Installing Dropbox in Gentoo running KDE

I had never used Dropbox before and had no intention of doing so, but today a work colleague sent me some large files via Dropbox so I was forced to sign up. I tried to install Dropbox on my main laptop running Gentoo Linux and KDE but, for a well-known application, I had a surprising amount of trouble, hence this blog post.

To begin with, I found the following Dropbox-related packages:

# eix dropbox
* gnome-extra/nautilus-dropbox
Available versions: (~)0.6.9 (~)0.7.0 0.7.1 (~)1.4.0 {debug}
Homepage: http://www.dropbox.com/
Description: Store, Sync and Share Files Online
.
* net-misc/dropbox
Available versions: 1.2.48-r1^ms (~)1.2.51-r2^ms (~)1.4.3-r1^ms (~)1.4.7-r1^ms (~)1.4.7-r2^ms (~)1.4.17^ms (~)1.4.23^ms (~)1.6.16^ms {X +librsync-bundled}
Homepage: http://dropbox.com/
Description: Dropbox daemon (pretends to be GUI-less)
.
* net-misc/dropbox-cli
Available versions: 1 1-r1 {PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_6 python2_7"}
Homepage: http://www.dropbox.com/
Description: Cli interface for dropbox daemon (python)
.
* xfce-extra/thunar-dropbox [1]
Available versions: [m](~)0.2.0
Homepage: http://www.softwarebakery.com/maato/thunar-dropbox.html
Description: Plugin for Thunar that adds context-menu items for Dropbox
.
[1] "sabayon" /var/lib/layman/sabayon
.
Found 4 matches.

But I don’t have GNOME or Xfce installed on my main laptop, so the first and last packages were of no interest. A quick search on the Web turned up Kfilebox, which seemed to be exactly what I needed. I was pleased to find that the package is in the main Portage tree:

# eix kfilebox
* kde-misc/kfilebox
Available versions: (4) (~)0.4.8 (~)0.4.9
{LINGUAS="ar br cs de el es fr gl it lt nl pl pt ru si tr zh zh_CN"}
Homepage: http://kdropbox.deuteros.es/
Description: KDE dropbox client

So I installed kfilebox, dropbox and dropbox-cli, thinking I would need them all. Then, before doing anything else, I surfed to the Dropbox Web site and signed up for an account.

I launched Konsole and entered the command kfilebox. A window popped-up telling me that the Dropbox Daemon was being downloaded, then another window popped up offering me two options/buttons: ‘Run gtk based installer’ and ‘Or simply link account’. I clicked on the latter, thinking that was all I needed to do as I had already signed up for an account via the Dropbox Web site. But a Dropbox icon did not appear in the Panel, nor did Dolphin show a Dropbox folder icon in my home directory, and the KDE Notifications widget kept popping up notification after notification from Kfilebox to “Please visit url to link to this machine”. The trouble was that clicking on the apparent link in the notifications did nothing.

The directories .dropbox and .dropbox-dist existed in my home directory, and the contents of /home/fitzcarraldo/.kde4/share/config/kfileboxrc were as follows:

[General]
AutoStart=true
Browser=rekonq
DropboxDir=/home/fitzcarraldo/.dropbox-dist/
FileManager=dolphin
GtkUiDisabled=true
IconSet=default
ShowNotifications=true
StartDaemon=true

As the rekonq Web browser is not installed on this laptop, I edited the file and changed Browser=rekonq to Browser=firefox then rebooted, but it made no difference.

So I uninstalled everything:

# emerge -C kfilebox dropbox dropbox-cli
# rm -rf /home/fitzcarraldo/.dropbox
# rm -rf /home/fitzcarraldo/.dropbox-dist
# rm /home/fitzcarraldo/.kde4/share/config/kfileboxrc

then rebooted and reinstalled only Kfilebox:

# emerge kfilebox

I then launched Konsole and entered the command kfilebox. The pop-up window appeared notifying me that the Dropbox Daemon was being downloaded, followed by the pop-up window offering me the choice of running the gtk-based installer or simply linking the account. This time I chose the option to run the gtk-based installer and just followed the intuitive instructions in the various pop-up windows that followed, one of which offered to create a new Dropbox account or to link to an existing Dropbox account. As I wanted to do the latter I entered my e-mail address and Dropbox password, a Dropbox icon then appeared on the Panel and a Dropbox folder icon is now visible in Dolphin.

I checked the contents of ~/.kde4/share/config/kfileboxrc and they were the same as listed above, so I edited the file to replace rekonq with firefox, although I’m not sure yet what (if anything) that does, as Dropbox is new to me and I’m still learning. Anyway, the important thing is that I could now click on the ‘View folder’ button in an e-mail sent to me by a colleague and the files uploaded by my colleague were automatically downloaded into the ~/Dropbox directory.

How to prevent a USB mouse auto-suspending in Linux when a laptop’s power supply is disconnected

I found that my USB mouse (and external USB keyboard) went to sleep when the mains power supply was disconnected from my laptop. This was annoying because I had to click a mouse button and wait a couple of seconds in order to wake up the mouse. You can see from the console output below that several USB devices were being auto-suspended when I unplugged the laptop PSU:

# # PSU is currently connected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 on 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 on 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 on 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 on 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 on 1.5 USB Keyboard
# # Now I will disconnect the PSU...
# # PSU is currently disconnected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 auto 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 auto 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 auto 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 auto 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 auto 1.5 USB Keyboard
#

I found out the Vendor ID (046d) and Product ID (c052) of my Logitech NX50 USB portable/travel mouse by unplugging then reconnecting the USB mouse and using the dmesg command:

[13628.909728] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 5
[13634.454132] usb 1-1.2: new low-speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd
[13634.535107] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c052
[13634.535111] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[13634.535113] usb 1-1.2: Product: USB Laser Mouse
[13634.535115] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Logitech
[13634.540168] input: Logitech USB Laser Mouse as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2:1.0/input/input17
[13634.540582] hid-generic 0003:046D:C052.0005: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Logitech USB Laser Mouse] on usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2/input0

First I tried creating a local Udev rule:

# cat /etc/udev/rules.d/91-local.rules
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{product}=="USB Laser Mouse", ATTR{power/control}="on"

That didn’t stop the mouse from auto-suspending (and neither did “Logitech USB Laser Mouse” instead of “USB Laser Mouse”), so I tried creating a Udev rule specifying the Vendor ID and Product ID of the mouse:

# cat /etc/udev/rules.d/91-local.rules
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="046d", ATTR{idProduct}=="c052", TEST=="power/control", ATTR{power/control}="on"

That didn’t stop the mouse from auto-suspending either.

