Good and Bad in Foresight Linux

I have a bit more than 6 months experience using Foresight on both my Dell desktop and on my MacBook. Indeed, I had even considered installing it on my EeePC but decided to go for Ubuntu Eee instead.
At this stage I would say that Foresight works well and has few shortcomings.
One of these however, is that I have a major problem with updating it. Because I mess around on a number of computers in quite a few different OSes (all Linux but have OS X and FreeBSD as well),I may be away from Foreesight for a few weeks at a time. It seems that when I update after a prolongued absense, the update may not complete and errors out.
In general, the way I have overcome this problem is to re-install Foresight (using a newer version if available) but without formatting the /home partition.
This has happened to me at least three times and occurred again two days ago.
The error always involves conflicting dependencies.
As I write this, I have just re-installed Foresight 2.0.4 (burned a new DVD) and I'm now in the process of getting madwifi installed so that I can get back to my wireless-only environment.
It's worth bearing in mind that before applying the install guide I published here you need to install subversion and all the conary compilation tools (see the Foresight User Guide under System in the Gnome panel). This will take at least an hour.
Now, as I haven't finished the install and done the updates I don't know yet if this approach has been successful in getting Foresight running normally again.
Just to mention also that after the unsucessful update when I rebooted the mouse (nor the touchpad) would work so essentially Foresight had become almost unusable because of the update.

OK, so that was the bad part. Here's something good.
I had been playing around with Livestation in Ubuntu (on both the Mac and the EeePC) and it works very well. However, in Foresight where it was equally easy to install, i was able to get a full screen (with pretty reasonable quality -- although a long way from HDTV) working very well. Indeed, I was able to watch the Obama-mcCain debate on CNN in full screen on Tuesday night (just before I did the update).
Strangely, I have not been able to get a full screen version in Ubuntu at all which is strange. This needs investigating.

Chromium in Foresight-Mac

The Cross-Over Chromium site provides installation files for various distros (and OS X) but Foresight Linux is not included.
A version of "CrossOver Chromium for all other Linux distros" is, however available and this is what I tried for Foresight.
The installation file is the 35 MB install-cxchromium-0.9.0.sh. I tried various means to get this to install but no luck.
Then I found that it wasn't executable. Once this error was rectified, it was easy to install (as user rather than as root -- some complaints about installing as root) using

./install-cxchromium-0.9.0.sh

from the Desktop directory to which it had been downloaded.
Thereafter, installation and operation was perfect.

Gmail Notifier in Foresight Linux

Actually, the reason for the last post was that I wanted to install Gmail Notifier in Foresight on my MacBook and it was available in one of the "private" repos. However, it failed ti install and errored out complaining about two dependency problems (I actually went to the trouble of downloading these deps as rpms, using alien to convert them to .tgz files and then untarring them in the / folder.
Unfortunately, this made no difference and the install still errored out because of the same two deps.
Now, I had actually compiled Gmail Notifier from source in Foresight before and it worked fine. But I couldn't find where I wrote that up.
Luckily, I came across this here which provides not just a simple way of installing Gmail Notifier, but it actually seems a better, more colourful version.
Working very nicely for me in Foresight right now.
One thing worth remaking here: I had put the command to start Gmail Notifier on boot into Sessions with this command

~/gmail-notify/notifier.py

but this wouldn't work until I changed the command to

/home/paul/gmail-notify/notifier.py

So, during boot, ~ is not recognized as /home/paul. Didn't know that.

Use of other repos in Foresight Linux

I'm amazed I didn't know this but there are quite a few other repos available for new apps in Foresight Linux.
Here's a list of them.
To use the new repo, add its url with an equals sign before it to the package name like this:

sudo conary update xchat=mkj.rpath.org@fl:2

Foresight re-install problems on Mac resolved

First, I downloaded the Foresight 2.0.4 DVD and installed that. Then I installed all the updates (I think it was about 39 rather than the 236 the night before).
Now, after the install as outlined here, Yakuake worked perfectly.
However, I still had the same problems with the Home folder icon missing from the Desktop. It seems from the forums that this is a deliberate policy for some unexplained reason.
However, no Gconf Editor was available to try and get it back.
I posted to the forums and found that gconf-editor can be installed from the repos. So, I did this, and everything is fine.

