Fedora Core 3 on a Sony Vaio Laptop (PCG-V505DC2)

Following the steps on the FC3 How-To on the prism54.org forums:

UPDATE: This wireless card finally bit the dust and refuses to react to a power source (picture open heart surgery on a circuit board with two metal contacts probing for any life). Dead.

Installed the msttcorefonts-1.3-3.noarch rpm to get MS True Type fonts

Extracted the win32-codecs.tar.bz2 tarball from mplayerhq.hu into /usr/lib/win32 for mplayer/xine codecs

Installed the flash-plugin-7.0.25-1.i386.rpm from macromedia mirror site

Installed the realplayer rpm from real.com as described by the article on FedoraNews.

Java can be installed any which way (the current setup was via the Sun package under /opt), but one problem will be outstanding with the Java plugin. The JVM native libraries were compiled against libXp.so.6, which has been deprecated recently by the X.org folks. Naturally, this causes Java to break when trying to run any UI-based programs, since the library is no longer there. However, there is a package on the FC3 CD2 which provides the missing libraries.

Once installed, the java plugin will no longer crash firefox. To get the java installed as an alternative correctly, work the alternative script:

Assigned /opt/java to the currently installed jdk installation and then created a java.sh in /etc/profile.d that looks like the following:

Also did the same alternatives thing for the ant installation. Check out the page on managing Java with the alternatives system.

It appears that the webstart binary in Java 1.4 has issues running on Fedora. Applied the javaws patch with the script detailed in this blog entry. As is, the javaws will hang the processor and hence not run properly. This download provide an alternative javaws folder.

Added several contrib repositories to the /etc/yum.repos.d/, namely dag and freshrpms.

Installed this yum frontend to manage package repositories and to browse the packages.

Currently, the mp3 plugin will crash gstreamer-driven players because of a bug in alsa. It is necessary to run gstreamer-properties and change the audio output to OSS for now (necessary for all users). This, of course, relies on the alsa-oss emulation layer to be loaded.

I have gone back and used the following packages from livna for mp3 support (instead of gstreamer-plugins-extra-audio):

The Gnome preferences dialog for Keyboard provides an option to modify this accessibility setting. I switched the functionality of the Capslock key, making it an additional control, and also enabled sticky keys. After tripping over it trying to learn one-handed typing, I blogged about how hotkeys are actually useful for anyone.

Added the fedora extra packages into the yum repository using the instructions on the Fedora website. From the Fedora Extras site, I picked up the following rpms:

Enabled sudo by adding main user to the sudoers using visudo as root: dallen ALL=(ALL) ALL

As I continuely have problems with up2date stalling out while retrieving the package headers, I have found it much better to enable the yum service in the Services manager.

Adding the DHCP ip address in /etc/hosts with a domain name seemed to have automatically configured my hostname; then added that hostname to the 127.0.0.1 line

Was running out of flexible space on /, so I move /var/cache/yum → /home/yum and made the appropriate symlink. The dynamic nature of the cache proves it needs a larger partition (note to self: make /var bigger in the future)

modprobe sonypi and make it probe on startup. Unlike in Mandrake 9.2, the sonypi device already exists, so it need not be created. In this case, however, it is 10, 62 rather than 10, 250 as it was under Mandrake 9.2. Added the same two lines as before in /etc/modprobe.conf with the updated numbers:

Removed the following packages to conserve space:

In order to make sound accessible to multiple users at once (simultaneous logins on different displays), it is necessary to modify the default permissions. Changed /etc/security/console.perms by making <sound> 660 root.users rather than the default <sound> 600 root so that anyone in the users group can read/write the soundcard, regardless of who logged in first.

In order to allow the back and forward buttons to work when a 7 button mouse is plugged in, the following three lines should be (re)placed in the Device section of xorg.conf for the mouse:

Additionally, the following directive should be added to the ~/.Xclients file (if does not exist, run switchdesk for it to be setup)

Have no fear, this will not break scrolling on mice that do not have 7 buttons, nor will it mess up the Emulate3Buttons needed by the touchpad ;)

Installed rpm package from minolta to provide the cups drivers for magicolor2430DL. Setup printer using JetDirect yucca:9100.

Note: For some reason, redhat-printer-config does not see this new driver and therefore messes up the printer settings if used because it picks a different driver, Minolta 2300

Decided to go with esd (esound). Enabled the esd sound system in the Gnome sound preferences, added the line -r 48000 in /etc/esd.conf so that it would not be scratchy, set gstreamer-properties to use ESD and set KDE notifications to use a modified version of mplayer that uses esd as the audio output plugin.

By default, all the system loggers will send mail to the root account, which is often forgotten and therefore goes unnoticed. To have this mail sent to a user account, edit the /etc/aliases file and modify the last line to point to a user account.

I have documented some known issues that I came across in Fedora Core 3 along with known workarounds, if available.

SecuringSSH