Fedora Linux provides a solid desktop computing environmentincluding a graphical user interface, communication tools, and office applicationsthat goes well beyond the traditional definition of an operating system. This chapter focuses on using Fedora in the desktop role.
Where possible, the labs in this book include instructions for performing tasks using both the graphical user interface and the command line. If you are not familiar with entering Linux commands, see Lab 4.1, "Using the Command Line."
Fedora Core provides two attractive and easy-to-use graphical user interfaces (GUIs): KDE and GNOME. Each of these GUIs should be a comfortable adjustment for the majority of Windows and Mac users because basic operations are similar. However, there are some capabilities that are unique to Linux, and learning to use these features will enable you to take full advantage of the Fedora GUIs.
Fedora Linux can boot into graphical mode or text mode, depending on the default runlevel (see Lab 4.5, "Using Runlevels"); when installed using the graphical installation program, Fedora's default is to present the graphical login display shown in Figure 2-1 .
Figure 2-1. Fedora default login screen
In the middle of the screen are four clickable controls:
Language
Displays a dialog enabling you to select the default language for the session. This will not change the messages on the login display, but it will change the default for messages after you successfully log in. Where possible, messages will appear in this selected language, but when no translation for the selected language is found, messages will appear in the default language for the application (usually English). After you enter a username and password, you will be given the choice of making the selected language the permanent default for that username, or using it only for one session.
Session
Permits you to select the session type: GNOME (the default) or a fail-safe session. If you install additional software for other desktop environments, such as KDE or Xfce, they will also appear on this menu.
Restart
Presents a confirmation dialog, then restarts the computer. Except for the kernel (the core of the operating system), almost everything in Fedora can be restarted without a reboot, so this option is usually used only when switching between operating systems in a dual-boot configuration.
Shut Down
Presents a confirmation dialog, then shuts down the system and turns the computer off.
If you press F10, a menu containing most of these options appears.
After you enter your username and password, the system will check to see if you have selected a session type or language different from your normal settings. If so, you will be asked if the change is temporary ("Just for This Session") or permanent ("Make default"). Click on one of the buttons to make your selection.
GNOME and KDE are built upon different technology and have been designed with different philosophiesas a GNOME or KDE advocate will quickly tell you. However, the most common operations are the same in both environments, and the GNOME and KDE communities collaborate on a number of key issues through freedesktop.org ( http://freedesktop.org ). The friendly rivalry between the groups spurs them on to develop innovations and refinements for both desktop environments.
Fedora installs and uses GNOME by default, and it is the best choice for most Fedora users. However, KDE is provided on the installation CDs/DVD, and it's worthwhile experimenting with both desktops to find the one that suits your style.
Regardless of which GUI environment you use, you can run both KDE and GNOME programs and have them side by side on your display. For example, you can fire up Evolution (the GNOME email/calendar/ scheduling application) and Konqueror (the KDE web browser) and cut and paste data between them. This interoperability is enabled by the X Window System, which provides the foundation for both GUIs.
Once you have logged in, you will see the GNOME desktop, shown in Figure 2-2 , or the KDE desktop, shown in Figure 2-3 . The same default visual theme has been installed in both environments to provide a fairly consistent appearance and style.
Figure 2-2. Fedora GNOME desktop.
Figure 2-3. Fedora KDE desktop
Although the two desktop environments have some significant differences, their main features are very similar. Here is a summary; where KDE and GNOME differ in their naming conventions, I've used a unified terminology (which will mortify GNOME or KDE purists but allow the rest of us to talk about the desktop in a sane way):
Panel bar (panel)
Fedora's default configuration of the GNOME desktop includes two panel bars, one at the top of the screen and one at the bottom. Fedora's KDE configuration includes one panel bar at the bottom of the screen. In both cases, you can move the panels to any edge of the screen by clicking on them (in an empty area of the panel) and dragging them. You can move an item within a panel by clicking on it with the middle mouse button (on a mouse with a wheel, depress the wheel; on a two-button mouse, press both buttons simultaneously) and dragging it to the desired location. To shove other items along while dragging an item, hold down the Shift key.
You can lock an item to a specific location within the panel by right-clicking and selecting the checkbox labeled "Lock to panel"; to unlock the item, deselect the checkbox.
Application/panel menus
GNOME's application menus appear on the left side of the top panel bar. Three menus are provided: Applications, which contains various useful programs; Places, which contains a list of location-oriented options, such as viewing your home directory or desktop, searching for files, or going to a recently edited document; and System, which includes preferences, administration, help, and options to log out or lock the display.
KDE's main panel menu is called the K menu (it's customized to look like an F in Fedora) and is located at the left side of the panel bar. It includes roughly the same applications as the GNOME menus, with some KDE programs replacing GNOME programs (such as the KDE Control Center instead of the GNOME Preference options).
Both environments permit you to access the application menu by pressing Alt-F1.
Panel icons
Common applications have icons on the panel bar. To add an icon for another program to the panel, find the program on the application menu, then right-click and select "Add this Launcher to Panel" or "Add Item to Main Panel."
Desktop icons
A default set of icons appears on the desktop, including your Home directory, Computer, and Trash. You can create additional icons by dragging files from a file manager or links from a web browser and dropping them on the desktop. Desktop icons are stored in the directory named ~/Desktop .
Workplace/desktop switcher
Both GNOME and KDE include virtual desktop (or workspace ) capability, which means that the visible screen represents only one of several desktop workspaces. To switch between desktops, click on one of the desktop icons in the desktop switcher, or place your mouse pointer over the desktop switcher and roll the mouse wheel. GNOME's workplace switcher also allows you to drag a window outline from one desktop to another. GNOME's workspaces are initially arranged in a horizontal row, while KDE's are arranged in a 2×2 grid.
The virtual desktop facility provides a lot of screen area to arrange your windows; many users arrange their open applications according to tasksfor example, having email and messaging programs open on one desktop, a web browser on another, and OpenOffice.org on a third.
Window/task list
When an application is running, an entry appears in the window list (or task list ) in the bottom panel. KDE's default task list includes the windows in all virtual desktops; GNOME's includes only windows in the current virtual desktop.
Clock/calendar
Click on the clock/calendar to display a calendar of the current month. The GNOME version of the calendar will also show you to-do list items from the Evolution scheduler program, and double-clicking on a date will take you to the Evolution schedule for that date.
Applets and monitors
A panel can also display applets and monitors to let you perform operations easily and to keep you informed. To add additional applets to the panel bar, right-click an empty spot on the panel and select "Add to Panel," and then select the applet or monitor from the list displayed.
When you start a program by clicking on an icon or application menu item, one or more windows will appear. Almost all windows have a title bar and window controls, as shown on the window in Figure 2-4 .
Figure 2-4. Dasher window, showing title bar and window controls
These are the basic controls:
Window border
When you position the mouse cursor over any edge or corner of a resizable window, it will change to a double-ended arrow. Click and drag to resize the window.
Title bar
Clicking and dragging the title bar will move the window. Double-clicking the title bar can be configured to maximize the window to fill the entire screen (the default for GNOME, similar to Windows) or to roll up the window into the title bar like a window shade (the default for KDE, similar to Mac OS 9).
Window menu
Clicking on the icon on the left side of the titlebar will bring up the window menu. You can also view the window menu by right-clicking anywhere on the window border.
The window menu contains options for placing the window on top of all other windows; maximizing, minimizing, and closing the window; and placing the window on a specific workspace/desktop or making it appear on all workspaces.
Minimize, maximize, and close icons
There are three icons on the right side of the titlebar. Clicking the leftmost one will minimize the window (you can then access through the window list); clicking the middle one will maximize or unmaximize the window, and clicking on the rightmost one will close the window.
You can also minimize a window by clicking on its entry in the window list.
Table 2-1 lists a number of useful keyboard shortcuts available for window management.
Table 2-1. Keyboard shortcuts for window management
| Action | GNOME | KDE |
|---|---|---|
| Display window menu | Alt-Space | Alt-F3 |
| Close window | Alt-F4 | Alt-F4 |
| Unmaximize (Restore) | Alt-F5 | |
| Task list menu | Alt-F5 | |
| Move window using cursor keys | Alt-F7 | |
| Resize window using cursor keys | Alt-F8 | |
| Minimize | Alt-F9 | |
| Maximize | Alt-F10 |
KDE, GNOME, and other GUIs based on the X Window System have standard cut-and-paste features. Most applications use Ctrl-X for cut, Ctrl-C for copy, and Ctrl-V for paste, which is compatible with the keyboard shortcuts on other platforms.
But the X Window System also has a faster way of pasting: select the text (or graphic) you want to duplicate by highlighting it, then click the middle mouse button at the point you wish to paste. For example, to fast-paste a web address from Firefox into an email being composed in Evolution, you can highlight the text in Firefox (place the mouse cursor at the start of the text, press the left mouse button, drag the cursor over the text, and release the button), then move to the Evolution window and press the middle mouse button to paste that text.
Taking this one step further, all of the Fedora web browsers allow you to highlight a web address in any application's window, then middle-click on a blank spot in the browser window to go directly to that page (with Firefox, you can also search using this technique, by highlighting a search term instead of an addressas long as there's no period in your search term).
The clipboard used for cut/copy-and-paste operations is not used for fast pasting; instead, the selection (highlighted text or graphics) is directly duplicated (pasted) into the destination, and the clipboard contents are left intact.
To log out of the desktop, press Ctrl-Alt-Delete. A confirmation dialog will appear, and then you will be logged out. You can also select the Log Out option from the application menu (System menu in GNOME).
The Fedora GUI is built in seven layers plus some toolkits or user-interface libraries, as shown in Figure 2-5 .
