Suse & OpenSuse Tips » desktop

How to install GNOME desktop environment theme in OpenSuse 11.1

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:43:01 +0000

Linux desktops in general offers users the capabilities to customize the operating system to meet any particular preferences. The OpenSUSE implementation of the GNOME desktop environment is no exception to this rule.

The theme of a desktop defines how various aspects of the desktop appear such as Controls, Window Borders, Colors, Icons and Pointers. In order to change the GNOME desktop environment theme, Theme settings are configured from the Appearance Preferences screen accessed from the Computer->Control Center->Appearance option.

If you would like to download and install other themes via the Internet, a wide range of themes are available for download from http://art.gnome.org/themes.

The new theme can be installed one of two ways.

Either click and drag the theme package from the desktop to the Appearance Preferences dialog to add the theme,
or click on the Install… button in Appearance Preferences and navigate to the location where the theme is installed.

Once the theme has been added you will be asked if you wish to apply the new theme to the current desktop. Good luck trying it out!

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How to install GNOME desktop environment theme in OpenSuse 11.1

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How to install Gnome/KDE Desktop Environment on OpenSuse 11

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:39:00 +0000

If you using OpenSuse and would like to switch from GNOME Desktop environment to KDE Desktop environment or vice versa, then this is a simple blog post for you.

In general, you can install GNOME/KDE Desktop Environment during installing of OpenSuse or after installation of OpenSuse. You can also switch from one desktop environment to another desktop environment easily.

During Installation :
During installation process for OpenSuse, you can select which desktop environment you want as your default, or which one will automatically load when you log into OpenSUSE 11.0, at the "Desktop Selection" section. Continue through the installation and you will come to a section called "Installation Overview" (check the left column for this heading). On this screen, you will see all of the hardware, settings, configurations and software that is about to be installed (since it is the last step before installation). Click on the "Change…" button and the software packages will load. Once they load, scroll down in the left column until you find the heading "Graphical Environments." Once you get there, check the following 2 packages:

To install Gnome:

GNOME Base System
GNOME Desktop Environment

To install KDE3:

KDE3 Base System
KDE3 Desktop Environment

To install KDE4:

KDE4 Base System
KDE4 Desktop Environment

Once you have checked them, click "OK" and finish the installation.

After Installation

The other method is after you have installed OpenSUSE 11.0. In order to install a new desktop environment, open YaST Package Manager, either by going into YaST (enter root password), go the "Software" section and then select "Software Management" or through the terminal by issuing the command: su, enter the root password, and then issuing the command: yast2 –install. Once you have YaST Package Manager open, the repositories will refresh. Once they finish, click the dropdown menu in the bottom-left of the window labeled: "Groups." Select "Patterns" instead and wait for the left column to refresh. Now, scroll down in left menu until you find the heading "Graphical Environments," select the following packages, and then press "Install All":

To install Gnome:

GNOME Base System
GNOME Desktop Environment

To install KDE3:

KDE3 Base System
KDE3 Desktop Environment

To install KDE4:

KDE4 Base System
KDE4 Desktop Environment

Switching Between Environments
Switching between desktop environments is fairly easy. For example, if you would like to switch GNOME to KDE, before you login, you will see a link in the bottom-left of the screen labeled: "Sessions." Click this, and a prompt will appear. Select the desktop environment you want to boot into and then enter your username and password. Once you do this, you will be asked if you want to make this session the default session: this means that if you make this session the default (weather you selected Gnome or KDE), that desktop environment will automatically load when you login, rather than having to into the session prompt and selecting it.

If you set OpenSUSE 11.0 to automatically log you in when it boots, this option will not appear. To disable the auto-login, open YaST and enter the root password in the prompt. Find the heading: "Security and Users" (you can jump to this heading by clicking the link the left column with the name "Security and Users"). Once the window loads, you will see the users on your OpenSUSE system. Click the dropdown labeled "Expert Options" and select the "Login Settings." In this new window, uncheck "Auto Login" (you can also uncheck "Passwordless Logins" if you want OpenSUSE 11.0 to prompt you for your password when you enter your username; this is suggested for security reasons, so if it is checked, it is suggested that you uncheck it) and then press the "OK" button. Now, click the "Finish" button in the bottom-right. Now, when you boot your OpenSUSE 11.0 system, you will be prompted to enter your username and password (if you unchecked "Passwordless Logins" in the Expert User option window [see middle of the paragraph]) and you can click the "Sessions" link to change your desktop environment. [via]