Then I remembered that laptop-mode-tools is installed on my laptop:

# eix laptop-mode-tools
[I] app-laptop/laptop-mode-tools
Available versions: 1.60-r1 (~)1.62-r1 {(+)acpi apm bluetooth scsi}
Installed versions: 1.62-r1(18:10:15 11/01/13)(acpi bluetooth -apm -scsi)
Homepage: http://www.samwel.tk/laptop_mode/
Description: Linux kernel laptop_mode user-space utilities

So then I tried adding the mouse model to the blacklist in /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/usb-autosuspend.conf by making AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_BLACKLIST="046d:c052" as shown below:

#
# Configuration file for Laptop Mode Tools module usb-autosuspend.
#
# For more information, consult the laptop-mode.conf(8) manual page.
#


###############################################################################
# USB autosuspend settings
# ------------------------
#
# If you enable this setting, laptop mode tools will automatically enable the
# USB autosuspend feature for all devices.
#
# NOTE: Some USB devices claim they support autosuspend, but implement it in a
# broken way. This can mean keyboards losing keypresses, or optical mice turning
# their LED completely off. If you have a device that misbehaves, add its USB ID
# to the blacklist below and complain to your hardware vendor.
################################################################################

# Enable debug mode for this module
# Set to 1 if you want to debug this module
DEBUG=0

# Enable USB autosuspend feature?
# Set to 0 to disable
CONTROL_USB_AUTOSUSPEND="auto"

# Set this to use opt-in/whitelist instead of opt-out/blacklist for deciding
# which USB devices should be autosuspended.
# AUTOSUSPEND_USE_WHITELIST=0 means AUTOSUSPEND_*_BLACKLIST will be used.
# AUTOSUSPEND_USE_WHITELIST=1 means AUTOSUSPEND_*_WHITELIST will be used.
AUTOSUSPEND_USE_WHITELIST=0

# The list of USB IDs that should not use autosuspend. Use lsusb to find out the
# IDs of your USB devices.
# Example: AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_BLACKLIST="046d:c025 0123:abcd"
AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_BLACKLIST="046d:c052"

# The list of USB driver types that should not use autosuspend.  The driver
# type is given by "DRIVER=..." in a USB device's uevent file.
# Example: AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_BLACKLIST="usbhid usb-storage"
AUTOSUSPEND_USBTYPE_BLACKLIST=""

# The list of USB IDs that should use autosuspend. Use lsusb to find out the
# IDs of your USB devices.
# Example: AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_WHITELIST="046d:c025 0123:abcd"
AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_WHITELIST=""

# The list of USB driver types that should use autosuspend.  The driver
# type is given by "DRIVER=..." in a USB device's uevent file.
# Example: AUTOSUSPEND_USBTYPE_WHITELIST="usbhid usb-storage"
AUTOSUSPEND_USBTYPE_WHITELIST=""

# Trigger auto-suspension of the USB deivce under conditional circumstances
BATT_SUSPEND_USB=1
LM_AC_SUSPEND_USB=0
NOLM_AC_SUSPEND_USB=0

# USB Auto-Suspend timeout in seconds
# Number of seconds after which the USB devices should suspend
AUTOSUSPEND_TIMEOUT=2

And now the mouse no longer suspends when I unplug the PSU:

# # PSU is currently connected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 on 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 on 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 on 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 on 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 on 1.5 USB Keyboard
# # Now I will disconnect the PSU...
# # PSU is currently disconnected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 on 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 auto 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 auto 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 auto 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 auto 1.5 USB Keyboard
# # Now I will reconnect the PSU...
# # PSU is currently connected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 on 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 on 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 on 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 on 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 on 1.5 USB Keyboard
#

So configuring laptop-mode-tools solved the problem with the mouse. Mind you, I will probably simply make CONTROL_USB_AUTOSUSPEND="no" in /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/usb-autosuspend.conf, as I don’t want the internal USB devices in my laptop (Bluetooth adapter, fingerprint sensor and Webcam) to auto-suspend either.

Evaluating Sabayon Linux Xfce

The last time I installed SL (Sabayon Linux) on one of my own machines was 18 months ago, and that was my media centre. I haven’t touched that installation since: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” My most recent desktop SL installation was on a relative’s Acer Aspire 5738 laptop just over a year ago, but it was disappointing. In the end I did get SL working with the laptop’s NVIDIA GPU but, amongst other things, ALSA didn’t work correctly and even I couldn’t fix it. The owner was understandably unimpressed with SL and ended up installing Ubuntu over it, which worked perfectly out of the box.

Since then I have not used SL much apart from occasionally booting an ISO image of the latest SL LiveDVD in VirtualBox on my main laptop running Gentoo, or on the family PC running Windows Vista. So I was keen to try a recent edition of SL, and the opportunity arose this week as I had to replace an Acer Aspire 5920 laptop belonging to a family member and I thought it would be interesting to install SL Xfce Edition on it. (I bought a Samsung NP350V5C laptop to replace it, if you’re interested.)

That Acer Aspire laptop is 4 years old and had been causing a lot of hassle: a hardware design fault made the display flicker, and Windows Vista often refused to connect via WiFi to my home network. A quick search of the Web turns up plenty of complaints about these two problems with this particular Acer model. Oh, and one more thing, Windows Vista was unbelievably slow on the laptop. You really could go and make a cup of coffee in the time it took to boot.

