mkdir ~/src
cd ~/src
git clone git://github.com/jkramer/shell-fm.git
cd ~/shell-fm/
make
su -c 'make install'

At this point, you should now have a fully functional shell-fm program. However, I would recommend creating a configuration file first by using the following commands in order (you could probably copy/paste these, remembering to replace username and password with your own):

mkdir ~/.shell-fm
cat > ~/.shell-fm/shell-fm.rc << EOF
username=username
password=password (plain text)
default-radio=lastfm://artist/The%20Beatles/similarartists
EOF

Then, finally run the program:

shell-fm

As always, be sure to check out the man pages for more information!

man shell-fm

I’ve had a terrific experience with both this utility and last.fm. I would rate it much higher than Pandora or Slacker radio. The music is much more extensive and I don’t get any repeats during an eight hour day. My thanks goes out to both last.fm and shell-fm. Great job guys! Keep up the good work.

Step 1: Download, Copy, and Edit Repository File

This is a one-liner command that will download, copy, and edit the VirtualBox repository file at once.

su -c 'wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/virtualbox.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repo; sed -i "s,enabled=0,enabled=1,g" /etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repo'

Step 2: Update Repository and Install VirtualBox-3.2

This command will update yum repositories to include the new VirtualBox repository file we copied in the last step and then it will attempt to install VirtualBox-3.2 with dependencies.

su -c 'yum update; yum install -y VirtualBox-3.2 dkms gcc'

Step 3: Run VirtualBox Setup Script

This command will run the VirtualBox driver setup script.

su -c '/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup'

If you’re having issues, try installing “kernel-PAE-devel” or “kernel-devel”.

Step 4: Setup Groups for VirtualBox Access

This command will add you to the vboxusers group. Replace “username” with your actual username found by using the whoami command.

su -c 'usermod -G vboxusers -a username'

If you find that you’re getting SELinux errors or denials, try adding VirtualBox.so as an exception with this command:
su -c 'chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBox.so'

Step 5: Run VirtualBox

Finally, run VirtualBox and have fun with it!

VirtualBox

Appendix A: To Properly Backup the VirtualBox Machine (.vdi):

Please refer to my other page here:

How To: Properly Backup a VirtualBox Machine (.VDI)

Appendix B: Setup a Pre-Built VirtualBox Guest Image

Please refer to my other page here:

How To: Setup a Pre-Built VirtualBox Guest Image [Tutorial/Guide]

Appendix C: Shrinking a VirtualBox Guest Image

Please refer to my other page here:

Shrinking a Dynamic VirtualBox Disk Image

The first script (setup_sd) will setup your SD card with the proper partitions and geometry. All you need to do is tell it where your SD card is. If you don’t know, use either dmesg or fdisk -l to find out. Likely, it’s located at /dev/sdb, so that’s what I’ll use here as an example on how to use this first script: setup_sd /dev/sdb. This script was obtained from XorA. All I added was a quick check to make sure the user is calling it properly.

#!/bin/sh
# As per instructions:
# http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardBeginners

if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
   echo "example usage: $0 /dev/sdb"
   exit 1
fi

DRIVE=$1

dd if=/dev/zero of=$DRIVE bs=1024 count=1024

SIZE=`fdisk -l $DRIVE | grep Disk | awk '{print $5}'`

echo DISK SIZE - $SIZE bytes

CYLINDERS=`echo $SIZE/255/63/512 | bc`

echo CYLINDERS - $CYLINDERS

{
echo ,9,0x0C,*
echo ,,,-
} | sfdisk -D -H 255 -S 63 -C $CYLINDERS $DRIVE

mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n "boot" ${DRIVE}1
mke2fs -j -L "rootfs" ${DRIVE}2

The second script (load_sd) will obtain and install the required files to boot the Beagle Board to the SD card. Usage is very similar to the above script, load_sd /dev/sdb. I would recommend creating a directory specifically for running this script within, ie. mkdir beagleboard; cd beagleboard, this way, everything is nice and tidy.