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How to install Gnome/KDE Desktop Environment on OpenSuse 11

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Opensuse 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:47:25 +0000

OpenSUSE 11.2 will be released in two months, however the recently released of OpenSUSE 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded images allows us to have a good preview of the upcoming 11.2 version.

openSUSE 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded includes KDE 4.3.1, Firefox 3.5 and all the online updates which have been released for openSUSE 11.1. Also included are applications like Amarok, Digikam, KNetworkManager & the new Qt4-based YaST Control Center. Other additional applications are like Choqok, Kompare, Marble & Okteta could be added with a new and more efficient compression algorithm.

These installable Live-CDs are useful for people who want to test out KDE 4.3 and users who are doing new installs and want the most recent openSUSE updates straight out of the box, saving a lot of installation time. New in this version is that the images can be also dumped to a USB stick and booted from there.

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Opensuse 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded

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Short and quick tutorial for the command “touch”

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:19:12 +0000

The touch command is typically used for 2 purposes, to create a new file and to modify the access and modification times of the file. If the file already exist, it will update the both the access and modification times of the file and if it does not exist, it will create a new file. The latter is probably the most common usage of the command.

For example, to update the access and modification time stamp on a file to the current time;

# touch helloworld.c

You can also use a specific time by using the –t option or just modify either the access or modification time only, using the –a and –m options respectively.

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Short and quick tutorial for the command “touch”

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Using command output with backquotes

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:43:32 +0000

The backquote (`), which is quite alien to most Windows users, is the key just below the top left hand side ESC key on your keyboard. This is a useful key to use when you want to use the standard output of a UNIX/LINUX command as part of another command.

For example, if you want to output the results of an addition.

# expr 10 + 42
# 52

If you would like to make it fancier,

# echo “The sum is `expr 10 + 42`”
The sum is 52

Note the backquotes (in red).

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Using command output with backquotes

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How to create shortcuts on Gnome desktop

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:51:28 +0000

Shortcuts on Linux is known as soft links and traditionally, this can be achieved by using the “ln –s” command and option. You can also achieve this on the Gnome desktop using the mouse only. However, unlike the Windows way to create a shortcut where you right click on the folder/file and near the bottom of the list there is the option to “Create Shortcut”.

In Gnome, the middle mouse button is used for this purposes (if you have a mouse that’s only 2 buttons, you can generally click on both to simulate the middle mouse button). As an example, OpenSuSE and SuSE both automatically mounts the Windows partition and assuming that you want to create a shortcut to these Windows partition on your desktop, you first select the Windows partition (as above).

Click (using the middle mouse button) and drag the mounted Windows directory to your desktop. Release the mouse button and select the “Link Here” option.

The shortcut to your selected Windows partition will be on your desktop.

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How to create shortcuts on Gnome desktop

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Taking screenshots in SuSE

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:51:57 +0000

SuSE Enterprise Linux Server comes with this simple yet effective tool to assist you to take screenshots. This is basically the same as using the “Print Screen” button and it can also be used to take a shot of the windows only, like using “Alt-Print Screen”.

The application has a camera as the icon and is called “Take Screenshot”. It can be found through the Application browser under the System category. The advantage of using this over the “Print Screen” button method is that you can specify the time lag before the system takes a screen shot.

It is also able to produce simple effects such as applying a drop shadow or a border. This is only available if you select “Grab the current window” option.

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Taking screenshots in SuSE

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What is a tarball?

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:22:50 +0000

OpenSuSE and SuSE uses the Redhat Package Manager (rpm) for the distribution of software applications. However, from time to time, we will also be asked to download the tarball as oppose to the rpm package. So what is this tarball?

A tarball generally refers to a compressed archive file that contains the source codes for the software application. This is generally preferred method for source codes that are highly portable and have very little dependencies on the Linux distribution. In addition to the source codes, the tarball will generally also contain the necessary compilation instructions (documentation) and the Makefile.

The tarball file is made using the UNIX tar command which basically appends all the files into a single file. It is then compressed (using one of the various compression programs) resulting in either a .Z, .gz or a .bz2 extension. The current common format of a tarball has a file extension .tar.gz or .tgz.

More on the .Z, .gz and .bz2 extensions later.

