Fedora 25 — after a final Fedora 24 install step

Fedora 25 was released November 22.   I downloaded its live  DVD .iso image after breakfast, morning coffee and e-mail.

Then I realized that I had forgotten one crucial last step of last June’s Fedora 24 installation to both of my desktop machines: I did not yet have not yet installed the K3b distribution-agnostic GUI DVD creation tool.  I have been using K3b since a LUGOR colleague in the Rochester N.Y. area suggested it to me as I got back into Linux circa 2006 to 2008.  I probably first used K3b for to burn a Fedora 13 or 14  DVD then while Fedora 15 to 17 in my recollecte opinion had unusable GUIs I found the eminently usable Cinnamon GUI first in Linux Mint for several Linux Mint releases.  When finally (Fedora 20?) Fedora began having the  easily installed Cinnamon GUI  option, I went back to using Fedora,  my present choice of Linux distribution.  The beauty of open source and Linux is that my key applications:  Libre Office (Writer, Calc etc) GIMP,  Thunderbird, Firefox,etc with minor cosmetic differences could care less about which Linux they run under.

 

This tool,  out of the Debian Linux branch, is what I used to transfer my downloaded  .iso image files onto bootable installation DVDs, the first step of the next installation after download.

So it turns out that my first step for installation of Fedora 25 was to install K3b into  Zeus, my HP Pavilion  “test” machine whiThen then, after realizing that I had forgotten to install the K3b  installing a forgotten k3b mail.t 09:50:57 s soon as it was available.

After burning my physical DVD from the image

thenburned

Converting Fedora 24β to Fedora 24 Final

A week after installing Fedora 24 in Thor,  it occurred to me that I could convert Zeus’s Fedora 24β to Fedora 24 Final by a simple command: 

dnf update

So I did…   Now both Zeus and Thor are running Fedora 24.  Of course as anyone using Fedora should do, perhaps one a week go into root mode and do a the same

dnf update to keep the system up ot date…

 

 

Using Fedora 24

On June 21,  I downloaded the new Fedora 24 live…

On June 22 I installed Fedora 24 into Thor,

Tinney Liberty_&_Plaintext_desktop---tagged final

 

 

leaving Fedora 24beta in Zeus for now

 

Fooled by a forgotten screenshot!

Some Linux installation setup gotchas that got me

notes by Carl Helmers, April 19, 2016

( copy edited and slightly tweaked April 20, 2016 )

Cc © 2016 Carl Helmers — all rights reserved

B a c k g r o u n d

Along about April 15, 2016 or so, I seemed to be having some initialization problems with my secondary weather / time display /  current events display computer Zeus, driving the upper of my two stacked LCD displays.  Zeus is an HP Pavilion p8620t “Core Quad” Intel PC with a 2.66Ghz clock. I purchased Zeus in December 2009 (a year before I ditched my last ancient XP computer , replaced with a much faster Thor, my current main AMD hex core computer.)

 

 

In addition to its real time weather radar, real time clock display and current weekday MarketWatch Financial DJIA & NASDAQ real time display functions,  I use Zeus as my experimental Linux computer when I want to try out some Linux distribution.  During experimental installations I temporarily  forgo use of my standard displays on the upper LCD until I have set them up again after a new installation.

 

T r y i n g   K o r o r a   A g a i n 

In March 2016 I decided to try the latest Korora 23 version of Fedora 23.   After most of a day saving select files then installing Korora 23,  I started installing the latest version of my Perl event epoch logging programs.  This process requires superuser BASH mkdir creation of my special /home/LL/ directories with my Carl group and user name fields as well as universal rwx  permissions:

/home/LL/B/  for the output of my /home/LL/get-last-shutdown shell piped ( | >) to …/B/last-shutdown-at-boot/

/home/LL/P/  for Perl programs and one or two BASH shells that I have written,

/home/LL/H/ for various history files created in the course of the initial boot process.

I  pipe the BASH date command into the file /home/LL/H/date-of-boot as my first BASH command after the end of the bootstrap process.   This is specified by my crontab@boot line calling my custom shell /home/LL/CH-ZeusCboot  (for my “Zeus” computer.)   In my CH-ZeusCboot BASH shell  the first command executed (absolutely minimal delay) is the BASH  date command directed to the intermediate file /home/LL/H/date-of-boot. This gives me a good approximation to the actual boot epoch (date and time) as a standard date command output.

At  an unknown and irrelevant delay time later in the CH-ZeusCboot shell, I cat the file /home/LL/H/date-of-boot into the pipe into my Perl /home/LL/P/form-history-date.pl program in order to get  an  “epoch” format date string for use in my history logs.  My “epoch” format date is a more natural readable format of date as opposed to the “format of convenience” used by the first Unix coders that resulted in the date command’s output format.   tAs an example the epoch of my login on an April 2016 morning is:  Tue Apr 19, 2016 @ 06:40:48 EDT created by cat piping the Linux date format /home/LL/H/login-date ( Tue Apr 19 06:40:48 EDT 2016 ) into a pipe into my form-history-date.pl  then into the file  /home/LL/H/epoch-of-login.  The main difference is that I move the year to its proper position in an American English expression of a date following the day of the month and I add the characters ” @” before the HH:MM:SS format 24-hour astronomical time field used by Linux.  Of course I use the effective time zone 3-digit abbreviation for Eastern Daylight time based on my New York location and the current day within the year.

