Linux Resources
This is the page where I document hacks and projects related to Linux.
I'll start adding things little by little, and hopefully this part of my page
will be pretty useful before too long. If you haven't heard of Linux, this
probably won't be terribly interesting to you, but for your information Linux
is a free operating system which is much superior to Microsoft Windows in many
ways.
My Linux Background
I started using the Internet (but not the WWW) in late 1993, and I started
using UNIX in late 1994 or so (though through my dad I had been exposed to it
much earlier). I first installed Linux (it was Slackware) somewhere around
1995. Eventually I tried Caldera, Redhat, Corel, Debian, and Gentoo. Now I
mostly use Debian/Ubuntu and Fedora. As far as other Unix variants go, I've
used quite a bit of Solaris, IRIX, and Mac OS X, and I've run into Ultrix,
HP/UX, AIX, and *BSD.
My Contributions
Linux at Home
- Universal Boot Drive
- Instructions on how to create a bootable USB flash drive that can load
Memtest86+ and install or rescue images for Fedora.
- Dansguardian Tips
- I've run into a few problems that are hard to track down. Hopefully this
will help someone out there.
- Mindguard for Gentoo
- Mindguard is awesome. It's one of the funniest programs I've ever seen,
and the source code provides even more entertainment. I've actually met
someone who wanted to install Linux just so they could use Mindguard--they
really believed it. Anyway, if you use Gentoo, untar mindguard.tar.bz2 into
/usr/local/portage/games-misc/ and make sure that you have /usr/local/portage
setup in /etc/make.conf as a Portage overlay
(PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage). Then 'ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge
mindguard' and feel at peace.
LaTeX, etc.
- Making a Resume in LaTeX
- I created a flexible LaTeX template for resumes. Content and presentation
are separated, so it's very maintainable and customizable.
- Lilypond for Bagpipe Music
- Lilypond produces beautiful printed music, and now it works well for
bagpipe music, too.
Hardware
- Hardware Recommendations and Warnings
- There's good hardware and bad hardware, and I've run into my fair share
of both of them. I'm starting to keep track of my experiences so others
can save time and cut back on stress.
- Linux on the Compaq ProLiant DL360
- The ProLiant DL360 is a cool but odd machine. I've recorded some tips for
getting Linux running smoothly on it.
Email
- DSPAM Notes
- Observations from installing DSPAM on an Redhat Enterprise Linux/CentOS box
with Postfix, DSPAM web-based management, retraining with bouncing/forwarding,
etc.
Unix
- Python by Examples
- Python is my language of choice for most projects. There are lots of
pages about Python, but I decided to try an experiment. This page introduces
Python to programmers of other languages by giving a list of examples
accompanied by terse descriptions. The idea is that you can quickly get a sense of the language and its corner cases. Let me know if you like it or dislike it.
- Named Pipe Mystery
- Sometimes you just don't have any hope of figuring out something on your
own. Here's my most annoying bug ever.
- Shell Hacks and Examples
- It's amazing what you can do with a shell. Here are a bunch of random but
cool one to two liners. Some of them are very common, but others are pretty
creative.
- Dr. Strange OS or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love Unix
- [In progress]. Notes from a UUG Presentation given Feb. 17, 2005.
Mac OS X
- X11 on Mac OS X
- If you want to set up a fullscreen X11 session on Mac OS X, your
configuration will be different than it would be in Linux. I've explained
some configuration issues with solutions.
- StartX.app
- In addition to a fullscreen X session, I like to be able to have X
applications blend with Aqua apps by being managed by QuartzWM in rootless
mode. Apple's X11.app makes it difficult to have two X11 servers running at
the same time with different configurations. I wrote StartX.app to make it
easy.
Config Files
I have a git repository with all of my config files. It contains, among
other things, a bin directory and a dotfiles directory. My ~/bin directory
contains a symlink to each file in ~/config/bin, so that any important scripts
I write are checked into version control. I suppose I should probably just
add ~/config/bin to my path. Anyway, the dotfiles directory contains a bunch
of files such as zshrc, bashrc, procmailrc, and so forth. For each file in
dotfiles, there is a symlink in my home directory. For example, there is a
link at ~/.zshrc pointing to ~/config/dotfiles/zshrc. My reconfig.sh script automatically creates
all of these symbolic links.
