Konqueror system font display

Double-clicking on a font will present the KFontView window shown in Figure 2-27 , showing an extended font sample. Clicking on the T icon will enable you to change the sample sentence; the default sentence is same pangram used in the GNOME font viewer.

Figure 2-27. KFontView window

To add fonts, simply drag and drop them into the font window. If you drop them into the system font window, you will be prompted to enter the root password.

To delete a font, treat it like a file: drag and drop it onto the trash can, or right-click and select Delete. As with installation, you will be prompted for the root password if the font is from the system font window.

2.7.1.3. Adding and removing fonts from the command line

When an application starts, the font configuration system automatically scans ~/.fonts (your personal font directory) as well as /usr/share/fonts (which is the system-wide font directory). Any changes to the fonts contained in those directories are detected automatically, so adding fonts is simply a matter of placing files into those directories, and removing fonts is simply a matter of deleting them.

For example, if you have a compressed tar file named /tmp/newfonts.tgz containing a folder named newfonts full of TrueType fonts and wish to install them for your own private use, you can use these commands:

$ cd ~/.fonts

$ tar xvzf /tmp/newfonts.tgz "*.ttf" "*.TTF"

Or, to install the fonts so that they are accessible to all users system-wide:

# cd /usr/share/fonts

# mkdir newfonts

# cd newfonts

# tar xvzf /tmp/newfonts.tgz "*.ttf" "*.TTF"

To delete all of your personal fonts:

$ rm -rf ~/.fonts/*

And to delete the system-wide fonts installed in newfonts :

# rm -rf /user/share/fonts/ newfonts

2.7.1.4. Installing the Microsoft fonts

Web pages and documents created on Microsoft systems often use fonts that are distributed with Windows. For a time, Microsoft made these fonts available free of charge on its web site; although they are no longer available directly from Microsoft, they are available from fontconfig.org under Microsoft's fairly simple licensing terms, documented in http://fontconfig.org/webfonts/Licen.TXT .

Installing these fonts makes it possible to view Word and Excel documents and web pages created under Windows as they were originally designed. Mozilla, Firefox, OpenOffice, and other applications can all use these fonts.

In order to install these fonts, you'll need to obtain a copy of the cabextract program to extract the fonts from archives created in Microsoft's proprietary CAB format:

# yum install cabextract

Once cabextract is installed, you can easily install the Microsoft fonts from the command line:

# wget http://fontconfig.org/webfonts/webfonts.tar.gz

# tar xvzf webfonts.tar.gz

# cd msfonts

# cabextract *.exe

# mkdir /usr/share/fonts/microsoft

# cp *.[tT]* /usr/share/fonts/microsoft

# cd ..

# rm -rf msfonts

# fc-cache

2.7.1.5. Using newly installed fonts

Applications load their font lists at startup time, so simply relaunching an application is usually all that is required before you can start using new fonts.

The command fc-cache will create an index cache to speed application startup. To use it:

$ fc-cache

# fc-cache

Running fc-cache as a regular user will create the index cache for ~/.fonts , which is not really necessary because the index cache will be created automatically. Running it as root will create the index cache for /usr/share/fonts and is strongly recommended; otherwise, an index of the system-wide fonts will be created for each individual user, wasting time and storage space.

2.7.1.6. Configuring font rendering options

Font rendering can be tuned to adjust the font appearance to suit user preferences and the display hardware in use. Both GNOME and KDE provide configuration tools to configure font rendering.

The GNOME configuration window shown in Figure 2-28 is accessed from the menu item System→Preferences→Font. The KDE rendering configuration panel shown in Figure 2-29 is accessed through the KDE Control Panel under Appearance & Themes→Fonts. 

Figure 2-28. GNOME font-rendering preferences tool

Figure 2-29. KDE font rendering preferences tool

In both cases, you can enable or disable antialiasing, adjust the level of antialiasing hinting, and set subpixel order.

On an older system with a slow CPU and/or low memory resources, turning off antialiasing can make enough of a performance difference to turn an unbearably slow system into one that performs reasonably.

When antialiasing is enabled, the hinting level can be set according to user preferenceexperiment and see what looks best.

If you have an LCD screen, select "Smoothing: Subpixel (LCD)" in GNOME or "Use Subpixel Smoothing" in KDE. You'll also need to select the order of the red, green, and blue elements on your screen; since this information is almost never documented in the hardware specifications, use a large magnifying glass or experiment until you find the setting that looks the best.

2.7.3.1. ...getting a list of available fonts?

The fc-list program (a utility provided with Fontconfig) will list all of the fonts available through the Xft/Fontconfig system:

$ fc-list

Luxi Serif:style=Regular

MiscFixed:style=Regular

Utopia:style=Bold Italic

Nimbus Sans L:style=Regular Italic

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:style=Bold

Webdings:style=Regular

Console:style=Regular

URW Palladio L:style=Roman

Century Schoolbook L:style=Bold Italic

Luxi Serif:style=Bold

...(snip)...

The list isn't in any sort of order, and it contains a lot of information about the styles available for each font, so it's not very readable. Using some arguments and the sort command will produce a much more readable list of available font faces:

$ fc-list : family|sort -u

Andale Mono

Arial

Arial Black

Bitstream Charter

Bitstream Vera Sans

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

Bitstream Vera Serif

Century Schoolbook L

Comic Sans MS

Console

console8x8

Courier

...(snip)..

2.7.3.2. ...specifying a font name?

Fontconfig font names are very easy to use: just specify the font face you wish to use. You can optionally include a size (separated by a hyphen) or font attribute name/value pairs (after a colon).

For matching purposes, you can specify multiple values for the font name or size, separated by commas. The first matching value will be selected.

Table 2-4 lists some font names expressed using this notation.

Table 2-4. Fontconfig font names

For a complete list of font properties that can be used in font names, see the documentation on the Fontconfig web site at http://fontconfig.org . Note that many of the properties mentioned in the documentation are not used; on most systems, style is the only property specified for most of the fonts.

xterm has support for Fontconfig/Xft and can be used to test a Fontconfig font name. The command-line option to use is -fa (face); if the font name contains spaces, be sure to quote it on the command line. Here are some examples:

$ xterm -fa courier

$ xterm -fa courier-12

$ xterm -fa courier-18:style=italic

$ xterm -fa "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-16:style=bold"

$ xterm -fa foo,bar,baz,utopia,courier,qux-12,18,10:style=italic

If the selected font does not use character-cell spacing, xterm will add considerable spacing between characters (the last example demonstrates this).

Using USB storage in Fedora Core is easy: simply insert the USB storage device into any available USB port.

If you're using GNOME, the device will be mounted, an icon will appear on the desktop, and a window will open showing the contents of the device.

When you insert a USB storage device while running KDE, the dialog in Figure 2-31 appears with two options: "Open in New Window" and "Do Nothing." Choose one of the options and click OK. If you want to skip this dialog next time you insert a storage device, select the checkbox labeled "Always do this for this type of media."

Figure 2-31. KDE USB Storage action dialog

The action performed when a new USB storage device is detected is configurable in both GNOME and KDE.

2.8.1.1. Safely removing a USB drive

Before unplugging a USB drive, you should unmount it to prevent data loss. In GNOME and KDE, right-click on the drive's desktop icon and select the menu option Unmount Volume or Remove Safely. Wait until the activity lights stop blinking and then unplug the drive.

2.8.1.2. Configuring default actions in GNOME

To configure the action taken when GNOME detects a new USB storage device, select the menu option System→Preferences→"Removable Drives and Media." The window shown in Figure 2-32 will appear.

Figure 2-32. Removable Drives and Media Preferences tool

The first tab, Storage, contains four checkboxes for USB storage devices:

Mount removable drives when hot-plugged

Freshly inserted USB drives will be mounted, and a corresponding icon will appear on the desktop.

Mount removable media when inserted

Freshly inserted media such as CDs and DVDs will be mounted, and an icon will appear on the desktop.

Browse removable media when inserted

Removable drives and removable media will be displayed in a Nautilus window when they are mounted, regardless of whether they are mounted automatically (depending on the settings of the checkboxes) or manually.

Auto-run programs on new drives and media

Searches for a file named autorun on newly mounted media, prompts the user for confirmation, and then executes that file. The file may be a script or a compiled program.

The third tab, Cameras, has a checkbox labeled "Import digital photos when connected." When checked (which is the default), GNOME will look for a directory named dcim on any newly mounted USB media. If found, it will run the specified command (the default is gthumb-import ).

2.8.1.3. Configuring default actions in KDE

To configure the behavior of KDE when storage devices are inserted, open the KDE Control Center and select the configuration category Peripherals→Storage Media. The window shown in Figure 2-33 will appear.

Figure 2-33. KDE Removable Media configuration

Select Unmounted Removable Medium in the "Medium types" menu. Two actions will be displayed: "Open in New Window," which mounts the drive and opens a Konqueror browse window, and Do Nothing, which causes a drive icon to be displayed on the desktop, which, when clicked, will mount and browse the drive.

To set one of these actions as the default, click on it, then click "Toggle as Auto Action," and then Apply. The selected action will take place automatically when new media is detected.

2.8.3.1. ...partitioning a flash drive?

You can use the standard fdisk utility to partition a flash drive (after unmounting it, if necessary). Here is an example in which fdisk is used to divide a 64 MB flash drive into two partitions:

# fdisk /dev/sdb

Since fdisk is an interactive tool, it's necessary to enter single-letter commands to specify the changes that should be made to the partition table. First, print the partition table on the screen so you can review it:

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 65 MB, 65536000 bytes

3 heads, 42 sectors/track, 1015 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 126 * 512 = 64512 bytes

 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdb1 1 1015 63924 83 Linux

This table shows a 64 MB device (64,512 bytes) with one partition.

Delete the old partition:

Command (m for help): d

Selected partition 1

Create a new primary partition number 1 that is 30 MB in size:

Command (m for help): n

Command action

 e extended

 p primary partition (1-4)

p

Partition number (1-4): 1

First cylinder (1-1015, default 1): ENTER

Using default value 1

Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-1015, default 1015): +30M  

Create a new primary partition number 2, taking up the rest of the drive:

Command (m for help): n

Command action

 e extended

 p primary partition (1-4)

p

Partition number (1-4): 2

First cylinder (467-1015, default 467): ENTER

Using default value 467

Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (467-1015, default 1015): ENTER

Using default value 1015

Print the partition table to check it:

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 65 MB, 65536000 bytes

3 heads, 42 sectors/track, 1015 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 126 * 512 = 64512 bytes

 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdb1 1 466 29337 83 Linux

/dev/sdb2 467 1015 34587 83 Linux

Set the type code for the two partitions:

Command (m for help): t

Partition number (1-4): 1

Hex code (type L to list codes): L

 0 Empty 1e Hidden W95 FAT1 80 Old Minix be Solaris boot

 1 FAT12 24 NEC DOS 81 Minix / old Lin bf Solaris

 2 XENIX root 39 Plan 9 82 Linux swap / So c1 DRDOS/sec (FAT-

...(snip)...

 9 AIX bootable 4f QNX4.x 3rd part 8e Linux LVM df BootIt

 a OS/2 Boot Manag 50 OnTrack DM 93 Amoeba e1 DOS access

 b W95 FAT32 51 OnTrack DM6 Aux 94 Amoeba BBT e3 DOS R/O

 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52 CP/M 9f BSD/OS e4 SpeedStor

 e W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux a0 IBM Thinkpad hi eb BeOS fs

...(snip)...

1c Hidden W95 FAT3 75 PC/IX

Hex code (type L to list codes): c

Changed system type of partition 1 to c (W95 FAT32 (LBA))

Command (m for help): t

Partition number (1-4): 2

Hex code (type L to list codes): c

Changed system type of partition 2 to c (W95 FAT32 (LBA))

Write (save) and exit:

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl( ) to re-read partition table.

Syncing disks.

The partition type used, c , indicates that the partition will contain a FAT filesystem. This enables compatibility with Windows and Mac OS X systems and is also necessary for most camera flash-memory cards and digital music players.