Figure 2-5. Layers in the Fedora GUI
This architecture fits in well with the Unix/Linux philosophy of writing programs that each do one task and do it well. The layers can be mixed and matched to serve various needs; for example, in the standard Fedora configuration, selecting a GNOME or KDE session changes the software used for the Session Manager, Window Manager, and Desktop Environment layers, even though the Display Manager and Application Clients remain the same. Likewise, if the system is configured for character-mode login, but the user starts the GUI after she has logged in, then the Display Manager layer is not used at all.
The X server manages all of the display hardware and is the only program that directly accesses the hardware. Client programswhich include any program that needs to communicate with the user, including the Display Manager, Session Manager, Window Manager, Desktop Environment, and Application Clientscommunicate with the X server using the X protocol over a network connection. That means that any application that can be used on a local display can also be used on a remote display. This provides powerful flexibility for remote access.
The Toolkits are function libraries used to simplify development of GUI applications. GTK+ is the toolkit used by GNOME, and Qt is used by KDE applications (though not all applications that use these toolkits are full-blown GNOME or KDE applications, because both environments provide additional services).
Many other desktop/GUI environments are availablefor example, Xfce, a nice but lightweight desktop environment included in the Fedora Extras repository. To install Xfce:
# yum groupinstall XFCE
You'll see an entry for Xfce in the Display Manager's Session menu (shown in Figure 2-1).
See Chapter 5 for more information on using yum
The GNOME Project: http://gnome.org
The KDE Project: http://kde.org
The freedesktop.org project: http://freedesktop.org
X.org, developers of the X Window System: http://x.org
Information about many different window managers and desktop environments (both current and old): http://xwinman.org/
Fedora's version of the GNOME desktop provides a convenient and attractive desktop environment, but by customizing it for the way you work you can increase your comfort and productivity.
Almost all of the Fedora GNOME desktop, as well as desktop options that are not part of GNOME or KDE, can be configured using the System→Preferences menu; other portions of the desktop can be configured by right-clicking on a GNOME component.
This lab looks at the GNOME settings most commonly used to customize the desktop.
Most GNOME settings take effect immediately; you do not need to click an Apply button for a change to take effect
The GNOME desktop and the Metacity window manager (the default GNOME window manager) use themes to configure appearance. Each theme is a combination of configuration information, images, and software that provides a particular visual effect and behavior.
Three types of component themes are used on the desktop:
Application (or control) themes
Configure the appearance of the controls: elements used by applications to build the graphical user interface, such as buttons, sliders, scrollbars, and text-entry fields.
Window border themes
Used by the Metacity window manager to control the appearance of the window borders, title bar, and title bar buttons.
Icons
Control the appearance of icons on the panel, desktop, application toolbars, and Nautilus file manager.
One component theme from each category can be combined into an overall desktop theme .
To change themes, select System→Preferences→Theme from the panel menu. The window shown on the left of Figure 2-6 will appear.
Figure 2-6. Theme preferences tool
You can select a desktop theme from this list by clicking on it. The theme will start to load immediately, and the appearance of your desktop will change in a few seconds.
To create a custom combination of component themes, click the Theme Details button. The window shown on the right of Figure 2-6 will be displayed. There is a tab for each of the three component theme types. You can select a different theme for any of the components, and when you do, a Custom Theme entry will appear in the main Theme Preferences window. Your selection will take effect immediately so that you can preview the effect. Once you are satisfied with a combination of component themes, click on the Save Theme button to name the combination and save it as a desktop theme.
To install additional component themes, open a browser and go to http://art.gnome.org/ , and open the Theme Preferences window in an adjacent part of the screen. When you find a theme on art.gnome.org that you wish to install, simply drag the download icon (a small floppy disk) from the browser window to the Theme Preferences window, and it will automatically be installed. You can then combine that component theme with others to produce a new desktop theme as described earlier.
Fedora's desktop is configured with two panels by default: one at the top of the screen containing the menus, icons, and applets, and one at the bottom of the screen containing the task list.
You can add another panel by right-clicking on an existing one and selecting New Panel. The new panel will appear on an edge of the screen that doesn't have a panel, or at the top of the screen if all of the edges are occupied. You can move it to another location by dragging it with the mouse.
To delete a panel, right-click on it and select "Delete this Panel." If there is anything on the panel, a confirmation dialog will appear before the panel is deleted.
To add items to a panel, right-click on the panel and select "Add to Panel." Although most of the options presented are applets or monitors, you can also add a drawer , which is like a panel that can be unfolded from another panel. A drawer is managed in the same way as a panel, by right-clicking on it.
To move an item around a panel, or move it to another panel, middle-click on the item and drag it (or right-click and use the Move menu option). To push along other icons, hold the shift key while dragging.
To delete an item from the panel, right-click on it and select "Remove from Panel."
To set a panel's properties, right-click it and select Properties. A small window will appear, containing two tabs, General and Background.
The General tab contains these settings:
Orientation
Selects one of the four screen edges for panel placement.
Size
Sets the panel size in pixels. 48 pixels is the default; the minimum size is 23 pixels, and the maximum is 120. Reducing this number will make the panel smaller and leave more screen space for your applications, while increasing this number will increase the panel size, making the icons bigger so that they are easier to see and click on. Experiment to find a value that works well for you; I find that 24 pixels is right for my eyes.
Expand
Selecting this checkbox makes the panel expand to fill the entire edge of the screen; deselecting it makes the panel just large enough to hold its contents.
Autohide
When selected, most of the panel will slide off the screen when not in contact with the mouse pointer, freeing up space for applications. To unhide the panel, place your mouse pointer over the part of the panel that is still visible.
Show hide buttons
Enables buttons at the end of the panel that can be clicked to make the panel slide off the screen (endwise). The "Arrows on Hide Buttons" checkbox will make the hide buttons bigger and add a graphical arrow to each one.
The Background tab lets you set the background color to the default for the current desktop theme, a solid color (which can have a pseudo-transparency effect applied using the Style slider), or a background image. This is almost always left at the default setting, which uses the desktop theme.
The menu option System→Preferences→Desktop Background is used to adjust the desktop background color and imagebut most Fedora users get there using the shortcut of right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Change Desktop Background. Both methods cause the Desktop Background Preferences window to appear, shown in Figure 2-7.
Figure 2-7. Desktop Background Preferences window
You can change to any of the listed background images by clicking on it. To add your own image, drag and drop an image file from the Nautilus file manager, or click the Add Wallpaper button and enter the filename; to remove an image, highlight it and click the Remove button. If you don't want a background image, select the No Wallpaper option.
The Style control determines how the selected image will be displayed:
Centered
The image is placed, full-size, in the center of the screen. If it's smaller than the screen, the remaining space is filled with the desktop color; if it's larger than the screen, it is automatically cropped.
Fill Screen
The image is scaled in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions to fill the screen. This may result in some distortion of the image if its rectangular proportions ( aspect ratio ) don't match those of the screen.
Scaled
The image is scaled, keeping the original aspect ratio, until it fills the screen. Any remaining space is filled with the desktop color. For photographs, this is a better choice than Fill Screen.
Tiled
The image is placed in the upper-left corner of the screen and repeated as many times as necessary (both horizontally and vertically) to fill the screen.
The Desktop Colors control sets the desktop color style (solid, horizontal gradient, or vertical gradient) and the colors used for that style. The color or gradient selected here will fill any part of the background not covered by an image and will show through background images that have transparency.
Select the menu option System→Preferences→Window to modify the behavior of the window manager, Metacity. Three options are presented in a window:
Select windows when the mouse moves over them
This behavior is called focus-follows-mouse and is very popular with some long-time users of the X Window System. Normally, you need to click on a window to give it focus in other words, the last window clicked is the window that receives keyboard input. If you select this checkbox, you can focus a window simply by placing your mouse pointer over it. This is convenient, but if your mouse pointer drifts to another window, you may end up typing into the wrong window.
If you select "focus-follows-mouse," then you can optionally configure the window manager to automatically raise focused windows after a brief pause, so that they are on top of other windows.
Titlebar Action
Configures the window manager to maximize or shade a window when the titlebar is double-clicked.
Movement Key
This setting selects the modifier key for moving windows. If you hold down the selected modifier and click on a window, you can drag it to a new location.
The Nautilus file manager is configured using the Edit→Preferences option in any Nautilus window, or through the panel menu option System→Preferences→File Management. A configuration window will appear with five tabs, containing lots of options.
Here are some common customizations for Nautilus:
The appearance of folder contents can be separately configured for each folder using the Nautilus toolbar. To configure default settings, set the View New Folders Using and the Arrange Items options on the Views tab.
To disable the spatial behavior of Nautilus, select the Behavior tab and select the "Always Open in Browser Windows" checkbox.
To enable the direct deletion of files (instead of placing them in the trash, which requires the trash to be emptied before the disk space is freed up), select "Include a Delete Command that Bypasses Trash" on the Behavior tab. Right-clicking on a file will now expose both the normal "Move to Trash" option and a new Delete option.
Both mice and keyboards are effective input devicesbut switching between them can significantly slow you down. A good set of keyboard shortcuts enables you to perform common operations without switching to the mouse.
Fedora's GNOME configuration contains a good set of keyboard shortcuts. To change shortcuts or add new ones, select the menu option System→Preferences→Keyboard Shortcuts, which displays the window shown in Figure 2-8.
Figure 2-8. GNOME Keyboard Shortcuts window
This window shows a number of actions on the desktop and the shortcut key for each. To change a shortcut, click on an entry. The shortcut for that entry will change to read New Accelerator. Press the key or key combination that you wish to use for that keyboard shortcut; if the shortcut is not already in use, it will be assigned to the selected action, and if it is in use, the conflict will be displayed in an error dialog.
To remove a keyboard shortcut, click on an entry, and then press Backspace.