I got a local PC repair shop to look at the ribbon cable in the lid that is known to cause the flickering display, and decided to wipe the HDD (good riddance, Vista) and install SL 10 64-bit Xfce. Below I list the laptop’s specification.

- Acer Aspire 5920-5A2G25Mi
- 15.4″ (1280 x 800)
- 250 GB SATA HDD
- Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 1.83 GHz
- 2GB DDR2 RAM
- Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with up to 358 MB Shared Graphics
- Intel 82801H HD Audio Controller
- Broadcom Netlink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
- Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
- Ricoh RSC832 IEEE 1394 Firewire Controller
- Ricoh R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Adapter
- Ricoh R5C843 MMC Host Controller
- Ricoh RSC592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter
- Ricoh xD-Picture Card Controller
- Suyin Corp. Acer CrystalEye Webcam (0.3 Megapixels)
- CD/DVD reader/writer
- 4 USB2 ports
- 56K ITU V.92 modem port

This model has a Bluetooth button but does not have Bluetooth hardware installed. The Bluetooth button can be configured for other purposes, as I discovered after installing SL.

I downloaded the file Sabayon_Linux_10_amd64_Xfce.iso from the SL Download page, and used UNetbootin version 581 to create a LivePenDrive on a 4GB pen drive. I inserted the pen drive into the Aspire, booted, pressed F2 to get to the BIOS menu, configured the BIOS to boot the pen drive, and rebooted.

The SL Live environment loaded without problem and I was able to access my home network via WiFi with ease.

I launched the SL installer and was pleasantly surprised to see that it is more polished that the version I used a year ago. However, over the years I have found that the SL Installer often crashes when it tries to partition the HDD, and the same thing occurred this time. Normally when this happens I boot up a SystemRescueCd LiveCD and use GParted to partition the HDD and format the partitions, then I reboot the SL LiveDVD and re-run the Installer, which then works. This time, however, I just decided to open a Terminal window from the SL Live environment and use the fdisk command to create the partitions manually. Then I re-ran the SL Installer. I was now able to specify the mount points for the partitions and format them, and installation was completed quickly.

I booted the HDD and was pleasantly surprised. Almost everything worked ‘out of the box’ (including the memory card slot), and the overall impression was of a polished distribution with an attractive Xfce desktop. SL looks great on the laptop’s relatively low resolution 1280×800 screen, and I suspect the Infinality patches make a difference. Most of the applications I needed were already installed, to make life easier. Apart from the positive impression aesthetically, I am very impressed with the speed at which it runs. This is one of the snappiest Linux installations I have used.

I did need to perform a few tweaks, and I’ll mention the main ones throughout the remainder of this article.

As SL is a rolling distribution I wanted to bring the installation bang up to date, so I used the usual Entropy commands in a Terminal window:

$ su
Password:
# equo update && equo upgrade && equo conf update

I did not need to upgrade the kernel using the SL kernel-switcher utility, as the version of the latest kernel in the SL Entropy Weekly repository was the same as the version installed by the LiveDVD.

Tapping on the touchpad didn’t work out of the box, but all I had to do was configure it using Xfce’s ‘Applications Menu’ > Settings > ‘Mouse and Touchpad’ > Touchpad (tick ‘Tap touchpad to click’).

Although the Uncomplicated Firewall was installed, a front-end wasn’t, so I installed UFW Frontends:

# equo install ufw-frontends

I launched ufw-gtk (Firewall Manager) and configured UFW as explained in How to config ufw/ufw-frontends for Samba browsing/printing.

Xfce has some useful plugins and utilities, so I installed some of those:

# equo install xfce4-power-manager xfce4-sensors-plugin xarchiver xfce4-battery-plugin thunar-volman xfburn tumbler

A calculator is always handy too:

# equo install galculator

The system clock was not displaying the correct time (it was one hour ahead of actual time) so I followed the SL Wiki article HOWTO: Clock, Time, UTC, Dual boot with Windows and then used the Linux date command to set the correct date and time:

# date MMDDhhmm

OPTIONAL: To keep the system clock in sync with a remote time server when the laptop is connected to the internet, I installed the package net-misc/ntp:

# equo install ntp

and then edited the file /etc/conf.d/ntpd so it contains NTPD_OPTS="-g" and I added the initscripts for NTP Client (executes once at start up) and the NTP daemon (runs continuously) to the default runlevel:

# rc-update add ntpd default
# rc-update add ntp-client default

The SL Xfce Edition LiveDVD installs the Midori Web browser which is lightweight and good, but not as good as Firefox, my favourite browser, so I replaced Midori with Firefox:

# equo remove midori
# equo install firefox

I found that the film trailers on the iTunes Movie Trailers Web site would not play in the browser, so I installed gecko-mediaplayer and gnome-mplayer (and used Edit > Preferences > Player to set ‘Video Output’ to gl for OpenGL or xv for XVideo) and I disabled the Totem plugin in Firefox (Add-ons > Plugins and disable ‘QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.6 The Totem 3.4.3 plugin handles video and audio streams.’) which solved the problem. An earlier blog post of mine also mentions this: Playing QuickTime videos in Firefox and Chromium + XVideo bug in AMD Catalyst 11.11 and 11.12 driver.

As the volume control thumb wheel on the laptop did not work in SL, I used Xfce’s Settings > Keyboard to configure the two unallocated function keys F9 and F10 to be Decrease Volume and Increase Volume, respectively:

amixer set Master 5%- allocated to F9
amixer set Master 5%+ allocated to F10

and I allocated F8 as the Mute button, as it already had a symbol for that printed on it:

amixer set Master toggle

Sound quality is excellent.

I installed Skype:

# equo install skype emul-linux-x86-medialibs

which works well apart from the video image from the laptop’s Acer CrystalEye Webcam (310,000 pixels, circa 640×480), which has flickering blue horizontal lines. I installed GUVCView, a GUI to configure the uvcvideo driver module.

# equo install guvcview

My adjustments using GUVCView helped slightly, but the image quality is still not great. The image is just about tolerable when the subject is illuminated by daylight, but poor in artificial light. Searching the Web tells me that plenty of Windows users have had problems with this model of Webcam too.