Remote desktop access -- more experimentation.

Well, there certainly is no shortage of means to let you access and control a distant desktop from the comfort of your own desk as shown in this article.
As I had had some problems with xncviewer, particularly from KuruminNG (Dell), I decided to try one other app listed in this article. This was x11vnc.
First, I tried to access Foresight (on the Dell) from Ubuntu (on the Mac). The steps are very simple and are as follows:
1. Download/Install x11vnc on the remote desktop (Foresight-Dell). For this I used:

sudo conary update x11vnc=@fl:2-devel

2. Start up the remote server by typing this in a terminal
x11vnc -display :0
3. In the client (your own computer or Ubuntu-Mac in my case), type this
vncviewer 192.168.1.12:0
and almost immediately, Foresight's desktop appeared on the Mac. Note that sshd was NOT running on Foresight at the time and NO passwords at all were required. Absolutely nothing, very quick and problem-free.

Note that in Ubuntu, I needed to download xtightvncviewer (one of four suitable apps available) before vncviewer would work.
Really, this whole thing, including the downloads, installs and connections could easily be set up in less than 5 minutes.

Flushed with this success, I tried to see if I could control KuruminNG (Dell) from Ubuntu-Mac. Here the steps were:
1. Install x11vnc in Kurumin

sudo apt-get install x11vnc

2. In a Kurumin terminal, type

x11vnc -display :0

3. In Ubuntu-Mac, type

vncviewer 192.168.1.12:0

Once again, connection was almost immediate with no requests for passwords or anything else.

Now, the area where I had a problem with Kurumin before, controlling another Linux desktop from Kurumin as client. So, for this I tried:

1. Install x11vnc in Ubuntu-Mac

sudo apt-get install x11vnc

2. In Ubuntu type

x11vnc -display :0

3. In Kurumin type

vncviewer 192.168.1.1:0

For the third time, everything worked perfectly, absolutely no flaws whatsoever. However, there was a difference from the last two attempts, in that this time, after the third step in Kurumin (vncviewer), a window appeared in Ubuntu asking did I want to accept or refuse the request to control the desktop. Once I said yes, connection was immediate.

My conclusion based on this very brief and incomplete test is that x11vnc seems quite a marvelous app and well worth trying again.
One big difference from NXserver, is that the client sees exactly what is on the servers screen right now. Also, the clients cursor moves around the servers screen.

Further attempts to install NXserver in Foresight Linux

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, I failed to install NXserver on Foresight using the method outlined in the nomachine documentation
So, I had a look at the more detailed instructions here. In particular, the prerequisites (1.2) are important. These libraries are mentioned as being required for the nxnode install:

- libXpm.so.4
- libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.2.3)
- libnsl.so.1(GLIBC_2.0)

I managed to find all of them in various rpms in PBone. All three were included in a relatively large bunch of files. I downloaded each package as an rpm in openSUSE 11, then I used alien

sudo alien -t file.rpm

to convert each file to a .tgz file.
I used cl1p.net to send each over to Foresight Linux.
To install, I just moved each of them to the root directory (/) and untarred (tar -zxvf file.tgz) and that was it.
Now, I was ready for the install. So, here's what I did:

1. cd /usr
2. sudo rm -rf NX #to remove all old installations
3. Install the nxclient

cd /usr
sudo tar zxvf nxclient-3.2.0-14.i386.tar.gz

4.Install nxnode

sudo tar zxvf nxnode-3.2.0-11.i386.tar.gz
sudo /usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxnode –-install debian

From what I remember this installed fine (although I have a vague recollection of some minor error or warning)
5. Install the nxserver

sudo tar zxvf nxserver-3.2.0-13.i386.tar.gz
sudo /usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxserver –-install debian

(note that this last command taken from section 2.8 of the detailed server installation instructions has an error and won't work. The "–-install" must be replaced by "--install". So the correct command line is

sudo /usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxserver --install debian

This seemed to "more or less" install, but gave quite a few warnings, the nature of which I again forget.
Note, however, that I plan to start all over again with this tomorrow and these notes are just meant to be a guide to me for tomorrows attempt.
6. First thing I saw was the /usr/NX/etc had no server.cfg file so I created it from server-debian.cfg. In server.cfg I then made the required changes:

#EnableUserDB = "0" to EnableUserDB = "1" (don't forget to uncomment
EnablePasswordDB = "0" to EnablePasswordDB = "1" (should be already uncommented)

** However, having said that I just noticed in looking at /usr/NX/etc/server.cfg that it seems to have completely changed and no longer contains the lines
EnableUserDB = "1
EnablePasswordDB = "1"
or anything remotely similar. This is strange but could be part of my problem.
7. Now to add myself as a user

sudo /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --useradd paul --administrator

However, this gave a warning (typically something like:

NX> 595 ERROR: Detected an inconsistency in the NX server configuration.

and a series of subsequent warnings all of which turned out to be due to lack of appropriate files in /usr/NX/etc/
So, I tried to get over these errorby manually producing the missing files, like, for example:

sudo cp administrators.db.sample administrators.db
sudo cp guests.db.sample guests.db

However, I was also missing the lock files of the type
users.db.lock
Strangely, I couldn't upload these to cl1p.net (no idea why) although they seemed to be just empty files (in openSUSE 11 where NXserver works fine).
So, I tar compressed a folder with the 5 files I needed from openSUSE and uploaded this to cl1p.net and opened it in Foresight. Then I uncompressed and put all the files in /usr/NX/etc/
8. Once again I tried to run

sudo /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --useradd paul --administrator

and this time it progressed fairly well but still got warnings:

NX> 900 Setting password for user: paul.
NX> 102 Password:
NX> 102 Confirm password:
NX> 110 Password for user: paul added to the NX password DB.
NX> 900 Checking user: paul with the NX password DB enabled
NX> 306 Administrator: paul added in the NX administrator DB
NX> 900 Adding public key for user: paul to the authorized keys file.
NX> 910 WARNING: The SSH key to be used for user authentication could
NX> 910 WARNING: not be added to the private authorized keys file of user.
NX> 910 WARNING: Please note that, with these settings, the user won't be
NX> 910 WARNING: able to successfully run any sessions.
NX> 910 WARNING: Run the following command to get some hints on the possible
NX> 910 WARNING: reasons of the problem:
NX> 910 WARNING:
NX> 910 WARNING: nxserver --usercheck paul
NX> 910 WARNING:
NX> 999 Bye.

9. When I did the usercheck suggested I got

$ sudo ./nxserver --usercheck paul
NX> 910 Account for user: paul is disabled
NX> 999 Bye.

10. At this stage I should have enabled my user using

sudo /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --userenable paul

but I didn't do this till later.
11. Despite many attempts to vercome this key problem , including changing the default keys according tomthis nomachine document, I failed completely and made no further progress.

Nevertheless, it looks now as if getting nxserver to work in Foresight is more of a possibility than it was yesterday. I should mention here that I had not at all paid any attention to the extensive list of required libraries for the installation of nxclient. Perhaps the fact that one or two of these might have been missing caused my nxserver problems. Worth a look.

Just for completeness, here's an interesting (although a bit old) look at NXserver.

VNC in openSUSE 11.0

As I use KDE 4.1 in openSUSE, I used krfb to enable me to communicate with either Ubuntu or Foresight on the Dell.
krfb is available in the K-menu (the Gecko icon) and clicking on it sets krfb running and puts an icon in the panel.
Clicking on this icon opens the krfb dialog where you can create invitations.
For Ubuntu or Foresight (Dell) to connect to openSUSE (Mac), you just type (client)

vncviewer 192.168.1.x

After supplying the password, you'll be connected.
At times, however, I found that connection did not occur but gave a message that the connection was made but apparently broke.
A reboot followed by a retry gave a connection in the few times I tried this.
The quality of the connection was not good, however, in either direction as the windows on the remote desktop wouldn't move.

Some experimentation with NXserver.

Yesterday I got NXserver working in Kurumin-dell and was able to communicate with nxclient in Ubuntu-mac.
So today I tried to see if any further OSes could be involved in NX.
First I tried to install nxclient in Foresight-Mac. This is not available in the Foresight repos but is readily available here.
I downloaded the nxclient.tar.gz file to /usr and untarred it there. That's all that's needed to install -- no compile or anything else.
Now I was able to NX to Kurumin-dell by

/usr/NX/bin/nxclient &

Now the dialog opened which I left basically as it was for Ubuntu (client) to communicate with Kurumin-Dell (server). So, the Key, the host (IP) and port (8888) remained unchanged. And it connected fine.

