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Archive for March, 2006

Crossing Indian Borders

March 31st, 2006

It will be one memorable moment… too bad, i wont be able to capture the India coast line with my 6600. Lets see!

I’ll be leaving for Singapore early morning tomorrow. Since the roaming + call charges for airtel are a bit too much in Singapore, i’ll be offline as far as my phone is considered. However, i’ll be online atleat once a day as we’ll have access to the internet.

Interested folks can reach me at mayank[dot]gnu[at]gmail[dot]com

I’ll be back on 6th morning.

Till then… cya!

Posted in It calls for a blog..., Life | Comments (2)

Screenshot of the month!

March 27th, 2006

Something which was keeping me on my toes from past 1 month…

Fedora Core 5

Posted in Fedora Core, GNU/Linux | Comments (3)

Enabling ATI Radeon Mobility M300 on Linux

March 26th, 2006

Playing Q3 on a Dell Latitude - D610 is tough without your ATI card supporting your moves

This is how to enable support for your ATI Radeon Mobility M300…
[btw, just to mention, I’m using Dell Latitude - D610 notebook]

1) Go to ATI’s website & download the driver install system
To be more generic, www.ati.com > Drivers & Software > Linux Display Drivers and Software > Linux x86 > Notebooks with ATI Graphics > ATI Proprietary Linux x86 Display Drivers for XFREE86 / X. Org Version 8.23.7 > ATI Driver Installer [download]

2) Download the file mentioned in step (1) & give it executable permissions with “chmod +x file-name.run”

3) Run the installer & choose default installation when asked for default/custom install.

4) Once the installation finishes, run “aticonfig –initial”

5) Reboot! You’ll experience a change in resolution once you reboot & relogin to your desktop.

6) Run & play Q3/Doom3 happily

Posted in Fedora Core, How-To | Comments (0)

How to upgrade from FC4 to FC5 via yum?

March 26th, 2006

Okay, this was something i wanted from the day i saw FC5 release news. Gnome 2.14… was dying to try it (outside vmware & outside a vnc session!)

But had absolutely no clue on how to start this upgrade as

yum upgrade

on vanilla FC4 just updates the system to latest package versions in FC4 repository. Also, i did not wanted to fiddle with yum.conf manually as the system under consideration is my production system! So no risks atall… or i would have to use my test system (which i’m still to get) as my production system. I would certainly not like that… & even my manager wont!

Okay, enough of crap… lets get to business!

NOTE - all steps are to be performed from a root console. You’ll need a decent internet connection to make this happen (in real time!)

0. yum update kernel kernel-devel initscripts kudzu
This should update your kernel to latest in FC4. This is an important step!

1. rpm -qa | grep fedora-release

2. if you find something like “fedora-release-4-2″ as the output, go to step 3, else to step 4

3. rpm -U http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-5-5.noarch.rpm
This will update your yum configuration to fetch latest fc5 rpm’s.

4. rpm -ivh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-5-5.noarch.rpm
This will set up your yum repositories to fetch latest rpm’s.

5. [optional - steps 5-8] To add livna repositories (extra packages)
rpm -qa | grep livna

6. if you find something like “livna-release-4-0″, go to step 7, else to step 8

7. rpm -U http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm

8. rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm

9. yum update yum
This is important as the latest yum package is damn faster than the old one. You’ll love the speed!

10. yum upgrade
This will fetch lots of package headers & in the end, you’ll need to say “Y” to start the actual packages download & install. If you want to skip the “y/N” stage, try this
yum -y upgrade

11. Enjoy the coolness!

Corrections/suggestions all welcome as comments.
Thanks
A new FC5 user

[update]

Try to leave the “optional” repositories till the upgrade is complete. This is just to make sure that unecessary deps are not created.
Also, if you get any broken dependencies for packages except (kudzu, initscripts), have a look at http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Upgrading_Red_Hat_Linux_with_yum.html
Related fedoraforum.org thread -> Thread

Posted in Fedora Core, GNU/Linux | Comments (48)

All worth the sweat!

March 24th, 2006

Last time i met him, Manuj had a dream in his eyes & two certificates of attendence in his hands. Today, his hands are fuller with a certificate of RHCE & my eyes are full of appreciation for him.