I wanted to be able to access computers running Windows on my home network, and to be able to print on printers connected via USB to those computers, so I added SAMBA to the default runlevel so that it would be started automatically when the laptop boots:

# rc-update add samba default

I also edited the configuration file /etc/samba/smb.conf to be as follows:

[global]
netbios name = Aspire5920
message command = /usr/bin/linpopup "%f" "%m" %s; rm %s
printcap name = cups
printing = cups
printer admin = @adm
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
map to guest = bad user
security = user
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/private/smbpasswd
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
name resolve order = wins lmhosts bcast
wins support = yes
dns proxy = no

[homes]
comment = Home Directories
read only = no

[netlogon]
comment = Network Logon Service
path = /var/lib/samba/netlogon
guest ok = yes

[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/spool/samba
guest ok = yes
printable = yes
create mask = 0700
print command = lpr-cups -P %p -o raw %s -r   # using client side printer drivers.

[print$]
path = /var/lib/samba/printers
write list = @adm root
guest ok = yes

[PUBLIC]
path = /home/fitzcarraldo/Public/
guest ok = yes
read only = no

I installed the drivers for two of my printers:

# equo install gutenprint

and used the CUPS browser interface http://localhost:631/ to configure CUPS to use a Canon PIXMA MP510 via SAMBA connected to a PC running Vista, and to use a Canon PIXMA MP560 on my home network via WiFi.

When configuring CUPS to use the Canon PIXMA MP510 printer connected to the family PC that is running Windows Vista, I had to specify the printer’s SMB address as follows:

smb://workgroup/username:password@hostname/printername

where username is the name of a user account on the Windows Vista PC, and password is the password of that user account.

For example, let’s say that I configured Windows Vista on the family PC some years ago as follows:

PC name: SA90

Work group name: WORKGROUP

Printer name: Canon_MP510_Printer

User name: Fitzcarraldo

User password: MollyAida

then the SMB address I would specify to the CUPS Manager for the printer would be:

smb://WORKGROUP/Fitzcarraldo:MollyAida@SA90/Canon_MP510_Printer

I configured the Xfce top Panel to show the Xfce LCD brightness plugin, Xfce audio mixer, Xfce sensor plugin, Xfce battery monitor. By the way, Xfce Power Manager works correctly when the laptop is using its battery.

Xfce makes it easy to configure shortcut keys: ‘Applications Menu’ > Settings > Keyboard | ‘Application Shortcuts’. I configured the browser launch key on the left of the laptop’s main keyboard to launch Firefox. And, as I am used to launching Yakuaki in KDE using F12, I set up F12 in Xfce to run /usr/bin/terminal (I could instead have installed Guake and used Xfce’s ‘Applications Menu’ > ‘Session and Startup’ | ‘Application Autostart’ to configure Guake to launch automatically at start up).

Basically, almost everything works well.

Also, I installed superadduser and added another user successfully:

# equo install superadduser

Although the Xfce ALSA Mixer works fine, I installed PulseAudio Volume Control too:

# equo install pavucontrol

Actually you do need both an ALSA mixer and a PulseAudio mixer because you can get into the situation where the ALSA volumes are turned up but the PulseAudio volumes are turned down.

As I sometimes download YouTube videos for offline viewing, I installed the version of the excellent Python script youtube-dl that is in the SL Weekly repository:

# equo install youtube-dl

but it turned out to be the package net-misc/youtube-dl-2012.02.27, which wouldn’t download YouTube videos. I had to download the latest version of the script from the youtube-dl developer’s Web site, made it executable (chmod +x ~/youtube-dl) and copied it to the directory /usr/bin/ to overwrite the 2012.02.27 version installed via Entropy.

Thunar was taking a very long time to open the first time I launched it after each reboot, and was also launching twice. To stop this happening I edited the file /usr/share/gvfs/mounts/network.mount and changed AutoMount=false.

Furthermore, the following message sometimes appears in a pop-up window when launching Thunar:

Failed to open directory “fitzcarraldo”.
Error when getting information for file ‘/home/fitzcarraldo/.gvfs’: Transport endpoint is not connected.

Searching the Web indicated the following command might fix it:

# umount /home/fitzcarraldo/.gvfs

It seems to have helped, but the message does still appear sometimes.

One problem I experienced 18 months ago with the SL 5.4 E17 Edition — and I notice has been reported by several users in the SL Forums since then — is that SL does not always set up the user’s locale correctly. During installation I selected English as the language, the UK as my location and English (UK) for the keyboard, and ended up with the US locale:

# locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

What I want is the British locale. I rectified it by following Steps 3, 4 and 5 in the SL Forums post Re: en_GB language missing after install.. I think the SL Installer probably needs modifying.

Summary

SL 10 Xfce is an attractive installation demonstrating a fair amount of attention to detail, but the Installer has some frustrating problems with partitioning and the set up of the locale. These problems have been present for quite some time now and could be ‘brick walls’ for newcomers to Linux.

I use Xfce in Gentoo on a legacy laptop (Pentium III) and so am familiar with it, but it looks great in SL and just seems that little bit more polished.

But the main impression I get from this installation is just how zippy and responsive it is. Video runs smoothly however fast I jiggle around a media player window, and we’re talking a relatively low-end graphics processor here, not an AMD or NVIDIA GPU. Applications open really fast. Overall, it’s a pleasure to use.

When I think back to how Windows Vista ran on this laptop, the difference is like night and day. It’s like having a new, more powerful laptop. I’ve now added a user account for my wife as she has decided she will use it. Not bad for a laptop I thought I would give to my local repair shop for spares.

Installing and using ZBar in Linux to scan bar codes with your Webcam

ZBar is an application that can scan and decode several bar code symbologies (including QR Code) from sources such as a Webcam or an image file. I had been wanting to install it for some time and was finally spurred on to do it by a request for help to get it working in the Sabayon Linux forums. Here are the steps I used.

