Setting cutom screen resolution on Sabayon

My Dell XPS 1330 has 1280x800 as standard screen resolution; but the Sabayon installation didn't pick it up because 1280x800 is not one of the standard screen resolutions. At least that is what i understood from my readings. 1280x800 is one of those wide screen resolutions which is pretty normal is every other laptop these days. Then why didn't Sabayon pick it up on my installation on Virtual Box!! That is not a good thing.

However, you can tell Sabayon to pick up 1280x800 with a small configuration.

'su' to root


pjames@localhost ~ $ su
Password:
localhost pjames #


open xorg.conf in your favorite editor. I am using 'nano'


localhost pjames # nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf



Under screen section, look for default depth.


# **********************************************************************
# Screen sections.
# **********************************************************************

Section "Screen"

# The Identifier, Device and Monitor lines must be present

Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "VESA"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
#Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"

# The favoured Depth and/or Bpp may be specified here

DefaultDepth 24

SubSection "Display"




Now look for display configuration for depth 24.

The Modes line will be commented by default. Uncomment this line, and add your custom screen conguration to it. Here is how it looks on my machine for 1280x800.


SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
ViewPort 0 0
Modes "1280x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection


Now, save the file and reboot system for new resolution to become effective.

Sabayon 4 Oh!

Last night, i upgraded my Sabayon 3.5 pod installation to the new Sabayon 4.0. Its a simple 2 step process

1. Change equo repository configuration to point to the new 4 branch

For this, edit /etc/entropy/repositories.conf file and look for the branch entry.
Change current branch to 4 (In my case, i changed 3.5 to 4)


#
# syntax for branch:
#
# branch: in Sabayon Linux each release has its branch that is the version name (eg. 3.4, 3.5)
# branch|actual branch string (no spaces!)
#
# example:
# branch|3.5
# or:
# branch|3.6
#
# Branch default setting
branch|4



2. Run equo world

Wait for equo to compare and upgrade your Sabayon to latest 4 packages and say 'Oh!!'.

I quite liked the way they use 'Oh' in 4.Oh! (4.0)

I have always liked Sabayon anyways.

Cisco VPN client setup on Sabayon linux 3.5

I have a Cisco VPN at work and CIsco provided VPN client won't install on my 64 bit windows Vista. Hence, i set it up on my Sabayon 3.5 mini linux box using 'vpnc' and 'rdesktop'. This is how you do it.

Install vpnc. 'vpnc' is the application that sets up a network connection with the VPN server by adding a rounter configuration.

Find the latest version of vpnc available to you by running


equo search vpnc



Install it



equo install net-misc/vpnc-0.5.2_pre20080509-r1



Next step is to create a vpnc configuration. If you have a 'pcf' file, you can do this by running the 'pcf2vpnc' utility. PCF is the CISCO client configuration file. Ask your network admin to procide you one. I am writing the configuration to vpnc's default configuration file so that i don't have to specify a configuration file when starting vpnc.


pcf2vpnc <pcf file> /etc/vpnc/default.config


Double check the configuration is intact. Also, if you are manually setting up configuration and not creating it from a pcf file, this is where you do it.


nano /etc/vpnc/default.config


## generated by pcf2vpnc
IPSec ID <connection_name>
IPSec gateway <vpn_ip>
IPSec secret <vpn_pwd>

Xauth username <domain name\username of the network you are connecting to> # domain\userId
Xauth password <domain password> #pwd
IKE Authmode <authmode> # Leave this to default


Start vpnc.


localhost pjames # vpnc
VPNC started in background (pid: 8138)...


If you get this message, we are good. vpnc deamon has started successfully.

Verify the connectivity. Check 'netstat -r' and make sure you see the new network connection to VPN server. Then, ping a machine in your VPN network.

So far, we have established a connection to the VPN. However, for a connection to the terminal desktop, you need a GUI tool - 'rdesktop'.

Install rdesktop.



equo install rdesktop



Now run rdesktop from console.


rdesktop -d <domain> -u <user> -p <pwd> <machine name>


You should get the target machine's desktop now. Disconnect from the machine and run rdesktop with '-f' flag for full screen.



rdesktop -f -d <domain> -u <user> -p <pwd> <machine name>


Now, let us add 'vpnc' as a start up service so that you don't have to do it manually every time.

rc-update add vpnc default


Last thing you may want to do is to create launcher for 'rdesktop' and place it as a short cut.

Thats it. I am one click away from my office machine now.



Update: The default conf file name for vpnc should be vpnc.conf (not default.conf) for the deamon to load it while start up.

Sabayon = Gentoo + Entropy

The main difference between Gentoo and Sabayon linux distros? Answer is Entropy. Entropy is the package management software from Sabayon which deals with the sbayon repository. This repository is much stable than the normal Gentoo repository and with Entropy, installations are pretty straight forward. Some installations, that failed for me on Gentoo worked on Sabayon and i am very happy with the default XFCE desktop that comes with Sabayon.

Other difference is the philosophy with which Sabayon is built. Sabayon is a linux flavor which has not compromised on the unix features with the addition of a nice desktop management system (for which linux originally became famous). Good thing about Sabayon is that most of the stuff just works out of the box. This list includes mp3s to youtube flash videos. They have chosen the must to have and packaged it so that you dont have to install them when you get stuck.

Overall, i liked Sabayon for what it is..and what it does..! an overall good linux experience for a serious user.

Gentoo linux

After a long break, my linux passion has forced me to dirty my hands on newer (new for me! of course) distros again. My current linux box runs on Ubuntu and i am pretty happy with the Ubuntu UI and wide base of applications Ubuntu repository has. I do everything from developing my Java apps to video chatting on Yahoo to playing mp3s on my box and it takes all of 'em happily.

My goal this time was to get a good linux installation that can work on a minimal hardware without loosing much of the X features and good number of applications for everyday computing. After a lot of reading on forums and disros requirements pages, i picked 2 of them- Gentoo and Sabayon. Because i was only trying out a new linux, i preferred doing it on virtual machine. VBox from Sun is the best (freeware) i have ever tried out yet.

Gentoo worked pretty well on live CD on my VBox with 128MB RAM pretty smoothly. I really mean smooth performance because i've had the same experiments on Fedora, Ubuntu and Xubuntu also and compared to those heavy distros, applications did run faster on Gentoo with XFCE.

So, if you are looking for a smaller installation and ready to come out of the comfort of Xubuntu and do some learning, i stringly recommend Gentoo.