If you have a "multimedia" keyboard with keys for sound control and common applications, you can in most cases use those keys as shortcuts. However, the Keyboard Shortcuts window will show these keys as hexadecimal codes, as shown in the highlighted line in Figure 2-8. Not all keys can be used as shortcuts because some multimedia keyboards are internally divided to act as two separate keyboards, with multimedia keys being sent to a different output. In a few rare cases, the multimedia keys don't generate normal keyboard scancodes at all.
GNOME stores most of its configuration in hidden directories in each user's home directory. Most configuration options and settings are stored, using the Gconf system, in XML files located in ~/.gconf .
Themes consist of a large number of files, stored in specific directories according to the type of theme and whether the theme is installed for personal use or system-wide use, as shown in Table 2-2 . The GNOME theme configuration tools perform a personal installation of themes.
Table 2-2. Directories for themes and icons
| Theme type | Personal installation | System-wide installation |
|---|---|---|
| Icon themes | ~/.icons | /usr/share/icons/ |
| Application/control and Window Manager themes | ~/.themes | /usr/share/themes/ |
When a new user is created, the files and directories in /etc/skel are copied to the new user's home directory; you can include default configuration settings by placing them into that directory. For example, files in /etc/skel/.gconf are placed in ~/.gconf when a new account is created.
GNOME panels are managed by the gnome-panel program, and the desktop is managed by Nautilus.
After testing component themes, you can move them from your personal theme directories to the system-wide directories:
# mv /home/ yourusername /.icons/* /usr/share/icons/
# mv /home/ yourusername /.themes/* /usr/share/themes/
# chown -R root:root /usr/share/{icons,themes}
The GNOME desktop manual; press F1 in any GNOME application, select System→Help, or enter the command yelp.
GNOME homepage: http://gnome.org
freedesktop.org: http://freedesktop.org
Fedora's KDE defaults are altered from the original upstream developers' versioneven more so than GNOME is modified from its upstream version. For this reason, some die-hard KDE fans don't like working on a Fedora system.
Like GNOME, KDE can be tweaked, fiddled, and configured to look and work just the way you want.
Most KDE configuration is performed through the KDE Control Center, which is found on the K menu. The Control Center is shown in Figure 2-9.
If you do not have KDE installed, you can install it; see Lab 5.3, "Using Repositories."
Figure 2-9. KDE Control Center
Along the lefthand side of this window, there is a collapsible menu of configuration categories; each category contains several subcategories, which can be revealed or hidden by clicking on the +/- icon in front of the category name. Each subcategory is handled by a separate configuration module . When you click on a configuration category, the configuration module for that category is shown on the righthand side of the window.
You can also configure some desktop components by right-clicking on them. For example, right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Configure Desktop will bring up a subset of the Control Center options, which is useful for changing the appearance of the desktop.
Unlike GNOME, KDE settings are not usually automatically applied; you must click on the Apply button before your changes take effect.
An alternative, express way to change basic KDE desktop settings is to select Settings→Desktop Settings Wizard (or enter the command kpersonalizer), which will walk you through the process of setting the most common desktop options.
To configure KDE themes, select Appearance & Themes→Theme Manager in the Control Center (Figure 2-9). You can select a theme from among the options listed by clicking on it and then clicking Apply.
To install a new theme, click the "Get new themes..." link in the upper-right corner to open the Konqueror web browser with the kde-look home page (http://kde-look.org). Select a theme that is packaged into a .kth file and download it to your system. Click the Install New Theme button within the KDE Control Center and open the downloaded file to install it into the list of available themes.
Relatively few themes are packaged in the .kth format required by the Theme Manager. Themes supplied in source format cannot be installed by the Theme Manager and must be configured manually.
KDE panels are configured in much the same way as GNOME panels.
You can add a new panel by right-clicking on an existing one and selecting Add New Panel→Panel. You can move the new panel to any edge of the screen by dragging it with the mouse.
The Add New Panel facility can add special panel types that are pre-populated with specific tools; for details, right-click on a panel and select Help.
To delete a panel, right-click on any panel and select Remove Panel, and then select the panel you wish to remove. It is not possible to remove the original panel. If the panel contains anything, a confirmation dialog will appear before the panel is deleted.
To add items to a panel, right-click on the panel and select "Add Applet to panel" or "Add Application to panel"the difference being that applets run within the panel, displaying information or performing useful actions, while applications are simply buttons that launch programs.
To delete an application from the panel, right-click on it and select "Remove application." To delete an applet, place your mouse cursor over it, which will cause a small bar to appear beside it; right-click on this bar, and select "Remove applet."
To move a panel object, middle-click on the object (or on the bar beside the object if it is an applet) and drag it to the desired location. To push other objects around, hold down the Shift key while dragging; to move between bars, left-click and drag.
To set a panel's properties, right-click on a panel and select Configure Panel, which displays the window in Figure 2-10 . You can also start the KDE Control Center and select Desktop→Panels, in which case the window arrangement is modified slightly to fit into the design of the Control Center.
Figure 2-10. KDE panel configuration window
In either case, you will have buttons or tabs for Arrangement, Hiding, Menus, and Appearance.
The Arrangement section contains these settings:
Position
The location of the panel on the screen. There are twelve buttons, enabling you to place the panel in the center or either corner of any edge of the screen (for example, if you place the panel on the bottom edge of the screen, you can place it in the left corner, the center, or the right corner). The position along an edge has no effect if the panel length has been set to 100%.
Length
The percent of the screen edge that will be occupied by the panel. The default is 100%, where the panel fills the entire length of one side of the screen. The checkbox labeled "Expand as required to fit contents" makes the specified length the minimum.
Size
The thickness of the panel in pixels. The Fedora default is rather big, so I usually set this to Small or Tiny.
The settings affect the panel selected by the "Settings for" drop-down menu. As you adjust the settings, the preview in the Screen section is updated to show your changes.
The Hiding section contains three settings:
Hide Mode
Configures the panel to be displayed all the time unless manually hidden, to hide itself after a period of time, or to be coverable by other windows. To reveal an automatically hidden panel, place the mouse cursor along the edge of the screen where the panel would normally appear.
Panel-Hiding Buttons
Allows you to add buttons to the left and right (or top and bottom) ends of the panel.
Panel Animation
Configures the animated sliding of the panel when it is hidden or revealed. The panel animation is a cute effect, and it serves the practical purpose of helping the user understand what's happening to the panel.
Like the Arrangement options, the Hiding options are applied to the panel selected with the "Settings for" control.
The Appearance section lets you configure icon mouseover effects (which include really big, animated tool tips), tool tips helps, colored or patterned button backgrounds, and a pseudo-transparency effect for panels.
The background image or color is adjusted using the Appearance & Themes→Background option in the Control Center. You can get to the same configuration module by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Configure Desktop, then selecting the Background button. Figure 2-11 shows the window that appears.
Figure 2-11. KDE desktop background configuration
You can individually configure the desktop background for each virtual desktop. This can make it easier to identify which virtual desktop is currently displayed, but it can use a lot of memory and increases the amount of time it takes to switch desktops. The "Settings for Desktop" control selects the desktop to be configured; use All Desktops to use the same image on all of the virtual desktops.
In this configuration module, there are two sections:
Background
Selects a picture or slideshow to use for the image background.
Options
Sets the background image position, scaling, and tiling (repeat) options; background colors, patterns, and gradients; and blending between the background image and background colors/patterns.
There are also two special buttons:
Advanced Options
Permits you to use a program to draw the desktop background (such as kwebdesktop , which uses a web page for the desktop background), to set the color and shadow for the desktop icon text, and to set the size of the background cache.
Get New Wallpapers
Provides a simple way to download wallpapers from http://kde-look.org , using the window shown at bottom right in Figure 2-11 . A list of available wallpapers appears (you can use the tabs to change the sort order); clicking on one will present a preview, and clicking Install will add that wallpaper to the Picture list in the KDesktop Background window.
To configure window-manager behavior, right-click on a title bar and select Configure Window Behavior. Figure 2-12 shows the window that appears. You can access the same options through the Control Center using the Appearance & Themes→Window Decorations, Desktop→Window Behavior, and the Desktop→Window-Specific Settings options.
Figure 2-12. KDE window-manager behavior configuration
The KDE window manager, kwin, offers extensive configuration options:
Window Decorations
Enables you to select the window-manager theme and the buttons that will be placed in the title bar. Some themes have additional customization options, such as adjustable border width.
Actions
Configures the actions performed when the various mouse buttons are clicked on the title bar and active or inactive windows. The Titlebar Actions tab contains settings for the action that will be taken when the user clicks on the window title bar, frame, and maximize button.
Focus
The window with focusalso called the active windowreceives keyboard input. This section selects the focus policy:
Click to Focus
Click on a window to give it focus.
Focus Follows Mouse
Place the mouse cursor over a window to give it focus. You can also change focus with Alt-Tab or Shift-Alt-Tab.
Focus Under Mouse
Same as Focus Follows Mouse, but Alt-Tab/Shift-Alt-Tab does not change the window focus (though it will raise other windows to the top), and new windows will not receive focus.
Focus Strictly Under Mouse
Same as Focus Under Mouse, but moving the mouse pointer over the desktop background (not over any window) will unfocus all windows instead of leaving the last window focused.
If you select a focus policy other than "Click to Focus," you can configure a delay between when a window receives focus and when it raises, as well as whether focused windows are raised at all (placed in front of other windows). The Navigation section enables you to set options related to keyboard navigation between windows (Alt-Tab/Shift-Alt-Tab).
Moving
Configures behavior when windows are moved. For best performance on a slower system (or a remote connection), disable the options "Display content in moving windows," "Display content in resizing windows," and "Animate minimize and restore"but on a fast machine, these options can provide useful user feedback. The Snap Zone settings make it easier to align windows with other windows or with the edge of the screen.