1. I installed the package media-gfx/zbar-0.10-r1.
Note for Gentoo users: I merged the package with the imagemagick and v4l USE flags set, so that both zbarimg and zbarcam would be installed. If you only want to use ZBar with a Webcam then turn off the imagemagick flag and zbarimg will not be installed.
Note for Sabayon Linux users: The Entropy package was built with both the above-mentioned USE flags set, so zbarimg and zbarcam will be installed.

2. Then I checked the status of the installed package by using the Portage eix command:

$ eix -I zbar
[I] media-gfx/zbar
Available versions: (~)0.10-r1 {{X gtk imagemagick jpeg python qt4 static-libs +threads v4l xv}}
Installed versions: 0.10-r1(03:56:14 05/10/12)(X gtk imagemagick jpeg qt4 threads v4l xv -python -static-libs)
Homepage: http://zbar.sourceforge.net/
Description: Library and tools for reading barcodes from images or video

Sabayon Linux users could instead use the following command:

$ equo search --verbose zbar

3. Then I checked which video device my laptop’s inbuilt Webcam is:

$ ls /dev/video*
/dev/video0

4. As it is /dev/video0, I launched zbarcam as follows:

$ zbarcam --raw /dev/video0
WARNING: no compatible input to output format
...trying again with output disabled
ERROR: zbar processor in zbar_processor_init():
unsupported request: no compatible image format

Clearly zbarcam was not recognising the Webcam.

5. As I had installed the package with the Video4Linux USE flag set, I then launched zbarcam with the following prefix:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so zbarcam --raw /dev/video0

The ZBar GUI window popped up and I could see myself in the window. So far, so good.

6. I held a QR Code 2D bar code in front of the Webcam, then held a 1D Interleaved 2 of 5 bar code in front of the Webcam. The following was displayed:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so zbarcam --raw /dev/video0
http://roho.it/mryt
0161223563

Both the QR Code and the I2of5 bar code were read correctly. If the --raw parameter is omitted then zbarcam displays the symbology of the bar code too:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so zbarcam /dev/video0
QR-Code:http://roho.it/mryt
I2/5:0161223563

7. Then I tried using ZBar to read a bar code which I had previously saved as a .jpg file:

$ zbarimg --raw ~/zebra04.jpg
01234565
scanned 1 barcode symbols from 1 images in 0.04 seconds

$ zbarimg ~/zebra04.jpg
EAN-8:01234565
scanned 1 barcode symbols from 1 images in 0.04 seconds

To find out the other parameters available, use the commands:

$ man zbarcam
$ zbarcam --help
$ man zbarimg
$ zbarimg --help

ZBar is a nice tool.

Synchronise your Gentoo Linux clock with an Internet time server

There are a number of ways to synchronise Gentoo Linux with a time server on the Internet. Here I look at a few alternatives.

ntp-client

ntp-client and the NTP daemon ntpd are installed when you install the package net-misc/ntp. Although I have read on some Web sites that /etc/init.d/ntp-client should be added to the default runlevel in order to read the time from an NTP server (once-only, during start-up), this in fact does not work because usually the network connection is not up by the time the ntp-client initscript runs. Bear in mind that ntp-client does not run continuously; it syncs once with an external time server if there is a network connection, and that’s it.

NetworkManager Dispatcher

If you are using NetworkManager, an elegant solution is to use NetworkManagerDispatcher to restart ntp-client in order to resync your system clock every time a network connection comes up. This is my favoured solution for laptops; see further on for how to configure your machine to do this.

cronjob

Another way would be to create a cronjob to run periodically the ‘/etc/init.d/ntp-client restart‘ command or the ‘ntpd -q‘ command (the -q option means “set the time and quit”).

Wait a while after start up

A ‘quick-and-dirty’ method, which I have used sometimes to synchronise a laptop’s system clock every time it boots, would be to delay running ntp-client until the network is up by putting e.g. the command below in a file 10_ntp-client.start in the directory /etc/local.d/ (10 seconds is usually enough time for a wired or wireless connection to my home network to be established):

#!/bin/bash
sleep 10s && /etc/init.d/ntp-client restart

Don’t forget to make it executable:

# chmod 744 /etc/local.d/10_ntp-client.start

NTP daemon

Regarding the NTP daemon, it is possible to configure this from the command line, rather than via a Desktop Environment GUI, to run at start-up and continue running to adjust your system clock. The command:

# rc-update add ntpd default

will add the daemon’s initscript to the default runlevel so that it is launched automatically at the next startup, and the command:

# /etc/init.d/ntpd start

will start the daemon running right now.

Note that, by default, the NTP daemon won’t correct, all in one go, a time difference between your system clock and the remote NTP server if that difference is above a certain size. However, if you want to override the default behaviour, i.e. allow the NTP daemon to make a large first adjustment to the system clock, you can set the environment variable NTPD_OPTS in the file /etc/conf.d/ntpd as follows:

NTPD_OPTS="-g"
# The -g option enables ntpd to make large adjustments.

This would mean that you would not need to run ntp-client before ntpd. However, if you run ntp-client automatically — either once after start-up or periodically — then that would be good enough for the typical Desktop user, and could be an alternative to having a continuously-running NTP daemon. Nothing stops you doing both if you want, of course.

Updating the hardware clock

If you make clock_systohc="YES" in the file /etc/conf.d/hwclock then the time in the system clock will be written to the BIOS (CMOS) clock (a.k.a. hardware clock) when you shut down your PC.

How to configure NetworkManager Dispatcher to synchronise the system clock only when a network connection is made

If you’re using a machine that is permanently connected to a network, running the NTP daemon makes sense. But what if you have a machine that is not always connected to a network when it is powered up? I have a laptop and I don’t want the NTP daemon running all the time. But I would like my laptop to synchronise with an external time server once after start up when I connect to the Internet. NetworkManager has a handy tool called NetworkManager Dispatcher for doing just this.

