[LinuxBrit]

A few hints and tips...

Current Contents:
How to get Software from CVS.
How to use your mouse-wheel with X.
How to get X to use all the Intellimouse Explorer's buttons
How to install pcf fonts in X
How to keep a local debian apt archive cache

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How to get software from CVS.

How to keep up with the very latest software. Use CVS. This way you can also submit your updates. To submit, you'll need an account with a CVS server, but to keep up to date, you can use anonymous CVS.

Here's how.

First a quick note. CVS software is in active development. This means that you could update your copy of the software exactly 5 seconds after someone introduced a vicious bug. Your copy may not compile, may not run, or may do bad things to your system. The bug will probably be fixed quickly, but you should not hold the developers responsible for any damage done. CVS software has no guarantees. If you find a bug, fix it and submit a patch.

Here's how to get the cool stuff from enlightenment cvs.

  1. You'll need a copy of CVS.
  2. You'll need to set an environment variable, CVSROOT. This should be done in your shell start-up script.
  3. Assuming you use Bash, the line would be: 
    export CVSROOT= \
   ':pserver:anonymous@cvs.enlightenment.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/enlightenment'
  4. Now make yourself a directory. I recommend ~/CVS
  5. Go to that directory and type: 
    cvs login
    There is no password, you are an anonymous user, so just hit enter.
    (You will only have to type this the first time you use CVS).
  6. Now its time to grab some packages. This should get you just about everything: 
    cvs -z3 checkout e16 e17 eterm misc
  7. (Its all good, the guys who use this cvs server don't write boring software ;)
  8. The z3 is a compression specification, and is the best one to use. Checkout means 'get everything from scratch'.
  9. The next step is to build and install the packages you end up with. (By the way, have some time on your hands before starting the checkout, it'll take a while. I'll cover installation in a while, for now, be aware that you need to run ./autogen.sh in the root directory of each package, not configure.
  10. Back to cvs. After a while, if you want to update your local copies, you don't need to download it all again. Just go back to your cvs directory and type: 
    cvs -z3 update -Pd
  11. (Depending on which you wish to update, you could go into that module's dir and just update that.
  12. This will only download what's changed since your checkout. It will also only download and apply a patch to the file where possible, to save bandwidth. Very handy.

This has been very brief. For more info, consult your local cvs documentation, or check out the CVS FAQ (not very up-to-date).

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How to Use your Mouse-Wheel in X-Windows

Ok. This is only gonna be any use for people with wheel-mice. But its not something everyone gets right.

Edit your XF86Config file. Go to the pointer section and make sure the following settings are present:

For XFree 3.3.x users:

Section "Pointer"
   Protocol             "IMPS/2"
   Buttons              3
   ZAxisMapping         4 5
EndSection

For XFree 4.x users:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse0"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option      "Protocol"        "IMPS/2"
    Option      "Device"          "/dev/mouse"
    Option      "ZAxisMapping"    "4 5"
EndSection

That should do it. Don't use anything like emulate3buttons, or chord-middle. They'll only get in the way.

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How to get X to use all the Intellimouse Explorer's buttons

This is relatively easy to do. You must be using XFree 4.x for this to work though, as this mouse technically has 7 buttons, and 3.x only supports up to 5.

The mouse section in your XF86Config should look like this:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Mouse0"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "Protocol"        "ExplorerPS/2"
        Option      "Device"          "/dev/mouse"
        Option      "ZAxisMapping"    "6 7"
        Option      "Buttons"         "7"
EndSection

You have to map the mousewheel out of the way as shown, as otherwise the extra buttons aren't detected. Now we can swap stuff back though. Either add this line to your .xinitrc: xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5" or add this line to your ~/.Xmodmap: pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5.

That's it. The side buttons will be 6 and 7 now, and mousewheel scrolling will work as ever. You can bind the buttons to do whatever you like in your favorite windowmanager and applications.

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How to install pcf fonts in X

There are a few nice .pcf fonts on my downloads page. Here's how to install them:

  1. Move the font to /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc
  2. As root, cd to this directory and type: mkfontdir
  3. Then type: xset fp rehash
  4. Then, if you run xfs, type: /etc/init.d/xfs restart
  5. That should do you. The font should be usable right away. Type xlsfonts to check
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How to keep a local debian apt archive cache

I use this cronjob on boxes I maintain to keep a local cache up to date:

00 6 * * * apt-get -qq -y update && apt-get -q -y -d dist-upgrade

This way, whenever you come up upgrade or dist-upgrade, you never need to get any packages, because the local cache is primed. For example:

75 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 79  not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/105MB of archives. After unpacking 1299kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

I actually go further, and do this only on my fileserver. I nfs mount /var/cache/apt/ on every other machine in the network and so their caches are primed for free. This is optional, however.

There's more to come. I'll stick it up as soon as I get time...