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What is a tarball?

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Customizing Gnome Terminal fonts and colors

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:30:22 +0000

By default, most SuSE and OpenSuse distribution selects Gnome as the window manager, KDE being the other option. Under Gnome, the terminal application is called the Gnome Terminal which has a better look and feel than the plain Terminal application (which is also available). The default size of the terminal may be too small for some of us, especially those who are using really large screens with very fine resolution.

To change the font and color settings, go to the “Edit” menu and select “Profile Preferences”.

You can deselect the “Use the system fixed width font” and click on the font selection “Monospace | 12”, to change the font size to whatever is suitable. The changes are instant and you can actually see it when you are selecting it.

To change the color combination, select the tab “Colors” (3rd tab on top). You need to de-select the “Use colors from system theme” and my personal preference for the moment is to have bright green text on a black background.

The screen above is from a 22” wide screen LCD. By enlarging the fonts and also matching the colors makes it easier to work.

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Customizing Gnome Terminal fonts and colors

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Adding applications to “Favorites Applications”

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:19:43 +0000

Having your regularly used applications on the Start Menu under the “Favorites Applications” section will come in handy as it will enable you to quickly launch the application. You can also create shortcuts (or technically speaking, links) on your Desktop to your favorite applications but some of us prefer a cleaner desktop.

To add an application to your “Favorite Applications” section of the start menu, select the application. You can use the “More Applications…” button on the start menu to select it.

Once you have identified the application that you regularly use, right click on the icon and select “Add to Favorites”. It’s as simple as that.

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Adding applications to “Favorites Applications”

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SUSE Studio : Create your own customized Linux OS

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:56:48 +0000

Recently Novell has unveiled a sneak preview of the alpha release of SUSE Studio at VMworld. In a nutshell, SUSE Studio is an innovative way to enable both standardization and customization of a Linux distribution. With SUSE Studio, you can customize and build your own personal distribution in as many ways you could possibly think off.

As per Novell’s blog:

SUSE Studio is a new, innovative Web-based service to enable (independent software vendors), developers, and the community to quickly and easily “mass customize” Linux. SUSE Studio is the first tool to enable users to create fully supported, customized variants of SUSE Linux Enterprise and OpenSUSE, add additional software, and test the resulting image–all in one simple and easy-to-use interface

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KQQiibbtzY

SUSE Studio is currently undergoing alpha testing, and will be released as public beta later this year. To learn more about SUSE Studio, and to sign up for the alpha, go here.

You can also checkout the Official SUSE Studio’s Documentation page.

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SUSE Studio : Create your own customized Linux OS

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Short and quick tutorial for the command “find”

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:30:15 +0000

We can learn about commands in Linux using the manpages, for example, to learn how to use the find command, we can just do

# man 1 find

However, this means we need to read the long manual and generally most of us are somewhat impatient. We will give short and quick tutorials on the common usage of the commands.

The find command is to search for files, directories, pipes, sockets, devices (anything that is defined as files in Linux) in the system. The quickest tutorial is

# find / –name

The ‘/’ tells the command to search from the root directory, another common variable here is ‘.’, which means to search from this directory onwards.

The ‘-name ’ specifies the file that you want to look for, e.g. proposal.txt as the filename.

That’s the shortest tutorial we can think of for “find”. For more advance stuff, “man 1 find”.

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Short and quick tutorial for the command “find”

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How to reset forgotten root password in SuSE Enterprise Server

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:16:42 +0000

We do sometimes forget our passwords and what more when we don’t login to that particular account regularly. As good system administrators who automate most of the administrative tasks, we sometimes do not login to the root account often. This is especially so for a highly reliable and robust SLES based system.

Our earlier posting was for OpenSuSE, but for SuSE, the security is even tighter. The following technique would also work for OpenSuSE, and also most other distributions.

(1) Boot your server using the installation DVD. If the server is already powered on, you will need to do a hard power-on as you can’t shutdown (since you don’t have the root password).

(2) Select “Resue System” and login as root. No password is required here.