Whenever I get a new account, I scp over and run amcnabb.sh. This script checks out my
config.git repository and runs reconfig.sh. Thus, it only takes two commands
to get my entire config environment set up.
Here are a couple of my config files:
- zshrc
- I like zsh a lot more than bash. It seems to work better overall, and it
has some more features. I use the same .zshrc on all of my systems, so it has
checks whenever the behavior needs to change for different computers.
- bashrc
- Some machines don't have zsh, so I still keep a bashrc around.
- shrc
- I have an "shrc" that contains all of the configuration that is common to
both zsh and bash. This file sets my PATH, PYTHONPATH, aliases, etc. I'm in
a bad habit of typing "vi" instead of "vim", which usually works fine but
sometimes starts up a dumbed-down editor. So I have a function that makes it
fail when I type "vi". It took me about a month to learn to type "vim" exclusively.
- themes/amcnabb/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml
- I used to use evilwm, which is a minimalist window manager. I like it
because it's clean and simple. However, it's annoying to have to install it
on every machine, and sometimes I like to have some more advanced features,
such as the NetworkManager applet. So I wrote a Metacity theme that makes
Gnome look like EvilWM. I have two EvilGnome screenshots, screenshot1.png and screenshot2.png. Enjoy.
- xsession
- My xsession file sets a lot of gconf settings. It would still be nicer if
Gnome used flat-file config files, but this is better than nothing, I
guess.
- xbindkeysrc and xbindkeysrc-ppclinux
- XBindKeys is a
program that lets you setup hotkeys. I use my blank key (scratched off
windows key). Blank-W starts a web browser, Blank-T starts a terminal,
Blank-M starts a music player, Blank-Z changes my background image, etc.
XBindKeys is incredibly simple, and it's much faster than using menus.
- xmodmap-dvorak and xmodmap-qwerty
- For most stuff I use the dvorak keyboard layout. I've had way to many
problems with setxkbmap, so I use Xmodmap. I've also had problems with other
people's xmodmap files, so I just went and made my own. They're pretty
simple.
- xmodmap-ppclinux
- On my laptop, which is a 12-inch PowerBook, I have it set up so the caps
lock key is a control, the left ctrl key is a right click, and if I hold down
on Fn and hit the left ctrl key, it's a middle click. I had to write a kernel
patch to get the caps lock key to work as a control key, but the patch was
included in Linux 2.6.24. I just have the following line in /etc/rc.local,
"echo 1 >/sys/module/adbhid/parameters/restore_capslock_events".
- vimrc
- My Vim configuration is still a work in progress. It handles email really
nicely, with auto-formatting (especially nice when editing comments). Thanks
to Hans Fugal for his template and for a
lot of his ideas.
- muttrc
- In addition to the main muttrc file, I have split off several other files
for clarity. My mutt-bindings
file helps make Mutt more friendly for people who have come from Pine (and
probably has some other keybindings as well). My mutt-pgp file makes PGP work in Mutt.
You may have to change some pathnames in there. I need to clean it up. By
the way, you should not use the muttrc as is. It has some specific stuff like
my email address in there that wouldn't work well for anyone else. Also, I haven't done anything about colors yet.
Linux-related Web Links
These are mostly for my own personal reference.
GNU/Linux Links
- BZFlag Remote Control
- One of my many current projects is adding remote control capabilities to
bot tanks in BZFlag. This is being used in
CS 470 (Intro to AI) at BYU.
- BYU CS Documentation Project
- In my work with the BYU CS Department,
I've contributed some howtos for the Department Documentation Project, where
you can find some really good tutorials related to Linux and programming.
- LaTeX Makefile
- Chris Monson has made a generic
LaTeX Makefile. It knows how to process XFig and GNUplot files, etc. It even
does colorized LaTeX logging now, to make it easier to see overfilled boxes and
page counts.
- BYU Unix Users Group
- I'm a member of the BYU Unix Users Group, a club that promotes Linux and
other UNIX-related stuff. It's a fun group.
- Gadgetboard
- Jason Holt designed a simple board that makes it easy to interface a
computer with the real world. It communicates over a serial port and has
input and output pins and relays. I made myself one with his help, and I
highly recommend it.