Advanced
Configures Shading (window roll-up) animation and automatic unrolling when under the mouse; Active Desktop Borders, which permit you to move off the desktop onto an adjacent virtual desktop; and Focus Stealing Prevention, which attempts to eliminate unpleasant surprises when you're typing and a new window appears (which in normal circumstances would automatically get focus). Right-click on the control and select "What's This?" to see a detailed description of the options.
Window-Specific Settings
Enables you to configure kwin to handle some applications differently than others. To create special settings for a window, ensure that the window is presently on the screen, and then click New in that window. A window labeled Edit Window-Specific Settings will appear; click the Detect button, and then click on the window you wish to configure. You can then use the provided tabs to configure your desired settings, such as specific window geometry (size and location) or preferences (e.g., causing the window to stay above or below other windows).
Translucency
Enables transparency and shadow effects for windows. This uses the COMPOSITE capability of the X server, which requires a modern graphics card for good operation; you can then use these settings to configure the transparency, shadows, and fade effects. To enable the COMPOSITE extension, see Lab 2.4, "Fine-Tuning Your Display Configuration ."
Since Konqueror was designed as both a web browser and a file manager, it offers many options for customization. You can access these configuration options by selecting Settings→Configure Konqueror from within Konqueror, or within the KDE Control Panel by selecting KDE Components→File Manager. The arrangement of the configuration options is slightly different, depending on the route you take get there; Figure 2-13 shows both layouts.
Figure 2-13. Konqueror configuration window; Control Panel version (left) and Konqueror Settings version (right)
Here are some of the most useful customizations:
On the Behavior tab/button, the checkbox "Open folders in separate windows" enables a mode similar to the Nautilus spatial mode, which displays each folder separatelybut, unlike Nautilus, window locations are not remembered on a per-directory basis by Konqueror.
Also on the Behavior tab/button, the checkbox "Show 'Delete' context menu entries which bypass the trashcan" enables you to directly delete files without the two-step process of moving them to trash and then emptying the trash (two-step deletion gives you a chance to review deletions before finalizing them but does not free up disk space right away).
The Previews tab/button configures the types of files and the maximum size of files for which previews will be generated. Setting the maximum size to a lower value will speed up the display of large directories of big files. Enabling "Show file tips" and "Show previews in file tips" on the Behavior tab/button will make Konqueror display an extended preview whenever you hover the mouse pointer over a file icon.
The Quick Copy & Move tab (Control Center only) enables "Copy to" and "Move to" options on context menus. This is a useful feature that offers recent and common directories as copy/move targets.
Keyboard shortcuts are configured using the Control Center option Regional & Accessibility→Keyboard Shortcuts, shown in Figure 2-14. To add or change a shortcut, double-click on an action in the list of actions under the Shortcut Schemes tab or a command under the Command Shortcuts tab. Enter the new shortcut (such as Ctrl-Shift-H) and click OK, or click on the whisk-like icon beside the Shortcut field to clear it.
Figure 2-14. KDE keyboard shortcut configuration
KDE configuration options are stored in text files in ~/.kde/share/config . The format of these files varies slightly, but most take the form of name and value pairs divided into sections denoted by section titles in square brackets:
[$Version]
update_info=kfmclient_3_2.upd:kfmclient_3_2
[HTML Settings]
AutomaticDetectionLanguage=0
[KonqMainWindow Toolbar Speech Toolbar]
IconText=IconOnly
Index=4
...(snip)...
[SearchBar]
Mode=1
Since these are text files, they may be copied from one account to another.
The directory /etc/skel acts as a template, or skeleton , for new account creation. Any KDE configuration files placed in /etc/skel/.kde/share/config will get copied to new user accounts automatically.
Start with the KDE online manual, accessed through the Help option on the K menu. The first time you access the KDE online manual, you will be asked if you wish to create the index; select the Application Manual and click Build Index to create the index (this takes only a minute or two).
KDE home page: http://kde.org
freedesktop.org: http://freedesktop.org
Fedora's Anaconda installer detects and configures most display hardware optimally. However, there are some situations where it's necessary to override the default configuration to set up a desired display resolution and color depth.
Fedora's display configuration program is called system-config-display .
If you have a working graphical display, you can start this program by selecting System→Administration→Display from the panel menus (System Settings→Display in KDE). You'll need to enter the root password when prompted.
If you don't have a working graphical display, or you've booted into character mode (see Lab 4.5, "Using Runlevels "), you can start this program from the command line:
$ system-config-display
You are attempting to run "system-config-display" which requires administrative privileges, but more information is needed in order to do so.
Password for root:
secret
The graphical display will be started in a very basic mode so that the graphical configuration dialog can be displayed.
system-config-display uses the existing display configuration as a starting point. If the existing configuration does not work at all, you may need to delete it to force system-config-display to start from scratch:
# rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Whether started from the menu or the command line, the window shown in Figure 2-15 will be displayed.
Figure 2-15. system-config-display window
This dialog has three tabs:
Settings
Selects the default resolution and color depth for the system. The maximum display resolution is limited by the monitor setting on the Hardware tab; the color depth should almost always be set to "Millions of Colors," which enables 24-bit color.
Hardware
Selects the monitor and video card type installed in your system. The Anaconda installer will have preselected the best match in most cases, but in some display configurationsincluding those with keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switches, video splitters, or old monitorsthe monitor type cannot be determined automatically. If your monitor does not appear on the list, select the closest option from the Generic CRT or Generic LCD categories.
In most cases, the exact video card model is not important; it's the chipset that counts. From your video card documentation, find out the chipset manufacturer and model (such as NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX) and select that option from the list. In many cases, an exact match is not required because one video driver is used for a wide range of chipsets.
If there are no options that work for your video card, select the VESA driver, which will provide basic capabilities on almost any modern video card.
Dual head
The X.org server used in Fedora can drive multiple monitors. If you have a second monitor connected to a second video card , you can enable it here. Select the checkbox labeled "Use dual head," then specify the video card, resolution, and color depth to be used. You can also specify the desktop layout as "Individual desktops" or "Spanning desktops"; for most applications, "Spanning desktops" is most versatile, since it enables you to move windows between desktops or even have a window fill both desktops. The second monitor is assumed to be to the right of the primary monitor.
Once you have selected the desired configuration, click OK. The new configuration will take effect the next time you start the graphical user interface.
If you logged in graphically, the GUI won't restart until you restart the system. You can force it to restart sooner by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspacebut you will lose any unsaved data, so exit from all applications first. (This key sequence abruptly aborts the X server process and normally should not be used to exit from a graphical session).
system-config-display changes the X server configuration file, /etc/X11/xorg.conf . If necessary, it creates an entirely new file. Most of the information for this file is determined from the hardware by probing.
The xorg.conf file contains configuration information for four types of devices:
Video card
Monitor
Keyboard
Pointer (typically a mouse, but possibly a trackball, graphics tablet, touch screen, light pen, or some other positional input device)
The xorg.conf file is a plain-text file and can be edited by hand (see Lab 4.4, "Basic Text Editing Using vi "). Be sure to make a backup copy before making any changes. You can find a detailed description of the configuration options in xorg.conf 's manpage (see Lab 4.2, "Accessing Online Documentation "):
$ man xorg.conf
The file is divided into sections, each of which looks like this:
Section " SectionName "
Configuration Directives
EndSection
The most commonly used sections in this file are shown in Table 2-3.
Table 2-3. Common xorg.conf section names
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Monitor | Monitor specifications. |
| InputDevice | Keyboard configuration. |
| Pointer device configuration (mice, graphics tablets, touch screens). | |
| Device | Video card configuration. |
| Screen | Associates a Device with a Monitor and defines the available resolutions and color depth. |
| ServerLayout | Associates one or more Screen sections with two or more InputDevice sections. Different ServerLayouts can be defined to combine devices in different ways for use at different times; for example, a laptop can have a ServerLayout that specifies that the internal+external displays should be used, and another one that specifies only the internal display. |
| Files | Location of auxiliary files such as fonts, drivers, and color tables. |
| ServerFlags | Flags to control the overall operation of the X server. The flags may alternatively be placed in the ServerLayout sections if they apply to some ServerLayouts but not to others. |
| Extensions | Enables/disables extensions to the server capabilities. |
| Module | Loads additional modules. (Modules may provide extensions, but extensions don't have to exist as separate modules.) |
| Modes | Defines special video modes (rarely required). |
| DRI | Direct Render Interface (DRI) device configuration, used for some 3-D gaming. |
Here is a typical xorg.conf file:
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "single head configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Synaptics" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "AlwaysCore"
EndSection
Section "Files"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "glx"
Load "dri"
Load "synaptics"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" # Scrollwheel support
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes" # L+R buttons count as middle
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics" # Laptop touchpad
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor" # Just for reference
ModelName "LCD Panel 1400x1050" # Just for reference
HorizSync 31.5 - 90.0 # Horiz. sync in kHz
VertRefresh 59.0 - 75.0 # Vert. refresh in Hz
Option "dpms" # Enables power management
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nv"
VendorName "Videocard vendor" # Just for reference
BoardName "nVidia Corporation NV34M [GeForce FX Go5200]" # Ditto
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0" # Associates the video card
Monitor "Monitor0" # with this monitor
DefaultDepth 24 # Default is 24-bit colour
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0 # "0 0" is almost always used
Depth 24 # This section used by default
Modes "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
# Change modes with Ctrl-Alt-+/-
EndSubSection
# This next SubSection is not selected by default (because of the
# DefaultDepth line in the previous section). However, it would be used if the
# -depth option was specified on the X server command line,
# overriding the DefaultDepth setting.
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16 # Because default is 24-bit,
Modes "800x600" "640x480" # ...this will usually be ignored
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "DRI" # Configures DRI devices...
Group 0 # Root (user ID 0) owns them
Mode 0666 # Readable/writable by all
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enabled" # Enables transparency, etc.