#!/bin/sh
# As per instructions:
# http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardBeginners

if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
   echo "example usage: $0 /dev/sdb"
   exit 1
fi

DISK=$1

if [ -e Angstrom-Beagleboard* -a -e MLO -a -e u-boot* -a -e uImage* -a -e modules* ]; then
	echo "All files found okay... "

	echo "Mounting ${DISK}1 and ${DISK}2"
	mkdir /mnt/sd1; mount ${DISK}1 /mnt/sd1
	mkdir /mnt/sd2; mount ${DISK}2 /mnt/sd2
	sleep 2

	echo "Copying to ${DISK}1 and ${DISK}2"
	cp MLO u-boot.bin /mnt/sd1
	cp uImage* /mnt/sd1/uImage
	tar -xvf Angstrom-Beagleboard-demo-image*.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/sd2
	tar -xvf modules-2.6.*.tgz -C /mnt/sd2

	echo "Unmounting ${DISK}1 and ${DISK}2"
	umount ${DISK}1; umount ${DISK}2
	rm -rf /mnt/sd1 /mnt/sd2
	echo "Done"

else
	echo "Files missing!"
	echo "Downloading required files... this may take some time."
   sleep 2

	wget http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/Angstrom-Beagleboard-demo-image-glibc-ipk-2010.3-beagleboard.rootfs.tar.bz2
	wget http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/MLO
	wget http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/u-boot.bin
	wget http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/uImage-2.6.29-r47-beagleboard.bin
	wget http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/modules-2.6.29-r47-beagleboard.tgz

   echo "Finished downloading files.  Simply run \"$0 /dev/sdX\" again to load files to SD card."
fi

After these scripts have ran successfully, all you need to do is interrupt the startup sequence of Uboot (Beagle Board’s bootloader) and setup the environment variables to boot from the SD card as mentioned here. For convenience, I have placed the commands you need to run here:

setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootwait'
setenv bootcmd 'mmc init;fatload mmc 0 80300000 uImage;bootm 80300000'
saveenv

Then, press the RESET button while holding down the USER button, and you’ll find yourself booting to the Angstrom distribution. More information about it can be found here.

Sources:
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardBeginners

This is my guide to getting Fedora 13 Goddard running on a MacBook Aluminium 5,1 (I believe this should work on more recent generations as well because the only difference was the addition of the SD card slot and Firewire port). As with Fedora 12, there were many things that worked out of the box. I have created this guide to help others get Fedora 13 installed on their MacBook Aluminum.

Table of Contents:

PreStep

Video

Wireless

Bluetooth

Touchpad

Sound

Function Keys

Keymapping

Webcam

Backlight

Keyboard Backlight

Power/Battery

Legend:
= Working out of the box (OBO)
= Working, but with comments
= Needs manual install
= Won’t work
= Not yet documented (TBD)

PreStep:

Gain internet access using a hard-wired Ethernet connection then install and enable the RPM Fusion repos for both the free and non-free packages which will get wireless networking up and running (and also the nvidia drivers if you wish):

su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm''

Apply all updates to the system:

yum upgrade

Yes, this step takes a bit of time, but it’s worth getting all the updated packages (less to fix).

Video:

The Nouveau drivers actually work out of the box, so nothing really needs to be done here, but if you want a better video experience including desktop effects (compiz), you’ll either need to get the proprietary Nvidia drivers from the RPM Fusion repository or enable the experimental 3D support from the Nouveau drivers using su -c ‘yum install mesa-dri-drivers-experimental’. Then, to enable desktop effects, simply go to “System -> Preferences -> Desktop Effects” and enable them.

Wireless:

su -
yum -y install akmod-wl akmods kernel-PAE-devel
akmods --akmod wl
modprobe lib80211
modprobe wl
exit

Bluetooth:

Bluetooth connections work out of the box. I was able to test a pair of bluetooth headphones and a bluetooth mouse.

Touchpad:

The touchpad works out of the box, but if you’d like to have two finger scrolling and such, navigate to the mouse settings in the main menu and select the “touchpad” tab:
“System -> Preferences -> Mouse”

Sound:

Sound works out of the box. This includes the headphones and internal speakers. Internal speakers turn off when headphones are plugged in and are turned back on when headphones are unplugged.

Function Keys:

These are working out of the box, including the backlight and audio keys, but not including the keyboard backlight.

