Fedora « Luc de Louw's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Fedora’

Kernel 3.5.3 partially broken for virtualization

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

Some time ago, Fedora 17 got a Kernel update to 3.5.3-1. Since then, PXE booting virtual machines does not work anymore. It seems that it has not been fixed in the upstream Kernel, but only the 3.5 series of Kernels is affected.

A bug has been filed, but no fix is available. The only solution for now is to stick to Kernel 3.4.5-2. I’ve checked the Fedora annouce mailinglist, looks like there have been no grave bugfixes since then.

The bug only hits when you use PXE boot virtual machines with qemu-kvm. The virtual machine gets just paused, to find out the reason for it, you need to have a closer look to /var/log/libvirt/libvirtd.log. There you can read: “KVM: entry failed, hardware error 0x80000021“.

Someone proposed to use the emulate_invalid_guest_state=y parameter to the kvm_intel module, but according to a Ubuntu bugreport it fails too, but differently.

Hopefully a bug fix will be made available soon.

Having fun? Well, could be worse, could be better.

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Tags: Fedora, KVM, Virtualization
Posted in Fedora, Linux, Virtualization | No Comments »

How to get a RTL2832U based DVB-T stick working on Fedora 17

Sunday, September 16th, 2012

This week I bought a no-name DVB-T stick with the risk to not getting it working with Linux. The device contains a RTL2832u chip which seems to be quite common according to this list. The price tag was just €14, so I was taking the risk.

First experiments shown that there is no chance to get it running on Fedora 17. After digging deeper I figured out that someone wrote a driver and published it on github.

Later on, I figured out that there is a driver also available in upstreams 3.6rc Kernel. Unfortunately the Kernel shipped with Fedora 17 does not support the device yet.

Steps to do

Ensure you have installed the kernel headers package that match your running kernel version. If not, run yum -y install kernel-headers. The package dvb-apps will help you to set up the channels later on, install it with yum -y install dvb-apps

Getting and compiling the kernel module

git clone https://github.com/tmair/DVB-Realtek-RTL2832U-2.2.2-10tuner-mod_kernel-3.0.0.git
cd DVB-Realtek-RTL2832U-2.2.2-10tuner-mod_kernel-3.0.0/RTL2832-2.2.2_kernel-3.0.0/
make && make install

Afterwards you need to scan your DVB-T stick for stations and put it into mplayers channels file. In /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/ you will find the right setting the region you are living. For me de-Berlin is the right one.

scandvb /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/de-Berlin -o zap >> ~/.mplayer/channels.conf

Now you are ready to watch digital terrestrial TV on you Fedora box. mplayer "dvb://Das Erste" does the job.

A more comfortable player is kaffeine which has features like EPG (electronic Program Guide), recording facilities etc. It comes with KDE.

Have fun!

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Tags: Fedora, Multimedia
Posted in Fedora, Linux, Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

FUDCon 2012 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

FUDCon 2012 Kuala Lumpur

Since I’ll be in Kuala Lumpur anyway, I take the chance to visit the upcoming FUDcon (Fedora User and Developer Conference) which will take place May 18th to 20th at the Asia Pacific University College of Technology & Innovation. I dont know yet if I can be there all three days, but at least days 2 and 3.

I’m really glad to meet the Fedora people from another continent. I’ve been visiting Malaysia back in 2009, it is a very beautiful country with nice people. So this time my visit is different, combining vacation and some nice Linux stuff.

Looking at the list of talks, it will be interessting to join those sessions. Unfortunately it is too late for me to prepare a talk. The only thing I miss is the annoucement of a social event, maybe I have overseen it?

See you there… Have fun!

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Tags: Fedora, FUDCon
Posted in Fedora, Linux | No Comments »

I voted for beefy miracle

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

There is a open poll on voting for a name for Fedora 16. I gave my vote to Beefy Miracle. Why I voted for Beefy Miracle? Because it is cool, geeky, freaky, I’m loving hot dogs and it is something new.

The Fedora distribution is geeky, freaky and open to new stuff.

Having fun? Of course!

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Tags: Fedora
Posted in Red Hat, Uncategorized | No Comments »

How to harden RHEL systems

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

Some time ago, the NSA released an excellent guide how to harden RHEL5 systems.

Despite of being written for RHEL5, it partially also applies to RHEL6 and newer versions of Fedora. It is also worth looking at it for users of non-RH breed distributions. To be mentioned: Its clearly focused on server systems, not desktops.

Some of the topics are really basic stuff which is already in place as industries “best practices”, other methods are not that well known.

Most of the items can be implemented very easy, others should be reviewed if the complexity is worth the gain of security.