Once the partitions have been created, they can be formatted with mkfs :

# mkfs -t vfat -n spreadsheet -F 32 /dev/sdb1

mkdosfs 2.10 (22 Sep 2003)

# mkfs -t vfat -n database -F 3 2 /dev/sdb2

mkdosfs 2.10 (22 Sep 2003)

The option -F 32 forces the use of 32-bit file allocation tables, which is not strictly necessary for drives under 512 MB in size but is required for larger drives and matches the filesystem type assigned to the partition by the previous fdisk command. The -n labelname option sets the filesystem label, which will be used to determine the mount points for the filesystem.

2.8.3.2. ...using a Linux filesystem such as ext2 on a USB storage device?

You can use ext2 or any other filesystem on a USB storage device, but that will reduce compatibility with other systems. To format the partition /dev/sdb2 with an ext3 filesystem:

# mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb2

2.8.3.3. ...accessing USB storage from a nongraphical application?

Automatically mounted storage media are mounted to the directory /media/<label> if the filesystem has a volume label, or to /media/disk<-N > if there is no volume label, where <-N> is a sequentially assigned number (the first disk mounted is simply called /media/disk ).

2.8.3.4. ...manually mounting a USB storage device?

When you're in runlevel 3 (character mode), your USB storage devices won't be automatically mounted. You can still use USB storage; you just have to mount it by hand:

# mkdir /mnt/usbdisk1

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdisk1

The SCSI disk IDs are sequentially assigned (the first USB disk found since boot is /dev/sda , the second is /dev/sdb , and so forth) but you may need to experiment to find the right value.

When you're done with the storage device, unmount it before unplugging it:

# umount /mnt/usbdisk1

Fedora uses the Advanced Configuation and Power Interface (ACPI) specification to monitor and manage the current power configuration. This approach requires support from the motherboard and CPU as well as the operating system; fortunately, most systems built in the last decade have some level of ACPI support, though many BIOS implementations are nonstandard.

3.1.1.1. Using gnome-power-manager to conserve power

Fedora's main power-management tool is gnome-power-manager. You can access the gnome-power-manager configuration window using the menu option System→Preferences→More Preferences→Power Management. 

The same program controls the power-management icon in the panel bar, which may or may not appear depending on the system configuration (it will usually appear by default on a system that has a battery, including most notebooks, but will not appear by default on a system with no battery). The symbol used for the icon will change according to the power supply: it will show a battery when discharging the battery, a battery plus a power cord when charging the battery, or just a power cord on a system with no battery. You can access the gnome-power-manager configuration window by right-clicking on the icon and selecting Preferences.

Regardless of how you access the configuration window, you will see the display shown in Figure 3-1 .

Figure 3-1. Power Manager Preferences window 

 This window contains three tabs: one that configures power management when the system is running on AC or charging the battery, one that configures power management when the system is running on (and discharging) the battery, and one for general power-management settings.

The controls on first two tabs are almost identical:

Sleep

Configures the conditions under which the display and the whole system is put to sleep. For the display, "sleep" is defined as a low-power mode; for the system, the definition of "sleep" is taken from the setting on the General tab. You can set either to a value between 11 and 60 minutes (in one-minute intervals), or you can disable sleep by moving the slider all the way to the right (Never).

When laptop lid is closed

Specifies the action to be taken when a lid closure event is signaled by ACPI. The options include: do nothing, which causes the system to continue to use full power, to be available the moment you open the screen; blank the screen, which is similar to doing nothing but will use slightly less power and delay system startup for a few seconds; or suspend or hibernate the system.

Prefer power savings over performance

If you are performing a task that is not very demanding, such as editing a document, instruct gnome-power-manager to maximize the battery life (or, on AC, reduce power consumption) by selecting the checkbox. On the other hand, if you need optimal performance without regard to the power consumptionsuch as when you are giving an important presentationleave the checkbox for this option unselected.

When battery power critical

This button appears only on the "Running on Battery" tab, and it configures the action to be taken if the battery runs down to the point that it will power the system for only a few minutes. The options are to do nothing, to suspend or hibernate, or to shut down the system. For most users, doing nothing is a poor choice because the system will abruptly shut off within a few minutes; suspend continues to use power, although at a much lower rate than usual, so the battery will ultimately go dead in due course (causing the loss of any data in memory). Shutdown in an option, but the shutdown procedure itself may take a few minutes and uses a fair bit of power. Therefore, the best choice (if your system supports it) is to hibernate the system when the battery power becomes critical. Hibernation takes less than a minute to complete and even less time to resume, yet it uses no power during the time that the system is in hibernation.

The third tab in this window controls general power-management options, as shown in Figure 3-2 .

Figure 3-2. General tab on Power Management Preferences window 

 The options in this window control how the system is put to sleep when the inactivity period set in the other tabs is reached (do nothing, suspend, or hibernate). It also configures the times that the the power-management icon is displayed in the Notification Area; the default is to display it only when the battery is present, so if you want to easily access the power-management controls on an AC-only system, set this to "Always display icon."

It's important to understand the difference between the suspend and hibernate options: in both cases, the system is effectively off, but in suspend mode the memory is still operating (and consuming power), while in hibernate mode the memory is transferred to swapspace. This means that suspend state will eventually run your battery down, and then the information in RAM will be lostbut until that time, the system will be able to quickly resume its operation. On the other hand, your system can be in hibernate state forever without any power and still resume successfully, but it will take a little longer to do so.

In order to hibernate or suspend successfully, the drivers for all of the devices attached to the system must be able to save and restore the device state. There's no simple way to predict if this will be the case, so it's best to try suspend and resume operations when you have nothing critical happening on the system. For hibernation, it's also necessary to have a swap partition instead of (or in addition to) swapspace on a logical volume.

To manually provoke a suspend or hibernate operation, right-click on the power-management icon in the status bar and use the menu options that appear. To resume from a suspend, use the wake-up key defined for your system (you may have to consult the system documentation or experiment to find this). To resume from hibernation, turn your system power on with the power button, then let it start a normal boot cycle. The kernel will recognize the hibernation state and attempt to resume; if this fails, a normal boot will take place (but you may lose changes to any files that were opened when you hibernated your computer, so it's a good idea to save changes before you hibernate).

3.1.1.2. Viewing power information

If your system has a battery, gnome-power-manager provides a number of interesting graphs showing your power state. To view them, right-click on the power management icon on the panel, then select Information. The window shown in Figure 3-3 will be presented.

Figure 3-3. Power Information window

The tabs across the top provide access to the available information and graphs:

Device Information

Displays the current battery state. Clicking on More presents the battery technology, serial number, and a capacity rating showing the percentage of the original design capacity that the battery is now capable of holding (the higher the number, the better the battery condition).

Charge History

This graph shows the battery charge (as a percentage of its current maximum) over time. The graphs are automatically scaled horizontally.

Power History

Displays the battery charge and discharge rates over time, as shown in Figure 3-4 . If the battery is fully charged and the system is on external power, the discharge rate will be shown as zero, but if the battery is charging, the system will show the rate at which it is charging. When running on battery power, this graph shows the rate of discharge. Power events are marked on this graph, including transitions to and from AC power, suspend and hibernate events, lid closures, and display idle periods. You can use the information in this graph to see the impact of your usage patterns on the system's power consumption.

Figure 3-4. Power History graph

Estimated Time History

Shows the history of the calculated time to charge the battery, when you're on AC power, or to discharge the battery, when you're running only on the battery. Power events are also shown on this log.

Event Log

Displays a more verbose listing of the same power events shown on the graphs.

On an AC-only system, the graphs will all be flat lines, but power events will still be displayed.

3.1.1.3. Changing the CPU speed

If CMOS semiconductors were perfect, they would consume power only when they changed state. They're not perfect, so they leak energy and consume power when idle, but that's a tiny fraction of the power they consume when changing state.

The system clock is a pulse generator that controls the speed at which the CPU changes state, and therefore controls the amount of energy used by the CPU and related system components. Therefore, there is a trade-off between performance and power consumption.

Fedora can balance power usage against performance automatically according to system workload. This feature is provided by the cpuspeed service and is enabled by default.

The default parameters used by this service work well in most cases, but can be adjusted by editing the file /etc/cpuspeed.conf , which looks like this:

VMAJOR=1

VMINOR=1

# uncomment this and set to the name of your CPUFreq module

#DRIVER="powernow-k7"

# Let background (nice) processes speed up the cpu

OPTS="$OPTS -n"

# Add your favorite options here

#OPTS="$OPTS -s 0 -i 10 -r"

# uncomment and modify this to check the state of the AC adapter

#OPTS="$OPTS -a /proc/acpi/ac_adapter/*/state"

# uncomment and modify this to check the system temperature

#OPTS="$OPTS -t /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/*/temperature 75"

Uncomment the OPTS lines that contain additional options you wish to use. The pre-configured lines have these meanings:

-n

Allow processes that have been marked as low priority using the nice command to run at full speed. The default is to slow down the processor when only low-priority processes are running.

-s 0 -i 10 -r

Manages only CPU 0 ( -s 0 ), making speed change decisions once a second instead of the default of once every two seconds ( -i 10 ), and restore the original speed when cpuspeed exits ( -r ).

-a /proc/acpi/ac_adapter/*/state

Monitors the AC adapter and switches to minimum speed when AC power is removed. Adding -C will force the system to operate at maximum speed when AC power is connected.

-t /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/*/temperature 75

Watches the system temperature and slows down the CPU when the temperature exceeds 75 degrees Celsius (167 degrees Fahrenheit).

To see a list of all available options, run this command:

$ /usr/sbin/cpuspeed --help 2>&1|less  

After editing /etc/cpuspeed , restart the cpuspeed service:

# service cpuspeed restart

Stopping cpuspeed: [ OK ]

Starting cpuspeed: [ OK ]

You can monitor the CPU speed by installing a monitor on your panel. Right-click on your GNOME panel, then select "Add to Panel." Choose the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor and click Add. The icon shown in Figure 3-5 will appear; the bar graph will rise and fall as the CPU clock speed is adjusted, and hovering your mouse cursor over the display will show the current frequency setting (the box that appears below the icon in Figure 3-5).

Figure 3-5. CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor

3.1.1.4. Managing power from the command line

If you are using your system through a text-mode console, you can still access the important power-management tools.

To suspend the system, execute the pm-suspend script:

$ pm-suspend

To hibernate, use the pm-hibernate script:

$ pm-hibernate

To view the battery status, access ACPI through the /proc filesystem:

$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/*/state

present: yes

capacity state: ok

charging state: charging

present rate: 3079 mA

remaining capacity: 2912 mAh

present voltage: 16273 mV

Battery details are also available from ACPI:

$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/*/info

present: yes

design capacity: 6450 mAh

last full capacity: 5154 mAh

battery technology: rechargeable

design voltage: 14800 mV

design capacity warning: 515 mAh

design capacity low: 156 mAh

capacity granularity 1: 5 mAh

capacity granularity 2: 5 mAh

model number: DELL 0017F

serial number: 14639

battery type: LION

OEM info: Sony

By dividing the last full capacity by the design capacity, you can determine the condition of the battery. In this case, the battery can presently store 5154/6450 mAh, or about 80 percent of its design capacity, indicating that it's in reasonably good condition.

3.1.1.5. Other ways to extend battery life

To further reduce power consumption:

 Dim your screen as much as the ambient lighting conditions will allow. The backlight for the screen draws a huge amount of power; one of my systems draws 31 percent more power in total when the screen is at maximum brightness than when it is set to minimum brightness.

 Turn off all unneeded services, reducing CPU and disk activity.

 Use a lightweight desktop environment such as Xfce instead of GNOME or KDE.

 Unplug any unneeded external devices, including USB devices, headphones, mice, and keyboards. Each USB device can consume up to 2.5 watts of power, increasing your power consumption by as much as 20 percent.

