Fedora Daily Package - Productive Monday

Productive Monday: yum-fastestmirror - Use fastest mirror for downloads

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:01:00 -0500

Fedora uses a worldwide system of mirror servers to distribute packages. When a Fedora system needs package info, packages, or updates, it will by default request a mirror list from a Fedora server. This list is generated based on the repository and architecture requested as well as the IP address of the requesting system.

The yum-fastestmirror package provides a Yum plugin which measures the speed of available mirrors and sorts the list so that priority is given to the fastest mirrors; this can result in faster yum operations and reduced network congestion -- and with no additional manual effort beyond installing the plugin.

Installing from the command line: yum install yum-fastestmirror
Installing using the graphical installer: Not available by browsing; search for yum-fastestmirror
Menu location after installation: Not on the menu; alters the operation of yum and PackageKit
Command: No direct command; access functionality via /usr/bin/yum and /usr/bin/pkcon
Upstream website: http://yum.baseurl.org/

Productive Monday: Hotwire - Object-oriented Shell

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:01:00 -0400

The shell has gradually improved through the years, from the Multics shell to the Bourne shell (sh), Korn shell (ksh), Bourne-again shell (bash), and other derivatives (ash, zsh). There are shells with C-like syntax (csh, tcsh) and others. But most shells retain a text-based paradigm and a scrolling-text display.

Hotwire is an object-oriented "hypershell" with an integrated GUI that offers a different way to work. Shell builtins such as "ls", "proc", and "filter" are used to build object pipelines, and the GUI displays pipeline results in an intelligent manner, allowing you to sort by clicking on column headings, change directories by double-clicking on paths, and so forth. Hotwire enables you to interactively extend pipelines by taking the current output and (without re-execution) feed it into additional commands. The commands are object-aware and an object inspector built into the GUI provides easy access to property and method details.

In addition to builtin commands, hotwire allows you to run Python snippets and regular shell commands (such as loops). It also provides TAB-completion and history searching, evaluates Perl and Ruby expressions, searches command output, and can run commands in a traditional terminal emulator.

This project has come a long way in just over a year, and it will be interesting to see how it progresses as planned features such as remoting are added.

Installing from the command line: yum install hotwire
Installing using the graphical installer: Not available in the Browse view; use the List or Search view to install hotwire
Menu location after installation: Applications > System Tools > Hotwire Shell
Command: /usr/bin/hotwire
Upstream website: http://hotwire-shell.org/

Productive Monday: Meld - Visual diff/merge tool

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:01:00 -0400

Meld is a powerful visual diff and merge tool. It displays colour-coded two- and three-way diffs and enables you to merge or edit the compared files. It can work with version control systems (cvs, svn, hg) and can diff directories. The GTK-based interface is clean and features tabs and a toolbar.

Meld does a great job of simplifying edit and merge tasks; when comparing files, for example, you can simply click on the arrows in the middle column to merge text from one side to the other (see screenshot). Holding down Ctrl reveals insert-before/insert-after options, and holding down Shift enables one-click block deletion.

Installing from the command line: yum install meld
Installing using the graphical installer: Development > Development Tools > meld
Menu location after installation: Applications > Programming > Meld Diff Viewer
Command: /usr/bin/meld
Upstream website: http://meld.sourceforge.net/

Thanks to Alessandro Boggiano for suggesting Meld!

Productive Monday: Unison - File synchronization tool

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:01:00 -0500

If you use more than one computer in your daily work -- especially if one is a laptop -- it's quite common to end up with a mismash of files and file versions spread across the machines. Unison is an easy-to-use, GUI-based, bidirectional file synchronization tool. It runs on Windows and most flavours of Unix/Linux, so it enables cross-platform synchronization, and SSH tunneling provides effective security for data in transit without requiring additional key or firewall configuration.

Installing from the command line: yum install unison
Installing using the graphical installer: Base System > System Tools > unison
Menu location after installation: Applications > Accessories > Unison File Synchronizer
Command: /usr/bin/unison
Upstream website: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Thanks to Rahul Sundaram for suggesting Unison! If you'd like to suggest a package, please use the form on the right side of the main page.

Productive Monday: Planet - Feed aggregator

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:01:00 -0500

Planet is a feed aggregator which assembles multiple RSS or Atom newsfeeds into a single web page and feed, like Planet Fedora, Planet Gnome, or Planet KDE. I use it to generate the opensource@seneca Planet.

