Before I get down to the details, I just want to say that Linspire 5.0 has been an absolute pleasure to use. It is significantly more responsive than Linspire 4.5 as well as a lot of other distributions that I have used. On top of everything else, it is downright beautiful. Elverado did absolutely amazing work crafting the new icon set and skins for the desktop. I prefer my software free, but Linspire has certainly earned their fee.

The following are some notes that I recorded while configuring Linspire 5.0 after running the upgrade from Linspire 4.5. I later updated this page when I did a fresh reinstall of Linspire 5.0 after a harddrive crash. While most of the notes are generally useful, a few of them pertain to solving issues the arose during the upgrade procedure. As of right now, the notes are in no particular order and mirror the order in which they were executed.

Install MS TrueType Core Fonts

First, ensure that x-ttcidfont-conf is installed via CNR.

Uncomment the debian repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list and then run, as root:

#> apt-get update
#> apt-get install msttcorefonts
#> defoma-app purge x-ttcidfont-conf

Servers

SSH

The ssh server is being short-circuited by existence of the file /etc/sshd_not_to_be_run. Simply delete this file and the ssh server will start on the next boot. It can be manually started, of course, via the init script: /etc/init.d/ssh start

To enable X11 forwarding over ssh, the setting in the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config should be set as follows: X11Forwarding yes

Note: In order to allow ssh connections from the outside world, it was necessary to select the "Open" firewall option under the network settings in the control center.

MySQL

Networking is disabled by default for security reasons. You can enable it by commenting out the skip-networking option in /etc/mysql/my.cnf.

Mail (Exim)

By default, the mail uses linspire.com as the hostname. This can be changed by editing the file /etc/mailname. However, it may be more appropriate to recofigure exim completely by running: sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

Modified /etc/aliases so that local mail was redirected to a single user (postmaster) and then routed out to a personal e-mail address.

Enable Qt theme in GTK2

Although the skel image for Linspire specifies the GTK2 theme in the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file, I went ahead and set it in /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc

include "/usr/share/themes/Qt/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"

Enable 7-button Mouse

In the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file under the pointers section, add the options:

Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"

Then add the script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/93mouse-buttons with the line

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5"

Control KDE Session Saving

In the kcontrol application, search for "session" under the Search tab, then click on "Session Manager" result. Clicking the option "manually restore session" will add a session option to the Kmenu (Linspire start button). Otherwise, the following dcop call will do the trick to save the current session:

$> dcop ksmserver ksmserver saveCurrentSession

Adjust Keyboard Repeat Rate (deprecated)

Under Linspire 4.5 I was using xset to adjust the rate of the keyboard repeat. However, under Linspire 5.0 I disabled my custom xset startup script because I figured out I could configure this option in the bios of the computer (it turns out that the bios setting was the culprit of this problem).

Setup Laser Printer

Before setting up the printer, install the package libcupsys2 from the CNR repository.

Installed the magicolor2430dl deb file in vault. Then, opened the KDE printer configuration, added a TCP printer (NOT IPP!) using the IP address/hostname (yucca) and port (9100) of the printer, then selected the driver from /usr/share/cups/models/mc2430dl/ (it should add the driver to the list of selections under KINOCA MINOLTA).

Discover Unknown Packages Marked for Upgrade

It seems that if a package is not listed in My Products tab of CNR, it cannot be selected for upgrade. However, apt seems to be aware of the available upgrades and report the packages as not being upgraded. The trick to discovering them is to configure apt-get to read the cnrclient apt source listings.

  1. make the following symlink /var/lib/apt/lists → /var/cache/cnrclient/lists, moving the original folder to the side

  2. copy the sources from /var/cache/cnrclient/apt/sources.list into /etc/apt/sources.list (should look like deb file:/var/cache/cnrclient apps live)

  3. run apt-get update

  4. run apt-get upgrade

  5. At this point, the packages to be upgraded will be revealed

  6. Reverse the steps above to restore previous configuration

  7. Go into cnrclient and search/install each of the packages listed

Note: I created the script checkupdates.sh that runs this process automatically.

Run fslint to Cleanup Upgrade

It appears that while the upgrade was successful at preparing the new version of Linspire while at the same time preserving the original state of the system, it left behind a large number of orphaned files.

I downloaded the FSLint rpm package and converted to debian using alien. Had to install the python-glade package and also modified the /usr/bin/FSlint to use the /usr/share/FSlint directory for the variable liblocation.

Installed Kernel Sources

Packages are listed as los-kernel-\{source,headers,config}-2.6.10 in CNR. Install all three of them. It is then necessary to go into the /usr/src directory and extract the three resulting tarballs in place.

Kernel Modules

shfs

Extracted the shfs.tar.bz2 source to /usr/src/shfs-module, entered directory and ran

#> make
#> make install
#> depmod
#> modprobe shfs

nvidia

Although Linspire comes with support for nvidia out of the box, the kernel module included in CNR is old. Downloaded the newest installer pack from nvidia and simply ran it in single user module (had to stop the ldm service).

By default, fast writes are not enabled. To enable them, append the following option line after the nvidia alias: alias char-major-195 nvidia options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1 NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1

Prevent autorun of Linspire Internet Suite when Insert CD

Currently there is no GUI and despite what it may seem, modifying /etc/autorun/autorun.conf will only be overwritten on the next login. The only way to truly keep the autorun from coming back is to copy /etc/autorun/autorun.conf → ~/.autorun.conf and then make whatever modifications to the events your heart desires.