EndSection
To change the default color depth, edit the DefaultDepth line in the Screen section (make sure that a SubSection for that depth exists in the Screen section of the file). Values that work with most video cards include 8, 16, and 24 bits; the number of colors available is 2depth .
Similarly, the default resolution is controlled by the Modes entry in SubSection "Display" with the same Depth as DefaultDepth .
For example, to change the configuration in this example from a 24-bit (16-million-color) to 16 bit (65,536 color) depth, and to change the resolution to 800x600, change the DefaultDepth to 16 and then change the Modes line in the SubSection for 16-bit color:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0" # Associates the video card
Monitor "Monitor0" # with this monitor
DefaultDepth 16
# Default is 16-bit colour
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0 # "0 0" is almost always used
Depth 24 # This section used by default
Modes "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
# Change modes with Ctrl-Alt-+/-
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "800x600"
EndSubSection
EndSection
The Composite extension, enabled in the Extensions section of the file, powers the use of advanced visual effects, including transparency. Not all video drivers support Composite .
The GNOME menu option System→Preferences→Screen Resolution sets the default resolution and refresh rate for a particular user (in KDE, select Control Center from the panel menu, then click on Display under Peripherals; be sure to select the checkbox labeled "Apply settings on KDE startup").
The system-wide resolution setting will be used for the user login display; individual user settings will take effect after the user logs in. The color depth can't be set this way because the architecture of the X Window System requires the color depth to be a system-wide setting.
The X server itself is capable of generating a reasonable xorg.conf file, which you can then fine-tune by manually editing it:
# X -configure :1
The system will automatically start an X server using display number :0. Additional X servers can be started as long as they each use a unique display numberwhich is why :1 was used in this command.
The new configuration file will be placed in /root/xorg.conf.new . In order to use it, you'll need to link the name /dev/mouse to the default mouse device:
# ln -s /dev/input/mice /dev/mouse
You can then test the new configuration:
$ X -config /root/xorg.conf.new
This will present a blank display with an X-shaped mouse pointer. If the display looks right and you can move the pointer with your mouse, then go ahead and install this new configuration file as the default configuration:
# mv /root/X11/xorg.conf /root/X11/xorg.conf.backup
# mv /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
You can fine-tune this configuration either manually or by using tools such as system-config-display .
The default X server configuration will work with all USB pointer devices and keyboards plugged into the system. The devices will work in parallel; for example, if you have two mice, moving either one will move the onscreen pointer, and if you have two keyboards, typing on either will send characters to the display.
Most keyboards will be detected as soon as they are plugged in, but other keyboards will be detected only when the system starts. For example, I have a secondary French Canadian USB keyboard and a USB calculator/numeric keypad; the French Canadian keyboard is detected as soon as it is plugged in, but the numeric keypad must be plugged in during boot in order to be detected properly. Special features of advanced pointers (such as touchpads) will not be configured automatically unless those devices are plugged in when system-config-display is run.
In most cases, these displays can be probed automatically using VESA standard protocols. If not, edit /etc/X11/ xorg.conf , find the Monitor section, and enter the HorizSync (horizontal scan frequency) and VertRefresh (vertical scan/refresh frequency) values specified in your monitor documentation:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Unknown Monitor"
HorizSync 32.00 - 72.0 # Horiz. sync in kHz
VertRefresh 58.0 - 62.0 # Vert. refresh in Hz
EndSection
Next, edit the default resolution to match your hardware:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubSection
EndSection
The manpages for X (general information about the X Window System), Xserver (general information about the X window server), Xorg (specific information about the X.org version of the Xserver used in Fedora Core), and xorg.conf (information about the X server configuration file).
In order to print from your Fedora system, you have to configure at least one print queue to manage documents waiting to be printed. For printers directly connected to your computer, this process is fully automatic, and for other printers (such as those on your network), it is very simple.
Select the menu option System→Administration→Printing (in KDE, it is Administration→Printing). You will be prompted to enter the root password, and then the printer configuration window will appear, as shown in Figure 2-16. If any print queues have been previously defined, they will be listed on the left side of the window, grouped according to connection type; if you click on one of these printers, the configuration details for that printer will appear on the right.
Figure 2-16. Printer configuration window
USB and parallel printers, as well as network printers that use the Internet Print Protocol (IPP), will be detected and configured automatically; you can adjust the printer configuration by editing the values in the main printer-configuration window (Figure 2-16) and then clicking Apply.
Other printers must be configured manually. Click on the New Printer icon to access the window shown in Figure 2-17.
Figure 2-17. New Printer window
Enter the name of the printer, which should be short and contain no spaces. I recommend using the generic printer type followed by a number (e.g., laser3 or inkjet0 ); even if you only have one printer now, you may add more in the future. If desired, you can add verbose description and location information. Click Forward to proceed to the connection configuration step, shown in Figure 2-18 .
Figure 2-18. Printer connection configuration
The Devices list shows all detected local printers, plus serial ports and common network printing protocols. Select the appropriate option; for network printers, you will need to enter the IP address or hostname as well as the printer or queue name. Press Forward to proceed to the driver configuration step, shown in the left side of Figure 2-19. Select the printer manufacturer, then click Forward; on the next display (shown on the right side of Figure 2-19), select the printer model. Use the Comments buttons to display information about the printer, driver, or PPD file.
The Drivers list may present more than one driver option. In almost all cases, it is best to use the default driver.
Click Forward, then click Apply on the confirmation dialog that appears.
Figure 2-19. Printer driver selection
To change an existing queue configuration, select the printer in the main window (Figure 2-16) and edit the option values on the tabs:
Settings
Configures the printer description, location, connection details, printer driver, and printer status (enabled/accepting/shared). Enabled means the the queue contents will be sent to the printer; accepting means that new print requests may be enqueued.
Policies
Configures starting and ending banner pages (which identify each print job) and the action to be taken when a printer error occurs.
Access control
Used to restrict printer access to specific users, or to prevent specific users from accessing the printer.
Printer options
Configures the default settings for printer features such as stapling, duplexing, media, ink cartridge type, and resolution.
The default print queue is used for all print requests that do not specify a queue. To set the default, select a printer and then click Make Default Printer. Click Apply to activate your change.
The command lpr (line printer requester) is used to place a print request into a queue. When used from the command line, lpr can accept input from standard input or from a specified file. For example, to print the file output.ps :
$ lpr output.ps
Or to print the calendar for the year, generated by the cal -y command:
$ cal -y | lpr
To specify a specific print queue (such as laser3 ), add the -P argument along with the name of the queue:
$ lpr -P laser3 output.ps
$ cal -y | lpr -P laser3
You can view the status of a print queue, including the documents in the queue, by clicking on the printer icon that appears in the notification area of the GNOME panel bar. The window shown in Figure 2-20 will appear; this window shows all print requests made by you on all print queues. To delete a document from the queue, right-click on it and select the Cancel document option.
Figure 2-20. Document print-status window
The lpq command provides another way of viewing a queue's contents:
$ lpq
inkjet0 is ready
no entries
While the graphical Document print-status window shows requests by one user on all queues, lpq shows requests by all users on a single queue. The output in the previous example shows that there are no documents in the default queue inkjet0 . You can specify a specific printer queue using the -P argument:
$ lpq -P laser3
laser3 is ready and printing
Rank Owner Job File(s) Total Size
active chris 91 report.ps 124928 bytes
2 jason 92 spreadsheet.ps 523423 bytes
In this case, there are two jobs in the queue; job 91 is printing, and job 92 is scheduled to be printed next.
You can delete a document using the lprm command, which accepts a job number (the default is the active job) and the -P option to specify the print queue. This command will delete job 92 on the print queue laser3 :
$ lprm -P laser3 92
Fedora's printing system combines four fairly complex tools into a comprehensive print solution. The Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) provides queue management and printer sharing; the Foomatic system provides access to the large database of printer configuration information and notes maintained by linuxprinting.org; Ghostscript converts PostScript, the most common printer output format used by Linux applications, into other formats for use by non-PostScript printers; and the system-config-printer script provides the user interface for printer configuration.
system-config-printer manipulates the CUPS configuration files in /etc/cups and restarts the CUPS server (cupsd) to load configuration changes. These files can be edited by hand, but this is not recommended.
CUPS provides queue management, storing queued documents in /var/spool/cups until they are printed. It is heavily tied into the Internet Print Protocol (IPP), which is based on the web protocol HTTP. You can connect to the CUPS server's administrative interface by accessing the address http://localhost:631 / through a web browser; however, if you do any configuration through that interface, you may no longer be able to use system-config-printer , which is generally a better configuration tool.
Applications vary enormously in the quality of their interface into the print system:
Programs with the most advanced print control, such as OpenOffice.org, load the list of queues from CUPS, including each queue's capabilities. They also let you set print optionssuch as duplexing, ink mode, paper type, and resolutionusing the Properties button in the print dialog.
Other applications, such as Firefox and Evince, load the queue list but don't permit full control over print options. You can select the queue from a drop-down list in the print dialog.
Many other programs such as xpdf simply allow you to specify the lpr command to be used; queue selection is performed using lpr 's -P option.
The printer icon in the GNOME panel's notification area is provided by the eggcups program.
This is called a printer class; to create one, use the New Class button in the graphical configuration tool. Add the desired printers to the printer class and click Apply; you can then print to the printer class instead of a specific printer, and the first available printer will be used to print your document.
Not only is it possible to set up more than one queue for a printer, it's a good idea, because each queue can have a different driver configuration.
For example, I have a color inkjet printer, which is used in text mode with plain paper and in a photo mode with photo paper. I have created three separate queues: color0-draft for fast, low-quality printing that saves ink; color0 for regular printing; and color0-photo for photo printing. The appropriate driver options have been set for each. Although it is possible to create just one queue and set the resolution and paper type within some applications, not all applications are capable of setting those options, and it's simply faster and more convenient to have preconfigured queues. Similarly, I have single- and double-sided queues for my laser printer.