To keep resource usage to a minimum, Planet writes static web pages based on template files instead of running as a web script. When the Fedora Planet package is installed, sample template files are installed in /usr/share/doc/planet-2.0/examples/, and CSS and image files for the sample templates are in /usr/share/doc/planet-2.0/examples/output.

To set up a planet, copy the template, CSS, and image files to appropriate locations (or create your own template files using the samples as a guide). In this example, I'm going to use ~/planet/template for the template files and ~/public_html/planet for the output location (where the CSS, images, and generated HTML/XML will be placed):

$ mkdir -p planet ~/public_html/planet
$ cp /usr/share/doc/planet-2.0/examples/*tmpl /usr/share/doc/planet-2.0/examples/fancy/*tmpl ~/planet
$ cp -r /usr/share/doc/planet-2.0/examples/output/* ~/public_html/planet

The next step is to create a configuration file. Again, examples can be found under /usr/share/doc/planet-2.0/examples/; here is a simple config file based on the file locations above:

# Configuration file for planet

# Basic planet details
[Planet]
name = myPlanet
link = http://concord3.proximity.on.ca/~chris/planet/
owner_name = Chris Tyler
owner_email = chris.tyler@example.com

# Directory for cached feed data
cache_directory = /home/chris/planet/cache

# Directory for output HTML and XML files
output_dir = /home/chris/public_html/planet

# List of template files to be processed
template_files = planet/template/atom.xml.tmpl planet/template/foafroll.xml.tmpl planet/template/index.html.tmpl planet/template/opml.xml.tmpl planet/template/rss10.xml.tmpl planet/template/rss20.xml.tmpl

# Feeds to be processed
[http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?feeds]
name = Chris Tyler
face = images/chris_tyler_hackergotchi.png

[http://planet.fedoraproject.org/atom.xml]
name = Planet Fedora

[http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot]
name = Slashdot

[http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?feeds]
name = Fedora Daily Package

Save this file in an appropriate location (e.g., ~/planet/config.ini) and then run planet with this file as the only argument:

$ planet ~/planet/config.ini

If the output looks good, use crontab to schedule planet to run periodically:

$ (crontab -l;echo "50 * * * * /usr/bin/planet $HOME/planet/config.ini")|crontab

Installing from the command line: yum install planet
Installing using the graphical installer: Not available in the Browse view; use the Search or List views to install planet
Menu location after installation: Not applicable -- run from the command line or as a cron job
Command: /usr/bin/planet
Upstream website: http://planetplanet.org

Productive Monday: htmldoc - HTML to PS/PDF Converter

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:01:00 -0500

htmldoc is a powerful simple-to-use tool which converts HTML to Postscript, PDF, or indexed HTML output. It provides a graphical user interface (pictured) for manual document conversion -- useful for tasks such producing printed manuals from web pages -- but it can also be used as a filter.

When used as a filter, htmldoc provides a simple way to produce nice-looking output from a script. Here's a bash example:

echo "<html><body><h1>Heading</h1><p>Some HTML output...</p></body></html>" |
htmldoc --format ps3 --bodyfont Helvetica --header ... --footer ... --webpage - | lpr

htmldoc is also a handy tool for producing PDF output in CGI scripts.

Since tables and images are supported, it's easy to set up documents such as invoices, statements, and reports with columnar data, logos, and icons. With a bit of sed/awk/perl magic, you can transform the text output of normal commands into HTML for inclusion in the htmldoc output.

This software is developed by Easy Software Products, who also develop the CUPS print spooler system used in Fedora.

Installing from the command line: yum install htmldoc
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Office/Productivity > htmldoc
Menu location after installation: Office > HTMLDOC
Command: /usr/bin/htmldoc
Upstream website: http://www.htmldoc.org/

Productive Monday: Maxima - Computer Algebra System

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:02:00 -0500

In the late 1960's, a computer algebra system named Macsyma was developed at MIT. This system was commercialized by Symbolics, and a number of other programs such as the proprietary Maple and Mathematica systems were inspired by it.

Fedora includes the maxima package, an open-source descendant of the original Macsyma code (forked in 1982 and placed under the GPL in 1998). It provides powerful symbolic and numeric manipulation and 2D and 3D plotting capability, and the maxima-gui package provides the simple but functional xmaxima graphical front-end.