D e f a u l t   F i r e f o x

W i n d o w s

Fine and dandy.   As part of this very manual configuration process, I create my default (at normal shutdown) Firefox windows pointing at various on line nuggets:

http://www.wunderground.com for ten frames of recent real time weather radar with lightning display graphics

( NOTE: wunderground.com this still requires some daily manual setup of the radar animation parameters. )

http://www.time.gov for current local real time in 24 hour astronomical notation

( NOTE: www.time.gov still requires daily manual checking of a “bullet” for 24-hour time )

http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/… for DJIA and NASDAQ stock market charts when markets are open.

R e s i d u e   of    B A S H i n g

S o m e   D e t a i l s

   T o g e t h e r  :

While creating my non standard directories, as well as developing some further “.plperl programs I had to make the new program files executable — whether the files were simple shell script text files or .pl perl programs.

Out of bad non-GUI habits command line habits I used a BASH shell window rather than the GUI file properties window to mark the new program files as “executable” so I could run them.   After I had a shell window activated for other purposes,  for some reason I used the screenshot GUI tool.  I inadvertently left it in the default “grab the whole screen” mode while taking my screenshot.  Well the whole screen includes my usual desktop background as well as my terminal window and Firefox browser windows.

Remember,  a screenshot of a terminal window looks just like an active working terminal window.   The …/Pictures/ directory happens to be the default directory from which to select desktop backgrounds as well as the default destination directory for the Screenshot application. Compound that with my inadvertent selection of the abnormal screenshot as my desktop background when I was configuring Korora 23 Cinnamon in Zeus.  Now I know why I ended up with a “frozen” terminal window that just would not close when I clicked its “X” dot in the upper right corner!

By going back to preferences I found that my options included my intended custom desktop background for the Korora 23 distribution without the terminal window image, as well as the inadvertent potential wallpaper image of my screenshot with the BASH GUI window and similarly frozen images of my weather and time windows.  Picking the correct image I solved my problem.  So now I know yet another potential gotcha of the occasional installation of a Linux, an act that I do not do every day!   Some details are worth cluttering into one’s memory rather than being tossed over the transom when using the system normally for weeks or months after the last installation!

Not bad for a morning’s writing about my latest finds.    …Carl Helmers

 

 

 

Korora 22 has arrived

Late this afternoon [August 4, 2015] I downloaded the new Korora 22 spin of Fedora 22 — twice.   The first time,  I somehow picked the KDE spin to download.  I followed up on my mistake before dinner by using K3b in Zeus (under its Linux Mint 17.1)  to burn the Korora 22 KDE live DVD. With the  KDE isodoeloaded and burned now I could possibly try out a new GUI spin “live” in my experimental computer Zeus.    But I really wanted the Korora 22 Cinnamon spin for A to B comparison with the real Fedora 22 Cinnamon GUI that I have been using in my main computer Thor since it became available.

I spent another half hour after dinner downloading the Korora 22 Cinnamon version to correct my mistake.  After K3b burning the DVD for Korora 22 Cinnamon,  I proceeded to shut down Zeus and attempt to boot up the live Korora 22 live Cinnamon version…

But either in the download or the DVD burning process,  I ended up with a non-working Korora 22 live Cinnamon DVD.  My initial experiment failed in a frozen non-GUI boot display that I ended up killing by powering off Zeus.

Not quite ready to quit on the day,  I then set Zeus up with the Korora 22 KDE DVD instead in  its tray.  Since I had never used KDE before,  I could initially prove that the DVD I made worked, then get a taste of KDE without actually following through tonight with a real install.  The Korora 22 live DVD (in its pokey live DVD way) loaded with no trouble in Zeus.

Since today is one of those summer days when I need the real time thunderstorm radar on my upper screen,  I shortly thereafter shut down Zeus again, removed the Korora KDE DVD, in order to reboot Zeus and restore my normal www.wundergorund.com radar in my upper display.   I write tonight’s note from Thor about my initial Korora 22 experience in the hour or so before the next T-storm cell (seen on Zeus’s upper LCD) marches west to east from lake Erie west of Buffalo NY to our position south of Rochester…   That’s it for now.

 

Fedora 22 missing printer found after “dnf update” July 24

2015.07.24 — Fedora 22 printer problem solved…   Soon after I installed Fedora 22, I was unable to print on my 2015 purchased HP OJ-P 8620 which is USB connected directly to Thor, my main desktop Fedora Linux workstation.   This is a major gotcha.