If you have installed NetworkManager, you’ll find there is an initscript /usr/portage/net-misc/networkmanager/files/NetworkManagerDispatcher. Copy it to the directory /etc/init.d/ and give it the necessary restrictive permissions:

# cp /usr/portage/net-misc/networkmanager/files/NetworkManagerDispatcher /etc/init.d/
# chmod 744 NetworkManagerDispatcher

Then create a shell script called e.g. 99_ntp-client in the directory /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/ to be run by NetworkManagerDispatcher when a network connection is established, containing the following code:

#!/bin/bash

INTERFACE=$1 # The interface which is brought up or down
STATUS=$2 # The new state of the interface

case "$STATUS" in
    'up') # $INTERFACE is up
        echo "System time before starting ntp-client:" > /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
        date >> /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
        echo "Starting ntp-client:" >> /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
        rc-config restart ntp-client &>> /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
        echo "System time after starting ntp-client:" >> /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
        date >> /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
        ;;
    'down') # $INTERFACE is down
        # Check for active interface and down if no one active
        if [ ! `nm-tool|grep State|cut -f2 -d' '` = "connected" ]; then
                echo "Stopping ntp-client at:" > /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
                date >> /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
                rc-config stop ntp-client &>> /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
        fi
        ;;
esac

Make the root user the owner of the script, and only allow the root user to write to it and execute it:

# cd /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/
# chown root:root 99_ntp-client
# chmod 744 99_ntp-client

Then add NetworkManagerDispatcher to the default runlevel so that it will be launched every time you boot your machine:

# rc-update add NetworkManagerDispatcher default

As the package net-misc/ntp installs both /etc/init.d/ntpd and /etc/init.d/net-client, users could optionally add the NTP daemon ntpd to the default runlevel too if desired, which would provide continuous, incremental adjustments to the system clock once net-client has done its one-shot adjustment each time a network comes up:

# rc-update add ntpd default

But users who don’t leave their PCs on for days on end — or who use laptops — can ignore the above step and just stick with the NetworkManagerDispatcher and net-client solution, whereas users who leave their machines on for days or weeks on end can also use the NTP daemon to keep the system clock in sync in between the times when ntp-client has synchronised.

Don’t forget to delete ntp-client from the start-up level if you are using NetworkManagerDispatcher to run it:

# rc-update del ntp-client

Notice that the script /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/99_ntp-client logs some information in a text file ntp-client.txt in my home directory which I can check. Here is an example of what ntp-client.txt contains after I select a network (or it is selected automatically) following start up of my laptop:

System time before starting ntp-client:
Sun Jun 3 19:24:08 BST 2012
Starting ntp-client:
Restarting init script
* Setting clock via the NTP client 'ntpd' ...ntpd: time slew +0.067178s
[ ok ]
System time after starting ntp-client:
Sun Jun 3 19:24:17 BST 2012

As you can see above, the ntpd command was executed once by NetworkManagerDispatcher and made a small adjustment to the system time on my laptop.

Replacing ntpdate with ntpd in ntp-client

Just for the fun of it, I changed /etc/conf.d/ntp-client to use the command ntpd instead of ntpdate, even though the ntpdate command works fine. Anyway, here’s my /etc/conf.d/ntp-client file these days:

NTPCLIENT_CMD="ntpd"
NTPCLIENT_OPTS="-g -q"

I have added the -g option so that the ntpd command can make large adjustments to the system time if it is way off the actual time. This is useful at the beginning and end of Daylight Saving Time, or if you dual boot with Windows. Here is an example of the former when I powered up my laptop the morning after the clocks changed from BST to GMT at the end of Summer 2010:

$ cat /home/fitzcarraldo/ntp-client.txt
System time before starting ntp-client:
Sun Oct 31 09:37:23 GMT 2010
Starting ntp-client:
Starting init script
* Setting clock via the NTP client 'ntpd'...ntpd: time set -3600.122381s
[ ok ]
System time after starting ntp-client:
Sun Oct 31 08:37:30 GMT 2010

You can specify the NTP server or NTP server pool in the file /etc/ntp.conf, but the default server pool already specified in that file should work. Note again that, when ntpd is run with the -q option, it synchronises the system clock once and terminates, i.e. it is not running as a daemon.

AMD Catalyst for Linux driver 12.2 fixes the XVideo bug that crashed X.Org Server 1.11.x

Just a brief ‘heads up’ for users of the closed-source FGLRX driver in Linux: In a previous blog post I mentioned a bug in the AMD Catalyst driver for Linux that caused X.Org Server 1.11.x to crash if you tried to play a video and your media player was configured to use XVideo (Xv) output. The bug also meant that people talking to you via Skype could not enable their Web cams or X.Org Server 1.11.x would crash on your machine, as Skype uses XVideo.

The problem occurred with versions 11.11, 11.12 and 12.1 of the FGLRX driver (the package x11-drivers/ati-drivers). Well, today I installed version 12.2 of the driver and am pleased to report that I can again set media players to use Xv output without causing the X.Org Server to crash (I’m currently using xorg-server-1.11.4). Likewise, other people who I am talking to via Skype can again enable their Web cams without causing the X.Org Server on my machine to crash.

Installing the Takeoff Launcher in KDE 4.8.0

My application launcher of choice is Lancelot, which comes as part of the package kde-base/kdeplasma-addons. If you haven’t already tried it, you really should.

Anyway, recently on the blogsphere I read about Takeoff, another Plasmoid application launcher for KDE, first issued end July 2011. Looking at screen snapshots of Takeoff reminded me of a tablet’s screen: an uncluttered array of large application icons. My curiosity was piqued, so I decided to install the Takeoff Plasmoid. Here’s what I did to install it in KDE 4.8.0 in Gentoo Linux. The same straightforward procedure should also work in other Linux distributions with KDE 4.8, although installation is a bit easier for Arch Linux, Chakra, Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu, as packages exist for those distributions (see the Download page on the project’s Web site for details).

I downloaded takeoff-1.0.tar.gz to ~/Desktop

I right-clicked on the tarball and selected Extract > Extract Archive To… and extracted the files to the directory ~/takeoff-1.0

I opened a Konsole window and entered the following commands:

cd ~/takeoff-1.0

cat README

The README file tells you exactly how to install the Plasma widget (although I ignored the instruction to create the directory ~/takeoff-1.0/build/ as it already existed):

cd build

cmake .. && make

sudo make install

kbuildsycoca4

Then I did the usual in KDE to add the Takeoff widget to the Panel.