(Note: sometimes, an sbcl (Steel Bank Common Lisp) process will continue to run after Maxima has been terminated, consuming a lot of CPU time).

Installing from the command line: yum install maxima-gui
Installing using the graphical installer: maxima-gui is not available through the Browse view (although maxima is in the Engineering and Scientific group); use the Search or List views to install the maxima-gui package
Menu location after installation: Applications > Programming > xmaxima
Command: /usr/bin/maxima-gui (graphical interface) or /usr/bin/maxima (character-mode interface)
Upstream website: http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

Update: maxima package maintainer Rex Dieter points out that wxMaxima provides a nice alternate graphical front-end to maxima. (Thanks, Rex!)

Productive Monday: iotop - Display I/O Activity by Process

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:01:00 -0500

System administrators have always relied on top for per-process CPU and memory usage statistics, and vmstat (or sar) to analyze I/O -- but there has been no easy way to analyze disk I/O on a per-process basis.

iotop is the missing tool. It shows the disk read and write rate, swapins, and total disk I/O for each process. The process list is sorted by I/O and updated once per second.

A minimal number of interactive controls are available: r reverses the sort order and q quits.

Although no manpage is provided for iotop, executing it with the argument --help reveals a few available options, including -d to set the delay between updates.

Installing from the command line: yum install iotop
Installing using the graphical installer: Not available in browse mode; use the Search or List modes to install iotop
Menu location after installation: Not on the menu - access through the command line only.
Command: /usr/bin/iotop
Upstream website: http://guichaz.free.fr/misc/#iotop

Productive Monday: FSlint -- Find filesystem waste

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:01:00 -0400

lint is a program to check C programs for certain errors. FSlint performs a similar function for filesystems: it detects bad symlinks, name clashes, temp files, empty directories, non-stripped binaries, and other forms of debris within a filesystem.

The FSlint package contains a number of utilities which are stored in /usr/share/fslint/fslint and which may be run from the command line, but it also contains a very convenient graphical shell (fslint-gui) with a tab-based interface which makes it easy to explore problems. While using the GUI, you can save files to a new path or delete them with a click of the mouse.

This useful tool makes it easy to stay on top of your storage system, keeping it streamlined and free from the cruft that always accumulates over time.

Installing from the command line: yum install fslint
Installing using the graphical installer: Not available in browse mode; use the Search or List modes to install fslint
Menu location after installation: > Applications > System Tools > FSlint
Command: /usr/bin/fslint-gui OR /usr/share/fslint/fslint/fslint
Upstream website: http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint/

Thanks to Martial Boudant for suggesting this package! (If you'd like to suggest a package, please use the suggestion box on the right side of the main page).

Productive Monday: Regexxer - GUI search & replace

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:01:00 -0400

Regexxer is a GUI search-and-replace tool for multiple text files. A divided window enable you to find files using a globbing pattern and recursive searching (left side of the window -- use the Find Files button to perform the search and populate the file list), and then specify a Perl-style regular expression and replacement text (right side of the window -- click the Find button to start searching). Each found occurrence is highlighted and displayed along with the proposed change; use the buttons at the bottom of the screen to skip (arrow), replace one occurrence (Replace), replace all occurrences in the current file (This file), or replace all occurrences in all files (All files). No changes are committed until you press the Save or Save all buttons (or use the corresponding options on the File menu).

There's nothing here that couldn't be done with sed or perl, but it's nice to be able to do this through a GUI with a statistical display and the option to confirm changes before applying them.

If you're unfamiliar with regular expressions: Regular expressions are search patterns that permit you to specify complex search criteria in regular text. You can learn about regular expressions by reading the manpages for perlrequick and perlre (enter the command man perlrequick and man perlre) or by reading this short introduction (PDF), but you can also use Regexxer by entering search text comprised of only alphanumeric characters and spaces, which will form a simple regular expression. The /g checkbox enables global replacement (replacing all occurrences on each line, not just the first one) and the /i checkbox makes the search case-insensitive.

Installing from the command line: yum install regexxer
Installing using the graphical installer: Development > Development Tools > regexxer
Menu location after installation: > Applications > Programming > Regexxer
Command: /usr/bin/regexxer
Upstream website: http://regexxer.sourceforge.net/

Thanks to Tinh Truong Xuan for suggesting Rexexxer! If you have a package you'd like to see covered, please use the Submit a Package box on the right side of the main page.