Since last installing Fedora 22 this printer hardware had not worked.    Today, I tried the Fedora superuser command “dnf update” to see if any changes had been broadcast.   After maybe 10-15 minutes of downloading then  doing the updates,  I did a power cycle of Thor and what do you know,  now I had printer function back!

When using software at the bleeding edge [AKA Fedora nn] it pays to update frequently!  I imagine that when I next go into the “System Settings” of cinnamon on Thor,  I will find the missing printer is actually there!

 

 

 

Home again after a week in Phoenix Az — Fedora 22

Jean and I just spent a week at the Phoenix Az Biltmore Hotel,  where her INRC (International Narcotics Research Conference) combined with the CPDD (College on Problems of Drug Dependance were held jointly this year.  I go along for the ride on her scientific trips,  since it offers the prospect of visiting new places or variations on previously visited places.   I will post some photos later when I get around to dumping my pix from camera to this computer.  While Jean attended sessions of the two successive meetings, I read infor on Fedora 22 and its installation so I could plan today’s partially completed installation/configration activities.

We got back home last night late Eastern Daylight Time;  in between our post trip laundry chores etc,  today I installed Fedora 22 in Thor for the perhaps ultimate, so far successful time.   I am just now exploring my chosen Cinnamon GUI which in its latest Fedora instantiation seems as comfortable to me as earlier versions in Fedora and Mint.  I have yet to tweak everything the way I would like it to be.  There are some gotchas and compromises that I have not figured a way around yet.  If frustrated enough I may yet try the another GUI available through Fedora.

This is thus my first post from Fedora 22.   When it is available in a few weeks,  I will try configuring a side by side via Korora 22.   This will allow me to compare the Fedora/EasyLife method I am in the middle of configuring today with the equivalent system set up using Korora.  This will give me an A to B comparison of the setups and thinking I need to do in the process…

This evening the remaining exploration is Thundernbird e-mail,  which I will adopt initially by the kluge of copying the configured .thunderbird directory of my last Fedora 20 installation since I know it has worked in the past.

Later after the Korora/Fedora tests, as summer 2015 progresses I hope to finally attempt to get around to re implementing my BASEL Bash Application for System Event Logging as PASERL, my  new Perl Application for System Event Recording – Logging.  This may seem excessive.  But I never liked the somewhat less clean way of implementation as BASH shells with some important data extractions details done in Perl when needed. My idea is to make BASH the exception and Perl the principal language for my application rather than use Perl as the exception with BASH as the normal coding paradigm.   I also want to try making it more distribution independent so that I can ultimately use the same or very similar Perl program with my Mac Airbook travel computer.

I may still have to use an expression piping Bash “last” into “head” into “grep” to get the halt, start and login times I seek eachepoch when a system changes its respective state.  However, the use of Perl rather than BASH to post these times to a /home/local-logs/PASERL-history file may be symbolically neater when I am done.

On to regaining Thunderbird’s setup of e-mail, now   —  2015.06.20 @20:55 EDT

 

2015.04.27 — Linux thinking (e-mail to LUGOR last night)

This is ane-mail that I sent to the Linux User Group of Rochester (LUGOR) re thoughts I have had re installing my next Fedora:

Lugor E-mail from CH 2015.04.26 -- header 2015-04-27 10:20:07

I am eagerly awaiting Fedora 22 when it comes out…

In poking around tonight,  I ran across a bookmark that
I first recorded a month or so ago about the Korora remix
of Fedora 21.  From what I can tell reading distro watch
and other sites,  Korora fits the Fedora open source ecosystem
the way that the long dormant Omega 14 was when I first started
getting back to Linux a decade ago.  Omega was an excellent
attempt to remix Fedora in a way  similar to how Ubuntu and
Mint now provide remixes of Debian.

Rob Raiman told me about the Omega 14 Fedora remix at a Lugor
meeting or follow on Quimbies dinner circa the times (2004-2006)
I first started going to Lugor meetings after moving back to ROC.

Omega has since gone dormant.  From what I can tell,
Korora is a current remix that purports to do for Fedora
what Ubuntu and Mint do for Debian and each other.

I plan on attending the next Lugor dinner May 21.  By then
I will have tried Korora 21 in my secondary Intel x86-64
real time weather radar box that currently runs Mint 17.

The release version of Korora 22 will probably
become available about a month or so after Fedora 22’s
upcoming release..

That said,  I will be able to talk about my experiences with
Korora 21 in conversation at with Lugor colleagues at our
May 21 stamtisch…

…Carl


From Fedora 20 Linux on Thor 3.2 GHz/AMD Phenom II x6
CH WWW site:  www.helmers.com
Then on April 27,  Rob Raiman replied:
Rob Raiman Reply to lugor 2015-04-27 12:25:06
I for one would be very interested in hearing about Korora. I missed Omega
when it went dormant.