Minimize Software to Minimize Vulnerability is a good starting point. RHEL5 is quite bad on this point, a default installation comes with a complete desktop environment. RHEL6 made a lot of progress on this issue as I wrote about it in a earlier post.

The default file system layout of most Linux distributions is suboptimal. At least /var, /tmp and /home should be on separate file systems. You can enhance the systems security by setting mount options such as noexec, nodev and nosuid where appropriate.

Always set SELinux to Enforcing mode where possible. Since tools like audit2allow and selinux-polgengui enables users to easily create basic policies, its no more rocket science. For further readings and hints about SElinux, have look on Dan Walsh’s Blog.

Check if only needed daemons are running. I. e if you are not using NFS, disable portmapper and friends.

Other things things disabling rhnsd is IMHO not a good idea. Enabling a warning banner for pre-login texts is just clueless.

Conclusion
NSA provides a nice guide which is really worth reading for server administrators. Some topics described in the guide are maybe overkill and complex, while others are easy to implement and maintain. Hopefully NSA will soon update its paper to RHEL6.

It also shows that Linux distributors have room for improvements to provide a better default security.

Have fun!

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Tags: Fedora, RHEL, Security
Posted in Linux, Red Hat | 1 Comment »

Epson scanners on Linux systems

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

I’ve got a Epson Perfection 1260 Photo scanner.

Fedora like other distributions such as OpenSuse are recognizing the device since a long long time. The back end chosen for the device is plustek.

Unfortunately when using the default configuration one experience very strange effects with colours. The left and the right 50% of the picture have a colored background, even when scanning a empty page.

I had this problem with OpenSUSE since years and still got it with Fedora 1x. Since I only need the scanner for my yearly income tax declaration, I always forget about what I needed to change.

That’s what is needed to change:

Solution

[root@bond ~]# diff /etc/sane.d/plustek.conf.orig /etc/sane.d/plustek.conf
100c100
< option altCalibration 0
---
> option altCalibration 1
[root@bond ~]#

Since I do not have any other scanners I do not know if this is a bug specifically to this type of scanners, or if it is a general bug.

Using different search engines, the web does not disclose some solutions. That is one of the reasons why I’m blogging about it. The other reason is to find other people with the same problem.

At the end of the day, I’ll try to find out if this is a general bug of the Sane back end, or just specific to some Epson scanners. If it is specific to some Epson scanners, it may be worth to create a new specific back end for those scanners affected.

Having fun? Now I have, my stuff is successfully scanned.

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Tags: Fedora, Linux, OpenSuse
Posted in Linux, Red Hat, SUSE | 1 Comment »

Pulp, what is it about it?

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

Thanks to Máirín’s posting I got aware of the Pulp project.

What is it? I had a brief look at it, it is a Red Hat sponsored project with a similar functionality like Spacewalk and RHN Satellite.

This brings me to the question: Is Pulp is intended to be a replacement of Spacewalk? It can make sense, it is written in Python as Cobbler is. Cobbler and Spacewalk are not really playing nice together. Spacewalk used Java, Perl and Python.

Anyway, Pulp seems to be in its early childhood, but it seems to be a really interesting project. What are the plans for the future? And what are the plans for Spacewalk and thus RHN Satellite?

Having fun? As soon as I get the time to install it and give Pulp a closer look….

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Tags: Fedora, RHN Satellite, Spacewalk, System Management
Posted in Infrastructure, Linux, Red Hat, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Usability Fedora vs Windows

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

I’m writing this post sitting in a train, connected to the internet via UMTS. The device is a Huawai E220 HSDPA modem connected via USB. Guess who is the winner?

Procedure to get the device running on Fedora (first time usage):

Plug in the device on any USB port
Enter the PIN in the pop-up
Enjoy mobile Internet connection

Steps: 3
Time: approx. 5sec.

Procedure on Windows XP (first time usage):

Decide on what USB port you will plug in the device an memorize it, because subsequently it will only work on that USB port
Plug in the device
A virtual CDROM drive gets mounted, a window with some drivers is appearing
Install the driver
reboot your notebook
Finding and starting the previously installed software
Getting a pop-up asking for the PIN
Enjoy mobile Internet connection

Steps: 8
Time: approx 10min

[update]
Procedure on Windows 7 (first time usage):

Decide on what USB port you will plug in the device an memorize it, because subsequently it will only work on that USB port
Plug in the device
A virtual CDROM drive gets mounted, a window with some drivers is appearing
When autorun.inf is enabled, the driver installs automatically (on enterprise systems mostly disabled). if not enabled, read some documentation what to do
Finding and starting the previously installed software
Getting a pop-up asking for the PIN
Enjoy mobile Internet connection

Steps: 7
Time: Between 5min and 30min (depending on your Windows 7 knowledge)
[/update]

For the subsequent usage on Fedora proceed as it is the first time usage.