 Turn off your wireless network radio when it is not in use. Most laptops have a wireless kill switch (sometimes labeled airplane or flight mode ) that turns off the radio portion of the wireless card. This can cut your power consumption by up to 5 percent.

3.1.3.1. ...stopping the hard drive motors when the drives are not in use?

The hdparm program can be used to stop a drive immediately or to configure it to stop if it is idle for a certain length of time; this is called a spin-down (and restarting the drive is called a spin-up ). This does save some power; however, the drive is rarely idle for very long and the length of time (and amount of energy) required to spin-up the drive is significant (and hard on some hardware), so opinion is divided on whether it makes sense to use this feature.

In the case of a two-drive system where the second drive is rarely used, an idle spin-down timeout is a good idea. Configure it with the hdparm command:

# hdparm -S 6 /dev/[hs]d[a-z]

The -S option configures the amount of time that the drive must be idle before spin-down is triggered. The scheme used to encode the timeout period is a bit convoluted (it is described in detail on the manpage for hdparm ), but 0 means that spin-down is disabled, and a value from 1 to 240 sets the idle timeout in multiples of 5 seconds (5 seconds to 20 minutes). The value of 6 used here indicates a 30-second idle timeout.

3.1.3.2. ...turning the computer on and off (or hibernating and resuming) at certain times automatically?

Some important operations are best performed when a system is not in normal use, such as backup, software updating, and data indexing. It's not necessary to keep a system running 24x7 in order to schedule nighttime tasks.

Most modern system BIOSes contain an alarm wake feature, which causes the system to turn on at a preset time. This feature can be used with the hibernate state or a full system shutdown to automate nocturnal activities.

Some BIOS versions permit the wake time to be set through ACPI. To see if this is possible on your system, enable the alarm wake feature using your BIOS configuration utility, then boot Fedora and examine the /proc/acpi/alarm file:

$ cat /proc/acpi/alarm

2007-03-17 00:00:00

Attempt to set this to a time in the future (the date portion of the time may be ignored by your system). If your system clock is maintained in UTC, be sure to also specify this time in UTC:

# echo " 2007-03-17 16:45:00" >/proc/acpi/alarm

$ cat /proc/acpi/alarm

2007-03-17 16:45:00

Shut down your system and see if it turns on at the specified time.

Regardless of whether you can set the alarm time using Linux, you can use the wake-up feature in conjunction with cron to configure automatic boot and shutdown.

Configure your system to turn on at a specified time using either the BIOS or Linux ACPI methods. Create a nocturnal script that performs the work you wish to do at boot time:

#!/bin/bash

#

# /usr/local/bin/nocturnal :: script for nighttime processing

# Place whatever commands you wish to execute at night here

/usr/local/bin/backup-scp

yum -y update

# Shut the system back off - you can use pm-hibernate here

# if it works on your system

shutdown -h now

Replace the last line with pm-hibernate if hibernation works on your system and you wish to reduce the startup time in the morning.

Edit your crontab :

# crontab -e  

Add a line to execute the nocturnal script a few minutes after your preset wake-up time:

# Perform nighttime processing after the 4:30 wake-up

35 4 * * * /usr/local/bin/nocturnal  

If you shut down the system at the end of your working day, it will wake up at night, perform the processing you have configured, and then shut down.

If your system supports changing the alarm time through ACPI, you can schedule multiple wake-up times: have your system start up in the middle of the night and perform the operations described above, and then have it schedule the next wake-up time before shutting down:

#!/bin/bash

#

# /usr/local/bin/nocturnal :: script for nighttime processing

# Please whatever commands you wish to execute at night here

/usr/local/bin/backup-scp

yum -y update

# Schedule another wake-up

date "+%Y-%m-%d

07:50:00 " >/proc/acpi/alarm

# Shut the system back off; you can use pm-hibernate here

# if it works on your system

shutdown -h now

This sets the next wake-up for 7:50 a.m. the same day, just in time to start work at 8 a.m. If your nocturnal processing takes place before midnight, schedule the wake-up for the following day:

# Schedule another wake-up

date +"%Y-%m-%d 07:50:00" -d tomorrow >/proc/acpi/alarm

There are three ways to configure networking on Fedora. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages:

Graphical configuration tool

The best approach for desktop and server systems that will connect to one or two networks and rarely require changes to the network configuration

NetworkManager

Excellent for laptops that will be connecting to a variety of different networks, but only compatible with certain network hardware

Network configuration commands

Good for experimentation, remote administration, and very complex configurations

3.2.1.1. Configuring networking graphically

Select the menu option System→Administration→Networking to access the GUI network configuration tool shown in Figure 3-6. Alternatively, you can type the command system-config-network into a shell (or use the traditional nickname for this program, neat).

Figure 3-6. Network Configuration window

To add a network connection, click on the New icon. The window in Figure 3-7 will appear, enabling you to select the connection type.

Figure 3-7. New Device Type window

Use the default Ethernet connection option for any LAN connection, including cable modem connections as well as all DSL connections made through a router or gateway device. Click Forward to proceed to the device-selection window in Figure 3-8 .

Figure 3-8. Device-selection window

All of the Ethernet devices that have been automatically detected (or previously configured manually) will be listed, with the device name in parentheses (such as eth0 ). Select the device you wish to configure and click Forward.

If the device is not in the list, select Other Ethernet Card from the bottom of the list and click Forward. The window shown in Figure 3-9 will appear; select the Adapter type (which selects the device driver to be used), the device name to be used (the default is usually OK), and any resources the card will use (this area should almost always be left blank). Click Forward.

Figure 3-9. New device-setup window

You will now see the window shown in Figure 3-10 . Select one of the two options to assign the IP address for this network connection:

Automatically obtain IP address settings

Use this option if you wish to use an IP address assigned by a system on your network (such as another computer running a DHCP server, a gateway or router device, or a cable modem). Set the adjacent protocol control to DHCP unless your network uses the older BOOTP protocol (rare).

Statically set IP addresses

Select this option to manually configure the IP address. Fill in the IP address, subnet mask, and gateway (router) address in the labeled fields.

Click Forward to proceed.

Figure 3-10. IP address configuration

Figure 3-11 shows the final confirmation window that appears. Review the information for accuracy and then click Apply.

Figure 3-11. Confirmation window

3.2.1.1.1. Changing a device configuration

To edit an existing network device, double-click on it in the main Network Configuration window (shown earlier in Figure 3-6), or select it and click the Edit icon. Figure 3-12 shows the editing window that appears.

The editing window includes some options that are unavailable when the device is first created. 

Figure 3-12. Network Configuration device-editing window 

There are three tabs in this window. The first tab, General, provides fields for basic device configuration:

Nickname

Any name of your choice. This is provided only for your reference; for example, if you have two Ethernet cards, you might nickname one Internet and the other Corporate to identify the networks to which they are connected.

Activate device when computer starts

Most network devices will have this box checked, but you should leave it unchecked for unused devices and for devices that are used only in certain contextsfor example, a wireless card on a laptop that is used only at home.

Allow all users to enable and disable this device

If selected, this feature enables any user to activate or deactivate the network device without the root password.

Enable IPv6 configuration for this interface

If your network supports IP version 6 (which is rare but becoming more common), select this box.

IP address settings

These fields replicate the fields used during the initial device setup.

Changing the hostname field and then saving the network configuration will prevent you from opening any new GUI applications because the X Window System uses the hostname in the security key used to control access to the display. To correct this problem, log out and then log in again after changing the hostname, or enter this command before doing so:

$ xhost +localhost                     

Figure 3-13 shows the Route tab, which is used to configure network routes when there is more than one gateway (router) available to your system.

For single-gateway networksincluding most home and office networksuse the Default Gateway field on the Devices tab and do not fill in any information on the Route tab.

Figure 3-13. Routing configuration  

To add a new route, click the Edit button, then enter the network to be routed as an IP network address and a netmask, and then enter the Gateway ( router) to which packets destined for that network are to be sent.

Figure 3-13 shows a new routing entry for an 8-bit subnet: the network number is 172.16.4.0, and the netmask is 255.255.255.0, which means that any packets addressed to an IP address that starts with 172.16.4 must be sent through the gateway associated with this route, which has been set to 172.16.97.200.

The gateway must be on the same subnet as the network interface device. 

To edit or delete existing routes, select the route and click on the Edit or Delete buttons.

Figure 3-14 shows the third tab, labeled Hardware Device, which contains three groups of fields:

Figure 3-14. Hardware Device tab

Hardware

Selects the physical network device used for this interface.

Device alias number

Used to configure multiple IP addresses for one device. If you have one Ethernet card and wish to assign it the IP addresses 192.168.4.13 and 10.0.17.42, one IP address could be assigned to the base device ( eth0 ), and the other IP address could be assigned to a different interface device entry connected to the same hardware (which would result in a device alias, such as eth0:1 ). This field is used to set the alias number ( 1 in this example).

To create alias devices, use the same procedure that you use to create physical interfaces. The configuration tool will set the alias number for you automatically. 

Bind to MAC address

This field associates this device entry with a specific physical network interface card via the MAC address (electronic serial number) of the network card. This is desirable in most cases because it prevents the network interfaces from being renumbered if network hardware is later added to the system, shifting (for example) eth0 into eth1 . However, this can cause problems if you replace a network card with a different card of the same model, or if you are using removable disks that are moved between systems (such as hard drives in removable drive trays, which are often used in testing environments and schools). If you do expect the MAC address to change, deselect this checkbox.

3.2.1.1.2. Configuring DNS and the Hosts table

The main network configuration window also contains tabs for Hardware, IPSec, DNS, and the Hosts table. I'm going to focus on the DNS and Hosts tabs in this lab.

The DNS tab shown in Figure 3-15 is used to configure nameservers , computers that are configured to translate hostnames such as google.com into IP addresses. When using DHCP, this information is usually configured automatically. If your DHCP server does not supply this information or you're not using DHCP, enter up to three DNS servers using the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary DNS fields. In the Hostname field, enter the name of the server you are configuring; this should be part of a valid domain, or localhost.localdomain if you don't have a domain.

Figure 3-15. DNS tab

If you are running a nameserver on the same computer, enter 127.0.0.1 (the loopback address that connects to the local host) as the Primary nameserver. Optionally, enter another nameserver as the Secondary DNS just in case your local nameserver is ever down.

If a nameserver times out on you frequently (a problem that is common on slow or congested links, and which causes name lookups to fail the first time and succeed the second time they are requested), enter the nameserver twice (for example, make it both the primary and secondary nameserver). 

The " DNS search path" field is used to specify the domains to be searched when looking up a hostname that does not have a domain-name component. For example, if this field contained myorganization.ca fedorabook.com , then the hostname bluesky would be looked up as bluesky.myorganization.ca , and if no IP address could be found for that name, it would be looked up as bluesky.fedorabook.com .

The Hosts tab shown in Figure 3-16 is used to configure static mappings , which define the relationship between hostnames and IP addresses without using DNS. This is useful if you have only a handful of hosts and wish to refer to them by hostname without going to the trouble of configuring a DNS nameserver.

Figure 3-16. Hosts tab  

To add a static mapping, click the New button, and then enter the IP address, hostname, and (optionally) any aliases or alternate hostnames for that particular IP address. In Figure 3-16 , the address 172.16.97.143 is being associated with the hostname darkday.fedorabook.com as well as the (shorter) alias of just darkday . Click OK to save the mapping.

As you would expect, the Edit and Delete buttons may be used to change or remove a selected static mapping.

Do not delete the entry for 127.0.0.1 or ::1, or your system will not work properly. Both the system's hostname and localhost must appear as the hostname or alias for this entry. If you change this entry and save the configuration, it may not be possible to open new programs on the graphical display until you log out and then log in again.

3.2.1.1.3. Saving and using the network configuration

To save the network configuration that you have configured using the GUI tool, select the menu option File→Save. This will update the network configuration files with your changes but will not immediately activate those changes.