(3) You have now booted into the live DVD, that is, you have booted from the DVD and the file system mounted is that of the DVD. You will need to access your Hard Disk Drive which is not mounted by default. (In my scenario, my SuSE 11 partition is on an extended partition and is on device /dev/sda7. Yours maybe different and if your system is a pure SuSE 11 (which should be the case), it is likely to be /dev/sda1, if using SATA or SCSI. If using IDE, you can try /dev/hda1. To access (mount) the SuSE 11 partition on directory /mnt;

#mount /dev/sda7 /mnt

(4) Edit /mnt/etc/shadow which is where the encrypted passwords are stored. Note that you are not suppose to edit /etc/shadow which is one used for the Live DVD. Furthermore, you won’t be able to save the /etc/shadow as it is a read-only filesystem.

(5) Search for the entry starting with “root:”.

(6) Remove 2nd field (the fields are separated by the ‘:’, resulting in something that resembles

root::14329::::::

(7) Save and exit your editor. Remove your DVD.

(8) Boot into single user mode by keying in “single” at the GRUB boot menu. You will not be able to access or change root password if you boot into graphical mode.

(9) After booting, you will be greeted on the command line with “Press enter for login:”, do as it says and you are in.

(10) Change root password by “passwd”. There you go … and reboot.

Any comments or ideas for further improvement are most welcome.

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How to reset forgotten root password in SuSE Enterprise Server

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Tripwire : Open Source Security Utility

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:10:04 +0000

In term of security, there are many basic security tools that you can add. Tripwire is one of the best file system monitoring tools around. In a nutshell, Tripwire helps to record information about important files (such as checksums) in a database. If anything changes in those files, Tripwire will catch the change when it runs (configure it as often as you like with cron) and will alert you.

Tripwire OpenSource project is based on codes that is originally contributed by Tripwire, Inc. in 2000. Tripwire can alert systems administrators whenever there is any possible intrusion attempts by periodically verifying the integrity of a server’s file systems. It is known that most systems intruders will often use trojan binaries for login, su, ps, and ls, etc. to cover their tracks and keep a low profile on the system. Thus, under normal circumstances even astute systems administrators may not observe the intrusion because the trojan binaries mimic the system binaries so well. By using a strong checksum method similar to MD5,

Tripwire can identify with absolute certainty whether or not a file has been modified, unlike similar programs that use weaker algorithms such as CRC to calculate checksums. While useful for detecting intrusions after the event, it can also serve many other purposes, such as integrity assurance, change management, and policy compliance.

Installation

To install Tripwire, you may issue the following commands as root:

  tar xvzf tripwire-2.3-47.i386.tar.gz

  rpm -ivh tripwire-2.3-47.i386.rpm

Once the software is installed with rpm, the installation shell script will need to be executed to finish the Tripwire installation. This is done by issuing the command:

  /etc/tripwire/twinstall.sh

as root. Note that all Tripwire associated files are kept in the /etc/tripwire directory.

Download Tripwire

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Tripwire : Open Source Security Utility

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How to install OpenOffice.org in SLES from a SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop ISO file

admin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:41:02 +0000

After installing SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES 11), there are some packages that may be required that’s not on the SLES 11 DVD but is available from the SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (SLED 11) DVD. One such example is OpenOffice.org.

If you already have the SLED DVD, you can install from it by adding the SLED DVD as a new repository. If you don’t, you can download the ISO image from Novell.

Once downloaded, you need to;

Start Yast –> Software Manager
Ctrl-R or go to Configuration –> Repositories
Click on “Add” and select “Local ISO image …”
Key in the location of the ISO image, agree to the license agreement and you will have it included in your repository
Search for “openoffice” and select “OpenOffice_org”. Click on “Accept” and it will install accordingly.
You will have it installed on your system. Go to your start menu, click on “Application”, you will find OpenOffice.org application icons.

Good luck!

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How to install OpenOffice.org in SLES from a SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop ISO file

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What’s the difference between “su” and “su –”?

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:54:13 +0000

We get asked this question quite often and maybe it is good to give a simple explanation. “su” by itself means that you would like to assume the super user identity. You can also assume the identity of another user using “su ”.

Then, many people actually ask why do we usually type “su –” instead of just “su”? The main difference is that the one with the “-“ will run the to-be-assumed userid’s startup scripts which will basically mean that you will have the environment settings (such as $PATH) as though you are logged in as the new userid. Without the “-“, you will have the environment settings of the current userid (probably your userid).

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What’s the difference between “su” and “su –”?

