Enable root GDM (GNOME) login in Fedora 12

To enable root login in GDM;  it’s a bit simpler in fedora 12 as compared to fedora 10 and 11 and you need to edit multiple files. Gain root privileges (su -), then:

# cd /etc/pam.d/
# fgrep “user != root” gdm*

On my system it returns two files, gdm and gdm-password; depending on your installed PAM and/or GDM type options there may be more files on your system. The process is the same for all of them:

# cp -a gdm gdm.orig
# vi gdm

…and simply delete the line that looks like:

auth required pam_succeed_if.so user != root quiet

Repeat the process with each file that matched the above fgrep and you’re all set, you can now log in as root from GDM. There are other files in /etc/pam.d/ that also contain the same logic (racoon, e.g.) – no need edit those, they shouldn’t be touched.

Save time on downloads with delta RPMs in Fedora 11

Fedora 11 introduced a great new feature: delta RPM updates. This feature creates delta RPM packages (.drpm) that are binary “patches” to the existing RPM packages. Instead of downloading all files, regardless of whether they have changed or not, a delta RPM will only download the files that have changed compared to the previous RPM package.

Once the delta RPM is downloaded by the Presto plugin for yum, it will try to reconstruct a full RPM based on the contents of the previous RPM, plus the newly changed files from the delta RPM. The newly-created RPM will then be installed by yum.

Using Presto has its benefits and drawbacks. If you have a fast Internet connection or are using a local mirror, using Presto doesn’t make sense. It would be faster to download the full RPM package instead of downloading the changed parts and consuming CPU time to reconstruct the RPM to install.

If, however, you have a slow Internet connection or you pay-per-byte for your Internet connection, then using Presto makes sense: it will download smaller files which will save time and money.

The savings from Presto will depend largely on the update. If it is an update that introduces a single patch that affects one or two files out of a multi-megabyte package, using Presto will make the download really fast. If it’s an upgraded version being provided, most files would likely change meaning that most files will have been changed, and thus downloaded. In a recent update of 27 packages that weighed in at 21MB, using Presto reduced the download size to 14MB, a savings of 7MB or one-third of what the download would have otherwise been.

Using Presto couldn’t be easier. All you need to do is install the yum-presto package, which contains the plugin for Presto:

 yum install yum-presto

Once this is done, any subsequent call to yum will use Presto as described above, transparently, and with no further configuration on your part. If you no longer want to use it, you can simply remove the yum-presto package:

 rpm -e yum-presto

Afterwards, the next invocation of yum will act as normal. Presto is not the default in Fedora 11, but my suspicion is that it will be the default in Fedora 12.

How to install Google Chrome browser on Fedora 11

Installation of Chromium browser can be done in both ways – either manually or using the YUM updater. These packages have been specially built for Fedora 11 and are available for both 32 bit and 64 bit systems.

Install Using Packages (RPMs)

RPMs of the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of both Fedora 10 and Fedora 11 operating systems are available at

http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/. Or   http://www.google.com/chrome

Download and install them by either double clicking the RPMs or by using the

rpm -ivh <package-name> command. If you are looking for source RPMs, these can also be found at the link above.

Install Using YUM

One advantage of installing Chromium via YUM is that you will get updates to Chromium automatically. Also there won’t be any dependency problem while installing. All you need to do is just type the content given below into  filenamed chromium.repo .

[chromium]
name=Chromium Test Packages
baseurl=http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/F$releasever/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

and save it to your /etc/yum.repos.d directory. Once done, then you can install Chromium by using the command: yum -y install chromium

Special note for 64bit version users

There have been many issues with the 64 bit version of the Chrome Browser.

So in order to fix the issue all you need to do is just install this missing package. To do so, you need to type the following command in a terminal:

sudo yum -y install nss-mdns

After installation, you must restart your Google Chrome browser for the changes to be applied.

Chromium can be launched from Applications > Internet > Chromium Web Browser. You can also alunch it from the terminal using the command chromium-browser. Since this install is a development build, some advanced functionality such as Support for Plugins(including Flash Plugin), Printing and support for Google Gears will not be available until it’s next release.

Fedora Event in SASTRA University

It was the first time that fedora event has been organized in my college.It happened over here on 23 august, 2009.

This event was organized by J. Dwarak(sun campus ambassador), Pankaj kumar, Anurag Jain, Sanjeev Gopinath(all fedora ambassador).Session started off at 11:00 am by Dwarak. He told what OPENSOURCE is and how it is connected  to the corporate world.He also demonstrated on how individuals form a part of the big communities.He was followed by Pankaj Kumar who explained how to get into Fedora subprojects, and then features of fedora.Then it comes Anurag Jain.He told the fedora installation with partitioning, package installation.Sanjeev took FEDORA ELECTRONIC LAB and programming and he explained how one can design electronic circuit using fedora electronic lab.He showed compilation of c, c++, java program in fedora. After that GNOME Desktop features has been shown to us, which was very exciting. At the end fedora 11 DVDs and stickers has been distributed and the session ends at 1.30pm. It was nice to see juniors coming over here to try out new things.

Allows People In Group Admin To Run All Commands via Sudo “command-name”.

I like the way Ubuntu  works – all people in admin groups should able to run all commands after running it via sudo “command-name”. Whereas in fedora you have to necessarily become to root to be able to run all commands.

How do I setup sudo under Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux to allow all members of the ‘admin’ group to run all commands?

/etc/sudoers files allows particular users or groups to run various commands as he root user, without needing the root password. This is useful for delegating roles and permissions to other users without sharing the root password. This file must be edited with the visudo command. Login as the root user and enter:

visudo
Append the following line:

## Allows people in group admin to run all commands
%admin  ALL=(ALL)       ALL

Save and close the file. Finally, add a group called admin:
groupadd admin

Add a user called shailesh (existing user) to group admin:
usermod -a -G admin shailesh

Verify group membership:
id shailesh


Sample Outputs:

uid=5001(shailesh) gid=5001(shailesh) groups=5001(shailesh),10(admin)

Login as user shailesh and to run any command as the root type:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart

To gain root shell, enter:
$ sudo -s
When prompted for a password, enter shailesh’s password.

How Do I Keep Track Of All Users In Admin Group?

sudo can log both successful and unsuccessful attempts (as well as errors) to syslog (default is /var/log/secure), a log file, or both. By default sudo will log via syslog but this is changeable at configure time or via the sudoers file.
tail -f /var/log/secure
grep something /var/log/secure

Please note that sudo will normally only log the command it explicitly runs. If a user runs a command such as sudo su or sudo sh, subsequent commands run from that shell will not be logged, nor will sudo’s access control affect them. The same is true for commands that offer shell escapes (including most editors).