To enable or disable network interfaces, go to the Devices tab ( Figure 3-6 ), select the interface you wish to change, and click Activate or Deactivate. Alternately, you can exit from the network configuration tool and restart the Network service graphically (see Lab 4.6, "Managing and Configuring Services ") or by entering this command:

# service network restart

Shutting down interface eth0: [ OK ]

Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]

Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]

Bringing up interface eth0: [ OK ]

Network interface devices which are set to activate at boot will automatically start up when the network interface is started. Other devices may be started and stopped using the network configuration tool.

However, if the option labeled "Allow all users to enable and disable the device" has been set in the interface device configuration ( Figure 3-12 ), any user can activate or deactivate the device using the GNOME menu option Application→System Tools→Network Device Control (in KDE, System→Network Device Control).

This option may not appear on your GNOME menu; to make it available, right-click on the GNOME application menu and select Edit Menus. Figure 3-17 shows the menu editor that appears.

Figure 3-17. The GNOME menu editor

Select Applications→System Tools in the left pane, select the checkbox labeled Network Device Control in the right pane, and then click on the Close button.

When you start the Network Device Control program, either through the menu or by typing system-control-network in a shell, the window shown in Figure 3-18 will appear.

Figure 3-18. Network Device Control window

To activate or deactivate network interface devices using this program, select the interface and click on the Activate or Deactivate buttons. Click Close when you are done with the window.

You can also activate and deactivate network interfaces from the command line using the ifup and ifdown commands:

# ifconfig eth1

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:2D:00:2B:DB

       BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

       RX packets:794 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

       TX packets:195 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

       collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

       RX bytes:115671 (112.9 KiB) TX bytes:19491 (19.0 KiB)

# ifup eth1

Determining IP information for eth1... done.

# ifconfig eth1

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:2D:00:2B:DB

       inet addr:172.16.97.101 Bcast:172.16.97.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

       inet6 addr: fe80::20c:2dff:fe00:2bdb/64 Scope:Link

       UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

       RX packets:802 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

       TX packets:213 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

       collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

       RX bytes:117520 (114.7 KiB) TX bytes:22579 (22.0 KiB)

# ifdown eth1

# ifconfig eth1

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:2D:00:2B:DB

       BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

       RX packets:802 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

       TX packets:213 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

       collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

       RX bytes:117520 (114.7 KiB) TX bytes:22579 (22.0 KiB)

3.2.1.1.4. Using network profiles

The graphical network configuration tool supports the concept of profiles to permit easy roaming between different networks. You can configure a separate profile for each network that you use (such as home , office , and coffeeshop ).

A standard profile named Common is created when your system is installed. The Common profile is automatically selected at boot time, and it's the only profile that can define interfaces that will be started when the system boots.

To create additional profiles, use the Profile→New menu option. The dialog shown in Figure 3-19 will appear; enter the name of the new profile. You can then select a specific profile from the Profile menu, use the checkboxes in front of the network devices to configure which interfaces are active in that profile, and then select File→Save to save the configuration of that profile.

Figure 3-19. Creating a new Network Configuration profile

Once you have created at least one profile in addition to the standard Common profile, the Network Device Control window will gain a new pull-down menu that enables you to select the active profile, as shown in Figure 3-20 (compare with Figure 3-18).

Figure 3-20. The Active Profile control has been added

To change profiles, select the desired profile from the pull-down menu, and then click on the Activate button. The list of configured network interface devices will change to reflect the interfaces configured as part of the selected profile. Interfaces that are part of the profile but that cannot be activated or deactivated by ordinary users will appear in the interface list, but will be grayed out and unselectable.

3.2.1.2. Using GNOME NetworkManager

The GNOME NetworkManager facility provides an alternative to the use of profiles. NetworkManager is a service that automatically detects network configuration changes and determines available options. A small GUI application permits you to quickly select the network option you wish to use. It's ideal for laptop users because it permits rapid switching between multiple wired and wireless networks.

The NetworkManager service is enabled in the same way as every other service (see Lab 4.6, "Managing and Configuring Services "). You can configure it to start at the next boot by choosing the menu option System→Administration→Services, and then selecting the checkboxes labeled NetworkManger (the related NetworkManagerDispatcher service is not usually required); to start the services immediately, select each of them in turn and then click the Start button.

From the command line, you can start the service immediately using the service command, and you can configure it to start at boot time using chkconfig :

# service NetworkManager start

Setting network parameters...

Starting NetworkManager daemon: [ OK ]

# chkconfig NetworkManager on

As soon as the NetworkManager starts, an icon should appear in your panel's notification area, which is shown in Figure 3-21 . This icon will indicate the type of IP connection currently in use. To switch to a different connection, click on the icon; a list of available connections will appear (including all broadcast local network names if you have a wireless card, plus a little signal-strength bar graph for each wireless network). Click on the network you wish to connect to, and NetworkManager will attempt to make the connection. You will be prompted to enter WEP or WPA encryption keys if necessary.

Figure 3-21. NetworkManager icon (left), showing that a wired Ethernet connection is active  

NetworkManager will establish connections with wired networks automatically, but it will not automatically connect to wireless networks to which you have not previously connected because they may belong to your neighbor, or to companies that you are passing if you are in a vehicle. It will also detect the loss of network connectivity when a wireless signal is no longer usable or a network cable is unplugged.

You can also view the NetworkManager status from the command line by using nm-tool :

# nm-tool

NetworkManager Tool

State: connected

- Device: eth0 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 NM Path: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/eth0

 Type: Wired

 Driver: b44

 Active: yes

 HW Address: 00:0D:56:33:D7:18

 Capabilities:

  Supported: yes

  Carrier Detect: yes

  Speed: 100 Mb/s

 Wired Settings

  Hardware Link: yes

 IP Settings:

  IP Address: 172.16.97.100

  Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

  Broadcast: 172.16.97.255

  Gateway: 172.16.97.254

  Primary DNS: 24.153.23.66

  Secondary DNS: 24.153.22.67

3.2.1.3. Configuring networking from the command line

3.2.1.4. Using wireless adapters that require firmware

Fedora's distribution policies do not permit the inclusion of binary software without source code, and that includes firmware. Unfortunately, some very popular wireless network cards require firmware for which the vendor will not release source code.

If you find that your wireless network card is not working, it is possible that a driver is present, but the firmware file is not. Use grep to search the system logfile for messages related to firmware:

# grep firmware /var/log/messages

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige kernel: usb 2-1: Failed to load zd1201.fw firmware file!

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige kernel: usb 2-1: Make sure the hotplug firmware loader is installed.

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige kernel: usb 2-1: zd1201 firmware upload failed: -2

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige firmware_helper[14394]: Loading of /lib/firmware/zd1201.fw for usb driver failed: No such file or directory

These messages clearly show that the system attempted to load firmware for a USB wireless adapter but failed because the firmware file was not found ( No such file or directory ).

To find more information, view the /var/log/messages file using a text editor or the less program, and search for the date and time identified by the previous grep command:

# less /var/log/messages

...(Lines skipped)...

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige kernel: usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 5

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige kernel: usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige kernel: usb 2-1: Failed to load zd1201.fw firmware file!

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige kernel: usb 2-1: Make sure the hotplug firmware loader is installed.

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige kernel: usb 2-1: Goto http://linux-lc100020.sourceforge.net for more info

Jun 29 04:11:57 beige kernel: usb 2-1: zd1201 firmware upload failed: -2

Notice the message directing you to the driver web site. Visit that web site and download the firmware file provided (in this case, the file was named zd1201-0.14-fw.tar.gz , which was downloaded to the /tmp directory through a web browser). The next step is to unpack this file and then install the firmware by copying the *.fw files to /lib/firmware :

# cd /tmp

# tar xvzf zd1201-0.14-fw.tar.gz

zd1201-0.14-fw/

zd1201-0.14-fw/zd1201.fw

zd1201-0.14-fw/README

zd1201-0.14-fw/makefile

zd1201-0.14-fw/zd1201-ap.fw

# cd zd1201-0.14-fw

# cp *.fw /lib/firmware

You can now use the wireless device after resetting the device driver, which you can do by physically disconnecting and reconnecting the adapter (if it is a removable device, such as a USB or CardBus adapter), rebooting the system, or using modprobe to remove and then reload the device driver.

In this case, the driver name is zd1201 , so the driver can be reloaded with these commands:

# modprobe -r zd1201

# modprobe zd1201

After pausing for a moment to permit the interface to be configured, you can view /var/log/ messages and the output of ifconfig to see whether the driver loaded successfully and brought up the interface:

# tail - 50 /var/log/messages

...(Lines snipped)...

Jun 29 04:25:58 beige kernel: usbcore: deregistering driver zd1201

Jun 29 04:26:04 beige kernel: usb 2-1: wlan0: ZD1201 USB Wireless interface

Jun 29 04:26:04 beige kernel: usbcore: registered new driver zd1201

Jun 29 04:26:05 beige dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67

Jun 29 04:26:10 beige dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67

Jun 29 04:26:11 beige dhclient: DHCPACK from 172.16.97.254

Jun 29 04:26:11 beige NET[15776]: /sbin/dhclient-script : updated /etc/resolv.conf

Jun 29 04:26:11 beige dhclient: bound to 172.16.97.101 -- renewal in 39113 seconds.

# ifconfig

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:56:33:D7:18

       inet addr:172.16.97.100 Bcast:172.16.97.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

       inet6 addr: fe80::20d:56ff:fe33:d718/64 Scope:Link

       UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

       RX packets:18181 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

       TX packets:3263 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

       collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

       RX bytes:2561730 (2.4 MiB) TX bytes:375878 (367.0 KiB)

       Interrupt:177

lo Link encap:Local Loopback

       inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0

       inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host

       UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1

       RX packets:4936 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

       TX packets:4936 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

       collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

       RX bytes:2973825 (2.8 MiB) TX bytes:2973825 (2.8 MiB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:2D:00:2B:DB

       inet addr:172.16.97.101 Bcast:172.16.97.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

       inet6 addr: fe80::20c:2dff:fe00:2bdb/64 Scope:Link

       UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

       RX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

       TX packets:13 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

       collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

       RX bytes:1026 (1.0 KiB) TX bytes:2384 (2.3 KiB)

3.2.1.5. Using private networks

Any IP address that is publicly accessible must be assigned by a central authority in order to prevent address collisions. For private networks, addresses can be freely assigned from pools reserved for this purpose, as listed in Table 3-2 ; these addresses are guaranteed not to conflict with any public IP addresses. Many home and small business gateway products default to assigning addresses in the 192.168.1.x range. If your computer is assigned one of these addresses, it will not normally be accessible from machines that are on different networks (unless you are using the port forwarding feature of your router or wireless access point).

Table 3-2. Private network address pools

3.2.3.1. ...using a Fedora system as a router?

A router passes packets from one interface to another, and Fedora is capable of doing this. /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward controls packet forwarding; writing a 1 to this path enables forwarding:

# echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Likewise, writing a 0 disables forwarding:

# echo 0 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

3.2.3.2. ...renaming a network interface, or configuring a "wlan" interface using the GUI configuration tool?

The ifrename utility can be used to rename a network interface. The -i option specifies the old interface name, and -n sets the new name. To rename wlan0 to eth1 , for example:

# ifrename -i wlan0 -n eth1

eth1

# ifconfig wlan0

wlan0: error fetching interface information: Device not found

# ifconfig eth1

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:2D:00:2B:DB

       BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

       RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

       TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

       collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

       RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

The GUI network configuration program ( system-config-network ) will sometimes refuse to configure interfaces that start with wlan ; after renaming the interface, you can use the GUI configuration tool to permanently set up the interface.

3.3.3.1. ...using a touchpad and a mouse at the same time?

This can be done if the Synaptics device is defined in addition to a traditional mouse, as recommended in the X11 configuration shown in this lab.

3.3.3.2. ...disabling the touchpad automatically when I'm typing?