Printer queues are created with default driver options. To adjust the driver options, create the queue, and then use the Printer Options tab to access the driver settings.
Many applications that don't provide PDF output do provide the ability to print to a file instead of printing to an output queue; this feature can be used to save a PostScript copy of the print request, which you can then convert to a PDF by using Ghostscript via the ps2pdf script.
For example, you could "print" from Firefox to the file bankstatement.ps and then convert bankstatement.ps to bankstatement.pdf with this command:
$ ps2pdf bankstatement.ps
The resulting PDF file can be viewed with Evince, xpdf, or Adobe Acrobat Reader (not installed by default).
HP produces several lines of multifunction printer/copier/scanner devices that use a multiplexed communication protocol; the printer and scanner are accessed through a single connection. The software necessary to access these devices is built into Fedora Core; just ensure that the hplip service is running.
The manpages for lpr , lpq , and lprm
LinuxPrinting.org (home of Foomatic and compatibility reports for hundreds of different printers): http://www.linuxprinting.org
CUPS web site: http://www.cups.org
Ghostscript web site: http://www.ghostscript.com
Configuring your firewall to permit remote access to CUPS printers: "Preventing Unwanted Connections"
Configuring the print service to start automatically (or not to start): Lab 4.5, "Using Runlevels "
Sharing printers using Microsoft Windows File & Print sharing: "Configuring Samba to Share Files with Windows"
Fedora Core contains drivers for many different types of sound cards. However, it may be necessary to configure the sound path or select from different sound devices before your sound output is usable.
Fedora provides two tools for configuring sound: the Soundcard Detection tool and the audio mixer.
To access the Soundcard Detection tool, select System→Administration→Soundcard Detection (or Administration→Soundcard Detection in KDE). The window shown in Figure 2-21 will appear.
Figure 2-21. Soundcard Detection window
This window offers a minimal set of options: basically, you can select the default device to be used, and you can play a test sound.
To test your sound card, make sure that your speakers are plugged in and turned on, then click the Play button. You should hear a guitar chord played on the right, then the left, and then the right+left channels. If you don't, try selecting different device tabs (on the left side of the window) and PCM Device settings (at the bottom of the window) until you find a combination that works. Your system may have multiple sound cards (e.g., both a motherboard and PCI sound card), or there may be sound devices on your sound card that are not connected to a sound path that goes to your speakers; they may instead go to a modem, headphone jack, or thin air.
If you still don't hear anything, then it's time to break out the Volume Control/Mixer. In GNOME, you can do this either by right-clicking on the volume-control panel applet (the icon that looks like a speaker, shown way back in Figure 2-2) and selecting Open Volume Control, or by selecting the menu option System→Preferences→Volume Control; the window shown on the right in Figure 2-22 will appear. In KDE, select Sound and Video→KMix or, if there's a volume-control icon in your panel, right-click it and select Show Mixer Window. The KMix window is shown on the left in Figure 2-22.
Figure 2-22. KDE KMix (left) and GNOME Volume Control (right)
To change which sound device is being configured, click File→Change Device and select the device from the list (in KMix, select the device using the "Current mixer" control).
Make sure the sound device you are configuring with the Volume Control/Mixer is the same device you are testing with the Soundcard Detection tool!
Modern sound chips have many different inputs, outputs, and processing sections, but not all sound card designs implement all of these features, and even if the features are implemented, some of the inputs and outputs may not be connected to anything, or they may be connected to an input or output labeled with a different name. KMix presents controls for almost every available input, output, sound path routing option, and switch; GNOME's Volume Control lets you configure which controls you wish to display. This reduces clutter on the screen, but it also means that required controls may not be visible until you enable them.
To change the configuration of the Volume Control, select its menu option Edit→Preferences. The small checkbox list shown in Figure 2-22 will appear. Until you know which control does what, I'd recommend enabling all of the controls.
With all of the sound card controls in front of you, you can now experiment to see which control is preventing the test sound from reaching your ears. After each adjustment, test the result by clicking on the Play button in the Soundcard Detection tool.
First, check to make sure that your Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), Master, Headphone, and Master Mono outputs are turned up and not muted (i.e., the Volume Control speaker icons are not crossed out or the KMix LEDs are illuminated). If that doesn't solve the problem, experiment with the switches (such as External Amplifier) and the PCM output path/3-D processing.
After you have set the options you want, they will be saved and restored by default the next time you log in, so for most users this is a one-time (per user) configuration step.
Once you have found the correct sound device, select the Settings tab in the Audio Configuration window (Figure 2-21) and set the Default Audio Card and Default PCM Device. Click OK to save your configuration and exit.
Once you have sound working, you can change the volume level by placing your mouse over the volume-control panel applet and rolling the mouse wheel: away from you increases the volume; toward you decreases the volume. If you don't have a mouse wheel, click on the volume panel applet to reveal a slider control. To mute the sound, right-click on the panel applet and select Mute.
To configure sound when using a text console, type:
$ alsamixer
The AlsaMixer display is shown in Figure 2-23 . Use the left/right cursor keys to select a control, up/down to set levels, Tab to switch between the Playback/Capture (Output/Input) views, M to mute, and Escape to exit.
Figure 2-23. AlsaMixer display
Fedora uses the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture system (ALSA), which has replaced the Open Sound System (OSS) used in older Linux kernels. The ALSA interface is generally more advanced than the OSS interface; however, OSS is used on many Unix systems, so ALSA also provides an OSS-compatible sound interface for the convenience of cross-platform software developers.
ALSA uses devices in the /dev/snd directory such as /dev/snd/controlC0 , which is used by the Volume Control and KMix tools to control the first sound card (C0). Devices for OSS compatibility are in the /dev directory and include /dev/dsp , /dev/audio , and /dev/mixer .
Most sound chips have several inputsin some cases, a few dozen inputswhich are routed through various sound paths to arrive at one or more outputs. Most of these inputs have a description assigned by the chip designer, but it's not necessary for the sound card designer to use a particular input for its designated purpose, and it's also not guaranteed that the system builder will connect a given signal source to the appropriate input on the sound card. Since the ALSA drivers generally use the designations provided by the chip documentation, you may find situations where the Video control manages the CD-ROM volume, or the Headset control affects the main speaker output.
It's not uncommon for different sound card models to use the same chipsets, with the support circuitry for some features left off of the budget models. In these cases, ALSA has no idea which features are wired up and which ones have been omitted, which explains why there are so many controls that don't do anything.
The Soundcard Detection tool is a Python script named system-config-soundcard . This script configures the file /etc/asound.conf with the selected default PCM device.
When the system is shut down, the script /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt saves the sound configuration (including mixer settings) to /etc/asound.state . The state is restored by the Udev subsystem using the program /etc/dev.d/sound/alsa.dev when the sound devices are detected during system boot.
When a user logs in, Fedora assigns ownership of the sound devices to that user and sets the permissions so that only that user can open them. If you want to allow several users (including those remotely logged in) to use sound at the same time, you can change the permissions of the sound devices so that they're universally accessible:
$ chmod 0777 /dev/snd/* /dev/mixer* /dev/audio* /dev/dsp*
To make this the default configuration, add this line to the end of the system-wide login script, /etc/profile .
The amixer utility provides command-line access to the sound controls. Run without arguments, it will tell you all of the current settings (which can run into hundreds of lines of output):
$ amixer
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 17 [55%] [on]
Front Right: Playback 17 [55%] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Master Mono',0
Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
Playback channels: Mono
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono: Playback 14 [45%] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 20 [65%] [on]
Front Right: Playback 20 [65%] [on]
...(Lines snipped)...
You can generate a more compact list of just the simple mixer control names using the scontrols subcommand as an argument:
$ amixer scontrols
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Simple mixer control 'Master Mono',0
Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0
Simple mixer control '3D Control - Center',0
Simple mixer control '3D Control - Depth',0
Simple mixer control '3D Control - Switch',0
Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
...(Lines snipped)...
To get the setting for a single control, use the get subcommand:
$ amixer get Master
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 20 [65%] [on]
Front Right: Playback 20 [65%] [on]
To change a setting, use the set subcommand:
$ amixer set Master 31
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 31 [100%] [on]
Front Right: Playback 31 [100%] [on]
There are many different audio file formats, and Fedora includes many different media players so that you can listen to them (including Totem, Mplayer, and Xine). Fedora Core also includes the sox utility to convert between formats; the sox package also includes a handy script named play that can be run from the command line. It converts just about any file into an appropriate format for output and sends the sound to your speakers:
$ play /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup_2.ogg
You can also apply various sox effects to the output. To play a file backward at a reduced volume:
$ play /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup_2.ogg -v 0.2 reverse
The sox package also includes the rec script to record sound:
$ rec /tmp/x.ogg
Send break (control-c) to end recording
Ctrl-C
The ALSA web site: http://www.alsa-project.org/
The manpages for alsactl, alsamixer, amixer, speaker-test, sox, play, and rec
Although Fedora ships with a good set of basic fonts, many users find it useful to add more fonts. Fortunately, this is very easy to do, either graphically or from the command line.
Fonts can be easily added or removed by manually copying the font files or by using the file managers: Nautilus (GNOME) or Konqueror (KDE).
GNOME's Nautilus file manager has a special URI for viewing and managing fonts. To access it:
1. Start Nautilus; use the My Computer or Home desktop icons, the panel bar icons, or any folder in the Places menu.
2. Select Open Location from the Nautilus File menu, or press Ctrl-L. An Open Location dialog will appear.
3. Enter fonts:/ in the location text box.
Figure 2-24 shows the Nautilus font display.
Figure 2-24. Font display in GNOME's Nautilus file manager
The lower- and uppercase letter A of each font are displayed, if the font has those characters. Double-clicking on a font (or right-clicking and selecting " Open with GNOME Font Viewer") will display some basic information about the fontincluding the license, file size, and font stylealong with an extended font sample, as shown in Figure 2-25 .