Productive Monday: Remind - GUI/Text reminder service

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:01:00 -0400

Remind is a very flexible reminder service which can be used from the command line. With the tkremind program (in the remind-gui package), it can also be used with a graphical user interface.

The basic purpose of remind is to present reminder messages or run commands at particular times. In that way it sounds a bit like cron -- but remind handles complex recurrence patterns, advance and repeated reminders, and the skipping of weekends and holidays. The powerful remind script syntax can be daunting to learn, so a good place to start may be creating some reminders using the tkremind tool and then reviewing the ~/.reminders file to see the syntax of the created entries. The manpage for remind (man remind) is a critical resource.

For convenient viewing of reminders, the rem shortcut command is provided. When working in a GUI environment, run the tkremind program (minimized) to see as-they-happen reminders; when in a non-GUI environment, run remind in daemon mode:

$ nohup remind -z ~/.reminders &

(You may want to add that to your ~/.bash_profile).

The remind package also includes rem2ps to produce Postscript calendars from reminder files; this feature is also available from the Print... option in the tkremind window.

Installing from the command line: yum install remind remind-gui
Installing using the graphical installer: Not available in Browse mode; use the Search or List modes to install remind and remind-gui
Menu location after installation: > Applications > Office > tkremind
Command: /usr/bin/remind, /usr/bin/tkremind
Upstream website: http://www.roaringpenguin.com/en/penguin/openSourceProducts/remind

Thanks to Till Maas for suggesting this package! If you have a package that you would like to see mentioned, please use the Suggest a Package box on the right side of the main page.

Productive Monday: MediaWiki - Collaborative publishing

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:01:00 -0400

A Wiki is a collaboratively-edited web site. Some of the best-known examples are the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, including Wikipedia and Wiktionary, and Wikis are useful collaboratively editing and publishing many different types of web content. The software that powers the Wikimedia Foundation projects is called MediaWiki and is available within Fedora.

In order to use MediaWiki, you will need a database server. Since this may be on another computer, there is no dependency noted in the RPM file -- if you want to run the database server and MediaWiki on the same system, you'll need to select and install the database server manually. I usually use MySQL, but PostgreSQL can also be used.

To set up your wiki, you'll need to start Apache and your database server, if they're not already running:

# service httpd start
# service mysqld start # <---- Assuming you use MySQL!

If you have freshly installed MySQL, you'll need to set a password for the root user (replace YourBigSecretPassword with the password of your choosing):

# /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password "YourBigSecretPassword"
# /usr/bin/mysqladmin -p -u root -h $(hostname) password "YourBigSecretPassword"
Enter password: YourBigSecretPassword

Next, create a symbolic link from the desired wiki location to /var/www/wiki. For example, if you want to host a wiki with an address of http://Hostname/wiki, then execute these commands:

# ln -s /var/www/wiki /var/www/html/wiki

You will also need to create a link to the skins directory:

# ln -s /usr/share/mediawiki/skins /var/www/wiki/skins

Then access the wiki's address (http://localhost/wiki) using a web browser on the the computer running MediaWiki. You'll see a welcome page with a setup link; click on that link to go to a setup form. Near the bottom of the form, select the User Superuser option and enter the root MySQL password where indicated -- MediaWiki will login to the server and create the required databases.

MediaWiki will then inform you of the success or failure of the setup operation (if it fails, read the message to find out why, correct the errors, and try again). Once you have successfully completed the setup step, copy the config file to the final location:

# cp /var/www/wiki/config/LocalSettings.php /var/www/wiki/LocalSettings.php

Your Wiki is now ready for use.

Tip: To set the logo that appears in the upper-left corner of the wiki pages, add a line to the end of /var/www/wiki/LocalConfiguration.php (just before the line which reads "?>" ) which sets $wgLogo to the URI of a 153 x 153 pixel image:

$wgLogo='http://Hostname/wiki/mylogo.png';

If your image is less than 153x153, add a transparent border to make up the difference.

Installing from the command line: yum install mediawiki
Installing using the graphical installer: Servers > Web Server > mediawiki
Menu location after installation: (none -- access using a browser)
Command: (none)
Upstream website: http://www.mediawiki.org

Productive Monday: Qcad - Simple 2D CAD program

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:00:02 -0400

Qcad is a two-dimensional drafting program, available in proprietary and GPL versions. Fedora includes the GPL version of QCAD, which does not have scripting or polyline support.