Next I tried to get Foresight-Mac (client) to talk to Foresight-Dell (server). This meant having to install NXserver in Foresight-Dell. Again, NXserver is not available in the Foresight repos.
Also, I couldn't use the method of yesterday as this involves some deb repos which (AFAIK) Foresight can't handle.
So I used this nomachine site to try to install the NXFree edition for Linux (as tar.gz). This involves installing three packages (nxclient, nxnode and nxserver). As mentioned, NXclient is very easy to install. Also, I once got the NXnode to install (after many tries) using this command

sudo /usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxnode --install debian

However, I was unable to repeat this. Really don't know why it worked just once. Strange.
Using the same type of command for NXserver never got me anywhere -- always failed.
So, can't get NXserver to install in Foresight.

I was, however, able to get NXserver working on Ubuntu-Dell from the same site. Here I just downloaded the debs (client, node and server) and installed them from the terminal using this commands of this type

sudo dpkg -i nxserver_3.2.0-13_i386.deb

And that was basically it.
I did NOT have to add that big line of code to node.conf. Indeed, I couldn't find any node.conf at all in Ubuntu after installation of the server.
On the client side, however, I needed to import the dsa-key from

/usr/NX/share/keys/default.id_dsa.key

on the server. In addition, I moved the port back from 8888 to 22.
When I logged in on the client, I got a message saying couldn't "start kde". Very strange since I don't have kde on the Ubuntu server. But it turns out that you must specify the Desktop Manager in the dialog before you launch nxclient.
After changing this to Gnome, it launched fine and everything seemed perfect.

Tried VNC today.

I had planned to test this for some time but only got around to it today.
In summary, everything went very well and this is so easy to set up.
This is a useful summary which I used to set things up in Ubuntu and Foresight. However, it contains a lot more than you really need.
Essentially, you just enable Remote Desktop in System>Preferences>Remote Desktop. Now you must install a program to enable you to see the remote screen.
In Ubuntu, a choice of four (vnc-java, tightvnc-java, xtightvncviewer, xvnc4server) is given and I installed xvnc4Server.
I found out what I needed in Foresight by running
conary rq --path=/usr/bin/vncviewer
which gave me three programs. I installed the vnc program.
However, although it seems to be recommended to use the host name to connect to the remote computer, but this simply didn't work for me.
What did work was this

vncviewer 192.168.1.12:0

which includes the IP of the remote computer and the screen number.
Linux-to-Linux asks for a password of the remote computer and that computer than is given the choice of accepting or refusing to allow access.

Kurumin uses a GUI (Krdc) for these connections and provides a choice of either vnc (to a Linux box) or rdp (to a Windows machine).
Strangely, it worked fine when I connected to Margaret's computer (Windows XP) but doesn't work at all for connection to a Linux box. when I try in a terminal (I installed xvncviewer here too), a window labelled with the correct remote host-name opens but nothing appears in it. It's just black.
Strange.

rdesktop works also on both Ubuntu and Foresight and is already installed on both.
In contrast to the Linux-to-Linux connection, connecting Linux to Windows opens a login screen on the client, but no accept/refuse is presented on the Server. Indeed, the server goes back to the login screen and stays there when the client is working on Windows remotely.

Seems that there's no quick solution to IPv6 problems in Foresight.

The problems are as follows:
1) ping6 doesn't work in Foresight
2) while "/etc/init.d/tspc start" works, "/etc/init.d/tspc stop" seems to do exactly the same thing as start.
Also, ifconfig tun after running "/etc/init.d/tspc stop", shows the tun device to be still operational.
In addition, I got no replies to the two requests I posted which probably indicates that my problem is not general, but specific to some peculiarity of my setup.
Actually, it reminds me a bit of the problems I had first with the installation of Yakuake in Foresight. My first attempt was very much of a gambiarra and never worked properly. However, after discovering that a particular dependency was essential, I got it to work perfectly.
Additionally, I installed tspc today in Kurumin (from the repo) and this worked perfectly right out of the box. Plus, it didn't need any messing around with installation of go6 or iputils for ping6 to work without problems.
This experience is another reason I believe that something is very wrong in Foresight that I'll have to solve myself.