Keymapping:

If you’d like to customize the keys a little more to your liking (for example, swapping the command and control keys), please refer to this fedora forums post.

Webcam:

Works out of the box. Open “Cheese Webcam Booth” from “Applications -> Sound and Video” to see.

Backlight:

Works out of the box.

Keyboard Backlight:

The keyboard backlight works, but you need to manually increase and decrease the brightness (as mentioned in a comment by “Min” below).
Max Brightness:

su -c 'echo 255 > /sys/devices/platform/applesmc.768/leds/smc\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness'

Min Brightness:

su -c 'echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/applesmc.768/leds/smc\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness'

Power/Battery:

With a fresh install of Fedora 13, I realized that the battery indicator is way off and I’m getting notifications that I only have so many minutes of battery left.

I would also like to make a few observations after a few days worth of using the MacBook with Fedora. In previous releases, it seemed that it tends to run hot and the battery life isn’t as good as it would be in Mac OSX. I’ll report back in a few days after using it.

Partition Scheme for Dual-Boot Mac OSX and Fedora 12

By Request:
This is my partition scheme for dual boot environment with Mac OSX and Fedora 13. I have a totally separate partition for sharing my files between both the OSs (which requires a change in UID in Fedora from 500 to 501):

Unionfs is not a command, but rather a file system. This manual page describes additional mount options that Unionfs supports.
Unionfs is a stackable unification file system, which can appear to merge the contents of several directories (branches), while keeping their physical content separate. Unionfs is useful for unified source tree management, merged contents of split CD-ROM, merged separate software package directories, data grids, and more. Unionfs allows any mix of read-only and read-write branches, as well as insertion and deletion of branches anywhere in the fan-out. To maintain unix semantics, Unionfs handles elimination of duplicates, partial-error conditions, and more.

In a nutshell, Unionfs allows you to layer directories into a single, mounted directory. Once the module has been compiled and inserted, it’s very easy to use. For example, to mount a read-only filesystem, you’ll want to replace any lines in your linuxrc file (if you don’t know what this is, you’ll want to read the article from logicsupply) that mount your filesystem (at /mnt/root, for example) with something like this:

insmod /unionfs.ko
mkdir /mnt/root.ro /mnt/root.rw
mount -o ro /mnt/root.ro
mount -t tmpfs root.rw root.rw
mount -t unionfs -o dirs=/mnt/root.rw=rw:/mnt/root.ro=ro unionfs /mnt/root

In the above example, we insert the unionfs.ko module located in the / directory. We then create the directories for which we will merge. These directories are where we’ve mounted our root filesystem and the tmpfs filesystem. Next, we mount our root filesystem as readonly to the root.ro mount point and then mount a tmpfs filesystem to root.rw which will become our writable layer. Finally, we merge the two together and voila! A read-only filesystem. The next thing to do is to chroot to /mnt/root and you’re done. Keep in mind that any changes made are being written to the tmpfs layer of unionfs and will not be persistent.

Take a look at these great articles on other example usage:
http://www.logicsupply.com/blog/2009/01/27/how-to-build-a-read-only-linux-system/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7714

The most difficult part is getting your kernel to support it, but even this isn’t too difficult thanks to good patches on the main project website here:
http://www.filesystems.org/project-unionfs.html

We’ll run through an example. Say that your embedded system is using the 2.6.24 kernel and you want to use Unionfs. The first things you’ll need to do is find the 2.6.24 patch on the Unionfs main project website, download it, extract it, and then apply it using a command like the following from within the kernel source directory (the same directory with the Makefile):

patch -p1 < unionfs-2.5.4_for_2.6.24.7.diff

When patched, you’ll then need to use make menuconfig to select the Unionfs module. Save the .config changes when prompted to do so and use the make command to compile the kernel and modules. Install the kernel Image and the module into your embedded system and then try to insmod the driver. It should just work. Then, you can use the commands outlined above.

And that’s that! Be sure to check out the links provided. It would be too difficult to include everything there is to know about Unionfs in a single post. I hope I was able to provide you with at least a start in using it. Good luck and have fun!