Even with palm detection, some typists and touchpads register false information during typing (especially true with certain laptop case designs, which transmit case stress to the touchpad). To help in these situations, the Synaptics software includes the syndaemon program, which will automatically disable the touchpad when the keyboard is in use. To start this daemon, simply type its name as a command:

$ syndaemon

Output from one card to multiple monitors is supported only by some drivers. The most commonly used ones are the NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers, and the open source Radeon driver. All of these drivers have some limitations; for example, the NVIDIA driver, when used on a laptop, will always configure an external monitor as primary (screen 0), and the ATI drivers permit only general monitor positioning (you can specify that one monitor is to the right of another, but you can't indicate a difference in their vertical alignment).

3.4.1.1. Configuring dual video on an NVIDIA card

Note that for the changes described in this section to take effect, you will need to restart the X server in one of these ways: changing to runlevel 3 and then back to 5, restarting the system, or terminating the running X server with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (save your work first!).

First, configure and test your system using the NVIDIA proprietary driver (see Lab 5.3, "Using Repositories "), and then add the highlighted lines to the Device section of your /etc/X11/ xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"

 Identifier "Card0"

 Driver "nvidia"

 VendorName "nVidia Corporation"

 BoardName "NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"

 BusID "PCI:1:0:0"

 Option "TwinView"

 Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "31.0 - 80.0"

 Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "50.0 - 75.0"

 Option "TwinViewXineramaInfo" "on"

 Option "MetaModes" "800x600,1024x768"

 Option "TwinViewOrientation" "LeftOf"

EndSection

The SecondMonitorHorizSync and SecondMonitorVertRefresh options configure the horizontal and vertical frequency ranges for the second monitor (the settings for the primary monitor are in the Monitor section of the file). The values given here are reasonable for most small monitors. The TwinViewXineramaInfo line configures the driver to inform applications about the fact that the desktop is on two screens, so that windows can be placed intelligently (avoiding dialog boxes that span both screens, for example).

The MetaModes option configures the relative sizes of the two screens; the first screen is always the external display. The TwinViewOrientation specifies the position of the second display relative to the first for the purpose of mouse movement and window positioning (possible values are Above , Below , LeftOf , or RightOf ).

For finer control over the monitor relationships, the positions of each monitor may be specified in the MetaModes line as an absolute position within the entire desktop. These values are given in the form + X + Y after each resolution; for example, "800x600+0+0,1024x768+800+0" specifies that the primary monitor is to the left of the secondary monitor and that the two monitors are aligned at the top, and "800x600+1024+168,1024x768+0+0" specifies that the primary monitor is on the right and that the monitors are aligned at the bottom (168 pixels is the difference between the two monitor heights, 768 and 600 pixels).

When using the external monitor connection for projection, it can be convenient to project a subset of what is shown on the laptop's panel. Using the NVIDIA driver, this can be configured by overlapping the two display regions using the MetaModes option. On a laptop with a 1400x1050 display, for example, you can project an 800x600 pixel subset to your audience:

Section "Device"

 Identifier "Card0"

 Driver "nvidia"

 VendorName "nVidia Corporation"

 BoardName "NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"

 BusID "PCI:1:0:0"

 Option "TwinView"

 Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "31.0 - 80.0"

 Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "50.0 - 75.0"

 Option "TwinViewXineramaInfo" "on"

 Option "MetaModes" "800x600+200+200,1400x1050+0+0"

EndSection

When you restart the X server, the GNOME panel bars will be located in the middle of the screen, because the smaller 800x600 subset display is considered "Primary." Drag the panels to the top and bottom of the laptop display. You can then start an application and position the portion of the window that you wish to display into the 800x600 pixel area that starts 200 pixels down and 200 pixels to the right of the upper-left corner of the screen.

This works well with OpenOffice.org Impress in "Normal" mode, which displays three panes, including the current image in the center and a preview of slides on the left (the panes can be rearranged if it is more convenient to see the preview on the right). Reposition the dividing line between the panes and scroll the center pane until the current slide completely fills the external display.

This configuration enables you to preview the slides using the OpenOffice.org preview plane as shown in Figure 3-22 without changing the projected slide. Once you select and then click on a slide, it becomes the current slide and is displayed both in the center plane of the LCD image and on the external projector, shown in Figure 3-23 .

Figure 3-22. LCD display, including slide preview pane (right)

Figure 3-23. Projected 800 600 subset of LCD image, showing only the current slide

3.4.1.2. Configuring dual video on an ATI graphics card using the open source driver

First, configure and test your system using the ATI open source driver radeon , and then add the lines highlighted in bold to the Device section of your /etc/X11/ xorg.conf :

Section "Device"

 Identifier "Card0"

 Driver "radeon"

 VendorName "ATI"

 BoardName "ATI 7500"

 BusID "PCI:1:0:0"

 Option "MergedFB" "on"

 Option "CRT2HSync" "31.0 - 80.0"

 Option "CRT2VRefresh" "50.0 - 75.0"

 Option "MergedXinerama" "on"

 Option "MetaModes" "800x600-1024x768"

 Option "CRT2Position" "RightOf"

EndSection

The MergedFB option enables dual video output. CRT2HSync and CRT2VRefresh set the horizontal and vertical frequency ranges for the second monitor (the settings for the primary monitor are in the Monitor section of the file), and the MetaModes option sets the resolution of the two displays. MergedXinerama enables sending display hints to applications, and CRT2Position sets the the position of the second display relative to the first for the purpose of mouse movement and window positioning (possible values are Above , Below , LeftOf , or RightOf ).

Restart the X server by changing to runlevel 3 and then back to 5, by restarting the system, or by terminating the running X server with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (save your work first!). When the X server restarts, both displays should be active.

3.4.1.3. Configuring dual video on an ATI video card using the ATI closed source driver

The ATI closed source driver is configured in much the same way as the other drivers. First, configure and test your system using the ATI closed source driver fglrx , and then add the lines highlighted in bold to the Device section of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf :

Section "Device"

 Identifier "Card0"

 Driver "fglrx"

 VendorName "ATI"

 BoardName "ATI 7500"

 BusID "PCI:1:0:0"

 Option "DesktopSetup" "0x00000200"

 Option "HSync2" "31.0 - 80.0"

 Option "VRefresh2" "50.0 - 75.0"

EndSection

The DesktopSetup option enables dual video output and specifies that the monitor attached to connector 1 is on the left; change this value to "0x00000201" if the monitors are reversed (it's not always apparent whether the internal or external monitor is attached to connector 1). HSync2 and VRefresh2 set the horizontal and vertical frequency ranges for the second monitor (the settings for the primary monitor are in the Monitor section of the file). The resolutions will automatically be selected from available options by the device driver.

Restart the X server by changing to runlevel 3 and then back to 5, by restarting the system, or by terminating the running X server with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (save your work first!). When the X server restarts, the two monitors should display two halves of the desktop.

3.4.3.1. ...using dual video output with another video driver?

Very few of the other X.org video drivers support multiple video outputs. If you have another driver and want to see the options supported, look for a manpage for your driver. For example, to see the driver options for the Intel 810 adapter:

$ man i810

If you are logged in to the system through the graphical user interface, access the command line through the terminal program. Select the menu option Applications→Accessories→Terminal (System→Terminal in KDE), or right-click on the desktop background and select Konsole under KDE.

If you have logged in to the system through a character-mode login screen or an SSH login, you will automatically be presented with a command line.

4.1.1.1. Understanding the shell prompt

The standard shell prompt looks like this:

[chris@concord2 ~]$

This message is an invitation to enter a command. It shows the name of the user ( chris ), the computer being used ( concord2 ), and the current working directory within the filesystem ( ~ , meaning the user's home directory). The last character of the prompt, $ , indicates that this is a normal user's prompt, as opposed to the system administrator's prompt, which ends with # .

4.1.1.2. Entering commands

To enter a command, simply type it, and then press Enter to execute it. The output from the command will appear after the command (scrolling the screen if necessary), and when the command is done a new prompt will be printed.

To edit a command line, use the left and right arrow keys to position within the line, and the Backspace and Delete keys to delete characters to the left or right of the cursor, respectively. To insert text, simply type it. You can press Enter with the cursor located anywhere on the line to execute the command. Other editing keys are available; Table 4-1 shows the most useful ones.

Table 4-1. Useful editing keys

4.1.1.3. Accessing previous commands

You can scroll through the history of previously entered commands using the up and down arrow keys. This enables you to easily re-enter a command, either exactly as you previously entered it or after editing.

You can also search for a previous command by pressing Ctrl-R (for reverse search ) and then typing a few characters that appear in the command. For example, if you had at some previous point typed cat /etc/hosts and you pressed Ctrl-R and typed hos , the cat /etc/hosts command would appear (providing that no intervening commands contained the letter sequence hos ).

4.1.1.4. Obtaining a root prompt to enter commands as the superuser

The superuser account, root , is also called the privileged account, because it is not subject to the security restrictions that are applied to regular user accounts. root access is required for many system administration commands. Although it's tempting to use the root account all the time on a single-user computer, it is unwise because Fedora assumes that you know what you're doing and won't ask for confirmation if you enter a dangerous command; it will just go ahead and execute it. If you're using the root account, an incorrect command can cause a lot more damage than the same command executed in a normal account.

Although you can directly log in as a root user, it's usually much safer to take on root privilege only when necessary, using the su (switch user) command:

$ su

Password:

root-password

#

The shell prompt will change to end in a pound sign ( # ) instead of a dollar sign ( $ ) when you are in root mode. Press Ctrl-D or type exit to drop superuser access and return to your regular shell prompt.

4.1.1.5. Linux error messages

Many Linux commands will output a message only if something goes wrong. For example, if you try to remove a file using the rm command, no message will be displayed if the file is successfully deleted, but an error message will be generated if the file does not exist:

$ rm barbeque

rm: cannot remove \Qbarbeque ': No such file or directory

Most error messages start with the name of the command that produced the message.

4.1.1.6. Logging out of a shell prompt

You can leave a shell by pressing Ctrl-D or typing exit . If you are using a terminal window and don't have any programs running, you can simply close the window using the X button on the title bar.

4.1.3.1. ...accessing a character-mode display when the graphical user interface is running?

Fedora is configured to allow you to log in using a character-mode display even if the graphical user interface is running. In fact, you can log in up to six times, using the same or different user IDs.

The key is Virtual Terminals (VTs). There are 12 virtual terminals that can be accessed easily: VT1 through VT6 are configured for character-mode login, VT7 is used for graphical login, and VT8 through VT12 are not normally used.

To switch to a specific VT, press Ctrl-Alt and the function key that corresponds to the virtual terminal you wish to access (Ctrl-Alt-F1 for VT1, Ctrl-Alt-F7 for VT7, etc.).  

You can log in on multiple VTs simultaneously and switch back and forth between them. This is particularly useful when you bring up documentation on one VT and enter commands on another.

4.1.3.2. ...finding out where a program is located?

The type , which , and whereis commands all provide information about the location of programs.

type will tell you where a command is located in a verbose way, along with an indication of whether the command location is hashed (stored in the shell for quick reference because the command has already been used recently). If there is more than one command with the same name, the location shown is the first one found using your $PATH :

$ type cat

cat is hashed (/bin/cat)

which is similar, but shows only the command location:

$ which cat

/bin/cat

whereis will show you all of the locations for the command (and sometimes there are several, if different versions of the same program are installed), along with the location of its manpage documentation:

$ whereis cat

cat: /bin/cat /usr/share/man/man1p/cat.1p.gz /usr/share/man/man1/cat.1.gz

4.1.3.3. ...starting graphical programs?

Programs with a graphical user interface are started in exactly the same way as programs with a character-based user interface. GUI-based programs use the DISPLAY environment variable to determine if a graphical display is available and to connect to that display. Some programs, such as system-config-printer , will automatically start up with a graphical or a character-based user interface according to the type of display that is available.

4.1.3.4. ...quickly entering a single command?