To configure Takeoff I right-clicked on its icon, clicked on ‘Takeoff Settings’ and, under ‘General Settings’, I unticked ‘Show Takeoff in full screen mode’. I also clicked on the icon under ‘General Settings’ and changed the icon to one of my choice. If you fancy a picture as the background of the launcher’s panel, tick ‘Show background image’, click on the ‘browse for file’ icon and select any wallpaper file that you have stored on your disk. There are other configuration options you can play with, such as the number of columns and rows of application icons to display in the launcher’s panel.

To display the launcher’s panel, just click on the Takeoff icon on your Panel. The Takeoff panel will pop up, as shown in the snaphot below of my screen.

Notice that there are tabs across the top of the launcher’s panel; these are the different categories of application available: Favourites, All Applications, Accessories, Education, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, and so on. Click on one of these tabs to view all the applications in that category. If there are too many applications in that category to fit on the launcher’s panel, there will be a slider button at the bottom of the panel; just click on the next number on it to view the next page of applications in the category.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, naturally those are Gentoo penguins on my Desktop wallpaper.

EDIT (July 10, 2012): For users of Gentoo there is now an ebuild (kde-misc/takeoff) in the Portage main tree, so use that to install Takeoff Launcher.

Playing QuickTime videos in Firefox and Chromium + XVideo bug in AMD Catalyst 11.11 and 11.12 driver

Video problems seem to be perennial in Linux. The latest two to affect me were:

1) Firefox and Chromium could no longer play QuickTime videos on the Apple iTunes Movie Trailers Web site;

2) a bug in the latest two releases of the closed-source ATI FGLRX driver (AMD Catalyst 11.11 and 11.12 for Linux) that causes the X.Org Server to crash when I try to play .mov files using XVideo (Xv) output in media players such as SMPlayer, VLC, GNOME-MPlayer etc. (see e.g. Gentoo Bug Report No. 391193).

The reason I mention these two problems in the same breath is because I encountered the second whilst trying to fix the first. Anyway, below I explain what I did to resolve the two problems.

I first had a problem displaying QuickTime movie trailers in Firefox a couple of years ago. The solution then was to install the User Agent Switcher add-on for Firefox and create a user agent to fool the Apple Web site into thinking Firefox was using Apple’s QuickTime browser plugin instead of mplayerplug-in for Linux. But within a few days Firefox again could not play movie trailers on the Apple Web site. I had to uninstall mplayerplug-in and install the then latest version of its successor, gecko-mediaplayer (which uses gnome-mplayer). All was good again until…

Several months ago I found that, yet again, Firefox could not play movie trailers on the Apple Web site. I tried to view the trailers in Chromium instead but had the same problem. Both browsers just displayed a black box where the video should be playing. A little searching on the Web led me to the conclusion that the problem lay with the latest version of gecko-mediaplayer and gnome-mplayer that I was using at the time, so I gave up and decided to wait for new versions of gecko-mediaplayer and gnome-mplayer to be released.

Now, yesterday I wanted to watch a particular trailer on the Apple Web site, but, despite having installed the latest version of gecko-mediaplayer and gnome-mplayer anyway a few days ago, neither Firefox nor Chromium would display the trailer. A little searching on the Web suggested that I should try mozplugger instead of gecko-mediaplayer, so I uninstalled the latter, installed mozplugger and… the black box in the browser was replaced by a white box displaying the QuickTime ‘Q’ logo and a message that I needed to install QuickTime. Argghh!

So I uninstalled mozplugger and reinstalled gecko-mediaplayer and gnome-mplayer (the same versions that I installed recently, you inderstand). This time my attempts to watch trailers on the Apple Web site resulted in Firefox and Chromium displaying grey boxes and appearing to download the QuickTime videos, but then the X.Org Server crashed, restarted and the Desktop Environment’s login screen appeared. Furthermore, when I tried playing .mov videos in VLC, the same thing happened. Perhaps now you may understand why I mentioned above the bug with the FGLRX driver? It took me a few hours to realise there were two separate problems here.

The work-around to the second problem was to configure media players to use a different output driver rather than the XVideo (Xv) output driver. For example, in VLC this is done via Tools > Preferences > Video and selecting ‘GLX video output (XCB)’ as the Output under Video Settings. For SMPlayer this is done via Options > Preferences > General and selecting ‘gl (fast – ATI cards)’ as the Output driver under the Video tab.

And, most importantly, in order to enable gecko-mediaplayer to display those Apple QuickTime trailers in Firefox and Chromium I had to launch gnome-mplayer, select Edit > Preferences, click on the Player tab and select ‘gl’ as the Video Output under Adjust Output Settings. Actually, clicking on the MPlayer tab and entering “-vo gl” (without the quotes) in the ‘Extra Options to MPlayer:’ box achieves the same result. By the way, the tickboxes QuickTime Emulation, RealPlayer Emulation, Windows Media Player Emulation and DIVX Player Emulation were already ticked on the Plug-in tab.

So, there you have it. After several hours of searching and tinkering I can again watch movie trailers on the Apple Web site. Don’t you just love Linux?