On Windows (XP and 7) you need to remember which port you plugged in the device when you installed it. Otherwise you need to uninstall the drivers, reboot and install the drivers again and reboot again. [update]On Windows 7 you do not need a reboot.[/update]

Having fun? With Fedora yes With Windows? Not really…

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Tags: Fedora, Linux, Mobile Internet, Usability, Windows
Posted in Linux, Red Hat | 15 Comments »

Joining the Fedora doc and trans-de Teams

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

The history
Since 1994 I’m a Linux enthusiast. In the year 2000 I was installing the first commercially used Linux Systems in Switzerland’s airline industry. Since then I worked in different companies mostly in the outsourcing business.

From 2001 to 2003 I was also contributing some German translations for KDE, as well as writing two Docbook SGML documentation for TLDP.

The current
Since approx. two years I’m working mostly with Red Hat’s RHEL and its derivatives such as CentOS. Later I also switched my desktop and notebooks from openSUSE to Fedora, for obvious reasons: Fedora is the upstream of RHEL and it is more stable.

I’m also a guy that wrote and writes some Bugzilla entries, mostly for RHN Satellite/Spacewalk. Those guys may already know me, I’ll hope they still like me

First contact to the Fedora community
My first contact with the Fedora community was at FUDCon 2010 in Zürich, Switzerland, my home town. There I recognized that it is indeed a very nice and international community with a lot of interesting people.

This encouraged me to to something for the Fedora project. What can I do? First of all, I’m having some knowledge about technical documentations, thus joining the doc-team. I also have some experience with GNU gettext and my mother tongue is german, so joining the trans-de team makes sense.

The future
I’m a RHCE with some skills in building RPMs, lets see if I can help the project with that too.

Lets have some fun?
Always!

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Tags: Fedora
Posted in Linux, Red Hat | 8 Comments »

Bye bye Suse, welcome Fedora

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

Successfully migrated my workstation @home from OpenSuse to Fedora13

After using SuSE and later OpenSuse since 1994 it was time for a change. I was stuck at OpenSuse because of its excellent multimedia support trough 3rd party repostitories from packman. Last evening another update brought the system down once again. Time for change.

Since a long time Fedora does not ship software any more which are problematic because of software patents, such as mp3, different video codecs etc. Since then Fedora was more or less a no-go for home-usage. In meantime there is a 3rd party repository available called RPM Fusion. RPM Fusion is as good as packman, this made the decision to switch easier.

Why I finally switched from OpenSuse to Fedora:

@Work, I’m mostly working with RHEL systems
Workstation @work migrated to Fedora long time ago
Novell is going to die, future of (Open)Suse is uncertain
Multimedia support is as good as for OpenSuse trough 3rd party repositories
Suse has a bad package management (zypper and friends) and its going worse with each new release
Fedora is more innovative
Bigger community
Better quality control (obviously)
If a Fedora update is going wrong, packages can be easily downgraded with a single command

Is the switch on my home workstation enterprise relevant?
Yes and no.

Yes, because people like me tend to use the upstream project of the two enterprise Linux distributions RHEL (with Fedora as upstream) and Suse (with OpenSuse as upstream). I know a lot of people who already switched to Fedora quite some time ago.

No, because for home usage for ordinary users Ubunu, Debian, you-name-it-distribution is good enough.

I’m quite convinced that (Open)Suse will die in the next time. One of the reasons is that Novell brought SuSE Linux AG back in 2003 and dismissed lots of developers. Then investment companies held the major part of Novell’s stocks. Investment companies are known to be interested to make money on the short term, not on the long term.

If Suse is really going to die, this is a bad thing for the Linux society. The only “Enterprise” Linux would then be Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As we know from Microsoft, a monopoly is always a bad thing. There is an urge for another Enterprise Linux vendor. How will kick in? Mandriva? They are nearly bankrupt. Ubunu/Canonical? They call five years of support long term support (LTS)? Gimme a break! Oracle Linux (Aka OEL)? Its a RHEL clone.

Your opinion?
Please leave a comment

Have fun? Unsure…

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Tags: Fedora, Novell, OpenSuse, RHEL, SLES
Posted in Linux, Red Hat, SUSE | 7 Comments »

Luc de Louw's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Fedora’

Kernel 3.5.3 partially broken for virtualization

How to get a RTL2832U based DVB-T stick working on Fedora 17

FUDCon 2012 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I voted for beefy miracle

How to harden RHEL systems

Epson scanners on Linux systems

Pulp, what is it about it?

Usability Fedora vs Windows

Joining the Fedora doc and trans-de Teams

Bye bye Suse, welcome Fedora

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