Typing Alt-F2 will open a Run Application dialog (in KDE, it's called Run Command), which enables you to enter a single command and run it. This is most useful for starting graphical programs that aren't on the menu.

You can also add an applet to your panel bar that does the same thing.

4.1.3.5. ...the difference between commands, utilities, applications, and programs?

There isn't any! Linux does not make any distinction between categories of programs.

4.1.3.6. ...using a different shell?

Fedora offers four different command shells: csh (a.k.a. tcsh ), bash (a.k.a. sh ), ksh , and zsh . You can temporarily start a different shell just by typing the shell name:

$ csh

Press Ctrl-D or type exit to return to the original shell. You can permanently change your default shell using the chsh (change shell) command:

$ chsh

Password:

bigsecret

New shell [/bin/bash]:

/bin/csh

Shell changed.

The password requested is your normal login password; the change will take effect the next time you log in.

chsh requires that you enter the full pathname of the new shell. To see a list of available shells, use chsh with the -l (list) option:

$ chsh -l

/bin/sh

/bin/bash

/sbin/nologin

/bin/ksh

/bin/tcsh

/bin/csh

/bin/zsh

zsh , ksh , and bash each use a syntax related to the original Bourne shell ( sh ). csh uses a very different syntax, which C programmers often find comfortable.

There are five main types of documentation available:

 Manpages

 info pages

 The GNOME Guides and KDE Manuals

 HOWTOs and guides from the Linux Documentation Project

 Text files distributed with applications

4.2.1.1. Using manpages

Fedora continues the Unix tradition of providing an online version of what were originally loose-leaf printed manuals. These manuals cover the commands, programming interfaces, and data formats used by the system.

The command used to access these online manuals is called man , so these documents have come to be known as manpages . The majority of Fedora documentation is in this format.

The pages are arranged into sections according to the original binders, using the section numbers described in Table 4-2 . The section numbers are used to distinguish different manpages with the same name, such as the manpage for the uname system call (found in section 2) and the uname command (found in section 1). In some cases, a letter or two may be appended to a section number to indicate a subsection (such as 3pm , the manual section containing Perl module library functions).

Table 4-2. Section numbers for manpages

To view the manpage for a particular command, such as ls :

$ man ls

The output will appear as shown in Figure 4-1 . You can use the up and down arrow keys and the Page Up/Page Down keys to scroll through the text, or q to quit. You can also type / , enter some text, and press Enter to search for that text within the document; type n (lowercase n , for next ) to search again. ? and N (uppercase N ) can be used in the same way to search backwards.

Figure 4-1. Online display of a manpage

To request a manpage from a specific section of the manual, give the section as the first argument and the name of the manpage as the second argument:

$ man 2 uname

If you don't specify the section, the first section containing a page with the requested name is usedand since there is a uname page in section 1, you won't see the page from section 2 unless you specifically ask for it.

4.2.1.2. Finding a manpage

The -k argument of man is used to produce a list of all of the pages that contain a specific keyword in their short descriptions. For example, if you wanted to see all of the manpages that contained the word calendar in their summary:

$ man -k calendar

Date::Calc (3pm) - Gregorian calendar date calculations

Date::Calendar (3pm) - Calendar objects for different holiday schemes

Date::Calendar::Profiles (3pm) - Some sample profiles for Date::Calendar and

Date::Calendar::Year

Date::Calendar::Year (3pm) - Implements embedded year objects for Date::Calendar

cal (1) - displays a calendar

Note that the section number is in parentheses. If you were looking for a calendar command, you could ignore the results from section 3 of the manual (library functions), which leaves just one possibility: the cal command. You could then get more information about that command to see if it will do what you need :

$ man cal

To see all of the manpages with a specific name in all sections of the manual, use the whatis command:

$ whatis uname

uname (1) - print system information

uname (2) - get name and information about current kernel

In this case, you can see that there is a page for uname in section 1 and 2 of the manual.

4.2.1.3. Reading info documents

The GNU project supplies most of its documentation in info documents rather than manpages. info documents are a unique form of hypertext and are read with a reader program named, not surprisingly, info :

$ info ls

info has many features and can be a bit overwhelming. Each document consists of nodes (analogous to web pages) that are linked together using menu options. The keys listed in Table 4-3 are sufficient for basic navigation.

Table 4-3. Basic navigation in info

To take a guided tour of info , type:

$ info info

4.2.1.4. Viewing GNOME guides and KDE manuals

GNOME and KDE each provide a general user's guide or manual, with specific chapters (or in some cases, separate manuals) for their various desktop tools.

To access these guides, just press F1 in a GNOME or KDE application. Alternately, select the System→Help (GNOME) or Help (KDE) menu options from the panel bar. The GNOME menu is connected to the GNOME documentation, and the KDE menu is connected to the KDE documentation. You can access the documentation for the other desktop environment from a command prompt; for GNOME documentation, use either of these commands:

$ gnome-help

$ yelp

For KDE documentation:

$ khelpcenter

4.2.1.5. Accessing HOWTOs and guides

The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) maintains a very helpful set of documents called HOWTO s, each of which describes the procedure to accomplish a specific task. They also publish some book-length guides . Most of these documents have been translated into multiple languages. However, these documents are generic and do not reflect the default configuration and packaging of Fedora.

The TLDP documentation can be found on the Web at http://www.tldp.org/ . TLDP also publishes FAQs and maintains links to online versions of the manpages and free Linux magazines.

4.2.1.6. Viewing text files distributed with applications

Most open source software packages include a small number of text files written by the programmers, which include licensing information, change histories, errata and bug lists, and release notes. In Fedora these miscellaneous documents are placed in /usr/share/doc and are organized in directories by package name and version. For example, the notes for dia (a diagram-drawing application) are available in /usr/share/doc/dia-0.95 .

I find that the easiest way to view these documents is to use a web browser, which enables you to navigate among directories and view documents by simply clicking on them. To do this, just open the Firefox web browser and enter /usr/share/doc as the location.

To view these files from the shell prompt, change to the directory you wish to view, and then use ls to list names of the files and less to view the contents of any text files that interest you. For example, here are the steps you might take to view the dia text files:

$ cd /usr/share/doc

$ ls -d dia*

dia-0.95 dialog-1.0.20050306

$ cd dia-0.95

$ ls -l

total 724

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1578 Aug 16 2004 AUTHORS

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 574015 Aug 17 2004 ChangeLog

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17992 Mar 12 2004 COPYING

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11364 Aug 16 2004 custom-shapes

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1620 Aug 16 2004 diagram.dtd

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3927 Aug 16 2004 INSTALL

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4955 Aug 16 2004 KNOWN_BUGS

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21535 Aug 17 2004 NEWS

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3444 Aug 16 2004 README

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 27 01:13 samples

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2324 Aug 16 2004 shape.dtd

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 501 Aug 16 2004 sheet.dtd

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1379 Aug 19 2004 THANKS

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2545 Aug 16 2004 TODO

$ less KNOWN_BUGS

The less command will enable you to scroll through the specified file ( KNOWN_BUGS ) in the same way that you would move through a manpage, using the arrow keys and Page Up/Page Down keys to scroll and q to quit.

Note that this directory also contains a sample directory, which includes some sample files for use with the dia program.

4.2.2.1. ...printing a manpage?

The man command's -t option will format a page into PostScript; you can then send the PostScript output to your printer with the command lpr using a pipe. This command prints the manpage for ls :

$ man -t ls | lpr

4.2.2.2. ...making a PDF or HTML version of a manpage?

It's easy to convert manpages into PDF or HTML formats.

For PDF, use the -t option with man and then pipe the PostScript output into the ps2pdf program. This command places the manpage for ls into the file ls_man_page.pdf :

$ man -t ls | ps2pdf - ls_man_page.pdf

The commands to convert a manpage to HTML are more complex:

$ zcat $(man --path ls ) | man2html | tail +3 > ls_man_page.html

This uses man --path to find the compressed, unformatted manual page; zcat to decompress the page; man2html to convert the page to HTML; and tail to strip off the unneeded httpd Content-type header.

Linux, like most modern operating systems, uses a tree-like hierarchy to store and organize files. To manage files effectively, extend the hierarchy to organize your data.

4.3.1.1. Understanding Linux directory names

Fedora's master directory (or folder , as it would be referred to by other operating systems) is called the root directory ; it may contain files and directories. Each of those directories may in turn contain other files and directories.

For each user, one directory is designated as the home directory , and that is where that user stores her personal files. Additionally, each process (a running copy of a program) has a current working directory on the system, which is the directory that it accesses by default unless another directory is explicitly specified.

The root directory is always the same system-wide; the home directory is consistent for a particular user, but varies from user to user; and the current working directory is unique to each process and can be changed anytime.

A pathname specifies how to find a file in the file hierarchy. There are three different pathname schemes that can be used, based on the three different starting points (root, home, and current working directory); each scheme specifies the path from the selected starting point to the desired file, separating directory names with the forward slash character ( / ). These three schemes are summarized in Table 4-4 .

Table 4-4. Absolute, Relative, and Relative-to-Home pathnames

The special symbols . (same directory) and .. (parent directory) are useful in pathnames. For example, if your current directory is /home/chris/book , then ../invitation refers to /home/chris/invitation.

4.3.1.2. Key directories

Fedora uses a standard set of directories derived from historical conventions, the Linux Standard Base (LSB) project, and the kernel. Table 4-5 outlines the key directories and their purpose.

Table 4-5. Key directories in Fedora Core

Local files refers to filesbinaries, scripts, and datafilesthat you have developed and that are not part of Fedora. Separating these files from the rest of the operating system makes it easier to move them to a new system in the future.

4.3.1.3. Ambiguous filenames

The wildcard characters ? and * can be used for pattern matching , which is useful for dealing with several files at a time without individually specifying each filename. ? will match any one character in a filename, and * will match any number of any characters (including none).

Square brackets [] can be used to contain a list of characters [123] , a range of characters [aj] , or a combined list and range [123aj] ; this pattern will match any one character from the list or range. Using an exclamation mark or carat symbol as the first character inside the square brackets will invert the meaning, causing a match with any one character which is not in the list or range.

Table 4-6 lists some examples of ambiguous filenames.

Table 4-6. Ambiguous filenames

4.3.1.4. Choosing easy-to-use filenames

Linux filenames can be up to 254 characters long and contain letters, spaces, digits, and most punctuation marks. However, names that contain certain punctuation marks or spaces cannot be used as command arguments unless you place quote marks around the name (and even then there may be problems). Linux filenames are also case-sensitive, so it's productive to adopt a consistent naming convention and stick to it.

Here are my recommendations for Linux filenames:

 Build the names from lowercase letters, digits, dots, hyphens, and underscores. Avoid all other punctuation. Start the filename with a letter or digit (unless you want to specify a hidden file), and do not include spaces.

 Use the single form of words instead of the plural ( font instead of fonts ); it's less typing, and you won't have to keep track of whether you chose the singular or plural form.

 Filename extensions (such as .gif , .txt , or .odt ) are not recognized by the Linux kernel; instead, the file contents and security permissions determine how a file is treated. However, some applications do use extensions as an indication of file type, so it's a good idea to employ traditional extensions such as .mp3 for MP3 audio files and .png for portable network graphics files.

4.3.1.5. Listing the contents of directories

The ls (list-directory-contents) command will display a list of the files in the current working directory:

$ ls

4Suite crontab hosts libuser.conf nxserver

a2ps.cfg cron.weekly hosts.allow lisarc oaf

...(Lines snipped)...