For the sake of completeness, below I list the versions of the applicable packages currently installed on my main laptop:

firefox-9.0
chromium-16.0.912.63
gecko-mediaplayer-1.0.5_beta1_p20111207
gnome-mplayer-1.0.5_beta1
mplayer-1.0_rc4_p20111215
ffmpeg-0.9
libquicktime-1.2.3-r1
xorg-server-1.11.2-r2
ati-drivers-11.12

EDIT (January 2, 2012): I’ve just had a thought: When I used Skype for Linux a few days ago, my laptop rebooted spontaneously as soon as the person at the other end enabled her Webcam in Skype for Windows. This was reproducible consistently. However, I could enable my Webcam, she could see me in Skype on her PC, and I could also see video of me in Skype’s ‘myself preview’ on my laptop. Now, it could be a coincidence but I wonder if the reboot occurred because Skype for Linux uses XVideo? Skype’s Web page for Skype for Linux lists “Video card driver with Xv support” as one of the hardware requirements, which looks pretty conclusive to me. However, this leaves a couple of niggling questions: a) If Skype does indeed use XVideo, why didn’t the ‘myself preview’ video in the Skype for Linux window crash the X.Org Server?. b) If the FGLRX driver bug is the cause, why did my laptop reboot instead of just the X.Org Server crashing, restarting and displaying the Desktop Environment login screen? Furthermore, Skype’s Options > Video Devices > Test does work correctly on my laptop. So perhaps the rebooting problem is caused by a different bug. Suspicious, though. Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no way of switching Skype to use OpenGL instead of XVideo, so I cannot prove that XVideo is the cause of this particular problem I’m experiencing with Skype.

How to install and use Tor for anonymous browsing or to access country-restricted content from another country

Some people want to browse the Web in complete anonymity. One tool for doing that is Tor. However, there are other reasons for using Tor. For example, when I am travelling in a country where the government blocks certain Web sites (or blocks accessing content on certain Web sites), or when I am travelling overseas and certain Web sites back home will not let me view content (e.g. TV shows), I use Tor. Note that some Web sites are now clever enough to detect that you are accessing them via a proxy and could be overseas, so even Tor will not gain you access to media on some Web sites back home. Anyway, it’s still worth trying Tor to see if it works in your case.

For an overview of the installation and configuration procedure, see Running the Tor client on Linux/BSD/Unix. Below I will explain how to install and use Tor in Gentoo Linux.

Before you use Tor, it is useful to check your current IP address. Several Web sites will tell you your current IP address; here is the site I usually use: http://whatismyipaddress.com/

1. Install Tor:

# USE="tordns" emerge -1v tor

(Actually, the more-recent versions of the tor package don’t require that USE flag but I’ve left it in as it does no harm.)

2. Install Vidalia:

# cd /usr/portage/distfiles/
# wget --no-check-certificate https://www.torproject.org/dist/vidalia/vidalia-x.y.z.tar.gz
# USE="tor" emerge -1v vidalia

Use the current version x.y.z of the vidalia package in the package manager and https://www.torproject.org/dist/vidalia/

3. Install Polipo:

# emerge -1v polipo

4. Download polipo.conf

# cd /etc/polipo
# wget --no-check-certificate https://gitweb.torproject.org/torbrowser.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/build-scripts/config/polipo.conf

Edit April 21, 2013: The above URL is now:

https://gitweb.torproject.org/torbrowser.git/blob_plain/ae4aa49ad9100a50eec049d0a419fac63a84d874:/build-scripts/config/polipo.conf

5. Edit it and change proxyPort = 8118 to proxyPort = 8123

6. Copy it to /etc/polipo/:

# cd /etc/polipo
# cp /etc/polipo/config /etc/polipo/config.bak
# cp polipo.conf config

7. Configure Firefox:

Edit > Preferences > Network > Settings

Manual proxy configuration:

HTTP Proxy: 127.0.0.1 Port: 8123
SSL Proxy: 127.0.0.1 Port 8123

SOCKS Host: 127.0.0.1 Port 9051
SOCKS v5
No Proxy for: 127.0.0.1

8. Run Vidalia and then configure it:

$ vidalia &

a) Settings > Sharing

Select ‘Run as a client only’

b) Settings > Advanced

Select ‘Use TCP connection (ControlPort)’
Address: 127.0.0.1 9051

Tor Configuration File:
/home/fitzcarraldo/.vidalia/torrc

Data Directory:
/home/fitzcarraldo/.tor

c) Click on ‘Edit current torrc’ and make it:

# This file was generated by Tor; if you edit it, comments will not be preserved
# The old torrc file was renamed to torrc.orig.1 or similar, and Tor will ignore it
ControlPort 9051
ExitNodes {gb}
Log notice stdout
SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1
StrictNodes 1

Note that I have specified “{gb}” above so that I am perceived by Web sites to be browsing in the UK even if I am in another country. But you can use a different country code if you want Web sites to perceive you are in another country. For example, “{us}” would make it look as if you are browsing in the USA.

9. Run Polipo:

$ sudo polipo

10. Surf to http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/ to check that you are now using a Tor exit node.

11. Surf to http://whatismyipaddress.com/ to check that your IP address has changed.

Sabayon Linux developers split the Portage sabayon overlay into two new overlays

If you are a Gentoo Linux user who added the sabayon overlay, or if you are a Sabayon Linux user who already uses Portage, note that the developers of Sabayon Linux have just split the overlay into two overlays. One of the overlays (sabayon-distro) contains ebuilds that are specific to the Sabayon Linux distribution and unlikely to be of interest to users of other distributions that use the Portage package manager. The other overlay (sabayon) contains ebuilds that could be of interest to Portage users of other distributions. For example, the package app-misc/sabayon-version will only be of relevance to users of Sabayon Linux, so you’ll only find it in the sabayon-distro overlay, not the sabayon overlay:

# eix sabayon-version
* app-misc/sabayon-version [1]
Available versions: (~)5-r5 (~)7-r1
Homepage: http://www.sabayon.org/
Description: Sabayon System Release virtual package

[1] "sabayon-distro" /var/lib/layman/sabayon-distro

All you need to do in order to cater for this change is the following as root user:

layman -d sabayon
layman -S
layman -a sabayon
layman -a sabayon-distro
eix-update

You only need to add the sabayon-distro overlay if you are a user of Sabayon Linux or want to install any of the distribution-specific ebuilds from it. Of course omit the eix-update command if you do not have the excellent eix utility installed.

From then onwards you can just continue as normal using the usual Portage commands as root user in order to synchronise the main Portage tree and synchronise all the overlays added on your machine:

emerge --sync
layman -S
eix-update

or, if you have an asterisk on its own line in the file /etc/eix-sync.conf then you can replace the above three commands with the following single command:

eix-sync