IPv6 tunnelling on Foresight Linux

As I managed to get IPv6 tunnelling working in Ubuntu Hardy yesterday on the Mac, I decided to try it also on Foresight on the same machine.
However, tspc isn't available in the Foresight repos, so I downloaded tspc_2.1.1-6.1_i386.deb from here. Then I converted it to a .tgz file using

alien -t tspc_2.1.1-6.1_i386.deb

in Ubuntu and spc'ed it back to Foresight.
So, then just

tar -zxvf tspc_2.1.1-6.1.tgz
cd tspc2
sudo make all target=linux

Now you have to install it using

sudo make install target=linux install_dir=/usr/local/tsp

(or whatever the default install directory suggested is).
Now change the username, password and server (this last must be broker.freenet6.net) in /usr/local/tsp/bin/tspc.conf
At this stage I got a bit confused because the tspc.conf file was in a very different location than in Ubuntu. So, I symlinked it as follows:

ln -s /usr/local/tsp/bin/tspc.conf /etc/tsp/tspc.conf

Also, I symlinked tspc as follows

ln -s /usr/local/tsp/bin/tspc /etc/init.d/tspc

So now to start tunnelling, run these commands

cd /usr/local/tsp/bin
sudo /etc/init.d/tspc start

when you should get this output to indicate all is well and tspc is running

tspc - Tunnel Setup Protocol Client v2.1.1
Initializing (use -h for help)


Connecting to server with reliable udp
Got tunnel parameters from server, setting up local tunnel
Going daemon, check tspc.log for tunnel creation status

At this point you can put ipv6.google.com in your browser address bar and then use google to start browsing through ipv6.
While this certainly works, it seems just a little slow. Plus, at times, it seems that it gives up on IPv6 and switched back to IPv4. Don't fully understand what's going on here but I'll investigate more.

However, a problem I had was in using ping6. I installed iputils=20020927-12-0.1 from conary and then ping6 was available in /bin (along with ping).
However, I couldn't get it to work.
When I tried

ping6 ipv6.google.com

I get this error

can't receive hop limit: Protocol not available

I posted to both LinuxQuestions and go6 forums on this but have yet to receive any replies which generally means it's not a common problem or it's something specific to my computer.

Incidentally, here are some very good tutorials on IPv6 (and some IPv4 which you'll need in order to follow the ipv6 stuff); this, this and this one too.
There's also lots of good info in the go6 wiki.

Sound in Foresight on Dell

For a long time, I have not been able to play music on Foresight (Dell) apparently because the sound card (Creative SoundBlaster emu10k1x) wasn't recognised.
Then I came across this which explained how to manually install the snd-emu1k1x module. The alsa files needed for this compile and install you can get from here.
I got an error with this command

chmod a+rw /dev/dsp /dev/mixer /dev/sequencer /dev/midi

I think because I don't have midi or sequencer stuff. Similarly, this command

modprobe snd-emu10k1x ; modprobe snd-pcm-oss ; modprobe snd-mixer-oss ; modprobe snd-seq-oss

gave a FATAL error for the snd-seq-oss part.
Nevertheless, after a reboot, my card now showed up in "Open Volume Control">File whereas before only Camera was available.
Now, I can play music in Banshee, without any problem.
It seems this may have arisen because of various kernel upgrades which, for some reason, did not include the emu10k1x module.

Getting accented letters in Foresight Linux.

I had been trying for months to get accented letters (Portuguese language) with the Bra (Brazil) keyboard layout.
Now, I could always get accented letters like ô, ã and í in both Gedit and a terminal but NOT in webpages (like Gmail or forum messages) or in Yakuake (strange this is different from a terminal) where the same characters turn out like ^o, ~a and ´i.
But today I found the answer. You just install group-xorg-fonts-extra and that's it. I can now get all of my accented characters with exactly the same facility as I can on all other OSes.
Actually, Iṽe just discovered while I was writing this that the solution involved invoking SCIM. I only noticed this because a SCIM icon showed up in the panel on the Mac (although I had never actually started SCIM). When I quite SCIM, the accented characters in Bra went with it. They came back, however, once I invoked SCIM again with the command scim.
So it seems the group-xorg-fonts-extra is part of SCIM.
Not sure about this but at least I can get my Portuguese characters when I want them.