You can specify an alternate directory or file pattern as an argument:

$ ls /

bin etc lost+found mnt proc sbin sys usr

boot home media net ptal selinux tftpboot var

dev lib misc opt root srv tmp

$ ls -d a*

a2ps.cfg alsa ant.conf audit.rules

a2ps-site.cfg alternatives ant.d auto.master

acpi amanda asound.state auto.misc

adjtime amandates atalk auto.net

alchemist amd.conf at.deny auto.smb

aliases amd.net atmsigd.conf

aliases.db anacrontab auditd.conf

By default, filenames starting with a dot ( . ) are not shown. This provides a convenient way to store information such as a program configuration in a file without constantly seeing the filename in directory listings; you'll encounter many dot files and directories in your home directory. If you wish to see these "hidden" files, add the -a (all) option:

$ ls -a

ls can display more than just the name of each file. The -l (long) option will change the output to include the security permissions, number of names, user and group name, file size in bytes, and the date and time of last modification:

$ ls -l

-rw------- 1 chris chris 3962 Aug 29 02:57 a2script

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 17001 Aug 29 02:57 ab1

-rw------- 1 chris chris 2094 Aug 29 02:57 ab1.c

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 884 Aug 29 02:57 perl1

-rw------- 1 chris chris 884 Aug 29 02:57 perl1.bck

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 55 Aug 29 02:57 perl2

-rw------- 1 chris chris 55 Aug 29 02:57 perl2.bck

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 11704 Aug 29 02:57 pointer1

-rw------- 1 chris chris 228 Aug 29 02:57 pointer1.c

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 12974 Aug 29 02:57 pp1

-rw------- 1 chris chris 2294 Aug 29 02:57 pp1.c

You can also sort by file size (from largest to smallest) using -S :

$ ls -S -l

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 17001 Aug 29 02:57 ab1

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 12974 Aug 29 02:57 pp1

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 11704 Aug 29 02:57 pointer1

-rw------- 1 chris chris 3962 Aug 29 02:57 a2script

-rw------- 1 chris chris 2294 Aug 29 02:57 pp1.c

-rw------- 1 chris chris 2094 Aug 29 02:57 ab1.c

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 884 Aug 29 02:57 perl1

-rw------- 1 chris chris 884 Aug 29 02:57 perl1.bck

-rw------- 1 chris chris 228 Aug 29 02:57 pointer1.c

-rwx------ 1 chris chris 55 Aug 29 02:57 perl2

-rw------- 1 chris chris 55 Aug 29 02:57 perl2.bck

The first character on each line is the file type: - for plain files, d for directories, and l for symbolic links.

There are dozens of options to the ls command; see its manpage for details.

4.3.1.6. Displaying and changing the current working directory

To print the name of the current working directory, use the pwd (print-working-directory) command:

$ pwd

/home/chris

To change the directory, use the cd (change-directory) command.

To change to the /tmp directory:

$ cd /tmp

To change to the foo directory within the current directory:

$ cd foo

To change back to the directory you were in before the last cd command:

$ cd -

To change to your home directory:

$ cd  

To change to the book directory within your home directory, regardless of the current working directory:

$ cd ~/book

To change to jason 's home directory:

$ cd ~ jason/

4.3.1.7. Creating and removing directories from the command line

To create a directory from the command line, use the mkdir command:

$ mkdir newdirectory

This will create newdirectory in the current working directory. You could also specify the directory name using an absolute or relative-to-home pathname.

To create a chain of directories, or a directory when one or more of the parent directories might not exist, use the -p (path) option:

$ mkdir -p foo/bar/baz/qux

This has the side effect of turning off any warning messages if the directory already exists.

To delete a directory that is empty, use rmdir :

$ rmdir newdirectory

This will fail if the directory is not empty. To delete a directory as well as all of the directories and files within that directory, use the rm (remove) command with the -r (recursive) option:

$ rm -r newdirectory

4.3.1.8. Copying files

To copy a file, use the cp command with the source and destination filenames as positional arguments:

$ cp /etc/passwd /tmp/passwd-copy

This will make a copy of /etc/passwd named /tmp/passwd-copy . You can copy multiple files with a single cp command as long as the destination is a directory; for example, to copy /etc/passwd to /tmp/passwd and /etc/hosts to /tmp/hosts :

$ cp /etc/passwd /etc/hosts /tmp

4.3.1.9. Renaming and moving files

In Linux, renaming and moving files are considered the same operation and are performed with the mv command. In either cases, you're changing the pathname under which the file is stored without changing the contents of the file.

To change a file named yellow to be named purple in the current directory:

$ mv yellow purple

To move the file orange from jason 's home directory to your own:

$ mv ~jason/orange ~

4.3.1.10. Removing files

The rm command will remove (delete) a file:

$ rm badfile

You will not be prompted for confirmation as long as you are the owner of the file. To disable confirmation in all cases, use -f (force):

$ rm -f badfile

Or to enable confirmation in all cases, use -i (interactive):

$ rm -i badfile

rm: remove regular empty file \Q

badfile

' ?

y

-f and -i can also be used with cp and mv .

4.3.1.11. Creating multiple names by linking files

Linux systems store files by number (the inode number ). You can view the inode number of a file by using the -i option to ls :

$ ls -i /etc/hosts

3410634 /etc/hosts

A filename is cross-referenced to the corresponding inode number by a link and there's no reason why several links can't point to the same inode number, resulting in a file with multiple names.

This is useful in several situations. For example, the links can appear in different directories, giving convenient access to one file from two parts of the filesystem, or a file can be given a long and detailed name as well as a short name to reduce typing.

Links are created using the ln command. The first argument is an existing filename (source), and the last argument is the filename to be created (destination), just like the cp and mv commands. If multiple source filenames are given, the destination must be a directory.

For example, to create a link to /etc/passwd named ~/passwords , type:

$ ln /etc/passwd ~/passwords

The second column in the output from ls -l displays the number of links on a file:

$ ls -l electric.mp3

-rw-rw-r-- 1 chris chris 23871 Oct 13 01:00 electric.mp3

$ rm zap.mp3

$ ln electric.mp3 zap.mp3

$ ls -l electric.mp3

-rw-rw-r-- 2 chris chris 23871 Oct 13 01:00 electric.mp3

Although these types of links, called hard links , are very useful, they suffer from three main limitations:

 The target (file being linked to) must exist before the link is created.

 The link must be on the same storage device as the target.

 You cannot link to directories.

The alternative to a hard link is a symbolic link , which links one filename to another filename instead of linking a filename to an inode number. This provides a work-around for all three of the limitations of hard links.

The ln command creates symbolic links when the -s argument is specified:

$ ls -l ants.avi

-rw-rw-r-- 1 chris chris 1539071 Oct 13 01:06 ants.avi

$ ln -s ants.avi ants_in_ant_farm.avi

$ ls -l *ants*

-rw-rw-r-- 1 chris chris 1539071 Oct 13 01:06 ants.avi

lrwxrwxrwx 1 chris chris 8 Oct 13 01:06 ants_in_ant_farm.avi -> ants.avi

Notice that the the link count on the the target does not increase when a symbolic link is created, and that the ls -l output clearly shows the target of the link.

4.3.1.12. Determining the contents of files

The file command will read the first part of a file, analyze it, and display information about the type of data in the file. Supply one or more filenames as the argument:

$ file *

fable: ASCII text

newicon.png: empty

passwd: ASCII text

README: ASCII English text

xpdf.png: PNG image data, 48 x 48, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced

4.3.1.13. Viewing the contents of text files

You can display the contents of a text file using the cat command:

$ cat README

Dia is a program for drawing structured diagrams.

...(more)...

To display only the top or bottom 10 lines of a text file, use the head or tail command instead of cat .

If the text file is too big to fit on the screen, the less command is used to scroll through it.

$ less README

You can use the up and down arrow keys and the Page Up/Page Down keys to scroll, and the q key to quit. Press the h key for help on other options, such as searching.

4.3.1.14. Managing files graphically using GNOME

GNOME's file manager is named Nautilus and it permits simple drag-and-drop file management.

When you are logged in to GNOME, Nautilus is already running as part of the desktop environment. To open a Nautilus window, double-click on the Home icon on your desktop or select a folder from the Places menu. A window will appear, such as the one shown in Figure 4-2 , showing each file as an icon. Emblems overlaid on the icons are used to indicate the file status, such as read-only .

Figure 4-2. Nautilus file management window

By default, Nautilus uses a spatial mode, which means that each directory will open in a separate window, and those windows will retain their position when closed, re-opening at the same location when you access them later.

You can open child directories by double-clicking on them, or you can open a parent directory using the pull-down menu in the bottom-lefthand corner of the window. To deal with more than one directory (for example, for a copy or move operation), open windows for each of the directories and arrange them on the screen so that they are not overlapping.

To manage files, start by selecting one or more files:

 To select a single file, click on it.

 To select several files that are located close together, click on a point to the left or right of the files (which will start drawing a rectangle) and then drag the mouse pointer so that the rectangle touches all of the files you wish to select.

 To select several files that are not adjacent, click on the first one, and then hold Ctrl and click on additional ones.

 To select a consecutive range of files, click on the first file, and then hold Shift and click on the last file.

Once you have selected a file (or files):

 Move the file by dragging it between windows.

 Copy a file by dragging it between windows while holding the Ctrl key.

 Link a file (symbolically) by dragging it between windows while holding the Ctrl and Shift keys.

 Delete a file by dragging it and dropping it on the Trash icon on the desktop, by pressing the Delete key, or by right-clicking and selecting "Move to Trash."

 To rename a file, right-click, select Rename, and then edit the name below the file icon.

You can also use traditional cut, copy, and paste operations on the files:

 To cut a file, press Ctrl-X, or right-click and select Cut. Note that the file will not disappear from the original location until it is pasted into a new location; this effectively performs a move operation.

 To copy a file, press Ctrl-C, or right-click and select Copy.

 To paste a file that has been cut or copied, click on the window of the directory you with to paste into, and then press Ctrl-V or right-click on the window background and select Paste.

You can also perform cut, copy, and paste operations from the Edit menu at the top of the Nautilus window.

4.3.1.15. Managing files graphically with KDE

KDE's Konqueror is both a file manager and a web browser. Figure 4-3 shows the file manager view. Although at first glance this looks similar to Nautilus, Konqueror offers a larger set of features, most of which are accessed through the toolbar and menus.

Figure 4-3. Konqueror in file management mode

To start Konqueror, select Home from the K menu. Unlike Nautilus, Konqueror does not use spatial windows; as you move around the file hierarchy, the same window is reused. To create a second window for drag-and-drop, press Ctrl-N (or select the menu option Location→New Window). Alternately, you can split a window horizontally or vertically using the Window menu, and then drag and drop between the two panes. To view more information about the files, select the menu option View→View Mode→Detailed List View, which shows information similar to that displayed by ls -l. There are other options on the View Mode menu that are useful in different situations, such as the Photobook view for directories of photographs.

You can change to child directories by double-clicking on them, or you can change to parent directories by using the up-arrow icon on the toolbar. You can also select a directory from the Navigation Panel, shown on the left in Figure 4-3 (the Navigation Panel can be toggled on and off using the F9 key).

To manage files, start by selecting one or more files:

 To select a single file, click on it.

 To select several files that are located close together, click on a point to the left or right of the files (which will start drawing a rectangle) and then drag the mouse pointer so that the rectangle touches all of the files you wish to select.

 To select several files that are not adjacent, click on the first one, and then hold Ctrl and click on additional ones.

 To select a range of files (rectangular region), click on the first file, and then hold Shift and click on the last file.

Once you have selected a file (or files):

 Move, copy, or link the file by dragging it between windows (or window panes). When you drop the file on the destination, a pop-up menu will appear with Move Here, Copy Here, and Link Here options.

 Delete a file by dragging and dropping it on the Trash icon on the desktop, by pressing the Delete key, or by right-clicking and selecting "Move to Trash."

 To rename a file, right-click, select Rename, and then edit the name below the file icon.

As with Nautilus, you can also use traditional cut, copy, and paste operations on the files:

 To cut a file, press Ctrl-X, or right-click and select Cut. Note that the file will not disappear from the original location until it is pasted into a new location; this effectively performs a move operation.

 To copy a file, press Ctrl-C or right-click and select Copy.

 To paste a file that has been cut or copied, click on the window of the directory you wish to paste into, and then press Ctrl-V, or right-click on the window background and select Paste.