Figure 2-25. GNOME font viewer
To install fonts into your personal font directory (~/.fonts), simply drag and drop them into the Nautilus font window. The fonts may not show up in the Nautilus display until you log out and log in again, but they will be installed and immediately accessible to applications when they start (if an application is already running, just restart that application to gain access to the new fonts).
To install fonts that are in a compressed archive, such as those from http://www.1001freefonts.com , click on the .zip archive link (i.e., for the Windows font) in your web browser, then select "Open with Archive Manager" as the action. You can then drag and drop the file from the Archive Manager window to the Nautilus font window.
A personal font can be deleted in the same way that a file is deleted using Nautilus: drag it from the Nautilus window to the trash can, or right-click on it and select "Move to Trash."
Nautilus does not permit you to install or delete system-wide fonts. However, Konqueror does, and it is possible to run Konqueror within a GNOME session. One easy way of doing this is to type Ctrl-F2 and enter konqueror in the dialog that appears.
KDE's Konqueror file and web browser enables you to view, install, and delete fonts from both the system-wide font directories and your personal font directory. To access this mode:
1. Start Konqueror, using the Home or Web Browser panel icons, or the K menu.
2. Enter fonts:/ into the location field.
The window will show icons labeled Personal and System; double-click on the group you wish to see, and the display shown in Figure 2-26 will appear (the System group is shown here).
Figure 2-26. Konqueror system font display
Double-clicking on a font will present the KFontView window shown in Figure 2-27 , showing an extended font sample. Clicking on the T icon will enable you to change the sample sentence; the default sentence is same pangram used in the GNOME font viewer.
Figure 2-27. KFontView window
To add fonts, simply drag and drop them into the font window. If you drop them into the system font window, you will be prompted to enter the root password.
To delete a font, treat it like a file: drag and drop it onto the trash can, or right-click and select Delete. As with installation, you will be prompted for the root password if the font is from the system font window.
You can also install and remove fonts through the KDE Control Panel.
When an application starts, the font configuration system automatically scans ~/.fonts (your personal font directory) as well as /usr/share/fonts (which is the system-wide font directory). Any changes to the fonts contained in those directories are detected automatically, so adding fonts is simply a matter of placing files into those directories, and removing fonts is simply a matter of deleting them.
For example, if you have a compressed tar file named /tmp/newfonts.tgz containing a folder named newfonts full of TrueType fonts and wish to install them for your own private use, you can use these commands:
$ cd ~/.fonts
$ tar xvzf /tmp/newfonts.tgz "*.ttf" "*.TTF"
Or, to install the fonts so that they are accessible to all users system-wide:
# cd /usr/share/fonts
# mkdir newfonts
# cd newfonts
# tar xvzf /tmp/newfonts.tgz "*.ttf" "*.TTF"
To delete all of your personal fonts:
$ rm -rf ~/.fonts/*
And to delete the system-wide fonts installed in newfonts :
# rm -rf /user/share/fonts/ newfonts
Web pages and documents created on Microsoft systems often use fonts that are distributed with Windows. For a time, Microsoft made these fonts available free of charge on its web site; although they are no longer available directly from Microsoft, they are available from fontconfig.org under Microsoft's fairly simple licensing terms, documented in http://fontconfig.org/webfonts/Licen.TXT .
Installing these fonts makes it possible to view Word and Excel documents and web pages created under Windows as they were originally designed. Mozilla, Firefox, OpenOffice, and other applications can all use these fonts.
In order to install these fonts, you'll need to obtain a copy of the cabextract program to extract the fonts from archives created in Microsoft's proprietary CAB format:
# yum install cabextract
Once cabextract is installed, you can easily install the Microsoft fonts from the command line:
# wget http://fontconfig.org/webfonts/webfonts.tar.gz
# tar xvzf webfonts.tar.gz
# cd msfonts
# cabextract *.exe
# mkdir /usr/share/fonts/microsoft
# cp *.[tT]* /usr/share/fonts/microsoft
# cd ..
# rm -rf msfonts
# fc-cache
Applications load their font lists at startup time, so simply relaunching an application is usually all that is required before you can start using new fonts.
The command fc-cache will create an index cache to speed application startup. To use it:
$ fc-cache
# fc-cache
Running fc-cache as a regular user will create the index cache for ~/.fonts , which is not really necessary because the index cache will be created automatically. Running it as root will create the index cache for /usr/share/fonts and is strongly recommended; otherwise, an index of the system-wide fonts will be created for each individual user, wasting time and storage space.
Font rendering can be tuned to adjust the font appearance to suit user preferences and the display hardware in use. Both GNOME and KDE provide configuration tools to configure font rendering.
The GNOME configuration window shown in Figure 2-28 is accessed from the menu item System→Preferences→Font. The KDE rendering configuration panel shown in Figure 2-29 is accessed through the KDE Control Panel under Appearance & Themes→Fonts.
Figure 2-28. GNOME font-rendering preferences tool
Figure 2-29. KDE font rendering preferences tool
In both cases, you can enable or disable antialiasing, adjust the level of antialiasing hinting, and set subpixel order.
On an older system with a slow CPU and/or low memory resources, turning off antialiasing can make enough of a performance difference to turn an unbearably slow system into one that performs reasonably.
When antialiasing is enabled, the hinting level can be set according to user preferenceexperiment and see what looks best.
If you have an LCD screen, select "Smoothing: Subpixel (LCD)" in GNOME or "Use Subpixel Smoothing" in KDE. You'll also need to select the order of the red, green, and blue elements on your screen; since this information is almost never documented in the hardware specifications, use a large magnifying glass or experiment until you find the setting that looks the best.
X Window System programs use one of two different font systems. The old system, known as core fonts , is still used by a few applications and is needed to start the X server. Almost all current applications use a system comprising two components: FreeType and fontconfig , two software libraries that provide high-quality font rendering and font matching. Since these are client-side libraries accessed by applications, each application separately handles its own font operations.
FreeType's sub-pixel rendering capability is, by and large, useful only on LCDs. It involves treating each of the RGB color elements in a pixel as a partial pixel. Figure 2-30 shows an enlarged diagonal line border between black and white regions on an LCD screen, rendered using subpixel hinting.
Figure 2-30. Subpixel rendering on an LCD panel
Note that each pixel is comprised of a red, green, and a blue element; on this display, they are arranged horizontally in R-G-B order. In the first row, there is one white pixel. In the second row, there is a white pixel followed by one-third of a white pixelwhich, in this case, means a red pixel. The third row consists of a white pixel followed by two-thirds of a pixela red-plus-green pixel, which displays as yellow. The fourth row contains two white pixels.
It seems odd that a color pixel would be perceived as a partial pixel, but it works because of sophisticated algorithms and the fact that the subpixels are a continuation of the R-G-B element pattern on the line.
The fc-list program (a utility provided with Fontconfig) will list all of the fonts available through the Xft/Fontconfig system:
$ fc-list
Luxi Serif:style=Regular
MiscFixed:style=Regular
Utopia:style=Bold Italic
Nimbus Sans L:style=Regular Italic
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:style=Bold
Webdings:style=Regular
Console:style=Regular
URW Palladio L:style=Roman
Century Schoolbook L:style=Bold Italic
Luxi Serif:style=Bold
...(snip)...
The list isn't in any sort of order, and it contains a lot of information about the styles available for each font, so it's not very readable. Using some arguments and the sort command will produce a much more readable list of available font faces:
$ fc-list : family|sort -u
Andale Mono
Arial
Arial Black
Bitstream Charter
Bitstream Vera Sans
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
Bitstream Vera Serif
Century Schoolbook L
Comic Sans MS
Console
console8x8
Courier
...(snip)..
Fontconfig font names are very easy to use: just specify the font face you wish to use. You can optionally include a size (separated by a hyphen) or font attribute name/value pairs (after a colon).
For matching purposes, you can specify multiple values for the font name or size, separated by commas. The first matching value will be selected.
Table 2-4 lists some font names expressed using this notation.
Table 2-4. Fontconfig font names
| Font name | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Courier-12 | Courier face, 12-point size |
| Utopia:style=italic | Utopia face in italics |
| Helvetica,Arial,Swiss-12 | Helvetica, Arial, or Swiss face (preferred in that order), 12-point size |
| Fixed-12,16,10 | Fixed face in 12-, 16-, or 10-point size (preferred in that order) |
For a complete list of font properties that can be used in font names, see the documentation on the Fontconfig web site at http://fontconfig.org . Note that many of the properties mentioned in the documentation are not used; on most systems, style is the only property specified for most of the fonts.
xterm has support for Fontconfig/Xft and can be used to test a Fontconfig font name. The command-line option to use is -fa (face); if the font name contains spaces, be sure to quote it on the command line. Here are some examples:
$ xterm -fa courier
$ xterm -fa courier-12
$ xterm -fa courier-18:style=italic
$ xterm -fa "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-16:style=bold"
$ xterm -fa foo,bar,baz,utopia,courier,qux-12,18,10:style=italic
If the selected font does not use character-cell spacing, xterm will add considerable spacing between characters (the last example demonstrates this).
The manpages for fc-list , fc-cache , and Xft
The Fontconfig web site: http://fontconfig.org
freedesktop.org: http://freedesktop.org
Keith Packard's Xft tutorial: http://www.keithp.com/~keithp/render/Xft.tutorial
USB is a widely used interface for peripherals. It's intelligent, fast, hot-pluggable, uses a compact and foolproof connector, and even provides a couple of watts of power for small devices.
Many USB devices fall into the storage class, including cameras, portable music players, and storage card readers. These devices can easily be used with Fedora.
Using USB storage in Fedora Core is easy: simply insert the USB storage device into any available USB port.
