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Old 06-26-2004, 10:45 AM   #1
Toth
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Project Utopia + Slackware 10


For those of you that don't know, Project Utopia is an attempt to pull together a linux system from the kernel on up to the desktop environment to make the system easier to use. Some of the basic goals involve easier and more robust interprocess communication and an abstraction of hardware in an operating system independent way.

What does this mean for you, the end user? In the short term, it means hardware should 'just work.' When you put in a USB flash drive, hotplug will automatically load any necessary kernel modules, HAL will recognize the device, update your fstab, and send out a message over D-BUS informing the system of the new device. A program listening on the bus such as gnome-volume-manager will then mount the volume and Nautilus will display an icon for the device on your desktop. Similarly, when you put a CD in your CD-ROM drive, it's mounted automagically. When you put a DVD in, totem will start and play the DVD for you. If it's a music CD, then gnome-cd will run and play your CD.

Now, I'm going to help you set it up. A few weeks ago I installed the software, got it working, and created Slackware packages for easy installation later. I shared them with some people on another forum and they worked well. I figured a few users on this forum may be interested in trying out this software.

NOTE: I DON'T GUARENTEE THAT THESE PACKAGES WORK CORRECTLY. I BUILT THEM FOR MY OWN USE, WITH THE INTENTION OF SHARING, BUT I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY IF YOUR SYSTEM FAILS TO WORK AFTER YOU INSTALL THEM.

That said, they should work just fine as they do for myself and others. I just wanted to get that out of the way

Requirements

Linux Kernel 2.6.6 or greater. It may work with previous versions of 2.6, but you absolutely must have a 2.6 kernel installed and working.

Slackware 10.0 or a recent version from -current. I built these packages on June 8th and my system was synced with -current. I highly recommend you are running 10.0 if you'd like to try this out.

udev must be installed and running properly. To check this, run 'udevinfo -d' from a terminal. If it spits out a bunch of device information, you're fine.

You will need GNOME installed as gnome-volume-manager depends on GNOME libraries.

From here on, I'll assume you are running Slackware 10.0, kernel 2.6.x (I'm running 2.6.7-rc1-mm1), sysfs is properly mounted, and udev is running properly. (If udev is running, then that means sysfs is mounted properly).

Installation

1) Download the D-BUS, HAL, and gnome-volume-manager packages from my website.

2) Install the packages using installpkg as root.

3) Start the D-BUS and HAL daemons. As root:

Code:
# . /etc/rc.d/rc.messagebus start
# . /etc/rc.d/rc.hal start
4) Start gnome-volume-manager. From a terminal as a normal user, run:

Code:
$ gnome-volume-manager
This will allow you to see messages as you test the software.

Now you should be set. Try plugging in a USB flash drive, or putting a music CD into your CD-ROM drive and observe!

To configure the software, log out and then back into GNOME. Unfortunately, since FAM is not included in Slackware, GNOME's menus do not automatically update when new software was installed.

Now go to Applications -> Desktop Preferences -> Removable Storage. Or run the gnome-volume-properties program.

Final Configuration

Now then, to get all of this to work automatically every time your computer starts, I suggest adding the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

Code:
# Start the system message bus
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.messagebus ]; then
  . /etc/rc.d/rc.messagebus start
fi

# Start the HAL daemon
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.hal ]; then
  . /etc/rc.d/rc.hal start
fi
Finally, open Applications -> Desktop Preferences -> Advanced -> Sessions. Navigate to the Startup tab, click add, and type gnome-volume-manager. Voila!

Final notes

1) A program called hal-device-manager is included in the HAL package that will let you view the device heirarchy of your system. There is no menu entry for this program, but you can add one or just run it manually. In order to run it, you will need pygtk2 and gnome-python installed. I recommend installing those packages from linuxpackages.net.

2) If you don't run a full gnome session, you can add gnome-volume-manager to your xinitrc or however you start software automatically for your X session.

3) If I remember correctly, the default command for DVD Videos is incorrect. Change it to 'totem dvd://' or 'xine dvd://' or any command you'd want to use.

4) The rc.messagebus and rc.hal scripts are written in the typical Slackware fashion. Passing 'restart' to the script will restart the program, 'start' will start it and 'stop' will stop it. Similarly, if you add the lines I gave you above to rc.local, making either script non-executable will prevent it from loading on start up. Finally, the messagebus must be running before HAL can start.

Hopefully this works for all of you. Enjoy and feel free to ask any questions you have here.
 
Old 06-26-2004, 11:08 AM   #2
lupin_the_3rd
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Registered: Oct 2003
Location: Memphis, TN
Distribution: Slackware current
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Well, everything works except gnome-volume-manager which craps out with this error:

manager.c/92: daemon exit: no point living

Have you ever run into this?


edit: I got the error above but it all works perfectly... great!!

Last edited by lupin_the_3rd; 06-26-2004 at 11:30 AM.
 
Old 06-26-2004, 11:33 AM   #3
Toth
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Registered: Aug 2003
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Wierd, I've never seen that error, but atleast it works!
 
Old 06-26-2004, 03:18 PM   #4
codec
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Registered: Sep 2003
Location: mad.es.eu
Distribution: ubuntu 5.04 knoppix Slack91/10 freebsd51 vector4 redhat9
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I was trying to find the project hp.

http://www.rpi.edu/~penwan/ss-20040308.jpg
What is that eye candy things? gdesklets?
 
Old 06-26-2004, 03:24 PM   #5
XavierP
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This'd work as a Linux Tutorial - have you thought about submitting it?
 
Old 06-26-2004, 09:42 PM   #6
Toth
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codec: That's a screenshot from when I was running FVWM some time ago. Those are icons of minimized programs with a screenshot of the application as the icon. For more information on how to do that, just google for 'taviso fvwm2rc' and you should be able to figure it out. It does require FVWM which is a pain to setup, but it's a nice window manager.

XavierP: No, I wasn't aware of that part of the site. When I have some free time I'll re-type it out to submit it.
 
  


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