You can also perform cut, copy, and paste operations using the Edit menu at the top of the Konqueror window.

4.3.2.1. Matching filenames

Linux shells use a process called globbing to find matches for ambiguous filenames before commands are executed. Consider this command:

$ ls /etc/*release*

When the user presses Enter, the shell converts /etc/*release* into a list of matching filenames before it executes the command. The command effectively becomes:

$ ls /etc/fedora-release /etc/lsb-release /etc/redhat-release

This is different from some other platforms, where the application itself is responsible for filename expansion. The use of shell globbing simplifies the design of software, but it can cause unexpected side effects when an argument is not intended to be a filename. For example, the echo command is used to display messages:

$ echo This is a test.

This is a test.

However, if you add stars to either side of the message, then globbing will kick in and expand those stars to a list of all files in the current directory:

$ echo *** This is a test. ***

bin boot dev etc home lib lost+found media misc mnt net opt proc ptal root sbin selinux srv sys tftpboot tmp usr var This is a test. bin boot dev etc home lib lost+found media misc mnt net opt proc ptal root sbin selinux srv sys tftpboot tmp usr var

The solution is to quote the argument to prevent globbing:

$ echo "*** This is a test. ***"

*** This is a test. ***

4.3.2.2. The merged file hierarchy

Microsoft Windows uses drive designators at the start of pathnames, such as the C: in C:\Windows\System32\foo.dll , to indicate which disk drive a particular file is on. Linux instead merges all active filesystems into a single file hierarchy; different drives and partitions are grafted onto the tree in a process called mounting.

You can view the mount table, showing which devices are mounted at which points in the tree, by using the mount command:

$ mount

/dev/mapper/main-root on / type ext3 (rw)

/dev/proc on /proc type proc (rw)

/dev/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw)

/dev/devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)

/dev/md0 on /boot type ext3 (rw)

/dev/shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

/dev/mapper/main-home on /home type ext3 (rw)

/dev/mapper/main-var on /var type ext3 (rw)

/dev/sdc1 on /media/usbdisk type vfat

(rw,nosuid,nodev,_netdev,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,user=chris)

Or you can view the same information in a slightly more readable form, along with free-space statistics, by running the df command; here I've used the -h option so that free space is displayed in human-friendly units (gigabytes, megabytes) rather than disk blocks:

$ df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/main-root

30G 12G 17G 42% /

/dev/md0 251M 29M 210M 13% /boot

/dev/shm 506M 0 506M 0% /dev/shm

/dev/mapper/main-home

48G 6.6G 39G 15% /home

/dev/mapper/main-var 30G 13G 16G 45% /var

/dev/sdc1 63M 21M 42M 34% /media/usbdisk

Note that /media/usbdisk is a flash drive, and that /home and /var are stored on separate disk partitions from / .

4.3.3.1. ...finding out which files are going to match an ambiguous filename before executing a command?

While the cursor is on or adjacent to the ambiguous filename, press Tab twice. bash will display all of the matching filenames, and then reprint the command and let you continue editing:

$ ls a* (press Tab, Tab)

a2.html all-20090412

a3f1.html

$ ls a*

Alternately, press Esc-* and bash will replace the ambiguous filename with a list of matching filenames:

$ ls a* (press Esc-*)

$ ls a2.html all-20050412 a3f1.html

4.3.3.2. ...entering a filename quickly at the shell prompt?

Type the first few characters of the filename, then press Tab. bash will fill in the rest of the name (or as much as is unique). For example, if there is only one filename in the current directory that starts with all :

$ ls all (press Tab)

$ ls all-20090412

4.3.3.3. ...using a filename in one command, and then reusing that filename in the next command?

Press Esc-_ (underscore) to copy the last argument from the previous command. For example, to create a directory and then change to that directory:

$ mkdir backup-directory-august

$ cd (press Esc, _)

$ cd backup-directory-august

To start up the vi editor, simply type its name at a shell prompt, optionally providing the name of a file you wish to edit as an argument:

$ vi filename

The screen will clear, and the specified file will be displayed, as shown in Figure 4-4 .

Figure 4-4. Initial vi display

Notice that unused lines are marked with a tilde (~) character.

4.4.1.1. vi modes

vi uses two distinct modes:

 Normal mode , where the text keys issue editing commands. This is sometimes called command mode .

 Insert mode , where text keys insert text into the document.

The lower-left corner of the display shows the current mode: if it says -- INSERT -- , then you're in insert mode; otherwise, you're in normal mode.

4.4.1.2. Moving around

You can move the cursor around using the arrow keys. If your arrow keys don't work (which may be the case if you're using a remote connection from a bad terminal program), you can use the h, j, k, and l keys, as shown in Table 4-7 .

Table 4-7. Basic vi movement commands

You can put a number in front of any command to repeat the command. For example, typing 10j will move down 10 lines.

4.4.1.3. Inserting text

There are several commands for inserting text, as shown in Table 4-8 .

Table 4-8. Commands to enter insert mode

All of these commands place the editor into insert mode; the only difference is where the cursor is positioned for the inserted text. The word -- INSERT -- will appear in the lower-left corner of the display.

To exit from insert mode and return to normal mode, press Esc. The -- INSERT -- indicator in the lower-left corner of the display will disappear.

4.4.1.4. Deleting, yanking, and putting: vi's version of cutting, copying, and pasting

vi offers three basic commands for deleting or yanking, as shown in Figure 4-9 . Deleting is roughly equivalent to cutting in a GUI-based editor, and yanking is similar to copying.

Table 4-9. Basic delete and yank commands

4.4.1.5. Searching

Typing / followed by some text (actually, a regular expression) and pressing Enter will search forward in the document. Typing n will repeat the previous search in the forward direction. Typing ? instead of / will search backward instead of forward; N will repeat a search backward.

Searching can be combined with deleting and yanking; for example, d/hello will delete from the cursor position up to the start of the word hello .

4.4.1.6. Undoing, redoing, and repeating

Pressing u will undo the last operation performed; pressing Ctrl-R will redo it. Typing a dot ( . ) will repeat the last operation.

4.4.1.7. Saving and exiting

There are a number of commands available for saving the document and exiting vi , as shown in Table 4-10 ; you must press Enter after these commands.

Table 4-10. Saving text and exiting vi

4.4.3.1. ...using vi with a GUI?

If you execute gvim instead of vi , a window will appear with a full graphical user interfaceincluding pull-down menus and a toolbaras shown in Figure 4-5 . Using the File→Save menu option, clicking on the Save toolbar icon, or typing the vi save command ( :w) will perform the same operation.

Figure 4-5. gvim: vi with a GUI

4.4.3.2. ...using other text editors?

In addition to vi , Fedora ships with a plethora of other text editors, including:

 nano (an improved clone of the easy-to-use editor Pico )

 mcedit

 joe (the commands jstar , jmacs , or jpico will start joe configured to emulate WordStar , emacs , or Pico ).

 emacs and emacs-x

 kedit and gedit

All of these text editors are capable of editing just about any text file. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

Since the choice of editor is very personal, take some time to experiment with each of the editors to see which one you prefer. In any case, I'd recommend knowing the basics of vi so that you can always fall back to it if you encounter a situation where your favorite editor is unavailable.

You can change the runlevel on the fly, or configure your system to start in a different runlevel.

4.5.1.1. Choosing the runlevel at boot time

The Fedora boot menu can be used to specify the runlevel:

1. Press a key (such as the spacebar) when the Fedora Core boot display appears. This will reveal the boot menu.

2. Select the Fedora Core boot option you wish to use using the arrow keys.

3. Press the letter a (Append). An edit display will appear that allows you to append information to the boot command line.

4. Add a space and then the runlevel to the end of the list of boot options (for example, press space then 3 to select runlevel 3).

5. Press Enter to boot into the runlevel that you've specified.

4.5.1.2. Changing the runlevel after booting

Take the following steps to change the runlevel after booting:

1. Obtain a root prompt using the su command:

2. $ su

3. Password: rootPassword

4. #

5. Use the init command to change to the runlevel of your choice:

6. # init 3

4.5.1.3. Changing the default runlevel

System administrators often configure servers to start in runlevel 3, freeing up memory to increase the server's performance.

The default runlevel is controlled by a line in the file /etc/inittab ; to change the default runlevel, edit that file using the vi editor:

1. Obtain a root prompt using su .

2. Start vi with the /etc/inittab file:

3. # vi /etc/inittab

4.

5. Find this line in the file:

6. id:5:initdefault:

7. Change the second field to the default runlevel of your choice; in this case, I've used 3 :

8. id: 3 :initdefault:

9. Save the file and exit vi . The change will take effect next time you boot the system.

4.5.1.4. Creating entries for different runlevels on the boot menu

The boot menu is configured using the file /boot/grub/grub.conf . You can edit this file so that options for various runlevels appear on the boot menu:

1. Obtain a root prompt.

2. Start vi with the /boot/grub/grub.conf :

3. # vi /boot/grub/grub.conf

4.

5. The file will look something like this:

6. # grub.conf generated by anaconda

7. #

8. # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file

9. # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that

10. # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.

11. # root (hd0,1)

12. # kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/Main/root

13. # initrd /initrd-version.img

14. #boot=/dev/hdc

15. default=0

16. timeout=5

17. splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

18. hiddenmenu

19. title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2517.fc6)

20. root (hd0,1)

21. kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2517.fc6 ro root=/dev/Main/root rhgb quiet

22. initrd /initrd-2.6.17-1.2517.fc6.img

23. title Windows XP

24. rootnoverify (hd0,0)

25. chainloader +1

26. This example shows two Fedora Core entries for two different kernel versions. There may be additional entries for other operating systems (such as Windows) or additional kernels.

27. Find a Fedora Core entry (the bold lines in the example above) usually, the one with the latest kernel. Make an identical copy of it immediately after the original location in the file:

28. title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2517.fc6)

29. root (hd0,1)

30. kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2517.fc6 ro root=/dev/Main/root rhgb quiet

31. initrd /initrd-2.6.17-1.2517.fc6.img

32. title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2517.fc6)

33. root (hd0,1)

34. kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2517.fc6 ro root=/dev/Main/root rhgb quiet

35. initrd /initrd-2.6.17-1.2517.fc6.img

36. Change the description of the copied section to indicate the runlevel that will be used:

37. title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2517_fc6) - Runlevel 3 - Character mode

38.

39. On the kernel line, append the runlevel that you wish to use (this will override the default runlevel in /etc/inittab ):

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2517.fc6 ro root=/dev/Main/root rhgb quiet 3

1. Optionally, change the default , timeout , or hiddenmenu options to suit your tastes.

2. The default option specifies which of the menu entries is booted by default; the menu entries are numbered starting at 0 , so you could set this line to 1 to boot the second item on the menu automatically:

3. default= 1

4.

5. The timeout option sets the number of seconds that the menu will be displayed before the default option is automatically chosen. To give the user 30 seconds to decide which boot option to use, change the timeout line to read:

6. timeout= 30

7.

8. hiddenmenu hides the menu until the user presses a key; remove the hiddenmenu line to automatically reveal the menu every time the system is booted.

9. Save the file and exit vi . The new menu option will appear the next time you boot the system.

4.5.3.1. ...booting without an /etc/inittab file?

If the file /etc/inittab doesn't exist, init cannot start the system normally. Runlevel S was created specifically for this purpose; it's the only runlevel that doesn't require /etc/inittab , so it can be a lifesaver if that file is missing or messed up. In fact, init doesn't even ask for a password in runlevel S; it takes you directly to a root command prompt. This is useful if you've forgotten the root password, but presents a huge security risk.

To protect against the unauthorized use of runlevel S, it's a good idea to add a password entry to the boot menu. If you didn't do this during the installation, you can add the password at any time by following these steps:

1. Generate an encrypted password with the grub-md5-crypt command:

2. $ grub-md5-crypt

3. Password:

4. bigsecret

5. Retype password:

6. bigsecret $1$f1z061$j/UEYyBn0e0996w0gjq4k/