Wireless devices vary greatly, so it’s near impossible to create a guide that’s going to work for all of them, but for the most part, these steps will get you there. The first step is to find the correct wireless driver for you device’s chipset. Drivers that work pretty well with Linux are from ralink and zydas. There are others I’m sure, but it just so happens that the following steps work for both the rt2501usb (rt73) and zd1211b (zd1211rw or zd_b) drivers. Once you’ve located the correct driver, use “insmod” to insert the module and then check out /proc/net/wireless to make sure the device was recognized properly. For example:

[/bash]
root# insmod rt73.ko
root# cat /proc/net/wireless
Inter-| sta-|   Quality        |   Discarded packets               | Missed | WE
 face | tus | link level noise |  nwid  crypt   frag  retry   misc | beacon | 16
rausb0: 0000  100.  220   177        0      0      0      0      0        0
[bash]

Once you’ve gotten this far, you should install the wpa_supplicant and wireless-tools packages so you can take advantage of iwconfig and others. Here are a few useful commands:

• iwconfig — use to check status such as associations
• iwlist scan — reports wireless networks available
• pump OR dhclient OR udhcpc — assign a dynamic IP address

Another thing to note of the below steps are that the rausb drivers are being using to connect to WPA and WPA2 access points. You may want to use wext instead depending on your environment and how the drivers were compiled. With that said, let’s get to it…

• Unencrypted
• WEP Encryption
• WPA Personal – TKIP
• WPA2 Personal – TKIP or AES
• AdHoc Mode

Unencrypted

   1) Bring the rausb0 interface up
      * ifconfig rausb0 up
   2) Associate with the AP
      * iwconfig rausb0 essid the_essid
   3) Assign a static IP
      * ifconfig rausb0 192.168.1.101

WEP Encryption

   1) Bring the rausb0 interface up
      * ifconfig rausb0 up
   2) Associate with AP
      * iwconfig rausb0 essid the_essid key the_key
   3) Assign a static IP
      * ifconfig rausb0 192.168.1.101

WPA Personal – TKIP

   1) Bring the rausb0 interface up
      * ifconfig rausb0 up
   2) Generate a configuration file for wpa_supplicant to use
      * ./wpa_passphrase the_essid the_password > /etc/wpa_supplicant_custom.conf
   3) Use wpa_supplicant to associate with AP and run it in the background (-B)
      * ./wpa_supplicant -irausb0 -Dralink -c/etc/wpa_supplicant_custom.conf -B
   4) Assign a static IP
      * ifconfig rausb0 192.168.1.101

WPA2 Personal – TKIP or AES

   1) Bring the rausb0 interface up
      * ifconfig rausb0 up
   2) Generate a configuration file for wpa_supplicant to use
      * ./wpa_passphrase the_essid the_password > /etc/wpa_supplicant_custom.conf
   3) Insert "proto=RSN" into "network" block in /etc/wpa_supplicant_custom.conf
   4) Use wpa_supplicant to associate with AP and run it in the background (-B)
      * ./wpa_supplicant -irausb0 -Dralink -c/etc/wpa_supplicant_custom.conf -B
   5) Assign a static IP
      * ifconfig rausb0 192.168.1.101

Adhoc Mode

   1) Bring the rausb0 interface up
      * ifconfig rausb0 up
   2) Setup rausb0 for Adhoc mode
      * iwconfig rausb0 mode ad-hoc channel 3 enc off essid the_essid
   3) Assign a static IP
      * ifconfig 169.254.114.101 netmask 255.255.0.0
   4) Add default gateway to route (optional)
      * route add default gw 169.254.114.100

A hard word wrap or line break feature isn’t included in gedit by default, but it’s easily added by using the ‘External Tools’ plugin and a two-liner shell script. This will allow you to format your documents with a line break at column 80, or whatever you’d like it to be, by selecting the text, paragraph, or entire document and applying the shell script. Here’s how…

1. Open gedit
2. Navigate to Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins
3. Enable “External Tools” and press “Configure Plugin”
4. Press “New” and enter “Line Break at Col 80″ (or any name you like)
5. Paste the following script in the “command(s)” text area (you can choose to leave out the #comments, these are only here as a reminder in case you want to modify it to fit your needs):

#!/bin/sh

BREAK=80

# fmt [-WIDTH][OPTION]... [FILE]...
# --uniform-spacing -- one space between words, two after sentences
# --split-only -- split long lines, but do not refill
# --width=WIDTH -- maximum line width (default of 75 columns)
# when FILE is -, read standard input

fmt --uniform-spacing --split-only --width $BREAK -

6. Choose “Current selection” as Input
7. Choose “Replace current selection” as Output
8. At this point, you can choose to create a shortcut key such as “ctrl+m” for easy access.
8. Close “External Tools Manager” by pressing the “Close” button
9. Now this script is executable under the “Tools” menu. Alternatively, you can use your shortcut key for quick access.

