K-Squared Ramblings » Linux

Dreamwidth and Debian

Kelson — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:42:07 +0000

Whenever I visit a Dreamwidth journal and leave it open in a tab, I always find myself wondering why I was looking at the Debian GNU/Linux website. For possibly obvious reasons:

I can’t imagine how I keep mixing up a dark red 1½-turn counterclockwise spiral with a dark red 1½-turn clockwise spiral!

Nepomuk

Kelson — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:45:34 +0000

I think I finally fixed it.

This stupid “OMG Nepomuk is not running!” error has been dogging me every time I launch KMail, ever since Fedora upgraded KDE. I followed all the directions on fixing Akonadi, and nothing worked. Finally, it turned out that there was a config file telling it to load the old-style “redland” database — which doesn’t exist in current versions of Nepomuk — instead of the new “virtuoso” database.

The file was in ~.kde/share/config/nepomukserverrc and the item in question is “Used Soprano Backend.” I changed it from “redland” to “virtuosobackend” as described here and now it actually starts Nepomuk, and KMail doesn’t complain when I start it!

Someone at KDE decided to massively overcomplicate things!

*grumble*

Getting Flash to work on Google Chrome for 64-bit Linux

Kelson — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:29:14 +0000

I tried out the Chrome beta for Linux on two different computers yesterday. On the first one, Flash worked right “out of the box.” On the second, it wouldn’t even show up in about:plugins. I couldn’t figure out what was different.

Both are 64-bit systems running Fedora 12.
Both are running the 32-bit version of Flash from Adobe’s yum repository.
Both are running the 64-bit version of Google Chrome from the beta download page.
I had run mozilla-plugin-config -i to create the 64-bit wrapper on both computers after updating Flash. (A security update came out yesterday.)
Flash works just fine in 64-bit Firefox and Opera.

I looked thoroughly at my home computer last night and came up empty. This morning I took another look at my work computer — the one where Flash actually showed up — and I think I’ve found it.

Chrome is using nswrapper_32_64.libflashplayer.so according to about:plugins. The actual file is in /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/. This system has two symbolic links to that file, one in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ and one in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/. ~~IIRC~~ Only one of these was present on my home computer.

So I think this will fix it:

ln -s /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/nswrapper_32_64.libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

Run the command as root or using sudo.

I’ll check back tonight and update this entry to show whether it worked.

Update: Yes, it worked!

Dissonance

Kelson — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 07:30:00 +0000

Contrast in the waiting room at the car dealer’s service department: A sad death scene in the movie on TV vs. polka-sounding video game music from a few chairs over. #
*sigh* I upgraded my Linux box to Fedora 12 in hopes that it would fix sound. Instead it broke suspend/resume – which I’d rather have on this system if I could only choose one. #

Google It! (Also: Fedora 12)

Kelson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:30:00 +0000

Whenever my site gets hits from Google’s Italian site, my brain insists on reading it as “Google It!” #
Fedora 12 is out today. I’d actually lost track of the schedule. With any luck, PulseAudio will actually work. #

Audio, Social Worker Spam, & Prius Hatch

Kelson — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:30:00 +0000

Fedora 12 claims PulseAudio improvements. Here’s hoping sound will actually work after suspend+resume again. #
Also: iPod train wreck of the morning was the Cardcaptor Sakura theme followed by Garbage’s Supervixen. #
What’s with all the “Be a social worker!” spam lately? It’s a change from the usual porn, pills, watches & software, but out of left field. #
Future reference: Though there’s no lever to pop the hatch on the Prius, unlocking the doors allows someone else to open it from outside #

SCOpe

Kelson — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0000

About time! @brionv reports:

After 6 years SCO finally dumps the exec who ran Caldera’s Linux biz into the ground. #
Doozy of an update in the copyright case over Shepard Fairey’s Obama “Hope” poster. (via @ThisIsTrue) #
Backed up, lately? A reminder from @sans_isc. #
Found a pack of screen protectors while cleaning yesterday & replaced the one on my phone. HUGE difference in clarity! #

@font-face Crashes Firefox on Fedora

Kelson — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:30:00 +0000

With the release of Firefox 3.5, I decided it was finally time to get serious about setting up a custom headline font on Speed Force. Cross-platform @font-face embedding in CSS is now possible on Firefox, Safari, the beta version of Opera, and (I think) Chrome. So I pulled out some bookmarks, looked for some fonts with licenses that allowed embedding, messed around with a test page and finally settled on two custom fonts: one for the post headlines, and one for the title and the sidebar section headers.

I tested it in a couple of browsers, both on my Linux desktop and on the Mac laptop, and planned to test it on the Windows desktop when Katie was done with it. But then something weird started happening.

Firefox started crashing. Repeatedly. Not quite predictably, but only when that test page was open.

I figured maybe it was a corrupted font, so I removed one, then the other, then both. If the page tried to download an embedded font, Firefox would eventually crash. If not, it was rock solid.

This seemed kind of bizarre for such a high-profile new feature to cause consistent crashing.

I did some searches online but didn’t come up with anything until I tried running Firefox from the command-line, so that I could read the error message. It complained, "firefox: cairo-ft-font.c:554: _cairo_ft_unscaled_font_lock_face: Assertion `!unscaled->from_face' failed." Searching for that led me to Fedora bug 509501 and bug 502274, and this blog entry.

To make a long story short:

On Linux, Firefox uses a library called cairo to handle graphics, including fonts.
An old version of cairo had a bug that would cause crashes with fonts under certain circumstances.
Cairo fixed the bug in December.
Fedora 11 is still using the old version of cairo.

So until Fedora ships a newer (or at least patched) version of cairo, my primary browser on my primary desktop will crash on any web page with an embedded font.

Nice.

I guess I could patch my own system for now and put the fonts up for the benefit of the rest of the Firefox+Safari+Opera-using audience on Windows and Macs (and probably other Linux distributions). But that means causing a crash for anyone else running Fedora 11 when they visit my site. I’m not too thrilled about that idea. I have no problem with adding enhancements that only appear under certain browser+os combinations, but actively crashing a browser? Not something I want to do.

Update (July 21): Aha! Fedora submitted an updated cairo for inclusion in the stable release last night!

Pushing Daisies, WaMu, Bees, Ubuntu and Vortex

Kelson — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:30:00 +0000

Brian Fuller talks about the future of Pushing Daisies. #
WaMu building has taken down its sign. Giant Chase banner at street level. #
Guy w/ sign by side of road: “Homeless kind soul stuck in vortex.” I get the 1st half, but WTF does “stuck in vortex” mean? Downward spiral? #
From @ThisIsTrue: possible cause identified for honey bee colony collapse. #
Odd: If Ubuntu is the biggest desktop Linux out there, why is my torrent for 8.10 64bit idle? Fedora 10 64bit found 7 peers in 30 seconds. #

This is why you vote

Kelson — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:03:58 +0000

The code name for Fedora 9 Linux has been chosen, and it’s going to be Sulphur. Because a foul-smelling rock associated with rotten eggs and depictions of Hell is just what we want to identify an operating system. (Actually, it might not be too far off for Windows Vista.)

Bathysphere was only 8 votes behind. Weird, but considerably cooler.

Oh, well. At least it’s not Mayonnaise or Chupacabra. And some of the other names on that list are considerably worse.