Monthly Archives: April 2003

Bah! I installed RH 9 at home and now I can’t get my software modem working! The hcfpci driver refuses to compile giving some obscure GCC error about parameters! So, I’m typing this in an internet cafe, otherwise I’d provide links and debug messages for you to digest. Hopefully updated drivers will be forthcoming. In the meantime I’ll have to pry the rpm open and hack the source to get it to compile..
So, if I promised to look at b2 bugs for you this weekend, it probably won’t happen, sorry! I’ll be back on Monday!

This package looks like the nfs for Symbian code I stumbled across a few weeks ago.
The docs look simple enough. Run an app on your phone, run a server on your PC, although it doesn’t explain how to mount your phone on the PC filesystem. I’ll have a look at that over the weekend.

It’s near impossible as far as I can tell! Well, not easily done anyway!
Here’s how I managed to get bluetooth working somewhat in Red Hat 9.

1. I installed the bluez-utils and bluez-libs rpms using apt-get.
2. I followed Tom’s advice in his lengthy article. I didn’t have to recompile the kernel however as it contained the rfcomm module already.
3. I was able to connect the phone to the PC through /dev/rfcomm0 by using rfcomm connect 0 <my phone code>. I tried to use that device to create a ppp link by doing /usr/sbin/pppd /dev/rfcomm0 10.0.0.1:10.0.0.2 but pppd returned immediately, and Syslog reported: “pppd[31912]: Serial line is looped back.”

Bah! I’m going home!

I mentioned the GURU LABS review of Red Hat 9 before but what I forgot to say is that it should be required reading for anyone new to this release of Red Hat 9. It has such a wealth of information! It links to this article on adding eyecandy to Red Hat 9 that explains how to change the cursors in your GUI.
The download page has many useful RPMs, including one for mp3 playback, and some very nice looking screensavers!
You really should install apt-rpm too and then apt-get update; apt-get upgrade as there’s already been a number of updates to Samba, Sendmail, Evolution and other packages. Then grab Synaptic by doing apt-get install synaptic and make your package management life much easier!
If you want mp3 playback easily, it’s also available through apt, just apt-get install xmms-mp3 and launch xmms!
Here’s a long slashdot discussion on the new release.

This is my first posting from Red Hat 9 and so far I’m impressed!
Fonts in the GUI are nice, and even though I knew about it, the animated cursors and cursor changes are “pretty” and gave me a pleasant surprise!

Out of curiousity I tried configuring a printer and opened the Red Hat Printer Config tool. This turned out to be a very familiar wizard type application.
When I selected “Windows Network (SMB)” printer the tool displayed the PCs on the local network allowing me to choose the printer easily.
The first test print did fail, but that’s because the printer was turned off. When I printed the test page again it printed! The colours looked a bit strange in the colour wheel, White was a gradient from blue to white, Yellow was white!
I’m not too worried however as all I’ll be printing will be b/w text documents.

More on my experiences to follow..