NoisyGecko

These are notes about a recent Fedora Core 6 install I performed. The system had a ASUS P4P800 motherboard.

Initial Install

Need to boot with the following for some systems just to
be able to install:

   linux irqpoll

This seems to be the norm with all the computers around our office.

Installation hanged twice in "verifying packages" or something like that, so I finally just installed the basic system with development setup. That worked.

After install I updated it with the package manager. Eventually I figured out I needed to add the irqpoll thing to my grub.conf

Setup sudo:

    su
   chmod +w /etc/sudoers
   gedit /etc/sudoers
   # Add line: myuserid    ALL=(ALL)     ALL
   chmod -w /etc/sudoers

Install extra software by running the following:

   sudu yum -y install tsclient rdesktop
   sudu yum -y install xemacs

Update to Firefox 2.0

By default you get Firefox 1.5 on Fedora Core 6 (Yeah, seems pretty lame to me), and here is how you can get that updated pretty easily to Firefox 2.0:

sudo yum -y -t --enable=development update firefox

That enables the "development" repository and then installs Firefox from there.
Found that tip at http://www.philoking.com/2006/11/15/how-to-update-to-firefox-20-on-fedora-core-6-the-easy-way/

Install RealPlayer 10 Media Player

(Stolen from http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc6-tips.php#rplayer with modifications.)

Before you install the play you'll need to make sure the compat-libstdc++-33 and the alsa-oss modules are installed:

# yum -y install compat-libstdc++-33 alsa-oss

Download the RealPlayer10 package from the following location:

RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm

Then install the RPM:

# rpm -ihv RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm

The other thing you'll need to do is prevent the mplayerplug-in you installed above from trying to handle Real Media. I don't know why it's included because it almost never works correctly. Also, the totem-complex-plugin will try to play if the mplayer one isn't there. The easiest way to disable it is to remove the appropriate plugin files:

# cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
# rm mplayerplug-in-rm.so
# rm libtotem-complex-plugin.so

Then whenever you want to view something just use /usr/bin/realplay . Here is a link to a cute test video to make sure it's working for you.

If audio is working but you have a black screen then it's possible your video card doesn't support XVideo. You can turn it off by clicking on Tools -> Preferences then choose the Hardware tab and disable Use XVideo .

If the video doesn't play properly the first thing to check is to make sure you're not running SElinux, it seems to prevent the RealPlayer from getting access to the drivers. I currently run with SElinux disabled but I recommend you run it in the Targeted mode rather than the most secure mode.

Now a bit of a tricky part. You'll need to edit the executable /usr/bin/realplay as root and locate the section below around line 56. Then add the code that's highlighted and save the file back.

 .
 .
  export HELIX_LIBS
fi

LD_PRELOAD="$LDPRELOAD:/usr/lib/libaoss.so.0.0.0"
export LD_PRELOAD
 
# See if LD_PRELOAD contains any of the sound server libs. If so, remove them.
LD_PRELOAD=`echo $LD_PRELOAD | sed -e 's/\([^:]*libesd[^:]*\|[^:]*libarts[^:]*\):\?//g'`
 .
 .

After you've run it the first time and gone through the configuration screens edit the ~/.realplayerrc file and add the following line in the [helix] section of the configuration:

[helix]
SoundDriver=2
      .
      .

For some reason on some systems RealPlayer uses the the old and virtually obsolete OSS sound driver. The line above tells it to use the newer ALSA sound driver instead.

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Normally I stay away from Sony Products -- I don't like their proprietary elements and don't see a lot of value in their products -- but the RM-VL600 universal/learning remote is an exception. I have steered away from Sony products for years, but I have tried a lot of remotes and never found one which works very well.

The Sony RM-VL600 cost me $25 at Walmart, and has worked very well for the past month or so. It already knows the codes for many devices out there, but I have also been able to program it for the remotes it doesn't know. This has been useful for my GoVideo DVD player, as well as to fix some problems with remotes it knows.

There are also 4 macro buttons which can be programmed to do buttons sequences, and the power buttons can also be set to run macros when held down.

One of the few problems I have had with the remote is that the buttons -- especially the volume and channel ones -- are too easy to press. But I can live with that after finally finding a remote which I can finally use as the only remote to control all move my living room multimedia devices.