The Qcad package includes several sample drawings in the directory /usr/share/doc/qcad-2.0.5.0 in the AutoCAD-compatible DXF format, and a parts library for this package is available from the upstream website. Documentation for this software is in an online manual accessed through the Help menu.

Installing from the command line: yum install qcad
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Office/Productivity > qcad
Menu location after installation: Applications > Graphics > QCad
Command: /usr/bin/qcad
Upstream website: http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html

Productive Monday: Gobby - Collaborative editor

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:01:00 -0400

Gobby is a collaborative editor which enables multiple people to simultaneously edit a group of documents. It provides encrypted communication, on-the-fly server ("session") setup, multple document editing, connection password protection, syntax highlighting for popular programming languages, and an online chat facility. Text entered or edited by each user is highlighted in colour to indicate the source.

Gobby also enables cross-platform collaboration: MS Windows and (limited) Mac OS/X clients are available from the upstream website.

A reminder: Don't forget to open the appropriate ports in your firewall when setting up a Gobby server.

Installing from the command line: yum install gobby
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Editors > gobby
Menu location after installation: Internet > Gobby Collaborative Editor
Command: /usr/bin/gobby
Upstream website: http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/

Special thanks to Knight Walker for suggesting this package.

Productive Monday: Incron - Execute commands based on filesystem activity

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:01:00 -0400

Cron is a tool that executes commands when a certain time has been reached. Incron is a new tool modeled after cron which executes commands when a filesystem event occurs. Without polling, Incron can watch a specific file or an entire directory for new files, file writes, closures, deletions, or other activity.

There are dozens of uses for incron, including:

playing a sound when a file changes
reloading a server config when the config file changes
notifying a user of new mail
watching for changes in critical files
processing uploaded files

This package contains a daemon named incrond. Use the server and chkconfig commands to start the server and configure it to be started at boot:

# service incrond start
Starting incrond: [ OK ]
# chkconfig incrond on

Incron uses per-user incrontab files, similar to crontab files. Each line in an incrontab contains a filename, a comma-separated list of events to watch, and a command to be executed. To display a list of available events, use the incrontab command with the -t (type) flag:

$ incrontab -t
IN_ACCESS,IN_MODIFY,IN_ATTRIB,IN_CLOSE_WRITE,
IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE,IN_OPEN,IN_MOVED_FROM,
IN_MOVED_TO,IN_CREATE,IN_DELETE,IN_DELETE_SELF,
IN_CLOSE,IN_MOVE,IN_ONESHOT,IN_ALL_EVENTS,
IN_DONT_FOLLOW,IN_ONLYDIR,IN_MOVE_SELF

Most of these event names will be self-explanatory; you can find a brief description of each in /usr/include/linux/inotify.h (from the kernel-headers package -- this is the main header file for the inotify system, which incron is based upon).

To create an incrontab, use the incrontab command with the -e (edit) option. By default, vi will be used as the editor; you can change this with the EDITOR environment variable or in the /etc/incron.conf file.

Here are some examples of incrontab entries:

Play a sound whenever a writable file in /tmp is closed (use play instead of paplay if you're not using PulseAudio)	/tmp IN_WRITE_CLOSE paplay /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Beep_Bottles.wav
Reload the DNS configuration whenever /etc/named.conf is modified	/etc/named.conf IN_MODIFY /sbin/service named reload
Run a script whenever a file in the inbound mailbox directory changes	/var/spool/mail IN_WRITE_CLOSE /usr/local/bin/mail-notify-script $#

The third example shows that you can can insert information about the filesystem event into the arguments of the executed command. The documentation file /usr/share/doc/incron-0.5.5/README notes that these substitutions are available:

$$ - a dollar sign
$@ - the watched filesystem path - this is the directory name if watching a directory
$# - the event-related file name - this is the relative filename if watching a directory; the absolute name is $@/$#
$% - the event flags (textually)
$& - the event flags (numerically)

Incron promises to be an useful tool for system administrators and end-users alike.

Thanks to Mattew Miller for suggesting today's package. If you have packages you would like to see covered, please use the Suggest a Package form on the right-hand side of the main page.

Installing from the command line: yum install incron
Installing using the graphical installer: Not available in browse mode; use the search or list tabs to install incron.
Menu location after installation: (Not applicable)
Command: /usr/bin/incrontab
Upstream website: http://inotify.aiken.cz/