Resolved my Foresight update problems

Got some very helpful replies to my post to Foresight Forum regarding the problem I had updating Foresight.
Basically this involves:
1) Checking the error message -- what's messing up your update?
2) If it's glib that initiated the problem, run this to update glib without any interference from dependency problems:

sudo conary update glib --replace-files --no-deps

3) Then update as normal

sudo conary updateall

This worked perfectly for me.

Starting sshd

In Ubuntu Hardy, sshd starts automatically on boot although I don't yet know how or why. Certainly there's nothing in sessions to start it.
However, in Foresight only ssh-agent starts at boot.
I had been using

/etc/init.d/sshd start

but this gives an error.
This post in the Foresight forums pointed me to

sudo service sshd start

and this works fine.

Still having some troubles with host recognition but lots of stuff to read on this.
Funny I didn't have any of these problems in Ubuntu or Foresight>>Ubuntu.

Install Giver on Foresight from conary

After the new install of Foresight on the Dell, I tried the newly packaged Giver install from Conary.
Worked quickly and perfectly. Absolute no problems.
It'll be interesting to see if this causes any of the update problems I believe were caused by my much more sloppy install of Giver.

Update problems in Foresight.

Well, I was able to completely eliminate my failure-to-update problem in Foresight by re-installing but without re-formatting /home.
This went perfectly, although, as I've said in an earlier post, getting back to where I was takes another 2-2.5 hours.

The main items included in the "recovery" phase are:
1. sudo conary update all
2. sudo conary update group-codecs
3. Install latest Opera (I like to d/l as .tgz, extract and then ./install.sh as root
4. Now the big one; allow at least an hour for this
sudo conary update group-gnome-dist-devel
5. Get nVidia driver (96.43.05) + patch for 2.6.25 kernels as described here.
Note that the command line which has to be manually entered in TTy1 is:
sh /path/to/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.05-pkg1.run \ --apply-patch NVIDIA_kernel-96.43.05-2290218.diff.txt
Note carefully that in the section of this command "\ --apply" there are TWO spaces between \ and -.
6. Install fusion-icon and tasque from conary
7. Install yakuake 2.8.1 as described here.

I'm coming to believe that my frequent update problems in Foresight are entirely due to some of the weird things I like to install.
Up to now we've had update problems because
i) I made /etc/resolv.conf immutable
ii) Yakuake in the way I had installed it previously (very sloppy)

Now this weeks problems may well be due to the sloppy way I installed Giver. Therefore my problems seem to all the fault of my unstructured, impatient hacking.

Trying the Giver package in Foresight

It was my intention today to try the newly packaged Giver in Foresight 2.0.3
As a first step, I tried to uninstall all the dependency stuff I had to install as indicated in my guide a few posts below this.
However, once again, I got Package Kit's now famous problem with erasing dependencies for some toher stuff. As usual in these circumstances it refused to proceed which means I couldn't uninstall almost anything. I think actually the only package I was able to erase was monodevelop which may actually mean that Giver doesn't use this one at all (I only selected it based on gut-feeling rather than anything more scientific).
In any event, I installed the Giver-qa package and Giver worked perfectly afterwards.
However, can't say if it worked well simply because a lot of the stuff it needs was simply not uninstalled.
To do a real test, I'll have to try it on a freshly installed Foresight.
Because of the problems I'm having with Foresight update, it's highly possible I'll have to clean install Foresight soon so I'll try it out there.

Updating Foresight.

I'm really starting to have some serious difficulties in updating Foresight. Almost every time I try it I get some message telling me that the update can't proceed as some dependency needed by another app would be deleted.
In the last couple of weeks I have had to re-install Foresight from the most up-to-date install DVD (without touching /home). Thereafter for a few days, I could apply the almost daily updates without a problem.
However, once again, today I had the same problem on both machines.
I posted to the Foresight forum on this but have had no replies up to now.
If not, tomorrow I'll probably have to re-install again. Luckily the Foresight install is very fast (10-15 minutes) but reconfiguring afterwards can take an hour or more.
Still don't know if I'm the only one with this problem.