The next step would be to somehow get gedit to automatically perform these hard wraps as your typing (like the evolution email client does). If anybody has a suggestion, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. I’m very surprised that this isn’t included in the already many featured gedit program by default, but thankfully it’s very easily remedied with the method described above.

1.) Install the tftp-server package

yum install -y tftp-server

2.) Enable TFTP by making the following change to the /etc/xinetd.d/tftp file

Find disable = yes, make it no

3.) Turn everything on and start the xinetd service

chkconfig tftp on
/sbin/chkconfig xinetd on
/sbin/service xinetd start

4.) Poke a hole in the firewall to allow TFTP access
CLI: Insert the following line before the “COMMIT” line of /etc/sysconfig/iptables and then restart the service with ‘service iptables restart’:

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport 69 -j ACCEPT

GUI: System -> Administration -> Firewall, put a checkmark on TFTP, and finally click apply.

Additional Information:
The TFTP server root directory is set to /var/lib/tftpboot/ by default but can be changed in the /etc/xinetd.d/tftp file.

Proper permissions to allow the TFTP daemon to update the files located in the TFTP server root directory are 666:

chmod 666 /var/lib/tftpboot/bootpImage

Sources:
http://llbb.wordpress.com/2007/06/14/installing-tftp-on-fedora/
http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/wiki/index.php/Quick_HOWTO_:_Ch16_:_Telnet,_TFTP,_and_xinetd

1.) Use apt-get to install debian-archive-keyring

apt-get install debian-archive-keyring

2.) Try using apt-get again. Additional information will be provided.

3.) Use additional information from last attempt with gpg commands.

Replace the KEYNUMBER with the actual keynumber that you should now have from running apt-get again.

gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys KEYNUMBER
gpg --armor --export KEYNUMBER | sudo apt-key add -

4.) Update apt-get to resynchronize the package index files.

apt-get update

5.) You should be good to go!

Keep in mind you may need to run apt-get update a couple of times. Also, make sure your date is set correctly.

Preliminary:

Most compression or archiving methods that you may want are already built into popular distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, etc…), but some of them aren’t. I would recommend installing this group of packages using apt-get, yum, or an equivalent before using this guide (unless of course you already know what you need):

su -c 'yum install unzip zip p7zip rar unrar bzip2 gzip lzma'

.tar

tar cvf filename.tar /dir

.tar.gz

tar czvf filename.tar.gz /dir

.tgz

tar cvzf filename.tgz /dir

.tar.gz2

You probably mean .tar.bz2

.tar.bz

tar cjvf filename.tar.bz /dir

.tbz

tar cjvf filename.tbz /dir

.tar.bz2

tar cjvf filename.tar.bz2 /dir

.tar.Z

.Z is an old naming convention which has moved to .gz.  See .tar.gz above.

.tar.xz

tar cvf -  filenames | lzma > filename.tar.xz 

.gz

gzip filename

.gz2

You probably mean .bz2

.bz

bzip filename

.bz2

bzip2 filename

.Z

.Z is an old naming convention which has moved to .gz.  See .gz above.

.xz

lzma filename

.zip

zip -r filename.zip /dir

.7z

7z a -t7z filename.7z /dir

.rar

rar a filename.rar /dir

.dmg

This is a bit more complicated than what I have time for. Looks like somebody has already figured something out.

.dd

Create these image files using:

dd if=inputfile.dd of=outputfile.dd

.more?

Have more to share? I wouldn’t mind hearing about it in the comments if you do!

.trouble?

Let me know about it in the comments. We’ll get it straightened out.