Installing Skype 2.2 on Fedora 17 x64

I am happy that Skype for Linux was not totally abandoned, but come on. Skype 4.0 for Linux is fucking terrible. It is so bad, that I highly recommend that you get rid of it and install the much more useful version 2.2 beta. (Kinda funny how the beta was more useful than the release isn't it?)

This is going to work only on Fedora 17 64 btw...

1. Download the Skype 2.2 Beta RPM. You can google for it, or you can use this one.
2. Install the dependencies:
1. sudo yum install-y qt-x11.i686 libXScrnSaver.i686 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 libXv.i686
3. Install the RPM for Skype:
1. sudo yum loclainstall -y skype-2.2.0.35-3.el6.nux.i586.rpm

That should get it going fine. If you already had Skype 4.0 installed then the dependencies are likely not needed.

Fedora 17 and Gigolo

Again this is a note to myself, and any others who might have had the same issue. After installing Fedora 17 XFCE Spin, for some unknown, and rather bewildering reason, it does not have Samba support for browsing files enabled by default.

To enable samba sharing via the ever popular Gigolo app perform the following :

1. sudo yum -y install samaba-client
2. sudo yum -y install gvfs-smb

After this you should be able to open Gigolo and connect to a Samba share. Why Fedora left this out of the final release is somewhat confusing, but oh well.

Making Chromium View PDFs

Chromium by default has no built-in PDF viewer unlike its cousin Google Chrome. I am not really certain why the hell this is, but it is. This is the easiest way that I could get this to work on Fedora (sometimes I wish I was back in Arch).

1. Install Google Chrome. 
Yeah I know, just trust me here, besides we only need one file, libpdf.so.


sudo yum -y install google-chrome-stable



After Chrome is installed, copy the libpdf.so file out of /opt/google/chrome to Chromium

sudo cp /opt/google/chrome/libpdf.so /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/plugins/


Go ahead and change the file permissions on libpdf.so to 755.

sudo chmod 755 libpdf.so


Now open Chromium and go to chrome://plugins. You should see a plugin called libpdf. Mine was enabled at this point but if your's is not, then do so.


That's it!

See that wasn't too hard was it?

A side note you should be aware of, in this format libpdf.so will not get updated. So it might be a good idea to do so manually every once and a while. Or you can leave Chrome installed and create a symlink to the chromium install for libpdf.so. 

Running Evolution in Dropbox

After switching to Fedora several months ago I have been using the Evolution Mail client solely. I got away from my long-time friend Thunderbird over some rather ridiculous issues that I won't go into here. And so far, Evolution is great. And it integrates into the default Fedora 16 desktop beautifully.

My only gripe is when Fedora 17 is released I don't want to loose everything or spend mass amounts of time backing everything up for the re-install. (Or if something goes completely haywire with the linux kernel during an update.) So I mapped all of the Evolution data into my Dropbox folder. Here is how you can do the same thing.

Evolution stores basic settings and such in ~/.evolution/ and even though nothing of any real import is stored there, you still need to move it to Dropbox.

mv ~/.evolution/ ~/Dropbox/evolution

Now make a sym link to the default location for Evolution.

ln -s ~/Dropbox/evolution ~/.evolution

The main data files and all of your emails are stored in ~/.local/share/evolution so we need to do the same thing to that folder. I changed the name to evolution-data in my Dropbox but you can use anything you want.

mv ~/.local/share/evolution ~/Dropbox/evoulition-data/

And then make the sym link.

ln -s ~/Dropbox/evolution-data ~/.local/share/evolution

That is it. Now Evolution will save the files into the Dropbox folder and it will in turn be synced to the web. If you have crap loads of emails, like I do, then you might need to purchase the 50gb plan to deal with the space. For $9 a year it is definitely worth it.

Flushing DNS in Linux

This is the easiest possible way that I know of to flush your DNS in Linux when you are not running a DNS server. Simply toggle the lan port off and then back on.

Installing Chromium on Fedora

For some reason you really have to work to get Fedora to install the chromium browser. Hopefully this will help someone else out there, and serve as a reminder to myself when I need to do it again.

My conkyrc …

background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Sans:size=8
xftalpha 1
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type desktop
own_window_hints
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 1250
maximum_width 200
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color white
default_shade_color blue
default_outline_color white
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 32
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no
undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
TEXT
${font sans-serif:bold:size=20}$alignc ArchLinux
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}SYSTEM ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}$sysname $kernel $alignr $machine
Host:$alignr$nodename
Uptime:$alignr$uptime
#File System: $alignr${fs_type}
#Mail: $alignr ${execi 300 python ~/.scripts/gmail.py}
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}Intel Core2 Duo E6300${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${cpugraph cpu1}
Core 1: ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${cpugraph cpu2}
Core 2: ${cpu cpu2}% ${cpubar cpu2}
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}MEMORY ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}RAM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc%
$membar
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}HDD ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}/ $alignc ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr ${fs_used_perc /}%
${fs_bar /}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}/home $alignc ${fs_used /home} / ${fs_size /home} $alignr ${fs_used_perc /home}%
${fs_bar /home}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}Seagate $alignc ${fs_used /media/SEA_DISC} / ${fs_size /media/SEA_DISC} $alignr ${fs_used_perc /media/SEA_DISC}%
${fs_bar /media/SEA_DISC}
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}TOP PROCESSES ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${top_mem name 1}${alignr}${top mem 1} %
${top_mem name 2}${alignr}${top mem 2} %
$font${top_mem name 3}${alignr}${top mem 3} %
$font${top_mem name 4}${alignr}${top mem 4} %
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}NETWORK ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}IP address: $alignr ${addr eth0}
${downspeedgraph eth0}
DLS:${downspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totaldown eth0}
${upspeedgraph eth0}
ULS:${upspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totalup eth0}
${color FFFFFF}${font LCDMono:Bold:size=10}${alignc}A Dance of Dragons${font}${color}
${alignc}Release Date
${font LCDMono:Bold:size=10}${color AAAAFF} ${alignc}${exec ~/Apps/countdown.sh}${color}${font}
${execi 10 ~/Apps/mocp.sh | fold -w55 -s}

Here is the mocp.sh script that is dumping my mocp content…

#!/bin/sh
    TITLE=”`mocp -i | grep ‘Title:’ | sed -e ‘s/^.*: //’`”;
    if [ “$TITLE” != “” ]; then
     ARTIST=”`mocp -i | grep ‘Artist:’ | sed -e ‘s/^.*: //’`”;
         SONGTITLE=”`mocp -i | grep ‘SongTitle:’ | sed -e ‘s/^.*: //’`”;
     ALBUM=”` mocp -i | grep ‘Album:’ | sed -e ‘s/^.*: //’`”;
     if [ “ARTIST” != “” ]; then ARTIST=”$ARTIST - “; fi
     if [ “ALBUM” != “” ]; then ALBUM=”($ALBUM)”; fi
     echo $ARTIST $SONGTITLE $ALBUM
    else echo MOC not running
    fi

And this is the little countdown script…

#!/bin/bash
START=$(date +%s)
END=$(date +%s -d “2011-7-12 00:00”)
SECONDS=$(( END - START ))
MINUTES=$(( SECONDS / 60 ))
SECONDS=$(( SECONDS - MINUTES*60 ))
HOURS=$(( MINUTES / 60 ))
MINUTES=$(( MINUTES - HOURS*60 ))
DAYS=$(( HOURS / 24 ))
HOURS=$(( HOURS - DAYS*24 ))
echo “${DAYS}d ${HOURS}h ${MINUTES}m ${SECONDS}s”