Linux for my home use

Its been several months that I have been using Linux on my old home computer. I am using it for surfing the internet, reading emails, listening to online radio and playing 720p mkv.

Below is my installation flow for CentOS 6.3.

1. Download and install CentOS 6.3 Desktop
2. Update CentOS:
yum update
3. Add EPEL repo (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL)
4. Add RPMForge repo (http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/RPMForge)
5. Install additional packages:
yum install mplayer smplayer gconf-editor unrar
6. Install Google Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome)
7. Install Skype (http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Skype)
• If there is an audio playback problem, install pulseaudio-libs.i686.
8. Download wallpapers and setup background xml file
9. Install compiz-fusion:
yum install compiz-fusion-extras compiz-manager compiz-fusion-extras libcompizconfig ccsm compiz-gnome compiz-fusion-extras-gnome fusion-icon
10. Set compiz as window manager:
1. Run gconf-editor and set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager to compiz-gtk
2. Edit /usr/bin/compiz-gtk, change the compiz arguments to:
exec compiz --loose-binding --ignore-desktop-hints gnomecompat ccp $@
11. Install Cairo-dock 3.1.x (http://glx-dock.org/)

Problems that I have encountered:

• I have accidentally corrupted my Linux partition because of a typo error in running mkntfs. Be very careful in running commands under root.
• I have to build and install proprietary drivers every time I updated Linux kernel.
• Linux Flash is slow.
• MTP is slow and unstable.
• Linux radeon driver does not support my ATI graphics card and proprietary driver is slow.

How to setup init script?

A typical init script provides start, stop, restart, and status service to daemon program.

The start service will run the daemon program and create a lock file in /var/lock/subsys. This lock file will be use by status service.


To avoid mulitple instance of the deamon program, create a pid file so that the daemon function can check the process id. The deamon function will execute the daemon program if there is no pid file or there is pid file but has invalid process id. Its up to daemon program or init script to create the pid file.

start() {
        echo -n $"Starting $PROG_NAME: "

        # start daemon
        daemon $DAEMON
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch $PROG_LOCK_FILE
        return $RETVAL
} 

The stop service will kill the daemon program, delete the lock file and pid file. killproc function will delete the pid file.

stop() {
        # stop daemon
        echo -n $"Stopping $PROG_NAME: "
        killproc $DAEMON
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && rm -f $PROG_LOCK_FILE

        return $RETVAL
} 

The restart service basically calls stop and start services.


  restart)
        stop
        start
        ;;

The status service will tell if the daemon is running or stopped. This depends on the lock file and process id of the daemon program. The process id is checked using pid file and using the pidof.

   status)
        status $DAEMON
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
 

About pidof:

• if the daemon program is a script that is using env to call the interpreter (e.g. #!/bin/env ruby, #!/bin/env python), the pidof will fail to return process id of the script.

To setup the daemon program to run as user account:

1. specify the user name in daemon, status and killproc functions
2. if the pid file is created by the daemon program, specify the location of pid file

Complete init script:

#!/bin/sh
#
# "$Id: mydaemon,v 1.10 2012/06/19 10:10:10 $"
#
#   Startup/shutdown script for the mydaemon.
#
#   Linux chkconfig stuff:
#
#   chkconfig: 2345 99 00
#   description: Startup/shutdown script for the mydaemon.

. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

export DISPLAY=:0

DAEMON=/path/to/mydaemond
PROG_NAME=mydaemon
PROG_LOCK_FILE=/var/lock/subsys/mydaemond
RETVAL=0

start() {
        echo -n $"Starting $PROG_NAME: "

        # start daemon
        daemon $DAEMON
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch $PROG_LOCK_FILE
        return $RETVAL
}      

stop() {
        # stop daemon
        echo -n $"Stopping $PROG_NAME: "
        killproc $DAEMON
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && rm -f $PROG_LOCK_FILE
        return $RETVAL
}      

case "$1" in
  start)
        start
        ;;
  stop)
        stop
        ;;
  restart)
        stop
        start
        ;;
  status)
        status $DAEMON
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
  *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}"
        exit 2
esac

exit $RETVAL