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Differential backup script sample

Manually Starting and Stopping Services in Suse/OpenSuse

admin — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 11:50:32 +0000

YaST provides a extremely easy way for system administrators to manage which services run at boot. The YaST Runlevel Editor module is easy to understand and gives you important information about each service. You can choose to start or stop a process with nothing more than a mouse click.

To view what are the what services that are currently running, you can open the Runlevel Editor module from the YaST System page. It will display a list of all the available services. If you change the configuration file for a particular service, you usually have to stop and restart the service to use the new configuration. For example, when making changes to the X server, it is often worthwhile to change from Runlevel 5 to Runlevel 3 to test the changes, then switch back to re-enable the display manager. This way, if you make a mistake, you can fix it and get it right without having to reboot every time.

e.g. To stop, start, or restart any service, open a shell as the SuperUser. To see if your ALSA sound server is running, type the following:

/etc/init.d/alsasound status

The script will report its status. It should report

ALSA sound driver loaded.             running

To stop and restart the service, type

/etc/init.d/alsasound restart

and the following should appear:

Shutting down sound driver               done

Starting sound driver:  via82xx          done

Restoring the previous sound setting     done

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Manually Starting and Stopping Services in Suse/OpenSuse

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How to Burn ISO image onto CD / DVD

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:56:29 +0000

Often you may download some applications from the Internet that is stored as ISO image file. An ISO image is an archive file (also known as a disk image) of an optical disc in a format defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). So here is a simple tip on how to burn ISO image onto your CD/DVD.

First, insert a blank CD/DVD into your drive, the file manager will automatically appear. Navigate in the file manager and find the ISO image file that you want to burn onto the CD/DVD. Drag and drop the image file to the blank DVD-ROM (or CD-ROM) disk.

You will be asked whether you want to “Create From Image” or “Create With File”. The “Create With File” option will basically copy the files found in the image into the CD/DVD whilst the “Create From Image” will map the whole image file onto the CD/DVD. Choose the “Create From Image”.

A new dialog box will appear, just select “Write” and let it proceed.

It will take some time to complete and once it has completed, a new message box will appear. Select “Close”. Voila!, just a few simple steps.

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How to Burn ISO image onto CD / DVD

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Open Special Locations in Nautilus with URI

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:51:24 +0000

For Linux, the official file manager for the GNOME desktop is Nautilus. In case you wondering the origin for Nautilus, it is a play on words. By evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards.

There are many ways to open an application in Nautilus. However, here’s a simple tip that you might not know. You can open special locations in Nautilus by entering the URI in the location bar. An Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a string of characters used to identify or name a resource on the Internet. You can invoke the location bar by using the keyboard shortcut key Ctrl+L.

For example, if you would like to show Computer and lists the disk partitions, you can type in computer:///. Similarly, you can try the following special location URIs :

network:/// to show the network locations
burn:/// to see the inbuilt CD application
fonts:/// to list the fonts installed on the system
burn:/// to open the CD Writing Window.
themes:/// to list the themes available for the Gnome Desktop
system-settings:/// to give access to system settings.

These URIs can be handy and it could be a time saver indeed.

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Open Special Locations in Nautilus with URI

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How to configure YaST firewall for BitTorrent

admin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:22:56 +0000

The most file sharing protocol is non other than the famous BitTorrent protocol. However sometimes you may be experiencing slow downloads when sharing P2P files when using BitTorrent client e.g. Utorrent. This is most likely to occur when your computer is behind a home router or software firewall. The OpenSuse firewall -YaST makes it nearly impossible to use the BitTorrent protocol. Extremely slow download times could be the end result.

However, there are two ways that may help to get BitTorrent running smoothly:

Start the YaST firewall and select the zone you want to allow services for (where you want the enabled port). Click [Advanced] and enter the correct information (syntax from-port:to-port numeric). Click [OK], and YaST will ask you if you are sure. Click [Continue] to return to the main dialog; click [Cancel] to re-enter the port numbers. After returning to the main menu, click [Next] and [Accept] to finish configuration.
Open the /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2 file in any text-editor Add the required ports to the FW_SERVICES_EXT_TCP, FW_SERVICES_INT_TCP or FW_SERVICES_DMZ_TCP variable. (# Examples: “ssh”, “123 514″, “3200:3299″, “ftp 22 telnet 512:514″)

You may try to add TCP: “6881:6999″ but this could result in a security risk. Always remember this is because not only P2P clients can use this port.

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How to configure YaST firewall for BitTorrent

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