If you're using GNOME, the device will be mounted, an icon will appear on the desktop, and a window will open showing the contents of the device.
When you insert a USB storage device while running KDE, the dialog in Figure 2-31 appears with two options: "Open in New Window" and "Do Nothing." Choose one of the options and click OK. If you want to skip this dialog next time you insert a storage device, select the checkbox labeled "Always do this for this type of media."
Figure 2-31. KDE USB Storage action dialog
The action performed when a new USB storage device is detected is configurable in both GNOME and KDE.
Before unplugging a USB drive, you should unmount it to prevent data loss. In GNOME and KDE, right-click on the drive's desktop icon and select the menu option Unmount Volume or Remove Safely. Wait until the activity lights stop blinking and then unplug the drive.
To configure the action taken when GNOME detects a new USB storage device, select the menu option System→Preferences→"Removable Drives and Media." The window shown in Figure 2-32 will appear.
Figure 2-32. Removable Drives and Media Preferences tool
The first tab, Storage, contains four checkboxes for USB storage devices:
Mount removable drives when hot-plugged
Freshly inserted USB drives will be mounted, and a corresponding icon will appear on the desktop.
Mount removable media when inserted
Freshly inserted media such as CDs and DVDs will be mounted, and an icon will appear on the desktop.
This option does not apply to media inserted into a memory-card reader! Use the "Mount removable drives when hot-plugged" option for memory cards.
Browse removable media when inserted
Removable drives and removable media will be displayed in a Nautilus window when they are mounted, regardless of whether they are mounted automatically (depending on the settings of the checkboxes) or manually.
Auto-run programs on new drives and media
Searches for a file named autorun on newly mounted media, prompts the user for confirmation, and then executes that file. The file may be a script or a compiled program.
The auto-run feature does not work with automatically mounted media because GNOME takes the precaution of mounting media with the noexec option, which prevents direct execution of files (including autorun files). It does work with manually mounted media.
The third tab, Cameras, has a checkbox labeled "Import digital photos when connected." When checked (which is the default), GNOME will look for a directory named dcim on any newly mounted USB media. If found, it will run the specified command (the default is gthumb-import ).
To configure the behavior of KDE when storage devices are inserted, open the KDE Control Center and select the configuration category Peripherals→Storage Media. The window shown in Figure 2-33 will appear.
Figure 2-33. KDE Removable Media configuration
Select Unmounted Removable Medium in the "Medium types" menu. Two actions will be displayed: "Open in New Window," which mounts the drive and opens a Konqueror browse window, and Do Nothing, which causes a drive icon to be displayed on the desktop, which, when clicked, will mount and browse the drive.
To set one of these actions as the default, click on it, then click "Toggle as Auto Action," and then Apply. The selected action will take place automatically when new media is detected.
When a USB storage device is detected by the USB drivers, the hal subsystem takes note and sends a message on the dbus , a messaging system for desktop applications. GNOME or KDE desktop applications listen for messages on the dbus and then perform the action you have configured, such as mounting the drive or displaying the drive contents in a window.
USB devices use a set of data items called descriptors to inform the controlling host of their capabilities. The Class descriptor is used to identify storage devices. These devices, which understand the same commands used to control SCSI disk drives, are given a device name in the form /dev/sd<x> where <x> is a sequential drive letter ( sd stands for SCSI disk ). Partitions within a USB storage device, if present, are given device names in the form /dev/sd<xp> where <p> is the partition number (1 is the first partition).
When a drive is mounted in a Fedora system, a record of the mount is made in /etc/mtab , which can be viewed with the mount command:
$ mount
/dev/mapper/main-root on / type ext3 (rw)
/dev/proc on /proc type proc (rw)
/dev/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw)
/dev/devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/md0 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
/dev/shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/mapper/main-home on /home type ext3 (rw)
/dev/mapper/main-var on /var type ext3 (rw,acl)
/dev/sda on /media/spreadsheet type ext2 (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
/dev/sdb on /media/disk type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,shortname=winnt,uid=500)
This particular single USB storage device appears as two separate devices, highlighted in bold in this example: a disk drive, mounted using the filesystem label as the mount point ( /media/<fslabel> ), and a floppy disk (mounted as /media/disk in the output above). This is a common configuration used on older USB keys; the emulated floppy disk device is intended to store encryption or password software for accessing the main storage device. Removable media is mounted under the /media directory.
A more useful way of looking at the /etc/mtab table is to use df :
# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/main-root
30G 8.9G 20G 32% /
/dev/md0 251M 33M 205M 14% /boot
/dev/shm 506M 0 506M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/main-home
31G 5.9G 25G 20% /home
/dev/mapper/main-var 36G 26G 9.3G 74% /var
/dev/sda 120M 1.6M 112M 2% /media/spreadsheet
/dev/sdb 1.4M 70K 1.4M 5% /media/disk
This shows most of the information displayed by mount , but with a nice column layout showing the total size, amount of storage used, and the available space.
/proc/mounts contains the same information as /etc/mtab but is generated directly from the kernel's data structures (and is therefore more reliable).
The kernel uses memory as a buffer, writing data to disk periodically. Unmounting a disk flushes the buffer to disk immediately and updates the disk control structures to indicate that the drive is in a consistent (clean) state. If a drive is removed while mounted, some data (including parts of files) may not be written to the disk, resulting in data corruption.
You can use the standard fdisk utility to partition a flash drive (after unmounting it, if necessary). Here is an example in which fdisk is used to divide a 64 MB flash drive into two partitions:
# fdisk /dev/sdb
Since fdisk is an interactive tool, it's necessary to enter single-letter commands to specify the changes that should be made to the partition table. First, print the partition table on the screen so you can review it:
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb: 65 MB, 65536000 bytes
3 heads, 42 sectors/track, 1015 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 126 * 512 = 64512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 1015 63924 83 Linux
This table shows a 64 MB device (64,512 bytes) with one partition.
If the display does not match the device you are trying to partition, you may be partitioning the wrong device; enter q to exit immediately!
Delete the old partition:
Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 1
Create a new primary partition number 1 that is 30 MB in size:
Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-1015, default 1): ENTER
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-1015, default 1015): +30M
Create a new primary partition number 2, taking up the rest of the drive:
Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 2
First cylinder (467-1015, default 467): ENTER
Using default value 467
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (467-1015, default 1015): ENTER
Using default value 1015
Print the partition table to check it:
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb: 65 MB, 65536000 bytes
3 heads, 42 sectors/track, 1015 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 126 * 512 = 64512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 466 29337 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 467 1015 34587 83 Linux
Set the type code for the two partitions:
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): L
0 Empty 1e Hidden W95 FAT1 80 Old Minix be Solaris boot
1 FAT12 24 NEC DOS 81 Minix / old Lin bf Solaris
2 XENIX root 39 Plan 9 82 Linux swap / So c1 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
...(snip)...
9 AIX bootable 4f QNX4.x 3rd part 8e Linux LVM df BootIt
a OS/2 Boot Manag 50 OnTrack DM 93 Amoeba e1 DOS access
b W95 FAT32 51 OnTrack DM6 Aux 94 Amoeba BBT e3 DOS R/O
c W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52 CP/M 9f BSD/OS e4 SpeedStor
e W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux a0 IBM Thinkpad hi eb BeOS fs
...(snip)...
1c Hidden W95 FAT3 75 PC/IX
Hex code (type L to list codes): c
Changed system type of partition 1 to c (W95 FAT32 (LBA))
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 2
Hex code (type L to list codes): c
Changed system type of partition 2 to c (W95 FAT32 (LBA))
Write (save) and exit:
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!
Calling ioctl( ) to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
The partition type used, c , indicates that the partition will contain a FAT filesystem. This enables compatibility with Windows and Mac OS X systems and is also necessary for most camera flash-memory cards and digital music players.
Once the partitions have been created, they can be formatted with mkfs :
# mkfs -t vfat -n spreadsheet -F 32 /dev/sdb1
mkdosfs 2.10 (22 Sep 2003)
# mkfs -t vfat -n database -F 3 2 /dev/sdb2
mkdosfs 2.10 (22 Sep 2003)
You may need to remove and reinsert the drive to force the kernel to load the new partition table before you can format the partitions.
The option -F 32 forces the use of 32-bit file allocation tables, which is not strictly necessary for drives under 512 MB in size but is required for larger drives and matches the filesystem type assigned to the partition by the previous fdisk command. The -n labelname option sets the filesystem label, which will be used to determine the mount points for the filesystem.
If you have ever used your USB drive without a partition table (formatting /dev/sda instead of /dev/sda1, for example), erase the master boot record (MBR) before partitioning to prevent udev from later detecting the drive as unpartitioned and mounting it incorrectly:
# dd bs=1k count=1 if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
You can use ext2 or any other filesystem on a USB storage device, but that will reduce compatibility with other systems. To format the partition /dev/sdb2 with an ext3 filesystem:
# mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb2
Automatically mounted storage media are mounted to the directory /media/<label> if the filesystem has a volume label, or to /media/disk<-N > if there is no volume label, where <-N> is a sequentially assigned number (the first disk mounted is simply called /media/disk ).
When you're in runlevel 3 (character mode), your USB storage devices won't be automatically mounted. You can still use USB storage; you just have to mount it by hand:
# mkdir /mnt/usbdisk1
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdisk1
The SCSI disk IDs are sequentially assigned (the first USB disk found since boot is /dev/sda , the second is /dev/sdb , and so forth) but you may need to experiment to find the right value.
When you're done with the storage device, unmount it before unplugging it:
# umount /mnt/usbdisk1
The unmount command is spelled umount; there's only one n.
The USB Implementors Forum, Inc. (USB standards): http://www.usb.org/home
The Linux USB project: http://www.linux-usb.org/
The Udev project: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev.html
Fedora documentation on Udev: http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/udev/
The GNOME and KDE online manuals