Another site claims that if you simply delete the file /etc/autorun/autorun.conf, this behavior will be disabled for good.

ifdown complained that it should be a symlink to /etc/resolvconf/run/resolv.conf, so I made the correction. This is another artifact left behind by the upgrade and likely will not be needed on a fresh install of Linspire 5.0.

ipv6 problems

It appears the KDE applications have a major problem if IPV6 is not configured properly. An easy way to deal with this problem is to just disable it.

In the file /etc/modprobe.d/aliases ensure the following setting:

#alias net-pf-10 ipv6
install net-pf-10 /bin/true

Then, the following KDE environment variable must be set globally to prevent ipv6 lookups in the khtml part of KDE

export KDE_NO_IPV6=true

In order to get this environment variable to be set globally, create the file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/95kde-no-ipv6 and add the following contents: `#!/bin/sh

export KDE_NO_IPV6=true`

Pass Arguments to Firefox Starup Script (deprecated)

The firefox-launcher script was not passing arguments to the native call, so I modified the last line by appending "$@".

This seems to have been fixed by an update.

Upgraded to Java 5

Installed java1.5 in /opt and updated alternatives for binaries. I also set the JAVA_HOME environment variable in /etc/bash.bashrc. There are also packages in the linspire CNR repository, which can be found using the search terms "j2re" and "j2sdk".

Scanner Setup

There is a known issue with the Epson scanner in Linspire, as it tries to use the scsi module instead of the usb module in /etc/sane.d/epson.conf. Follow these setups to solve the configuration problem:

  1. Open file "/etc/sane.d/epson.conf"

  2. Comment out the "scsi EPSON" line by putting a # in front of it (as well as all other lines)

  3. Enable the "usb" line by removing the # in front of it.
    (optionally make the line include vendor/product: usb 0x4b8 0x11e

  4. Run sane-find-scanner to verify it works

  5. Selected module by putting the string "epson" in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf

GTK2 Font Size

The font size in GTK2 is 1px larger than that set in KDE3, so to fix this, create a file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and place the following info into it:

style "user-font"
{
    font_name = "Nimbus Sans L 9"
}

widget_class "*" style "user-font"

GTK2 Themes in Eclipse

In order to install custom GTK2 themes for use in Eclipse, it is necessary to get the CNR package gtk2-engines-pixbuf, which adds the pixbuf rendering library to allow the use of many decent GTK2 themes.

Edit System V services

Besides using the commandline, installed ksysv to modify startup scripts.

Lags in mplayer and mplayer-plugin

Set up the ~/.mplayer/config file to use the following directive

ao=jack

Fix Broken Sound in RealPlayer 10

This problem can be solved just by loading the OSS emulation module in the kernel rather than using the userspace library.

modprobe snd-pcm-oss

This seems to be the default configuration on a fresh install of Linspire 5.0.

Configure iRiver MP3 Player

This section specifically relates to getting the iRiver ifp library setup on this box. First, ensure that the package libusb-dev is installed via CNR. Also, it is nicer to use checkinstall for the installation since it will created a debian package to manage the deployed files.

Downloaded libifp (version 1.0.0.1) and ran

#> ./configure --prefix=/usr
#> make
#> sudo checkinstall

In order to build the GUI, the packages libqt3-mt-dev and Qt3 Dev Tools are required from the CNR library.

Downloaded ifp_gui (version 0.8.5) and ran

#> ./build.sh

  • Added devilkin to the ifp group, which the ifp_gui build created.

  • Copied the ifp_gui binary from the bin/ directory to /usr/bin/

  • libifp/ifp_gui creates and modifies files in /etc/hotplug/usb/ifpdev and /etc/hotplub/usb.usermap

The default placement for the usermap information is /etc/hotplug/usb.usermap, however Debian (or perhaps Linspire) expects it to be placed in the file /etc/hotplug/usb/ifpdev.usermap, so update this after installing the libifp package.

Modify the script /etc/hotplug/usb/ifpdev by prefixing the following lines to add a log message: `cd /etc/hotplug . hotplug.functions

mesg Setting permissions for $DEVICE`

In order to get links in thunderbird to open in a new tab in firefox, make the following change to prefs.js: user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/usr/bin/launch-firefox");

While you are looking at the /usr/bin/launch-firefox file, there is a bug in which the commandline arguments are not passed to the firefox program. Find the two lines which execute firefox and append "$@" after the program name. You could also add a kmessage pop in that script that announces the fact that the link is opening in the background using kmessage --dialog.

Enable Local Mail Server

Installed postfix to be used as the local mail server for sending mail. Also installed mailx to be able to send mail from the commandline using mail'. Configured postfix to use mojavelinux.com rather than linspire.com in `/etc/postfix/main.cf

Note: It appears that the default for Linspire 5.0 is to use exim, so I am going to roll with this for a while.

Games

Doom3

The following script should be used to startup doom3 from any location in the system: `#!/bin/sh

cd "/home/devilkin/opt/doom3-demo/" export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:. exec ./doom.x86 "$@"`

In order to fix sound, it may be necessary to change the driver used. If alsa-oss emulation is being used (which it is by default), then modify a ~/.doom3/DoomConfig.cfg file in the doom3 installation directory and add/change the following lines: s_numberOfSpeakers 2 s_driver oss

Using these settings will allow alsa to be used via the emulation layer. For whatever reason, this fixes the sound skipping that muffles the sound output and slows down the video.

Bug Fixes

  • When firefox upgraded, not all of the symlinks for the mplayerplug-in made it into /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins. Look here first for plugin problems.

Resources